THE THIRD WORLD IN THE ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT

THE THIRD WORLD IN THE ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT

PHILIP P o r n *

It is a great privilege for me to address you as members and associates of this University which has from the start developed a tradition of learning and of openness to the world. There can be no surprise about this fact, for Hamburg has, as a leader in the Hanseatic League, a long history of commercial and intellectual contact with the world. Hamburg has also been a centre of Christian missionary activity since the days of Anskar in the ninth century up to today with the chair of missiology and ecu- menics in this University, the Missions Academy, the headquarters of the Deutscher Missions-Rat and of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur Welt- mission. It is therefore appropriate that we should consider together the theme “The Third World in the Ecumenical Movement”. This is a very large subject which cannot be adequately treated in one address. Little has been written about it in any systematic way. The only exception is the admirable study by Hans Ruedi Weber , “Asia and the Ecumenical Move- ment, 1895-1961”, which provides many valuable clues. Moreover, we cannot speak on this subject without paying some attention to the political realities which have both conditioned and accompanied the relation of the Third World to the ecumenical movement. The very phrase “Third World” has a political connotation. It was coined by the French, “le tiers monde”, as an expression of the situation of the Cold War, in distinction from the first world, presumably the North Atlantic community (North America, Britain, Western Europe, together with their associates, Australasia and the South African state), and also in distinction from the second world considered as the USSR and the Eastern European socialist states. The rest of the world, with the exception of Japan, was thus lumped together as the Third World, made up largely of non-white peoples who have been under the influence and domination of the North Atlantic since the journeys of Christopher Columbus in 1492 and of Vasco da Gama in 1498. The Third World has

* The Rev. Dr. PHILIP POTTER is Chairman of Programme Unit I on Faith and Witness of the World Council of Churches and Director of its Commission on World Mission and Evangelism. Address given at the University of Hamburg, Germany, June 25, 1971.

56 THE ECUMENICAL REVIEW

the bulk of the world’s population. Indeed, it would be truer to describe it as the “two-thirds world”. It is, further, the world of over-population, poverty, illiteracy. In the economic race it is increasingly being outpaced by the first and second worlds because of the immense scientific and technological power which is concentrated in the Northern hemisphere. Yet both the first and second worlds have tried to woo it to their political advantage. I need hardly add that the Third World has been the sphere of the great missionary movement of the last two centuries particularly from the North Atlantic world. It is in this context that we must discuss the ecumenical movement which has been traditionally defined as express- ing “the nature of the modern movement for co-operation and unity which seeks to manifest the fundamental unity and universality of the Church of Christ” (Visser ’t Hooft in History ofthe EcumenicaZ Movement:

In view of this political character of the phrase “Third World”, I propose to divide my comments on the relation of the Third World to the ecumenical movement between two main periods - 1895-1948 and 1948- 1971 -for by 1948 the Cold War had become a reality. I have chosen 1895 as ushering in the modern ecumenical movement because it was on that date that the World Student Christian Federation came into being, and of course 1948 was the inauguration of the World Council of Churches.

1517-1948, p. 740).

A. The Period 18951948

It is often assumed that the Third World is a recent arrival on the ecumenical scene. True enough, in the great missionary and ecclesiastically controlled meetings which have been called ecumenical, the number of leaders from the Third World has been few and this is still true, though there has been a definite improvement since the Third Assembly of the World Council in New Delhi in 1961. But it has been the glory of the World Student Christian Federation that from the very start students and their leaders from the Third World were included in its deliberations both as participants and as leaders. Hans Ruedi Weber, in his book mentioned above, tells an interesting story relating to the origins of the WSCF. On 5 July 1889, 500 Japanese students meeting in Kyoto at Doshisha, the oldest Christian College of Japan, sent a cable of greetings to the Student Conference of the YMCA in the USA meeting at the same time in Northfield. The cable contained simply the words of the theme of that

THE THIRD WORLD IN THE ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT 57

Conference : “Make Christ King”. The General Secretary of the Ameri- can YMCA, Richard Morse, wrote about the cable to his friend Karl Fries, who was secretary of the Stockholm City YMCA. Fries received it while at a Scandinavian Missionary Conference. He read the letter to a few student leaders present and one of them, K. M. Eckhoff from Nor- way, remarked : “If students can gather round Jesus Christ as their King over there in the Far East, why not also here in the North ?” That is how the Scandinavian Student Movements began and it was at their third meeting at Vadstena Castle in Sweden that the WSCF was founded in August 1895. Karl Fries became its first chairman while John R. Mott, who was at the Northfield Conference, became its first general secretary. When the World Council of Churches was inaugurated at Amsterdam in August 1948, the opening preachers were John R. Mott and the Ceylonese, D. T. Niles, who himself was nurtured in the WSCF and the YMCA. I myself had the privilege of presenting a statement on behalf of the youth delega- tion at the end of the Assembly, and I too had my ecumenical apprentice- ship in the WSCF. Before indicating ways in which the Third World participated in the ecumenical movement during those formative years till it came of age, so to speak, at Amsterdam, it is useful to remind ourselves of the historical context of those years. In 1895 the West had achieved undisputed sway over Asia, Africa and the Pacific. For example, between 1875 and 1895, Germany acquired a new colonial empire of one million square miles and 13 million people. The odd man out among the non-white peoples was Japan which in 1894-5 emerged as a world power when it defeated China and forced it to cede Korea, Formosa and the Liaotung peninsula. In 1904-5, Japan defeated Russia in what was the first colonial war between big powers. This had a profound effect on the minds of Asians. Simi- larly, the defeat of the Italians by the Ethiopians at Adowa in 1896 also deeply impressed Africans who were at that time being forced under German, British, French, Belgian and Italian rule. But the situation changed dramatically with a series of events, starting with the first world war - the Russian revolution of 1917, the rise of fascism in Italy, Ger- many and Japan, the economic depression of 1929-31, the rape of Man- churia by Japan and of Ethiopia by Italy, the Spanish civil war, World War I1 and the decimation of Hiroshima and of Nagasaki by atomic bombs. The Third World was at first helpless and voiceless and even sought to adapt itself to the West. But the two world wars and other well-known


events undermined the moral authority of the West in the mind of the Third World. With the independence of India in 1947, the era of Western imperialism had more or less come to an end, and with it the collapse of Western Christendom. Hendrik Kraemer has well described the factors which contributed to that collapse :

“. . . the relentless process, in many Western countries of de-Christianiza- tion, out and inside the churches, and of ‘de-churchification’ ; the widespread lack of courage, faith and clear-sightedness in Western (and perhaps also Eastern) Christendoin to face up to the challenge inherent in the vague, but very pregnant, term, ‘the modern world’ ; the abiding, predominantly introverted mentality in the churches ; the weakness of genuine response to the ecumenical movement ; the distressing lack of a real grasp of the dynamic meaning of the Christian faith among both older and younger Christians, Christian students not excepted.” (His- tory’s Lessons for Tomorrow’s Mission, p. 200).

How, then, did the Third World participate in the ecumenical movement in that period?

1 . World Student Christian Federation. In the early part of this period students and their leaders from Japan, China and India were in the fore- front of the ecumenical movement.. Many of them visited universities and colleges of Europe and North America, conducting evangelistic meetings and challenging students to commitment--. Ibuka, Miss M. Kawai, T. Kagawa of Japan ; C. T. Wang, C. Y. Cheng, T. Z. Koo (who was the first Third World secretary of the WSCF) of China; V. S. Azariah, K. T. Paul, S. K. Datta, P. D. Devanandan, D. T. Niles, Miss Sarah Chakko, C. Devanesan, M. M. Thomas of India and Ceylon. Some of the significant WSCF conferences were also in Asia. In Tokyo 1907, the primacy of evangelism was stressed and had a profound influence on the preparation of the World Missionary Conference of Edinburgh 1910. In Peking 1922, students from both West and East were forced, because of the situation in China and elsewhere in Asia, to face the meaning of the Christian faith for political and social involvement in a manner which was well in advance of the time and was only seriously taken up by the ecumenical movement after 1948. It is important to remember in this connection the Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1900 when some 300 white people were killed in the nationalist reaction against the unequal treaties imposed by Western, including German, powers, and which provoked very severe retaliation by Western powers. By 191 1 the Manchu dynasty was deposed and a republic set up with some of‘the young Christian leaders partici-


pating in the new government. The Chinese Renaissance Movement was in full force and expressed itself in the Anti-Christian Movement, creating an Anti-Christian Student Federation. It was Chinese Christians themselves who persuaded the reluctant WSCF to meet in Peking in 1922 to face this challenge to the relevance of the Christian faith - and the impact was felt most strongly by the Western participants. In Tjiteureup (Indo- nesia) 1933, the Federation had to come to grips with the crisis of faith around the world. This meeting was also notable for being the first regional student encounter held within a distinctly Muslim and anti- colonial setting. The WSCF also pioneered in bringing the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches through their young leaders into the ecumenical movement - first with the Syrian Orthodox in India, and then the Eastern Orthodox through the meeting in Constantinople in 191 1. It was because of these contacts that the Ecumenical Patriarch proposed the formation of a world league of churches in 1920. The YMCA and the YWCA, too, played a very useful role in this period. Together with the WSCF and the World Council of Churches in process of formation, they organized two World Christian Youth Conferences in Amsterdam in 1939 and Oslo 1947 where the Third World was amply represented and made a major impact, particularly at the Oslo meeting (my first world ecumenical experience). Indeed, it must be remarked that the lay movements (WSCF, YMCA, YWCA) under such great lay leaders as John R. Mott and J . H. Oldham did more to encourage Third World participation than the more ecclesiastically oriented organizations. 2. WorZd Missionary Conferences. At the Edinburgh Conference there were only seventeen Third World representatives and they came as part of Western delegations. However, their contributions were notable, especially those of C. Y. Cheng from China and of V. S . Azariah of India. Cheng was the youngest delegate at Edinburgh 1910, though he already had a great deal of experience behind him of student work and also of translating the Bible into Mandarin as an effective tool for evangelization and for building up a church which was self-supporting and indigenous. It was for those reasons that he was passionately concerned about the unity of the Church. “Speaking plainly”, he said in a terse seven-minute speech, “we hope to see in the near future a united Christian Church without any denominational distinctions. This may seem somewhat peculiar to some of you, but friends, do not forget to view us from our standpoint, and if you fail to do that, the Chinese will remain always a


mysterious people to you.. . . There is no time more important than the present. These days are days of foundations from both political and reli- gious standpoints. The future China will largely depend on what is done at the present time . . . The Church of Christ is universal, not only irrespective of denominations, but also irrespective of nationalities.” Such a challenge had never before been so clearly heard at a world Christian meeting - and it came from the Third World. It caught the imagination of Bishop Charles Brent, who had been a missionary in the Philippines, and who later became the founder of the Faith and Order movement. The other remembered Third World voice at Edinburgh was that of V. S . Azariah. He, like other early Indian ecumenical leaders, was educated at Madras Christian College, itself a venture in inter-church cooperation. In 1895 he was secretary of the YMCA and a student leader. Actually, it was Mott himself who persuaded the reluctant Azariah to speak at Edinburgh on a very delicate matter in the relations between people of the North Atlantic and of the Third World, and in particular between foreign missionaries and national workers. Azariah knew well that what he had to say would cause anger, pain and confusion to the assembly. But he had behind him considerable experience as a missionary to his own people and also of unhappy relations with all too paternalistic missionaries. What he called for was an end to paternalism in favour of an attitude of friendship. He said: “Through all the ages to come the Indian Church will rise up in gratitude to attest the heroism and self- denying labours of the missionary body. You have given your goods to feed the poor. You have given your bodies to be burned. We also ask for love. Give us FRIENDS !” It is precisely this friendship which Azariah had experienced in the WSCFand which was lackingin the relation between churches and particularly between the West and the Third World. One of the essential marks of the ecumenical movement is this sense of sharing a common life in Christ which transcends national and racial attitudes. The ecumenical movement creates a certain attitude of mind which makes possible mutual correction and growth in unity and common witness. It is a spirit that we of the Third World would wish was more widespread among our fellow Christians of the North Atlantic. Azariah was the embodiment of that spirit. It is no wonder that he was one of the archi- tects of the Church of South India which came into being in 1947. I would like to pay tribute to one who exemplified this ecumenical spirit and who was an inspiration to Christians of the Third World. I refer to the late Dr. Walter Freytag, who was Professor of Mission in this Uni-


versity, and who played an important role in the ecumenical movement up to his untimely death in 1960. Soon after the Edinburgh conference, John R. Mott, who chaired it so ably, helped to form National Christian Councils in Asia and elsewhere which became effective ecumenical instruments, some of them, especially the one in China, being well ahead of almost anything which existed in Europe or North America. When the International Missionary Council was formed in 1921, some of these Councils were foundation members. At the Jerusalem Conference of 1928, therefore, there was much greater Third World participation. It was at that meeting that Third World people began to challenge the rather negative attitudes of Westerners to the great religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Islam. This was also the first world Christian meeting to discuss the race issue, though the WSCF had done so through the Student World in 1921 when Asians had written vehemently on the subject, but were barely heeded by the impervious Westerners. The Africans and black Americans who spoke at Jerusalem did so with an extraordinary eirenic spirit, in spite of the unjust treatment they and their people were receiving from white Christians. Secularism was seen as a world issue and posed the question of the Christian mission being on all continents, which, however, was still rather difficult for many Westerners to accept, imprisoned as they were in their Christendom ideology. At Tambaram 1938, the Third World really came into its own. For the first time there was an equal representation of the West and the Third World, and Africans and Latin Americans were present in good numbers. This was in no small way due to the political realities of the time - the churches and missionary forces of the West, under the pressure of the communist and fascist ideologies, were discovering the supreme impor- tance of the universal Church beyond race and nation. In the debate on Kraemer’s book, The Christian Message in a non-Christian World, Asians and Africans were not yet fully engaged, because it was conducted in Western and rather Barthian terms. In fact, it was after this meeting that Asians began to do their own thinking on the subject. But perhaps the most important issue which emerged in Tambaram was that of partnership in mission and the self-hood of the churches of the Third World. But it was only at Whitby 1947 that the slogan “Partnership in Obedience” was accepted as the only valid approach to mission by all churches. In all these meetings and in the on-going work of the IMC, the Third World played a useful role through a handful of dedicated and wise leaders.


3. Life and Work and Faith and Order Movements Both the Stockholm 1925 and Oxford 1937 Conferences on Life and Work were mainly preoccupied with the problems of the West, the one in the aftermath of the first world war and the other in response to the challenge of totalitarian states to the freedom of the Church to witness prophetically to the issues of society. The Third World participants therefore were generally onlookers. This was mainly because the Constantinian and Christendom preoccupation with Church and State still determined consideration of ethical and political issues in the West. The Lausanne 1927 and the Edinburgh 1937 Conferences on Faith and Order did not find much room for the Third World, again because the categories of theological thinking were entirely Western. But the Asians in particular emphasized the necessity and urgency of Church union and were somewhat impatient of the comparative ecclesiology which prevailed at those meetings. The union of Anglican, Presbyterian, Congregational and Metho- dist Churches in South India in 1947, after many battles stemming mainly from theological and ecclesiastical circles in the West, constituted a challenge and a rebuke to the Western churches.

4. World Council of Churches. When the Council came into being in 1948, few Third World churches could comply with the conditions for membership because of the Western requirements of what constituted an autonomous church. But there were many Third World leaders who played a significant part in the deliberations, especially in the sections on “The Universal Church in God’s Design” and “The Church’s Witness in God’s Design”. The point to remember is that the two movements which gave the least scope to the Third World - Faith and Order and Life and Work - were precisely the two which went into the formation of the WCC. The World Council leaders were well aware of this and sought ways in which the Third World could participate in its work. It was on this occasion that Sarah Chakko of India insisted that if the World Coun- cil of Churches were to be truly a world body there should soon be an occasion for Western churchmen to meet church leaders in the Third World. This was what eventually happened at Lucknow in 1952, and marked a turning point in the life of the Council.

B. The Period 1948-1971 This is the period when the Third World has become a major factor in world politics and also in the ecumenical movement. The colonial em-


pires have been wound up, except for pockets here and there, and for Southern Africa which oppressively keeps down the predominant black population in the name of Christian civilization. The Asian and African countries have gone through the elation of independence, with the Ban- dung Conference of 1955 being a high point of Third World solidarity, and they have experienced, too, the travail of internal upheavals. The Chinese revolution of 1949 has brought on the world scene a new communist state of some 700 million people, who are destined to play a decisive role in history in spite of being kept out of the councils of the world. The Korean war of 1950-53 and the partition of the country, as well as the unceasing wars in Vietnam have been a source of humiliation for Asians and Westerners alike. The Cuban revolution of 1959 was the signal for a new and more determined effort on the part of intellectuals and the masses of Latin America to rid themselves of American economic domination and the blatant oppression exercised by landowners and capi- talists. With the establishment, at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs, of the state of Israel in 1948, the Middle East has been a constant theatre of war and of threats of war. Moreover, the advent of the third industrial revolution in the computer and automation has brought about new problems and exacerbated the old ones. In effect, the rich nations are becoming richer and the poor nations are becoming poorer. Within the rich nations, the economic, political and cultural structures of society are being undermined and there is great unrest among workers, students and women against the traditional, hierarchical, non-participatory styles. Through the rapid development of the mass media, the possibilities both of mass manipulation and of greater awareness of peoples and events have been vastly increased. Communications are contracting the world into a global village. We have been tumbling from one political, social, economic and cultural crisis into another in rapid succession. The growth of the ecumenical movement must be assessed in terms of this bewildering series of events which have engulfed the whole world, and bound us all willy-nilly into a common history and fate. It can in fact be said that these events have accelerated the growth of and the ten- sions within the ecumenical movement. Political independence has been matched by church autonomy, and most churches of the Third World have become members of the World Council of Churches, including indigenous groups like the Pentecostalists of Chile and Brazil and the Kim- banguists of Congo. The Eastern Orthodox Churches have been drawn away from their long isolation into active participation in the ecumenical


movement. Even the great Roman Catholic Church, which had for so long behaved as a monolithic self-sufficient structure seeking actively or passively to claim for itself the sole right to Christendom, has been forced into the movement of change, thanks to the farsighted initiative of Pope John XXIII and the deliberations and decrees of Vatican Council 11. This enlargement of the ecumenical movement has helped to give greater scope of expression to the Third World. It can truly be said that during this period the influence of the Third World has been very pervasive, not only in terms of participation but even more in the shifts in the concerns and styles of thinking and acting within the ecumenical movement. Dr. Visser 't Hooft has summarized the impact of the churches of the Third World as follows :

1. They have heiped the other Churches to realize that the position of Christianity in the world is that of a minority the future of which depends on its missionary energy. 2. They contribute to the creation of a different sense of proportion in doctrinal and theological matters. For the issues which are crucial for them are not the traditional interconfessional issues, but rather the issues of a right interpretation of basic Christian truth in terms of cultures dominated by other religions. 3. They help the other Churches to face the problem of world poverty, hunger, and underdevelopment as the number one problem for humanity and as an inescapable challenge to all Christians. (History of the Ecumenical Movement : 1948-1968, p. 14)

The points raised by Dr. Visser 't Hooft are certainly subjects of present debate in the ecumenical movement. I would like to develop them briefly so as to bring out the present agenda of the ecumenical movement :

1. The Church as a Minority. With the collapse of Christendom, all churches are more or less minorities in secular and religiously pluralistic societies. This has been true for some time, but is only being recognized today. Of course, the churches of the Third World have been grappling with this issue for many years. Because of colonial power, they were for some time both protected by the State (at least the missionaries and their work were) and despised by their people for being foreign. Now this situation has been reversed and these churches have to discover their own selfhood and freedom. One is reminded of the words of Pascal that the condition of the Church is good when it has or seeks no other support than that given by its Lord. This process towards selfhood has been


greatly hampered by the whole Western apparatus which the churches of the Third World have been forced to adopt through Western missionary influence. The World Studies of Churches in Mission carried out by the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism have amply demonstrated that the growth of churches depends on the degree to which they are both rooted in Christ and related to the soil of their countries which are themselves undergoing change. Three of the fifteen studies were conducted in the North Atlantic - one by the present Prime Minister of Ghana, K. A. Busia, in Birmingham, England ; another in rural Michigan, USA ; and the third in Hamburg by Dr. Justus Freytag and a Japanese, Kenji Ozahi, entitled “Nominal Christianity”. The studies conducted by Professor Hans Jochen Margull on “The Missionary Structure of the Congregation” evoked widespread response and controversy in Europe and North America. The report entitled “The Church for Others” aptly describes what it can mean for a Church to lose and gain itself in freedom by being totally at the disposal of its Lord and therefore of others. We have still to draw the implications of these two series of studies for the life of the churches in the North Atlantic and the Third World. In this enterprise of discovering what it means to be the Church of Christ as a minority in the world, the ecumenical movement should play a liber- ating role of drawing all the churches into conversation with each other as they seek to be renewed and render a common witness to the world. Here the renewal movements which have sprung up in many places, stimu- lated very largely by the Kirchentag and the Evangelical Academies, are of great significance. Furthermore, the Third World gave a lead in developing regional conferences, first of all in Asia. The purpose has been, not to withdraw into a regional or continental shell, but rather so to draw the churches, councils and movements together, in constant contact with the rest of the world, that they may more effectively promote this very selfhood and freedom of the Church in mutual relationships and joint action in their different environments. Rajah Manikam and later D. T. Niles, as leaders of the East Asia Christian Conference, did a great deal in carrying forward this regional movement, which was followed by Africa, and then by Europe and the Pacific. Now Latin America and the Caribbean are moving in the same direction. It is also to be noted that the Roman Catholic Church is going through a similar process and in several countries, especially in the Third World, there are developing close working relationships in national or local Christian councils.


The pressure to organic Church unity for more faithful and effective mission in the world is still being kept up by the Third World. Only last year, the United Church of Pakistan and the Church of North India came into being. Soon the Church in Lanka (Ceylon) will be inaugurated. Several other Church union schemes are being discussed in Asia and Africa. The movement towards unity in the North Atlantic is still slow and too much dominated by static and backward looking notions of the Church. One clear example are the Anglican-Methodist conversations in England which were based on how the churches as they have been and are can achieve inter-communion and a mutually accepted ministry, rather than on what shape is needed of the Church of God if it is to carry out its mission in a largely secular and pagan society. The curious thing is that ecumenical insights gained over the years seem to have little influenced these conversations towards union. The ecumenical task in this regard is still very great, and perhaps the pressure from the Third World may be helpful in pushing forward the movement to manifest unity for mission in the North Atlantic world.

2 . Doctrinal and Theological Issues. As I have hinted earlier, the theological climate in the ecumenical movement has been distinctly Western. This has been expressed in different ways. Churches in the Third World have been expected to adopt European and American confessions of faith, styles of worship and ethical systems. All these have been the products of particular categories of thinking, of phi- losophies and cultures which are Western. The lack of creative participation of Third World churchmen in Western-led ecumenical discussions, especially in matters of Faith and Order, is precisely because they have not felt at home in these systems and styles of thinking. For one thing theological education in the Third World countries was for long well below the standards of higher education offered by missionary agencies. It was not considered that Third World people needed a thorough theological training, and when in recent years this training has been provided, with the generous help of the Theological Education Fund, it has still been mod- elled on Western theological education which is itself in a state of crisis. Another factor has been that churchmen from Asia and Africa have found that many of the theological issues so hotly debated by the Western School- men, who are still trained in the Medieval tradition, have no relevance to the life of their churches and cultures.

THE THIRD WORLD IN THE ECUMENICAL. MOVEMENT 67

The tide is, however, turning. At a consultation sponsored in 1965 by the East Asia Christian Conference on “Confessional Families and the Church in Asia” it was asserted :

A living theology must speak to the actual questions men in Asia are asking in the midst of their dilemmas ; their hopes, aspirations and achievements, their doubts, despair and suffering. It must also speak in relation to the answers that are being given by Asian religions and philo- sophies, both in their classical form and in new forms created by the impact on them of Western thought, secularism and science. Christian theology will fulfil its task in Asia only as the Asian Churches, as servants of God’s Word and revelation in Jesus Christ, speak to the Asian situation and from involvement in it.

The same plea is being made by Africa. One of the leading African scholars, Professor John Mbiti, has recently written in the International Review of Mission in summary form what he has developed in his books African Religions and Philosophy and Concepts of God in Africa :

Christianity has spoken too long and too much ; perhaps it has listened too little. For too long it has passed judgement on other cultures, other religions, other societies, while holding the attitude that it is itself above criticism. The time may have come now for western Christianity to be more humble in its approach to other religions and cultures, if it is to be effective here in Africa. Christianity has to approach this traditional background with an open mind, with a readiness to change it and be changed by it. In particular I would appeal to our brethren in and from Europe and America to allow us to make what in their judgement may be termed mistakes ; allow us to make a mess of Christianity in our continent just as, if one may put it mildly, you have made a mess of it in Europe and America. When we speak or write on particular issues about Christianity or other academic matters, we should not be expected to use the vocabulary and approach used in Europe and America : please allow us to say certain things our own way, whether we are wrong or not. We sometimes reach a point of despair when what we say or do is so severely criticized and condemned by people in or from Europe and America - often because we have not said it to their satisfaction or according to their wishes. (IRM, Vol. LIX, No. 236, October 1970, p. 439)

This is of particular significance in the theological debate concerning dialogue with men of living faiths and ideologies. This dialogue has been going on in Asia since the Tambaram Conference of 1938. Not having had the doubtful benefit of Christendom, the Asians have had to take seriously the relationship between the Christian faith, the churches, societies, cultures and religions. This relationship is a very complex one. The


issue is how the distinctive Christian faith can be articulated in the context of living together with people of other living faiths and ideologies. Such dialogue, in faithfulness to deepest convictions and openness to the exis- tential realities, should not weaken but rather strengthen Christian witness. Western Christianity is only one particular experience of the Chris- tian faith. The ecumenical movement should provide the climate for different styles of thinking and approaches to problems of faith, as well as different experiences of the one Faith, to be shared in mutual correction and enrichment, and for a more relevant contemporary witness. This has hardly begun, but is an urgent task before us. I need hardly remind you in such a gathering that even in Western countries, theology and confessions of faith are going through a serious crisis, precisely because of the radical changes taking place in ways of thinking of and experiencing reality. But as the Chinese word for crisis signifies, this is a dangerous opportunity which must be seized boldly. Just as Asians and Africans are having to come to terms with the cultures, religions, ideologies and the social and political realities in their countries, so must the peoples of the North Atlantic, and especially of Europe - and, I may add, even more so in Germany which has for so long been considered to be the leader and arbiter of theological thought. It is interesting to note, in this regard, that Faith and Order studies have had to enlarge the quest of the Unity of the Church to include the Unity of Man- kind, and this will have a profound effect on how ecclesiological issues are approached. There is every hope that the Third World will now be able to participate more fully in theological discussions in the ecumenical movement.

3 . Socio-political issues. Since the Lucknow 1952 meeting of the World Council's Central Committee, the significance of the social revolution taking place in Asia, Africa and Latin America has been brought to the fore in ecumenical thinking. A study on Areas of Rapid Social Change was conducted in 1954-1959, followed in 1966 by the World Conference on Church and Society when there was a real confrontation between the Third World and the West on some of the burning social and political issues of our time, and especially on revolution for social change. This confrontation was largely possible because in this first official ecumenical meeting where laymen outnumbered theologians, it was possible to have Third World politicians, economists and sociologists who could speak on equal terms intellectually with their Western counterparts. The theologi-


cal questions posed by this debate have upset much of the old Church and State positions of Western churches and their too easy devotion to and justification for law and order, even when law and order are used as instruments for maintaining or furthering unjust systems. Since 1966 a great deal of attention has been given by the ecumenical movement to development, though this has been conceived in terms of the economic development of the Third World. The Pope delivered his Encyc- lical on the Development of Peoples (Populorum Progressio) at Easter 1967 and set up a Pontifical Commission on Justice and Peace which has since formed with the World Council a joint committee and secretariat on Society, Development and Peace (SODEPAX). Much has been done to cultivate closer relations between Roman Catholic Conferences of Bishops and Christian Councils in the Third World. But not much has happened in this direction in the North Atlantic countries. The Pope had spoken of the development of the whole man and of all men, but up to now this global vision has not found clear expression in the ecumenical movement. Moreover, there is still a lingering view among Western Christians that development is something evolutionary and promotes good order. But as Professor Samuel Parmar of India warned the Uppsala Assembly of the World Council :

Rightly understood development is disorder because it changes existing social and economic relationships, breaks up old institutions to create new, brings about radical alterations in the values and structures of society. If we engage in development through international cooperation we must recognize that basic changes become necessary in developing and developed nations as also in the international economy. “Develop- ment is the new name for peace.” But development is disorder, it is revolution. Can we attempt to understand this apparently paradoxical situation which would imply that disorder and revolution are the new name for peace ? (The Uppsala Report, p. 42)

Even more explosive has been the challenge to white racism which was made at Uppsala and which was taken up by the World Council’s Central Committee at Canterbury in 1969 in adopting a Programme to Combat Racism. The World Council had on each successive Assembly, and especially the Second Assembly at Evanston, spoken out against racism as a sin, but little action had followed. Now that the World Council has given humanitarian support to movements which are seeking the liber- ation of their people from racial injustice by violence, if no other way is


open to them, very profound questions about violence and non-violence are raised, though this crisis of conscience was not evident in the Oxford Conference of 1937 when the enemies were European Fascism and Com- munism. Incidentally, it is on issues of this kind that Latin Americans have come into the ecumenical arena. A notable theological contribution to Christian social thought has recently been made by the Brazilian theo- logian, Rubem A. Alves, entitled A Theology of Human Hope. Added to these questions of revolution, violence and non-violence, is the universal concern for what is truly human and about the future of man in a technological and science based society. Here again there is great nerv- ousness in traditional theological circles about this concern for human- ization and a fear that the Gospel will be compromised. This problem cuts right across our different confessions and also the continents. The question is, are our theological faculties and colleges able to cope with these issues on their own ? Is there not need for greater elasticity of thinking and more inter-disciplinary work between theologians and lay experts, as well as greater participation of the whole people of God in thinking through these issues together ? All I want to say at this point is that the Third World is raising these issues with particular sharpness within the ecumenical movement and to the North Atlantic Christian community which has so tragically failed to come to terms with evils which were committed quite often in the name of Christian civilization or an outworn Protestant ethic. The ecumenical movement has until lately been directed and also financed by the churches of the North Atlantic. Their leaders used to draw up the agendas, set the rules of procedure, introduce the themes, make the significant contributions and write the reports ! Those from the Third World who were educated in the West managed somehow to keep up with the discussions and to make marginal comments. But they were a very small group. Today we are on the threshold of a new era when the ecumenical movement is becoming more truly world-wide in terms of participation, of the issues being faced, and the methods of thinking and expression. The Third World, or more correctly the Two-thirds World, has a.significant role to play in this movement, as they have tried to do in the past. The Third World has contributed greatly towards enlarging the under- standing of the ecumenical movement from the early view of cooperation towards unity to one of renewal in mission fro unity and to unity for more effective mission. More recently, the immensely complex problems of social and racial injustice, of development and peace have forcibly re-


minded us that “ecumenical” rightly understood is about “the whole inhabited earth”, the world of men, of cultures, religions, social and political structures. These are the concerns of the ecumenical movement and in a new and urgent way, and they are strongly pressed by the Third World. The question posed to the Western churches is whether they will be humble and generous enough to participate fully with the Third World in this movement in a true mutuality of giving and receiving. Certainly, this ecumenical movement is God’s gift to his people whereby he draws them together in Christ as he draws them together as churches into one family, as a sign of his design to draw all men and all things together.

Documents

THE THIRD WORLD IN THE ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT