In Greece, Hundreds of Christian Leaders See New Unity, Focus on AIDS

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) A broad range of more than 600 Christian leaders ended an eight-day missions conference Monday (May 16) after hearing a plea from the Rev. Samuel Kobia, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, to be a “moral compass” for contemporary society. The May 9-16 Conference on World Mission […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) A broad range of more than 600 Christian leaders ended an eight-day missions conference Monday (May 16) after hearing a plea from the Rev. Samuel Kobia, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, to be a “moral compass” for contemporary society.

The May 9-16 Conference on World Mission and Evangelism held at a military recreation center outside Athens was the 12th such meeting since 1910, when the modern ecumenical movement began in Edinburgh, but the first held in a predominantly Orthodox country.


Unlike some other WCC-sponsored meetings in the past, the mission conference was short on political declarations but long on prayer, Bible study and workshops on a potpourri of challenges to issues that confront the Christian movement in the new century. They include economic globalization, violence, such as the war in Iraq, AIDS and Christian and interreligious reconciliation and dialogue.

Participants did, however, draft a “message to the churches” that will be completed by a committee and issued at a later date.

In some ways, the ecumenical nature of the conference _ and the WCC’s efforts to expand the church unity table _ overshadowed the more overtly political issues.

For the first time, the Roman Catholic Church had an official delegation rather than just observers at a WCC-sponsored meeting and Bishop Brian Farrell, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, was upbeat about the future of ecumenical relations under recently elected Pope Benedict XVI.

Farrell told a May 12 news conference that formal dialogue between the Orthodox Churches and the Roman Catholic Church will soon be restarted. Such talks were ended, with some bitterness, in 2000.

“We definitely feel, I think on both sides, that we are at a point where we can build a much more positive relationship,” Farrell said.

Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news service, reported that Farrell also said that Metropolitan Kirill, a top Russian Orthodox Church official, had a “long private talk” with Benedict.


Historically, the WCC has been made up primarily of Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox church bodies. But in the last decade, under the leadership of the Rev. Konrad Raiser, the WCC’s former general secretary, it has _ like the National Council of Churches in the United States _ sought to expand the ecumenical organization.

Fifteen of the 650 conference delegates appointed by their churches and mission agencies were Pentecostals. Additional observers from other Pentecostal and evangelical churches not affiliated with the 347-member WCC, also attended.

“I think there will be a time when my church may join the World Council of Churches,” said the Rev. Yong-Gi Hong, a Pentecostal scholar and senior mission executive of the Yoido Full Gospel Church in the Republic of Korea.

“There are already Pentecostal member churches and my church is a full member of the national council in Korea.”

But full participation in the WCC is still problematic for both Catholics and Pentecostals.

“The Catholic understanding of the doctrine of the church, of ecclesiology, makes mutual accountability complicated,” Farrell said.

The Rev. Opoku Odinyah, rector of the Pentecostal University College in Ghana and an adviser at the conference, said “there would have to be change” before his Church of the Pentecost would consider membership.


Hong said the main source of reluctance was Pentecostalism’s aversion to “hyper-institutionalism.”

“In our tradition, charism _ the gifts of the Holy Spirit _ are to be found at the local level,” he said. “If we are to work in ecumenical organizations beyond the local community, we must find the proper way to balance the Spirit and the system.”

But at least one of the major issues discussed in the workshop sessions _ AIDS _ could be a major force in bringing the disparate churches together as the pandemic ravages Africa and the new geographic center of Christianity is now also in Africa, near Timbuktu. Kobia noted that researchers have predicted that by 2100, the vast majority of Christians _ approximately 80 percent _ will live in the the Third World regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America.

“We have pastors who are spending more time burying members of their congregation than ministering to them,” Jacinta Maingi, who runs an African HIV/AIDS program supported by the WCC, told the Associated Press at the conference. “I tell them, `If you don’t get involved today, you won’t have a congregation tomorrow.”’

MO/JL/DEA END RNS

Editors: Search the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for a file photo of Kobia. Search by last name.

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