From Partnership to Liberation

Although there were more women present at the 4th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) at Uppsala in 1968 than at previous assemblies, they still formed less than 10 percent of the voting delegates. There was thus a large discrepancy between the WCC's theological statements on the cooperation of women and men and the various power structures found in the WCC and its member churches. Nevertheless, Uppsala marked a significant turning point for women in the WCC. The expansion of the WCC, the commitment to restructuring, and the emergence of new leadership all contributed to the beginning at Uppsala of a new era in the ecumenical movement, leading to a shift in discourse from cooperation to liberation, and a new awareness of women's universal struggle for liberation from all forms of discrimination and oppression.     

Reclaiming Communication

This article focuses on the history of the ecumenical discussion on communication, as reflected in the assemblies of the World Council of Churches (WCC). It examines, in particular, the communication statements that emerged from the WCC assemblies in Uppsala in 1968 and in Vancouver in 1983, as well as the more tentative moves at the Harare assembly of 1998 to develop an understanding of communication as an integral part of an “ecumenical space.” The article goes on to argue that the changing perspectives manifested at these assemblies, each 15 years apart, were linked to changing paradigms of social and theological reflection that were themselves the product of economic and political transformation. Finally, the article considers how the insights gained can be brought to bear on the challenges presented by digital transformation.     

Uppsala 1968 – The Swedish Context

The 4th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Uppsala, Sweden, in 1968 was an event of global significance, drawing participants from around the world under the theme “Behold, I make all things new.” At the same time, it was an event taking place in Sweden – a country that by the 1960s had become a model of “responsible society,” with strong economic growth, an all‐encompassing welfare state, and an ambitious policy for international development that was channelling material aid to Southern Africa. For the Church of Sweden, the assembly marked a continuity with the 1925 World Conference on Life and Work convened in Stockholm by Swedish Archbishop Nathan Söderblom. In turn, the Swedish churches themselves were influenced by the Uppsala assembly, especially in the renewal of liturgy and worship. This article explores the Swedish dimension of the Uppsala assembly through examining the legacy of the Stockholm conference of 1925, the societal and political context in Sweden of the 1960s, the participation of youth, and the impact of the assembly on Swedish church life.     

The Mandate of the Ecumenical Movement

This is the text of the address given by Willem A. Visser 't Hooft to the Uppsala Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1968 after being named honorary president of the WCC, following his retirement as general secretary two years earlier. In this address, Visser 't Hooft reviews the 20th‐century history of the ecumenical movement and the contemporary mandate of the WCC, in which the central issue is the relationship between the church and the world, where the vertical dimension to God of the church's unity determines the horizontal dimension of its service to the world. The address concludes with four challenges: no horizontal advance without vertical orientation; the ecumenical movement and the churches need each other; church unity is important; and youth expects answers.     

“Behold,I Make All Things New”

The theme of the 4th Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Uppsala in 1968 was “Behold, I make all things new.” God's great promise in Revelation precisely reflected the fears and hopes of the turbulent 1960s. This promise is realized in the experience of faith, and in this certainty, Christianity goes out to meet the great future of God in the world. The connection between this promised future and the advent of the new creation experienced by Christians was captured in Uppsala by the concept of “anticipation.” This article traces the impetus of the impulse of the Uppsala assembly through the World Student Conference in Finland in 1968 and the Conference on World Mission and Evangelism in Bangkok in 1973–73.     

Eugene Carson Blake: Renewal in Church and Society

This article reviews the ecumenical involvement of Eugene Carson Blake, the second general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) from 1966 to 1972, focusing on the support for the US civil rights movement and rejection of racism that he brought with him to the WCC. It also examines his role at the WCC's 4th Assembly, in Uppsala, which is often seen as a turning point in ecumenical history.     

From Busan to Arusha,and beyond

A new World Council of Churches (WCC) mission statement was presented to the member churches of the WCC at the assembly in 2013 in Busan, South Korea. The document, Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes (TTL), was said to be pneumatological. From God’s mission, missio Dei, there was a shift toward the mission of the Spirit, missio Spiritus. The ecumenical world was introduced to a new mission concept: “mission from the margins,” according to which the Holy Spirit was empowering those in the margins. Five years later, in 2018, in Arusha, Tanzania, the WCC Conference on World Mission and Evangelism officially adopted a short mission document entitled “The Arusha Call to Discipleship” and another document, “The Arusha Conference Report.” The conference was said to have been influenced and inspired by TTL. However, in the conference documentation, the missio Spiritus seems to have been left aside. Thus, it would seem that in recent ecumenical missiology, there has been a shift from pneumatology toward Christology as the basis of individual and communal Christian life. In light of this, this article intends to compare the WCC mission documents of 2013 and 2018 and to show that there has been a shift toward the “Christ-connected way of life” of the disciple and how this Christ-connected discipleship is vulnerable and wounded, as it connects with the concept of kenosis.     

Disciples and Pilgrims,Arusha, and Karlsruhe

A striking feature of the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC), held at Karlsruhe in Germany in 2022, was its lack of attention to the “Arusha Call to Discipleship” issued by the WCC World Mission Conference held in Tanzania four years earlier. Further ecumenical amnesia was evident in the Assembly's neglect of the centenary of the formation of the International Missionary Council (IMC) in 1921. It is therefore timely to recall the purpose of the integration of the IMC and the WCC in 1961. This was driven, above all, by the theological imperative that mission and unity can never be separated from one another in the ecumenical movement. On the contrary, these two essential evangelical impulses must continuously inform and energize one another. It was in expectation of such synergy that the integration of the IMC and WCC was enacted. Today, a new opportunity to fulfil this ecumenical hope presents itself. Currently, the “unity strand” in the WCC has a preference for the language of pilgrimage when it comes to expressing the nature of the ecumenical journey, while the “mission strand” has opted for the language of discipleship. The opportunity missed at Karlsruhe was to draw the two into conversation with one another. Enabling the two motifs of disciple and pilgrim to inform and enrich one another could prove to be a vital source of renewal for the ecumenical movement in the next phase of its journey.     

Ecumenism in the 21st Century

This article explores the challenges facing the ecumenical movement at the beginning of the 21st century: global demographic trends and a shift in the centre of gravity of Christianity toward the global South; the need for ecumenical structures and institutions to change in response to new realities; the need to widen the ecumenical fellowship so that Roman Catholics, Pentecostals, and evangelicals who have not played a part in the WCC may participate more fully; the urgency of inter‐religious dialogue; and the need to discover a “spirituality of engagement” in interaction with the world and its people.     

Discerning the Signs of the Times

This article offers a close reading of the six reports from the 4th Assembly of the WCC in Uppsala 1968. The assembly was keenly in tune with the worldwide upheavals of the year. It indeed sought to discern the signs of the time and produced a number of creative suggestions, for example by emphasizing the aspect of inclusiveness in catholicity, by stressing the multilateral dimension of mission, and not least by highlighting the churches' inherent responsibility to be agents of justice and peace in a fractured world. Uppsala 1968 proved to name in a prophetic way crucial issues that remain on the agenda for worldwide Christianity: class, economy, isolationism, racism, the arms race. But today the churches are also confronted with new and renewed issues such as post‐colonialism, migration, ecology, gender, and a theological grounding of the church‐s existence in the world. The article concludes by proposing table fellowship as a possibility for such theological grounding.     

Behold … All Things New: Uppsala 1968 and Its Mediatization as Film

The 4th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1968 occurred during a period of increasing influence of the media in shaping society and culture. The documentary film Behold … All Things New, produced by Radio Sweden for the WCC's 1968 assembly in Uppsala, reflected this development. It was, however, both a promotional tool for the church and a sort of documentary. This article analyzes the film from the context of church media relations, examining the strengthened mediatization of the religious arena in the 20th century and giving close attention to the circumstances of the film's production, its narrative techniques, and visual realization. In this way, the film is made accessible as a historical source for the WCC and thus also for the history of the globalization of churches. The film places into perspective the connection between mediatization and secularization, as it represents the churches' integration into modern media society with all of its visual symbols of globality, ecumenism, and willingness to enter into dialogue.     

The Liberating Awareness

The purpose of this article is to reflect on the search for racial justice as a call from God, using biblical readings and documents produced by the World Council of Churches (WCC). It is anchored in the increasingly intense challenges that emerge in this respect in Brazil, a country whose Indigenous peoples were annihilated in its colonization process, and which up until the 19th century received the largest flow of enslaved Africans in the world. The article combines the Latin American methodology “See, Judge, Act” with the theological methodology of the WCC's Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace and its three steps: “Celebrating Gifts,” “Visiting the Wounds,” and “Transforming Injustice.” The first part of the paper reflects the “See” and exposes the expressions of everyday racism in Brazil. The second part presents the “Judge,” seeking references to the challenge of racial justice in the Bible and in ecumenical reflection. The third and final section, “Act,” reflects on the possibility for transforming racial injustices, sharing experiences from Brazil as well as one of the Pilgrim Team Visits organized by the WCC in 2019.     

Churches in Ecumenical Transition

This is a brief introduction to the contribution of the Ecumencial Network for Multicultural Ministry (ENFORMM) to the new WCC affirmation on mission and evangelism, which was specifically commissioned by CWME in 2009 and will be fed into the new WCC affirmation on mission evangelism. Recognizing the critical significance of the emerging multicultural and migrant churches to mission and ministry in the twenty‐first century, CWME is keen that the new mission statement adequately reflects that important development. Clearly, the ministry and ecclesiology of migrant/multicultural churches are integral to the future mission and existence of the Christian church. “Cultural diversity as a fact of human existence”: This text assumes that cultural diversity is a fact of human societies, and migration is a fact of human existence. Throughout human history, societies have always enjoyed varied degrees of cultural pluralism largely because migration is a natural human predisposition. Migration is by no means limited to movements from South to North. People movements from South to South and North to South have equal importance and impact. With increased migration come increased cross‐cultural encounters and their attendant complexities. The paper highlights the unfortunate but pervasive and widespread misconception that migrants as such constitute the root cause of social tension and problems. The paper argues that “people movement around the globe (migration) not only calls for reframing the rhetoric on migration, it also calls for reframing the debate on mission.” “Cultural diversity as a fact of Christian communal life – migration‐shaped early church”:

相似文献   

Together toward Life

The Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) has since 2006, after the WCC Porto Alegre Assembly, been working and contributing toward the construction of the new ecumenical mission affirmation. The new statement will be presented to the WCC 10th Assembly at Busan, Korea, in 2013. Since the integration of the International Missionary Council (IMC) and the World Council of Churches (WCC) in New Delhi, 1961, there has been only one official WCC position statement on mission and evangelism, which was approved by the central committee in 1982, “Mission and Evangelism: An Ecumenical Affirmation.” It is the aim of this ecumenical discernment to seek vision, concepts and directions for a renewed understanding and practise of mission and evangelism in changing landscapes. It seeks a broad appeal, even wider than WCC member churches and affiliated mission bodies, so that we can commit ourselves together to fullness of life for all, led by the God of Life!     

Revisiting the Message to the People of South Africa: 1968–2018

The year 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Message to the People of South Africa in 1968, the same year in which the 4th Assembly of the World Council of Churches was held in Uppsala. The Message was the first major South African ecumenical statement that rejected apartheid as unbiblical and unchristian, a “false gospel.” At the time it was likened to the Barmen Declaration of the Confessing Church in Germany (1934). It also set in motion a process of ecumenical opposition to apartheid that prepared the way for declaring its theological justification a heresy and its practice a sin that had to be rejected and resisted. This article sets out the background to the Message, describes the process which led to its publication, outlines its content, and considers its significance looking back after 50 years.     

Making All Things New

The relationship between the civil rights movement and the World Council of Churches was personified in the links between Martin Luther King Jr and Eugene Carson Blake, both of whom were known for heightening the spirit of prophetic Christianity through their involvements in the ecumenical movement and the mounting struggles against global poverty and the Vietnam War. As 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the Uppsala assembly and King's assassination, this article focuses on the contributions of King and Blake to the kind of ecumenical movement that united peoples of faith in cooperative, concrete efforts to eliminate racism, poverty, and war. The central argument is that these joint efforts were still unfolding at the time of King's untimely death.     

“Jesus Christ — the Life of the World”: Report of the Meeting of WCC Member Churches in Latin America

As part of the programme of the Sixth Assembly which is to take place in Vancouver, Canada, 24 July-10 August 1983, the WCC held a preparatory meeting in Oaxtepec, Mexico, attended by representatives of WCC member churches in Latin America, 13–16 April 1982. The focus of attention throughout was the theme of the coming Assembly, “Jesus Christ — the Life of the World”. Sermons, biblical studies and the themes presented, accordingly prepared the participants to reflect on the meaning of that affirmation which the ecumenical movement is presenting for our time, but in this case in the context of various different situations in which the churches of Latin America live.     

Walking Together,Serving Justice and Peace

As the World Council of Churches (WCC) marks its 70th anniversary, this article focuses on the challenges it faces in its commitment to work for the unity of the church and for common service and witness for justice and peace in the world. Looking back on the experiences in the Reformation year 2017, it argues that it is time for the fellowship of churches to be accountable for what it has achieved and received from ecumenical dialogue, and to grow together in mutual accountability. At the same time, the statement by the WCC's 10th Assembly at Busan that “We intend to move together” emphasizes that ecumenism is not a static reality, but dynamic, involving the cooperation of the various churches and in interaction with people of good will of other communities.     

VIOLENCE,NONVIOLENCE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

In response to the Uppsala Assembly's Martin Luther King resolution (1968), and the controversy provoked by the World Council of Churches' humanitarian aid to groups combatting racism (1970→), the WCC Central Committee (Addis Ababa, 1971) asked its sub-unit on Church and Society to conduct a two-year study on the problems and potentialities of violence and nonviolence in the struggle for social justice. Reporting back to the Central Committee (Geneva, 22–29 August 1973), Church and Society noted that ‘Our task was not to initiate a discussion, for the issues had already registered themselves in the headlines of the press, the agendas of church synods and the consciences of many troubled individuals… Our distinctive role was that of trying to set the issue in a worldwide ecumenical context - which has meant, in particular, heIping white afluent Christians take seriously the perspectives of other parts of the Church.’ The main part of the report took the form of a statement (see below) drawing on work done during the previous two years. It was prepared, Church and Society explained, as ‘an attempt to clarify (not to terminate) the churches' debate. We underline the need for further work on the disagreements and unclarities which remain, and for the kind of genuinely ecumenical perspective on the whole problem without which none of our churches can escape from their various parochialisms.’     

Justice,Peace and Care for Creation: What is at stake? Some South African perspectives

This article explores the relationship between the three aspects of the social agenda of the ecumenical movement captured in the motto of “Justice, peace and care for creation”. It investigates the moral, spiritual and theological issues that are at stake from a South African perspective, drawing especially on a recent document entitled “Climate Change – A challenge to the churches in South Africa” (2009), published and endorsed by the South African Council of Churches. It examines the underlying tensions between these concepts and the ways in which one is sometimes prioritized over the other. It concludes that the themes of justice, peace and sustainability may be associated with different aspects of God's work on earth and that this can only be dealt with on the basis of a deeper theological assessment of the whole of God's work.