c. 1996 Religion News Service

NEW YORK (RNS)-It’s unlikely that the Rev. Konrad Raiser, the soft-spoken general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), will ever become a household name.

But the 58-year-old Raiser, a tall, slim former university professor and pastor to factory workers in Germany, may, more than most people, shape the way the world’s religious faiths relate to one another in coming decades. “The ecumenical movement is very much in transition,”Raiser said in a recent interview.”It is searching for a new vision, but it is not quite clear what the vision will be.” Raiser believes that new vision must depart boldly from today’s ecumenical scene.

Mainline Protestant denominations, which have been at the heart of the ecumenical movement, must share the spotlight on theological and church unity issues with evangelicals and Catholics, two groups that traditionally haven’t been part of the World Council of Churches, Raiser said.

Moreover, he said, the Council must reach out to non-Christian faiths-Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism-in an effort to quell the political and religious tensions growing throughout the world.

So strong are Raiser’s convictions that he believes the 48-year-old World Council itself-formed in Geneva in the soul-searching years after World War II and now encompassing 330 Protestant and Orthodox churches-should perhaps refashion itself into a new group that is more dynamic and inclusive.”I think the ecumenical movement will have to establish itself on a broader basis,”he said.”That means, on the one hand, clearly including the Roman Catholic Church and, on the other hand, including the evangelical-charismatic communities, those churches which have been the most vitally growing part of Christianity worldwide.” The stakes are high, Raiser suggests. Not to broaden the ecumenical mandate is to invite further global tensions among religious bodies, increasing the chances that religious extremism and anarchy will grow throughout the world.”Religious loyalties that become a legitimization for aggressive behavior represent a perversion of true religious faith,”he said.”This is as true for Christianity as it is for Islam as it is for Hinduism as it is for Buddhism.” Raiser, who has led the WCC since 1993, has been pushing his agenda in articles, interviews and speeches around the world.

First and foremost for Raiser is the need for World Council members to reach out to the Catholic Church and burgeoning evangelical groups in Latin America, Africa and Asia.”Our ecumenical organizations at the moment are constructed in ways that make it very difficult to entertain open relationships with this wide of a constituency-the Roman Catholic on one side, and the evangelical on the other.” The Catholic Church, he said,”must take its place at the center”of the ecumenical movement. How that will happen, however, remains unclear, he added.

Although the Roman Catholic Church participates in some aspects of the World Council, the Vatican has always rejected membership, arguing that the Catholic Church is an autonomous body that does not share governance or policy-making with other religious institutions.

Evangelicals, meanwhile, have been uncomfortable with the theology of many WCC members and their political activism on social policy issues. But Raiser said of the WCC and evangelicals:”An ecumenism which cannot maintain an open relationship with this fourth major family would not be worthy of the term ecumenical.” If Raiser hopes for a retooled WCC, he also is a realist who knows that changes in institutions do not come easily or quickly.”At the moment I am sure that a majority of the present member churches of the WCC would not want to call the council itself into question,”he said.”Therefore, we may have to initially create something in addition (to the WCC), something of which the World Council would itself become a part. But we are clearly at the beginning of this process.” Even as Raiser pushes the mainline churches to closer relationships with the Roman Catholic Church and evangelical bodies, he stresses that the next frontier must be dialogue with non-Christian faiths such as Islam and Buddhism.”The Christian household has not yet really come to terms or realized the significance that interreligious dialogue will have in the 21st century,”Raiser said.”I say this not because I believe in some nebulous, universal religious harmony or unity, not at all. But I believe that we have sufficient evidence of how destructive religions can become when they are being used to legitimize violence and tension,”he said.

Raiser said such issues will increasingly come to the forefront in the next century.”In response (to religiously-justified violence), it is the responsibility of people of faith to mobilize that within their religion that allows them to live as neighbors in mutual respect.”Since this will become more and more a priority on our agenda, we must lay the foundations for a new relationship between religious communities,”he said.”There can be no world peace without peace between religions.”

MJP END ANDERSON