c. 1998 Religion News Service

HARARE, Zimbabwe _ The World Council of Churches, finding itself in a biblical”time between times,”Monday (Dec. 14) ended its Eighth Assembly agreeing to create a”forum”aimed at widening participation in the drive for church unity and at the same time taking steps to heal the breach between its Protestant and Orthodox members.

As the nearly 1,000 delegates and 4,000 observers and visitors packed their bags to head home, the 50-year-old global ecumenical agency came out of its 12-day meeting in what Canadian church leader Marian Best called”a time of transition”while the Rev. Konrad Raiser, secretary general of the 339-member organization, said it was more a meeting about listening than of stirring visions.

And it was a disappointment for those who came expecting to see WCC implode over the volatile and divisive issue of homosexuality _ a subject addressed by the assembly only on its last day when the Rev. Paul Sherry, president of the United Church of Christ, complained a resolution on human rights failed to mention the issues.”Our support for human rights will ring increasingly hollow until we speak out against the violence done to our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters,”Sherry said.”Our silence in the midst of this violence is deafening.” In their final session, however, the council’s”program guidelines committee”identified the issue of human sexuality as one of seven areas for future WCC work. Russian Orthodox delegate Vladimir Shmaliy warned that”any move to develop a homosexual agenda would severely jeopardize Orthodox participation in the WCC”but his effort to delete human sexuality was soundly defeated.

For the most part, however, the delegates argued _ sometimes endlessly _ over what kind of vision and structure the worldwide unity drive among Christians might take in the coming millennium and what role the World Council might play in a world increasingly affected by a global economy divided by a growing gap between haves and have-nots.

The key idea emerging from the meeting called for the establishment of a new organization, a”Forum of Christian Churches and Ecumenical Organizations,”that would bring to a single ecumenical table all the main Christian churches and organizations in the world. It would, in theory, include not only the Roman Catholic Church and Pentecostal denominations not now members of the WCC, but also such groups as the Lutheran World Federation and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

Raiser, who has proposed such a forum for several years, said such an organization was needed because the”organized ecumenical movement,”including the WCC, represented”only one segment of world Christianity.””We will have to listen to and learn from those who we want to gain as partners in the ecumenical movement, without necessarily trying to integrate them as members of the World Council,”Raiser told Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency funded by the WCC and other international church organizations.

He suggested the new forum might meet at Pentecost 2001.

The assembly also agreed to establish a”mixed theological commission”made up of representatives from the world’s Orthodox churches and the WCC in order to seek to resolve Orthodox criticism that has led some Orthodox churches _ especially the Russian Orthodox Church, the WCC’s largest member _ to quit the council.”If we are satisfied with the results of the commission, we resume our work”in the council, said Hilarion Alfeyev, head of the Russian delegation.

The commission will draw up proposals to change the structure of the WCC so that the Orthodox are not overwhelmed by the Protestant and Anglican majority and their sharply more liberal views on democracy, hierarchy and the churches’ role in the political realm.

Raiser said he hoped the commission would not”concentrate only on the structure of the WCC”but also”go to the roots of the feeling of marginalization and alienation of the Orthodox church. That will be good for the ecumenical community.” In other action on the final day, the delegates:

_ adopted a resolution calling for debt cancellation for the world’s poorest countries, debt reduction for middle-income nations and participation by”civil society”_ churches, non-governmental organizations and other such institutions _ to assure that funds made available by debt forgiveness are spent for the betterment of the poor and not siphoned off by corruption.

_ adopted a resolution on Jerusalem declaring the status of the city must be decided by the three faith groups _ Jews, Muslims and Christians _ for whom the city is holy.

DEA END ROBERTS