New forum may mean radical changes to ecumenical organizations By Stephen Brown Ecumenical News International Friday, December 18, 1998 HARARE, Zimbabwe - The general secretary of the World Council of Churches, Dr. Konrad Raiser, has hinted that the creation of a new Christian "Forum", to include churches that are not WCC members may lead to radical changes in the institutional structure of the ecumenical movement. The WCC's eighth assembly, which ended today 14 December in Harare, gave its backing on 12 December to the creation of a "Forum of Christian Churches and Ecumenical Organizations." The forum could bring to a single ecumenical table nearly all of the main Christian churches and organizations in the world, including many churches and organizations that are not WCC members, such as the Roman Catholic Church and major Pentecostal and Evangelical churches. Interviewed by ENI shortly before the end of the assembly, Dr. Raiser said that the forum, which might first meet at Pentecost 2001, was intended "to create a framework" to overcome the barriers which prevented the participation of these churches and organizations and "perhaps create together a new configuration of the ecumenical movement institutionally at the world level." Not a replacement for WCC Asked whether such a new institutional "configuration" would replace the WCC, which has more than 330 Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox churches, Dr. Raiser said, "So far the forum has quite explicitly not been suggested as a replacement for the World Council." But he added, "Nobody can exclude and should exclude that out of the experience of the forum further impulses for institutional change in [both] the World Council of Churches and the other partners may emerge which could lead eventually to a new configuration, not only on the part of the World Council of Churches but also on the part of Christian World Communions, Regional Ecumenical Organizations and other partners. The forum is meant as an open process without determining yet what the outcome will be." The proposed forum, Dr. Raiser said, was needed because the "organized ecumenical movement", including the WCC, increasingly 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 in the World Council," he told ENI. Asked about the WCC assembly, whose preparations were dogged with problems, Dr. Raiser said that despite "the fears and anxieties that were around prior to the assembly, it has clearly demonstrated that ecumenism is alive." "The World Council goes strengthened into the next phase of its life and work," Dr. Raiser said, adding that the assembly had given its backing to the fundamental reshaping of the organization and working style of the WCC. Orthodox concerns One of the most sensitive issues at the assembly has been the question of the relationships between the WCC's Orthodox and non-Orthodox member churches. The assembly voted on 12 December to set up a theological commission to look at possible changes in the "structure, style and ethos" of the WCC. However, it was also revealed during the assembly that the Bulgarian Orthodox Church had officially withdrawn from the WCC, and that the Russian Orthodox Church was suspending its full participation in the WCC's central committee while the special commission conducts its deliberations. But Dr. Raiser said that there had been "considerable progress" during the assembly in relations between Orthodox and non-Orthodox member churches. The commission would, he said, "look seriously at the questions that have been causing concern to the Orthodox churches for a long time" but to which the WCC "has not found the right way of responding, at least to the satisfaction of its Orthodox member churches." He added that it had also become clear "that the concerns of the Orthodox are shared also by other member churches." WCC statements During the WCC meeting in Harare, the leader of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions called on the assembly to denounce last month's banning of strikes by President Robert Mugabe. A local organization, Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ), has also called on the WCC to condemn the Zimbabwean government's campaign against homosexuals. Asked why the WCC assembly had not responded to these demands, Dr. Raiser told ENI that the WCC did not chose to hold major meetings or assemblies in particular countries "with the expectation of achieving major impact or change in the respective country," although situations might arise "which then will oblige the World Council to speak out openly because the integrity of its witness is at stake." However, he added, "in my judgment the situation in Zimbabwe, while grave, does not require the World Council to make an explicit statement in response", although he had referred to the challenges facing Zimbabwe in his report to the assembly. The fact that the assembly "had discussed openly a number of issues" would also "leave its traces," as would assembly statements on human rights, the debt crisis and globalization.

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