The coming of the third world

...rather, the long-term wisdom of such a step was sharply questioned, and the ecumenical movement was strongly criticized for deviating from the goals that had been set by the pioneers...

...The fear that political and social liberation might supplant church unity as the goal of ecumenism was explicitly aired, and warned against...

...We have already noticed the impatience exhibited by some Western theologians and churches toward what they see as unjust pressures emanating from the third world...

...The majority of Christians were found in the Western world...

...Such critics saw looming on the horizon a new division between the churches of the North and those originally evangelized by them...

...To set about doing this, the ecumenical movement will have to dig into its ecumenical memory...

...As the world church extends beyond the Western world, the greater part of its members are poor...

...Refusal to take this path can only diminish the scope and promise of the ecumenical movement...

...Many of them became participants in the fifties...

...This development has been most visible within and among the communions represented in the World Council of Churches (WCC), which will be the principal focus here...

...What must be recovered is the insight that, more than anything else, acknowledgement of suffering and acceptance of social responsibility have been the very cement that has held the movement together...

...Cultural changes like the rise of the women's movement have engendered differing responses—and, therefore, conflict—between faith communities and within them...

...But their net effect was to destabilize the bases on which the movement was established...

...1. The ideological shock...

...They gradually came to sense that the theologies they had been taught by their "mother churches" did not take cognizance of and were not adequate to their specific situations...

...Both the methods and the contents of classical theology were subjected to review and revision...

...The "official" entry of the third world into the ecumenical movement may be said to have taken place at the third WCC Assembly in New Delhi (1961...

...The birth of the PCR caused an immediate uproar in many circles...

...In the words of Harvey Cox, "the growing conflict between the traditional Western (or 'Northern') church and the burgeoning Christianity 19 of the previously voiceless outsiders of the third world" will characterize the future of both Christianity in general and the ecumenical movement in particular...

...What are the possible scenarios for the near future...

...Here the organizers saw to it that large delegations from the third world took part on equal terms with their Western counterparts...

...At present we have experienced the shattering of traditional formulations...

...In his varied and instructive assessments of the ecumenical goals over two decades, Deschner has focused on the question of unity as it has engaged the ecumenical movement as a whole...

...One has only to think for a moment to realize that major events of "secular" history in our century have inevitably affected the ecumenical vision: the two world wars, the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, continuing strife over the land held sacred by Christians, Jews, and Muslims...

...In this connection, the question of the limits of theological diversity became a burning issue...

...As Konrad Raiser observed: "The decisive shock...

...all missionary work abruptly ended...

...As a result, there was a "paradigm shift" that perturbed the theological scene...

...To such critics, it is the duty and the calling of the West to salvage or defend the faith from this drift into corruption...

...He had expressed his fear that the Christian churches were incapable of repenting their ways: "I tremble when I wonder if there is left in the Christian civilizations (and only these civilizations can answer this question—I cannot) the moral energy, the spiritual daring, to atone, to repent, to be born again...

...D 20...

...Certainly, this ecumenical movement is God's gift to his people whereby he draws them together in Christ as he draws them together as churches into one family, as a sign of his design to draw all men and all things together...

...Then, with no forewarning or foresight, the door was closed...

...One of the characteristics of this "Third Church" has been its dynamism...

...The Latin American theology of liberation, with its focus on "the preferential option for the poor," is an example.Consequently, a flurry of contextual theologies mushroomed in all the continents that had been the "mission fields" during the missionary era...

...This question cannot be treated at length here...

...Suddenly, Christianity was no longer "a white man's religion...

...Implicitly they begun to question the claim to universality of the so-called "classical theology" that had guided and shaped the ecumenical movement...

...It was even accused of not being faithful to the gospel and of renouncing the one mandate of the church: to preach the gospel to the nonChristian nations...

...These new approaches gradually exerted an influence on the various sections of the ecumenical movement...

...This is not the place to recall that history in detail...

...In view of the cold war that pitched West and East against each other, the rise of a third-world theology that advocated "God's preferential option for the poor," the serious engagement of theology with sociopolitical issues, and the prospect that liberation could become the guiding term of theology shook the theological establishments...

...Suffice it to say that as soon as the ecumenical movement forgets the role of suffering in its formation and the social concerns that inspired it in the course of its maturation, it will have lost sight of important sources of its renewal...

...Given the spirit of the times, the missionary movement seemed to be the religious arm of the inexorable Western expansion, the religious component of the civilizing mission of the West...

...Theological controversies—especially, perhaps, those attending the Second Vatican Council—have produced many points of friction...

...At each instance, they questioned certain basic assumptions of the movement and contributed significantly to its uncertainties...

...No wonder, then, that the non-Western peoples were absent at the creation of the ecumenical movement...

...It was alleged that "politics" and "syncretism" had compromised the missionary calling of the church...

...But this time around, it attacked racism head-on not only in words but through action, by giving financial aid to movements that were struggling to fight any form of racism...

...The present crisis is different...

...The first powerful shock to this ideological worldview was delivered in the fifties by the emergence of China and its successful overthrow of Western domination...

...Because the change has significance beyond mere numbers, it is argued that appropriate measures to reflect the reality must be taken...

...Slowly but surely, the churches from the non-Western world begun to enter the ranks of the Western members of the ecumenical movement...

...In the words of Roger Williamson: "...heated discussions between the big churches of the West and the WCC have their nucleus in the threat to our identity as white, Western, well-armed nations with a specific Christian identity...

...Continued on page 16) DR...

...But our experience shows that denominationalism and racism have destroyed the unity of the church...

...The full and explosive impact of these "newly arrived" cultures in the ecumenical movement seems to have been felt most clearly at the seventh WCC assembly in Canberra (1991...

...YACOB TESFAI, of Eritrea, is research professor and director of the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France...

...These moves, made largely in response to third-world pressures, were viewed as a betrayal of the ecumenical goal...

...These are the concerns of the ecumenical movement and in a new and urgent way, they are strongly pressed by the third world...

...The euphoria that greeted the fall of communism in 1989 and the triumph of capitalism and the free market have been followed by some churches turning in on themselves and seeking their own kind...

...Other cultures and religions could neither compete with nor challenge this bulldozer of an entity, the Western worldview...

...Without going into the details of the program itself, it is necessary to point out three effects of the program on the ecumenical movement...

...The shock administered by the introduction of the PCR to the goals of the movement was so serious that some even expressed the fear that it might "break the back of the ecumenical movement...

...Third-world participation took another new turn at Geneva in 1966...

...The event was seen as a debacle and led to great soul-searching...

...Second, much of the controversy stirred by the creation of the PCR went well beyond church circles, and the movement found itself in the eye of a considerable storm...

...But the same phenomena can be seen within Roman Catholicism...

...The imperial outreaches of the Western powers stretched practically throughout the globe...

...Thirdworld theologies were no longer under the tutelage of the heretofore dominant theology of the West but they were struggling to chart their own landscape...

...First, once again the Christian identity of the West and its civilization was called into question...

...3. Programmatic shock...

...There were rumblings to this effect for a long time...

...About twenty years ago, the former WCC General Secretary, Philip Potter, wrote a still-relevant passage that will provide an appropriate summing-up of this essay: More recently, the immensely complex problems of social and racial injustice, of development and peace have forcibly reminded us that "ecumenical" rightly understood is about "the whole inhabited earth," the world of men, of cultures, religions, social and political structures...

...Ever since the beginning of the eighties, demographers have been informing us that a quiet but radical change has been taking place in the texture of world Christianity...

...he numerical weight of the third world in the world church was bound to have consequences...

...In his latest writings, he has observed a marked shift in emphasis, which he traces to the growing presence of the third world in the ecumenical movement that has been described here...

...As Tissa Balasuriya has written, "a smooth transition to a church of the third world must be carried out with a clear foresight and spiritual insight...

...Christian missions had devoted a great deal of material resources and personnel to missionary work in China...

...5. Theological shock...

...The call, then, is to take this emerging majority into consideration and to engage with it in a critical but constructive dialogue that does not sweep under the rug the undeniable tensions and conflicts that exist...

...Such a concatenation of events had shaken the ideological basis of the movement...

...Various writers speak of "an ecumenical winter," a "paralyzed ecumenism," even of "the end of ecumenism...

...The new "theological pluralism" that developed was viewed as a threat in some circles...

...This has tremendous implications for the life and witness of this church, for it carries with it an urgent sense of responsibility for and solidarity with the poor of the non-Christian world...

...In this scenario, the churches will continue to give lip service to ecumenism without giving their hearts to it, and the movement will simply vegetate...

...6. Cultural shock...

...As Barbara Rogers noted in her book, Race: No Peace without Justice [World Council of Churches, 1980], "The unity of the church is inseparably related to the unity of mankind...

...With the increased number of churches from the third world joining the ranks of the ecumenical movement, it was inevitable that sooner or later non-Western cultures would be at the center of the discussion...

...At certain points in the past it has been shaken by events that seemed to render it vulnerable...

...and with the Korean War...

...If that should happen, it will only be an added proof of the ageold incapacity of the church to deal with its divisions...

...Especially after the fifth assembly of the WCC in Nairobi (1975), the powerful influence of these theologies on the ecumenical movement was recognized, and, in some quarters, greeted with alarm...

...At first, they were received with enthusiasm, as was the case at the WCC Assembly in Evanston, Illinois, in 1954...

...But this increased third-world participation was not universally 17 accepted as a natural and welcome development...

...Inevitably, the pressure to change the direction of ecumenical efforts resulting from the new arrivals has in turn engendered resistance, tension, and conflict...

...The poor Jesus Christ is discovered anew and seen in a different light...

...The WCC had of course spoken earlier against racism in many of its pronouncements...

...18 In the second place, this church is becoming the church of the poor...

...In the words of Leslie Newbigin, "The colored and colorful representatives of the Asian and African churches were hailed and photographed as trophies of our missionary success...

...The various claims coming from the latter are increasingly seen as unacceptable, threatening the very "Christian faith" and "tradition" for which the West is seen as a depositor and guarantor.' Intimations of a possible split were enunciated after the Canberra assembly...

...It was after the Uppsala assembly that the racial discrimination of whites toward blacks in Africa caught the imagination of the ecumenical movement...

...Some believe that this is already happening in Europe...

...Along with the performance of the Communists, the anticolonialist, anti-Western spirit symbolized and expressed by the coming together of many newly independent countries at the Bandung [Indonesia] Conference (1955), in which Communist China played a significant role, not only dealt a severe blow to the missionary enterprise of the Western churches but posed a serious challenge to the worldview that had reigned uncontested within the ecumenical movement until then...

...I will contend that ever since the fifties, when the third world became not just the passive recipient of ecumenical efforts but an active participant, urging new ideas and new emphases, it has been both a stimulus, a "shot in the arm," and a provocation to ecumenical progress...

...A new Eurocentrism has arisen which threatens to marginalize the younger churches of the TwoThirds World not only politically but ecclesiastically as well...

...The cumulative criticism raised questions whether the aims of the ecumenical movement had been replaced by "non-ecumenical" concerns...

...These came at different times and with differing degrees of force...

...A few lonely voices expressed opinions from the periphery, but they did not influence the mainstream because they did not form part of it...

...Roughly speaking, the West has been the seat of the Christian church for the greater part of its history...

...Third-world theologians were claiming that their own particular cultures must be vessels for the explication of the gospel in their own contexts...

...So-called "non-theological factors," long neglected because they were not seen as church-dividing issues, were brought to the fore, with the result that the race question came to be seen as belonging at the center of the quest for unity...

...The German ecumenist Hans Norbert Janowski sees "not only self-assertion but also a desperate preoccupation with oneself taking precedence over the community task of ecumenism...

...The contexts of the theologian—sociopolitical, economic, cultural—became indispensable factors in the process of theological reflection...

...But the challenge of third-world theologies went further...

...Even as late as the formation of the World Council of Churches in 1948, church leaders from the non-Western world felt some strangeness in the burgeoning ecumenical movement...

...Participants at Uppsala recognized a shift from the Western basis of the movement to that of the third world...

...The question posed to Western churches is whether they will be humble and generous enough to participate fully with the third world in this movement in a true mutuality of giving and receiving...

...In the light of this fact, the question of poverty and the implications of the gospel in its light become crucial issues...

...The Program to Combat Racism (PCR) (see below) and the opening to dialogue with other, non-Christian faiths were attacked as having nothing to do with ecumenism...

...2. Participatory shock...

...One prominent element of these movements has been to combine the Christian confession with engagement in the daily struggle in the world...

...To counteract such a drift, the call has been launched with the idea of regrouping such forces under the Faith and Order movement, outside the WCC structure, if need be...

...In his book To Set at Liberty the Oppressed [World Council of Churches, 1975], Richard Dickinson caught the moment: "The hegemony of Western theological preoccupations has been broken...

...Third, the church unity aim of the movement was profoundly shaken...

...The PCR could and can thus be understood as a threat to our well being, our white-ness...

...The pioneers of the ecumenical movement breathed the air of their times and carried the hopes of the birth of a progressive world under the hegemony of Western religious, cultural, and political domination...

...The centrality and gravity of the North-South relationship are recognized by quite a few observers of the ecumenical movement...

...Some critics even claimed that third-world elements had simply taken over the ecumenical movement and were using it for their own ends...

...However accurate or otherwise these readings may prove, it is clear that the many focal points that guided the ecumenical movement in the past and gave it a vision of the future no longer seem adequate...

...4. Demographic shock...

...As the "younger churches" began to emerge as full-fledged churches in their own right, they also began to develop their own theologies...

...The sum total of what we have said so far is that the coming of the third world has severely shaken the ecumenical movement...

...came, it must THE COMING OF THE THIRD WORLD 16 be said, only with the victory of the Communist revolution in China...

...One of the steps that could be taken is the election of a leadership from the third world...

...For some of its observers, the spectacle offered by "strange" cultures and religions through the "uncritical inculturation" said to be promoted by some in the lands evangelized by the North constituted a threat to the integrity of the Christian faith...

...At this assembly, the African-American writer James Baldwin had given witness to the devastation caused by such discrimination...

...This aid went especially to liberation movements that were fighting against white minority rule in southern Africa...

...True, talk of crisis is not new in the movement...

...Some argued that by giving support to groups which were dedicated to the overthrow of racially based minority governments, the WCC was endorsing violence...

...But it would be helpful and in order to list a few: 1. The first scenario sees the possibility of a growing indifference toward the ecumenical movement, a willingness to leave the movement to its fate...

...It is no wonder then that Harvey Cox [The Silencing of Leonardo Boff, Meyer Stone, 1988] could predict that "the most vexing theological question of the late twentieth century" will be "whether a culturally polycentric Christianity is really possible...

...According to Raiser, it was in New Delhi—the capital which symbolized the new self-awareness of the upcoming third world—that "the so-called 'younger churches' now entered the ecumenical movement as equal partners...

...3. The far more challenging and fruitful path to follow would be what John Deschner has called the "emerging North-South ecumenical encounter...

...If one goes back to the beginnings of the ecumenical movement around the year 1910, one finds it took form, more or less inevitably, within the ideological framework that characterized the period, which coincided with the height of the colonial era...

...Some theologians have even proposed that a new Vatican Council should be called in order to draw out the necessary implications of the shift in demographics and dynamism...

...It was at the Uppsala conference that the Western churches were introduced to a new ecumenical dialogue, one which challenged their customary views about how the gospel is to be related to the world...

...At a time when the churches in the West have been greatly weakened through the forces of the Enlightenment and secularism and have been pushed to the margins, the churches in the third world are giving new life and energy to Christianity...

...After the New Delhi and Uppsala assemblies and the Church and Society conference, critics strongly attacked the ecumenical movement for its opening to the world and for the churches' new involvement in the world's ills...

...It was, rather, a signal of the growing role that these churches were going to play in the ecumenical arena...

...There is talk of a "paradigm shift," a new understanding which transcends former models and renders them inapplicable...

...Together with the successful liberation struggles in India and Indonesia, these events signaled the end of the long period of Western [Christian] world domination...

...These developments provoked serious confrontation and debate...

...It was here that the issue of the capacity of non-Western cultures and religions to convey the gospel was brought to broad daylight...

...But this trend had begun to reverse itself in the eighties when it was realized that the numerical weight of the Christian church majority had shifted away from the West...

...Issues of "syncretism" and the "authentic nature of the Christian faith" were argued in the open, some declaring that the attempt of third-world theologians to interpret the gospel in their own thought categories placed the integrity of the gospel at stake...

...Economic, political, and other issues are thus viewed in the light of the faith and are not separated from "spiritual" questions...

...The rest of the inhabited globe was then viewed as the pagan world which had to be Christianized...

...We have witnessed the birth of what Johann Baptist Metz has called the "polycentric world-church...

...it is both more nuanced than was previously the case and, in the view of many, more intense...

...13 (Continued from page 13) One may aptly characterize "the coming of the third world" as giving a series of shocks to the foundations of the ecumenical movement...

...hat, then, is to be done...

...It is the thesis of this essay that one of the chief causes, if not the cause of the current crisis is "the coming of the third world" into the ecumenical encounter...

...Unlike any previous such meeting, the WCC's conference on "Church and Society" made Christians in the industrialized nations conscious of the needs and demands of the third world...

...Walbert Buehlmann has referred to this phenomenon as "the coming of the Third Church...

...It was no accident that the Assembly took place in a third-world country...

...Emphasis added.] Raiser characterizes these events as entailing a "profound crisis....in the self-understanding of the ecumenical movement" and as giving rise to "...an intense theological reflection on itself...

...At that point the newcomers were viewed as strengthening the image that the West had of itself...

...2. A second scenario is paradoxical: the ecumenical movement as we have known it may split...

...This was followed by the WCC assembly in Uppsala in 1968...

...For, as Barry Till observed twenty years ago [The Churches Search for Unity, Penguin, 1972]: "Unless the World Council can reform itself, streamline itself, and move significantly in the direction of a Christianity that is non-white and non-middle-class it may not survive to be the World Council which so far it has only been in an embryonic form...

...Grassroots Christian movements, acting through what have been called "base Christian communities," have supplied much of this new vigor...

...As subsequent years would show, however, the honeymoon was not to last...

...they were not then suspected of bringing any new questions to the established structures but were proof of the triumph of the civilizing efforts of the West...