Once every seven or eight years since the World Council of Churches was founded in 1948, there has been an “assembly” that gathers delegates of member churches, official observers from other churches and agencies, WCC staff, co-opted staff and visitors. The Ninth Assembly of the WCC convened on February 14, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, following four related, pre-assembly conferences of Christian women, youth, Indigenous peoples and persons with disabilities.
Of the nine WCC assemblies convened over 58 years, this was the first to take place in Latin America. It was also the first assembly since September 11, 2001 and the declaration of an official “war on terror.” This made it the first assembly since the U.S. carried out its doctrine of pre-emptive war in the invasion of Iraq, despite the opposition of many church leaders. From an internal perspective, Porto Alegre was significant in being the first assembly since the work of the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the World Council of Churches. For a variety of reasons, then, expectations were high for decisions and actions that might emerge from the Ninth Assembly. But was the institution of such an “assembly” up to the tasks at hand?
The systems, purpose and attitude characterizing WCC assemblies have evolved with the decades. The first gatherings were affairs where an American Presbyterian could feel at home, a sort of inter-confessional General Assembly with simultaneous translation. Plenary sessions were at the center of deliberations. Around the periphery, one found interpretive exhibits, speakers, bookstalls, music and theater, study groups.
In 1968, during the era of the “teach-in,” attention shifted from the business meeting to special events. At the WCC’s fourth assembly in Uppsala, Sweden, the spotlight shone most brightly on speeches in the university’s lecture halls, coffeehouses, folk songs and youth protests. By 1983 and the sixth assembly in Vancouver, the concept of enthusiastic, multi-cultural “ecumenical worship” as exemplified in the Lima Liturgy helped further relocate the heart of the WCC assembly. Massive white worship tents were central to the experience of Canberra in 1991 and Harare in 1998. By this time, the principal business of delegates was to elect a WCC central committee to serve until the next assembly — and many key decisions once made during the assembly were now referred to the central committee.
At Harare, the eighth assembly was presented largely as a “marketplace of ideas” — a Padare, using the local, Shona term for market square. Thousands of facilitators from churches and affiliated organizations, including more than 100 American Presbyterians, made their way to Zimbabwe to participate in ecumenical workshops. The Padare had something of the air of Kirchentag, the German national church festival that has become a social and spiritual movement in its own right. The organizers of Porto Alegre translated Padare into Portuguese and offered a range of seminars under the heading Mutirao. In addition, much of the agenda of the assembly was given over to Bible studies and “Ecumenical Conversations” in dozens of small groups. As at Harare, a troupe of Presbyterians from the U.S. assisted with these and other dialogues. Ninth Assembly participants from the PC(USA) numbered just under ninety. Major addresses included those by Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu on peace and reconciliation, Brazilian president Lula da Silva on education in the future of Latin America and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, on the pressing need for greater progress in inter-religious dialogue.
Early in the assembly, representatives of U.S. member churches made a presentation–a confession of sin for the churches’ failure to divert U.S. policy-makers from acts of violence, denial of human rights, economic injustice and environmental degradation. The statement would create a stir in some publications within the United States. The muted reaction inside the assembly took some by surprise. On the final afternoon of the conference, United Church of Christ President John Thomas publicly expressed disappointment that the WCC had not responded more forcefully to the confession; one wag remarked that the appropriate response was, “Go, and sin no more.”
The hallmark of the Porto Alegre assembly came in a constitutional change to the way in which business is transacted, both in committees and in plenary. A series of amendments, responding to the 2002 recommendations of the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the WCC and moved by Committee Moderator Cliff Kirkpatrick of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), instituted a process of consensus decision-making in place of the WCC’s former parliamentary rules of procedure. Throughout the remainder of the Ninth Assembly, potentially controversial subjects were approached gingerly and handled by delegates with caution.
Detailed plans for the WCC’s future were, as expected, left to the central committee and its executive committee. The leadership of the Council was asked to prepare a plan under which the organization will attempt to “do less, but do it better” — yet it was not clear during the assembly the extent to which this will involve restructuring. Four areas of priorities were recommended: (1) unity, spirituality and mission, (2) ecumenical education, especially among youth, (3) global justice, and (4) bringing a credible, moral voice to the world. Further information on the formulation of these priorities, and on the assembly as a whole, is to be found on the WCC assembly Web site: https://www.wcc-assembly.org
Following the discomfort expressed by some Orthodox churches at the predominantly western, Protestant institutional culture of the World Council, and the recommendations of the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation, it is no longer considered proper to speak of “ecumenical worship” at a WCC assembly — consensus can be reached only on uniting in “common prayer.” Services of common prayer, which seemed to a simple Presbyterian awfully like ecumenical worship, opened and closed each day of the assembly. White tents were in short supply in southern Brazil, so common prayer transpired beneath the red, green and yellow big top of a striped and star-spangled circus tent. The assembly began with a sermon by Archbishop Anastasios of Albania, a living saint from the Orthodox tradition. At closing worship, preacher Robina Winbush did the PC(USA) proud at closing prayer on February 23 with her call to take part in “the healing of the nations.”
As always, the healing of the churches may be a good place to start.
Theodore A. Gill Jr., former editor of Monday Morning magazine, is a Presbyterian minister serving in Geneva, Switzerland, as senior editor of the World Council of Churches. In December 1998, he reported for The Presbyterian Outlook on the Eighth Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Harare, Zimbabwe. More extensive reports and features on the Ninth Assembly of the WCC may be found on the assembly’s Web site, https://www.wcc-assembly.org
