Magyar Egyház, 1966 (45. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1966-03-01 / 3. szám

MAGYAR EGYHÁZ

9

NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES

In an unusually busy winter meeting in St. Louis, Mo., February 22-24, the General Board of the National Council of Churches, among other resolutions,

• SUPPORTED the seating of Red China in the United Nations, “without prejudice to its own policy concerning diplomatic recognition, and under conditions which take into account the welfare, security and political status of Taiwan, including membership in the United Nations.”

• ADOPTED a separate policy statement calling on all citizens to uphold the rights of debate, diversity and dissent.

• CONGRATULATED in a resolution the Rev. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and a former NCC president, on his election as general secretary of the World Council of Churches.

• COMMENDED the U.S. government for its “peace offensives” and Congress for its “public debate and examination of policy” in a resolution urging “reconciliation and peace with justice” in Vietnam.

• ISSUED a special appeal for Good Friday fasting and “sacrificial giving” to famine victims in India.

• REVIEWED plans for a two-pronged NCC program aimed at relieving emergency starvation and overpopulation throughout the world.

• AFFIRMED in a policy statement on “Christian Concern and Responsibility for Economic Life in a Rapidly Changing Technological Society” that science and technology are in themselves neither good nor evil, but gifts of God which man can either use well and be blessed, or misuse and suffer.

• LEARNED from NCC general secretary R. H. Edwin Espy that issues of war and poverty, coupled with rapidly growing Protestant-Roman Catholic cooperation, played major roles in the NCC’s 1965 program operations.

A bronze memorial plaque commemorating Archbishop Nathan Söderblom of the Lutheran Church of Sweden was unveiled at the Ecumenical Center in Geneva, Switzerland during the meeting of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches.

Archbishop Söderblom was the man who, in 1919, made the first definite proposal to create an ecumenical council and he was the convenor of the Conference on Life and Work held at Stockholm in 1925. He was also one of the leaders of the World Conference on Faith and Order held at Lausanne in 1927. Out of these two movements sprang the World Council of Churches.

The picture shows, looking at the plaque, I. to r.: the Rev. Jerome Hamer, O.P., Roman Catholic observer at the WCC meeting, Greek Orthodox Archbishop lakovos, one of the presidents of the WCC and the Rev. John F. Long, S.J., Roman Catholic observer.

WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES

The Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, February 8-17:

• ELECTED an American churchman, the Rev. Eugene Carson Blake, as Council General Secretary to succeed the Rev. Willem A. Visser ’t Hooft, who has served as the chief executive officer of the world church body since its organization in 1948. Dr. Blake will assume his new position on December 1, 1966.

• ACTED to join forces with Roman Catholic relief agencies in providing immediate aid to famine victims in India and Africa. The Central Committee also authorized an appeal for not less than $3,000,000 to support a threeyear program for projects in India calculated to help remove the causes of famine and disasters.

• ADOPTED a controversial policy statement on Vietnam which endorsed a call for immediate peace and criticized both the United States policy of containing communism and the communist policy of supporting wars of liberation.

• HEARD the annual report of the Council’s General Secretary covering a wide range of ecumenical concerns. He told the policy making body of the WCC that “concentration rather than expansion is now the main task of the ecumenical movement.” The movement, he said, is entering a new period which “requires a deepening of efforts in seeking Christian unity.”

• CONSIDERED a report from the Council’s Department of Faith and Order which noted that the unity movement among churches has before it “a wide door and many adversaries.” It was noted that there has never been as many opportunities for effective work in the area of Faith and Order, but that the path to true and worthwhile union is not an easy one.

• APPROVED plans for a World Conference on Church and Society to be held in Geneva in July 1966, and outlined the program for the Fourth Assembly of the Council in Uppsala, Sweden, in July of 1968.

Dr. Eugene Carson Blake (United Presbyterian Church in the USA) was elected to succeed Dr. Willem Visser 't Hooft as General Secretary of the World Council of Churches. Dr. Blake, in recent years, visited many Churches overseas among them those in Hungary, Transylvania and the Carpatho-Ukraine.