Magyar Egyház, 1961 (40. évfolyam, 1-10. szám)
1961-01-01 / 1. szám
8 MAGYAR EGYHÁZ MAGYAR CHURCH An Effective Gospel For The Whole World Requires A United Church Highlights of the General Assembly of the National Council of Churches Insistent demand for church unity formed the dynamic, central core of debate at the National Council of Churches’ 1960 General Assembly held in San Francisco, December 4-9. Here are some highlights of the Assembly as compiled by Geraldine Sartain, NCCC staff reporter. A self-rising yeast of dissatisfaction with the fragmented state of American Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy animated the sessions of more than 3,000 church leaders from all over the nation. Again and again church statesmen called for unity in their formal addresses. Panel discussions worried the subject. The triennial Message to the Member Churches voiced the most urgent plea ever made by a church body for the denominations to forget their “dividedness” and to join hands “in the Lord’s work.” Drama was injected into the discussions at the very start. A former National Council president, preaching in Grace Cathedral, outside of the Assembly sessions, proposed the merger of four of the largest Protestant denominations. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk, United Presbyterian Church in the USA, declared that the church “cannot longer afford the luxury of our historic divisions.” He sketched general principles for the union of his own denomination, and of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Methodist Church and the United Church of Christ. Bishop James A. Pike of the Episcopal diocese of California, immediately endorsed Dr. Blake’s proposal, calling the plan “the most sound and inspiring proposal for unity of the church in this country which has ever been made.” The Rt. Rev. Arthur Lichtenberger, presiding bishop, Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, added his approval. Several others hailed the proposal, among them Dr. Theodore A. Gill, president, San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo, Cal., who believes that church union can have a grass roots beginning and need not wait for the merger of major denominations. A leading Episcopalian, Charles P. Taft of Cincinnati, expressed agreement with the objectives, but questioned the wisdom of striving at the outset for organic union. Cooperative long-range planning is one step toward the “united witness and a united church,” reported the Rev. Dr. A. Dale Fiers, chairman, General Committee on Program and Field Operations. “Taking the broad way of sectarian separateness,” he said, “leads to destructive division, excessive duplication, wasteful competitiveness and, worst of all, irrelevance to the needs of humanity and the purposes of God.” Dr. Fiers made public for the first time the findings of a nationwide survey report on needs confronting the churches. More than 1,000 individuals were interviewed and hundreds of discussion groups functioned in order to pin-point the extent of changes in American life. Backed by six years of grass-roots research, the survey report urged the Council to stimulate massive planning efforts by both denominational and inter-church organizations, national, state and local. In the opening Assembly service, marked by a stately procession of robed clergy, retiring president Dr. Dahlberg declared that an effective gospel for the whole world requires a united church. Presenting his general secretary’s report, the Rev. Dr. Roy G. Ross told the Assembly that Christian people are aware that something is wrong with our society and restlessly seek the answers. This gives the church an opportunity such as may not come again for centuries, he said, He called on the churches to provide leadership motivated by a Christian concept of man as the creation of God, recognizing his moral responsibilities to his creator and his fellowmen. The concern for unity was put into the context of the Council’s own program through the reports of its new faith and order commission. The director of the faith and order studies, the Rev. William A. Norgren, proposed that Christians in local congregations be drawn out of their isolation and become familiar with the differing beliefs of other denominations. Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, general secretary, International Missionary Council, stressed the necessity for Christians to listen to one another. Bishop Newbigin also warned a plenary session that Christians should not try to hold back the revolution of our time, but bear witness in it to its true meaning. Communism is not the author of the revolution, he said, but one of the movements which exploit it. Cuba and the Congo are current examples of this Communist exploitation, a special report of the Foreign Missions Division stated. In the Congo at least nine types of maneuvers were used by the Communists in their efforts to gain control. The Rev. Eugene L. Smith, from the Methodist Division of World Missions, posed some deeply unsettling questions to the Assembly about Cuba and the Congo. “Do we really care about the abolition of poverty outside the U.S.?” he asked. “Does American luxury lead us to become defenders of the status quo?” A pronouncement was made asking that the pro
