Promoting unity in a divided world
Commandment of love
After lighting candles at a "tree of reconciliation" in Uppsala Cathedral, participants in the 4th assembly in 1968 gave a donation to the Martin Luther King Fund. Scheduled to preach at the opening service, King was assassinated three months earlier. An Assembly resolution thanked God for King's faithful and prophetic witness "to the New Testament commandment of love and the relating of non-violence to social change".
Combat against racism
Christians from Kenya, Fiji and Australia (pictured together with the WCC's Rev. Daisuke Kitagawa, right) were among the participants in a 1969 consultation on racism at Notting Hill, London, that led to the founding of the Programme to Combat Racism. Its emphasis was on combating institutional racism, entrenched in the structures of social, economic and political power. © WCC/John Taylor
Christian education for change
Education came in for renewed ecumenical attention when the World Council of Christian Education was integrated into the WCC in 1971. One goal was to make people aware that they are agents of change, not passive objects, and to enable them to take up an active role within their environment. Pictured: The Majahida Bible School in Tanzania trains African Inland Church pastors and theologians. © WCC/Peter Williams
Assembling in Africa
The Nairobi assembly in 1975 was the first to be held in Africa, a continent where Christianity is still growing faster than anywhere else, and where the struggles of daily life vividly illustrate many of the issues on the ecumenical agenda. The bitter polarizations some had predicted for the assembly - between North and South or East and West - did not materialize. But by no means was the 5th assembly a placid event: delegates struggled over such topics as the meaning of "holistic" evangelism, relations with people of other faiths and ideologies, sexism and human rights.
Community of women and men
In a study on the Community of Women and Men in the Church in the late 1970s and early 1980s, more people were engaged at the local level than by any previous initiative of the Faith and Order Commission. More than 150 reports by local groups, as well as material from regional conferences and from specialized consultations on ordination, theological anthropology and the authority of scripture, provided valuable background for a 1981 international conference in Sheffield, England(pictured). © WCC/John Taylor
Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry
The three church-dividing issues of baptism, eucharist and ministry were on the agenda of the ecumenical movement as far back as the first Faith and Order world conference in 1927. Meeting in Lima, Peru, in 1982, the Faith and Order Commission submitted to the world's churches a document on what was perceived to be the growing ecumenical convergence on these issues, seeking official responses. Eventually, hundreds of thousands of copies of the Lima document would be distributed in dozens of languages. Churches' responses were compiled by the WCC and published in multiple volumes. Picture: A baptism at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Leningrad, 1988 © WCC/Peter Williams
Peace and justice in cold-war-times
A much-discussed statement on peace and justice by the 6th Assembly, in Vancouver 1983, called on churches to declare unequivocally "that the production and deployment as well as the use of nuclear weapons are a crime against humanity, and that such activities must be condemned on ethical and theological grounds". A night-long vigil for peace (pictured) commemorated the atomic bombing of Hiroshima 38 years earlier. One speaker was Desmond Tutu, who had arrived in Vancouver after being delayed while the South African government decided whether to allow him to travel outside the country.
Ecumenical visitors
On Pentecost 1984, John Paul II (left) became the second Roman Catholic pope to visit the World Council of Churches. A joint statement by WCC general secretary Philip Potter (right) and Jan Cardinal Willebrands, president of the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, expressed gratitude "for what God is doing to bring Christians and their churches and communities closer together through the ecumenical movement, which is a gift of his grace". © WCC/Peter Williams
Candles in memory of the disappeared
When the WCC central committee met in Buenos Aires in 1985, global ecumenical attention was focused on Latin America. Besides moving encounters with those who had suffered during the years of military rule in Argentina, committee members issued a statement on the economic and social hardships compounded by the astronomical external debt of many Latin American nations. Picture: Paula Logares, a girl who had disappeared for a time, lights a candle at the central committee meeting in Buenos Aires. © WCC/Peter Williams
Diakonia: more than money
Poor and oppressed people, who are at the margins of the world's concern, should be at the centre of Christian service, insisted the 300 participants in a 1986 global ecumenical consultation on interchurch aid. Diakonia, they said, is "liberating and transforming, suffering and empowering". Christian service cannot be separated from the struggle for justice and peace; therefore, advocacy, solidarity and sharing of skills are as essential to diakonia as the giving of money. Picture: Collage at the consultation in Larnaca, Cyprus © WCC/Peter Williams
