“All the Saints” & the World Council of Churches

on November 4, 2013

One of the best parts of the Sunday closest to All Saints Day is singing the majestic hymn “For All the Saints Who from Their Labors Rest ,” which reminds us of the cosmic, eternal unity of all believers in Jesus Christ across culture and time. Here’s one stanza:

O blest communion, fellowship divine,
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia! Alleluia!

The Church is not just the communion of the currently living but includes all who have ever lived in Christ. We who live today are only a small part of the story, which should inspire some humility and inhibit revisionism about the faith. After all, the faith has been defined and is transmitted by the whole Church, starting with the Apostles. By joining The Church, each of us submits to the continuity and authority of the whole. Each may have unique vocations, and special insights, but none can reinvent the central truths of the faith, which collectively belong the entire Church, sustained by the Holy Spirit, and always based on the Scriptures.

Coincidentally, the World Council of Churches (WCC), with often a very different view of Christian faith and truth, is currently meeting in General Assembly in Busan, South Korea. According to a WCC report, about 1000 conservative Korean Christians gathered in Busan to protest the WCC, with one demonstrator complaining the “WCC is ‘tainted by pluralism’ by embracing different gods, communism, homosexuality and other lifestyles.” One demonstration leader told a Korean newspaper: “Religious pluralism is heresy, denying the authority of the Bible, and is an Antichrist scheme aimed at rooting out Christianity.”

A Russian Orthodox representative, Metropolitan Hilarion, challenged the WCC in his official remarks from the podium, wondering how effective the WCC is against “militant secularism” and radical Islam. He warned: “While we continue to discuss our differences in the comfortable atmosphere of conferences and theological dialogues, the question resounds ever more resolutely: will Christian civilization survive at all?”

Founded in 1948, the WCC was from the start guided by Western liberal Protestants committed to 20th century revisionism. Shortly into its history, if not from the start, the WCC became more focused on social justice and interfaith relations than on missions evangelism or commitment to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.

The WCC radicalized in the 1960’s under the influence of Liberation Theology, supporting and funding leftist groups engaged in armed struggle against right-wing regimes. Soviet and East Bloc controlled churches were active members of the WCC and successfully inhibited any WCC critique of human rights abuses in the Soviet Empire or other Marxist regimes, instead aiming the WCC’s fire at the U.S., Israel, and pro-Western regimes. The IRD was founded in 1981 in part to counteract the WCC’s unfortunate blind spots, particularly its betrayal of the persecuted church.

In the decades since the Cold War, the WCC has somewhat moderated, partly thanks to the demise of Western liberal Protestantism, and the rise of Global South Christianity. But the WCC is still left leaning and more political than missions focused. West European Protestant denominations, most of them dying and sustained by government funding, provide much of the WCC’s funding. And the WCC remains committed to liberationist themes, ostensibly to benefit the Third World, but still contrived by Europeans and Americans.

There are 1000 delegates in Busan, and the United Methodist delegation thankfully includes representatives from the overseas church, who hopefully actually represent those churches. Also included is retired Bishop Mary Ann Swenson, United Methodism’s Ecumenical Officer, and the one bishop who openly supported retired Bishop Melvin Talbert recent violation of church law by leading a same sex rite. It’s an odd role for Swenson, since her beliefs are profoundly anti-ecumenical. She not only dissents from United Methodism, she more importantly and troublingly dissents from the universal Church now and across history.

Another outspoken opponent of United Methodist and universal Church teaching on marriage is Bishop Sally Dyck, although she does not advocate violation of it. Apparently also present is liberal activist Larry Pickens, former head of United Methodism’s ecumenical agency, and now belonging to the WCC’s Central Committee, and who once defended in a church trial a minister who conducted a same-sex union. His predecessor at the ecumenical agency, Bruce Robbins, who recently himself conducted a same sex union in violation of church law, is evidently in Busan as well.

Why are persons who oppose ecumenical teaching, and the very basis of ecumenical unity, representing United Methodism in ecumenical relations? About a decade ago, Methodist theologian Thomas Oden contrasted dying “old ecumenism,” defined by declining bureaucracies like the WCC and National Council of Churches, which were mostly liberal Protestants talking to each other, with the “new ecumenism,” defined by direct relations among orthodox believers among growing communions of Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox and Evangelicals.

The NCC is now on death’s door, but the WCC hobbles along. Maybe the Global South can capture it for the “new ecumenism” and for “all the saints,” in glory or on earth, bound together by common faith in the Triune God, revealed in Scripture, declared in the ancient ecumenical creeds, and witnessed to by all The Church around the world.

  1. Comment by polistra on November 6, 2013 at 5:02 am

    Overly complicated article. WCC has been a Soviet front from the start. That is all. Nothing more, nothing less. Its intent was always to use “religion” as just another tool for spreading Stalinist destruction. Nothing more, nothing less.

    If it’s fading, that’s purely good.

  2. Comment by Adrian Croft on November 7, 2013 at 8:30 am

    If all Christians are the Body of Christ, the WCC is a large and painful kidney stone that will, we hope, eventually pass.

  3. Comment by Bishop Andrew Gerales Gentry on November 15, 2013 at 10:24 pm

    Whether it is American evangelicalism as counterfeit Christianity or post modern relativism,God is in charge not the CEOs of denominations, but remember it is the Church that is the steward and interpreter of Scripture not the other away around. It is the Church that gave us the Bible not the Bible the Church!

  4. Comment by John S on November 18, 2013 at 8:44 am

    Ahh, yes, this argument. I disagree but at least it is a more central point of contention than many that float through the comments section.

    But even if one were to agree that the Church is the steward and interpreter of Scripture why would one assume the organization headquarted in Rome is the Church?

  5. Comment by Brien on December 10, 2018 at 9:45 pm

    Men wrote your Bable books; so your comments are ludicrous, and your books do not prove any gods – just that the books exist!

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