World Council of Churches


The World Council of Churches is a worldwide Christian inter-church organization founded in 1948 to work for the cause of ecumenism. Its full members today include the Assyrian Church of the East, most jurisdictions of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Union of Utrecht, the Lutheran World Federation, the Anglican Communion, the Mennonite churches, the World Methodist Council, the Baptist World Alliance, the World Communion of Reformed Churches, several Pentecostal churches, the Moravian Church, and the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church. The Catholic Church is not a full member, but it sends delegates who have observer status to meetings.
The WCC describes itself as "a worldwide fellowship of 352 global, regional and sub-regional, national and local churches seeking unity, a common witness and Christian service". It has no head office as such, but its administrative centre is at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland. The organization's members include denominations which claim to collectively represent over 600 million people across the world in more than 110 countries.
Many regional affiliates of the World Council of Churches, such as the Middle East Council of Churches and National Council of Churches in Australia, work for the cause of Christian unity at the domestic level, with member denominations including the Oriental Orthodox Churches, Lutheran churches, Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox churches, Methodist churches, Anglican Communion, Reformed churches, among others.

History

The Ecumenical Movement met with initial successes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910. In 1920, the former Patriarch of Constantinople, Germanus V, wrote a letter addressed 'To all the Churches of Christ, wherever they may be', urging closer co-operation among separated Christians, and suggesting a 'League of Churches', parallel to the newly founded League of Nations". Church leaders agreed in 1937 to establish a World Council of Churches, based on a merger of the Faith and Order Movement and Life and Work Movement organisations.
Its official establishment was deferred with the outbreak of World War II until 23 August 1948. Delegates of 147 churches assembled in Amsterdam to merge the Faith and Order Movement and Life and Work Movement. This was consolidated by a second meeting at Lund in 1950, for which the British Methodist Robert Newton Flew edited an influential volume of studies, The Nature of the Church. Subsequent mergers were with the International Missionary Council in 1961 and the World Council of Christian Education, with its roots in the 18th century Sunday School movement, in 1971.
WCC member churches include the Assyrian Church of the East and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, almost all of the Eastern Orthodox Churches and Lutheran Churches; the Moravian Church; the Anglican Communion; some Old Catholic Churches; the Methodist churches; the Baptists churches; the Presbyterian and other Reformed churches, a sampling of united and independent churches, and some Pentecostal churches.
Many churches who refused to join the WCC joined to form the World Evangelical Alliance.
Neither the WCC nor the U.S.-based National Council of Churches include denominations such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and other groups which have historically refused to affirm certain widely accepted creeds of Christendom.
File:Meeting with World Council of Churches Delegation. Bp. G. Brook Mosely, Sec. State Dean Rusk, Dr. Kenneth L. Maxwell - NARA - 194177.jpg|thumb|President John F. Kennedy with World Council of Churches Delegation. Bp. G. Brook Mosely, Sec. State Dean Rusk, Dr. Kenneth L. Maxwell, Dr. Frederick Nolde, President Kennedy, Archbishop Iakovos of America, Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, Bp. B. Julian Smith, Bp. John Wesley Lord, Judge James M. Tunnell Jr., Dr. Roswell Parkhurst Barnes. White House, Cabinet Room in 1962.
Delegates sent from the member churches meet every seven or eight years in an Assembly, which elects a Central Committee that governs between Assemblies. A variety of other committees and commissions answer to the Central Committee and its staff. Assemblies have been held since 1948.
The "human rights abuses in communist countries evoked grave concern among the leaders of the World Council of Churches." However, historian Christopher Andrew claims that, during the Cold War, a number of important WCC representatives of the Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe had been working for the KGB, and that they influenced the policy of the WCC. From 1955 to 1958, Robert S. Bilheimer co-chaired a WCC international commission to prepare a document addressing the threat of nuclear warfare during the Cold War.
At the 1961 conference, a 32-year-old Russian Orthodox Bishop named Aleksey Ridiger was sent as delegate to the assembly, and then appointed to the WCC's central committee. He was later elected as Russian patriarch in 1990 as Alexei II.
The ninth assembly took place in Porto Alegre, Brazil in February 2006, under the theme "God, in your grace, transform the world". During the first Assemblies, theologians Vasileios Ioannidis and Amilkas Alivizatos contributed significantly to the debates that led to the drafting of the "Toronto Statement", a foundational document which facilitated Eastern Orthodox participation in the organization and today it constitutes its ecclesiological charter.
The 10th Assembly was held in Busan, Republic of Korea, from 30 October to 8 November 2013.
In 2013 Dr. Agnes Abuom of Nairobi, from the Anglican Church of Kenya, was elected as moderator of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches; she is the first woman and the first African to hold this position.
The 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches took place in Karlsruhe, Germany, from 31 August to 8 September 2022, under the theme "Christ's love moves the world to reconciliation and unity".

Member Churches

Members

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