A moment in ecumenical history

'We are never without a friend.'

Jorge Lara-Braud, assistant general secretary of the National Council of Churches for Faith and Order from 1972 to 1980, was a scholar trained in the intricacies of defining the Christian faith.

But the Mexican-born Presbyterian wrote that one the most moving definitions he heard came from Oscar Romero two years before the El Salvador archbishop was assassinated in 1980.

Romero brought Lara-Braud to tears with his reports of priests and lay leaders who were imprisoned, tortured or killed in El Salvador. "That is the price of a church converted to the Gospel," Romero said.

Getting hold of himself, Lara-Braud asked Romeo what he meant by conversion to the Gospel.

"To defend the poor as our Lord did," Romero replied. In the 1970s, El Salvador was controlled by a few families whose oppression of the poor was an international scandal.

"They had never seen the face of a born-again Church," Romero said "No wonder they treat us as subversives and Marxists. Nevertheless, we forgive them and pray for their conversion."

Two years later, Salvadoran National Guard forces burst into a Catholic retreat center and in a blaze of machine gun fire murdered a 34-year-old priest and four young men, two in their teens. Lara-Braud raced back to El Salvador to stand by the archbishop as he excommunicated those responsible for the assassinations. The act was intended as "a prodding for their repentance." Shortly afterwards, Romero was assassinated by a right-wing group headed by the infamous Roberto D'Aubuisson as the archbishop held up the consecrated host during a mass.

A few months earlier, Lara-Braud had quoted Paul in an article in New World Outlook: "We are often troubled, but not crushed; sometimes in doubt, but never in despair; there are many enemies, but we are never without a friend; and though badly hurt at times, we are not destroyed. At all times we carry in our mortal bodies  the death of Jesus, so that his life may also be seen in our bodies." (II Cor. 4:8-10).

The words were a fitting epitaph, not only for the Salvadoran martyr but for Lara-Braud himself, who died last June 22 near his home in Austin, Tex., after years of being silenced by Parkinson's disease.

Lara-Braud came to the National Council of Churches staff in 1972 from his post as director of the Hispanic-American Institute in Austin, where he was also visiting professor of ecumenical theology at Austin Theological Seminary.

He earned a masters of divinity degree at Austin and a doctor of theology degree at Princeton Theological Seminary, but he remained a layman in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.

During his years at the NCC, he said, "Christian unity is at the heart of the Gospel. Without it, we cannot effectively tell good news or do works of justice." The differences between communions, he said, "are not as important as their common efforts for the renewal of faith and spirituality."

In 1975, Lara-Braud, true to his calling, moderated a panel of theologians to examine the Hartford Declaration about 13 themes of contemporary thought considered dangerous to the church's message. The panel, consisting of then Lutheran pastor Richard John Neuhaus, now a Roman Catholic priest, the Rev. Dr. William Sloane Coffin of Riverside Church and the Rev. Dr. Harvey Cox of Harvard University, met in the lobby of the Interchurch Center in New York.

In part, the Hartford statement raised questions as to whether a belief in a transcendent God hindered or encouraged the church in its pursuit of social justice. For Lara-Braud, that was never an issue. Jesus, he believed, had already set the example to show a transcendent God called people both to love their Creator and one another.  Lara-Braud would live his life as an apostle of Archbishop Romero's simple definition of the Gospel: "To defend the poor as our Lord did."

When he left the NCC in 1980 to direct the Presbyterian Council on Theology and Culture, he stated his life's goal: "I would like to provide fellow Christians with the biblical and theological basis for Christian witness in regard to the most sensitive issues facing the church." He added: "There is a deep need among Christians enlivened by the Gospel for responsible action in the world and ultimate meaning in their lives."

His witness remains a legacy to all he leaves behind.