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Centennial Gathering adjourns as it began - in worship

New Orleans, November 15, 2010 -- The Centennial Gathering of the National Council of Churches and Church World Service adjourned Thursday evening, November 11, as Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie preached in historic Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral here.

McKenzie is the presiding prelate of the 13th Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

More than 400 people of faith came to New Orleans November 9-11 to celebrate a century of ecumenical engagement and to discuss how the churches might live and work together in an uncertain future.

The Centennial Gathering of the National Council of Churches and Church World Service marked the one hundredth anniversary of the 1910 World Mission Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, an event many church historians regard as the beginning of the modern ecumenical movement.

The theme for the Centennial Gathering is “Witnesses of These Things:  Ecumenical Engagement in a New Era.”  The theme is taken from Luke 24:48 which is the scriptural theme text for the 2010 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity – an additional reminder that there is one, multi-faceted ecumenical movement.

On Thursday morning, the general secretary of the World Council of Churches expanded on the theme with an address entitled, "To Walk With an Open Heart." The reference is to Luke's account of the walk to Emmaus by two of Jesus' apostles when they encounter the resurrected Christ on the road.

"As we come to the end of the Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV), we will join together in marking the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC) next year in Kingston, Jamaica," said the Rev. Dr. Olav Fykse Tveit, who became WCC general secretary in January. "It will not just be for those who attend the event in Jamaica. All churches and all Christians throughout the world are being invited to live out the 'Way of Just Peace.' This is a journey into God’s purpose for humanity and all creation, trusting that God will “guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:79). 

"'The Way of Just Peace.'" Tveit said, "is fundamentally different from the concept of 'just war.'   It cannot be the role of the church to focus on what is a just war, not even when we realize that the authorities sometimes have to exercise their difficult duty to protect. Focusing on just peace we as churches can concentrate – in addition to silencing weapons – on embracing social justice, the rule of law, respect for human rights and shared human security."

At the closing plenary Thursday afternoon, the Rev. John L. McCullough, executive director and CEO of Church World Service, moderated a panel discussion on the future of the ecumenical movement.

Panelists representing a wide range of ecumenical experiences shared their views.

Scott Anderson, executive director of the Wisconsin Council of Churches, predicted a future formed out of the decline and difficulties of the ecumenical present.

"The formation of 21st century ecumenical leaders will likely take place at the foot of the cross," Anderson said. "Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) is the best ecumenical experience I have had."

The ecumenical future probably begins with a season of lent, Anderson said. "The way we’re doing it now is fundamentally unsustainable. And Presbyterians, good Calvinists that we are, are perpetually in a season of grief. We can’t help ourselves. But let us not medicate our grief with pious clichés. It is not in our strength but in our weakness that the power of God is manifest."

The Rev. Dr. Karen Hamilton, general secretary of the Canadian Council of Churches, used a statement by the late Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau to describe U.S.-Canadian relations. It's like sleeping with an elephant," Trudeau said. "No matter how careful or considerate it is, you're still very much aware of every move."

Hamilton encouraged the ecumenical movement south of the border to reach out in more directions.

"It is always for me a shock to come to the U.S. and discover that Roman Catholic and evangelical sisters and brothers are not part of the NCC," she said. "These things are possible. We need to be taking just as many steps as (they take) toward unity."

The Rev. Jennifer Leath of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a doctoral student at Yale, said she stood at several crossroads as a child of God, an African American, a woman and a young adult.

"Clarity about my crossroad instructs me as an ecumenical partner," she said. "This is a clarity about what violence is done to me, clarity about the violence that is done to others who share my locations, clarity about internalized violence, and clarity about the violence that is done to others whose crossroads are different from mine.

"From this crossroad I do not have the luxury of saying: 'look, everyone is oppressed, so everyone should stop complaining about their oppression, move on, and work in your own vineyard.'  From this crossroad, I must inhale and exhale the mantra that one of our modern day prophets taught us, saying: 'If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own…. For if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.'  Neither the NCC and CWS nor the communions they assemble can afford the ignorance of a perspective that denies disproportional, intersecting, and compounding injustices. 

"Neither the NCC and CWS nor the communions they assemble can afford to allow existential anxieties to stall the work of justice," she said. "Neither the NCC and CWS nor the communions they assemble can afford not to fight for the lives of those among us – and those beyond our fences – whose human dignity is targeted daily."

Other panelists were Dr. Glory Dharmaraj of the United Methodist Church; Dr. Elizabeth Ferris of the Religious Society of Friends; Kathryn Lohre, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and NCC president elect; the Rev. Dr. Tony Richie, Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.) and the Rt. Rev. Maxim, bishop of the Western America Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

The sessions of the Centennial Gathering were presided over by the Rev. Peg Chemberlin, NCC president, and Bishop Johncy Itty, chair, CWS board of directors.

A complete schedule and other documents of the meeting can be found at www.ncccusa.org/witnesses2010.  

For more information contact: Philip E. Jenks, pjenks@ncccusa.org, 212-870-2228

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