Critics from Without and from Within

Ronald Preston

Since this chapter is to be about critics of Church and Society, two preliminary remarks are essential. The first is that I have a great admiration for the work of Paul Abrecht. As a serious and ongoing study in practical Christian social ethics, his work is without equal in the World Council of Churches: nothing so comprehensive or complete has been achieved elsewhere. Moreover, it has been accomplished with the minimum of staff and budget resources. In- deed, financial support has been specially raised on several occasions, thus relieving the general budget of the WCC. Paul Abrecht has shown astonishing vitality in maintaining the impetus over the years, and especially in enlisting the cooperation of distinguished collaborators. A number of these had never before been asked for their help by any Christian body, and were often more than ready to assist when asked. It should also be added that anyone who has respon- sibilities for wide-ranging global commitments of considerable perplexity, in- volving frequent absences from his base of operations, depends upon an office efficiently and intelligently administered. In this respect Paul has been fortunate over the years, as he has often made clear, in having Christa Stalschus as his secretary.

The second preliminary remark is that criticisms of Church and Society have less and less been confined to it, and more and more directed to the whole social witness and method of the WCC. This is because an expansion of the number of social issues on the agenda has been parallel with the expansion of the WCC itself. Among these issues black theology, feminist theology, the ethical problems of revolutionary action and nation-building in post-colonial political situations, and the uncertain results of scientific and technological development come at once to mind. There has been a diversification of opera- tions within the WCC, and other units have taken over areas which were at one time, or in theory might well have been, the province of Church and Society. For instance economic issues, which at one time figured largely on its agenda, have tended to move elsewhere in recent years. It is not therefore possible strictly to separate criticisms of Church and Society from more general criticisms of the WCC.

Paul Abrecht inherited a method of study which owed much to J.H. Oldham in the formative stages of the ecumenical movement.’ This process produced some very solid work. The most obvious example is the six volumes issued in con- nection with the Oxford conference on “Church, Community and State” in

‘See the chapter by W.A. Visser ’t Hooft in this volume, “Oldham’s Method in Abrecht’s Hands”.

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1937.2 It is doubtful whether a weightier theological contribution has been made since. In running a special one-year course on ecumenical social ethics in Man- Chester University in the 1970s, I frequently found that students became excited when introduced to the Oxford conference volumes, and found them still rele- vant today. Paul Abrecht continued this method, and recently he has brought in a number of highly distinguished natural scientists in connection with the wider and narrower issues raised by nuclear energy and ecology.

The West and the “two-thirds world” In 1937, and in 1948 when the WCC was finally launched, the context was

largely “western”. It is just the enlargement of the WCC since then which has produced criticism from “western” sources. It is hard for the “West”, the heart of the old Christendom, to find that its viewpoint and priorities are not shared by the “two-thirds world”. It often leads to bad-tempered criticism. Some of it is based on sheer ignorance of the WCC in general and Church and Society in par- ticular. Some of it is wilful ignorance, exemplified by a recent attack in Reader’s Digest (USA) which is not worth attention in this chapter. Some of it is based on the old heresy that the church should stick to “religious” questions and eschew political ones. It is ironic that this is precisely the attitude taken to the church by the authorities in communist countries, whereas those who take it in the “West” are usually strongly anti-communist. I do not need to expose the fallacy of such an attitude in this essay, though I shall shortly mention two critics, E.R. Norman and Ernest Lefever, who partly exemplify it. Meanwhile how can one explain the disgruntlement expressed in the following passage, except as due to nostalgia for the vanished predominance of the “West”?

Naturally, the WCC bureaucrats are highly unrepresentative both in their style and their politics: and their ecumenist assumptions are thoroughly out of tune with the deep-rooted attachments to particular forms and localities found amongst most or- dinary Christians. The interests of such bureaucrats lie in canvassing support in the third world, in problems of racism and the like, and their whole theology and vocabulary has decreasing contact with the home constituency. At one and the same time they bureaucratize and standardize and manage to wield an existentialist-cum- Marxist vocabulary of liberation, dialogue, significant encounters and the like. Feeling their own loss of roots they lean ever more heavily towards third world politics, con- doning whatever is illiberal in the third world (or indeed in communist countries since they want the prestige deriving from the participation of the Orthodox), while cam- paigning vigorously against every blot on the social record of their own countries.

This comes from the book A General Theory of Secularisation3 by David Martin, an internationally renowned professor of sociology at the London School of Economics with a special interest in the sociology of religion, and a distinguished lay theologian (who has recently been ordained). His competence in this area is much greater than that of either Norman or Lefever, which makes the whole tone of the passage so sad.

2The Christian Understanding of Man; The Kingdom of God and History; The Christian Faith and the Common Life; Church and Community; Church, Community and State in Relation to Educa- tion; The Universal Church and the World of Nations; all published with a general introduction by J.H. Oldham, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1938. 30xford, Blackwells, 1978, p.294.

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Norman is a history don at Cambridge University and an Anglican priest. His large book, Church and Society 177@1970,4 which contains much valuable material, becomes increasingly idiosyncratic the nearer it gets to 1970. The only entry concerning the WCC in the index adds “unsound teachings of”, and gives six references. The basis of his attitude becomes more clear in his broadcast Reith Lectures on “Christianity and the World Order”,s in which the WCC figures quite largely. It becomes plain that Norman has two unreconciled attitudes. One is that the Christian gospel is basically concerned with the “ethereal qualities of immortality”, and must not be “politicized”, in the sense of equating it with a political option or a “secular” value like liberation. One can query the first part of this assertion and broadly agree with the second. However, there is also a clear approval of a time when the clergy were influential and sacralized politics from within, and the Christian knowledge of politics served the interests of the church as an institution. No wonder he does not like the extended canvas on which Paul Abrecht in Church and Society has had to work.

Norman is much quoted by Ernest Lefever in his Amsterdam to Nairobi: the World Council of Churches and the Third World.6 Lefever is apparently a much better informed critic, for in the past he has had a good deal of direct contact with the WCC. The book is published by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, DC, of which Lefever is President. His formal position is better than that of Norman. The WCC “should encourage the peaceful and lawful forces that are trying to deal constructively with the problems of poverty, in- justice and lack of freedom. There have been, of course, situations so rigid or dangerous that armed violence was the only possible option ... Most crises are more ambiguous.” 7 When he applies this perspective, however, he finds himself at odds with a great deal of WCC material. This is because his judgments reflect predominant strains in USA opinions, and do not enter at all into those of the rest of the world who are at the receiving end of the enormous power of the USA, and do not see things the same way. The WCC and Church and Society have per- force to hear from a gobal constituency.

The frequent complaint in the “West” that the WCC is too sanguine about political violence is overstated in any case, but it hardly makes sense unless it is based on pacifist principles, which it rarely is. The “western” critics are using a double standard, one which applies to their world and another which applies to the rest. Similarly, the charge that WCC stances are selective in their condemna- tions, and especially that they are soft on coercion in communist countries, is again overstated, and ignores the fact that one cannot proceed on a similar issue in all countries in the same way, regardless of whether the Christians are in a small minority, or of the type of government under which they live. South Africa, the USSR and Iran are very different in these respects.

Mixed with these complaints are references to the WCC “curia”, “bureaucracy”, “centralization” or “the social action curia”. These pejorative terms are an indication more of prejudice than reasoned criticism. There is,

%xford, Oxford University Press, 1976. 5Given in 1978 and published by Oxford University Press in 1979. 61979. 71bid., p.60.

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however, a grain of truth hidden in them. The permanent staff of any organiza- tion always have a good deal of influence, as those involved day by day in its ac- tivities, compared with members of committees who meet only occasionally. In the case of the WCC the influence is qualified, real and necessary, although it has to be watched. It is qualified by the need to carry the committees, and by the fact that it is not monolithic, because the staff differ among themselves. Those in- volved in official assemblies and committees of the WCC are nearly all nominated by the churches, but in study work and consultations and in the ap- pointment of advisers the staff have more influence. A good deal of thought goes to balancing age, sex, nationality, type of experience and confessional tradition. But one phenomenon has been noticed. I have said that much of the criticism comes from the disgruntled “West”, which no longer sets the agenda, and which sees its criteria questioned. Nevertheless there are important stances in the “western” tradition which need to be heard. There is a certain tendency to find that those from the “West” involved in global advisory consultations are persons who respond most fully to critics of their own countries, and are not sufficiently convinced of the value of their own tradition to present it, in addition to paying attention to its critics; and when they ought to call into question simplicities from others, in a truly ecumenical dialogue, they fail to do so.

Moreover, all of us are liable to be swayed by intellectual fashions. No church is exempt from this; neither is the WCC. For a long time it was dominated by what Paul Ramsey in the book mentioned below called “a truncated Bar- thianism”, though that has now passed. Church and Society was over-influenced for a time by the Club of Rome report of 1972, The Limits to Growth.8 I remember the Church and Society consultation at Cardiff that year. Half of those present were engaged on the theme of “Violence, Non-violence and the Struggle for Justice”, and the other half on economic issues. I myself was so oc- cupied in the former that I had no time to find out what was happening in the lat- ter. However, when I got home I read the papers presented and was astonished at the economic naivety of many of them, carried away by this first report of the Club of Rome.

Theology and political policy In my view much the most important criticism of Church and Society was

made by Paul Ramsey in his book Who Speaks for the Church?9 which was a direct response to the Geneva conference of 1966 on “Christians in the Technical and Social Revolutions of Our Time”. In this book he says he is particularly con- cerned with Christian ethics as an authentic discipline and not simply the religious consecration of strong feelings. Ramsey’s complaint is that the Geneva conference rushed to too direct detailed conclusions (on an alleged Christian basis) on political and economic issues. Others have criticized Church and Socie- ty at different times, Iess cogently, for not coming to a clear decision for or against, as in the question of nuclear energy. Ramsey is at the other extreme. He makes a sharp separation between a theological statement and one by Christians

8New York, Universe Books. 9Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1967.

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which comes to a specific decision about an empirical situation. He leaves the lat- ter to “the magistrates”. It is a strongly “two realms” doctrine, advanced in this case by a Methodist and not a Lutheran. The most he will grant is a statement in the form : “If a certain political conclusion is arrived at by the authorities, then a great deal of Christian opinion will support them.” This is in order that, in sup- porting a specific decision, Christians are made to be clear on the cost of im- plementing it, and on precisely how one moves from the existing position to the one recommended. However, in his view “basic-decision and action-oriented principles of ethical and political analysis”, 10 which give direction rather than directives, are a better position for Christians to adopt.

This raises questions which I have explored in my Scott Holland lectures, Church and Society in the Late Twentieth Century. 11 Suffice it to say here that Ramsey draws attention to real problems, whilst making too sharp a separation between “the magistrates”, or political authorities, and the rest of us. He is also unduly sanguine about the procedures by which Roman Catholic statements on social ethics are made. True, Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution of Vatican I1 (1965), is impressive. But Ramsey’s praise of “the concern for the fullness of Christian truth that is attained by the process by which a social en- cyclical is issued by a pontiff”l2 was written before the encyclical Humanae Vitae was promulgated in 1968. There are many questions which arise about the pro- cedures which lie behind the issue of social teaching by the Roman Catholic magisterium, and this I have also discussed in the Scott Holland lectures.

To some extent Ramsey was answered on method in Christian social ethics by the joint consultation of Church and Society and Faith and Order at Zagorsk in 1968.13 It said clearly that: “Theology cannot remove the ambiguity of political ethics in a revolutionary situation”, as against the tendency to moralize in the sense of expecting a clear “yes” or “no” as a guide to political action. But other issues remain, and this is the last time that method in Christian social ethics has been explicitly considered by Church and Society. It is due for further attention.

Ramsey has a further criticism that the theory whereby a Church and Society study conference speaks to the churches, notfor them, is “a situation which in- vites irresponsible utterances”. 14 Here he is being perverse. It is precisely the right stance. If the WCC does not keep ahead of the churches, it is no use to them. Merely to be a post-bag circulating their existing opinions is otiose. They can do that for themselves. Irritating as it is for them, the WCC must push ahead and speak to the churches or give its study conferences freedom to do so, presenting the churches with the best work it can do, and leaving them to evaluate it.

Ramsey’s criticism was more directed at the tendency of a study conference, like Geneva, to pass resolutions addressed to governments on matters of im- mediate action, which was not its job, and were not and could not be adequately considered. This brings to mind the warning of J.H. Oldham against Christians feeling pleased with themselves after passing a resolution without considering

IoZbid., p.13. IILondon. SCM Press, 1983. 120p. cit., p.146. W u d y Encounter, No. 2, 1968. 140p. cit., p.32.

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whether they themselves were committed to any action by it. In Church and Society consultations a particular weakness in this respect is the shortage of people from the echelons of government, and indeed from management or trade unions in industry. It is partly because in politics they cannot get away or are sub- ject to instant re-call if a critical political vote or crisis arises. This is less true of industry. But neither top level nor middle management has played much part in Church and Society activities, and trade unionists have been almost entirely ab- sent. These are more difficult for church bodies to bring in than are professional and managerial folk, because they are more suspicious, in view of the lack of relation of the church to the labour movement since the Industrial Revolution. However, their absence is a clear defect.

This is connected with a criticism one sometimes hears within the WCC that the whole Church and Society method is too elitist. It pays attention to the pro- fessional persons, the expert, the established people in society, and not to the poor. It operates at a rarefied centre and not at the grassroots. It is de haut en bas and not participatory. This is surely a false polarization. It is not that one should be done and the other left undone; both are needed. But there must be some divi- sion of labour, though each needs to be alert to what others are doing. In such a self-conscious body as the WCC this is not difficult. The poor and unprivileged need to be heard themselves, and not interpreted by better-off intermediaries. Nevertheless, they do not see the whole. It is impossible to deal with issues of nuclear energy without physicists, or genetic engineering without biologists and medical folk, or unemployment and underdevelopment without economists. None of them have the last word, but they do have a necessary word. Without their contribution good intentions can lead to foolish actions. In mobilizing them Church and Society has done the ecumenical movement an essential service.

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