World Council Plans
May 9-12, 1938, a provisional conference of churchmen of various denominations and from various parts of the world met in Utrecht, Holland. The eighty persons there assembled, under "the gracious and skillful chairmanship of the Archbishop of York," unanimously adopted a constitution for the much-discussed World Council of Churches which they hope will soon be founded. According to this proposed constitution, the functions of the World Council of Churches would be:
"1. To carry on the work of the two world movements, for Faith and Order and for Life and Work.
"2. To facilitate common action by the churches.
"3. To promote cooperation in study.
"4. To promote the growth of ecumenical consciousness in the members of all churches.
"5. To establish relations with denominational federations of world-wide scope and with other ecumenical movements.
"6. To call world conferences on specific subjects as occasion may require, such conferences being empowered to publish their own findings."
How successful will the Utrecht Conference actually be in persuading various religious groups—Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Old Catholic—to unite in the proposed World Council? On this topic we can only quote opinions.
In an interview with a staff correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor, John R. Mott said:
"Returning from the organization meeting of the world convention of churches at Utrecht, I had more hope of religious growth than at any time I have ever known. The Christian churches undoubtedly have a clearer sense of mission. They have come to see they must move together, for they are necessary to one another. Persecution always has stimulated and purified the living church. I have no fear of failure of Christianity, for ultimately the truth will prevail and •the movement will spring forth, as in the past, stronger than ever before."
Said Robert A. Ashworth, in an article appearing in the Christian Advocate:
"The possibilities of such a project for the advancement of the kingdom of God are limited only by the good judgment and devotion and unselfishness, in a- word, by the Christian temper of the churches that enter it. Cooperative thinking and association in common tasks is the shortest road to understanding, and there could not be conceived a more potent instrument than the proposed World Council of Churches to draw the churches together and lower the barriers that have separated them." —June 17, 1938.
In general, the Protestant churches sent up a chorus of approval and assent to the proposed constitution. A wise voice of dissent, however, appeared in the editorial columns of the American Lutheran:
"We find it difficult to visualize what kind of program the World Council of Churches will fashion for itself. The record of the federation of churches in our own country, called the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, is not of a character to dispel the misgivings of conservative Christians. The officious meddling of this body in all sorts of questions, that only by the widest stretch of imagination can be supplied with a moral issue and which usually lacked all religious significance, has not done the church any good. If the World Council of Churches is to be merely a glorified extension of the American effort, we cannot regard it with any degree of enthusiasm."—June, 1938.
As for our own comment, we merely point out that the provisional conference at Utrecht took no time for and paid no attention to the concept of a mighty message which God is sending to all the world at this time. That is to say, the conference approached its problems from an angle entirely different from that which we believe God has revealed to His remnant people. There was no concept of God at this time calling upon His people to finish His designated work in all the earth; no concept of the nearness of our Lord's appearing and the church's one duty in view of that nearness. We can be but spectators of its self-devised and therefore futile plans.
Gwynne Dalrymple. [School of Theology, Walla Walla College.]
Commission's Repercussions
Exception is taken to the "doctrinal laxity" of the report, and denunciation made of other "serious errors prevalent." The chief protest is against admission of dissenting bodies to holy communion, and tacit acknowledgment of the validity of non-Episcopal orders. Especial exception was taken against admission to the communion service at the Oxford Conference of all members of the conference by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The manifesto contains this threat:
"If the doctrinal standards of the Church of England and its established order in regard to the ministry continue to be set aside, the bishops will eventually force upon many loyal and devoted churchmen a most painful conflict between their etachment to the Church of England and the allegiance they owe to that one holy catholic and apostolic church in which they daily profess their belief."
A similar protest, though milder, has also been made to the House of Bishops in behalf of 1,406 Protestant Episcopal clergymen of America, likewise over the admission of non-Episcopalians to communion. The Christian Century makes the following significant remarks:
"The Episcopal Church 'cannot with integrity enter upon or encourage efforts toward Christian reunion, except such as are based upon the terms of the Lambeth Quadrilateral, namely, the Apostles' and Nicene creeds, the sacraments of holy baptism and holy communion, the Bible as rule of faith, and the historic episcopate.' Intercommunion among Christians, before unity in faith and order is achieved, is not only condemned as unlawful, but is deplored as a hindrance to genuine and permanent reunion, an end to which the signers of the statement profess themselves as devoted as any others."
Modernism's Fundamentalist Garb
The Christian world is under distinct obligation to the Sunday School Times for faithfully exposing the subtly deceptive character of the public teachings of prominent liberalist Christian leaders who, clothing their messages in the phraseology of orthodoxy, teach a Christianity stripped of all its vital elements and thereby fascinate not a few Fundamentalists. One such article by Dr. Louis B. Bauman (April 16 issue), discusses the teachings of two prominent men—Kagawa of Japan, and E. Stanley Jones of America and India. Citing first from Kagawa's book, "The Religion of Jesus," Doctor Bauman shows that the former plainly contends that instead of atoning for sin, Jesus "apologized to God for all the sins and failures of mankind." Further, Kagawa denies the literal resurrection of Jesus by contending: "Anyway, Jesus was truly revived in the hearts of His disciples. Here is the beginning of Christianity." And he scouts the second advent thus:
"Even though there are folk who talk continually about Christ's second coming, it will not do to believe them; their emphasis is a mistaken one."
But a Modernist, used to the phrasings of this school of religious thought, quickly detects and declares the intent. Thus Dr. Paul Hutchinson, managing editor of the Christian Century, writing in Atlantic Monthly on the "present Kagawa fad," says:
"He often couches his most radical social ideas in a mystical phraseology which still employs the familiar terms of orthodox piety. Exactly so! This is the method whereby Satan's emissaries would fool the saints ! Thus the Baptist Fundamentalist of the deep South hears Kagawa talking about 'the cross, 'the saving blood,' or 'the atonement,' and goes away 'edified,' while all the time the Japanese evangelist has been trying to drive home a conception of human solidarity, of the necessity of sacrificing the privilege of the few to gain the welfare of many, which even a Marxist would recognize as proletarian gospel."
E. Stanley Jones is the other figure discussed. Leaving his mission field in India, he recently toured America under the auspices of the National Preaching Mission. As presented before in these columns, his hope for mankind rests on a huge, unified church. He has been urging "the establishment of a single church, created by all denominations' becoming but branches and retaining their individual names only as identification of groups within the one great church." His ecclesiastical Utopia, "simple, but profound," would accept any branch that confesses Christ as the Son of the living God. We are reminded that even unclean spirits did that ; but they would not make very acceptable branches. This mirage of a world church is thus phrased in an excerpt used by Doctor Jones:
"The Protestant churches must first unite. Then a Catholic Protestant Church could meet the Greek Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic Church and work out a plan for a World Christian Church. That ought to come someday; and we have conferences and groups at work on plans which are influential."
The forces for the last great fray are forming. Let us be on the alert to detect and declare them.
