[Walter] Altmann touched on a variety of events marking milestones this year and next, including the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the upcoming centennial of the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh.
He tied those episodes to some challenges of the present, including the shift of Christianity’s “centre of gravity” to the global south, the need for the WCC’s constituency to be more representative, the problems of poverty and “climate injustice” and the openness to change required for radical discipleship.
Whenever the WCC stands at a crossroads, it almost always resolves to take a hard left turn.
It is extraordinary how, 40 years ago the WCC was an influential body, and now is almost irrelevant. It hardly ever features in the news. It lost credibility, I would suggest, in three ways (1) it failed to speak up for Christians suffering behind the Iron Curtain during the Communist era, because it wanted to keep the Orthodox churches as members. (2) The Program to Combat Racism in the 1970s was a foolish WCC venture, way outside its remit. (3) Finally with the possible exception of the Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry consultations in and following Lima, virtually nothing at the WCC has any real link with people in the pews.