(Vatican Radio) Uproar and enthusiasm. Tears and smiles. Applause and protests. As
participants at the World Council Churches 10th Assembly in Busan, South
Korea, delve deeper into the controversial issues that divide the many churches and
Christian communities around the globe, heated emotions have begun to surface.
Listen
to the report from Busan by Philippa Hitchen:
Among the
highlights on the media agenda on Friday was a speech by Metropolitan Hilarion of
the Russian Orthodox Church, who spoke out strongly against what he called aggressive
secularism and radical Islamisation.
Denouncing the destruction of traditional
family values and the rise of same-sex relationships, he accused some churches of
compromising core Christian beliefs to make moral teaching more attractive to modern
secular tendencies. His use of terms like a mother’s “time-honoured role as guardian
of the domestic hearth” (while a father’s task is to teach children social responsibility)
raised heated responses, even among those who share many of his concerns.
Both
Hilarion and another Orthodox representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate also urged
the WCC to focus its energy and resources on combating the persecution of Christians
in countries across Africa, Asia or the Middle East.
In completely contrasting
style and tone was a slide presentation from a soft-spoken doctor at a Lutheran hospital
in the remote highlands of central India. She moved many in the audience close to
tears as she talked of the dedication, love and care shown by staff for their patients,
including a pair of conjoined twin girls, only one of whom survived the difficult
separation procedure. Girls in India, she and other speakers recalled, lack basic
rights and are too often victims of infanticide, rape, slavery and oppression.
And
these are just two of the many, vastly varying agendas and issues that have begun
to take centre stage here in Busan. From gender justice to interfaith relations, from
climate change to peace on the Korean peninsula, delegates hurry from one hall to
another to follow the latest on who’s doing what and where.
Another key speaker,
the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, remarked the Assembly really
reflects the depth and breadth of God’s great Church. While we must be a poor Church
for the poor, he added, we must also recommit ourselves to the task of restoring full,
visible, sacramental unity to the Body of Christ. We must be one, he said to resounding
applause, so that the gospel we preach is not denied by the way we live our separate
lives.