Come, Holy Spirit, Renew the Whole Creation: Seventh Assembly of the World Council of Churches

Abstract

T HE SEVENTH Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Canberra, February 7-20,1991, has come and gone. Theologians and ecumenists will assess its contribution to ecumenical theology and to the ecumenical movement by analysing its published final reports. However the reports alone cannot do justice to the assembly itself or to the debate it generated. Only by reading them in terms of the issues which emerged prior to and during the assembly can one arrive at an accurate assessment of the reports and, more importantly, the real contribution of the assembly to the ecumenical movement. In the pre-assembly period a series of meetings took place which surfaced many of the major issues which it would have to address. These meetings offer themselves as fruitful headings under which one can analyse the discussions, debates, and documents of the assembly. THE ASSEMBLY THEME: BEFORE CANBERRA This was the first time that the World Council of Churches (WCC) had chosen a pneumatological theme for an assembly. 1 The story of its emergence is a good case study of the workings of the World Council. In this instance one does not discover a refined, inclusive process of dis-cernment as much as a key person with an inspiration and a prevailing interest within the WCC. The key person was Emilio Castro, the General Secretary. In his report to the Central Committee in Geneva, 1987, he began to "wonder" whether the 1991 assembly might not take on a pneumatological theme. 2 From then on there was no real doubt that the theme would be pneumatological, so well did such a focus seem to address the needs of the WCC at that point of history. In analysing why such a focus should appear so appropriate, we discover something about the history and membership of the WCC itself. Emilio Castro outlined some 1 Though the Uppsala Assembly (1968) did not have an explicitly pneumatological theme, it did produce a report from a very significant pneumatological study, "The Holy Spirit and the Catholicity of the Church," in Uppsala Speaks; Section Report of the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches Uppsala 1968 (Geneva: WCC, 1968) 7-20. 2 Emilio Castro, "Report of the General Secretary," Ecumenical Review 39 (1987) 245.