An Architect's Warning

There was a shock waiting for the 200 delegates to the U.S. Conference of the World Council of Churches at their annual meeting last week at Buck Hill Falls, Pa. In his opening address, Dr. Roswell P. Barnes, the Council's executive secretary in the U.S., an nounced that he was retiring in October because of a heart condition.

Although little known outside church circles, Barnes belongs -- along with such figures as Willem Visser 't Hooft, Henry P. Van Dusen, and the late Anglican Bishop of Chichester, Dr. G.K. A. Bell -- to the great generation of ecumenical architects who brought the World Council to life. A former English teacher, Presbyterian Minister Barnes, 62, was associate general secretary of the old Federal Council of Churches (a predecessor of today's National) from 1940 to 1950. He has been the ranking executive of the World Council in the U.S. since 1958.

Barnes is widely respected by churchmen as a behind-the-scenes ecclesiastical strategist with a knack for welding divergent theological views into an acceptable compromise. But he never lost sight of "the need for keeping a pioneer spirit in the church," as one of his clerical friends puts it. In his address to the delegates representing 30 Protestant and Orthodox churches, Barnes warned that this pioneer spirit might be corroded by "ennui, even lethargy" as the idea of Christian unity becomes commonplace. If the ecumenical movement is to succeed, he said, "there must be renewal within the churches," and scope for dedicated Christians to undertake experiments in cooperation "independent of ecclesiastical control."

Barnes suggested that future ecumenical progress would be more apparent in the realm of witness and service than in matters of faith and theology. Here, unity will be hard to find and "will be derived from shared Biblical study rather than from agreements on formulation of doctrine." But the path toward union is unpredictable, he added. "We must pray in faith that the Holy Spirit will intervene with power to confound our predictions based upon calculations of our own resources and efforts."

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