American in Geneva

A blunt and candid American whose size and manner might suggest a foot ball coach last week won election as general secretary of the World Council of Churches, the unity-seeking organization to which 214 Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox bodies belong. Meeting at their new headquarters in Geneva, members of the World Council's central committee chose the Rev. Eugene Carson Blake (TIME cover, May 26, 1961), stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church, to succeed Willem Visser 't Hooft, council chief since it was founded in 1948.

"In Visser 't Hooft we lose a God-given architect," one council staffer commented, "and in Blake we get an energetic manager." Blake's acceptance speech suggested that he will apply his energy --he seems bountifully springy at 59 --toward keeping the council strong and influential. "I believe the World Council of Churches can continue to grow in usefulness in the coming years," he said. "But I know, too, that it can be passed by."

The main obstacle to Blake's election was potential opposition from the influential delegates of Orthodox churches behind the Iron Curtain. Although Blake is well liked by the Orthodox -he led a pioneering team of U.S. church men to Moscow in 1956, and three years ago helped arrange a U.S. tour by representatives of the Russian patriarchate-- the council officers feared that Russian delegates might be under governmental pressure to vote against an American. Discreetly assured that this was not so, a special nominating committee of the council then went ahead to propose Blake.

Organization Man. A onetime Prince ton football letterman, St. Louis-born Gene Blake takes pride in being "an organization man" who sees administrative detail not as housekeeping but as a means of achieving the church's mission. Though he lacks Visser 't Hooft's skill in languages, Blake seems strongly qualified for the job: he was a mission ary teacher in India, spent 19 years as a preacher and pastor, served a term (1954-57) as president of the National Council of Churches. In U.S. ecumenical circles, he is famed as author of the "Blake proposal" to unite his own Presbyterians with Methodists, Episcopalians and three other denominations in a vast Protestant superchurch.

Aloof and often sensitive to criticism, Visser 't Hooft has been primarily a scholar-diplomat, learned enough to hold his own on any divinity-school faculty. Blake, as he readily admits, is no theologian. Nonetheless, he has what President Arthur McKay of Chicago's McCormick Theological Seminary calls "an instinctive theological savvy about the issues that are facing the church." Out of conviction that Christianity has a duty to speak out on social issues, Blake has done more than merely preach about Negro rights; in 1963 he was arrested for attempting to integrate an amusement park in Maryland. Within his own church, he 'has forcefully backed the "Confession of 1967"--a proposed restatement of the church's faith that may be approved by next year's general assembly.

Roman Challenge. Blake takes over as general secretary at a troubled time for the council. Once dominated by European and American churchmen, it now must increasingly heed the voices of Orthodoxy and the new churches of Africa and Asia. Many younger ecumenists question whether its structures and offices are properly attuned to the task of Christianity today. There is also the spiritual challenge from Roman Catholicism, freshly reformed by the Vatican Council. But World Council relations with the Vatican seem destined to become more cooperative than competitive. Last week the central committee agreed to join with Catholicism in a worldwide appeal on behalf of famine victims in India and Africa.

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