“Sisters and brothers in the ecumenical community, we come to you in this Assembly grateful for hospitality we don’t deserve, for companionship we haven’t earned, for an embrace we don’t merit.”

     — A letter from the US Conference for the World Council of Churches to the 9th Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 18 February 2006

http://www.wcc-assembly.info/en/theme-issues/assembly-documents/non-official-documents/letter-from-us-conference-for-the-wcc.html

“Religious organizations receive something like 60 percent of all the individual giving that occurs in this country, and that’s not counting religious schools or faith-based social services. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that these donations do much to help the needy. Churches put most of their charitable receipts into ongoing operations—buildings, salaries, and the like—spending that essentially helps the giver by keeping his church going. ‘In this sense,’ writes Rob Reich, a Stanford political scientist, … ‘religious groups look less like public charities and more like mutual benefit societies.’”

—Daniel Akst, “Bang for Your Buck: You Have $1. How Should

You Spend It to Do the Most Good?” http://www.slate.com/id/2135721/

Both documents arrived on my office computer the same day. The first, a letter to the 9^th Assembly of the World Council of Churches, takes the form of a prayer of confession. U.S. churches that are members of the World Council of Churches confess their failure to “raise a prophetic voice loud enough and persistent enough to deter our leaders from … preventive war,… to call our nation to global responsibility for the creation [and] … to seek just economic structures so that sharing by all with mean scarcity for none.”

The second is a column originally posted on Slate, the online journal, on St. Valentine’s Day. The author asks, “What is the best way to spend $1 to make the world a better place?” He reviews some of the options—purchasing carbon offsets to reduce global warming, giving to schools, supporting politicians committed to a more just society, and supporting science among them.

He also looks at giving to religious institutions: “If crowds really have any wisdom, we have to consider putting our dollar in the collection plate.” You can read his conclusion about that option above. (In the end, he concludes, microcredit loans such as those funded by Oikocredit, in which the Council has a small investment, are the best way to go. Visit the Web posting to read his argument.)

Ecumenically speaking, one of the reasons that “we need each other and are given each other, to be the church” (a phrase Michael Kinnamon uses often) is because in community, in solidarity, we are empowered to be what God calls us to be. Alone, behind the self-built sheltering walls of church building, denominational identity, or national self-interest (to name just a few of the walls we so easily erect), we are free to be separated, self-involved, and selfish. It is when we come together in community beyond those walls that we see most clearly who we are called to be and what we are called to do. One of those calls is to “raise a prophetic voice loud enough and persistent enough” to summon our churches, our society, our government, and ourselves to honor and embody justice, peace, and the integrity of God’s creation.

I won’t argue that the sole mission of the church is to eradicate poverty, or work for justice and peace, or any other single objective—however significant it might be in and of itself. But I do believe that koinonia—fellowship, community, solidarity—is essential to the nature of the church: it is a dimension of being “one holy catholic and apostolic” (as the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer punctuates the phrase). Koinonia, in turn, compels us to tend to the well-being of all, not just ourselves.

There’s nothing wrong with being a mutual benefit society, but there’s more to being church than that. So let’s join in the prayer offered by the US Conference for the World Council of Churches: “In the hope that is promised in Christ and thankful for people of faith in our own country who have sustained our yearning for peace, we come to you seeking to be partners in the search for unity and justice. From a place seduced by the lure of empire we come to you in penitence, eager for grace, grace sufficient to transform spirits grown weary from the violence, degradation, and poverty our nation has sown, grace sufficient to transform spirits grown heavy with guilt, grace sufficient to transform the world. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Amen.”

For other words from the executive director (in PDF format), click here.

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