Summary: In his marvelous one volume book on Church History, Bruce Shelley relates how the World Council of Churches came up with its motto.In 1962, its General Secretary, Willem Hooft, met a delegation of Russian Orthodox leaders in a Leningrad hotel over breakfast. The Russians complained the current WCC motto left out a crucial element of their theology, without which they couldn’t join. They needed to see some reference to the Trinity, however brief.From discussions with many Protestant groups, Hooft knew what kept them from joining; an absence in the motto of any reference to the importance of the Bible. In a flash of insight, he grabbed the breakfast menu and penned, “The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior according to the Holy Scriptures and therefore seek to fulfill together their common calling to the glory of one God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”That revised motto was adopted in the New Delhi meeting of the WCC later that year and has remained the organization’s credo to this day.Let’s go back a bit, to the end of the 16th C. Overlooking the plethora of smaller groups that developed following the Reformation, the major branches of the Christian Faith were four. Europe had both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. The Middle East & Asia had Eastern Orthodoxy and the Nestorian Church of the East, which, after the depravations of Islam and the Mongols was a scant shadow of its former self.The Protestant church was further split into 4 main groups; Lutherans, Reformed, Anabaptist, and Anglican. As the 16th C folded into the 17th, Protestantism continued to fracture into different movements and groups. These new groups were most often the result of an emerging emphasis on some point of doctrine or practice. By the 20th C, there were hundreds of denominations, and thousands of movements and churches claiming to be non-denominational.Jesus’ prayer that His people would be one, seemed to be forgotten by the very institution that claimed to be the Earthly manifestation of His will. Seeing this, a new movement began, one seeking to bring Christians and churches from all these various groups together. That movement was Ecumenism.The word “ecumenical” means general, universal. It was adopted by leaders of this movement to bring about unity among disparate Christian groups. As early ecumenists set out to establish unity, they quickly realized the monumental task they’d set themselves. Unity’s a great idea. Forging it means convincing people the things they believe, and that led to the launching of their movement generations before, aren’t really worth clinging to. That’s a tough proposition. If people were willing to depart their parent group over an issue at the group’s inception, how much more wed to that idea, teaching, whatever, are they likely to be when tradition reinforces it?So, the early Ecumenical architects realized their only hope of achieving their goal was to devise a creed on which all Christians could & would agree.On what subjects do all people think alike? The list is small. And it’s no surprise to anyone listening when I say, Christians aren’t unanimous on all aspects of their Faith. They hold differences in doctrine, worship, organization; even issues of morality. Most don’t regard their distinctives as mere opinion either. They’re deeply cherished convictions. Individual believers as well as entire denominations even disagree over what constitutes the divisions that separate them. Some defend their distinctives while others regard them as a scandalous failure to heed Christ’s call to unity. That scandal, and the sensitivity of some t the way disunity in The Church was a glaring black-mark hindering the Gospel and Christ’s command to make disciples of all nations is what fueled the early ecumenists.If the Middle Ages can be called the Era of Catholic Christianity, the 16th-18th Cs, the Era of Pro
