|TOP|The World Council of Churches has been criticised by a leading U.S. religious institute for focussing too much on social issues at the expense of spreading the Gospel.

An official at the Institute on Religion and Democracy pointed to last month’s WCC 9th Assembly as proof that the global church body favours social issues over spreading the Gospel, reports Agape Press.

At last month’s gathering of the 350 member denominations of the WCC, church leaders and Christians focussed criticisms toward the use of military force to fight terrorism, and united first and foremost in furthering Muslim-Christian dialogue and ecumenical relations within the worldwide Christian body.

The WCC’s actions are alarming but not altogether surprising, says Mark Tooley, director of the United Methodist Action Committee of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD).
|AD|"Unfortunately, for at least the last 40 years, the World Council - rather than focusing on Christian evangelism and unity - has instead turned very sharply to the theological left and focuses on radical liberation theologies that very often tend to be very anti-Western and anti-American," says Tooley.
Delegates at last month’s Assembly in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the largest ecumenical gathering in a decade, were called to work together to further Muslim-Christian relations and strengthen ecumenical relations between Christian denominations.
Rev Geoff Tunnicliffe, the International Director and CEO of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) reported that the WEA “parallel network” of 400 million Christians identified with many of the WCC’s themes, such as HIV/AIDS, violence and poverty.

In particular, Tunnicliffe said that evangelicals, of which many exist within WCC churches, were dedicated to integral mission, the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel.

He said, “If we ignore the world, we betray the word; if we ignore the word, we have nothing to bring to the world.”

He went on to explain that the WEA was not a member of the WCC, partly because of the structural differences between the two worldwide bodies, and also due to some “historical and deeply-felt issues”.

However, he stated that the way forward was “to find connections around issues” such as the northern Uganda crisis, on which both organisations agreed.

When asked about evangelism and proselytism, Rev Tunnicliffe said that the desire to see personal conversion was “at the heart of the evangelical movement.”
He added, “We need to work on best practices about how we engage in evangelism.”

"We are called to show utter commitment to the God who is revealed in Jesus and to all those to whom His invitation is addressed," the Rev. Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury said Friday during a session on Christian identity and religious plurality at the World Council of Churches 9th Assembly in Porto Alegre, Brazil.