Word: vissering
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Dutch-born Protestant leader prefers to think of himself as simply "an international Christian worker." He has never been anything else. Thirty-eight years ago the American ecumenist John R. Mott picked Visser't Hooft out of the State University of Leyden and made him the secretary of the YMCA's World Alliance. Two years later Visser't Hooft became head of the World Student Christian Federation. When the 1937 Oxford Conferences of the Life and Work and Faith and Order Movements resulted in the establishment of a Provisional Committee to set up the World Council of Churches, Visser...
Since then, the World Council has grown steadily to its present membership of over 200 churches, with congregations totaling nearly 400 million Christians. At every step of the Council's development, Willem Visser't Hooft has made his leadership and wisdom felt. It was he who paved the way for the historical entry of the Eastern Orthodox churches into the World Council in 1962. He has taken a first hand interest in racial problems in South Africa as well as in missionary work all over the globe. Although he directs an international staff of 150 people...
...eminent Protestant figure in the ecumenical movement believes that this twentieth century Reformation of Christendom is the work of God. "We have not created this present ecumenical situation," says Visser't Hooft. "We have been led into it. We have been used for purposes larger than we had in mind...
Certainly, the ecumenical movement has progressed far beyond anyone's hopes in 1948. Visser't Hooft is confident that the churches will continue "their tremendous resilience." He admits that the churches have often failed to make themselves relevant to modern man, but he adds, "It is precisely because the churches have great powers of recuperation when they are in difficult situations that one can not help but have hope today...
...Visser't Hooft describes the ecumenical movement as "a great effort of the Church to get into a real conversation with the world." By this he does not mean that the churches must change their fundamental tenets; rather, he believes their truth must be proclaimed anew by a church "united in a common divine calling." He recalls that the theme of the Oxford conferences in 1937 was, "Let the Church be the Church." And he admires the German theologian Karl Barth because "Barth felt the church had lost its soul in making adjustments to historical trends. He called the church...