Ecumenism" "
Pastor Jean-Arnold de Clermont has been chosen as the new president of the Conference of European Churches (CEC). He was elected during the first meeting of the new Central Committee (Geneva, 13-18 December 2003), set up by the 12th Assembly held in Trondheim (Norway) in June. So, after Orthodox metropolitan Jérémie, it’s now the turn of the Protestants to head CEC. Hitherto president of the Protestant Federation of France, with long experience of ecumenism and of service in central Africa, Pastor de Clermont will be flanked by two vice-presidents, the Orthodox archbishop of Albania Anastasios and the Swedish Lutheran pastor Margarethe Isberg. A group of 7 members (3 Protestants, 3 Orthodox, 1 Anglican) will serve in the CEC’s executive committee. De Clermont spelt out four priorities in his inaugural speech: developing Protestant/Orthodox dialogue within the CEC itself; creating new spaces for dialogue with the southern hemisphere; making the CEC more “legible” for the Churches and the grassroots; and more actively involving youth in the life of the Conference. Apart from the elections for the renewal of the CEC’s offices and for its various commissions, the Central Committee also devoted ample space to the debate on the programming of its work for the next seven years. A first basic question, presented by general secretary Keith Clements, concerns the reorganization of the ecumenical bodies and relations between them. The CEC wants, in particular, to rethink its own relations with the World Council of Churches (WCC), of which it is a member, with the other ecumenical bodies (Lutheran Federation, Anglican Communion, National Councils of the Churches, Leuenberg agreement…) and with the Catholic Church, which has always been active in collaboration with but is not a member of these organizations. This need is prompted by the new international and ecumenical scenario. The future of Europe and the process of the growth of the Union have taken up a considerable part of the debates of recent days: 2004 will be “an extremely important year” for the whole continent, because there are a whole series of important deadlines on the EU agenda that “will put the future of Europe to the test”, says the Letter to the Churches on “the Europe of 2004”, sent from Geneva on 18 December. The Churches, which in recent years have striven to demonstrate that “Europe is greater than the European Union and that integration is more than geographic enlargement”, will in future step up their commitment in the debate on issues regarding the relations between peoples and cultures in Europe. This is also because as the members of the Central Committee criticise the negotiations in the final phase of the Intergovernmental Conference were dominated “by an excessive emphasis on questions of private interest and quest for power rather than on solidarity and on human dignity”.
