Friday

The pattern of the days is set now, but in fact will now change for the weekend. It's up a bit earlier on Saturday for a visit out to a traditionally Confucian village a long way away.  There were quite a lot of choices including  a visit to Seoul and the demilitarised zone. But that's what I'm expecting to be doing with the Immanuel church next weekend. Prayer and bible study followed by an Asia Plenary session which was preceded by a short address from the Archbishop of Canterbury who spoke well, and the President of a Pentecostal Federation - WCC have been building relationships with Pentecostals and I gather this was a bit of a landmark having someone bring a greeting. Hearing Justin Welby speak made you realise it was quite nice to a native English speaker here for a change even though he does sound a bit posh - he spoke well too. Some pleas from Asia followed for climate justice, and re Indian attitudes to girl babies, including a poignant story of conjoined twins born in hospital to a tribal couple who really couldn't take them on. The two were eventually separated which went well but one of them subsequently died, and now the family has received the surviving girl back. A chilling address regarding the persecution of Orthodox and Coptic Christian communities who could well disappear after centuries of history in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Egypt which at least one speaker blamed on western interventions. Had an excellent fish lunch, then heard a talk by the Chinese Christian artist He Qi whose folk-artish paintings I've seen before - a very pleasant articulate person. In a business session the tensions between Orthodox especially Russian Orthodox and west European Protestants came out in a number of ways in an address by one of their top people (Hilarion I think I heard). There's a feeling there's not much speaking out from non-Orthodox people about the sufferings, and there's incomprehension of the point western societies and churches are reaching over same sex marriages (shared by the Africans, as emerged in a Baptist meeting later). In a buzz group in the continuing Ecumenical Conversation from yesterday I was with the Bishops of Uganda, Bangladesh and the Prior of Taize. A different Pentecostal leader was present for this, and he had a very different perspective to the man who gave the greeting earlier - maybe he felt he should have given the greeting. The Baptist meeting was very homely, perhaps 60 people and we were all asked to say a bit about who we were and why we were there and what our hopes were and what our previous experience of the WCC was. It was actually very interesting, even heartening, with white people very much in a minority. I think 2 or 3 Swedes and 2 of us from Britain were the sole representatives of Europe. Paul Goodliff, the official Baptist Union representative, has been involved in the developing conversation with the Pentecostals on behalf of the WCC. Then prayers led by Korean Protestant woman, suggesting they do protest a bit, covering a range of current issues in the prayers. A good bit of use is being made of drums in worship. They do make (as the gong did at the very start of the assembly) a very effective start to worship, or, as in the morning to the reading of the bible study passage from Amos. A good quote I noticed - A ship is safe in the harbour, but that's not what ships are for.