Some Historical Notes on the

Some Historical Notes on the Relationship Between The Student Christian Movement and The Churches

Feliciano V. Cariño

1. Our Need and Our Hope

What is the need that confronts us and what is the hope we wish to express when we engage in some historical reflection on the relationship between the Student Christian Movement (SCM) and the Churches? I assume that we are not interested here in merely recollecting the past in the hope of reconstructing it for the present. The past is there, but it is past. It is not possible to relive its glories. It is possible however to avoid its mistakes, and to notice its inadequacies. George Santayana once said that "those who do not know history are consigned to repeat it." We engage in historical reflection, in short, in order to learn some lessons and extract some historical directions for our present task.

The need that confronts us has been expressed succinctly but clearly by the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) and the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) Consultation on the Ecumenical Task of the Asian Student Christian Movement which was held in Hongkong in March, 1982. Dramatic changes have occurred in the life of Asian societies and Asian universities over the past decades which has brought about equally dramatic changes in the life of Asian SCMS. The rise of authoritarian, even militaristic governments have, among other things, shattered the ideals we used to hold regarding the autonomy and independence of the academic communities, and have converted these communities into political and ideological battlegrounds for conflicting ideas about their task and their vocation in Society. As a result, there has also emerged a new generation of SCMS, less concerned about its part in the elite class of university students, and more involved in the struggle for justice and freedom. These developments have in turn created "a sense of distance between some Churches and SCMs.... brought about by misunderstanding and by disagreements about the meaning of the Church's ministry in the academic world. This distance led in some instances to the withdrawal of mutual support and even direct confrontation, and in other instances to a more quiet and debilitating sense of mutual indifference." (see "WSCF-CCA Consultation on the Ecumenical Task of the Asian Student Christian Movement," pp.5-6).

The hope we wish to express is that some clarification can be made of the misunderstanding that have set in, so that misunderstandings might lead to understanding.

The hope further is that we can, again to use the words of the Hongkong Consultation, "regain that sense of mutual trust and confidence" between the SCMs and the Churches so that together we can chart our common obedience of mission of the Church in the academic communities of Asia.

2. The SCM and the Mission, Unity and Renewal of the Church

There can be no question about the intimacy of relationship between the SCM and the Church. The basis on which the SCMs and the WSCF was founded is rooted squarely and firmly on the faith of the Church and commitment to the Church's fife and mission. The basis of the WSCF is "faith in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit," and its aim is to call students and other members of the academic community to become "disciples of Jesus Christ" and to "commitment to the life and mission of the Church." The aims and basis of the WSCF has kept it through the years from any sectarian or proselytising tendencies, and from any conception of its life and work that is apart from and in disregard of the actual life and work of the Churches. Its missiology, in short, was never uprooted or conceived outside of its ecclesiology.

While the SCM and the WSCF have always been of the Church, they have not, however, been exclusively and fully in the Churches. Their organizational life has always been in relation with but never entirely integrated into the organizational life of the existing Churches. Their programs and concerns are constantly in consultation, but never identical with the programme and concerns of the Churches. The most creative and telling contributions they have made to the life and mission of the Church in fact have been wrought in the dialectical tension between their being of the Church but not in the Churches, between their commitment to the Church's mission and their refusal to be enmeshed and wedded to the status quo of the Churches' life.

Valdo Galland, a past general secretary of the WSCF, once described the role of the SCM and the WSCF in terms of being the "scouts" of the Churches. They are that part of the Church that should be at the frontiers of the Church's mission, tip-toeing, as it were, in the risky edges of the Church's witness, pointing and raising signals for new involvements that the Churches might undertake. "They should tread," he continued, "where angels fear to tread." They are able to do this precisely because of their commitment to the life and mission of the Church, on the one hand, and of their freedom from the current structures and institutional expressions of the Church's life, on the other.

W.A. Vissert Hooft, another past general secretary of the WSCF, put it in a different way. The life of the WSCF, he said, bears testimony to the grandeur of the Church's mission, but it must also be an expression of "that active shame" over the misery of the current life of the Churches.

It was for this reason that in its early beginnings the primary focus of the life and work of the SCM and the WSCF was the mission, unity and renewal of the Church. Why is it that the Churches continue to be concerned and worried about the SCMS, despite all of the irritations, distance, and even alienation of the recent past? The reason is simple. The SCM and the WSCF were pioneers and vital components of two of the major sources of renewal of the modern Church, namely, the missionary movement and the modern ecumenical movement.

In recognizing that the "student world is a strategic point in the world's conquest," the fathers of the modern missionary movement rightly recognized the strategic and vital importance of students and other members of the academic community in the "evangelization of the world in the present generation." As the institutional locus of the world's intellectual energy and power, the universities and the people who worked in it were considered as the pivotal target for the conquest of the world for Christ. The conquest of the world in short, necessitated the conquest of the world's mind, and that meant attention to and concern with the student world. The student world, too, provided the much needed personnel by which the worldwide movement of the Church's mission might be undertaken. Thus, as the Church moved out of its Western moorings and began to look into its mission to the "regions beyond," the SCMs provided the Christian "beachhead" within the institutions of higher learning from which were recruited the manpower needs of the missionary enterprise. They also provided the intellectual vibrancy and freedom out of which there began to merge a theology of mission that was suitable to the challenge of a worldwide vision.

The SCM's involvement in the frontiers of missionary life provided for it the context within which it became one of the major experimental stations for the re-union of the Churches. "Within the SCM," wrote one of the early General Committees of the WSCF, "we have experienced a more than human fellowship across confessional boundaries to which we are bound to witness as a fact and as a gift of the Holy Spirit." The words now sound a bit theologically sonorous. It is nevertheless a historical fact that the SCMs provided the pioneering "fellowship across confessional boundaries," situated within the intellectual vibrancy of the universities and in the frontiers of life and thought, within which there came to be experienced a new sense of the unity of the Church and of the theological bankruptcy of the Churches' separated existence with each other. Within the life of the SCMs were tested the avenues and the "experiments" of Christian reunion. Within the life of the SCMs,

too, emerged the pioneering leaders of the ecumenical enterprise. It should be no wonder, and it is a historically documented fact. that even until now much of the leadership of the missionary movement and of the ecumenical enterprise gained their training and emerged from the life and work of the SCMS. If indeed the Churches can not completely renounce the SCMs, it is in part because they can not renounce one of the primary loci of their "theological conscience" for their mission, unity and renewal in the modern world.

3. The SCM and the University Question

The formation of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1948 and the subsequent integration of the International Missionary Council into the Division of World Mission and Evangelism of the WCC were triumphs of the life and work of the SCMs and of their theological aspirations. The formation of regional and national councils of Churches and the re-union of quite a few Churches around the world were equally a fulfillment of the theological concerns of the SCMS. Though the SCMs and the WSCF could by no means claim exclusive credit for these ecumenical achievements, they could nevertheless easily assert that they contributed much to their coming to being. It was simply natural that the first general secretary of the WCC was a past general secretary of the WSCF and that so many of the early leaders of national and regional councils of Churches came from the ranks of the SCM. When M. E. Prabhakar writes of "building Christian leadership" as the role of Christian Student Movements (see his preparatory paper for this Consultation), he is in part nostalgically looking back to this era of SCM life.

The emergence of the WCC as an organizational reality however meant a major shift in the focus of the SCM's life and work. With the concern for the mission, unity and renewal of the Church now fully vested and entrenched in the WCC, what now would be the role of the WSCF and its member movements? Like the International Missionary Council, it could have easily become integrated into the WCC and converted into a division or a department within that larger ecumenical structure. It did not, however, choose to do that. Visser't Hooft himself was emphatic in affirming that "he hoped that the day would never come when the WSCF and the SCMs would lose their independence." Whether or not he would still say that today is another matter. At the time however he was insistent that the WSCF should retain its autonomy in order that it could continue to be free to explore new areas of the Church's mission. What was needed therefore was not integration but the re-definition, or perhaps better, the reallocation, of the focus and primary concern of the WSCF's work. From the mission, unity and

renewal of the Church, the new focus became that of mission in the university. The SCMs and the WSCF were to be the missionary arm of the Church in the university. The university would be the primal locus of their work and- the nature and function of the university would become the primary concern of their attention and their energies. A rapprochement was reached that was basically strategic in character and involving a delineation of mutually complementary spheres of work. The ministry and mission to the university belonged to the WSCF and the SCMS. It is in the university that they are to work out an ecumenical strategy of mission and where they are to seek to convey to each generation of students the ecumenical understanding of the Church's life and mission.

It was at the WSCF General Committee that was held in Nasrapur, India in 1952, barely four years after the birth of the WCC, that this shift in the focus of the WSCF's work became formally heightened, The SCMs began to be viewed primarily as a university movement, and their primary task was to involve not only the evangelization of students but also the critical understanding of the nature and function of the university in society. If in the past, they were to prefigure the nature and form of a reunited and renewed Church, now they were to embody in their life the nature and function of "a university in a university that is not a university." From then on, the nature, function and renewal of the university in society was to be the focal point of their attention.

WSCF and SCM work, as a result, became concentrated on the "university question." Walter Moberly's The Crisis of the University, Arnold Nash's The University in the Modern World became primary reading among the SCMs around the world. John Coleman's The Task of the Christian in the University was published as a WSCF Greybook. In Asia, a consultation of university teachers was convened and developed "the idea of a responsible university" as an Asian critique of and alternative to the idea of a liberal university that has evolved from the West. Work with university teachers began in earnest and a secretary for university teachers' work was added to the WSCF staff in Geneva. The Christian Scholar and other similar publications exploring the frontiers and intersections between faith and learning began to be published in various national movements around the world.

The concern for the "university question" was cemented further at the General Committee of the WSCF which was held in Embalse Rio Tercero, Argentina in 1964, where the document "Christian Presence in the Academic Community" was produced. The document, first of all, presented a cogent understanding of the idea of Christian "presence"

as an alternative missiological stance whereby any form of Christian triumphalism and presumption were demolished. The Christian is to be "present first before he speaks," and that "presence" might in fact be nothing more than a "presence in silence" and "in listening" amidst a situation in which the Christian might have really nothing to say or do. The document, secondly, emphasized the shift in the locus of the work oi' the SCMs from the more "ecclesiastical concern with the mission, unity and renewal of the Church to that of being a very special expression of the ministry and mission of the Church to a particular institution of society - the university."

It was shortly after Ebalse Rio Tercero, and in compliance with the mandate of the "Christian Presence" principle that the first consultation between the East Asia Christian Conference (EACC) and the WSCF and SCMs of Asia was held in Hongkong in 1966. The consultation basically affirmed the rapprochement that has been worked out regarding the reallocation of work between the Churches and the SCMs since Nasrapur. The consultation forged, as it were, a covenant in which the EACC and the WSCF committed themselves to a common vision and strategy for work among the universities and academic communities of Asia. "On the one hand, this covenant committed the WSCF, through its Asia Committee, to plan and implement a sustained program for the life and witness of the Christian community in the Asian academic world. On the other, it bound the Churches, through the EACC, to recognize and support the WSCF as the ecumenical body through which their concern for and work with students and universities in the region were to be expressed" (see "WSCF-CCA Consultation on the Ecumenical Task of the Asian Student Christian Movement", p. 4). The first Hongkong consultation, moreover, specifically emphasized the need for work among university teachers in Asia as a vital part of that ecumenical strategy for work in the academic communities that it sought to project.

The results of that first Hongkong consultation were received with much enthusiasm by both Churches and SCMs in the region. An ecumenical strategy was indeed forged in which "Churches" and "movements" considered themselves not antithetical but complementary to each other in the undertaking of work in the academic communities in the region. The conviction was expressed strongly that Christian faith and witness to it must not be insulated from a living encounter with culture in its various expressions, e.g. religious, economic, social and political, so that dialogue with others becomes a vital mode of Christian expression. The conviction too was underscored that the symbols of faith could more richly reveal themselves if they could be looked at and conveyed from the point of view of community rather than of individuals. The conviction was further affirmed that denominational

divisions should be opposed and transcended and that Christian community in the academic community should be a vehicle for further and strengthened unity. The conviction was finally expressed that a vital intellectual culture was to be exercised among Christians if they were to gain a hearing in the university world and if they were to contribute, further to the theological renewal of the Christian community in the region. The formation of university teachers' fellowships, as part of student Christian movements, was to be the primary vehicle through which such a new intellectual culture would be nurtured and conveyed.

4. The SCM and the Struggle for Liberation

Dramatic as the results were of the first Hongkong consultation, the rapprochement on which it was built and the ecumenical strategy it proposed did not hold too long. The whole "Christian presence" emphasis in fact was very short-lived, and four years after it was enunciated, it was already being attacked and then abandoned abruptly. In Asia, not long after 1966, the distance that the second Hongkong consultation referred to began to set in between the SCMs and the Churches and the commitment to mutual support began to fade. What happened?

Many things can be mentioned. One thing however was most important. Political events overtook the ecumenical strategy and overcame the theological presuppositions on which that strategy was built. The working relations as a result were shattered at many points and the neat reallocation of spheres of work became untenable.

Strange as it may seen now, the first Hongkong consultation hardly mentioned, if at all, the burgeoning worldwide student protest movement that in 1966 was far advanced. Already in 1960, massive student protests began in Tokyo not over internal university reforms and academic questions but over the Security Treaty between Japan and the United States. Around the same time, students in Korea became directly involved and instrumental in the fall of the regime of Syngman Rhee. By 1964, equally massive student protests overcame Berkeley and spread across the whole United States, not over narrow questions of student rights but over the involvement of the university in the Vietnam War and of its acquiescence over the issue of racial injustice. Similar student protests began to happen in Paris and Frankfurt. Throughout the sixties and the early seventies, student protests spread across the world. In Manila, there was the First Quarter Storm and Mendiola I. In Bangkok, students marched and many died for the restoration of democracy in their country. In all of these, bloody confrontations occurred not only with military police but often also with university officials who sought to put down student activism with violent means.

The student protests were vitally and directly linked with the main political events ot the time. In 1966, when the representatives

of EACC and the WSCF met in Hongkong, Hanoi was being bombed and the Vietnam War escalated to its peak levels of brutality. Across the border into the People's Republic of China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution began to set in with its attack on the impotency and elitism of intellectuals. In Korea, after Syngman Rhee, military rule took over. In the Philippines, after two terms of Marcos rule, Martial Law was declared. In Indonesia, after a bloody abortive coup, the generals assumed political power. In Thailand, there was no return to democracy, there was only more of military government. The United States meanwhile after its debacle in Vietnam instituted the Nixon doctrine of withdrawal of American forces but massive military and technical support to friendly but repressive regimes. As these were happening in Asia, similar things were happening in the other continents of the world. Militarization as an aspect of American hegemony set in, and has since then become the dominant ingredient of Asian politics.

The students who came to the World Student Conference in Turku and the WSCF General Committee in Helsinki, Finland in 1968, did not come from the quiet ambience of the "liberal" universities of the West or the "responsible" universities of Asia. They came literally from the barricades and from their bloody confrontations with military and often university officials in the battlefronts of student protests. The idea of a "Christian presence" that is "silent" and "listening" sounded to them ludicrous. The idea of the university as an autonomous center of the elaboration of "science and knowledge" that the first Hongkong consultation referred to simply could not carry conviction in the light of their very direct experience of the incredible control and manipulation of science and technology by repressive forces that are antithetical to human liberation and development. They have learned that the universities were not free and autonomous, and neither were they as students. They knew further that their unfreedom was rooted in the unfreedom of their societies and that others in their societies were even less free and more oppressed than they were. "The theological task," they thus stated in that Assembly, "is not to evade the radical nature of the Christian faith. 'Presence' means concrete and effective action in the struggle for the creation of a new society and a new person." "Any theological reflection in the Federation," the Assembly stated further, "will depend upon full involvement in the struggles going on in the university and society."

It was in this context that, along with the adoption of regionalization as a structural adjustment in the life of the WSCF, "liberation" became the thematic focus of the life of the SCMs from the General Assembly in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1972, until now. In adopting this theme, the "Federation not only committed itself and its constituency to the study and exploration of its meaning but also affirmed that 'liberation' more than any other word or concept sums up the

human aspiration in our time and therefore constitutes the primary historical challenge to which the Christian community must respond The Federation further affirmed that commitment to liberation must "express itself in solidarity with those who are engaged in various forms of struggle for liberation around the world."

in adopting this theme, too, the WSCF and the SCMs attacked directly the developmentalist approaches to social and political change that has become predominant both in national circles and in some circles of the Church. In a brief paper as "WSCF: Some Notes on Its Current Concerns" that was put out in 1975, the WSCF clarified that it had no inclination of becoming a political party, certainly not a "front" for the liberation of any group or any country, neither does it have an\ illusions of projecting itself as some kind of a "Christian wing" of on-. or all of the "liberation movements" around the world. Rather its task is "to explore, in thought and action, what the shape of Christian fait'@ and witness might be where these are worked out very concretely in the context of a very specific political commitment, and where these are expressed out of the life and work of modestly small groups of Christians who have chosen to engage themselves and participate in the struggle for liberation in its various forms around the world."

At the Executive Committee in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1974, and in Longueil, Canada in 1976, the WSCF clarified its position further in relation to the Churches, amidst the growing distance that has began to stiffen between the SCMs and various Church bodies. "The WSCF has always been a meeting place for groups with a variety of political experiences who are critically concerned with the life and mission of the Church," the Longueil paper stated candidly. The WSCF and the SCMs in short are not Christian political organizations, neither are they, however, merely an ecclesiastical youth organization, sort of like the "Church of tomorrow." The WSCF and the SCMS, the Longueil paper insisted categorically, are "part of today's community of believers called the Church." They are that part of today's community of believers who, together with many others in the Church, have become concerned with a number of very concrete projects: critical understanding of and involvement in the theoretical and practical aspects of the struggles for liberation: Biblical and theological reflection in the context of political commitment; the renewal of the Church; and Christian witness and political commitment in the midst of the educational institutions of the present.

The consequences of this thematic shift in the life of the SCMs and especially in their relationship with the Churches were drastic and far-reaching. The SCMs very clearly stepped out of the sphere of work allocated to them and left that sphere of work relatively unattended. University ministry, it was claimed by Churches, was neglected. More

importantly, the SCMs placed themselves squarely on one side of the political and ideological struggle that was taking place not only in Church and university but also in society itself. Any remnants of triumphalism and vanguardism on the part of the Church and the university and on the part of students and intellectuals relative to social and political change were abandoned completely at the same time that their presumed autonomy and special role in the political struggle was unmasked forever. What was important was not their autonomy and their special role but their solidarity with the forces of liberation and social transformation in society. Solidarity with both Church and university remained but the solidarity had become a radically critical one. A political and social critique of both church and university had become dominant, and their renewal and become riveted to the larger and more complex political and social renewal of society. Under the present structure of society and political rule , in other words, renewal of Church and society was not really possible or would only be tangential.

When the second Hongkong consultation was held, this time between the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) and the WSCF, the covenant that was made in the first consultation was renewed. The setbacks and gains of the past decade were however indicated. The traditional membership of the SCMs waned. Ministry to the university was not given proper attention. There emerged however a new generation of SCMs that was born out of the commitment and involvement in the struggle for liberation to which the SCMs had taken an unequivocal option. The second consultation that was held in 1982. at Tao Fong Shan, echoed the call of the last WSCF General Assembly in San Francisco. The commitment to liberation must continue, but it was also time to "rise up and build up." It was also time, in short, to rebuild, to gather some of the pieces that have been broken, to share a vision once more. Amidst both criticism and affirmation, the second Hongkong consultation finally asked the Churches to recognize and to respect a number of elements in the life of the SCM that are necessary for its witness in the academic world and in society:

1. that the SCM is an ecumenical fellowship. Its life and work therefore require freedom and flexibility, especially in the relationships it seeks to build with Christian and other groups in the academic world;

2. that the SCM is a lay movement. Its witness is located less in the inner structures of the Churches' life and more in that part of the world where its members live and work;

3. that while the SCM is a movement that is based on Christian faith, participation and membership in its fife nevertheless are open to all students and other members of the academic community who are interested in its activities. The SCM has always been, and must continue to be, a meeting place for students and groups with a variety

of political experiences and confessional backgrounds who are critically concerned with the life and mission of the Church and with the transformation of society.

5. Some Personal Concluding Remarks

These, as I see it, are the main historical antecendents that brought us to where we are in this consultation. History, it must always be remembered, is prologue. Any effort to merely recapture and reinstitute the past is not only irresponsible to that past, it is also irresponsible to the future. Nostalgia must not be allowed to overcome future vision.

It is not within the purview of this historical review to project future developments and to suggest plans into the coming years. I venture however to indicate a few very general signposts towards a vision of work for the future:

1. Any presumptions about the autonomy of the university as a neutral place of learning is no longer defensible on any grounds. The university is enmeshed in the present structures of political power. Unless a critical relationship with the present structures of political power is first defined, any vision of the role of the university in society becomes a service to the status quo.

2. Any presumptions about the special role of students and intellectuals must likewise be abandoned. The primary subjects of social and political change are found elsewhere. What is important for students and intellectuals is to indicate what their solidarities are, and what options they are willing to make for the transformation of society. The same holds true for the Church and for Christian students.

3. The struggle for liberation is not finished. It is in our time in fact heightened. In our time, too, the forces of repression have intensified. It is in this context that the role of the university and of those who work in them must be defined and critically understood.

4. Finally, the Churches as the larger partner in the relationship with the SCMs have yet really to deal seriously with the issue of liberation. The burden of understanding lies more heavily on them. It is for them to indicate what options they are willing to take in the heightened struggle for liberation in our time.