Trouble Erupts at WWC

BY GE0RGE ODIKO
TROUBLE erupted last night at the opening ceremony of the World Council of Churches’ Fifth Assembly, outside Kenyatta Conference Centre, Nairobi.

Just as Kenya’s Archbishop Festo Olang had said the opening prayer, a white man jumped from behind, grabbed a microphone and shouted at top of his voice:
“This is an anti Christ Assembly!” Pointing his finger at an African priest he further shouted: “Hay ... Hay...!”

Police led away the man who gave his name as Pastor Jack Glass, chairman of the Scottish Twentieth Century Reformation Movement.

By about 8pm, the police said they were still holding three white men for allegedly trying to disrupt the opening of the Assembly. But the men were set free later. Assembly sources said the three men were Scots. Sources claimed they were members of a Protestant group in Northern Ireland, and also connected them with the International Council of Christian Churches (ICCC) which held its congress in Nairobi last July and whose president, Dr. Carl McIntire, was deported.

The sources also said there were more than three men. Delegates wondered how the men had entered without being identified. But Pastor Glass had a priest’s “white collar” and his protest poster was hidden under his jacket.

A suggestion was made later that priests in white collar and without identification should be searched before being allowed in.

Before he was taken away by the police, Pastor Glass distributed copies of a letter to the Assembly, which stated:
“On behalf of the Scottish Twentieth Century Reformation Movement, I would like to remind the WCC’s Assembly of the following facts.
“That while Jesus Christ frees and unites, such systems as Roman Catholicism and Communism are totalitarian and persecuting, and therefore bring men into bondage in the countries they control.

I challenge the WCC to condemn these systems.
“That while Jesus Christ frees and unites, terrorist organisations terrify and divide communities by their bombing, maiming and killing innocent men, women and children in pursuit of their revolutionary aims. I challenge the WCC to condemn world terrorism and its slaughter of the innocent.
“That Jesus Christ indeed frees and unites through the preaching of the gospel of free and sovereign Grace which liberates the souls of men from sin, and has united all true born again believers. This is a unity to be realised, not sought in apostate ecumenical sense.
“I declare this Assembly to be an act of apostasy that does not demonstrate the unity of Christ.

Daily Nation 24.11.75

This Refutation appeared in the East African Standard

‘Absolutely no connection’

I, PASTOR Jack Glass, chairman of the Scottish Twentieth Century Reformation Movement who protested at the opening service of the WCC, wish to make it known that I have absolutely no connection with Dr. Carl McIntire nor any Northern Ireland organisation.

Would you please draw the attention of your readers to this matter, as a previous article in your newspaper seemed to imply that I had some connection with McIntire. McIntire’s position, theologically and politically, is not mine.