The Church, the Churches and the World Council of Churches (the Toronto Statement)
The statement in which the World Council’s central committee, meeting at Toronto in 1950, set out what membership of the council does and does not imply about the nature of the Church.
The council’s first assembly had left open what the council was in relation to the churches that composed it. The central committee took up the question at Toronto in July 1950. Part III of its statement says what the council is not: it is not a “superchurch”, and joining it does not mean that a church treats its own understanding of the Church as merely relative. Part IV sets out what the members do assume in common, and adds that membership does not oblige a church to regard the other members as churches in the full sense of the word.
It is the council’s own account of itself. See the World Council of Churches Is Founded.
Cited in
- 23 August 1948, firm date