WCC NEWS: Scholars study WCC in 1960s and ’70s

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World Council of Churches - News

SCHOLARS STUDY WCC IN 1960S AND ’70S

For immediate release: 09 March 2011

Dr Katharina Kunter came upon the World Council of Churches (WCC) as an
object of research through the discipline of Cold War studies, analyzing
the encounter of Christian bodies in East and West from the end of the
second world war to the fall of the Berlin Wall. She soon came to realize
that the interplay of “northern” churches with the global South was
equally influential in transforming attitudes and practices of the WCC and
its member churches during those decades.

Kunter and other scholars from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in
Germany are exploring this facet of the “globalization” of Christian
churches. Foundation grants and contributions from German church bodies
have made possible a research project focusing on inter-regional dynamics
and their effect on churches, particularly from the Second Vatican Council
in the 1960s to the development of the WCC Programme to Combat Racism and
other social justice emphases through the 1970s. The project has
culminated in an international conference on the theme.

In a seminar on global transformation and ecumenical renewal in the 1960s
and 1970s, fifteen lectures were complemented by panel discussions and a
film on the 1968 WCC Assembly at Uppsala. Thirty-five participants
gathered for the event from 4 to 6 March at the Ecumenical Institute in
Bossey, Switzerland.

A highlight of the conference was a panel featuring three “perspectives
from contemporary witnesses” within the ecumenical movement: Mercy Amba
Oduyoye of Ghana, Julio de Santa Ana of Uruguay and Dwain Epps of the
United States. Now retired, all three served the WCC in the final third of
the 20th century.

Oduyoye recalled the late Sixties and early Seventies in the WCC as a
period of increasing “inclusion of persons and issues from the
margins”, a time when voices from the global South were heard more
clearly and began to be given weight in decision-making.

Santa Ana cautioned that not everything should be remembered as showing
“a happy face”, for the ecumenical movement often wore “a conflicted
face” at the time: the dream of full “organic unity” of the church
was dying, and there was substantial friction between different elements
of ecumenism within the WCC.

Epps agreed that some tried to put barriers in the way of change, yet this
eventually forced the various factions to engage one another in open,
honest debate and to start anew on the path toward Christian unity.

Hans von Rütte, a Swiss historian and the newly appointed WCC archivist,
participated in the seminar. During a final discussion at Bossey, he
remarked, "I find this aspect of 'globalization' very helpful in forming
my understanding of what I see in the WCC today."

Ecumenical dimensions of East-West reconciliation and the meeting of North
and South, he said, "have helped make the world more global – that is to
say, more multi-centric, more mutually aware." He added that the
representative organizational structure of the council, together with the
presence of congregations even in small communities, made possible direct
connections and communication between local and global expressions of
Christianity.

The WCC continues to work on challenges, tensions and opportunities
presented by co-existing cultures and political systems, as well as by the
encounter of western Protestantism with eastern Orthodoxy and the
similarities and dissimilarities of "classical" academic theologies and
regionally-based "contextual" theologies.

A report on the research project is to be produced, and presentations from
the seminar are to be published.

Website of the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey (Link:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=85ea2d937f7794cb867c )

More information on the WCC archives (Link:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=1db758650291d53e9a2d )


The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness 
and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of 
churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 349 Protestant, 
Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 560 million 
Christians in over 110 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman 
Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, 
from the [Lutheran] Church of Norway. Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland.



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