04551
December 17, 2004

New book holds up mirror to history of ecumenical movement 

by Stephen Brown
Ecumenical News International

GENEVA — Half‑a‑century after the publication in 1954 of the first volume of the History of the Ecumenical Movement, a new volume brings the story of the movement for church unity up to the end of 2000. It covers what have been seen as some of the most turbulent years in the history of the World Council of Churches.  

      “This latest volume brings us to the end of the second millennium and it reminds us of the increasingly controversial and complex period of time we have just passed through,” notes WCC General Secretary Samuel Kobia in a preface to the new work, whose focus

is the period from 1968 to 2000.  

      Referring to the gestation time of the latest volume, co‑editor Georges Tsetsis said, “Normally a pregnancy lasts nine months; in our case it lasted nine years.” He said although it lacked a unity in style it reflected the diversity of the ecumenical community. 

      Chapters by more than two dozen historians and ecumenists focus on events including:

• the WCC’s Program to Combat Racism offering support to liberation movements fighting white minority rule in southern Africa;
• the shift in the ecumenical movement away from Europe and North America to the churches of the global South; the movement for women’s liberation;
• the influence of the Cold War on attempts to bring together churches from East and West; and
• the collapse of communism at the end of the 1980s. 

      Co-editor John Briggs paid tribute to Hugh McCullum in Canada “for bringing unfinished ends to a conclusion.” McCullum served as project editor for the past year, helping to bring the 697‑page book to completion. Briggs noted that for much of the production of the volume, “we had to live with the theology of hope.” 

      “Writing, editing and publishing A History of the Ecumenical Movement has, in itself, covered a significant share of the history of the modern ecumenical movement,” said WCC publisher Yannick Provost.  

      Plans for the first volume of the history began in 1946, two years before the WCC’s official founding. That volume, published in 1954, covered a span of 441 years, from 1517, when Martin Luther unleashed the Protestant Reformation, to 1948, when the WCC held its first assembly in Amsterdam. The second volume, which appeared in 1970, covered the period 1948 to 1968. The new volume covers the remaining years up to 2000. 

      “The very structure of this volume is an expression of the changes in the profile of the ecumenical movement over the last thirty‑five years,” writes former WCC general secretary Konrad Raiser in an introduction. 

      Topics now treated in their own right for the first time include inter‑religious dialogue; racism and ethnicity; science, technology and ecology; the Bible; spirituality; ecumenical training and education; and women, under the heading “inclusive community.”

      The volume is dedicated to the late Jan H. Kok, former WCC communication director and publications manager, who together with his friend, the late Marlin VanElderen, WCC executive editor, launched the project but did not live to see its publication. 

      (A History of the Ecumenical Movement, Volume 3, 1968‑2000 — edited by John Briggs, Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Georges Tsetsis; project editor Hugh McCullum; Geneva, WCC Publications, ISBN2‑8524‑1355‑0; price US$60.)