Reclaiming "responsible freedom"
Amid all the recent debates about religious dialogue as a means to disarm religiously inspired terrorism, we are about to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the World Council of Churches. The WCC was formed in 1938 but officially launched ten years later in Amsterdam, and its two founding committees—“Faith and Order” and “Life and Work”—suggested how the council would serve both spiritual and political purposes.
The WCC was never intended to be a “super-church,” as critics charged. Its goal was to facilitate local and regional inter-Protestant or “ecumenical” identity, fellowship and service on a global scale. Over the decades, the WCC’s function as a clearinghouse for cross-denominational communion and interfaith dialogue has moved to the forefront. But 75 years ago, the geopolitical leadership of the churches was the center of ecumenical conversation.
The WCC was founded just after World War II, and its primary aim was to transcend the American-Soviet rivalry—particularly when pressed to do so by its Asian constituency. The founders knew what they were against—secularism, totalitarian forms of nationalism, militarism and nuclear war, unfettered capitalism—but what were they for?
