The World Council of Churches, as well as the ecumenical movement as a whole, were severely criticized after the fall of the "Iron curtain". On the one hand, this organization was accused of loyal politics towards the socialist countries and neglecting the restrictions of religious freedoms. On the other hand, it was accused of active participation in the loss of theological identity of Churches with ancient traditions. This article analyses the development of the World Council of Churches, the change of its theological and social doctrines in the context of ideological opposition between two political blocks, active processes of decolonization in the South and secularization in the West. The author offers an analysis from inside - this helps to understand the values of its leaders, the logic of their actions, the mechanisms of planning and decision-making. Gradual shift of attention of the World Council of Churches in the 1960s to the Third World led to the shift of the theological paradigm of ecumenical movement: now it was more about theology of liberation and emphasis on the image of the "Church for the poor". This shift created more opportunities for dialogue with representatives of Churches from the socialist camp.

Keywords: World Council of Churches, Cold War, ecumenical Christianity, religious freedom, social rights.

Kunter K. Was there a third way? The World Council of Churches during the Cold War / / Gosudarstvo, religiya, tserkva v Rossii i za rubezhom [State, Religion, Church in Russia and Abroad]. 2017. N 1. pp. 147-163.

Kunter, Katarina (2017) "Was There a Third Way? World Council of Churches in the Period of Cold War", Gosudarstvo, religiia, tserkov' v Rossii i za rubezhom 35(1): 147-163.

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Laurens Hoogebrink, a Protestant theologian from the Netherlands who has been a member of various ecumenical structures in Europe for many years, recently, looking back, self-critically stated:

Today, there is no doubt that communist regimes significantly interfered with church life in Eastern Europe during the forty years of the Cold War, and in the former Soviet Union for even seventy years. Less obvious is the damage this has done to ecumenical Christianity. At that time, it was not realized that ecumenical Christianity was facing a new stage after the "turning point" of 1989 in Europe.1
Hogebrink is one of the few active Protestant figures in the ecumenical movement who not only foresaw future political changes in Central and Eastern Europe, but also had numerous - and not only official - contacts in the church environment of this part of the world. In his statement, he raised a difficult topic for Ecumenism. According to his critique, the problem was not only that the Central and Eastern European churches had become instruments of socialist party policy and were extremely constrained in their own actions. The systemic conflict between East and West and the bipolar political structure of the Cold War era limited the scope for ecumenical institutions such as the World Council of Churches, the Conference of European Churches, or confessional associations such as the Lutheran World Federation. All these organizations are components of the ecumenical movement that grew up in the world of Protestantism and was institutionalized in the middle of the 20th century, with its center in Geneva.

Status of research2

Even twenty-five years after the end of the cold war, Hogebrink's position is not firmly established in ecumenical discourse.-

1. Hogebrink, L. (2007) "Ökumene und Kalter Krieg. Ein Erfahrungsbericht", in J. Garstecki (Hg.) Die Ökumene und der Widerstand gegen Diktaturen. Nationalsozialismus und Kommunismus als Herausforderung an die Kirchen, S. 190. Stuttgart.

2. The following outlines the main points of my previous works on the World Council of Churches and provides references to these works.

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se. This applies to both internal, ecclesiastical and ecumenical historiography and scientific research.

Today, there is no common empirical and historically reasoned concept that characterizes ecumenical Christianity and churches during the Cold War period-from the end of World War II to 1991. The only attempt of this kind is Owen Chadwick's 1992 study "The Christian Church during the Cold War", which, although not based on archival research, provides a panoramic trans-confessional portrait of Christianity during the conflict between East and West in the second half of the 20th century.3 The greatest discussion about the role of the World Council of Churches was caused by a three-part study conducted by Gerhard Bezir, Armin Boyens and Gerhard Lindemann, which was published in 1999 under the title "National Protestantism and the Ecumenical Movement. Church activity during the Cold War 1945-1990 " 4. Without going into too much detail, it should be noted that this is not an overview study, but rather separate articles dealing with the Evangelical Church in Germany and the World Council of Churches since 1948, the topic "Protestantism, Communism, and Ecumenism in the United States" , and the relationship between the Christian Peace Conference and the World Council of Churches. It is now clear that until the late 1990s there was a brief "boom" in international research projects on the role of the Church and ecumenical Christianity during the Cold War. In Germany, they studied primarily the role of the Church in the GDR, as well as bilateral German - German (FRG-GDR) church relations, taking into account the role of the ecumenical movement. In addition, it is necessary to mention an international project aimed at studying Protestantism in Eastern Europe during different epochs of communist rule, which in one way or another addressed the question of the dual role of Ecumenism and the WCC5. Individual pro's-

3. См.: Chadwick, O. (1992) The Christian Church in the Cold War. London.

4. Besier, G. (1999) Armin Boyens und Gerhard Lindemann, Nationaler Protestantismus und ökumenische Bewegung. Kirchliches Handeln im Kalten Krieg 1945-1990. Berlin. For the discussion, see, among others, a literature review: Bremer, T. (2003)" Die ökumenische Bewegung während des Kalten Krieges - Eine Rückschau", Theologische Revue 99: 177-190.

5. См., например: Maser, P., Schjørring, J.H. (Hgg.) (2002) Zwischen den Mühlsteinen. Protestantische Kirchen in der Phase der Errichtung der kommunistischen Herrschaft

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projects and research on ecumenism and the churches during the Cold War were carried out at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Helsinki 6 and focused on the external relations of the Finnish Lutheran Church and the processes of interaction with the churches of the Socialist camp countries in the ecclesiastical and theological spheres.

In addition to international projects in the 1990s, local church-historical or purely historical studies were conducted in this area.7 At the same time, the structure, mission, complex issues of organization and specifics of the WCC's discourse remained incomprehensible to an outsider.

The purpose of this article is to give an idea of the role of the World Council of Churches during the Cold War. To do this, the author suggests focusing on (1) the dilemma of "ecumenical Christianity between East and West" that has arisen since the WCC was founded in 1948 in the early stages of the Cold War (late 1940s-1950s), (2) the situation of the WCC in the period of "detente" since the late 1960s.and (3) the issue of the political instrumentalization of the WCC during the Cold War.

im östlichen Europa. Erlangen; Schjørring, J.H., Lehmann, H. (Hgg.) (2003) Im Räderwerk des real existierenden Sozialismus. Kirchen in Ostmittel- und Osteuropa von Stalin bis Gorbatschow. Göttingen; Maser, P., Schjørring, J.H. (Hgg.) (2003) Wie die Träumenden? Kirchen in der Phase des Zusammenbruchs der kommunistischen Herrschaft im östlichen Europa. Erlangen; Kunter, K., Schjørring, J.H. (Hgg.) (2007) Die Kirchen und das Erbe des Kommunismus. Die Zeit nach 1989 - Zäsur, Vergangenheitsbewältigung und Neubeginn. Fallstudien aus Mittel- und Osteuropa und Bestandaufnahme aus der Ökumene. Erlangen.

6. Из недавних публикаций см.: Laine, A.T. (2015) Ecumenical Attack against Racism: The Anti-Racist Programme of the World Council of Churches, 1968-1974. Helsinki; Peipponen, M. (2012) Ecumenical Action in World Politics. The Creation of the Commission of Churches on International Affairs (CCIA), 1949-1949. Helsinki; Merilainen, J. (2012) "Whose Dollars, his Religion": The WCC, the LWF, and the Reconstruction of European Protestantism in the Early Cold War years, 1945-1948", Communio viatorum LIV: 14-24; Merillinen, J. (2010) "Die finnischen Orthodoxen "zu Diensten der Regierung der Vereinigten Staaten": Patriarch Athenagoras als Botschafter des Westens 1949", Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 23: 290-303; Ferner die Aufsatzsammlung "Christliche Beitrlge zur Europlischen Integration - Die politische Rolle der Kirchen" (2006), Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 19; McLeod, H., Saarinen, R., Lauha, A. (2006) North European Churches. From Cold War to Globalisation. Tampere.

7. См., например: Hedwig, R. (2011) "Der Protestantismus und das linksrevolutionlre Pathos. Der Ökumenische Rat der Kirchen in Genf im Ost-West-Konflikt in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren", Geschichte und Gesellschaft 36: 408-436; Kirby, D. (Hg.) (2003) Religion and the Cold War. Basingstoke; Greschat, M. (2000) "Ökumenisches Handeln der Kirchen in den Zeiten des Kalten Krieges", Ökumenische Rundschau 29: 7-25.

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The Cold War as a metahistory of the World Council of Churches

The WCC is a large association of churches founded in August 1948 in Amsterdam during the initial phase of the Cold War. Its 349 churches represent a wide range of faiths, including many different Protestant churches around the world, the Anglican and Orthodox Churches, and the Pentecostal movement (the Catholic Church is not part of the WCC). The World Council of Churches covers more than 140 countries on all six continents and represents more than 572 million people. Christians, most of whom are natives of Europe. The WCC is also an international organization whose activities reflected numerous events and conflicts in the political and ecclesiastical history of the second half of the 20th century.

The Cold War itself formed a kind of meta-history of the World Council of Churches, since the antagonism between the West and the East in its various phases generated serious disputes and contradictions in the WCC and largely determined the direction of its decisions. This was already evident during the Founding Assembly of the WCC in August 1948 in Amsterdam. Then, in the third section devoted to world disorders, the key texts of the two main speakers-the representative of American foreign policy John Forster Dulles and the Czech theologian Josef Hromadka-demonstrated the new bipolarity of the world. They presented two diametrically opposed views on the path that churches and ecumenical Christianity should take in the face of growing tensions between East and West.8 While Dulles advocated a free society and human rights and warned Christians against communism and its inherent totalitarianism, Hromadka called the bourgeois, capitalist West the main cause of nationalism and fascism in the 1930s and the subsequent catastrophe of World War II. He pinned his hopes for renewal on new social movements coming from the East: with socialism and communism. What path should ecumenical Christianity have taken then? The World Council of Churches, inspired by the concept of Swiss theologian Karl Barth, spoke out

8. Die Unordnung der Welt und Gottes Heilsplan. Ökumenischer Rat der Kirchen (1948). Tübingen/Stuttgart.

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in Amsterdam, for a certain "third way" independent of both superpowers - the United States and the USSR, formulated as follows::

The Christian Church must reject the ideologies of both countries - communism and unregulated capitalism - and strive to free people from the delusion that these ideologies are the only alternative. They both made promises that they can't keep... Christians have a responsibility to find new creative solutions that will not allow justice and freedom to be violated on both sides.9
The question of whether such a "third way" could really exist in a bipolar world remained a key and open question for the World Council of Churches throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Thus, during later discussions in the WCC on human rights and religious freedom in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as on the maintenance of peace in Europe, it became clear that these topics cannot be discussed and worked out regardless of the political contexts in which representatives of churches are located. For the World Council of Churches, these issues have become a kind of test of strength and have largely paralyzed bold initiatives and attempts to achieve solidarity.

The World Council of Churches in an era of detente

Stalin's death in 1953 changed the political climate in Eastern and Western Europe. The long, brutal era of Stalinist persecution and repression came to an end, and Stalin's successors N. Khrushchev and L. Brezhnev promised to pursue a new political course. The idea of" peaceful coexistence "between the West and the East and" defusing tension " between them was established as a new prerequisite for a socialist foreign policy, the central element of which was the recognition of the status quo in Europe. Both superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, were forced to accept the reality of a divided Europe. At the political level, a crucial role was played by the multilateral European security conferences, which were attended by 35 countries, including the United States and Canada. They began to be held

9. Ökumenischer Rat der Kirchen (Hg.) (1949) Amsterdamer Dokumente. Berichte und Reden auf der Weltkirchenkonferenz in Amsterdam 1948, s. 55. Bethel.

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Since 1973, they have been known as the "Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe" (CSCE). Their outcome was the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, which marked the beginning of new intra-European processes.

Against this background, the churches in Europe and the ecumenical movement adjusted their activities. The Helsinki process opened up new opportunities for East-West contacts, which slowly but steadily became easier and more accessible. For the first time in the post-war period, almost all Eastern European churches were able to send delegates to ecumenical meetings abroad. This significantly changed the climate of ecumenical conferences and at the same time led to an increase in the "professionalization" of ecumenical movement figures. Originally proposed by the Soviet Union, the concept of "peaceful coexistence" of two opposing systems now defined countless ecumenical meetings, sittings, meetings, and conferences. The topic of the conflict between East and West has become the core of a new joint activity. At the same time, church leaders representing religious organizations of the Eastern Bloc, being emphatically loyal to their states, discussed at a very abstract level mainly about various theological issues, such as secularization or universal peace. Acute issues, such as specific human rights violations or everyday repression of Christians in socialist countries, were generally excluded from the discussion. It should also be borne in mind that since the 1970s, the anti-communist discourse that dominated them in the 1950s and 1960s has been gradually eroding within the Western churches.At the same time, the repression and restrictions that Christians in Eastern Europe were systematically subjected to have ceased to attract public attention in the West. At the same time, the policy of detente has created a new perspective of partnership and a willingness to learn from each other. Participants on the Protestant side took the East-West dialogue seriously as a concept and practice that could serve to strengthen peace.10
10. См., например: Overmeyer, H. (2005) Frieden im Spannungsfeld zwischen Theologie und Politik. Die Friedensthematik in den bilateralen Gesprächen von Arnoldshain und Sagorsk. Frankfurt a.M.

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From the very beginning, the World Council of Churches supported various church initiatives related to the pan-European process of detente, which is confirmed by official sources from 1972-1973. 11 Fearing an attempt to be instrumentalized in the context of detente by both world superpowers, members of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA), the WCC's Department for External Church policy They also participated in the European discussion of human rights within the framework of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe. An example of the implementation of this strategy is the WCC meeting on "Human Rights and Christian Responsibility" held in the Austrian city of St. Pelten in 1973, during which a list of fundamental human rights was formulated. This widely accepted approach in ecumenical circles was a clear attempt to transcend the Western liberal and individualistic understanding of human rights. 12 The significance of this policy and the simultaneous impact of the Helsinki Final Act became apparent at the Fifth WCC Assembly in Nairobi in December 1975. After the faithful from the USSR, priest Gleb Yakunin and layman Lev Regelson, in an open letter to the WCC, suggested that the latter publicly condemn violations of religious freedoms in the USSR, a conflict broke out. 13 Official representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church perceived the discussion of this story as an attack on their country, emphasizing that they would not support such a decision, and threatening exit from the WCC. On the other hand, the World Council of Churches was under intense pressure from the Western media. The WCC's reticence towards human rights violations in the USSR was seen primarily in conservative church and political circles in Western Europe as tacit approval or tolerance of socialist and communist policies. The World Council of Churches has been accused of speaking out against racism and racial segregation in South Africa, but has remained silent about human rights abuses in the East.

11. См. Human Rights and Christian Responsibility (1975). Geneve: Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA).

12. See Ibid.

13. Подробнее см.: Kunter, K. (2000) "Die Schlussakte von Helsinki und die Diskussion im ÖRK um die Verletzung der Religionsfreiheit in Ost- und Mitteleuropa 1975-1977", Ökumenische Rundschau 49: 43-51.

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After lengthy discussions, the then General Secretary of the WCC, Caribbean Methodist Philip Potter, suggested that the controversial part of the final resolution should be formulated in such a way that it would also be acceptable to representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church. As a result, only one small note was adopted, stating that the Assembly devoted a "significant" part of its time to discussing the alleged rejection of religious freedom in the USSR (in the original: "alleged denials of religious liberty").14. At the end of the resolution, the abstract thesis was also formulated that ecumenism unites Christians from both political camps in Europe, and since they are members of the Body of Christ, they should not be silent when problems arise in this world, but mutual actions should be an expression of Christian love.

The Nairobi debate demonstrated to the general public how politically contentious the WCC's discussion of human rights and religious freedom in Central and Eastern Europe has become. The various strategies adopted by members of the ecumenical movement in building relations with WCC member churches from Central and Eastern Europe prevented the development of a clear and unified position. One of the parties was represented by those members of the WCC who were in favor of an open discussion of violations of religious freedom in the USSR and in other Eastern European states; among them were, for example, Albert van den Heuvel, Secretary General of the Netherlands Reformed Church (Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk), Lukas Fischer, Director of the Faith and Order branch of the WCC, as well as representatives of the Swiss the Second World Faith Institute and the British Keston College. In letters and public speeches, they tried to draw the attention of responsible politicians to Soviet religious dissidents, persecuted or arrested members of the church, with whom they tried to establish contacts. Their efforts within the WCC were successful: under their pressure, the World Council of Churches, following the Nairobi Assembly, organized two large CSCE meetings in Montreux in 1976-1977 on the content and application of the Helsinki Final Act and violations of religious freedom.

This sharply confrontational approach was heavily criticized, including by Leopoldo Niilus

14. Ibid., S. 44.

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and Dwayne Epps, influential figures of the Churches ' Commission on International Affairs (CCMD). From their point of view, it was more important to strengthen the official position of the Russian Orthodox Church, because otherwise the church community could be destroyed, which would bring more harm than good to the victims.15 In addition, the CMC preferred to consider the issue of religious freedom in the general context of human rights and in a global perspective, rather than as a separate or primary issue, since this could lead to a reproach for Eurocentrism on the part of third world countries. 16
After two meetings held in Montreux in 1976-1977 on the role of churches in the CSCE process, the future direction of the WCC's relevant policy was gradually determined. According to them, public criticism and opposition to the Russian Orthodox Church and other churches in socialist countries should be abandoned, as this would only strengthen the existing division. On the contrary, churches from Central and Eastern European countries were given the opportunity to participate more actively in ecumenical dialogue. As a result, the WCC's work on developing a human rights position based on the universal value of individual human rights failed. Instead, Geneva was now talking about the need to" globalize " the ecumenical movement for human rights, while emphasizing the interdependence of individual and social rights.

Maneuver space boundaries and global dimensions

The described processes raise the question of the space for maneuvers that could be used by the participants of the ecumenical movement.-

15. See, for example, the letters of Leopoldo Niilus dated 13.02.1976 and 07.07.1976: Archiv der CCIA/Helsinki-ColloTuium-July 1976/Correspondence and Archive of the Commission of Churches for International Affairs (Geneve)/Helsinki ColloTuium Montreux July 24. -28.7.1976.

16. In a Memorandum dated May 28, 1975, Dwayne Epps emphasized: "It is truly incredible how little attention people in Europe and, if I may say so, especially in Eastern Europe pay to some of the global dimensions of the steps that are being taken today towards security and cooperation in Europe. The third world does not perceive this as a gift brought to it by generous Northerners" (Archiv der CCIA/Helsinki-ColloTuium Background Materials pre 1976). See also Koshy, N. (1992) Religious Freedom in a Changing World. Genf.

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research institute. Today, we are much more fully aware than in the 1990s of how scrupulously representatives of churches from socialist countries followed the political instructions of the authorities, speaking in the ecumenical arena and considering the World Council of Churches as a platform for promoting socialist foreign policy. Only very rarely, in exceptional cases, could they participate in ecumenical meetings or establish ecumenical contacts without the supervision and guidance of the State. This applies primarily to representatives of Orthodox Churches from communist countries. Most recently, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate, Filaret, stated that all the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church cooperated with the KGB.17 The same information about the Bulgarian Orthodox Church is provided by Momchil Metodiev in his extensive research based on archival materials.18
However, the close association of the Eastern churches with the state and secret services alone is not sufficient to explain the eastern policy of the World Council of Churches and its conspicuous silence on the human rights situation in the Soviet Union since the 1960s. Perhaps left-wing church intellectuals succumbed to the fashion for "socialism" and, out of naivety or because of ideological motivation, turned a blind eye to the persecution that Christians in Central and Eastern Europe were subjected to? The thesis put forward by the German historian Hedwig Richter that this blindness was the result of a new legitimizing myth about "revolution" and "change" that has taken shape is only partially convincing.19 The point is that Richter took the secularization of Western societies as the starting point of his argument. However, it should be borne in mind that the voices of supporters of democratic socialism, church participation in revolutionary transformations, or pro-poor liberation theology that have been heard loudly in the World Council of Churches since the late 1960s

17. G2W News from March 19, 2012, Ukraine, Patriarch Filaret: "All the bishops collaborated with the KGB."

18. Metodiev, M. (2010) Between Faith and Compromise. The Orthodox Church and the Communist State in Bulgaria. Sofia; Leustean, W.L.N. (ed.) (2010) Eastern Christianity and the Cold War 1945-1991. New York.

19. Richter, H. (2011) "Der Protestantismus und das linksrevolutionlre Pathos. Der Ökumenische Rat der Kirchen in Genf im Ost-West-Konflikt in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren", Geschichte und Gesellschaft 36: 408-436.

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Most of them came from among the representatives of the "third world" countries, where churches and religion did not enter the legitimation phase, the need for which arose in connection with secularization. 20
This realization forces us to ask ourselves whether the Cold War is generally understood historically adequately in the current research on the history of ecumenism. Most studies legitimately emphasize, first of all, the dichotomy of East and West, understood from the European point of view. At the same time, statements have emerged that seriously limit the ability to fit the history of the WCC into the international context. A striking example is the notion that the conflict between East and West, since the 1960s, has been displaced from the ecumenical agenda by the conflict between North and South; or the thesis that the Cold War was a conflict of the North, and therefore, with a shift in emphasis to the churches of the South and to subjects related to them As it developed, it was bound to lose its significance for the ecumenical movement.21 But such explanations seem too weak. In fact, the cold War served as a catalyst for almost all wars and military conflicts in the "third world" countries (for example, wars in Korea, Indochina, Vietnam, Angola, Congo, as well as in Latin America). Among other factors - such as the collapse of the colonial system, the emergence of national liberation movements, historical ethnic tensions or local rivalries-the notion of a "third world" that could become neutral and independent in relation to the "first" and "second" was directly rooted in the systemic ideological competition between the USSR and the United States. Just as the UN became a public political platform for the non-Aligned movement in the 1960s, so the WCC brought together numerous representatives of "third world" churches from Asia, Africa, and Latin America who considered themselves anti-colonial, but politically

20. For more information on this issue, see Kunter, K., Schilling, A. (Hg.) (2014) Globalisierung der Kirchen. Der Ökumenische Rat der Kirchen und die Entdeckung der Dritten Welt in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren. Stuttgart.

21. См., например, об измерении "Север-Юг" в экуменическом движении в: Krusche, G., Stöhr, M., DeMung, K.H. (2001) "Der Ökumenische Rat der Kirchen im Kalten Krieg", Sonderheft Junge Kirche 1; Müller-Fahrenholz, G. (2000) "Instrumentalisierung der Theologie zu politischen Zielen? Aspekte des Nord-Süd-Konfliktes wlhrend des 'Kalten Krieges'", in H.J. Joppien (Hg.) Der Ökumenische Rat der Kirchen in den Konflikten des Kalten Krieges, S. 290-298. Kontexte-Kompromisse-Konkretionen: Frankfurt.

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In their home countries, the United States and the Soviet Union competed for political, economic, and military influence. Thus, gradually, during the long 1960s, new alliances emerged between representatives of the churches of the so - called first, second, and third worlds, and with them new, non-European-oriented theological and political accents-for example, in the understanding of justice or socialism. On the one hand, this led to the fact that the traditional anti-communist rhetoric lost its force in the World Council of Churches - at the latest in the 1970s. However, on the other hand, ecumenical discussions about socialism or communism have gone beyond Europe or the West.22
Changing the theological paradigm at the World Council of Churches

At the founding meeting of the WCC in Amsterdam in 1948, the concept of "responsible society"was adopted as the leitmotif. An important goal of the ecumenical movement was the emergence of a democratic, just society based on the individual responsibility of each Christian. However, since the 1960s, this concept has increasingly been called into question. A turning point was the World Conference "Church and Society", which was held in Geneva in 1966 under the auspices of the WCC. At the conference, representatives of churches from the "third world" countries criticized the concept of a "responsible society" aimed at preserving stability and the existing order for its "Western" nature. They argued that in the face of the dramatic social and political changes associated with the process of decolonization, the ecumenical movement should look for new ways that would allow the churches of their countries to participate in the revolutionary transformation. Thus, the new agenda of the World Council of Churches includes the topics of development, humanization, human rights, combating racism, liberation and solidarity with the poor. WCC Assembly in Uppsala (1968) decided that these topics should be reflected in the programme of work and in the structure of WSIS-

22. For more information, see: Kunter, K., Schilling, A. (Hg.) Globalisierung der Kirchen. Der Ökumenische Rat der Kirchen und die Entdeckung der Dritten Welt in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren.

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council of Churches. Under the influence of the growing number of representatives of the "third world", the discussions generated by the confrontation between the eastern and western blocs gradually ceased since the 1970s, and the topic of confrontation was discussed only in a global context. New forms of activity have emerged in the World Council of Churches (for example, actions to help in the so-called Biafran conflict, the anti-racism program, and the literacy program led by Paulo Freire). Further points of politicization of the ecumenical movement were, for example, the establishment of a Church Development Service or the World Missionary Conference in Bangkok in 1972-1973, where the neocolonialism of Western Christianity was severely attacked.

In the 1960s and 1970s, major transformations took place not only in the WCC's program work, but also in ecumenical theology. If in the 1920s, during the initial phase of the ecumenical movement, both its trends-"Faith and Order "and the" Practical Christianity " movement - represented separate areas of theology and Christian social ministry, now these trends have merged within the World Council of Churches. This has led to the emergence of a new threat: will it not turn out that "behind the' horizontal 'of the Church's care for the world, the Church's own vital foundation - the 'vertical', that is, the relationship with God-will be lost? " 23. An illustrative discussion on this topic took place at the 1971 conference of the WCC Commission "Faith and Order" in Louvain between Archpriest John Meyendorff, a Russian Orthodox theologian, and Jose Miguel Bonino, a Latin American Reformed theologian. Miguel Bonino's criticism of the Meyendorff report was very clear: It is not going to theologize, but only getting involved in the conflicts of the world, that can unite the churches, and with them humanity. This presupposes a theology "from below", that is, a theology from the perspective of the cross. Later, ecumenical theology underwent a radical paradigm shift, increasingly focusing on the Church of the poor and on Latin American liberation theology. This meant a radical rejection (in part forced) of the Anglo-Saxon liberal understanding of human rights, which had already been established in the Soviet Union.

23. For more detailed information, see: Mateus, J. P. (2014)" Josp Rodriguez Bonino and the Struggle for Global Christian Unity in the 1970s", in K. Kunter, A. Schilling (Hg.) Globalisierung der Kirchen. Der Ökumenische Rat der Kirchen und die Entdeckung der Dritten Welt in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren, S. 237-254. Stuttgart.

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Until then, it dominated the World Council of Churches. This was replaced by discussions around the second generation of human rights - social rights, and in their context - around social justice. This change in orientation was determined by three main factors: (1) Parallel discussions in various UN organizations (WCC offices in Geneva are located in close proximity to UN subsidiaries; there was institutional and interpersonal interaction between them and the WCC); (2) the increasing number of representatives of churches from the so-called "third world" associated with decolonization, who passionately defended the priority of "social justice"; (3) the increasing role of representatives of the GDR and other countries of the socialist camp who were completely loyal to their state, who intensified political discussions about social human rights and thereby won sympathy from representatives of the "Third World" churches.the third world".

Conclusion

The above considerations confirm the thesis formulated at the beginning that the Cold War can serve as a meta-narrative of the history of the World Council of Churches. Political bipolarity gave an" existential " meaning to ecumenism, with its opportunities for dialogue between East and West, as well as North and South. On the one hand, the Christian conviction that political boundaries do not limit the Christian community served a meaningful role and allowed the ecumenical community to exist. However, on the other hand, it also made it difficult to react to the dynamics of actual processes. Preserving the status quo in Europe was considered more important than supporting Christian dissidents or Christian liberation and civil rights movements in Central and Eastern Europe that contributed to its destruction.

Translated from the German by Maria Khramova

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Bibliography / References

Hogebrink, L. (2007) "Ökumene und Kalter Krieg. Ein Erfahrungsbericht", in J. Garstecki (Hg.) Die Ökumene und der Widerstand gegen Diktaturen. Nationalsozialismus und Kommunismus als Herausforderung an die Kirchen. Stuttgart.

Chadwick, O. (1992) The Christian Church in the Cold War. London.

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