‘Peace, Peace and Rumours of War’

2000 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 767-770
Author(s):  
W. R. WARD
Keyword(s):  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
World Council Of Churches ◽  
Real Thing ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The World ◽  
World Council ◽  
The Cold War

Nationaler Protestantismus und Ökumenische Bewegung. Kirchliches Handeln im Kalten Krieg (1945–1990). By Gerhard Besier, Armin Boyens and Gerhard Lindemann (postscript by Horst-Klaus Hofmann). (Zeitgeschichtliche Forschungen, 3.) Pp. vi+1074. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1999. DM 86. 3 428 10032 8; 1438 2326This is indeed a formidable offering – three and a half books by three and a half authors, all for the price of one and a half – and it must be admitted to those whose stamina or German quail at the prospect that some of the viewpoints and a little of the material by two and a half of the contributors has been made available in English in Gerhard Besier (ed.), The Churches, southern Africa and the political context (London 1999) at £9.99. The soft option is, however, no substitute for the real thing, which, like that other blockbuster, the late Eberhard Bethge's Bonhoeffer, is a contribution both to scholarship and to a struggle inside the German Churches. This, readers in the Anglo-Saxon world need to assess as best they can. It is not often that attempts are made by both the World Council of Churches and their principal paymasters in the German Churches to stop the publication of a work of scholarship, to be foiled (in best nineteenth-century style) by the liberalism of the German Ministry of the Interior; but that has happened here. And the rest of the world has the more reason to be grateful to the ministry for the authors have exploited the archives of the Stasi and the KGB, access to the latter of which has now been closed under pressure from the Russian Orthodox Church, which appears to have more to hide than anyone.The link between all this and Besier's inquiries in America is provided by the sad fate of the Protestant Churches of the Ost-Block during the Cold War.

THE EMERGENCE OF RESISTANCE TO ECUMENISM IN THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH (ROC) IN THE POST-PERESTROIKA PERIOD OF RUSSIA

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 74-93
Author(s):  
V.A. LIVTSOV ◽  
◽  
A.V. LEPILIN ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Russian Federation ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
International Level ◽  
World Council Of Churches ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
The World ◽  
World Council ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Emergence Of Resistance

The main purpose of the article is to analyze the emergence of opposition to ecumenism in the Rus-sian Orthodox Church (ROC) in the post-perestroika period of Russia. The article examines the issues of interaction between the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and the World Council of Churches (WCC), the aspects of opposition to the ecumenist movement in the Russian Federation in the post-Soviet realities. The author comes to the conclusion that in the post-perestroika period, a number of representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church were negatively disposed towards ecu-menism and considered this movement a heresy. The issues of this kind caused disagreement not only at the international level, but also within the structure of the ROC itself.

INTERACTION OF THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH AND FOREIGN RUSSIAN CHURCH EMIGRATION WITH THE ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT IN 1940–60-s.

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 75-86
Author(s):  
V.A. LIVTSOV ◽  
Keyword(s):  
State Power ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
World Council Of Churches ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
The World ◽  
World Council ◽  
The Relationship

The aim of the article is to consider the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the breakaway Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and the Western European Exarchate of Constantinople Patriarchate for parishes of the Russian tradition with the World Council of Churches. These relations are analyzed from the point of view of the participants' political interests and interference of party and state power in the USSR into these processes.

The Ecumenical Contribution of the Russian Orthodox Church

1959 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmund Schlink
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
World Council Of Churches ◽  
Negative Contribution ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Ecumenical Movement ◽  
The World ◽  
World Council

The Orthodox Church within the Soviet Union has so far made no direct contribution to the ecumenical work which has been done in the World Council of Churches since its constitution in 1948 and before that in the ecumenical movement which led up to its constitution. The political situation has so far prevented this—just as the autocephalous Orthodox Churches of the Balkans, which shared in the ecumenical work before the Second World War, have found it impossible to do so since they have been in the Communist sphere of influence. There is, to be sure, a negative contribution from the Moscow Patriarchate, namely the ‘Resolution on the question of “The Ecumenical Movement and the Orthodox Church”’, passed in July 1948 in connexion with the jubilee celebrations of the Russian Orthodox Church on the occasion of the fifth centenary of its independence, and in accordance with this the refusal on 1st August 1948 of the invitation from the general secretariat of the World Council of Churches to participate in the Conference of Churches in Amsterdam. In this connexion, however, it must be borne in mind that at that time and as a result of many years of isolation it was hardly possible for the Russian Orthodox Church to take an objective view of the World Council, inasmuch as the Council's understanding of itself before the Amsterdam Conference could in fact only be discerned imperfectly from written documents alone, and in particular the important Toronto declaration clarifying this understanding was not made until 1949.

The Ecumenical Movement in its Early Years

1998 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 465-485 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID CARTER
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
World Council Of Churches ◽  
Ecumenical Movement ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The World ◽  
Church Relationships ◽  
World Council

The year 1998 sees the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of the World Council of Churches. Great, but subsequently largely disappointed hopes, greeted it. The movement that led directly to its formation had its genesis in the International Missionary Conference of 1910, an event often cited in popular surveys as marking the beginning of the Ecumenical Movement. This paper will, however, argue that modern ecumenism has a complex series of roots. Some of them predate that conference, significant though it was in leading to the ‘Faith and Order’ movement that was, in its turn, such an important contributor to the genesis of the World Council.Archbishop William Temple, who played a key role in both the ‘Faith and Order’ and ‘Life and Work’ movements, referred to the Ecumenical Movement as the ‘great fact of our times’. This was a gross exaggeration. It is true that the movement engaged, from about 1920 onwards, a very considerable amount of the energy of the most talented and forward-looking leaders and thinkers of the Churches in the Anglican and Protestant traditions. It remained, however, marginal in the life of the Roman Catholic Church until Vatican II, despite the pioneering commitment of some extremely able people amidst official disapproval. Some leaders of the Orthodox Church took a considerable interest in the movement. However, both the official ecclesiology and the popular stance of most Orthodox precluded any real rapprochement with other Churches on terms that bore any resemblance to practicality. Even in the Anglican and mainstream Protestant Churches, the movement remained largely one of a section of the leadership. It attained little genuine popularity, a fact that was frequently admitted even by its most ardent partisans. One could well say that the Ecumenical Movement had only one really solid achievement to celebrate in 1948. This was the formation, in the previous year, of the Church of South India, the first Church to represent a union across the episcopal–non-episcopal divide. This type of union has yet to be emulated outside the Indian sub-continent.One of the aims of this article will be to try to explain why success in India went unmatched elsewhere. The emphasis will be on the English dimension of the problem, though many of the factors that affected the English situation also obtained in other countries in the Anglo-Saxon cultural tradition. This assessment must be balanced, however, by an appreciation of the real progress made in terms of improved and even amicable church relationships.

THE VALUE OF RUSSIAN INSTITUTION OF ELDERS IN MATTERS OF CORRECTION OF JUVENILE OFFENDERS IN RUSSIA IN XIX - EARLY XX CENTURY

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 252-258
Author(s):  
Матвеева ◽  
Evgeniya Matveeva
Keyword(s):  
Juvenile Offenders ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
The World ◽  
The Masses

The article analyzes the changes in the spiritual, moral and religious climate in Russian society in XIX - early XX century. The peculiarities of national modernization, that predetermined the gradual destruction of the traditional patriarchal way of life of the masses, are revealed; they led to the transformation of the world towards its secularization. The underlying problems of "religious ignorance" of a large part of the Orthodox population of the central part of Russia are determined, which are expressed in a large number of superstitions, prejudices and heresies incompatible with the official teaching. The crisis of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) is characterized, which is expressed in the rapid numerical growth of the various sects, strengthening of the Old Believer communities, the development of free God-seeking and spreading atheism. The pedagogical foundations of Russian Institute of elders are considered in the article, which determine certain anthropological strategy for Russia and are based not only on legal laws, but also on spiritual and moral primordial. Great importance is paid to the justification of the role of the institutions of elders in matters of correction of juvenile offenders.

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