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Peace was something Archbishop Nathan Söderblom (1914-1931) worked for. After the "Great War" that later came to be known as the First World War, where Christian countries were pitted against other Christian countries, it was necessary to do something.

Söderblom wanted to gather the churches in the countries that had been involved in the war. He imagined that it would lead to the formation of an international ecumenical council. The idea was that the churches together, despite their differences, would contribute to peace and justice in the world. The council could also imbue the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations, with a Christian spirit.

No permanent council was established, but the Stockholm meeting in 1925 was the start of Life & Work. At its meeting in England in 1937, when Communism and Nazism brought Christian churches and countries against each other again, a unanimous statement was made that the church must be a church, true to the Gospel, unbound by worldly ideologies, prophetic in society and in solidarity with vulnerable people.

Then came the Second World War, again a great failure, but on its smoldering ruins were built the World Council of Churches and the United Nations. At the first assembly of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam in 1948, war was declared to be against God's will. The assembly in Harare announced in 1998 a decade of nonviolence for the churches. The basic rule of the UN Charter is to work for peace and resolve conflicts without violence (Article 2:4). The right to use force in self-defense or by the Security Council in the event of a breach of the peace constitutes an exception.

The work for peace is in a dire situation. In recent years, we have had more armed conflicts than in a long time and many dead in Ukraine and Gaza. We have seen the fall of the Berlin Wall and now it's time for new walls to fall. We have seen the end of wars in countries like Northern Ireland and the former Yugoslavia. Now it's time to strengthen our efforts for peace and justice.

Ecumenism is so much more than cooperation between churches. It is a collaboration with a purpose. The word oikoumene itself means "the inhabited world.” God did not primarily create different churches, but one world and it is in this that we are called to work. We all belong together, and each parish is a local office in the worldwide church. God is in the schools, at the football match, in the mall, but also in the refugee camp, in Gaza, in Ukraine. Then we must be there as a church.

You can support that work. Among other things, you can give a gift to the ACT Alliance, speak well of others (especially the stranger), participate in an international group in the congregation, influence politics to work for disarmament and join a peace movement, for example SweFOR - The Swedish Fellowship of Reconciliation/IFOR The International Fellowship of Reconciliation.

About the author :

Klas Corbelius is vice chairperson of the synod's ecumenical committee, Church of Sweden.

Disclaimer

The impressions expressed in the blog posts are the contributions of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or policies of the World Council of Churches.