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Söderblom played a crucial role not only in the conference, but also for the whole ecumenical movement and its development, said the moderator of the World Council of Churches (WCC) central committee, Bishop Dr Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, in an address.
The 1925 Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work in Stockholm brought together church leaders from many countries after the First World War to work for peace and reconciliation, and for the rebuilding of society and economic and political life.
The movement that began in 1925 was one of the ecumenical initiatives that led to the founding of the WCC in 1948.
“Stockholm signifies and represents a whole programme,” said Bedford-Strohm. “It signifies a very deep basis for our own work as the World Council of Churches, and that basis is the inseparable connection between our faith, our love of God, and our action in the world.”
In 1930, the year before his death, Söderblom was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for promoting Christian unity and helping create that new attitude of mind which is necessary if peace between nations is to become reality.”
The 22 August reception was held in the historic Stockholm Concert House, which since its completion in 1926 has hosted the annual Nobel Prize ceremony. Here Nobel prizes are awarded, with the exception of the Nobel Peace Prize, which is presented in the Norwegian capital of Oslo.
“To award the Peace Prize to ecumenical work was indeed a bold decision by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, but it also shows the exceptional quality of Nathan Söderblom’s initiatives for Christian unity and for brotherhood extended to all humankind,” said Prof. Dr Astrid Söderbergh Widding, chair of the Nobel Foundation.
In his opening words at the reception, Archbishop Martin Modéus of the Church of Sweden quoted from Söderblom’s 1930 Nobel Prize lecture.
“The noble and practical measures for world peace will be realized only to the extent to which the supremacy of God conquers the hearts of the people,” Söderblom said in the lecture.
Söderblom became Swedish archbishop soon after the outbreak of the First World War, and he felt compelled to act to get church leaders to appeal for peace, said Söderblom’s biographer, Swedish Bishop emeritus Dr Jonas Jonson.
However, “the nationalistic war frenzy and propaganda to which preachers had made no small contribution from their pulpits ruled out any church cooperation.”
Only after the war was it possible, against all odds, Jonson said, to organize a conference of representative church leaders, and to establish the embryo of a permanent ecumenical council.
“Nathan Söderblom had friends and networks in churches on both sides of the conflict line during the First World War,” said Lotta Sjöström Becker, secretary general of the Swedish Fellowship of Reconciliation.
“Let us honour his legacy by following Söderblom’s striving towards peace and reconciliation,” she said, “and for the churches to act as actors of peace and for the ecumenical movement to be a true peace movement.”
In his address, Bedford-Strohm invited participants to consult the new WCC Digital Collection on Life and Work, an online resource tracing the history of ecumenical social ethics and action since the Stockholm conference and made possible with support from Lund Mission Society and the Church of Norway: https://archive.org/details/wcclifeandwork
WCC moderator's address at the reception
Nathan Söderblom’s 1930 Nobel Prize lecture
Article by Bishop Jonas Jonson in The Ecumenical Review:
Nathan Söderblom and the Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work
Photo gallery: Ecumenical Week in Stockholm 2025
"United in faith and action,” global church prays together (WCC news release, 22 August 2025)
WCC releases Life and Work Digital Collection (WCC news release, 21 August 2025)
“Reclaiming the Spirit of Life and Work for Ecumenical Renewal” (WCC news release, 18 August 2025)
