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Among several presentations, lectures and meetings, Jonson presented the history of how the World Council of Churches (WCC) began decades before its official founding in 1948. In 2025, we celebrate 100 years since archbishop Nathan Söderblom initiated the Ecumenical Conference in Stockholm 1925 that became a significant beginning for the modern ecumenical movement.
Jonson, who has been actively involved in the life and work of the WCC for more than 60 years, told the story as a family member would—with candor, humor, and love.
As he recalled it, the WCC began before World War One with a small number of enthusiastic people. “And I dare say that most of them were men, of course, but not all, and many of them were very well-to-do.”
In fact, there were quite a few parliamentarians involved in those days, and other older individuals who were committed to Christian unity, and to serving the people—especially because working conditions were poor for so many, and there was a push for peace preceding the outbreak of World War One.
Eighty of those people got together in the town of Constance, on the Swiss border in Germany, in 1914, just at the outbreak of World War One, and they formed what they called an alliance for promoting friendships among the people.
They couldn't meet again until after the war, but they kept personal contacts with lots of correspondence, and made friends.
“The First World War, of course, completely reorganized Europe, and we tend to forget that,” said Jonson. “Europe before and after the war was completely different.”
He noted that there were countries who were born out of the war—like Latvia—and there were others who disappeared.
Reunited in 1919
The group got together again in 1919, in the Netherlands, and among them was Söderblom.
“He was not able to really assemble any people from the warring countries,” said Jonson. “It was only the neutrals.”
Söderblom came with a vision for a church council or a church assembly, not as private personalities but as representatives of churches who should get together and discuss how to come out of a situation that was the ruin of Europe.
“His second mission was that they must form a council, an ecumenical council, to be the voice of the churches in all the peace negotiations, and all the sort of reformation of Europe that was going on, and in the world, I would say,” said Jonson. “But most of these people who started this were Europeans and Americans, and it was all done with American money, from a foundation in the US.”
Meetings continued, including a small meeting in Paris to draw up an outline and, a year later in Geneva, in the summer of 1920, 100 people came together to decide how to elect or invite delegates, and how to finance such an assembly.
“The Swiss were dead against having any Catholics in this meeting, and the Archbishop of Canterbury had said that he would not back it if there were not both Orthodox and Catholics invited, and Söderblom himself wanted also a full ecumenical spectrum, so there was much dispute about this,” said Jonson. “And then suddenly happened a kind of coup d’état, really; Söderblom made contacts with the Orthodox in Constantinople, and maintained these contacts.”
Constantinople, the Patriarchate, sent out an encyclical inviting churches to form a kind of league of churches. “And this has been much commented upon,” said Jonson.
“So they started working on this, and the correspondence went to and fro, and, in fact, you can easily recognize the proposals behind this encyclical—and when the encyclical was published, Söderblom was the first one to respond.”
An invitation also went to the Catholics. “The courier turned it down,” said Jonson. “They tried twice, but it didn't work.”
First fruits
All this led up to the Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work in Stockholm in 1925, Jonson said.
“The Swiss also wanted it, but it went to Stockholm, and then they worked day and night, literally for five years, and it was quite a diplomatic effort to get all these warring
peoples and churches to decide to send delegations to Stockholm,” said Jonson. “This was the first time, at least, church-wise, that the French and the Germans had met in person to talk to each other, and the British and the Germans, and it was still very tense in atmosphere when the Stockholm meeting opened in 1925.”
The meeting opened on 19 August 1925 with 600 delegates appointed by the churches. “Sixty of them were women,” said Jonson. “They had a very heavy agenda, because all the people came with their own proposals, and all of them tried to avoid the questions of peace and war.”
They spent only two days of the meeting discussing matters of peace and war, and that was mainly a discussion on the opportunity or the possibilities for some strengthening of international legislation through the League of Nations.
“And the Germans were dead against having anything to do with a League of Nations, so that was a very heated debate but actually they did it very kindly and politely, and the whole thing went well,” said Jonson. “The Swedish government was involved; the art and culture in Sweden was involved.”
Good moods, no documents
In fact, people were in a very good mood—but if you ask for the result of this meeting you find next to nothing, Jonson said.
“You find official reports recording all the speeches, and there were many of them—140 or so,” he said. “And you find the records for every liturgy, but there are no documents coming out of the conference, and the problem with the conference was that there was no simultaneous translation at the time.”
He added: ”The most important thing with the Stockholm Conference was simply that it happened. People met. People talked with each other for the first time after the war. People shared meals. People had a common experience of a beautiful summer week in Stockholm. People came as enemies and left as friends, and the platform was formed for what later became the ecumenical movement.”
Then a Continuation Committee from the Stockholm Conference established an Office for Social Ethics in Geneva—the first center of ecumenical work in Geneva.
“They certainly proposed Bern as the center of the new ecumenical office, because it's centrally located in Europe,” said Jonson. “Geneva was nothing, you know. Imagine Geneva without any UN buildings, without any institutions. The Red Cross was there, but that's all.”
In the end, the World Council Churches was constituted after the Second World War in 1948 with the headquarters based in Geneva.
“The whole thing was built on a handful of people with initiative, strength, and perseverance,” said Jonson.
