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Dialogue or Confession? Ecumenical Responsibility and the War in Ukraine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2023

Keith Clements
Keith Clements*
Affiliation:
Former General Secretary, Conference of European Churches and Emeritus Board Member, International Bonhoeffer Society
*
Email: keithclements128@gmail.com
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Abstract

While the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been overwhelmingly condemned by the churches of the world, the support of the Russian Orthodox Church for the war poses difficult questions to the ecumenical community: in particular, whether that church’s support for the war and the extreme nationalist policies of President Putin constitute grounds for suspending it from the World Council of Churches (WCC) and other ecumenical bodies. The current ecumenical emphasis upon ‘dialogue’ acts as a deterrent to such action, but the WCC describes itself as a fellowship of churches that confess Christ as God and Saviour and therefore supreme over all other authorities. There are parallels with previous challenges in ecumenical history, most particularly 1930s Germany and the stand of the Confessing Church. While dialogue has its own importance the prime ecumenical commitment in conflict situations is to confess Christ, whatever the risks of division that this incurs.

Keywords

BonhoefferConfessing ChurchdialogueecumenismRussian OrthodoxUkrainewarWCC
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , November 2023 , pp. 246 - 259
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust

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References

1 Countries that voted against were the Russian Federation, Belarus, North Korea, Nicaragua and Syria. Those abstaining included China, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

2 Quoted in article by Jonathan Luxmoore, Church Times, 12 May 2023.

3 ‘WCC Calls for an Immediate End to the Current Armed Hostilities’, WCC Press Release, 24 February 2022.

4 ‘CEC Governing Board Endorses Call for Peace with Justice in Ukraine’, CEC Press Release, 24 May 2022.

5 ‘Statement by the WCC Central Committee on the War in Ukraine’, WCC Press Release, 18 June 2022.

6 ‘WCC Statement on War in Ukraine Deplores “Illegal and Unjustifiable” Invasion, Calls for Ceasefire’, WCC Press Release, 8 September 2022. Emphases in original text.

7 WCC General Secretary after the Visit to Moscow “WCC to Be an Instrument of Dialogue’, WCC Press Release, 18 May 2023.

8 ‘Confessing Christ Today: Report and Recommendations of Section I’, in H.-G. Link (ed.), Apostolic Faith Today: A Handbook for Study (Geneva: WCC, 1985), p. 127.

9 From the English version of the Declaration translated by A.C. Cochrane, in Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906–1945 (trans. Isabel Best; London: T. & T. Clark, 2010), p. 409.

10 See Keith Clements, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ecumenical Quest (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2015), pp. 165-74.

11 Report of BBC Radio interview, Church Times, 5 April 2022 (article by Jonathan Luxmoore).

12 W.A. Visser’t Hooft, Memoirs (London: SCM Press 1973, and Geneva: WCC, 1987), p. 192 (emphases mine).

13 For an informed and disturbing account of the full extent of the oppressively nationalist and authoritarian regime of Vladimir Putin see Mikhail Shishkin, My Russia: War or Peace? (London: Riverrun/ Quercus Publishing, 2023).

14 ‘Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church’, Section III.5.

15 One thinks of the severe criticism by the ‘Kairos’ theologians of South Africa who in 1985 sharply rejected the ‘church theology’ that spoke too readily of ‘reconciliation’ instead of attending to the manifest injustices of apartheid.

16 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Works. XI. Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 1931–1932 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), p. 368. In the context of this paper as a whole, one can hardly avoid referring also to Bonhoeffer’s entry into the political resistance to Hitler, and to his confiding to ecumenical friends abroad that he was praying for the military defeat of his country – the ultimate level of true patriotism, pace Patriarch Kirill’s labelling of dissent as ‘treason’.

17 Visser’t Hooft, Memoirs, p. 114.

18 The pain would certainly be felt by this writer, who during his ecumenical work cherished his close, fraternal and enriching contacts with the ROC at all levels.

19 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Works. XIV. Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 1935–1937 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), p. 400.