The World Council of Churches was founded on this day in 1948 In August 1920, an inter-Christian conference, “Life and Work,” took place in Geneva. The Supreme Church Authority in the South of Russia assigned Archbishop Evlogii (Georgievskii) of Volynia to represent the Russian Church at it. In 1915–1916, Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitskii) had engaged in correspondence with Robert Gardiner, the founder of another inter-Christian conference, “Faith and Order.” In his last letter, Archbishop Anthony wrote: “But just allow me to repeat that a conviction of the correctness of one’s own church and of the graceless condition of all heretics and schismatics, does in no way stand in the way of objective and patient debate on matters of faith and definitely cannot instill in its followers a prideful and scornful attitude.” In 1927, the first conference on “Faith and Order” in Lausanne assembled 500 delegates representing 102 denominations. A year earlier, a rift had occurred in the Russian diaspora between the centers of church life in Paris and in Karlovci, Serbia. The ROCOR Synod in Serbia suspended the Paris-based Metropolitan Evlogii. The fact that Evlogii and professors at St. Serge Theological Institute attended the conference meant that the ROCOR did not send any observers of its own. In this way, the hope expressed in Metropolitan Anthony’s letter remained unfulfilled. On August 23, 1948, in Amsterdam, both of these Protestant Christian conferences – “Life and Work” and “Faith and Order” – were merged to form the World Council of Churches. The organizers did not invite any members of the ROCOR, because they wanted representatives of the Church in Russia to attend. Although the Moscow Patriarchate at that time refused to participate in the ecumenical movement, in his response to the invitation, Metropolitan Nicholas (Yarushevich) of Krutitsy pointed out that no émigré church has the authority to represent the Russian Church at the WCC. The ROCOR would send its representatives to the assemblies of the World Council of Churches in Evanston, IL in 1956 and New Delhi, India in 1961. To defend the unique status of the Orthodox Church as the Church founded by the Lord Jesus Christ, Archpriest Georges Florovsky, during World War II a ROCOR clergyman in Serbia, drafted the following points, which were adopted in 1950 in Toronto: “1. The World Council of Churches is not and must never become a super-Church. - The purpose of World Council of Churches is not to negotiate unions between Churches, which can only be done by the Churches themselves, […] but to bring the Churches into living contact with each other and to promote the study and discussion of the issues of Church unity. […]
- Membership in the World Council of Churches does not imply that a Church treats its own conception of the Church as merely relative.”
Despite this disclaimer and primarily due to the participation of Orthodox in joint prayer with non-Orthodox at the assemblies – a practice that was abandoned not long ago – the WCC has become a stumbling block to the Russian Church Abroad. This attitude found its way into the Resolution of the Fourth Pan-Diaspora Council in San Francisco, which dealt with unification with the Moscow Patriarchate: “From discussions at the Council, it is apparent that the participation of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate in the World Council of Churches evokes confusion among our clergy and flock. With heartfelt pain we ask the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate to heed the plea of our flock to expediently remove this temptation.” Sources A.M. Aagard, P. Bouteneff, Beyond the East-West Divide: The World Council of Churches and “the Orthodox Problem” (Geneva, 2001). A. J. van der Bent, “Florovsky, Georges Vasilievich,” Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, N. Lossky, J. M. Bonino et al. (Geneva, 2002). Relevant Links St. Hilarion (Archimandrite Troitskii), The Unity of the Church and the World Conference of Christian Communities Deacon Andrei Psarev, Nadieszda Kizenko, “The Russian Church Abroad, the Moscow Patriarchate, and Their Participation in Ecumenical Assemblies during the Cold War, 1948-1964” Protopresbyter George Grabbe’s Correspondence with Archpriests Georges Florovsky and Alexander Schmemann A. Psarev, The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia and the Ecumenical Movement: an Historical Evaluation 1920–1948 | 
