Editorial.

VANELDEREN, MARLIN

Judging from the furnishings of the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, the ecumenical movement, oriented as it is to words, is not much given to commemorating its past through the medium of statues of its leading figures. To be sure there are small statues of the apostle Paul and of Martin Luther (the latter perhaps Compensating for the modest level of his recognition -- a block of granite with his name carved into it -- in Geneva's Reformation Monument). But while certain commitments of both Paul and Luther to the unity of the church may be cited ecumenically, neither can be considered to have been part of the 20th-century movement.

The exception is a bust of Nathan Soderblom (1866-1931), by all accounts one of the major architects of the ecumenical movement -- and by Bishop George Bell's account the person who did more than any other Christian leader of his time "to unite Orthodox and evangelical churches of all nations and communions in a common fellowship". As archbishop of Sweden, Soderblom worked assiduously during the first world war to base peace-making efforts in that "common fellowship" of the churches; unfortunately, these initiatives drew a response only from church leaders in the neutral countries. Undeterred, he devoted his considerable energies and talents after the war to the organization and follow-up of the 1925 universal conference on Life and Work, a milestone in ecumenical history and the origin of the movement which merged with Faith and Order (Soderblom also chaired a section at its world conference in 1927) to form the World Council of Churches. In 1930 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Apart from this, however, the significant contributions of the churches of the Nordic countries to the ecumenical movement have perhaps tended to have a lower profile than one might expect. The overwhelming numerical predominance of the Lutheran churches in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden may create in other parts of the oikoumene an image -- "stereotype" is perhaps a more accurate term -- of solid faithfulness (the support of the churches in these countries for mission and development initiatives far beyond their shores, and for ecumenical organizations, is well-known), rather than creative ecumenical ferment. And the economic well-being of the Nordic countries perhaps leads them often to be lumped together in the minds of many with the rest of "the West".

Against that background, most of the articles in this issue of The Ecumenical Review -- the majority written by persons from this part of the world (not all of them Lutherans)-- might be seen as a sharing of some elements of a "Nordic contextual ecumenical theology". They have their origins in a 1999 conference, a "Postgraduate Seminar on Ecumenics" held not in the north but in Italy, at a centre in Farfa Sabina (outside Rome) whose name recalls the Swedish saint Birgitta, a tireless worker for the unity and renewal of the troubled church of the 14th century.

The articles selected here reflect the two focal points of the seminar. One focus was "ecumenical trends", especially the recent discussions of globalization, human rights and ecclesiology and ethics. The other focus was "ecumenical texts" -- in particular, the encyclical of Pope John Paul II on ecumenism, Ut Unum Sint, the Lutheran-Catholic joint declaration on justification and the Porvoo common statement of the Anglican churches of Britain and Ireland and most (though not all) of the Lutheran churches of the Nordic and Baltic countries.

One of the papers originally presented to the seminar -- on the Orthodox churches and the ecumenical movement -- appeared in the October 1999 issue of The Ecumenical Review; it was written by Anna Marie Aagaard, a president of the WCC from 1991 to 1998, a Lutheran theologian at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and one of the co-organizers of the Farfa seminar. To her we owe a debt of gratitude for making this material available in this form to the readers of The Ecumenical Review.