Is the East-West Political Bipolarity the Foundation of the Ecumenical Movement? The Cold War as a Meta-Narrative of the World Council of Churches

Excerpt: ...the following remarks provide an overview of the role of churches during the Cold War. Very often, the role of churches will be represented by developments and discussions within the WCC, which can be understood as a sort of role model, because it provided the bell for similar developments in the Western and Northern European countries. Three topics were prioritized. First was the dilemma of an ecumenism between the East and West in the early phase of the Cold War during the late 1940s and 1950s, which accompanied the founding of the World Council of Churches in 1948. Second, was the position of the World Council of Churches in the period of detente after the late 1960s. And third, was the issue of political instrumentalization of the World Council of Churches during the Cold War period. For them all, the Cold War formed a kind of meta-history, because its implicit antagonism between the West and East, between two different political systems and its various phases also shaped the great debates, controversies, and directional decisions of the churches