A major new history of ecumenism was launched during a webinar held by the World Council of Churches (WCC) on 19 January 2022, during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2022.
The book is titled Dawn of Ecumenism, the first of a three-volume work called A History of the Desire for Christian Unity. It traces the long-term roots of ecumenism and reconstructs the historical, theological, and political junctures that marked the beginning of a distinctive movement that ran throughout the 19th century and into the heart of the 20th, covering a period up to the Second World War.
The publication has been produced by a team of academics and scholars coordinated by the Italian-based Foundation for Religious Studies (FSCIRE). The project has been directed by Prof Dr Alberto Melloni, secretary of FSCIRE, and edited by Dr Luca Ferracci, an affiliated researcher at FSCIRE. The first book includes 32 separate articles by Orthodox, Protestant and Roman Catholic scholars, organised around three main themes.
At the webinar, Melloni and Ferracci presented the project as a whole, offered an introduction to the first volume, and introduced the plans for the next two volumes. Responses to the volume were presented by three panellists coming from Roman Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox backgrounds: Prof Dr Michael Quisinsky of the Catholic University of Freiburg; Prof Dr Elisabeth Parmentier of the University of Geneva; and Archbishop Job of Telmessos, representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the WCC.
Dr Stephen Brown, editor of the WCC journal The Ecumenical Review, who moderated the webinar, said: ‘At a time when we are marking the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, this new publication offers an insight into the profound desire for unity between Christians, and will be an invaluable resource as the WCC looks toward its assembly later this year.’
For more details, and a link to the table of contents of the new publication, please see the WCC website.
