Looking to transcend capitalism and communism in Seoul

Today - 5 March 2010 - marks the 20th anniversary of the opening of the World Convocation on Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation (JPIC) . Planned as the culmination of the JPIC process - better known in the then two German states as the "Conciliar Process" - delegates from all parts of the world converged for a week's deliberations in the South Korean capital of Seoul. It was intended to express "the urgent call for authoritative witness by the churches" in the face of injustice, hunger and poverty; war and violence; and destruction of the environment, stemming from an initative at the WCC's 1983 assembly in Vancouver, which, in large part due to efforts of the delegates from the German Democratic Republic, called on the WCC "to engage member churches in a conciliar process of mutual commitment to justice, peace and the integrity of creation".

Here, a key role had been played by the GDR theologian Heino Falcke, both in the run-up to the Vancouver assembly and in subsequent elaboration of the Conciliar Process in the GDR and at the global level.

In the GDR, the high point of this conciliar process was an Ecumenical Assembly of Churches and Christians which met in three sessions in 1988 and 1989, and which, not least because of the involvement of peace, environmental and human rights groups, made unprecedented demands for the reform of the GDR and influenced the citizens' movements and political parties formed at the time of the peaceful revolution of autumn 1989. According to Heino Falcke:

The ecumenical assembly raised the floodgates enough to release the log-jam of change. It gave an ecumenical inspiration to the dynamic for change, which also in a way gave it legitimacy; and above all, it gave it a direction that was set by the gospel.

An ecumenical gathering was held in 1988 in the Federal Republic of Germany, and in May 1989, the first European Ecumenical Assembly, "Peace with Justice", took place in the Swiss city of Basel. By the time the Convocation met in Seoul, however, the world had experienced a change of momentous dimensions. The epochal shift can be seen not least in the chronology of the GDR itself. The Basel assembly took place just after the widespread rigging of already undemocratic municipal elections in the GDR that was one of the triggers for the "peaceful revolution" of autumn 1989. The world convocation the following year took place immediately before the elections of March 1990 in the GDR that led to the first freely-elected Volkskammer, the GDR parliament. Many of those - like Falcke - involved in the events that led to the "peaceful revolution" considered that they had taken part in a movement for liberation and a new more just, peaceful and sustainable world order.

Yet, for many of those in Seoul from the Global South, the events in Europe at the end of the 1980s were being regarded with suspicion. Certainly, in his address to the Seoul convocation, Frank Chikane, then general secretary of the South African Council of Churches - from a country where the release of Nelson Mandela and the unbanning of the African National Congress was also experiencing an epochal shift - described the changes in Europe as an opportunity to leave behind old models based on capitalism and communism and to replace them with new models "aimed at moving towards the Kingdom of God". However, he warned also that if the "First and Second World come together on the basis of the old system ... the remaining two-thirds of the world will be in trouble".

At the same time, the voices of Christians from the two German states (and especially the GDR), who had in many ways provided the motor for the conciliar process, were muted in Seoul. The specific conditions within the GDR which had given such force to the conciliar process disappeared with the autumn revolution. The conciliar process, whose origins lay in an initiative at a time of heightened East-West tension, was being overshadowed by the process of German unification. By the time the world convocation took place in Seoul, immediately before the GDR's free elections of March 1990, the collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe and the accelerating process towards German unification had fundamentally shifted the terms of the debate.

In a recent paper, Falcke noted how East Germans themselves had little time after the opening of the Berlin wall on 9 November 1989 to reflect on the significance of the epoch-changing events. Instead, they were fully consumed by the "breathtaking processes" in their own country that led to the unification of Germany, 11 months later, in October 1990.

Falcke said that travelling to Seoul for the World Convocation had allowed him to gain a different perspective:

While I was there. I was often greeted with the joyful words, "The wall has been broken down!", but was made to feel very clear just how this process was seen from the perspective of other problems in the world and especially about the hopes and fears in Central America and Asia about the revolutions in Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War.

[The photo shows the closing worship at the Seoul convocation. Souce: http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/jpc/hist-e.html]

Was 1989 good for humanity?

Over on the Guardian Comment is Free/Belief site, Ulrich Duchrow has posted an answer to the question, "Was 1989 good for humanity?" He notes how the prayers for peace in East German churches were also linked to the Conciliar Process for Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation launched by the World Council of Churches. It was good, Duchrow writes, for people to experience that self-liberation is possible when a system has lost its legitimacy. However, the people lost control in the process of transformation. In East Germany, capital and the West German political institutions took over. His conclusion:

So 1989 can only be seen as good for humanity in the future if the people of the world learn from the "peaceful revolution" that they have the power of self-liberation from an oppressive and destructive system. If they interpret this year as the victory of the west they allow capitalism to continue to destroy humanity, the earth and eventually itself. There are signs of that learning. One of them is the World Social Forum and its sub-events at regional, national and local levels. Here people train to develop a co-operative solidarity economy (geared at satisfying real needs of people instead of the greed of property owners), models for money as public good and co-operative banks, serving the real economy instead of speculative accumulation, as well as direct and participatory in addition to representative democracy. The World Council of Churches, its member churches (unfortunately, less so in Europe) and the grassroots ecumenical movement form part of this process by working for AGAPE (Alternative Globalisation Addressing People and Earth) and just peace.

He ends by quoting Heino Falcke: "The art of Christian hope is to work persistently for making possible the necessary."

The Berlin Wall and the Ecumenical Movement

By Konrad Raiser (*)
The opening or fall of the Berlin Wall was an unexpected event for the people most directly affected, but even more so for the world at large. The ecumenical movement was no exception. However, the events in 1989 East Germany were to have a wide and long lasting impact on it that can still be felt today.

To be sure, large numbers of people from the former German Democratic Republic had left the country since the opening of the border between Hungary and Austria in the summer of 1989. Also, a growing network of civic groups, struggling for fundamental social and political change in the country, had emerged. They had benefited from the protection by the churches and were inspired by the ecumenical assemblies earlier in the year at Magdeburg and Dresden as part of the conciliar process on Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation.

Similar groups and movements had been operating in neighbouring countries already for some time. All of this had created a dynamic pushing for change, especially after the large, explicitly non-violent demonstration in Leipzig on Monday, 9 October 1989. But even then, few people expected that the wall would come down so soon, preparing the way for the end of communist rule not only in East Germany but in the entire region of central and eastern Europe and eventually overcoming the division of Germany and of Europe.

The series of events taking place in Europe from the summer of 1989 continuing well into the year 1990 and complemented by radical changes in South Africa and in other parts of the world had profound implications for the ecumenical movement. During the four decades following the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Amsterdam 1948, ecumenical efforts for justice and peace had been conditioned by the antagonism of the two major power-blocks and its consequences for countries in the southern hemisphere.

Ecumenical organizations, especially the WCC and the Conference of European Churches had tried to maintain links with the churches in the countries under Communist rule. Their witness for peace under the threat of nuclear confrontation had finally borne fruit. The 1990 Paris Charter for a "new Europe" appeared to herald in a new world order of peace and justice and a process of genuine disarmament began to take shape.

But the transformations in Europe and in other parts of the world had come so suddenly that neither governments nor the churches were sufficiently prepared for the new situation. The countries and churches, liberated from oppressive ideological and political constraints, had to find a new identity. In many instances this led to sharp internal struggles, especially between those involved in or complicit with the former system and those who had struggled for liberty, justice and human rights.

Ecumenical organizations came under scrutiny as well in view of their relationships with representatives of the former system and their lack of effective support for the struggles of dissident movements. In some cases, "ecumenism" even became a term to be avoided. Internal tensions developed particularly in many of the Orthodox churches leading to the withdrawal of the Orthodox churches in Georgia and Bulgaria from membership in the WCC.

Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall the second Gulf war in 1991, the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia as well the rapid progression of the process of globalization presented the ecumenical witness for justice and peace with unprecedented new challenges. The fragile order of the "cold war" years had been replaced by a new "world disorder".

In recognition of the important, and in some cases decisive ways in which the churches had contributed to the peaceful revolution in central and eastern Europe as well as to the ending of the apartheid regime in southern Africa, the ecumenical movement accepted the challenge to overcome violence as its special vocation. That the Decade to Overcome Violence should have been officially inaugurated in February 2001 in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin was therefore a symbolic tribute to the peaceful revolution that brought down the Berlin Wall.

* The Rev. Dr Konrad Raiser, a Lutheran theologian from Germany, is a former WCC general secretary (1993-2003). This contribution first appeared on oikoumene.org:

http://www.oikoumene.org/en/news/news-management/eng/a/article/1634/the-fall-of-the-berlin-wa.html

Where were you on 9 November, Frau Kässmann?

I was in Geneva where I was taking part in preparations for the World Council of Churches' World Convocation on Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation. I was overwhelmed with joy and though: what a miracle that this process has had such an effect. It was one of the reasons why the protests in the GDR remained peaceful. Three days later I returned to my country parish in Hessen where we we looking after people from the GDR, people who had escaped via Hungary and the Embassy in Prague who had been lodged in a vacation home nearby.

Bishop Margot Kässmann, newly elected chairperson of the council of the Evangelical Church in Germany

- From a questionnaire of public figures asking where they were when the wall was opened, published in the Rheinischer Merkur.