a movement of Christian churches to eliminate the division between them and unite church forces on an international scale. It originated on the initiative of Protestant churches of the USA and Western Europe in the early 20th century (specifically, at the first World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910); it received definitive establishment with the organization at an assembly of churches in Amsterdam in 1948 of the World Council of Churches, the body that unites and coordinates the activities of church organizations participating in the movement.
The formal goal of the ecumenical movement is the achievement of religious unity among Christians; in practice the movement is directed at surmounting the profound crisis in Christianity and at strengthening Christianity’s position in the modern world. Originally, the Protestant religious organizations of the capitalist countries held total control over the movement, which functioned as an instrument of political reaction and undisguised anticommunism. However, the proimperialistic orientation and the particularly Protestant character of the theological positions advocated condemned the ecumenical movement to sociopolitical and religious self-isolation. Since the late 1950’s there has been a change from flagrant anticommunism to a more realistic policy.
Between 1961 and 1965 the World Council of Churches was joined by the Orthodox and various other churches of almost all the socialist countries, including the USSR, and many church organizations of the developing countries. The broadening of the social membership and denominational affiliation of the movement’s participants has furthered the consolidation of church forces. At the same time it has led to pointed discussions of political and social problems—the participation of the organizations of the ecumenical movement in the peace movement, the possibility and forms of dialogue between Christians and Marxists, and the evaluation and interpretation of social revolutions—as well as problems of a religious and organizational nature, such as the attitude toward the process of religious secularization, church reform, religious tolerance, and the degree of Christian integration within the World Council of Churches. In spite of its renunciation of any apologetics of capitalism—a stance characteristic of the modern ecumenical movement—the movement remains an instrument of bourgeois politics because of the predominance within it of religious organizations of the capitalist countries. Its fundamental theological doctrines are permeated by a spirit of Protestantism; the Protestant churches maintain absolute hegemony in the movement. The Catholic Church remains outside the ecumenical movement, although it consults with it. In 1980, about 300 churches from more than 100 countries participated in the movement as members of the World Council of Churches. The council has held five general assemblies, the last of which was held in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1975.