Tiptoeing Through the Minefields of the Cold War

A tribute to Karoly Toth

The evolution of the churches’ common witness for peace and justice  

It has been said that the modern ecumenical movement was formed in the gathering clouds of war, forged in the furnace of wars, and its strength tested in the Cold War.  From its beginnings in the late 19^th century it was an internationalist peace movement that saw itself both as the conscience and as an instrument of the churches.  It was rooted in the local church and from there reached out to others who shared its biblical, utopian vision of a world where the lion could lie down with the lamb; where there would be no more fear; where brothers and sisters, young and old would make common cause; where enmity would be replaced by friendship among the nations and peoples.  It was rooted in the mission of the Christian Church and sought the unity of the Church in order that the Gospel message could be seen as credible to all.  It believed that God alone reigns supreme over all of history and all principalities and powers are subject to God’s will.  It was made up of people, especially youth with a purpose who were loyal to their own nations, but who at all times held their leaders to account for their words and actions, their silence and their complicity with those forces which divide the nations from one another.  It sought to build bridges between denominations and confessions, and between people trapped in opposing camps.  It welcomed alliances with those who shared its ideals and its hopes for the world.  It was from the beginning a non-violent, antimilitarist movement that believed that true security could never be founded on reliance on weapons or the threat of armed force.  It was a movement of reconciliation, but not at the price of the sacrifice of principle.  It came to know that its task was a risky one that, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer taught, demanded sacrifice and costly discipleship.

Despite its best efforts, this movement and those who shared its ideas were unable to prevent the First World War that it saw looming on the horizon.  At the end of the war, however, it engaged actively in equipping the churches to aid the victims: the displaced, the homeless, the bereft, the widows, the orphans, and the maimed.  It did this out of a sense of Christian responsibility and in the hope that it might help heal the wounds that continued to divide peoples and nations and break the spiral of retributive violence that comes from the lex talionis.

Shortly after the conclusion of WWI, in 1920, the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople issued a call for the formation of an international “League of Churches” alongside theLeague of Nations. As the several ecumenical streams that were formed after the turn of the century matured, they took up this challenge and decided in 1937 to form a World Council of Churches to strengthen Christian unity and the churches’ peace, justice and reconciliation efforts around the world.  The conference to formally establish the WCC planned to be held in 1938 had to be postponed due to the increasingly dangerous international situation.  A “Provisional Committee for the World Council of Churches in process of formation” was created, however, and a small headquarters staff was established inGenevaunder the leadership of Willem Visser’t Hooft.

The churches engaged in the WCC in process of formation engaged early on during the war years to plan for and promote a post-war world order based on peace and the international rule of law, and made significant contributions to the Charter of the new United Nations adopted inSan Franciscoin 1945.  The following year, the International Missionary Council and the WCC joined to create the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA) as an instrument to promote and strengthen the UN and to represent the WCC churches there.

New challenges: from open armed conflict to Cold War

The long-postponed First WCC Assembly was finally held in 1948 atAmsterdamwhere the World Council of Churches was formally established.  As the movement had done at the conclusion of WWI, the WCC was already actively engaged out of itsGenevaheadquarters in programs of refugee resettlement and post-war reconstruction and reconciliation efforts.  There was a sense of new beginnings and optimism that through the instrumentality of the UN and by the grace of God the peace might this time be lasting, built on solid foundations.

One debate at the Amsterdam Assembly, however, evidenced the challenges that lay ahead.  The fourth section of the Assembly, on “The Church and International Disorder”, featured presentations by the Czech theologian Josef Hromadka and American layman John Foster Dulles. 

Hromadka, deeply concerned about the continuing and deepening divisions between “West” and “East” (and thus between capitalism and communism), pleaded for the Church “to go beyond the present national, political and ‘bloc’ divisions.  She cannot, if she be loyal to her mission, identify herself with any group of people…  Without illusions or self-deception she is aware of the terrible dangers lurking within the Western and the Eastern heart.  All has become fluid: all categories of justice, freedom and political rights need to be rethought, redefined and reinterpreted, all institutions of international life reconstructed.”  He was acutely aware of the potential for abuse of power and thus injustice within the Soviet bloc, and therefore pleaded with Western Christians to recognize and strengthen the Communist system’s potential for positive social transformation to greater social and economic equality.  The West, he asserted, with its ideological blinders can see only the splinter of evil in the East and is blind to the log lodged in its own eye.  The Church should address the real needs of the moment in both the East and the West and help them to achieve the real freedom and real justice that Christ wills for all through humble and repentant dialogue and attempts at mutual understanding.

Dulles agreed that the world was at an historic turning point in a still deeply troubling international situation marked by the accumulation of ever more powerful weapons of mass destruction.  A new war was unthinkable given the advent of atomic weapons, and thus the Church must provide moral, responsible leadership based on recognition of moral law, which must govern all human society, and the conviction that God has invested every individual human being with a dignity that no human law could deny.  Wherever these two principles are violated abuse of power and brutal violence inevitably follow, he asserted, and this was the case in societies governed by the ideology of Marxist Communism.  Orthodox Communism had no place in a partnership for a peaceful world order.  At the same time, he called on Western Christians to be more deeply engaged in assuring that the basic moral principles were embodied in their own national social and political institutions.  Though skeptical about the possibility to influence the Communist system, he acknowledged that it still allowed some openings.  He called upon the churches to adopt a “Cold War” strategy and to exercise their special Gospel responsibility to form a strong, well-organized United Nations, so that those openings could be effectively pursued.

The Berlin Wall was not built until sixteen years later in 1964, but this Amsterdam exchange marked indelibly for the ecumenical movement the Cold War line of demarcation between two super-power blocs: between the Western principle that justice begins and ends with the freedom of the individual and the Socialist idea that without a just social order there can be no true freedom for anyone.

Dulles went on to become U.S. Secretary of State four years later under President Eisenhower.  There he was regarded as the chief proponent of “Cold War” thinking, but at the same time he led aU.S.foreign policy deeply committed to international law and institutions.  He was a forceful advocate of a strong United Nations, of disarmament through international negotiation, and – in consonance with his appeal to the churches atAmsterdamto apply the fundamental principles at home – he shared President Eisenhower’s critique of what he called the “military-industrial complex” in his own country. 

Hromadka, who was invited to teach at Princeton Theological Seminary in theUSduring the Nazi occupation of his homeland taught from 1939 to 1947, had returned toPragueto teach.  A decade afterAmsterdam, he created the Christian Peace Conference, hoping to build a bridge of dialogue and understanding between East and West.  Deeply disillusioned following the 1968 Soviet invasion ofCzechoslovakiathat ended Dubcek’s experiment towards a Socialism with a “human face,” he resigned from the CPC presidency and died soon after.

Speaking at Hromadka’s funeral, Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, the recently-elected American (Presbyterian) General Secretary of the World Council of Churches said, “Hromadka was above all a man under the Word of God… The reason non-Christians can never quite understand a Josef Hromadka is that they cannot believe that he really was committed to the just rule of God which makes any completely political commitment to any earthly kingdom an idolatry to be rejected.  So, many Americans during the cold war supposed he must be a communist and therefore an enemy, while many communists distrusted his loyalty even while for 21 years he was the strongest force in Eastern Europe in persuading his fellow churchmen to support, in faith and hope, their new revolutionary socialist governments and societies; and during those same 21 years he was the outstanding moral interpreter to the West of the vision of justice and peace that has inspired the best in all socialist nations…”

Both Dulles and Hromadka were committed to the ecumenical movement and to the World Council of Churches.  Both sought in their own ways to provide a witness in their respective countries for peace and justice.  Their paths diverged, but they remained bound in mutual respect.

Good men can disagree.  The task of the ecumenical movement is to keep them talking with – and learning from – one another for the sake of peace in the wider fellowship and in the world.

Tiptoeing through the minefield of the Cold War

Keeping that dialogue alive during the Cold War was a major challenge for the World Council of Churches. It needed dedicated, courageous and astute guides to help it negotiate the path through the minefield of misunderstandings, controversies, animosities and dangers of the Cold War. 

Karoly Toth was, providentially, such a one.   Born midway between the two world wars, he grew up in an economically and politically devastated land.  He lived through its vacillations between social democracy and fascism as a child.  He experienced war, German occupation of his homeland toward the end of WWII, and later, as a mature young man, the 1956 Soviet intervention that cut short the Hungarian revolution’s attempt to restore democracy and a mixed economy.  His deep roots in the Hungarian Reformed Church, where he was guided by teachers and church leaders who believed deeply in the principles of the ecumenical movement, equipped him to learn from those experiences.  As a young theologian he joined the Christian Peace Conference and imbibed Hromadka’s theology of engagement for reconciliation.  After the latter’s death he was encouraged to assume leadership of the deeply fractured CPC and he was bold enough to accept the daunting challenge of seeking to restore it as an instrument that could serve churches living under the severe restrictions of Communist rule and provide a bridge between Protestant and Orthodox Christians in East and West,.

Bridge builders, as the eminent Dutch ecumenical leader Hendrikus Berkhof put it, are often accused by both shores of abandoning them.  This was certainly true for Karoly, yet he persisted despite criticisms from both sides and became a discrete, valued and trusted advisor to the WCC. He was a member of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA) when I joined the WCC staff in early 1971. I had been charged with organizing an ecumenical consultation to chart a new ecumenical approach to human rights.  It was a time when few church leaders fromEastern Europewere able or willing to risk embarking on this path through the minefield of the Cold War.  Human rights were at the center of the East-West ideological divide.  Karoly not only took the risk, but helped us to design a strategy that could engage churches in both West and East on an equal footing.  He participated actively in the 1974 Consultation on Human Rights and Christian Responsibility inSt. Pölten,Austriathat laid the foundations for a new ecumenical departure in the field of human rights and religious liberty.

In the following years, Karoly helped to interpret the delicate and often-volatile situations in which the churches in Eastern andCentral Europewere caught so that we could work in ways that would help them and their ministries.  He helped open doors for the WCC to both the churches in the eastern bloc, and – crucially – to state ministers of religious affairs.  Both were key to the WCC’s efforts to foster East-West ecumenical contacts and dialogue by bringing church representatives together quietly, on neutral ground, to share information, build relationships and plan joint activities.  He was at times able to vouch for the good faith of the WCC with national authorities so that church representatives could travel abroad for such encounters.  The fruits of these efforts were seen especially in the period following the 1979 Soviet invasion ofAfghanistanwhen virtually all official contacts between theUSand theUSSRwere cut.  At a time when nuclear tensions were growing between the two super-power blocs, the provided at times the only direct human contact that proved to be crucial to international understanding.

Karoly was also active in the CCIA’s work in the late 1970s and early 1980s on militarism and human rights and on disarmament, helping to prepare and participating in international consultations held to develop ecumenical policy in these fields.  Similarly, he advised the WCC during planning for the important WCC International Public Hearing on Nuclear Weapons and Disarmament that was held inAmsterdamin 1981, bringing together church leaders, high-standing political figures, and internationally-recognized scientific experts in the field from both East and West.  Those hearings focused on “detailed attention to the facts, the weighting of probabilities, and a willingness to wrestle with the dilemmas actually faced by world leaders.”  At a critical point in the nuclear arms race, they gave visibility and credibility to the churches’ global efforts to turn the tide of public and political awareness “before it’s too late”.

Christian witness for peace and reconciliation in a divided world

The Cold War was declared to be over in 1991, two years after the Berlin Wall was smashed down in November 1989.  As should have been predicted, the collapse of theSoviet Uniondid not usher in an age of peace and freedom for “captive nations,” but rather an explosion of ethnic and national conflicts throughout the region.  In one of the most complex periods of international affairs in recent history, new analyses and new responses were needed to address these wars.  Regrettably, Cold War thinking outlived the Cold War itself and continued to dominate and cloud thinking about how to approach conflicts like those in the Balkans.  By then, now-Bishop (emeritus) Karoly Toth might have been enjoying a well-deserved retirement with his family and friends, Instead, he founded the Ecumenical Study Center to help analyze the root causes of these and other regional tensions and open conflicts and to provide them as resources to the churches in the wider ecumenical movement for their efforts to promote peace and reconciliation.  Once again, his insights and remarkable ability to identify key actors on the several sides of some conflicts and bring them together across national, ethnic, confessional and religious lines were brought into play.  I was privileged to participate in one of the consultations organized together with the Hungarian Catholic Bishops Conference and was again deeply impressed by his clarity and sensitivity in facilitating discussions on sensitive and often divisive issues.

These memories of Karoly’s contributions to the work of the WCC over the years touch only some highlights.  Fortunately other contributors to this volume will fill out the picture of Karoly’s manifold contributions to his own beloved Hungarian Reformed Church and to the wider ecumenical movement, including his leadership role for many years in the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. 

I was grateful for the invitation to contribute to this effort.  Ecumenical memory grows shorter by the year with the passing of the generations that lived the vitality of the movement.  It is thus all the more important to put on record the contributions of leaders like this one whose lives have been devoted to Christian witness for peace and reconciliation in a divided, needy world.

It is important, too, because the ecumenical movement and its institutions are now at a crucial turning point.  As with so many other global non-governmental enterprises, the impact of economic globalization trends has severely weakened the financial base of the WCC and its network of related regional and national ecumenical councils.  At the same time, many churches are turning inward in response to their own institutional and financial difficulties.  Ecumenical approaches to mission, sharing and service and witness to the world of nations are giving way to more narrow confessional considerations and free-enterprise approaches based on the perceived need to increase “market share” in the market of providing emergency and development aid.  Ever fewer members of the present generation of church leaders have direct personal experience of the international ecumenical movement.  Yet the challenge of church unity and the unity of humankind has seldom been greater than at present. 

While, as mentioned at the beginning of this writing, it has been crucial for the ecumenical movement to have effective institutions to implement its ideas and embody its vision.  But the greatest strength of the movement has been in the lifelong personal relationships that have been built there among men and women who share the ideals and aspirations that inspired the founders of the World Council of Churches.  The greatest of ecumenical leaders have been bold actors, and thus have been subject to criticism, even by their friends.  Debates among them have often been strong.  But the confrontations of individual ideas and perspectives have strengthened the whole, and when troubles came, as they inevitably do, the family tie prevailed over all; personal friendship, trust and loyalty remained strong.  

I am only one of a myriad of persons who have benefited from the intellectual encounter, the challenges, the wisdom and the warm personal friendship of Karoly Toth, a bold modern-day Christian witness for peace, justice, reconciliation and the unity of the Church and of humankind. 

We all thank you, Karoly.  You have so often remembered and encouraged us.  Allow us now to return the favor.  May your costly discipleship be an inspiration to the generations of witnesses to come.

14 February 2006

Rev. Dwain C. Epps