WCC NEWS: Students explore ecumenical peacebuilding, 100 years after Stockholm conference

When the Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work brought international church leaders to Stockholm in August 1925 to seek reconciliation and peace after the carnage of the First World War, the youngest delegate was 24-year-old Willem Visser ’t Hooft. 19 August 2025, Stockholm, Sweden: An Ecumenical Summer Academy entitled 'Ecumenical Peacebuilding in Times of War. The Legacy of Stockholm 1925' is organized at the University College Stockholm as one hundred years after the historical Stockholm conference of 1925, representatives of churches from around the globe gather again in Stockholm, hosted by the Christian Council of Sweden for a week of ecumenical anniversary celebrations on 18-24 August 2025. Photo: Albin Hillert/WCC/CCS 08 September 2025 When the Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work brought international church leaders to Stockholm in August 1925 to seek reconciliation and peace after the carnage of the First World War, the youngest delegate was 24-year-old Willem Visser ’t Hooft. He had just started working in Geneva for the YMCA but would go on to become the first general secretary of the World Council of Churches when it was founded in 1948, and his experience as a young person at the Stockholm conference set the direction for his life. He was, he wrote later, “miraculously admitted as a substitute delegate, and I therefore had to keep rather quiet.” One hundred years later, however, as people from Sweden and around the world gathered in Stockholm for an Ecumenical Week to commemorate the 1925 conference, they will have noticed the intensive involvement of students and young people at many of the panels and keynote presentations.  Summer Academy student Nova-Madelene Sefton Göransson (left) poses a question to Dr Sara Gehlin from University College Stockholm at a seminar held at the Immanuel Church in Stockholm featuring contributing authors to a special anthology produced for what has been dubbed a special 'Ecumenical Year' in Sweden. Photo: Albin Hillert/WCC/CCS Interacting with the speakers, the students came from a Summer Academy organized to coincide with the commemoration by University College Stockholm (UCS), a college of the Uniting Church in Sweden.  “I thought this is such a unique opportunity to really experience international ecumenism today, but also to develop a deep understanding of the meaning of the Stockholm conference of 1925,” said Dr Sara Gehlin, a senior lecturer in theology at UCS who first had the idea to organize the academy. With its theme “Ecumenical Peacebuilding in Times of War: The Legacy of Stockholm 1925,” the Summer Academy looked back on the Stockholm conference and the message of peace that emerged from the gathering.  It explored its significance today when the world is once again marked by international conflict, and in the context of a church that is worldwide, multicultural, and embraces a multiplicity of traditions.      The academy began in June with a four-week online phase organized by Gehlin and her colleague at UCS, lecturer Vera la Mela. It gathered about 70 students, about a third from outside Sweden, to listen and interact with lecturers and to delve themselves into the history of ecumenical peacemaking. About 30 of them were able to come to Stockholm for an in-person phase that coincided with the Ecumenical Week from 18 to 24 August, organized by the Christian Council of Sweden under the theme “Time for God’s Peace.” Here students had an opportunity to meet each other and the lecturers that they had previously seen online.  Students and faculty at the Summer Academy pay a visit to Stockholm Old Town to learn about the city’s past and present. Photo: Albin Hillert/WCC/CCS They took part in lectures and discussions at UCS, including a presentation by Egyptian scholar and interfaith practitioner Dr Azza Karam, who was also one of the keynote speakers at the Ecumenical Week.  Cooperation with the Christian Council meant the students took part in the main events of the Ecumenical Week, asking questions of keynote speakers and panelists, and offering messages for peace at the Ecumenical Celebration at Filadelfia church One of the students who participated by asking questions was Sr Marie-Farouza Maximos, a consecrated sister of the Chemin Neuf Community, who was born in France with a Franco-Egyptian background.  “I am very much aware of the questions of unity and reconciliation,” said Maximos, currently working as a programme coordinator at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem, and who responded to the keynote lecture by Swedish Archbishop Emerita Antje Jackelén. “But here I realized the strong link between the birth of ecumenism and the questions of war and peace at the 1925 conference in Stockholm,” she said. “It’s obvious, of course, but I saw it in a new way.”  Johan Wahlström, a student from Sweden, said the course had given him a deeper understanding of the history of the ecumenical movement and the interconnections between different issues. “It’s not only about churches coming together,” he said. "It spreads out to all the different areas of life. It’s not only about peace and war, it’s also about climate change, it’s also about interreligious dialogue.” ‘Tid för Guds Fred' | 'Time for God’s Peace’, reads the theme of what has been dubbed a special Ecumenical Year in Sweden, convened by the Christian Council of Sweden. Photo: Albin Hillert/WCC/CCS Sessions during the online phase in June and July focussed on the Stockholm conference of 1925; the ecumenical movement as a movement for peace; building bridges of friendship and peace in local communities; peace and sustainability; ecumenical and interreligious endeavours for peace; the life and work movement today;  and a final session on the Stockholm conference, the Ecumenical Year, and the future. Alongside Gehlin and la Mela, there were 10 external lecturers from Sweden and beyond, including Rev. Prof. Dr Benjamin Simon, the academic dean of the Ecumenical institute at Bossey, and Dr Stephen Brown, editor of The Ecumenical Review, one of the journals of the World Council of Churches (WCC).  Many resources for the course came from the WCC, including WCC publications and a thematic issue of The Ecumenical Review on “100 Years of Ecumenical Social Ethics and Action.”  An invaluable resource, said Gehlin, was the new WCC Digital Collection on Life and Work  which offers free online access to source material relating to the Stockholm conference and ecumenical social ethics over the past 100 years. Copies of the WCC journal Ecumenical Review – special issue entitled 100 Years of Ecumenical Social Ethics and Action – are gifted to students at the Summer Academy. Photo: Albin Hillert/WCC/CCS Students were able to use the collection for their research, even before it was launched officially in Stockholm during the Ecumenical Week. Gehlin said she already knew when she joined UCS in January 2021 that she wanted to try and organize something in 2025,  following the announcement in 2020 by the Christian Council that it would celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Stockholm conference.  “I thought this is such a unique opportunity to really experience both international ecumenism today, but also really get this deep understanding of the Stockholm conference in 1925 and what it means for us today,” said Gehlin, a member of the WCC’s Commission on Ecumenical Education and Formation. In 2013, she was a participant at the Global Ecumenical Theological Institute (GETI), organized by the WCC for younger and emerging theologians to coincide with the WCC’s 10th Assembly in Busan, South Korea. “And then I was also a facilitator at the GETI at the WCC Assembly in Karlsruhe in 2022 and all of these experiences gave a lot of energy to my thinking and planning,” she said.  Gehlin was interested not only in organizing a course for students but also in giving a greater profile to ecumenism and ecumenical studies in Swedish academic life. “I thought we should not stop with the Summer Academy but that it should be the start and the springboard for something that would be a long term project,” she said. Students and faculty pictured in conversation at the University College Stockholm. Photo: Albin Hillert/WCC/CCS So alongside the Summer Academy, an Ecumenical Academy at UCS was launched in January 2025 to be organized around two major events a year. “This was the chance to give this subject a place in the field of theology in Sweden to grow and flourish,” she said. “And since I knew that 2025 would be the year when ecumenism would get attention in in Sweden, I thought that this is the time when we should launch.” The Summer Academy was planned with the help of a student reference group that first met a year ago, Gehlin said. With her colleague la Mela she expected three or four students to show up; in the end it was 12 who were involved in the planning of the academy. “We were overwhelmed by their enthusiasm and their engagement,” said Gehlin. “They have really been important – I think that this student contribution and student engagement will continue to really be central to the work with the Ecumenical Academy.” Students look out over the city during the Ecumenical Week in Stockholm 2025. Photo: Albin Hillert/WCC/CCS YouTube video: Peace Messages by Students from the Summer Academy News Release: WCC releases Life and Work Digital Collection News Release: Dr Sara Gehlin highlights why 2025 will be a very special year for churches in Sweden The Ecumenical Review: 100 Years of Ecumenical Social Ethics and Action (free to read) WCC Publications See more

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 356 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 580 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay from the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa.  Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press Our visiting address is: World Council of Churches Chemin du Pommier 42 Kyoto Building Le Grand-Saconnex CH-1218 Switzerland