Nathan Söderblom, ekumeniken och Europa

Abstract

The archbishop of the Church of Sweden, Nathan Söderblom, saw the needs of the European peoples suffering after the First World War as a challenge for the Christian church. The political systems alone could not heal the wounds of the devastated continent, its famine, poverty, political turmoil and military brutality. Remaining animosity between the nations was an obstacle for the rebuilding of a war-ridden society. For the churches no such animosity was acceptable, according to Söderblom, because churches and Christians were not enemies but friends, their friendship transcending borders. As peaceful units the churches ought to combine their efforts to heal the wounds of the society. Of many other ecumenical tasks this one was the most important. — The issue of guilt was primordial after the war, not only for states but also for churches, e.g. French Protestant churches. If the guilt issue threatened political negotiations, churches had to help to overcome that problem. A Christian fellowship was ready both to give and to forgive, according to the theology of peace of Söderblom. — Söderblom’s ecumenical theories began to be practised at home in Sweden. He worked purposefully for better relations between the dominating state church and the growing free churches in Sweden. He met new, truly Christian movements with openness. Söderblom’s remarkable open-minded attitude, it is suggested here, could be understood thanks to the fact that he essentially was a scholar, all his life wrestling with the truth and the arguments. — Before the First World War Söderblom had notified the international arms race, something that made him look forward to a future European unity. On November 27, 1914, a document «For peace and Christian fellowship» on his initiative was communicated from Uppsala, signed by Protestant churches in Europe and the USA. He never abandoned the hope of peace and ecumenism. As an intellectual European he had friends all over Europe. In England he felt at home with its manner and piety. He loved France, its culture and people, and, above all, the French language. He admired the German people, from which Sweden had learnt so much, but he could not tolerate the extreme nationalism in Germany in the years prior to the war. At the outbreak of the war, when Söderblom lived and worked in Leipzig, the German people had his sympathy, after all, when he saw how in their own eyes they felt totally isolated in Europe.

After the war, Söderblom together with his Swedish Lutheran colleagues, officially and strongly reacted against the French occupation of Ruhr in 1923. The occupation had no support from the League of Nations. He was looking for an international legal system, capable of solving inter-state problems. The opposition against the occupation made Söderblom popular in Germany, understandably, and — for a while — severely criticised in France, even among Protestant churches. His competent concern for justice and the truth gradually restored his good relations with French Protestantism, to a great extent due also to his personal, energetic efforts. The satisfactory outcome was sealed, ecumenically as well as politically, by a carefully planned and very successful visit to Paris in December 1926.