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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 June 2018
The article looks at the entanglement of the international ecumenical movement and Latin American Protestantism in the ‘long 1960s’. It investigates the influence and significance of Latin American liberation theology for the churches and theology around the world. During this period, it was particularly the World Council of Churches (WCC), a worldwide fellowship of Christian churches, which strengthened the efforts of churches from the ‘Third World’ to identify their own theological issues and questions. In this way, the WCC strongly supported Latin American Protestant church leaders and theologians in giving specific attention to their own context. The article argues that the ‘boom’ of Latin American Protestantism within the WCC in the 1960s and early 1970s brought into the global ecumenical movement both new theological concepts, such as revolution and liberation, and individuals exiled from Latin America. Yet this contextual and emancipatory approach revealed at the same time fundamental differences and conflicts between churches of the North and South.
This article presents major results from my research on the boom of Latin American Protestantism in the 1960s and 1970s, drawing on my doctoral thesis, published as Annegreth Schilling, Revolution, Exil und Befreiung: Der Boom des lateinamerikanischen Protestantismus in der internationalen Ökumene in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016. I am grateful for the various responses to the present article, particularly the many useful comments at the ENIUGH Congress in Paris 2014, as well as the clear and thoughtful recommendations by the anonymous reviewers.
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39 Iglesia y Sociedad en América Latina, Social justice and the Latin churches: church and society in Latin America, trans. Jorge Lara-Braud, Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1969. This is an edited summary of the discussions and reports presented at the second Latin American Conference on Church and Society in El Tabo, Chile (1966).
40 See the thematic volume on ISAL in Teología y cultura, 8, 13, 2011; Julio de Santa Ana, El aporte de iglesia y sociedad en América Latina (ISAL), http://trilce.com.uy/pdf/forjando04.pdf (consulted 2 March 2018); Dejung, Die ökumenische Bewegung, pp. 296–321; Schilling, Revolution, pp. 91–112.
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62 WCCA, 4201.2.9/12, WCC, ‘Press information: international economists to participate in World Council/Roman Catholic Conference’, 26 March 1968.
63 Committee on Society, Development and Peace, World development: the challenge to the churches: the conference on world cooperation for development, Beirut, Lebanon, 21–27 April, 1968: the official report, Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1968.
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67 Ibid.
68 WCCA, 4202.053, ‘Criticisms of the Beirut report’, p. 2.
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73 Ibid., p. 83.
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77 WCCA, 4201.5.1, ‘Ecumenism in crisis: report from IDOC’, 6 March 1972, p. 6.
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