Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vpsfw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-19T16:26:33.712Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From religious freedom to social justice: the human rights engagement of the ecumenical movement from the 1940s to the 1970s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2018

Bastiaan Bouwman
Bastiaan Bouwman*
Affiliation:
Department of International History, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK E-mail: s.a.bouwman@lse.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article contributes to the historiography on human rights and (religious) internationalism by tracing how the ecumenical movement in the post-war decades sought to protect the religious freedom of its co-religionists in Catholic and Muslim countries, specifically Italy, Nigeria, and Indonesia. In cooperation with local actors, the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs worked to anchor international human rights in the domestic sphere through constitutional provisions. These activities constituted a significant strand of Christian human rights engagement from the 1940s to the 1960s, which intersected with the Cold War and decolonization. The article then contrasts this with the turn to a more pluralistic and communitarian conception of human rights in the 1970s, animated by liberation theologies. As the World Council of Churches embraced a ‘revolutionary’ tradition and worked to resist military dictatorships in Latin America, racism, and global inequality, it gravitated towards Marxism-inflected and anti-colonial strands of human rights discourse.

Keywords

Commission of the Churches on International Affairshuman rightsinternationalismreligious freedomWorld Council of Churches
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , July 2018 , pp. 252 - 273
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank the guest editors of this special issue, James C. Kennedy, Justin Reynolds, and Elisabeth Engel, for their valuable comments in preparing this manuscript. My work benefited greatly from the advice of Piers Ludlow, Boyd van Dijk, Nathan Kurz, and Robert Brier, and two anonymous reviewers. I also gained much from feedback on recent presentations, including at the LSE-Sciences Po Seminar in Contemporary International History, the ‘Blueprints of Hope’ research group at Utrecht University, the 29th Annual Conference of the British International History Group, and the International History Seminar of the Institute of Historical Research, as well as from participating in the Global Humanitarianism Research Academy organized by the University of Exeter and the Leibniz Institute of European History. Research for this article was generously supported by the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, VSBfonds, the Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship, and the Department of International History of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

References

1 Renaud, Terence, ‘Human rights as radical anthropology: Protestant theology and ecumenism in the transwar era’, Historical Journal, 60, 2, 2016, p. 3 Google Scholar.

2 Slotte, Pamela, ‘“Blessed are the peacemakers”: Christian internationalism, ecumenical voices and the quest for human rights’, in Pamela Slotte and Miia Halme-Tuomisaari, eds., Revisiting the origins of human rights, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 327, 411 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Renaud, ‘Human rights’, pp. 8 and 20. See also Moyn, Samuel, Christian human rights, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015 Google Scholar. On the ecumenical movement and on religious freedom, see Nurser, John, For all peoples and all nations: Christian churches and human rights, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005 Google Scholar; Preston, Andrew, ‘Peripheral visions: American mainline Protestants and the global Cold War’, Cold War History, 13, 1, 2013, pp. 109–130 Google Scholar; Preston, Andrew, Sword of the spirit, shield of faith: religion in American war and diplomacy, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012 Google Scholar; Su, Anna, Exporting freedom: religious liberty and American power, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Lindkvist, Linde, Religious freedom and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See Koshy, Ninan, ‘The ecumenical understanding of religious liberty: the contribution of the World Council of Churches’, Journal of Church and State, 38, 1, 1996, pp. 137–154 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See inter alia Moyn, Samuel, The last utopia: human rights in history, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010 Google Scholar; Eckel, Jan, Die Ambivalenz des Guten, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014 Google Scholar; Philip Bradley, Mark, Reimagining the world: Americans and human rights in the twentieth century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Filo, Július, ed., Christian world community – and the Cold War: international research conference in Bratislava on 5–8 September 2011, Bratislava: Comenius University, 2012 Google Scholar; Kirby, Dianne, ‘The impact of the Cold War on the formation of the World Council of Churches’, in Joachim Garstecki, ed., Die Ökumene und der Widerstand gegen Diktaturen: Nationalsozialismus und Kommunismus als Herausforderung an die Kirchen, Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 2007, pp. 135–158 Google Scholar; Kunter, Katharina, Die Kirchen im KSZE-Prozess 1968–1978, Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 2000 Google Scholar.

8 See Hollinger, David A., ‘After cloven tongues of fire: ecumenical Protestantism and the modern American encounter with diversity’, Journal of American History, 98, 1, 2011, p. 22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 On the formation of the CCIA, see Peiponen, Matti, Ecumenical action in world politics: the creation of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA), 1945–1959, Helsinki: Luther-Agricola-Society, 2012 Google Scholar. For more on the early WCC, see Zeilstra, Jurjen A., European unity in ecumenical thinking 1937–1948, Zoetermeer: Uitgeverij Boekencentrum, 1995 Google Scholar.

10 Lehmann, Karsten, Religious NGOs in international relations: the construction of ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’, New York: Routledge, 2016 Google Scholar, ch. 5.

11 Quoted in Pollard, John, The papacy in the age of totalitarianism, 1914–1958, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014, pp. 476 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 WCC, Central Committee of the World Council of Churches: minutes and reports on the third meeting, Geneva: WCC, 1950, p. 13 Google Scholar.

13 CCIA, The Commission of the Churches on International Affairs 1950–1951, London and New York: CCIA, 1951, p. 32 Google Scholar.

14 World Council of Churches Archives, Geneva, Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (henceforth WCCA, CCIA), 428 Country files Europe / Italy 1946–1967 / Italy 1952–1953, Human rights, religious liberty [box not numbered], Federal Council of Churches to Alcide de Gasperi, ‘Memorandum’, 13 January 1947.

15 Nolde, O. Frederick, Free and equal: human rights in ecumenical perspective, Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1968, pp. 33–35 Google Scholar.

16 WCCA, CCIA, 428.4.3, ‘Memorandum of the Federal Council of the Evangelical Churches in Italy to the Italian Government’, 25 May 1950, p. 1.

17 WCCA, CCIA, 428.4.3, CCIA, Minutes of the fifth meeting of the Executive Committee, Emmanuel College, Toronto, Canada, 3–5 July 1950, pp. 29–30.

18 WCCA, Commission of Inter-Church Aid, Refugee and World Service, 425.02.08.012.2b, Giorgio Peyrot, ‘La liberté religieuse: son fondement théologique et ses formes concrètes. Deuxième rapport’, n.d. [1958], pp. 102–3.

19 WCCA, CCIA, unprocessed materials, 428, Country files, Europe / Italy 1946–1967 / Italy 1952–1953, Human rights, religious liberty, Mario Lucelli to Earl Frederick Adams, 14 March 1955.

20 WCCA, CCIA, unprocessed materials, 428, Country files, Europe / Italy 1946–1967 / Italy 1952–1953, Human rights, religious liberty, Federal Council of Evangelical Churches in Italy, ‘Memorandum on the problem of religious liberty in Italy’, 17 February 1955, p. 6.

21 E.g. Peyrot, George, Religious liberty and conditions of evangelical people in Italy, Rome: Tip. Ferraiolo, 1957 Google Scholar.

22 WCCA, CCIA, unprocessed materials, 428, Country files, Europe / Italy 1946–1967 / Italy 1952–1953, Human rights, religious liberty, Federal Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America to Mario Scelba, ‘Memorandum’, 30 March 1955.

23 Domenico, Roy Palmer, ‘“For the cause of Christ here in Italy”: America’s Protestant challenge in Italy and the cultural ambiguity of the Cold War’, Diplomatic History, 29, 4, 2005, p. 651 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 WCCA, CCIA, 428.4.7, Legal Office of the Federal Council of Evangelical Churches in Italy, ‘Report on the position of religious liberty in Italy’, February 1959, pp. 1–2 (italics omitted).

25 WCCA, Secretariat on Religious Liberty, 4226.5.65, Giorgio Peyrot, ‘Relazione annuale dell’Ufficio Legale. 1 Luglio 1956–30 Giugno 1957’, n.d., p. 48.

26 Bognetti, Giovanni, ‘Political role of the Italian Constitutional Court’, Notre Dame Law Review, 49, 5, 1974, p. 989 Google Scholar.

27 Ventura, Marco, Religion and law in Italy, Alphen aan de Rijn: Wolters Kluwer, 2013, pp. 46–50 Google Scholar.

28 WCCA, CCIA, 428.15.3.23, offprint of de Albornoz, A. F. Carillo, ‘The ecumenical and world significance of the Vatican declaration on religious liberty’, Ecumenical Review, 18, 1, 1966, pp. 4–6 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 16–17, and 26.

29 WCCA, WCC, 4201.4.2, WCC Central Committee, ‘Joint working group between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches: second report’, August 1967, p. 10.

30 Thompson, Michael G., For God and globe: Christian internationalism in the United States between the Great War and the Cold War, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Greenberg, Udi, ‘Protestants, decolonisation, and European integration, 1885–1961’, Journal of Modern History, 89, 2, 2017, pp. 314–354 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Zubovich, Gene, ‘The Protestant search for “the universal Christian community” between decolonization and communism’, Religions, 8, 17, 2017, http://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/8/2/17 (consulted 16 March 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 For a case study of this process in France and Algeria, see Fontaine, Darcie, Decolonizing Christianity: religion and the end of empire in France and Algeria, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On how Jews in northern Africa dealt with similar questions, see Nathan Kurz, ‘“A sphere above the nations?” The rise and fall of international Jewish human rights politics, 1945–1975’, PhD thesis, Yale University, 2015, ch. 4.

34 Hastings, Adrian, ‘The clash of nationalism and universalism within twentieth-century missionary Christianity’, in Brian Stanley and Alaine Low, eds., Missions, nationalism, and the end of empire, Grand Rapids, MI: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003, pp. 15–33 Google Scholar.

35 Nolde, O. Frederick, ‘Ecumenical action in international affairs’, in Harold E. Fey, ed., The ecumenical advance: a history of the ecumenical movement, vol. 2: 1948–1968, Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1993 (1st edn 1970), pp. 278–279 Google Scholar.

36 CCIA, The Commission of the Churches on International Affairs 1952–1953, London and New York: CCIA, 1953, p. 35 Google Scholar.

37 Quoted in Stuart, John, ‘Empire, mission, ecumenism, and human rights: “religious liberty” in Egypt, 1919–1956’, Church History, 83, 1, 2014, pp. 118, 121 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 WCCA, CCIA, 428.15.3.2.2.2, O. Frederick Nolde, ‘Notes on procedures for securing constitutional safeguards for religious liberty’, 26 October 1954; and WCCA, CCIA, 428.6.24, CCIA Country files / Nigeria [unnumbered first box; alternative designation, per inventory by Dwain C. Epps: 428.16.1.38], ‘Constitutional provisions for religious liberty: a compilation of provisions in constitutions recently adopted and in constitutions operative for a transitional period’, 1957.

39 WCCA, CcIA, 428.15.3.2.2.3, offprint of Nolde, O. Frederick, ‘Religious liberty considered as an international problem’, Ecumenical Review, 13, 4, 1961, p. 5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 On Egypt, see Stuart, ‘Empire’.

41 On British missionaries and decolonization in Africa more generally, see Stuart, John, British missionaries and the end of empire: east, central, and southern Africa, 1939–1964, Grand Rapids, MI: Wm B. Eerdmans, 2011 Google Scholar.

42 Butt, Simon and Lindsey, Timothy, The constitution of Indonesia: a contextual analysis, Oxford: Hart, 2012, p. 2 Google Scholar.

43 Ricklefs, M. C., A history of modern Indonesia since c. 1200, 4th edn, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008, p. 262 Google Scholar.

44 I use here the official translation, but draw from Feith, Herbert, The decline of constitutional democracy in Indonesia, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur: Equinox Publishing, 2007 (1st edn 1962), p. 98 Google Scholar.

45 Quoted in van de Wal, Hans, Tot op het bot verdeeld: Nederlandse protestanten, de zending en de Indonesische revolutie (Hopelessly divided: Dutch Protestants, mission, and the Indonesian revolution), Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2012, p. 119 Google Scholar.

46 Ibid., pp. 119–20.

47 Archives Raad voor de Zending, Utrechts Archief (henceforth RZ-UA), 7213, Memoranda en correspondentie betreffende godsdienstvrijheid in Indonesië (Memoranda and correspondence concerning religious freedom in Indonesia), 1946–1947, Raad voor de Zending (Missionary Council) to Lt-Governor General Van Mook, 1946, p. 2.

48 Quoted in Van de Wal, Tot op het bot, p. 173.

49 WCCA, unprocessed materials, CCIA, Country files / Asia / Indonesia 1948–1968, file: Indonesia, Republic of, 1948–66, A. L. Warnshuis to Nolde, Roswell P. Barnes, and Wynn C. Fairfield, 24 January 1950, enclosure, p. 1.

50 Van de Wal, Tot op het bot, p. 173.

51 Drooglever, P. J., ‘The genesis of the Indonesian constitution of 1949’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 153, 1, 1997, p. 81 Google Scholar.

52 WCCA, Warnshuis to Nolde, Barnes, and Fairfield, enclosure, p. 1, emphasis in original.

53 Hoekendijk, who had received a copy of Bates’ book from the American missionary leader A. L. Warnshuis after a 1945 visit to New York, would later say it had been ‘our textbook’ (ibid.).

54 RZ-UA, 3376, Raad voor de Zending, ‘Aantekeningen over godsdienstvrijheid met inachtneming van de situatie in Indonesië (Notes on religious freedom with respect to the situation in Indonesia)’, 1949, p. 7.

55 RZ-UA, 7213, Gerard Slotemaker de Bruijne, ‘Artikel 177 en de Islam (Article 177 and Islam)’, n.d. [probably late 1947].

56 WCCA, CCIA, 428.15.3.2.1.4.16, J. Verkuyl and C. O. A. van Nieuwenhuyzen, ‘Indonesia: background’, March 1950, in CCIA, ‘Religious freedom in face of dominant forces: part III: religious domination: reports on selected areas’, July 1950, p. 6.

57 Raad voor de Zending, ‘Aantekeningen over godsdienstvrijheid’, p. 7.

58 Verkuyl, J., Enkele aspecten van het probleem der godsdienstvrijheid in Azië (Some aspects of the problem of religious liberty in Asia), Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1948 Google Scholar.

59 Raad voor de Zending, ‘Aantekeningen over godsdienstvrijheid’, pp. 7, 16.

60 ‘244. Besluiten van het tweede gedeelte van de Inter-Indonesische Conferentie gehouden te Batavia van 31 juli tot 2 aug. 1949 (Decisions of the second part of the Inter-Indonesian Conference held in Batavia from 31 July to 2 August 1949)’, in Drooglever, P. J. and Schouten, M.J.B., eds., Officiële bescheiden betreffende de Nederlands–Indonesische Betrekkingen 1945–1950: negentiende deel, 1 juni 1949–15 september 1949 (Official documents concerning Dutch–Indonesian relations 1945–1950: volume nineteen, 1 June 1949–15 September 1949), The Hague: Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, 1994, p. 441 Google Scholar.

61 Drooglever, ‘Indonesian constitution of 1949’, pp. 78–81.

62 WCCA, unprocessed materials, CCIA, Country files / Europe / Germany 1947–1950 / File: Germany/CCIA Correspondence 1946–1950, New York Office, Nolde to Wilhelm Menn, 9 November 1949.

63 Butt and Lindsey, Constitution of Indonesia, pp. 3–4.

64 Supomo, R., The provisional constitution of the Republic of Indonesia: with annotations and explanations on each article, trans. Garth N. Jones, Ann Arbor, MI: Cornell University Modern Indonesia Project, 4th edn, 1964, pp. 20 Google Scholar, 31–2.

65 WCCA, unprocessed materials, CCIA Country Files / Asia / Indonesia 1948–1968, file: Religious liberty, M. H. Bolkestein, ‘Godsdienstvrijheid in Indonesië (Religious freedom in Indonesia)’, De Hervormde Kerk (The Reformed Church), n.d. [25 November 1950], p. 3.

66 Noordholt, Henk Schulte, ‘Indonesia in the 1950s: nation, modernity, and the post-colonial state’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 167, 4, 2011, pp. 396–397 Google Scholar.

67 Verkuyl and van Nieuwenhuyzen, ‘Indonesia’, p. 7.

68 van den End, Thomas and Aritonang, Jan Sihar, ‘1800–2005: a national overview’, in Jan Sihar Aritonang and Karel Steenbrink, eds., A history of Christianity in Indonesia, Leiden: Brill, 2008, p. 199 Google Scholar.

69 Jan Sihar Aritonang, ‘The ecumenical movement in Indonesia with special attention to the National Council of Churches’, in Aritonang and Steenbrink, Christianity in Indonesia, p. 843.

70 Ricklefs, Indonesia, p. 321.

71 Cheong, Yong, ‘The political structures of the independent states’, in Nicholas Tarling, ed., The Cambridge history of southeast Asia, vol. 2: the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 423–424 Google Scholar.

72 Parkinson, Charles O. H., Bills of rights and decolonisation: the emergence of domestic human rights instruments in Britain’s overseas territories, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 134 Google Scholar.

73 WCCA, General Secretariat documentation / Nigeria, unprocessed materials, S. I. Kale and H. Hogan, ‘Christian responsibility in an independent Nigeria’, n.d. [probably 1962], p. 100.

74 De Smith, Stanley, The new Commonwealth and its constitutions, London: Stevens & Sons, 1964, p. 167 Google Scholar. My thanks to Roger Clark for drawing my attention to this work and the case of Nigeria.

75 Parkinson, Bills of rights, pp. 135–40.

76 WCC, CCIA, 428.6.24, CCIA Country files / Nigeria [unnumbered first box], Council of Churches in Nigeria and Sudan Interior Mission, Minutes of meeting with the Civil Secretary of the Northern Region of Nigeria, 20 April 1955, pp. 2–5.

77 Quoted in Parkinson, Bills of rights, pp. 140–1.

78 WCC, CCIA, 428.6.24, CCIA Country files / Nigeria [unnumbered first box], Kenneth G. Grubb to Kenneth Slack, ‘Religious freedom in Northern Nigeria’, 16 May 1955, p. 2. See also Parkinson, Bills of rights, p. 144.

79 WCC, CCIA, 428.6.24, CCIA Country files / Nigeria [unnumbered first box], British Council of Churches, ‘Nigeria: religious liberty and human rights’, July 1956.

80 Parkinson, Bills of rights, pp. 145, 150.

81 WCC, CCIA, 428.6.24, CCIA Country files / Nigeria [unnumbered first box], Kenneth G. Grubb, ‘Religious liberty in Nigeria’, December 1957, pp. 1–4.

82 WCC, CCIA, 428.6.24, CCIA Country files / Nigeria [unnumbered first box], Council of Churches in Nigeria to the Minorities Commission, December 1957, pp. 1–3.

83 Parkinson, Bills of rights, p. 151.

84 Nigeria: report of the commission appointed to enquire into the fears of minorities and the means of allaying them, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1958, pp. 98 and 102–3.

85 Parkinson, Bills of rights, pp. 161–2.

86 De Smith, New Commonwealth, pp. 193–6.

87 Kunter, Katharina and Schilling, Annegreth, ‘“Der Christ fürchtet den Umbruch nicht”: Der Ökumenische Rat der Kirchen im Spannungsfeld von Dekolonisierung, Entwestlichung und Politisierung’, in Katharina Kunter and Annegreth Schilling, eds., Globalisierung der Kirchen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014, p. 24 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 On the roots of the ‘revolutionary’ tradition, see Justin Reynolds, ‘Against the world: international Protestantism and the ecumenical movement between secularization and politics’, PhD thesis, Columbia University, 2016, ch. 6. See also Reynolds’ contribution to this special issue.

89 Kunter and Schilling, ‘Der Christ’, pp. 37–45.

90 On the UN’s activities on race and religion at this time, see Jensen, Steven L. B., The making of international human rights: the 1960s, decolonization, and the reconstruction of global values, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 WCCA, CCIA, 428.4.10, Richard M. Fagley, ‘The first twenty years in outline: a brief review of CCIA 1946–1966’, n.d. [1966], p. 12.

92 See Lehmann, Religious NGOs, ch. 5. On Blake’s signature achievement, the WCC’s Programme to Combat Racism (1969), see Laine, Antti, Ecumenical attack against racism: the anti-racist programme of the World Council of Churches, 1968–1974, Helsinki: Luther-Agricola-Society, 2015 Google Scholar.

93 William Kelly, Patrick, ‘“Human rights and Christian responsibility”: transnational Christian activism, human rights, and state violence in Brazil and Chile in the 1970s’, in Alexander Wilde, ed., Religious responses to violence: human rights in Latin America past and present , South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016, pp. 95–122 Google Scholar.

94 WCCA, Human Rights Resources Office for Latin America (henceforth HRROLA), 249.02.02, Charles Harper, ‘Situation in Chile’, 6 June 1974, pp. 5 and 2.

95 WCCA, HRROLA, 249.02.02, Charles Harper, ‘Evaluation and proposals meeting on Tuesday June 11th, 9–11 a.m. Salle III’, 10 June 1974, pp. 2–3, and Chile Emergency Desk, ‘TF meeting Nov. 16, 1973’, 20 November 1973.

96 WCCA, HRROLA, 249.02.02, HRROLA report to CCIA, August 1978, p. 2.

97 Schilling, Annegreth, Revolution, Exil und Befreiung: der Boom des lateinamerikanischen Protestantismus in der internationalen Ökumene in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

98 Christian Albers, ‘Der ÖRK und die Menschenrechte im Kontext von Kaltem Krieg und Dekolonisierung’, in Kunter and Schilling, Globalisierung der Kirchen, pp. 189–215.

99 Paton, David M., ed., Breaking barriers: Nairobi 1975: the official report of the fifth assembly of the World Council of Churches, Nairobi, 23 November–10 December, 1975, London and Grand Rapids, MI: SPCK and Wm B. Eerdmans, p. 104 Google Scholar.

100 Quoted in van der Bent, Ans J., Christian response in a world of crisis: a brief history of the WCC’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, Geneva: WCC, 1986, p. 29 Google Scholar.

101 Paton, Breaking barriers, p. 102.

102 For an outspoken critique, see Richter, Hedwig, ‘Der Protestantismus und das linksrevolutionäre Pathos: der Ökumenische Rat der Kirchen in Genf im Ost–West-Konflikt in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 36, 2010, pp. 408–436 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

103 Lehmann, Religious NGOs, pp. 112–14.

104 Albers, ‘Der ÖRK’, p. 209.

105 Schilling, Revolution, Exil und Befreiung, p. 275. See also Schilling’s contribution to this special issue.

106 Reynolds, ‘Against the world’, ch. 6.

107 Paton, Breaking barriers, p. 251.

108 See Kennedy, James C., ‘Protestant ecclesiastical internationals’, in Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene, eds., Religious internationals in the modern world: globalization and faith communities since 1750, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 292–318 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

109 E.g. All Africa Conference of Churches and WCC, ‘Factors responsible for the violation of human rights in Africa’, Issue: A Journal of Opinion, 6, 4, 1976, pp. 44–6; WCCA, CCIA, 428.15.3.5.4/6.1, Christian Conference of Asia, ‘Consultation on human rights’, 14–16 June 1975, Hong Kong.

110 Philip Bradley, Mark, ‘American vernaculars: the United States and the global human rights imagination’, Diplomatic History, 38, 1, 2014, pp. 1–21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

111 For an overview, see Reuver, Marc, ed., Human rights: a challenge to theology, Rome: CCIA and IDOC International, 1983, pp. 16–20 Google Scholar.

112 Burke, Roland, ‘The internationalism of human rights’, in Glenda Sluga and Patricia Clavin, eds., Internationalisms: a twentieth-century history, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, p. 288 Google Scholar. See also Moyn, Last utopia, ch. 2.

113 On Amnesty in contrast to earlier forms of human rights activism, see Eckel, Jan, ‘The International League for the Rights of Man, Amnesty International, and the changing fate of human rights activism from the 1940s through the 1970s’, Humanity, 4, 2, 2013, pp. 183–214 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

114 Ibid., p. 311. See also Albers, ‘Der ÖRK’, p. 209.

115 See also Hoffmann, Stefan-Ludwig, ‘Human rights and history’, Past & Present, 232, 2, 2016, pp. 279–310 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.