The World Conference of Life and Work () was held on the initiative of

Church of Sweden The Church of Sweden () is an Evangelical Lutheran national church in Sweden. A former state church, headquartered in Uppsala, with around 5.5 million members at year end 2023, it is the largest Christian denomination in Sweden, the largest List ...

archbishop

Nathan Söderblom Lars Olof Jonathan Söderblom (; 15 January 1866 – 12 July 1931) was a Swedish bishop. He was the Church of Sweden Archbishop of Uppsala from 1914 to 1931, and recipient of the 1930 Nobel Peace Prize. He is commemorated in the Calendar of ...

in Stockholm, Sweden 1925 to discuss social cooperation. Attending the meeting were most major Christian denominations, however the Catholic Church and the Pentecostal movement didn't show up. Prior to the conference, Söderblom had put efforts into ecumenical discussions among churches, and peace talks during

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. Among these discussions was the World Alliance for Promoting Friendship among the Churches in 1919, which was the first time Christians from both sides of the war met again. Söderblom arranged the World Conference of Life and Work with hopes that it would result in an ecumenical council of churches and that "the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all peoples will become more completely realized through the church of Christ". Some of the topics discussed were the church's role in God's plan for the world, economic, industrial, social and moral problems, international relations and co-operation between churches. It was intended that theological differences be kept out with the slogan "Doctrine divides, while service unites", which turned out to be hard to achieve. The conference was followed by other ecumenical activities, such as the Faith and Order Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1927, which Söderblom's friend, the Episcopal bishop

Charles Brent Charles Henry Brent (April 9, 1862 – March 27, 1929) was the Episcopal Church (United States), Episcopal Church's first Missionary Bishop of the Philippine Islands (1902–1918); Chaplain General of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War ...

had been instrumental in arranging. The movement out of the Faith and Order Conference and the World Conference of Life and Work later formed the

World Council of Churches The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a worldwide Christian inter-church organization founded in 1948 to work for the cause of ecumenism. Its full members today include the Assyrian Church of the East, most jurisdictions of the Eastern Orthodo ...

in 1948.

References

1925 conferences 1925 in Christianity 1925 in Sweden 1920s in Stockholm 20th-century Lutheranism Christian ecumenism Christianity in Stockholm Events in Stockholm International conferences in Sweden History of the Church of Sweden {{Christian-hist-stub

See also

References