Vermittler ohne Mitte: Die ambivalente Rolle der Ökumene im Balkankonflikt

• Published in: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 1997-01, Vol.10 (1), p.138-157
• Main Author: Herbst-Oltmanns, Anne
• Format: Article
• Language: ger
• ISSN: 0932-9951; 2196-808X

The major organisations in the ecumenical movement which tried to negotiate between the rival churches and religious communities in the Balkan war were in fact trapped by their own good intentions into several dangerous situations. First, because the rifts between the church leaders coincided with political, ethnic and denominational lines. One of their own members - the Serbian Orthodox Church - for example waged a stringent and theologically supported anti-ecumenical campaign against both the World Council of Churches and the Council of European Churches. Secondly, the result was to force these inter-church bodies in Geneva, in the interests of not "endangering ecumenical interests" i.e. concern about their own clientele, to abandon any intensive investigation of the underlying causes of this strife between the conflicting parties, such as the close nationalistic identification of each church group with its own constituency, and the consequent denial of its own collective responsibility for the outbreak of the war. Thirdly the Catholics in the Balkans had no appropriate counterparts, since they were not members of the various Geneva-based church bodies. They were only loosely associated with the Council of European Churches. As a result, Geneva's attempts to keep all member churches together on the path of peace and reconciliation only prevented a complete loss of contact between the local churches. The various non-binding statements issued by so-called summit meetings at the international level were hardly conducive to any real resolution or reconciliation. Instead the unwillingness to face the real issues only led to difficulties with more critical Protestant member churches. At the moment only independent individual initiatives through ecumenical contacts at the local level seem to offer much hope of success.