The Conference of Orthodox Youth at the Chateau De Bossey, 8Th 13Th January, 1949

The Conference of Orthodox Youth at the Chateau de Bossey, 8th-13th January, 1949.

Nikos Nissotis

The 1949 Conference of Orthodox Youth at Bossey castle in Switzerland laid the foundations for the establishment of SYNDESMOS. The following report reveals how the Conference continued the momentum of the pre-World War II conferences in a concrete form.

Nothing defines the aim of what has been called the Consultation of Orthodox Youth better than the letter of invitation sent out on the 25th November, 1948. We reproduce the text below as an aid to understanding the origins and the spirit of the meeting.

“Amidst the present sufferings of our Church, a spirit of faith in the glorious destiny of Orthodoxy is breathing through the world. Youth particularly is seeking its way in the Church and organising in preparation for a fruitful apostolate for Christ.

But very little effort has been made to share the fruits of its labours. The thirst of our youth to understand Orthodox life, thought and action throughout the world and to become imbued more and more with the spirit and the vocation of Orthodoxy is already making itself felt. A spiritual collaboration is becoming vital.

It is a fact of an empirical nature that this desire for inter-Orthodox co-operation has been revealed in our religious consciousness at the very moment of some ecumenical encounters. The Orthodox young people, who were at Oslo in 19471 and the young observers at the Amsterdam Assembly2 have realised that it is high time for religious workers in all parts of the Orthodox world to unite with the intention of communicating together at the Divine Liturgy, of praying, of studying the eternal burning questions that the Church sets before them and thus to bring their humble contribution to the Holy Church and her youth.

The signatories of this letter are three Orthodox who are taking an active part in the work of the Church among youth. When they met at Amsterdam they conceived the plan of inviting some of their brethren to study the spirit and form of this collaboration. Naturally in a private and unofficial meeting nobody represents his church with any official title, being unable to take decisions in the name of his competent organ. It is also evident on the other hand, that our desire being to serve the Holy Orthodox Church as best we can and work in the fullness of her catholic life, we have begged our church authorities to give their benedictions to our participation and our work, helping us through their prayers.

We invite you warmly to help us by your presence that these consultations may be possible. As for practical plans, the Youth Department of the World Council of Churches is offering us its help and hospitality. Our Conference will take place at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey near Geneva from the 8th - 13th January 1949. It is understood that this Conference will be reserved exclusively for Orthodox. It will take

1 Second World Conference of Christian Youth, Oslo 1947 2 First General Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Amsterdam 1948. The decision to hold the 1949 Orthodox Conference in Bossey was taken during this Assembly. on the character of consultations mutually desired by workers in the Church, and so will remain devoid of any official character.”

In fact the majority of those invited were able to come: there were Russians from Paris, Greeks belonging to the Great Church of Constantinople and the churches of Greece and Cyprus, one Displaced Person from Germany, a Bulgarian monk, a Romanian, two Serbs, 2 Lebanese from the Patriarchate of Antioch, a Frenchman, a German, and an Indian from the Church of Malabar. As the conference was prepared in such a short time it could not include people coming direct from their own countries. The majority of the people who came were in fact teachers and students in Western Europe. From the start the assembly was conceived as of a strictly unofficial character. None of us were authorised by our churches or youth organisations. The members were chosen by the signatories of the letter of invitation in a personal capacity, but almost all are engaged in theological studies or in church work among youth. During five days of prayer, meditation and sincere spiritual effort they tried to come to grips with the demands of the Church and to see in its light the problems which presented themselves, and which are all related to the mystery of the Church in its inner life, in its historical advance and its present situation.

It was natural that our principal interest was in the youth movements on the one hand, and in ecumenism on the other. First and foremost because many of us have been awakened by these movements to the mystery of Christ, and because these movements are at the present time one of the most important expressions of ecclesiastical life and thought. Certainly the renewal of Christian people depends on the depth and the work of these movements. But these young people who tried to enter more deeply into spiritual matters are struck by the spectacle of the divisions of Christendom. They cannot do other than take part in the tragedy of the diviston and feel themselves deeply bound together with all the Christians who pray for the gathering together of the flock. But as true Orthodox, desiring to be faithful to the pure tradition of undivided Christianity, what attitude can they adopt towards the heterodox world? More precisely have the prayers and efforts which have resulted in the Ecumenical Movement any meaning? And outside that Ecumenical Movement there is the Church of Rome which refuses to join the discussion, but which suffers no less from the spectacle of division. And then we had with us the Indian who could not take part in Communion because, since the Council of Chalcedon he, with the other Christians of his country and of Armenia, Egypt, and Ethiopia is separated from our Communion, but whose tradition, which claims and desires to be Orthodox, so closely resembles our own.

These young people desired to bring all their faith, their limited experience and their love to the solution of the problems, guided by the pioneers, their predecessors who were present. It was a modest effort, and our conference will have been of use in so far as what was good in the spirit of the Orthodox Bossey can, perhaps be followed up, studied, and furthered by other young people whose lives are bound to the Church. Guided by this hope our thinking was always directed towards the youth of our Church. “That their hearts might be comforted.” (Col.II,2)

Work of the Conference The conference began on Saturday 8th January with the celebration of Vespers. At the opening meeting Father Alexander Schmemann, in the name of the three signatories of the letter of invitation - himself, Nik Nissiotis (Orthodox Students' Unions in Greece), and G. Khodre (Orthodox Youth Movement of Syria and Lebanon) - spoke of the origins of the conference, and proposed that the members should together decide on the agenda, and should also nominale the officers, and plan the work. Professor Léon Zander was unanimously elected president of the conference, and the three signatories were asked to be in turn chairmen of the sessions.

Each day began with a celebration of the Liturgy, sung in Greek or in Slav. The mornings were given over to addresses, presented by the Rev. Basil Zenkovsky (teacher at the Institute of Orthodox Theology and president of the Russian Student Christian Movement outside Russia) - on the history of inter-Orthodox relations before the war and their present task, by Father Alexander Schmemann (teacher at the Institute of Theology in Paris) on the present tasks of the Orthodox Church, by M. Paul Evdokimoff (Orthodox member of staff at the Ecumenical Institute) on the Church and the World, and by Professor Zander on the relations of Orthodoxy to the Ecumenical Movement, and by M. N. Nissiotis and G. Khodre on the Orthodox youth movements, their place in the Church, and their tasks and methods. The reports were discussed and commented on in plenary session and in the afternoons the Conference divided into three commissions whose task was to draw up statements on the basis of the general discussions, to be presented, as the result of the work of the Conference, to the youth movements to be used as they thought fit. The Commissions were as follows: Youth Movements (directed by Father Zenkovsky and G. Khodre), 2) Methods of Work (M. Evdokimoff and N. Nissiotis), 3) the Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Movement (L. Zander and Dr. Kalogizou). Meetings for the exchange of information took place in the evenings, when each member of the Conference gave a picture of the life of his or her church, of its youth work and its plans and projects. At the end of the meetings the Conference assembled together for evening prayers.

Summary of Addresses

As we are not able to include in this short report the whole text of the addresses given to the Conference we have decided to give a summary of them, not in chronological but in logical order. We begin with M. Paul Evdokimoff’s address.

As a member of the Church and a citizen of a state the Christian is in a constant state of tension. Maximalism as it is expressed in monachism does not provide a solution, for the monk, seeking to lead a holy life lives outside the world. Monachism is not in any way to be depreciated, but one cannot say that it provides a solution to the problem of the church’s relations with the world. As to theocracy and its corrolorary “Cæsaropapalism” history shows that they are the forerunners of nominal Christianity and open the way to atheism. We have to state that Christianity in our days seems to have no hold on history. “The salt has lost its flavour”. The state on its side finds itself in a state of confusion, and the further it continues turning away from God the more it becomes inhuman. This divorce between the Church and the world is against the will of God who loves the world even in its sinfulness. The Church must shine in the world and she even must be accepted by it. Hence the necessity to create communities and groups that are really Christian. The problem of culture constitutes a particular aspect of the relations between the Church and the world. Is it an element of Christian reality? According to the Apocalyps the nations do not enter with empty hands into the new Jerusalem. With the fire of the Spirit culture becomes a sign, an arrow pointing towards that which is to come - with the Church it says “Lord, come”.

Father A. Schmemann took up the problem of Orthodox action. We need to look askance at a simple and over simplified opposition between oriental contemplation and western activism. Contemplation should by no means be identified with vague escapism. We must shun any clumsy use of western “recipes”. Acute and burning problems present themselves and we wish to offer a Christian solution, but the world turns away from us. But the only true method is not the one which seeks “new ways” or to “modernise” Christianity but to rediscover anew the “Catholic dimension”, that is to say the fullness of the Church. This means return to the eternal sources of the life of the Church, the Word of God, the Liturgy, and the living theology, the sense of church fellowship. It is only in finding again the reality of the Church that we can witness before the world and win it again.

With clarity and lucidity Father Basil Zenkovsky traced the history of the Orthodox meetings between the two wars, and outlined the concrete problems which will without fail continually arise. First the danger of ethnico-ecclesiastic particularism, the “phyletism” which one must know how to overcome in order to achieve the catholic and universal conscience of Orthodoxy. Secondly the ecumenical problem; our participation in the ecumenical movement, especially with protestant churches, removes the prejudices which are engrained in the West, in particular the belief in the petrification of the Orthodox East. The education of youth presents delicate problems as well, for it involves a particular aspect of the relation between the Church and the world, the invasion of Orthodox countries by western secularism and its lay culture. Conferences have met to discuss this theme (Bucarest and Salonika). A congress of Orthodox youth should have been held in Belgrade in 1940, but the war prevented the realisation of the project.

N. Nissiotis is a specialist and a leader, and he spoke to the conference of the problems which arose in the organisation of youth movements. First a Christian organisation was clearly differentiated from any other youth organisation by its aim which is “to lead souls to God”. We must not wait for young people to come to us, we must go to them in a truly brotherly spirit, but the various youth organisations themselves must give an example of brotherly love. Delicate questions can arise in the relation of the movement with the clergy, but the movements though not being at all “clerical” must always be conscious of the hierarchical principle of the Church. The training of leaders is extremely important. He ended with a call for Orthodox youth to unite for common work.

G, Khodre raised the problem of the “spiritual” foundations of the youth movements in Orthodoxy. He began with a rigorous criticism of all attempts at special “ideologies” and “programmes” made by the movements. “Each group within the Church lives only out of the fulness of the Church", and “the Church is not an administration". “One must choose between the rigidity of organisation and the liberty of an organism, between the closed and the open, between programmes and life.” He then outlined a picture of the renewal of the Church from within which must be a return to integral Christianity; Orthodoxy is just this integral Chrlstianity - not merely “orientalism” or a sentimental or psychological attachment. This renewal demands further a revaluation of the “humanist” conception of Christianity, inherited from the rationalism of the 19th Century. “The Christian Church is in a state of constant crisis, she does not know stable equilibrium, she lives constantly in the tension between the present age and the age to come.” To conquer and overcome the world she must always be free and independent and must never seek conciliation with everything in this world. In the constructive part of his speech the speaker insisted on the necessity of the return to dogma as the source of life, to missionary zeal, and finally, in speaking of the ultimate goal of each Christian, and of the youth movements, he concluded with presenting the ideal of saintliness, for “the only vision of the world, the only pure vision, is that of the saints.”

Professor Zander spoke of the relations of the Orthodox Church with the Ecumenical Movement. Basing his speech on the fact that the Orthodox Churches have participated in the movement from the beginning, he tried to draw from this participation two categories of conclusions, of which the first were according to him “undiscutable”, while the others demanded deep theological work and reflexion on the part of the whole body of the churches. From experience it seemed “indisputable” to him that 1) the Orthodox Church can and must participate in the Ecumenical Movement, 2) in this particapation she must always be completely uncompromising in matters of faith and dogma, 3) that the positive values of this movement lay in the discovery, by Christians now divided, of their unity in Christ. It still remains to define the exact nature of this cooperation, and at the same time problems as acute as those of proselytism, witness, liturgy, etc. must be considered. Professor Zander ended by giving his own conception of ecumenism as seen in the eschatological perspective.

The Work of the Commissions.

Commission I aimed at finding a general definition of the youth movements and of their place in the life of the Church. It drew up the following statement:

1) The aim of the Orthodox youth movement is to participate in the whole life of the Church with its blessing. Their special task consists in bringing to the Church young people who have lost their faith or who are indifferent towards religion and in helping them to enter into the life of the Church.

2) The members of the Orthodox youth movements must be active members of their parishes.

3) The Orthodox youth movements being lay organisations must bring to the notlce of their members the responsibilities of lay people in the life of the Church.

4) It is desirable that all the Orthodox youth movements in all the autocephalous churches should enter into direct relation wlth each other in order to increase their spiritual strength and to exchange their experiences.

The work of Commission II was a study of the methods of work within the youth movements. Three problems were broached, “the inner life of the movement”, “missionary work”, and “inter-Orthodox relations”. 1) Inner life of the Movement. The Commission stressed first the importance of the development of the life of prayer, which must be at the centre of every activity, especially by the organisation of retreats and liturgies for members. It further mentioned the necessity of providing as far as possible, in each movement, religious instruction for all members, who would thus receive an indispensable groundwork of theological and historical knowledge. Within this scheme of training comes the problem of Bible study to which the commission devoted a whole session. It decided that this must be quite specially developed, in view of the increasing lack of knowledge of the Word of God. They drew attention to the difficulties of obtaining Orthodox commentaries at the present time and to the interest here might be in the setting up of a Commission concerned with the editing of exegitical literature. Side by side with this definitely religious instruction a certain amount of time must be devoted to the study of social problems which are beoming more and more acute, and whose importance has often been underestimated.

2) Missionary Work. a) The religious education of children demands the foundation of many Thursday and Sunday schools in the parishes, the ideal being for each parish to have its own school. To help in this work it would be very useful to bring together different national experiences by the joint publication of a study on teaching methods. b) with regard to youth work, two methods have above all held the attention of the Commission, the first is that of forming mobile teams to vist different centres, such as parishes, universities, factories, and arrange there lectures and meetings; the second should be the organisation of an open circle in each movement where the young people can meet to discuss the problems which concern them. 3) Finally the Commission discussed ways of following up and developing the results obtained at Bossey. To this end the Commission drew up several proposals: The annual organisation of inter-Orthodox conferences, on the model of Bossey; the publication of a review, participation in various national congresses of delegates from movements abroad; the introduction of a day of prayer for Orthodox youth; and the exchange of reviews and correspondence.

Finally Commission III dealt with the relations between the Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Movement. In the course of discussion, which was often heated by reason of the importance of the subject and its novelty for the Orthodox conscience, the Commission decided to reduce its report to a simple statement of the “guiding principles” for the participation of Orthodox youth in the ecumenical Movement, which could be learnt from past experience.

1) Thirty years of participation by the majority of autocephalous churches in the Ecumenical Movement allow the guiding principles of their participation to be discerned. a) In ecumenical work the Orthodox members confess their fidelity to the dogmas of their Church, and their intransigeance before all error. They cannot, therefore, be convinced by anything at all that is not in conformity with Orthodox doctrine. Ecumenical activity carried on in a spirit of charity and humility helps the Orthodox to understand the fulness of their faith, to overcome certain prejudices and to see in the representatives of other confessions their brothers in Christ. b) The Orthodox take part in the Ecumenical Movement with a consciousness of their Christian responsibility to be the living witness of Orthodoxy, ready to explain those of their dogmas which are the least understood by other Christians, especially the place of the Holy Virgin and Mother of God in the life of the Church.

2) We realised the necessity of working for the union of Orthodoxy with the Eastern dissenting churches.

We realise equally the importance of brotherly meetings with Roman Catholics.

His Holiness the Patriarch of Antioch and His Eminence the Metropolitan Wladimir, Exarch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate for the Russian Churches in Western Europe sent their best wishes and blessings to the Conference.

Best wishes fur success were received from the Orthodox Students' Unions in Greece.

The Conference had the pleasure of a visit from the Rev. Oliver Tomkins, Assistant General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, who welcomed the conference in the name of the Council and of the General Secretary, Dr. Visser ’t Hooft, who was detained in Germany.

One session was devoted to a speech by Mr. Tomkins who explained to members the structure and aims of the Ecumenical Movement and stressed the value of Orthodox participation. The Conference was equally glad to have visits from the leaders of the different Christian Youth movements which have their headquarters in Geneva.

The members of the Conference wish to express their deep gratitude to the Youth Department of the World Council of Churches, and chiefly to its Director, Miss Jean Fraser, and to its Secretary, Jan Mirejovsky, without whose friendly and constant help the conference could not have taken place. The Conference expresses also its gratitude to Dr. Kraemer and to the staff of the Ecumenical Institute for their fine hospitality.

The members of the Conference of Bossey hope that this is only the first step along the path to union and cooparation between Orthodox youth tor the greater glory of the Holy Orthodox Church and for our own growth in its fulness. They hope that they have worked towards this end, and in all humility submit this report to all those who have responsibilities in the Church and the youth movements.

In order not to sever the contacts established at Bossey and while waiting for an official body which will assure the relationships between the various sections of Orthodox youth, the Conterence before breaking up elected a Continuation Committee composed of: Father Alexander Schmemann, N. Nissiotis, Helle Georgiades and P. L’Huilier3, whose task is to present the results of Bossey to all those who may be interested in them, and also to seek ways for the practical realization of the desires expressed by the Conference.

3 Later Archbishop Peter of New York of the Orthodox Church in America.