The World Council of Churches and the Hungarian Crisis of 1956 (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a federation of churches that maintain their structural and doctrinal independence while striving for closer cooperation in areas where they can agree. The WCC’s periodic assemblies elect a Central Committee that meets annually in different countries. In 1954 a Hungarian Protestant delegate extended an invitation for the committee to hold its annual meeting for 1956 in Communist Hungary, and this invitation was accepted in 1955. The meeting took place during a nine day period in July 1956 in the mountain resort of Galyatető on Hungary’s northern border with Slovakia, with an estimated 400 participants. A statement was presented for debate entitled “The Churches and the Building of a Responsible International Society” that ended, in the version that received final approval, with an endorsement of freedom of conscience and freedom to travel— on which 200,000 Hungarians would act by fleeing Hungary after the defeat of the Revolution. What did the WCC hope to achieve by meeting in Hungary, and the Hungarian authorities in inviting and hosting it in 1956? Did the meeting have an impact on the epochal events that followed it? I will propose answers to these questions in the light of the WCC Archives in Geneva and the Hungarian archives in Budapest.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Jim Niessen earned his Ph.D from Indiana University in 1989. After three years of college history teaching he shifted to the library profession, earning an MLIS and then working as a librarian since 1994, first at Texas Tech University and then since 2001 at Rutgers University. His research and publications have ranged from religion and politics in nineteenth century Transylvania (his dissertation topic) to Romanian nationalism, church history, libraries and archives, to the refugees from Hungary during the Cold War. Many of his publications are freely available at https://soar.libraries.rutgers.edu/bib/James_P._Niessen .