Alain Blancy: a life which exemplified ecumenism's challenges
By Stephen Brown
Geneva (ENI). Alain Blancy, who was born in Berlin of German Jewish parents but went on to become one of France's most prominent Protestant ecumenists, died from cancer on 30 September at the age of 73.
He once said that it was his experience of receiving help from Christians in Hitler's Germany that contributed to his "ecumenical calling".
At the time of his death, Alain Blancy - a pastor of the Reformed Church of France - was the Protestant co-president of the Groupe des Dombes which brings together Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians from France and Switzerland. Their work, particularly the 1991 publication of For the Conversion of the Churches, has won high praise locally and internationally. Dr Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), has paid tribute to its "penetrating biblical and historical analysis".
In recent years, Alain Blancy was particularly proud that the group's discussions and publications were devoted to one of the most divisive issues between Protestants and Roman Catholics - the role of Mary. "We give credit to the Catholics for the fact that what they say about Mary does not contradict the [Protestant understanding of the] question of mediation," Blancy said. "At the same time, the Catholics accept that the Protestant refusal to accept the Marian dogmas is not a refusal of Mary herself."
Blancy was born on 5 January 1927 as Arved Ludwig Bielschowsky - he took the name Alain Blancy when he settled permanently in France after the Second World War. His father's family, though of Jewish origin, had converted to Protestantism before his birth. After Hitler's rise to power in 1933, his mother decided to emigrate with her two sons to France in order to bring them up in a more tolerant society and to protect them from the Nazi campaign against the Jews. After France's defeat and its occupation by Germany, the young Arved and his brother tried to escape from France, but were captured and deported to Germany in 1943.
But, thanks partly to the intervention of a Protestant pastor in the Confessing Church, they escaped the fate of so many Jews - including their uncle - who were shipped to Auschwitz.
The pastor arranged for the two brothers to work as nursing assistants and gardeners at a Protestant diaconal institution at Bethel, near Bielefeld, in northern Germany. After Germany was defeated in 1945, Alain returned to France, took French citizenship, and - because of his wartime experiences - trained as a Protestant pastor, studying theology in Montpellier, France, in Basle, Switzerland, as a student of the leading theologian Karl Barth, and in the United States. He took degrees in German and in philosophy at Bordeaux University, in France, while serving as a pastor in a nearby parish.
He taught at a number of French Protestant institutions before becoming assistant director of the WCC's Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, near Geneva, in 1971, a post he held until 1981.
He was greatly influenced both by the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, himself a Protestant, and by the "Theology of Hope" of German theologian Jürgen Moltmann - the subject of his doctoral dissertation.
Blancy not only wrote and spoke about ecumenism, but actively participated in ecumenical ventures. He was a delegate of his church at the talks that led, in 1973, to the Leuenberg agreement establishing full communion between Europe's Lutheran, Reformed and United churches.
A prolific writer, Blancy was known well beyond the confines of the circle of professional ecumenists and theologians because of his regular columns in Réforme, France's main Protestant weekly, and in other publications. His final column in Réforme appeared on the weekend of his death. Alain Blancy retired officially in 1992 with his wife, Christiane, to the small French village of Farges, near Geneva. Christiane died from cancer in 1994. Alain's cancer was diagnosed in 1996, but he remained active until four days before his death, travelling across Europe and beyond in response to requests to give papers at academic conferences, and to work as an interpreter at ecumenical events - he spoke French, German and English fluently. But he was equally at home organising Bible study in his local parish.
Not least because of his own background, Alain Blancy was passionately committed to Jewish-Christian dialogue, a commitment that increased in his final years. In July this year he spoke at Remembering for the Future 2000, a major interfaith conference in London and Oxford intended to "evaluate the Holocaust in a genocidal age". Five days before his death he was putting the finishing touches to a paper on "Christian Theology after the Shoah" that he intended to deliver two days later in Mulhouse, in eastern France. But his illness made that impossible.
For Alain Blancy, uniting in his own life many religious strands, ecumenism was far more than an academic issue. It allowed him, he said, the freedom to bring together in his own life elements which otherwise divided humanity. "Can I, with the inheritance of my Jewish past, the past of my forebears, identify myself as a Christian, without thereby being torn apart, without having to betray either Christ or this inheritance? Am I able to live this unity - this 'ecumenism' - in my own body and life, to test out in myself and on myself a new unity, to reconcile that which in the world is divided and opposed? I cannot avoid this conflict ... For me there is no other ecumenism than that which dares to hold together and to practise this repentance and struggle."
• In a message read at Alain Blancy's funeral on 4 October, Michel Bertrand, president of the national council of the Reformed Church of France, praised his ecumenical commitment and his theological rigour and integrity. In a tribute published by the WCC, Dr Konrad Raiser said that Alain Blancy would be "remembered as one among the cloud of ecumenical witnesses of the 20th century. His passion for unity, the clarity of his vision, and the generosity of his personality in spite of the bitter memories which shaped his younger years, will remain a precious legacy for a new ecumenical generation." Dr Setri Nyomi, general secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, described Alain Blancy as "a man with a rare capacity to interpret the Reformed tradition in ways which brought it to bear compellingly on the issues of today".
Alain Blancy, born 5 January 1927, died 30 September 2000. Source: ENI Bulletin No. 19/2000
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