A new book by three German scholars documents the fact that the World Council of Churches (WCC) was infiltrated by communist agents during the Cold War period. National Protestantism and the Ecumenical Movement: Church Activities During the Cold War, co-authored by Gerhard Besier, Armin Boyens and Gerhard Lindemann, draws upon KGB files as well as archives from the WCC, the Lutheran World Federation and the East German state secretariat for church affairs. The authors, who spent several years of research before writing and publishing the 1074-page book, stated that WCC president Metropolitan Nikodim, a leader in the Russian Orthodox Church, served as an agent of the KGB, the Soviet Union's secret security agency. Nikodim was elected as one of the WCC presidents in 1975 and also served on the WCC's central and executive committees before dying of a heart attack in 1978. According to Ecumenical News International (ENI), Nikodim "played a major role in the Russian church's decision to join the WCC in 1961" (ENI, 2-2-00).

In December 1999, Besier promoted the book in Berlin and explained the purpose behind the WCC's socialist agenda. He said during the Cold War, the WCC believed it could improve the world's social and economic condition through the implementation of social and political programs. "Many ecumenists used ecumenical social ethics based on 'socialist' models, he claimed, to criticize the Western model of society" (ENI, 2-2-00). He added that the WCC should, in the future, focus on theological issues rather than social issues.

Several WCC officials are attempting to discredit the new book and even deny the fact that Nikodim served as a KGB agent. Mikhail Gundyaev, who represents the Russian Orthodox Church at the WCC headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, told ENI that although he had never seen the KGB files, he found it "impossible to imagine" that Nikodim worked for the communist government, although he did admit that he would not reject the possibility that "some of the people in our church" may have had connections with the KGB. WCC spokesperson Karin Achtelstetter discredited the work of the authors by telling ENI that they did not utilize all the source material available to them and, therefore, portrayed the WCC-Cold War situation inaccurately.

For decades, the FEA warned about the communist infiltration and the communist sympathizers within the WCC. The FEA particularly sounded a warning about the duplicity of Metropolitan Nikodim, who not only served as a WCC president and member of the central and executive committees but also as president of the communist-sponsored Christian Peace Conference. Russian refugees had identified Nikodim as a KGB agent, but liberals would not listen. Nikodim deceived the United States and the world when he held a press conference in New York in 1967 and said the communist revolution in Russia "released the Christian church" and "sought to serve clearly Christian purposes" (FEA News & Views, Nov.-Dec. 1967). Despite his 1975 claim to a Nairobi newspaper in which he stated, "I'm not a KGB agent," his pro-communist stance was clearly evident in a 1966 speech in Geneva, Switzerland, at the WCC's World Conference on Church and Society in which he said,

Christians in the Soviet Union ... have not only accepted the socialist revolution that took place in our country, but have and are active builders of a classless, socialist society, which is free from exploitation, racial or other inequality, and every member of which possesses equal rights as well as the opportunity for individual development and an active participation in the life of the whole society" (Foundation magazine, Sept.-Oct. 1982).

The world now knows that such statements were completely untrue, yet the WCC served as a platform for such lies and propaganda during the Cold War period. Even today, the WCC still champions socialist causes and criticizes the political and economic foundations of the free world. Believers must continue to beware of the liberal political and social agenda of the WCC.

http://www.fundamentalbiblechurch.org/WTrumpet/fbcwt004.htm