Feature story
Titled “The Parish of Ferney Voltaire: Cradle of Ecumenism?” the lecture told the lively story of the friendship that developed at the church between its pastor, Pierre Maury, and Willem Visser 't Hooft, “two people,” Brown said, “each intimately linked with the parish, who have played key roles in the ecumenical movement, both in France and internationally.”
Visser 't Hooft would later become the WCC’s first general secretary, and Maury president of the Reformed Church of France and himself active in the WCC.
Brown notes that Maury, in 1925, was beginning his first pastoral post in Ferney Voltaire.
“Almost at the same time as Pierre Maury's arrival at Ferney Voltaire, a young Dutchman, ten years younger than Maury, arrived in Geneva to work for the World Young Men's Christian Association as secretary for youth in Europe. His name was Willem Visser 't Hooft,” Brown said.
Impressed by Maury’s “powerful and direct preaching,” Brown said, Visser 't Hooft and his wife Henriette would cross from Geneva to France every Sunday to attend services at what the later WCC general secretary described as “the rather dilapidated church in Ferney Voltaire.”
The work of Swiss theologian Karl Barth was a unifying link between Maury and Visser 't Hooft, who became lifelong friends and colleagues.
“The friendship that developed between Pierre Maury and Visser 't Hooft during the five intense years they spent together in this parish, within these very walls, their shared passion for the Gospel, for ecumenism, for the thought of Karl Barth, played a decisive role in the development of the international ecumenical movement in the 1930s and even beyond,” said Brown.
