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While others recall the late George S. McGovern primarily as a United States senator and anti-war presidential candidate of the Vietnam War era, the World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit has paid tribute to him as the moderator of an ecumenical conference in 1969 that led to the creation of the WCC Programme to Combat Racism and the Special Fund to Combat Racism.
McGovern, known for his leadership on hunger issues as well as global justice and peacemaking, died at the age of 90 on Sunday 21 October 2012 in his native US state of South Dakota.
The WCC tribute noted, “As chair of a landmark 1969 conference” in Notting Hill, London, “George McGovern helped point the churches on the way toward a united approach to combating racial injustice in apartheid South Africa and throughout the earth.”
McGovern, a one-time theology student at Garrett Evangelical Divinity School near Chicago, represented the Methodist Church (now the United Methodist Church) as a delegate to the WCC 4th Assembly at Uppsala, Sweden in 1968.
In 1972, McGovern was nominated as the Democratic Party candidate for the presidency but was defeated by incumbent president Richard M. Nixon.
Read full text of the WCC general secretary's tribute to George McGovern