Free
Christianity
The 5th Congress was held in Berlin in August 1910 as
the "World Congress of Free Christianity and Religious
Progress." Prior to the Congress foreign delegates
stopped at Cologne to join a demonstration led by Friends
of Protestant Freedom in the Rhinelands against the
strictures of the State Church. Speakers at the Berlin
Congress included the well-known German liberal scholars
Ernst Troeltsch and Adolf Harnack as well as the American
theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, and participants included
members of "orthodox" Christian denominations
and Reformed Jews. Women taking part in the 1910 Congress
founded the International Union of Liberal Christian
Women, which was later renamed the International Association
for Liberal Religious Women.
After
the Congress there were excursions to Wittenberg and
Weimar to visit the homes of Luther, Goethe and Schiller.
In recognition of the growth in Christian involvement,
the Executive Committee that met in 1910 changed the
name of the Council to the "International Congress
of Free Christians and Other Religious Liberals." The Executive Committee was also enlarged from twelve
members to twenty-two: five members from Germany,
four from Great Britain, four from the United States,
three from France, two from Switzerland, two from
Scandinavia, and one each from Italy and Hungary.
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