Ecumenical Internationalism: Willoughby Dickinson,the League of Nations and the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches

Abstract

Despite the eventual collapse of the international system, the interwar years also gave rise to lasting developments in international co-operation. Such co-operation was largely taken up not by nation-states, but by representatives of international civil society. Two of their foremost causes were the League of Nations and the nascent Christian ecumenical movement. One of the most active proponents of internationalism in the 1920s was the British liberal Willoughby Dickinson, the leading parliamentary proponent for female suffrage. After the war, Dickinson turned to international politics, advocating a form of ecumenical internationalism that combined his religious and liberal beliefs. This article outlines Dickinson’s background in British progressive politics. It then examines how he came to develop his ideas of ‘international friendship’ and ‘ecumenical internationalism’ through his leadership roles in the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches and the International Federation of League of Nations Societies. It concludes by examining his support for the newly emergent question of minority rights in the interwar years.