International League of Religious Socialists

History

Background

The International League of Religious Socialists (ILRS) is the oldest continuing socialist organization in Europe. The first international conference of the ILRS was held in the Netherlands by Willem Banning and Carl Mennicke in 1926. Willem Banning served as a Dutch preacher and co-founded the Dutch Labor Party. Carl Mennicke was a German-born theologian. A second conference was held in 1928 in Switzerland, and the following year, in 1929, an international committee for religious socialists was founded in Cologne, Germany. Among its members were Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, England and France. This conference solidified the existence of an international organization and is considered to be the official origin of the ILRS. From this point until the 1970s, the activities and membership of the ILRS was limited to Northern Europe.

The Bommersvik Congress

In 1983, the International League of Religious Socialists held a conference in Bommersvik, Sweden. This conference established the global reach of the ILRS, highlighting the commitment of the organization to provide a platform for Christian socialists around the world. The U.S. Religion and Socialism Commission formally joined the ILRS at this meeting. Under this conference's theme of "Peace and Employment", the ILRS addressed the relationship between the global north and south amidst the Cold War.

3 years later, the ILRS expanded its borders even further and met outside of Europe for the first time. This meeting took place in Managua, Nicaragua in October 1986 and featured 67 participants from 16 different countries. At the Bommersvik Conference, the Minister of Education for Nicaragua, Carlos Tunnerman, invited the ILRS to hold their next conference in Nicaragua, under the theme of "No Peace without Justice and Democracy".

Expanding to the Middle East, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) attended the 1989 Stockholm Congress of the ILRS. In 2002, the International League of Religious Socialists sat down with both the PLO and the Meretz party, an Israeli religious socialist party, in West Bank and Israel, respectively.

The Cold War

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the ILRS was able to integrate the former Soviet bloc countries into their fold. In 1991, the organization's conference was under the theme of "A New Europe: Challenges for Central/Eastern Europe". This conference was attended by delegates from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Lithuania and Estonia to name a few. At the ILRS conference in 2000, both Latvia and Italy officially joined the organization.