Eugene Carson Blake
Eugene Carson Blake ( born November 7, 1906 in St. Louis, Missouri; † 31 July 1985 in Stamford, Connecticut) was an American theologian of the Presbyterian Church and 1966-1972 Second Secretary of the World Council of Churches.
Life
The son of a sales agent of the Inland Steel Company studied after attending the Lawrenceville High School, first at Princeton University and earned a Bachelor of Arts there in 1928 (BA). He then worked as a teacher at Forman Christian College in Lahore 1928-1929, before he completed a subsequent postgraduate studies at the Theological Seminary at Princeton University in 1932 with a Bachelor in Theology ( Th.B. ). In addition, he studied intermittently at New College of the University of Edinburgh.
After several years as a Presbyterian minister in New York City and California Blake 1951 Secretary General of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States and held this post until 1966. Meanwhile, he was from 1954 to 1957 and President of the National Council of Churches, an association of Anglican, Protestant and Orthodox Christian denominations in the United States. On August 28, 1963, he was one of the speakers at the rally at the March on Washington for work and freedom, on the Martin Luther King 's speech I Have a Dream held.
In 1966, he was the successor of Willem Adolf Visser 't Hooft for the second Secretary-General of the World Council of Churches selected. Served in this office Blake, who advocated the formation of a church, the " reformed truly, truly catholic, truly evangelical" (, truly reformed, truly catholic, truly evangelical ') was, for six years until his replacement by Philip Potter in year 1972. During his tenure came the historic visit of the Ecumenical Council in Geneva offices by Pope Paul VI. on 10 June 1969.
As General Secretary of the WCC, he used the contact to the Christian Peace Conference (CFRP ), whose III. Allchristlichen peace meeting in Prague in 1968, he paid tribute to his greeting.
His major work, The Church in the next decade, published in 1969 in a German translation, entitled The Next Steps to a church with a foreword by Klaus von Bismarck, who was not only director of the WDR, but also Director of the German Protestant Church Congress at that time.