ABSTRACT
In January 1917, Leighton Pullan (1865-1940), Chaplain and Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford for forty years from 1890-1930 preached at St Margaret’s Church in North Oxford. Taking as his text Isaiah chapter 52, he spent some time pleading for the Church of England and the Serbian Orthodox Church to continue to deepen their understanding of one another.1 For Pullan, who was a historian of doctrine, an ardent controversialist, and a committed Anglo-Catholic ecumenist, the changed international situation brought about by the First World War appeared to offer a real possibility of reunion between the churches of the East and West. The difficult situation held out much promise:
[W] hen we think of the Church of England and the Church of Serbia it seems hardly possible to speak of separation and disunion. I do not think lightly or gaily of theological differences. … But … how wrong it must be to exaggerate differences of belief.2
