30.07.2004
LWF Study Team Considers Lutheran “Grammar” to Engage Current Ethical Topics
Diverse Cultural Perspectives on Common ConcernsNUREMBERG, Germany/GENEVA, 30 July 2004 (LWI) – A Lutheran World Federation (LWF) study team on intercultural ethical deliberation considered at its recent meeting a so-called Lutheran “grammar,” for addressing challenges emerging in contextual situations.
The LWF Department for Theology and Studies (DTS) group comprising ethicists from Brazil, China (Hong Kong), Germany, Hungary, South Africa, Sweden and the United States, cited familiar emphases such as vocation, but also new significant concerns such as global citizenship.
Participants in the second international meeting of the DTS study team, July 19-24 in Nuremberg, Germany, included Prof. Dr Hans G. Ulrich of Erlangen University, Germany, and Rev. Dr Wanda Deifelt of the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil, who expressed the need to correct what have been misuses of the Lutheran tradition.
In other study sessions, papers presented by the team members, as expected, provoked intense deliberation. “How topics such as democracy, property, genetically-modified foods, education, or sexuality are viewed from African, Central Eastern European, or Asian cultural perspectives can be quite diverse,” observed Rev. Dr Karen Bloomquist, DTS director also responsible for the study, “yet interesting convergences also began to emerge at this meeting.”
Noting diverse perspectives, Dr Yuen Waiman, professor at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Hong Kong, observed, “What might be seen by a German as provocative is for a Chinese Christian a matter of realistic survival.” Convergence was suggested when Dr Andras Csepregi of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hungary asked, “How can freedom and community coexist in places such as Hungary, or Hong Kong?”
In its deliberations, the study team considered how pre-modern, modern and late modern perspectives on ethical matters come together in complex ways in today’s globalized world, so that it seems that we are living “in many worlds.” “Nevertheless, it is God’s one world,” insisted Bishop Dr Moeahabo Phillip Moila of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa.
Participants from Asian and African LWF member churches, attending the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria Division for World Mission summer school shared with the DTS team what they considered as ethical issues emerging in their settings. “We really are interested in what you are doing,” commented Rev. Sivin Kit of the Lutheran Church in Malaysia, “and hope that others will be able to learn from the process as well as the outcome.”
The study team’s final meeting is scheduled for March 2005 in South Africa. The working title for the anticipated publication presenting the study’s results is, “Ethics at the Intersections of God’s World.” (434 words)
If you want to edit this article yourself and adapt it to a given format, follow our editing information
