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The Lutheran World Federation
Lutheran World Information |
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| 13.06.2005 |
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| Former Estonian Archbishop Urges Open Dialogue among Europe’s Churches |
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Regional Consultation Discusses Challenges, Prospects for the Changing Continent
REYKHOLT, Iceland/GENEVA, 13 June 2005 (LWI) – A former archbishop of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church has called for openness and mutual willingness to dialogue among European churches in efforts to deal with dwindling membership and significant changes among Lutheran churches on that continent.
“What our churches can and should do is to be partners in dialogue,” retired Archbishop Jaan Kiivit told church representatives attending the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) European Church Leadership Consultation in Reykholt, Iceland, June 8-13.
Around 90 church representatives from 23 countries participated in the meeting, which provided a discussion platform for social and ecclesiological change in European Lutheran churches. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland hosted the event.
From a sociological understanding of religion, the experiences of churches in eastern Europe were not “fundamentally different” from those of western Europe, Kiivit explained. But the loss of Christian traditions and values in Central Eastern Europe, he said, had not been caused by “progressive and almost imperceptible dismantling,” but, rather, resulted from the violent repression within former communist-led countries. “The process of globalization shows us how entire systems of values and social structures are disappearing, and being replaced by others,” he observed.
Europe was strongly characterized by a change in the perception of piety, Kiivit said. “People are leaving the church not because they no longer have faith, but because they no longer need the church.” He remarked that although many churches were “now empty,” a strong craving for religiousness could still be felt among the majority of people.
This changing society, according to Kiivit, should not be viewed as a threat, but more as the “context in which the church has to proclaim the gospel and administer the sacraments.” It is a situation that could lead to totally new opportunities. “Linking church with culture such as music, poetry, and descriptive art,” could be one of them. Particularly important for missionary work, he said, was to be familiar with the religious origins of culture; the church had always been a vehicle of culture.
In his address to the consultation, LWF General Secretary, Rev. Dr Ishmael Noko, noted there was no healing without recollection and memory. Every church, he said, had its own history in which it was embedded. But in view of current challenges, it was necessary to go beyond such considerations and recall the history shared by the Lutheran community since its founding at the first LWF Assembly in Lund, Sweden, in 1947. (424 words)
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