Global Consultation "Theology in the Life of Lutheran Churches"
Coordinator | Host | Presenters | Seminar Convenors | Worship Leaders
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Rev. Dr Benson Kalikawe Bagonza – Presenter
“Doing theology of sustainable development in Tanzania” 
Rev. Dr Benson Kalikawe Bagonza is bishop of the Karagwe Diocese in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT). He earned a Master of Sacred Theology (STM) from Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, and a PhD in theology from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (Illinois), with a focus on theology and development. He has also done extensive studies on African theology, ethics and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Since his ordination in 1993, he has served with ELCT as parish pastor, mission developer and general secretary.
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Rev. Dr Ramathate Dolamo - Presenter
“Indigenization of the church in Africa”
Rev. Dr Ramathate Tseka Hosea Dolamo is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa and Professor of Systematic Theology and Theological Ethics at the University of South Africa. His research has focused on Church and State relations, globalization, interreligious ethics, African/Black theology, gender justice and ecology. He has served as a resource person for ecumenical organizations such as the South African Council of Churches, the All Africa Conference of Churches and the World Council of Churches. He is a member of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians.
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Rev. Dr Norma Cook Everist - Presenter
“Integrative theological formation”
Rev. Dr Norma Cook Everist is Professor of Church and Ministry at Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, where faculty have engaged in a comprehensive strategy of visiting the congregations where their graduates serve as pastors and diaconal ministers. She is a widely known lecturer, the author of numerous books on leadership and Christian education and has participated in the development of the five-year Book of Faith initiative of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Everist is a deaconess and an ordained ELCA pastor.
“I look forward to my participation in this LWF seminar to reflect on the questions: How do we teach and minister beginning where the laity are in their context? Using the vernacular of their ministries in daily life all week long, how do we think theologically about the human predicament and grace, the church and salvation? How can a seminary learn from congregations, strengthening the connection between theology and the life of the church in the world as we worship and learn, engage in diakonia and pursue justice? How do we prepare leadership to strengthen the church’s vocation in the multi-religious public world?"
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Dr Hans-Peter Grosshans - Presenter
“Different cultures, different problems. Is a common theological perspective possible?”
Dr Hans-Peter Grosshans is Professor for Systematic Theology and Director of the Institute for Ecumenical Theology at the Faculty of Protestant Theology at the University of Münster in Germany. His theological work focuses on Luther’s theology and the Lutheran tradition, the challenge of global Christianity for European theology, the diverse confessional understandings of Christian faith, and the encounter between theology and philosophy.
Hopes and expectations: “To overcome the various divisions in Protestant theology–for example, between the global North and South, academic and church-based theology, Scripture and human experience–through intensive theological discussions and shared spiritual experiences. To intensify the communion of Lutheran churches worldwide with theological discourse which deepens our mutual understanding.”
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Rev. Dr Guillermo Hansen - Presenter
“Resistance, adaptation or challenge? How versatile is Lutheran theology in new contexts?”
Rev. Dr Guillermo Hansen is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota. A native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Hansen has served as Professor of Systematic Theology and Ethics, Chairperson of the Department of Systematic Theology and director of post-graduate and doctoral studies at ISEDET Ecumenical Theological University in Buenos Aires. He was also vice president of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Argentina and Uruguay and theological advisor in the LWF.
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Dr Eva Harasta - Presenter
“Pluriform unity in Christ: Responding to the challenges of multireligiosity from the perspective of Lutheran ecclesiology"
A native of Vienna, Austria, Dr Eva Harasta received her Doctor of Theology from the University of Heidelberg in Germany; her dissertation was entitled “Praise and Petition: A Study of Prayer in Systematic Theology.” She has been a research associate at the Chair of Systematic Theology and Contemporary Theological Issues at the University of Bamberg in Germany since September 2004. She was the Bonhoeffer Visiting Teaching Fellow at Union Theological Seminary in New York City from January to June 2007, and received the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise in May 2007.
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Bishop Dr Margot Kässmann - Presenter
"Bible, Prayer and Confession. Current challenges on the way towards the Jubilee of the Reformation"
Rev. Dr Margot Kässmann is bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover, Germany. She earned her Ph.D. at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, with a thesis on “Poverty and Wealth as an Inquiry into the Unity of the Church.” Between 1991 and 1998 she was a member of the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches, and served as Secretary General of the Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag (German Protestant Church Congress) from 1994 to 1999.
“I am convinced [that] Lutheran theology is prepared to meet the challenges of a globalized world. We will have to search for the balance to reform the church of the Reformation (ecclesia reformata semper reformanda) and at the same time preserve the tradition of theological thinking. Augsburg certainly is a wonderful place to reflect from different contexts in the world what that may mean for our common confession.”
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Rev. Dr Dirk G. Lange - Presenter
“Confessions, ecumenism, ethnicity: A Lutheran charism”
Rev. Dr Dirk G. Lange is Associate Professor of Worship at Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He received his PhD in theology from Emory University. He is currently working on a literary analysis of liturgy as disruptive force in the theology of Martin Luther. Having himself witnessed and been involved in the Eastern European underground resistance in the 1980s as a brother of the Community of Taizé, he is interested in the ways liturgical disruption can rewrite ecclesiology and ecumenism. Dirk was born and raised in Canada and is now an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
“I have been deeply concerned about finding a new language for theology, a language that needs to come from outside of the religious sphere. Working in the area of constructive liturgical theology, I have been re-reading the Lutheran Confessions through the lens of liturgy, trauma theory and post-structuralist literary theory. In this reading, I have become more and more aware of the deep ecumenical and global characteristics of the Confessions. The LWF’s global consultations have precisely encouraged and supported a re-thinking of theological loci in the 21st century beyond a “western” framework. My own area of study–worship and theology–is at the heart of this on-going dialogue between theology and culture, gender, social and interreligious realities. It is exciting to be part of this global re-thinking and re-writing!”
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Rev. Dr Kristin Johnston Largen - Presenter
“What God has created will not be lost: Constructing a more inclusive soteriology”
Rev. Dr Kristin Johnston Largen is an ordained minister in the ELCA and currently serves as Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. She is the current editor of Dialog: A Journal of Theology. Her forthcoming book is titled What Christians can Learn from Buddhism: Rethinking Salvation.
“I am particularly interested in the question of salvation: how it is described and envisioned in a variety of Christian contexts, and how these Christian descriptions are influenced by other religious traditions.”
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Dr J. Paul Rajashekar - Presenter
"Rethinking Lutheran theology in the context of religious plurality"
Dr J. Paul Rajashekar is Luther D. Reed Professor of Systematic Theology and Dean of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia (Pennsylvania). He has formerly served as Professor at United Theological College in Bangalore, India, and was the first Executive Secretary for Church and People of Other Faiths, LWF Department for Theology and Studies.
“I look forward to the flow and cross-flow of ideas and agendas for doing theology in a globalized world. A global consultation of this kind may help de-territorialize theological reflection in forging a Lutheran theology that is in a true sense ‘ecumenical.’”
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Rev. Dr Barbara R. Rossing - Presenter
“Diversity in the Bible as a model for Lutheran hermeneutics”
Rev. Dr Barbara R. Rossing is Professor of New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (Illinois), where she has taught since 1994. She holds a doctorate in New Testament and Early Christianity from Harvard Divinity School, an M. Div. from Yale Divinity School, and a B.A. from Carleton College with a major in geology. She has authored a number of publications and is currently writing a book on apocalypse and global climate change.
Rossing has served as chaplain to Harvard Divinity School, pastor at the Holden Village retreat center, and assistant pastor at Bethany Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She serves on the LWF Executive Committee and Council, and chairs the LWF Program Committee for Theology and Studies.
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Rev. Dr Gary Simpson – Presenter
“‘Partakers of divine majesty’: Retrieving Martin Luther’s critical public theology of political authority for the global civil society of the 21st century”
Rev. Gary Simpson has held faculty appointments since 1990 at Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he is currently Professor of Systematic Theology and Director of both the Center for Missional Leadership and the God-in-Global-Civil-Society Project.
Beginning in 1976, Simpson served for 14 years in California, Missouri and Oregon in different capacities including Lutheran pastor, Protestant chaplain and minister of education and youth.
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Rev. Dr Martin Lukito Sinaga – Presenter
“Conversion and public conversation in Asia”
(could not attend due to a death in the family) Rev. Dr Martin Lukito Sinaga is an ordained minister in the Simalungun Protestant Christian Church in Indonesia. He earned his doctorate in theology from the South East Asia Graduate School of Theology with a dissertation entitled “The Postcolonial Identity of an Ethnic Church in Civil Society.” He was a lecturer at the Roman Catholic Driyarkara School of Philosophy in Jakarta prior to teaching religion, church-society relations, and interfaith dialogue at the Jakarta Theological Seminary from 2001 until 2008.
Sinaga is founder of the Society of Interreligious Dialogue, sat on the Theological Commission of the Council of Churches in Indonesia, and serves currently as Study Secretary for the DTS Theology and the Church program.
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Rev. Dr Vítor Westhelle - Presenter
“Summarizing and implications for theology in the life of churches and for theological formation”
Rev. Dr Vítor Westhelle is Professor of Systematic Theology at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (Illinois), an institution he joined in 1993. A native of Brazil and ordained member of the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil (IECLB), he was Coordinator of the Ecumenical Commission on Land in Paraná, working with the landless peasants struggling for land and justice. He has written widely on Luther, liberation, creation, the apocalypse and eschatology.
Before joining LSTC, Westhelle was on the faculty of Escola Superior de Teologia in São Leopoldo, Brazil, and of Luther Seminary, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He was also visiting professor at the University of Natal in South Africa and Aarhus University in Denmark. Westhelle has served on various LWF committees.
“I look forward to witnessing and being part of the shaping of a new generation of Lutheran theologians that will be, and already is, for the first time in the history of Lutheranism, truly international, diverse, and vibrant.”
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Rev. Dr Dean Zweck - Presenter
“‘Whoever hears you, hears me’: hearing the voice of Christ as we listen to one another interpret the Bible in a global community”
A pastor of the Lutheran Church of Australia (LCA), Rev. Dr Dean Zweck is presently lecturer in church history and vice-principal at Australian Lutheran College (formerly Luther Seminary) in Adelaide, South Australia. Dean was ordained in Adelaide and has done graduate studies at Concordia Seminary in St Louis, Missouri, and at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (Illinois). He was seconded by the LCA to serve as pastor and seminary lecturer in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea. He is married to Dorothy and they have three grown-up children.
“I come to the conference with a deep interest in the way in which Christians of the Lutheran tradition around the world interpret the Scriptures in their particular contexts. As Lutheran Christians we share a common understanding of the Scriptures: Christ is at the centre, and all that Christ has done for us and for our salvation. But the Word becomes flesh, and the word about the Word happens in a context. I am hoping and expecting that at this conference we will together be enriched as we learn from one another about the transforming power of the gospel in very different situations. Other perspectives and practices can open our eyes and enrich our lives to see and experience the gospel working in ways of which we were not formerly aware.”
