3 - 2003

Ecumenical Kirchentag

First Ecumenical Kirchentag

An easy-going ecumenical triumph

by Thomas Seiterich-Kreuzkamp

"You Shall Be a Blessing”: listening, relaxed encounters, celebrations together. What can we learn from Germany’s first Ecumenical Kirchentag in Berlin? – It takes courage to write a synopsis of a major five-day event including 3,200 individual events. T. Seiterich-Kreuzkamp, editor of Publik-Forum magazine, sums up his impressions in four observations.

The Ecumenical Kirchentag (ÖKT) is having its effects on politics, society, religion and church policy:
In politics, a change has come with this ecumenical "council” in Berlin, with 200,000 full participants and around 250,000 occasional visitors, a strong fair-weather front bringing warm air into a Germany which was, until Berlin, politically at loggerheads over conflicts of interest. Indeed: this biggest ever gathering for dialogue in the Republic took its stand behind Chancellor Schröder’s Agenda 2010 and behind the further reduction of the welfare state which lies ahead.

The critical opposing stands of the trade unions, of social ethicist Friedhelm Hengsbach and of the Catholic Worker Movement (KAB) are unfortunately losing their influence. Surprising for political observers is the degree to which the traditional, rather "leftist” critique of capitalism in calling for a just distribution of goods practically disappeared at the Ecumenical Kirchentag, so great was the readiness for future belt-tightening. The churches turned out to be the Republic’s supporters in its hour of need.

This was heard from the lips of EKD Council President Manfred Kock, of Protestant Bishop Wolfgang Huber, whose church hosted the Kirchentag, and, a bit more distanced from the (ruling) Social Democrats, of the President of the German Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Karl Lehmann. This agreement in principle to thrift at the expense of poorer persons will benefit mainly the governing Social-Democratic/Green coalition rather than the opposition.

So the ÖKT did not mention political justice at home. But global justice was the theme of ÖKT President Elisabeth Raiser’s strongly worded protest against the so-called Third World’s bondage to debt which is costing human lives. Overall, the ÖKT was characterised by a liberal, tolerant attitude; enemy images were not to the fore. Even President Bush and the USA were not put in the dock. This is remarkable six weeks after the Iraq war which was conducted, despite mass peace protests, as an intervention in disregard of international law by the conquerors.

From a social viewpoint, the ÖKT was visibly a great warm bath of harmony. Here we are, all together: everyone was so glad that a good mood prevailed on all sides. Anyone looking to settle accounts in any area, to sharpen a conflict and push for a solution, or who had good reasons for some provocation, simply couldn’t get a response. Serenity was the order of the day – live and let live. There was no room for indignation, that public emotion which had spiced and heated up so many church conventions, both Catholic and Protestant, since 1975.

This stability of the peaceful atmosphere was dictated by awareness of subjectivity and complexity. The speeches of most of the orators at the innumerable podium presentations began with "I”. No ÖKT podium can get away, any more, without this subjectivity in expressing one’s concern, though it grates on the nerves of the impatient. The issues – bioethics, gender justice, the Middle East, Africa, pensions, reform of health care, child-raising, education – of concern to society and politics, are all complicated ones. Every answer brings up new questions and problems.

So in the new millennium we are not negotiating on "saving the world”, but rather on problems which will continue to be decisive for our lives. Complex issues were discussed at the ÖKT, mostly with great efforts at honesty. The President of the German Catholics’ Central Committee (ZdK), Hans Joachim Meyer, an experienced educational policy-maker, hit on the social image of the ÖKT in saying that he was surprised to see thousands of people at major presentations with serious content "listening patiently with bowed heads, taking notes”. The time for provocation and protest seems to be over. Instead of anger, there is readiness to listen.

In religion, the first Ecumenical Kirchentag marks the end of the either-or era. The new ecumenical theme tune of 2003 is both-and. You can be both Christian and Buddhist, or read the challenging theology of Drewermann and still be a loyal elder in your local church. We are not called to be confrontational prophets, but rather women and men of public credibility; our model is the non-violent leader of oppressed Tibet, the Dalai Lama, God incarnate for Buddhists.

Phenotypical of this event as a whole was that in Berlin, the former home of Prussian Protestantism, the social image of the Protestant church convention prevailed over the traditional Catholic one. The all-inclusive dough of the ÖKT cake is soft like today’s Protestantism, sprinkled with raisins, currants and other bits of Catholic, non-mainline Protestant or non-Christian origin. The content, dominated clearly by the Protestant church convention culture, is therefore largely without central control, liberal in a free-market sense, has little room for systematics, for "dogmatic” teaching, or for the sharp contours of confrontation. Fundamentalism of any stripe is not welcome at the ÖKT, and the fundamentalists know it and stay away.

As for church policy, the Ecumenical Kirchentag is a milestone on Germany’s historic journey in a positive direction, from a land of confessions and divisions to a republic of varied denominations down to neighbourhood level. Each confession harbours exclusiveness along with its claim to the truth. For 400 years Germany was divided into confessional territories, each a more or less homogenous world unto itself. Wars between confessions once wiped out more than half the nation’s population. Only the floods of refugees in 1945 finally mixed the confessions together – at the price of decades of conflict, under which many uprooted persons suffered bitterly.

But today the confessions are ripening, each with its corner on truth and blessedness, into friendly neighbour churches. Germany, the land of religious schism, is changing so that from a distance its faith scene looks a bit like that of immigrant nations, the USA or Australia, where churches and religions live in peace and tolerance, as good neighbours.

The people at the ÖKT were voting with their feet – for the ecumenical community. The vast attendance represents a vast success. Just under two-thirds were Protestants, 36 per cent Catholics. But even this Catholic third represented about 70,000 ÖKT participants. That’s almost twice the attendance at the last two Catholic conventions, in Mainz (1999) and in Hamburg (2001). The ÖKT apparently has much more drawing power than the "Katholikentag”, centrally controlled by the ZdK.

Within Catholicism, tensions will probably increase after the ÖKT. Only a few of the bishops are dialogue-oriented enough to endure an ecumenical Kirchentag – such as Cardinal Lehmann of Mainz, Cardinal Sterzinsky of Berlin, and Bishops Fürst of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, Kamphaus of Limburg or Marx of Trier. The timid and conservative ones stayed away from Berlin.

Among the Protestants it was different. Many conservatives, faithful to their confessions, and leaders of non-mainline "free” churches, who had always preferred a strict "Kirchentag of the Word” to a "worldly” Kirchentag, came to the ÖKT in Berlin and found a place for themselves, whether in the Spiritual Centre or at a variety of fora of their own.

Christianity is not losing its meaning for German society – to the contrary. This too was evident at the ÖKT. Germany needs this unique mass gathering of serious citizens who struggle over issues and celebrate unconstrainedly together.

In the debates of today’s society, Christian opinions are more sought after than 10-15 years ago. This results from the discovery that all the problems the society is trying to solve today have an ethical dimension. At this point many Christians have a great deal to offer.

However, as surveys are continually confirming, the institutional churches’ much-discussed downward trend is a reality. They are stuck in the same structural crisis as the trade unions and political parties. It is not religion itself which is fading away, but rather the established, official churches. This is also the lesson of the 2003 Ecumenical Kirchentag in Berlin.

So what do we have left? A great, inviting festival of faith, unique in German history, and a definite desire for more ecumenicity. So here’s to many more ecumenical Kirchentage!

This article, here slightly abridged, appeared in Publik-Forum. Zeitschrift kritischer Christen (a magazine for critical Christians) Oberursel, No. 11/2003, 13 June.