4 - 2001

Churches in Europe

The Horizon Expands

European church conference in Belfast

by Jürgen Wandel

The Protestant churches in Europe cooperate through the Leuenberg Church Fellowship. At their fifth assembly, held 19-25 June in Belfast, they experienced how religion can divide people. This is precisely why the assembly was concerned with the question of how Protestants in Europe can work together better with people of other confessions and faith communities.

The wall is attractive, standing along Springfield Street in North Belfast. Like the surrounding row houses it is built of light red brick, with concrete posts decorated with little towers. However, this structure, which recalls the industrial architecture of the 19th century, is not intended to protect a factory from break-ins. Its job is to separate the Protestant and Catholic residential areas. A small section of the massive iron gate is left open during the day.

When the wall was built a few years ago it was intended to straighten the "peace line”, as the boundary between the two residential areas was called. However, the Methodist church was left out on the "wrong” side. Since then it has stood in a no-man’s-land, and now and then it has been the target of arsonists. The Leuenberg Church Fellowship delegates came here shortly after the opening of their assembly, to find out about reconciliation projects.

Belfast was an appropriate venue for this assembly. Since its founding, the Leuenberg Church Fellowship has sought to break down the walls which separate confessions, nations and religions. In 1973, at the Protestant Academy on the Leuenberg near Basel, delegates from the Lutheran, Reformed and United churches in Europe met together to conclude several years of conversations on doctrine. There they signed a sort of peace treaty, the "Leuenberg Agreement”. This put an end to centuries of enmity between Lutheran and Reformed Christians, which had weakened Protestantism in Europe and repelled those outside both churches. Since then the two confessions exchange pastors and celebrate the Lord’s Supper together.

The wall dividing Protestants and Catholics in North Belfast, which also protects them from one another, will probably remain there for a while. The 2,000-year-old spiritual wall which Christians have erected against the Jews, however, has been crumbling during the past few years. In Belfast, the Leuenberg Fellowship made an important contribution towards lowering it a bit more. For the first time in their history European Protestants made a common statement on the relationship between "Church and Israel”.

The document which the assembly adopted with only one dissenting voice clearly renounced evangelisation of the Jews. Since Christians and Jews together have the mission to witness to the "God of Israel” and recognise God’s "sovereign act of election”, the churches are "to refrain from any activity directed specifically to converting Jews to Christianity”.

The walls between the nations of Europe have become more permeable, especially within the European Union. But they continue to exist in people’s heads, in traditions and mentalities Ð even among church people, even within the Leuenberg Church Fellowship. Even though there was no quarrelling over the topic "Church and Israel”, a quarrel broke out over the issue of how the Fellowship can speak at the European level Ð and whether it is possible to do so "with one voice”.

Just as it did seven years ago in Vienna, the key word "synod” stirred up strong reactions. For most of the churches’ representatives, a "European Protestant Synod” sounds like centralism, like a body which would restrict the sovereignty of the individual churches. However, a minority sees such a Synod as a broad-based, public forum where Protestants could discuss European issues regularly, and which would receive attention both within and outside the churches, and from the EU.

In Belfast, Oberkirchenrat Wilfried Neusel from the Rhineland spoke on behalf of a European Protestant Synod. After all, the synod of his regional church had voted in favour of the idea last year. The Protestant churches in the Netherlands think along the same lines, but there is strong disagreement from those in Denmark. Like most Danes, church folk are afraid of having their freedom limited by international institutions.

A Danish pastor pointed out in Belfast that even her own church does not have a synod, so she is that much less ready to discuss having a synod at the European level. And a fellow citizen of hers described the call for the Leuenberg Fellowship to speak "with one voice” as un-Protestant, as Roman Catholic. Oberkirchenrat Heiner Küenzlen from the Church of Württemberg proposed a compromise: discussion of the European synod should not be cut off, but the first thing to do was to examine "all possibilities under the heading ‚synod’”.

The assembly decided in favour of this compromise. It called for "the voice of the Protestant churches in Europe to be heard more clearly”. This confers a special significance on the executive committee of the Leuenberg Church Fellowship, which was re-elected in Belfast. The committee is to invite the member churches to regional consultations, at which important ethical issues at the level of Europe will be discussed.

Dr. Elisabeth Parmentier, Professor of Theology at Strasbourg, is the newly elected President of the Leuenberg Fellowship. She called the assembly’s decision "a step forward”. The discussion on a European synod showed that it was not a very big step. It must be admitted that the German regional churches took more than four hundred years to overcome their regional limitations and begin to work more closely together.

Another of the theological projects presented to the Leuenberg Fellowship in Belfast was a paper on the theme of "Law and Gospel”. It describes the different approaches of the Christian churches towards establishing a theological basis for ethical stances. And the Fellowship’s member churches from southeastern Europe presented a document on an explosive theme in their region, "Church Ð People Ð State Ð Nation”. It stressed "a particular emphasis on the universality of human rights”. This paper is also to be discussed in the Conference of European Churches (CEC), the bigger sister of the Leuenberg Fellowship. This will represent a challenge particularly to the Orthodox member churches of the CEC, which are closely Ð often too closely Ð bound up with their own nations.

The three documents presented in Belfast show that the Leuenberg churches have (once again) done a sound job with their theological homework. This is their strength. But will the Fellowship also manage to do significant work on the issues of concern to people inside and outside the churches and the European institutions? After Belfast, it is possible to be cautiously optimistic. In contrast to the assembly seven years ago in Vienna, there were many younger and female delegates to be seen in Belfast. And the Leuenberg Church Fellowship plans to strengthen its presence on the Internet and to develop "a network of European churches”.

This article appeared in the magazine Zeitzeichen (Signs of the Times), No. 8/2001. The author is  editor of this magazine. The article is here published in abridged form.