From the Worldwide Faith News archives www.wfn.org


News in brief


From FRANK_IMHOFF.parti@ecunet.org (FRANK IMHOFF)
Date 20 Feb 1998 14:41:09

 ... Woman elected as bishop for Stockholm. The Rev. Caroline Krook has
been elected by a large majority to be bishop of the Church of Sweden's
Stockholm diocese. The Swedish government will appoint a bishop from among
the candidates at the end of March. During the last two decades, only in
five cases of the 27 appointments of bishop has the government chosen
someone other than the person who won the election. Krook, 53, currently
dean of Stockholm's cathedral parish, would succeed retiring Bishop Henrik
Svenungson. If appointed, she would become the second woman bishop in the
Church of Sweden following Christina Odenberg who, last year, became bishop
of Lund.

 ... Bishop Thomas Mbuli passes away. Bishop Thomas Mbuli of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa (ELCSA) Eastern Diocese,
Mbabane, Swaziland, recently died aged 55. Mbuli spent some years as a
pastor in Germany in the late 1970s. Upon his return to South Africa he
became a parish pastor at Eshowe, in the ELCSA South Eastern Diocese. Later
elected dean of the ELCSA's South Eastern Diocese in the Durban Circuit, he
went on to become a general secretary of the ELCSA.

 ...VELKD brochure provides introduction to the message of justification.
The United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany (VELKD) is making
available a 48-page brochure on the message of justification to its
congregations. The first 10,000 copies of an introduction to the biblical
and Reformatory understanding of the message, published last fall, already
have been distributed. Reprinting will be necessary. The text, intended as
a discussion starter, encourages concentration on the central message of
justification and invites interested parishioners to further reading.
Copies may be obtained from the Lutheran Church Office, P.O. Box 51 04 09,
30634 Hanover, Germany.

 ... "Protestant Perspectives in History". A recently published book in
Argentina offers essays on Martin Luther, Felipe Melanchton and Dietrich
Bonhoeffer. Written by Alejandro Zorzin, pastor in the Evangelical Church
of the River Plate, Buenos Aires, and institute of theology professor, the
book also includes the translation of documents not previously published in
Spanish.

 ... Second basic training course for women in journalism. The
Communication Committee for Lutheran Minority Churches (KALME) will hold
another basic training seminar for women on print media, this time in
Pilliscsaba, near Budapest, Hungary, 27 April - 2 May 1998. Led by
Christine Lssig, editor-in-chief of the Thuringian church newspaper Glaube
und Heimat, and Marion Wolf, editor of the Mecklenburg church newspaper,
Mecklenburgische Kirchenzeitung, delegates from 13 European Lutheran
churches will be introduced to the theory and practice of journalism. A
visit to a Hungarian rural congregation and to the new radio mission center
are included in the seminar. The positive experience of the first seminar
for women, held in 1989 in Weimar, induced the KALME leadership to offer
another training course for women.

. . . Slovak Lutherans, Roman Catholics agree to joint history project.
Lutherans and Roman Catholics in the Slovak Republic have agreed to a joint
history project. The agreement, concluded by a group of Lutheran-Roman
Catholic scholars, was reached Jan. 20 during conversations in the bishop's
office of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in the Slovak
Republic (ECACSR) in Bratislava. According to a statement, issued after
three hours of deliberation, by chairperson of the Slovak Bishops'
Conference, Bishop Rudolf Balaz, and ECACSR Bishop Jlius Filo, the history
project will cover four periods, including the time from the Reformation
and Counter-Reformation to the Second World War up to the Communist regime.
A first conference is planned for October.

 ... Three Dutch theological faculties must close. Three of the six
theological faculties in the Netherlands are to be closed. According to the
Dutch Ministry of Education in The Hague, there are neither enough
students, nor qualified professors. Minister of education, Jo Ritzen, has
asked the Protestant churches to submit a plan for the shutdown by 15 May.
Alternatively, he will decide which faculties will close. Currently,
Protestant theologians are trained at six universities, Amsterdam,
Groningen, Leiden, Utrecht, the Free University of Amsterdam, founded by a
Christian association, and the Theological University of Kampen. The Roman
Catholic faculties were reduced from five to three a few years ago.

 ... "Die Lutherin" - exhibition on Katharina von Bora. "Die Lutherin -
stations of a life" is the title of an exhibition on Martin Luther's wife,
Katharina von Bora. Opened at the end of January in Wittenberg, the
exhibition documents Bora's childhood and youth, her time spent in a
convent and her life at the side of the Reformer. Heidemarie Wst, director
of the Evangelical Academy of Sachsen-Anhalt, emphasized that the
exhibition intended to show that Katharina von Bora "was, in no way, just a
loyal pastor's wife, in the background", but that she led a life all of her
own. The exhibition also marks the 500th anniversary of Bora's birth in
1999.

*       *       *
Lutheran World Information
Editorial Assistant: Janet Bond-Nash
E-mail: jbn@wcc-coe.org
http://www.lutheranworld.org/


Browse month . . . Browse month (sort by Source) . . . Advanced Search & Browse . . . WFN Home