wfn.org | Courageous and Controversial European Protestant Leader Dies

[PCUSA.NEWS@ecunet.org]

22-November-1996 
 
 
96469         Courageous and Controversial European  
                      Protestant Leader Dies 
 
                         by Stephen Brown 
                  Ecumenical News International 
 
GENEVA--One of Germany's most prominent and controversial Protestant church 
leaders died suddenly on Nov. 10 at the age of 61. 
 
     Peter Beier, who died apparently as the result of a heart attack, had 
been president of the Evangelical Church of the Rhineland since 1989. 
 
     The Evangelical Church of the Rhineland, with 3.2 million members, is 
the second biggest church belonging to the Evangelical Church in Germany 
(EKD), whose 24 member churches represent the overwhelming majority of 
German Protestants. 
 
     Beier irritated conservative groups within the church because of his 
involvement in the peace movement, his participation in trade union 
demonstrations and his belief that the church needed to discuss openly the 
issue of homosexuality. 
 
     But he was capable in equal measure of upsetting the church 
establishment -- of which he was also part -- as when he suggested earlier 
this year that parallel groupings of Lutheran, United and Reformed churches 
in Germany should be abolished and replaced by the stronger EKD. 
 
     The EKD's presiding bishop, Klaus Engelhardt, said Nov. 10 of Beier: 
"Peter Beier lived until the end with a sense of responsibility before God, 
his Lord. That gave him the shrewdness and courage to take a fearless stand 
on the burning and controversial questions facing church and society. He 
often surprised his friends with proposals that few had expected." 
 
     Beier, a convinced European and a committed ecumenist who wanted to 
see Europe's Protestant churches speak with one voice, became president in 
1994 of the Leuenberg Church Fellowship, a grouping of Europe's main 
Lutheran, Reformed, United and Methodist churches. 
 
     Jean Fischer, general secretary of the Conference of European Churches 
(CEC), told ENI: "Peter Beier was moved by his commitment to Europe and 
particularly by his desire to bring the churches of the Reformation 
together to speak with one voice. But although president of the Leuenberg 
Church Fellowship, his ecumenical commitment went far beyond the churches 
of the Reformation and I always felt he was supportive of the 
multiconfessional ecumenism that CEC stands for." 

------------
For more information contact Presbyterian News Service
  phone 502-569-5504             fax 502-569-8073  
  E-mail PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org   Web page: http://www.pcusa.org 

--