wfn.org | LWF president focuses on global perspective of churches and cultures

[FRANK_IMHOFF.parti@ecunet.org (FRANK IMHOFF)]

Release No.2/99

BRATISLAVA, Slovak Republic, 22 June 1999 (lwi) - Basing his address on the
theme of this year's council meeting, the "Gospel Transforming Cultures"
the president of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), Bishop Christian
Krause said that religious orders, universities and missions can serve as
places for education and experience in the face of new issues of
re-nationalization emerging in central Europe.

Addressing the LWF Council, meeting here from 22 to 29 June 1999, Krause
remarked that this century is ending the way it began with the open
question of what will be the source of the decisive influences on culture
in the future.

Against greater challenges posed by the process of globalization, the
widening gap between the rich and poor, the diminishing traditional forms
of public and communal life and the emerging new levels of interaction such
as the Internet,  Krause said he was concerned about how the LWF shall
manage to derive from the unity of the gospel a global perspective for a
just and peaceful coexistence of churches, cultures and religions.

Does the LWF, with its 124 member churches amidst a great variety of
cultures around the world have the will and the strength to develop an
alternative vision of a way to approach those "who are different from
ourselves? Are we, despite our concern for our own identity and the global
inner cohesion of our communio in the LWF open for an active,
interconfessional, interreligious and intercultural exchange?" Krause asked.

On Christian mission, the LWF president said that mission contextualizes
the gospel and transforms cultural identities, especially where they have
taken on ethnically or religious based racism, sexism and apartheid. The
South, hitherto the mission field of the North is also discovering its own
mission, thereby helping the North to overcome its missionary obliviousness
of the world.

Krause described the concept of "home" in the globalized world as a place
that has entered an age of permanent crisis when one considers that over
22 million people worldwide have been displaced from or are leaving their
homes in order to escape hardship, persecution, war and poverty. He
wondered what can be done to develop further the culture of Christian
hospitality.

For "home" to become the point of departure for movements, according to the
LWF president, intensive continuation of a dialogue like the "Joint
Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification" between Lutherans and
Catholics needs to be encouraged. On the overall, there is a need for a
critical mass of agreements in order to expand the culture of hospitality
into a model for confessional, religious and ethnic co-existence.

The culture of hospitality, he added, unites "koinonia" (communion),
"martyria" (witness and remembrance) and "diakonia" (works of compassion).
The message of peace and reconciliation enables those without a home to
find one outside home and to offer assistance in the midst of hope and
despair.Answering questions during a press conference following his
address, Krause said that with all the seriousness regarding the Kosovo
war, "we should not forget the rest of the world" which is also
experiencing crises of conflict.

Earlier on, the LWF general secretary, Dr. Ishmael Noko, announced that
Bishop Krause will on 24 June 1999, receive an honorary doctorate from the
theological faculty of the University of Bratislava.

(The LWF is a global communion of 124 member churches in 69 countries
representing over 58 million of the world's 61.5 million Lutherans. The
LWF's highest decision making body is the Assembly, held every six or seven
years. Between Assemblies, the LWF is governed by a 49-member Council,
which meets annually, and its Executive Committee.)

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Lutheran World Information
Assistant Editor, English: Pauline Mumia
E-mail: pmu@lutheranworld.org
http://www.lutheranworld.org/