wfn.org | WCC FEATURE: Cologne faith communities together for peaceful relations

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World Council of Churches - Feature

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>For immediate release - 07/07/2008 08:25:00

SEESAW OF INTERFAITH COOPERATION: WORKING TOGETHER FOR PEACEFUL
RELATIONS IN COLOGNE

>By Carmen Molitor (*)

"It's always good to see what can come of an idea," says Rev.
Barbara Rudolph, executive director of the Council of Christian
Churches in Germany (ACK). On this beautiful summer Sunday, she
is delighted to hear how the local project in Cologne of the
campaign Weißt Du wer ich bin?("Do you know who I am?") has
developed. The nationwide campaign was launched by the ACK, the
Central Council of Jews, the Central Council of Muslims and the
Turkish-Islamic Union at the Institute for Religion (Ditib) and
has, with support from the Federal Ministry for Internal Affairs,
set up 120 local projects to promote greater interfaith
cooperation. In Cologne, too, the seed has fallen on fertile
soil.

Barbara Rudolph did not go alone to Cologne's Melanchthon
Academy to hear the local organizers' report: she took with her
the World Council of Churches' Living Letters (
http://overcomingviolence.org/en/iepc/living-letters-visits.html
)- a six-strong international team that is visiting Germany
seeking good examples of overcoming violence. The delegation was
in Germany 27 June - 4 July, visiting projects working to bring
the faiths together to achieve the aims of the Decade to Overcome
Violence ( http://www.overcomingviolence.org/ )2001-2010.

Hannelore Bartscherer, the chairperson of the local Catholic
Committee, sees the seesaw as a good symbol for interfaith
cooperation in Cologne: on a seesaw, sometimes you rise and
sometimes you fall, but it's fun, and you need each other to get
any movement going, she explains to the visitors from the WCC.
It's fitting, then, that one initiative aiming to promote good
relations in everyday life pays for a seesaw for a playground
somewhere in Cologne each year and seeks children from all three
religions to act as playground mentors.

The beginnings of Weißt Du wer ich bin?in Cologne were far more
theoretical, with the ceremonial signing of a "Cologne Commitment
to Peace" - a kind of charter of mutual acceptance and
non-violence. It was the Catholic Committee, of which Bartscherer
is the chairperson, that first took the initiative in this and
sought partners among the city's Christian, Jewish and Muslim
communities. Not all local groups are involved in the initiative:
Bartscherer explains that the Orthodox Synagogue had been invited
as the official representative of the Jewish community, being the
larger of the two Jewish congregations in Cologne; while out of
all the many Muslim groups and organizations based in the city,
only Ditib committed to the project.

The groups participating each sent one member to a planning
committee, which grappled long and hard to formulate the text.
Then, in 2006, all the groups, plus Lord Mayor of Cologne Fritz
Schramma, formally signed the charter in the historic city hall.
City hall was chosen deliberately, Bartscherer explains, as a
neutral location of equal importance for all religions. This was
the first time that Cologne's three major religions had spoken
publicly with one voice, committing to peaceful cooperation. "I
am so grateful for the trust that's grown among us through the
project," says Bartscherer.

In Cologne, a predominantly Catholic city, different religions
have always found a way to coexist. Christian pilgrims have been
drawn to the remains of the Three Wise Men in the cathedral,
Cologne's Jewish roots stretch far back, while the city today is
home to 120,000 women and men of the Muslim faith. The different
religions are rarely out of the spotlight of public debate - be
it on account of the debates provoked by the trenchant opinions
of the Archbishop of Cologne Cardinal Joachim Meisner, the mass
protests by right-wing groups at the construction of a
prestigious new mosque or the disputes over where to site a
planned Jewish museum.

>Pre-empting conflict

In order to pre-empt conflict, a round table known as the
Council of Religions has been held twice a year in Cologne since
2006, as Dr Sonja Sailer-Pfister of the Cologne city deanery
explained: "We wanted to strengthen communication, straighten out
misunderstandings and set up some crisis management." The round
table, which is based on a model from Cologne's sister city of
Liverpool, does not discuss theological issues but provides a
forum for talking over all important practical issues and to
promote understanding of the distinctives of the various groups.
A calendar of the festivals of all the religions has already been
jointly compiled and made available on the city's internet portal
(
http://www.stadt-koeln.de/thema_soziales/integration/ratderreligionen/artikel/11653/index.html
). A book on religion in Cologne and a joint Religion Day 2009
are planned. According to Sailer-Pfister, there is also a desire
to draw up a joint statement against Islamophobia. "We want to
address people's fears," she said.

Recently, the planned construction by Ditib of a new, flagship
mosque in Cologne's Ehrenfeld district has led to some heated
debates. Hannelore Bartscherer said that Cologne was currently
home to around 70 mosques, but almost all of these are housed in
people's homes and back yards. The new construction was becoming
bogged down in political debates that werefuelled, in particular,
by the right-wing populist party ProKöln. "Legally, we can build
the mosque [right away]," explained Ditib representative Hasan
Karaca of the Research Centre for Religion and Society, "but for
political reasons we have to be patient." He found it depressing
that media reports were so often dictated by prejudice - as had
happened recently, when a reputable daily newspaper had accused
the builders of installing allegedly fundamentalist interior
design.

Over two hours, the Anglican Archbishop of Burundi Bernard
Ntahoturi, the Greek Orthodox theologian Aikaterini Pekridou,
Thomas Yonker of the US denomination the Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ) and Janette Bächtold Ludwig from the
Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil, along
with WCC deputy general secretary Georges Lemopoulos and the Rev.
Sabine Udodesku from the WCC's Geneva office were able to build
up a detailed picture of interfaith relations in Cologne. The
"living letters" listened, asked penetrating questions and
offered suggestions.

Archbishop Ntahoturi enquired about the position of African
Christians and Muslims in cooperation between different religions
in Cologne. Both Rev. Dr. Martin Bock, for the Protestant church,
and Hannelore Bartscherer of the Catholic Committee admitted with
regret that the African Christians had so far not responded much
to invitations to collaborate locally and remained in some
isolation. African and Arabic Muslims were primarily involved in
the Central Council of Muslims.

Ntahoturi addressed the controversy around the building of the
mosque in Cologne, asking how the Cologne group was dealing with
Muslim officials who in their own countries were forbidding
Christians to pray. Bock mentioned an idea of Cardinal Joachim
Meisner which he believed to be a good one, to request permission
to build a pilgrimage centre and a church dedicated to St. Paul
in Tarsus, Turkey, in return for the mosque being built in
Cologne. However, Gertrud Casel of the German Justitia et
PaxCommission opposed the idea of setting preconditions in other
countries for the building of a mosque in Cologne. "In Germany,
we require freedom of religion for all," she said.

Georges Lemopoulos, the WCC's deputy general secretary, said
there was a need to think outside the box in the fight against
Islamophobia, and that it was interesting to talk with Christians
in Muslim countries on the subject. "There are some successful
models of cooperation over there that we can copy," he said, "as
well, of course, as some we need to avoid." He thanked the people
of Cologne for their honesty, and said that the issue of
interfaith dialogue would remain at the very top of the WCC's
agenda.

(*) Carmen Molitor is a freelance journalist working in Cologne
for the Catholic news agency KNA and Reader's Digest Germany
among others.

Further information on the Decade to Overcome Violence:
http://overcomingviolence.org

Visit of the Living Letters to Germany:

http://overcomingviolence.org/en/iepc/living-letters-visits/germany.html

Project "Do you know who I am?"

http://www.weisstduwerichbin.de/gb/htdocs/index.php?sID=02

WCC programme on interreligious dialogue:

http://www.oikoumene.org/en/programmes/interreligiousdialogue.html

WCC member churches in Germany:

http://www.oikoumene.org/en/member-churches/regions/europe/germany.html

Opinions expressed in WCC Features do not necessarily reflect
WCC policy. This material may be reprinted freely, providing
credit is given to the author. 

Additional information:Juan Michel,+41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507
6363 media@wcc-coe.org

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith,
witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical
fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings
together 349 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches
representing more than 560 million Christians in over 110
countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic
Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, from
the Methodist Church in Kenya. Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland.