Arnoldshainer Conference

The Arnoldshain Conference (ACF) was a merger of Uniate and Protestant national churches of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). It also included the Lutheran regional churches of the EKD, which were not members of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany (VELKD).

The Arnoldshain Conference had an office at the church chancellery of the Evangelical Church of the Union in Berlin .

history

The Arnoldshain Conference was founded in 1967 in Arnoldshain , a village in Hesse with approx. 1,900 inhabitants, which has been part of the Schmitten community in the Hochtaunus district since August 1, 1972 . The Academy of the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau, established in 1954, was located in Arnoldshain until 2013 .

The Arnoldshain Conference was merely a working group of independent regional churches or church leaderships. It therefore did not have the status of a corporation under public law , as is otherwise customary in regional churches.

Member churches of the Arnoldshain Conference

• Evangelical Church of the Union (EKU) and its member churches
  • Evangelical Church of Anhalt
  • Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg
  • Pomeranian Evangelical Church
  • Evangelical Church in the Rhineland
  • Evangelical Church of the Ecclesiastical Province of Saxony
  • Evangelical Church of Silesian Upper Lusatia
  • Evangelical Church of Westphalia

Further:

• Evangelical Church in Baden
• Bremen Evangelical Church
• Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau
• Evangelical Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck
• Lippe regional church
• Evangelical Lutheran Church in Oldenburg
• Evangelical Church of the Palatinate (Protestant State Church)
• Evangelical Reformed Church - Synod of Evangelical Reformed Churches in Bavaria and Northwest Germany

as well as the guest

• Evangelical Church in Württemberg

The regional churches in the area of ​​the former GDR only joined the Arnoldshain Conference after the reunification of the two German states.

tasks and goals

The Arnoldshainer Conference had the aim of promoting agreements in the essential areas of church life and action and strengthening the unity of the EKD. She dealt with topics such as church fellowship, ordination , structural issues , constitutional law, membership law, service and labor law, education and training, ecumenism, etc. For this purpose, both internal church papers and publications were developed.

The decisions were made by the full conference, which meets every six months, to which the individual church leaders send two members each. The full conference elected a chairman from among its members for three years. The following persons held this office:

Chair of the Arnoldshainer Conference (not yet complete)

• 1967–1970 President Joachim Beckmann , Rhineland
• 1970–1972 State Bishop Hans Heidland , Baden
• 1972–1976 Bishop Hans-Heinrich Harms , Oldenburg
• 1976–1979 State Superintendent Fritz Viering , Lippe
• 1979–1982 Church President Helmut Hild , Hessen-Nassau
• 1982–1985 Bishop Hans-Gernot Jung , Kurhessen-Waldeck
• 1985–1988 Regional Bishop Klaus Engelhardt , Baden
• 1988–1991 Church President Helmut Spengler , Hessen-Nassau
• 1991–1994 Church President Werner Schramm , Palatinate
• 1994–1997 Bishop Christoph Demke , Church Province of Saxony
• 1997–2000 Bishop Christian Zippert , Kurhessen-Waldeck
• 2000–2003 Regional Bishop Ulrich Fischer , Baden

Dissolution of the Arnoldshainer Conference

On July 1, 2003, almost all member churches of the Arnoldshain Conference joined forces with the Evangelical Church of the Union (EKU) to form the Union of Evangelical Churches (UEK).

Only the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Oldenburg and the Evangelical Regional Church in Württemberg (which only had guest status anyway) did not initially join the ICE. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Oldenburg fears that the UEK could act as an additional authority between the regional churches on the one hand and the EKD as their umbrella organization on the other.

literature

• Alfred Burgsmüller, Rainer Bürgel (Ed.): The Arnoldshainer Conference. Your self-image. Luther-Verlag, Bielefeld 1974; ² 1978.
• Christoph Thiele: The Arnoldshainer Conference. Structure and function of a member church association from a legal point of view (= European university publications ; series 2; vol. 2174). Peter Lang, Frankfurt / M. [u. a.] 1997, ISBN 978-3-631-31906-2 .
• Wilhelm Hüffmeier :  Arnoldshainer Conference . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 1, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 1998, Sp. 794.

Web links

• Link to more recent elaborations of the Theological Committee of the Arnoldshain Conference on the website of the Union of Evangelical Churches

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The publications were mostly published by Neukirchener Verlag . Until 1988 they have been compiled in the Zeitschrift für Evangelisches Kirchenrecht 33 (1988), pp. 450–455.