German Evangelical Church Congress 1987

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The 22nd German Evangelical Church Congress in 1987 took place from June 17 to 21, 1987 in Frankfurt am Main . His slogan was “See what a person” ( John 19 : 5  LUT ). The host state church was the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau . With Eleonore von Rotenhan , a woman led a church convention as president for the first time.

invitation

It was the third Kirchentag in Frankfurt am Main, after 1956 and 1975 . 125,047 permanent participants and 25,254 contributors accepted the invitation from Church President Helmut Spengler and Provost Dieter Trautwein to Frankfurt. The events were assigned to five subject areas: Paths of people - paths to people , preserving human dignity - shaping the state socially , steps towards reconciliation and understanding with the peoples of the Soviet Union and people in God's creation - reconciliation with nature .

course

The Kirchentag began with the evening of the meeting on Wednesday, June 17, 1987. The opening services were held on the Frankfurt exhibition grounds and in the Protestant inner-city churches. Central venues were also in front of and in the Alte Oper , An der Hauptwache and the Katharinenkirche , at the Konstablerwache and on the Römerberg .

The large podium events on the three working days did not only take place on the exhibition grounds, as at the two previous Church Days in Frankfurt, but also in other venues in the city: the Jahrhunderthalle Hoechst , the Frankfurt ice rink , the Bockenheimer Depot and the zoo society house . 85,000 visitors attended the closing service in the Waldstadion . The sermon was given by Allan Boesak , President of the World Reformed Federation .

As in previous church congresses since 1981, the peace between East and West was a special focus. In 1985, at the Düsseldorf Kirchentag , the physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker invited the church leaders to a council process on the way to an all-Christian peace council. In Frankfurt hopes were particularly linked to Michael Gorbachev's perestroika policy .

A public conflict developed over the question of how the Kirchentag and the church leaderships should deal with apartheid in South Africa . In the run-up to the Kirchentag, the Kirchentag presidium had terminated its accounts at Deutsche Bank because it was too uncritical towards the South African government. The EKD Council had distanced itself from this boycott . During the Kirchentag, 20,000 participants marched to the headquarters of Deutsche Bank in a protest march .

literature

  • Konrad von Bonin (Ed.): German Evangelical Church Congress 1987 - Documents , Kreuz-Verlag 1990, ISBN 3783108616
  • Jürgen Telschow: History of the Evangelical Church in Frankfurt am Main . Volume III: From the post-war period to the present (=  series of publications by the Evangelical Regional Association Frankfurt am Main . No. 42 ). Waldemar Kramer in the publishing house Römerweg GmbH, Wiesbaden 2019, ISBN 978-3-922179-56-6 , p. 183-184 .

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