Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Central Asia

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The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Central Asia , in short ELCROS ( Russian Союз Евангелическо-лютеранских церквей Soyuz Jewangelitschesko-ljuteranskich zerkwei - The Union of Evangelical Lutheran Churches ) is a community of Lutheran regional churches and communities the territory of the former Soviet Union , which has 76,000 members (as of 2010).

history

The ELKRAS is the legal successor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELK) in the Russian Empire.

The first Lutheran congregations on Russian soil existed as early as the 16th century. In 1576 Ivan IV allowed the construction of a church (St. Michaelis) in Moscow . In the period that followed, the Church expanded into the Russian Empire, and its constitutional rights were secured through the adoption of the 1832 Statute.

At that time the church in the two was Konsistorialgebiete Moscow and St. Petersburg divided in turn into deaneries subdivided, in turn, made up of several church districts were composed. A church district consisted of several parishes.

Since then the church has founded its own educational institutions and institutions of diakonia.

Although a new church order was passed and recognized by the Soviet state in 1924, the repression of the church increased in the 1920s. In the early 1930s, numerous church buildings were expropriated, pastors were executed or banished, so that central administrative structures could no longer be maintained. The closure of St. Petri Pauli Church in Moscow in 1938 also marked the end of the ELK as an organization. Most recently, Theophil Meyer (1924–1934) and Arthur Malmgren (1924–1936) held the office of bishop together.

Individual believers and groups remained. The actual reconstruction of the church began in 1989. The first bishop of the ELCRAS (then superintendent of the German Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Soviet Union) was Pastor Harald Kalnins from Riga , who had visited the German Lutheran congregations in the republics of the Soviet Union since 1969. On November 13, 1988, Kalnins was consecrated bishop for the Russian-German evangelical congregations in the Soviet Union with state approval in Riga. 20 leading preachers who had gathered in Riga gave their approval to the Kalnins.

In the following period, the structures in the regional churches of the ELKRAS were introduced and staffed. After the adoption of a new internal church order, on August 25, 1999 the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation confirmed the registration of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Central Asia in accordance with the Russian Federation law of October 1, 1997 “ On Freedom of Religion and religious associations ”.

structure

St. Petri Church in St. Petersburg, Episcopal Church of the ELCRAS

The Central Church Office has had its seat in St. Petersburg since 1992 . The archbishop also resides there . The main and episcopal church is the St. Petri Church .

The heads of the regional churches together with the archbishop and his deputy form the bishops' council . The archbishop is entrusted with the spiritual direction of the Church as a whole.

The highest decision-making body in the Church as a whole is the General Synod , which meets every 5 years.

The church leadership, the consistory , consists of the presidium of the general synod, two members of the bishops' council, the archbishop, his deputy and the head of the central church office. The archbishop presides over it. The consistory usually meets two to three times a year.

Regional churches

The Federation of Evangelical Lutheran Congregations in the Republic of Belarus left the ELKRAS on April 22, 2006.

Central church office

The Central Church Office is located in St. Petersburg 191186, St. Petri Church , Nevsky Prospect 22-24.
Head : Hans Schwahn

archbishop

(until 1999 the official title was bishop )

Facilities

  • Theological seminary in Novosaratowka, founded in 1997.

Rectors:

  1. 1997–2003: Stefan Reder
  2. 2004–2005: Rudolf Blümcke
  3. 2005–2007: Godeke von Bremen
  4. since 2007: Anton Tichomirow

See also

literature

  • Evangelical Lutheran Church (ed.): Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Central Asia: 1994–1999 , St. Petersburg 2000.
  • Christoph Gassenschmidt: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Soviet Union 1917–1941 . In: Christoph Gassenschmidt, Ralph Tuchtenhagen (Ed.): Politics and Religion in the Soviet Union, 1917–1941 . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-447-04440-3 , pp. 87-138.
  • Walter Graßmann: History of the Evangelical-Lutheran Russian Germans in the Soviet Union, the CIS and in Germany in the second half of the 20th century. Parish, Church, Language and Tradition. Munich 2006 (Munich, University, dissertation, 2004). online (PDF file 623 pages)
  • Joachim Willems: Lutherans and Lutheran Congregations in Russia. An Empirical Study of Religion in the Post-Soviet Context. Martin-Luther-Verlag, Erlangen 2005, ISBN 3-87513-142-8 (University of Hamburg, Protestant-theol. Dissertation, 2003).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 2010 World Lutheran Membership Details; Lutheran World Information 1/2011 ( Memento from September 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive )