Protestant military pastoral care in Germany
The Evangelical Military Pastoral Care in Germany serves the pastoral care of soldiers by the Evangelical Church. Your work in the military chaplaincy of the Bundeswehr is based on a treaty between the Evangelical Church in Germany and the Federal Republic of Germany . Military chaplaincy as part of the church's work is carried out on behalf of and under the supervision of the church. The state takes care of the organizational structure of the military chaplaincy and bears its costs. Further tasks are financed with a special budget of the EKD. The background to pastoral care is the guarantee of the soldiers' right to practice their religion freely and undisturbed even under the special conditions of military service.
It currently comprises (as of May 27, 2016) 98 military pastors and an additional roughly the same number of parish helpers who are available on site as contacts and are sometimes also responsible for several locations. In addition to church services, life science lessons are also given to support the soldiers with professional ethics . At the Bundeswehr locations abroad, where the soldiers sometimes live with their entire families, there is complete community life. The offers of the military chaplaincy are expressly directed not only to church members, but to all members of the military.
The work of the Protestant military pastoral care is under the motto Domini Sumus (German: We belong to the Lord ).
The leadership of the Protestant military pastoral care is entrusted to a bishop . In 2014, Sigurd Rink was the first full-time bishop . Bishop Rink is not employed by the state or the armed forces. Two institutions involved in pastoral care support the military bishop: The Evangelical Church Office for the Federal Armed Forces (EKA) and the Protestant Pastoral Care Unit in the Federal Armed Forces (HESB), both with a joint seat in Berlin . As the higher federal authority, the EKA is entrusted with central administrative tasks and is headed by Military Dean General Matthias Heimer , who is an ordained theologian. Four Protestant military deans are subordinate to the EKA as federal agencies and around 100 Protestant military chaplains as federal sub-authorities.
history
The military chaplain in Germany has a long history. Forerunners of the military pastoral care in the Bundeswehr were the pastoral care workers in the Wehrmacht and the pastoral care in the barracked civilian German Labor Service units of the US armed forces in Germany, which began in June 1951.
Protestant military chaplaincy in the Bundeswehr was established in 1957 with a military chaplaincy contract. This should ensure on the one hand spiritual independence and on the other hand the greatest possible proximity to the soldiers. As of January 1, 2004, the military pastoral care contract (MSV) will apply in all regional churches of the EKD as the basis for "Protestant pastoral care in the Bundeswehr" (according to the "Church law regulating Protestant pastoral care in the Bundeswehr" the valid language regulation).
The Protestant military chaplaincy was hotly contested from the start and was particularly rejected by representatives of the brotherhoods coming from the Confessing Church . The systematic theologian Hans Joachim Iwand declared in a lecture at the First Conference of the International Christian Peace Conference (CFK) in Prague in 1958 :
“ It was mostly only under Hitler that I realized that you weren't allowed to participate in this bloody craft. And one can no longer justify the preparation for this bloody craft. There is enormous weight attached to Christianity today. "
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There was no military pastoral care in the GDR . After the reunification of Germany, the East German regional churches were initially unwilling to adopt the military chaplaincy contract and the West German practice of military chaplaincy. They feared being too close to the state and voiced concerns about the state civil servant relationship of the military pastors, the position of the Evangelical Church Office for the Federal Armed Forces and its integration into the portfolio of the Federal Ministry of Defense , the dual position of the military general dean and the state's rights to participate in the appointment of the military bishop . Only after a transitional arrangement did the military pastoral care contract also come into force in the new federal states at the beginning of 2004 .
See also
literature
- Evangelical Church Office for the Federal Armed Forces (Ed.): Oases. Words, pictures, encounters from the evangelical pastoral care in the foreign deployment of the Bundeswehr . Commissioned by the Evangelical Military Bishop, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2006, ISBN 978-3-374-02401-8 .
- Evangelical Church Office for the Federal Armed Forces (ed.): Called to peace. Notes from the Protestant military chaplaincy [Heinz-Georg Binder on his 60th birthday] . Lutherisches Verlagshaus, Hanover 1989, ISBN 3-7859-0593-9 .
- Jens Müller-Kent: Military chaplaincy in the area of tension between church mandate and military involvement. Analysis and evaluation of structures and activities of Protestant military pastoral care taking into account changing social framework conditions (= Hamburg theological studies . Volume 1). Steinmann and Steinmann, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-927043-09-5 .
- Dagmar Pöpping : Passion and Destruction. War pastor on the Eastern Front 1941–1945. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019, ISBN 978-3-525-54145-6 .
- Ines-Jacqueline Werkner : Soldier pastoral care versus military pastoral care . Evangelical pastors in the German Armed Forces (= Inner Leadership Forum . Volume 13). Nomos, Baden-Baden 2001, ISBN 3-7890-7392-X .
Web links
- Homepage of the Protestant military pastoral care
- Military pastoral care in the Bundeswehr at www.bundeswehr.de
Individual evidence
- ^ Dagmar Pöpping : War pastor on the Eastern Front. Evangelical and Catholic Wehrmacht chaplaincy in the war of annihilation 1941–1945 , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017, ISBN 978-3-525-55788-4 .
- ↑ Catholic military pastoral care ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed January 30, 2012
- ^ The protocols of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, vol. 5: 1951. Edited by Dagmar Pöpping, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck% Ruprecht, 2005, p. 164 ff
- ↑ Ecumenical Institute of the Comenius Faculty in Prague (ed.): Assignment and testimony. Christian Peace Conference Prague 1st to 4th June 1958, Praha 1958, p. 46
- ↑ Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) ( Memento of the original from September 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed January 30, 2012
