Lutheran unification work

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Lutheran Unification Work
(LEW)
purpose Upholding the Lutheran creed
Chair: Falk Klemm
Establishment date: 1868
Seat : Leipzig
Website: einigungswerk.org

The Lutheran Unification Work (LEW) is a work of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany (VELKD). It is dedicated to upholding the Lutheran creed and strengthening Evangelical Lutheran churches in Germany, promoting their fellowship and representing their common church interests. In addition, the unification work is involved in diakonia and mission . It sees its free convent activity, academic study groups, church services and evangelistic events as a service to all of Lutheranism.

history

In 1868 the General Evangelical Lutheran Conference (AELK) was founded as an international association of Lutheran Christians. It was a free association of persons with no organizational connection to the Lutheran regional churches and had the legal form of a non-incorporated association . It included individuals from the German Lutheran regional churches, the Old Prussian Union and the Lutheran churches in Scandinavia, Southeast Europe and the United States. In fact, the conference was primarily a meeting point for Lutherans from the regional churches with a minority of "Old Lutherans" (from Lutheran free churches) and "Club Lutherans" (from the Old Prussian Union). State and provincial associations of the AELK came into being after 1916. While the AELK initially saw its task primarily in defending against the Union and the zeitgeist, in the further course the consolidation of international Lutheranism came to the fore. In 1923 the Lutheran World Convention took over this task from the AELK. In connection with this, the AELK was renamed the Lutheran Unification Work in 1926 . In 1949 the VELKD recognized it as one of its works.

After the division of Germany there was unification in the West and East. From 1947, representatives of the unification work in the three western zones of occupation were:

Only in the territory of the GDR did the unification work, based in Leipzig, exist. The Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR proposed that the unification work join its theological study department as a working group; but this was rejected. After reunification , the Lutheran Unification Work was revived for all of Germany and in 1997 was again recognized by the VELKD as one of its works.

Presidents / First Chairmen

Working with other groups

Lutheran Unification works in particular with the following organizations:

Well-known members of the AELK and the unification work

literature

  • Handbook of the German Protestant Churches 1918 to 1949: organs - offices - associations - persons . Volume 1: Supraregional institutions . Edited by Karl-Heinz Fix, Ruth Pabst (= work on contemporary church history . Volume 18). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2010. pp. 279–286.
  • August Kimme, Ernst Sommerlath: Path and goal of the Lutheran unification work. Lutheran publishing house, Berlin 1951.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ VELKD: Works of the VELKD .
  2. ^ A b c Herbert Frost: Structural problems of the Protestant church constitution: Comparative legal studies on the constitutional law of the German Protestant regional churches . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1972, p. 467.
  3. ↑ a b Handbook of the German Protestant Churches 1918 to 1949: Organs - Offices - Associations - Persons . Volume 1: Supra-regional institutions Göttingen 2010, p. 279.
  4. ↑ Lutheran Unification Work: History
  5. ↑ Activity report of the church leadership on the priorities of the VELKD 2013/2014 , p. 56.
  6. ↑ Lutheran Unification Work: Cooperation with other works and groups