Sylvia Michel (pastor)

Sylvia Michel (born December 25, 1935 ) is a Swiss pastor and was President of the Church Council of the Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Aargau from 1980 to 1986 . She was the first woman in Europe to hold a leadership position in a church.

Life

From 1964, Sylvia Michel was pastor of the Ammerswil parish (until 1981), at that time the first woman to work alone in a parish in Aargau. From 1971 to 1974 she headed the women's center in Aargau as its president and in 1974 Michel was elected - also as the first woman - to the church council of the reformed regional church in Aargau. From 1985 she was a board member of the Swiss Protestant Church Federation , and in 1980 she was elected to the Church Council. She held this office until 1986. After that, Michel was involved in an international context, including from 1987 to 1995 as a member of the Diakonie in Europe commission of the World Council of Churches . Today Sylvia Michel lives in Mönchaltorf .

Since 2009, the International Sylvia Michel Prize for the promotion of women in church leadership , which is endowed with 5,000 US dollars and endowed by the Reformed Regional Church of Aargau and the World Community of Reformed Churches , has been awarded in her honor every two years .

literature

• Claudia Bandixen , Silvia Pfeiffer, Frank Worbs (eds.): When women lead the church. New Trend in the Reformed Churches in Switzerland , Zurich 2006, ISBN 3-290-17418-2

Web links

Sylvia Michel Prize