Ulrich Bach

Ulrich Bach (born May 26, 1931 in Solingen -Widdert; † March 8, 2009 in Bergisch Gladbach ) was a Protestant theologian . He became known for his reflections on the healthy and the handicapped in diakonia and theology . Before his retirement, he was a pastor in the Evangelical Foundation in Volmarstein and a lecturer in New Testament and dogmatics at the Martineum deaconry . For his theological achievements, he received an honorary doctorate in Protestant theology in Bochum in 1981 and the Wichern Prize in Berlin in 2002 .

Life

Bach was born on May 26, 1931 in Solingen-Widdert. He continued his school attendance from 1937 in Bochum during the war in Frankfurt / Main and Bad Homburg and passed the Abitur in 1951 in Bochum. In 1952 Bach began studying Protestant theology in Wuppertal and continued it in the 1952 summer semester in Münster before he fell ill with polio . Since then, Bach has been dependent on a wheelchair. He was only able to continue his theology studies with the help of four friends, who each moved in with him for a semester and looked after and accompanied him. After the first theological exam in Bielefeld, Bach was vicar in Wittekindshof near Bad Oeynhausen (facility for the mentally handicapped) and finished the vicariate in 1961 with the second theological exam. Initially synodal vicar of the Dortmund-Nordost Synod, Bach was pastor in the Evangelical Foundation (then Orthopedic Institutions) Volmarstein / Ruhr and lecturer for New Testament and dogmatics at the Martineum Deacon Institute (Volmarstein, from 1972 Witten / Ruhr).

In 1973 his first publications appeared on the subjects of "Theology and work with the disabled in church and society". In addition to radio broadcasts and lectures, the “Volmarsteiner Rasiertexte. Notes from a wheelchair user ". In 1981 he was awarded an honorary theological doctorate from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (together with Bengt Hägglund and Bishop Desmond Tutu ).

Since 1983 he has been teaching there in the summer semester on the subjects of “the handicapped as a subject of theology”, “the church as the church of the handicapped and non-handicapped”, “salvation and healing”.

When he retired in 1996, Bach moved to Kierspe- Rönsahl . Due to the considerable worsening of his disability ( post-polio syndrome ), he was forced to stop lecturing.

In 2002 he was awarded the Wichern Prize in Berlin.

Ulrich Bach died on March 8, 2009 in Bergisch Gladbach and is buried in the Protestant cemetery in Kierspe-Rönsahl.

Theological work

During his time as a pastor, Bach a. a. Luther's Small Catechism. In the first article (“I believe in God ... the Creator ...”) Martin Luther formulated: “I believe that God created me with all creatures, me body and soul, eyes, ears and all limbs, reason and has given and still receives all the senses ... "

His confirmands, some of whom were severely disabled, confronted Bach with a question that he had asked himself again and again: Does this creed also apply to people with a disability? Is it theologically correct if you also confess: "I believe that God created me with my disability?"

A theology that would answer this question in the negative is what Bach calls “apartheid theology”. Because in addition to being disabled, disabled people would be excluded from the community of those created by God.

In this way, disabled people become test stones for the correctness of theological statements. If a theological statement leads to people with disabilities being marginalized, this statement cannot be correct.

Bach's theological thinking aims at a “ground-level theology” in which disabled and non-disabled people understand each other in a community of solidarity before God and dismantle intellectual levels as well as obstructive levels in public transport.

In this context Ulrich Bach asked to what extent theological thinking before 1933 was shaped by a euthanasia mentality and thus contributed to the Nazis' euthanasia program, and to what extent this thinking continued after 1945.

Ulrich Bach clearly distances himself from “genitive theology” (theology of “the” disabled), since he does not want to regard disabled people as a special case. Instead, he sees in his theology a form of Western liberation theology. Too often the “healthy” occidental person is trapped in an obsession with perfection. In contrast, Bach emphasizes the imperfection and limitation of the human being, which fundamentally characterizes every human being. “The deficit is part of the definition of the human.” Thinking about human limitations leads to the liberation of the “do-you-what-are-you-what” and to mutual solidarity.

Looking at Jesus Christ, Bach also determines his need for help and comes to the conclusion: Receiving help is just as divine as helping.

effect

Through his theological thinking, Bach led to a rethinking in church and diakonia in many places. Theologically disabled people are no longer viewed as objects of charity for non-disabled people, but perceived as independent subjects who live together in a solidary give and take in a comprehensive “patient collective”.

Works (selection)

• Volmarsteiner shaving texts. Notes from a wheelchair user . Schriftenmissionsverlag, Gladbeck 1978, 2nd edition Neukirchen 1981
• Nobody has any ground under their feet. Plea for solidarity diakonia . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1980. (2nd edition 1986)
• Millimeter stories. Texts to go on . Göttingen 1981
• Power in empty hands. The Bible as a course book . Freiburg 1983. (Herder Library 1023)
• Hosanna in a headwind. Try to pray . Freiburg 1986. (Herder Library 1292)
• Forsake the dream of being more than human. On the way to a diaconal church . Neukirchen 1986.
• "Healing Church"? Try to correct a trend . Neukirchen 1988.
• What is separated is reconciled. Against social racism in theology and the church . Neukirchen-Vluyn 1991.
• “Healthy” and “Disabled”. Against apartheid thinking in church and society . Gütersloh 1994.
• On the way to total medicine? A handout for the “bioethics” debate . ed. by Ulrich Bach and Andreas de Kleine. Neukirchen 1999.
• The Church is not whole without the weakest. Building blocks of a theology according to Hadamar . Neukirchen 2006.

literature

• Michael Schibilsky (Ed.): Course book Diakonie . Neukirchener Verl., Neukirchen-Vluyn 1991, ISBN 3-7887-1388-7 .
• Annette Krauß: Barrier-free theology - challenges from Ulrich Bach . Dissertation Erlangen-Nürnberg 2010 digital version (PDF; 4.6 MB)

Web links

• Homepage of Ulrich Bach
• Literature by and about Ulrich Bach in the catalog of the German National Library
• Press release on the Wichernpreis
• Ulrich Bach in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors