Germany

On Sept. 8, participants say goodbye during the closing prayer service of the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches, held in Karlsruhe, Germany. Photo: Paul Jeffrey/WCC

The WCC convenes an assembly only once every eight years. The agenda always includes electing a new, 150-member Central Committee, approving reports and making formal statements on pressing international issues. But that’s not at the heart of what happened in Karlsruhe, nor has it been in the four previous WCC Assemblies I’ve attended.

Isaac S. Villegas 7-21-2021

PASSAGES FROM THE book of Hebrews show up in the lectionary every Sunday this month. In Ernst Käsemann's landmark book The Wandering People of God, written in the context of 1930s Germany, this pastor and theologian characterizes the community described in the Epistle to the Hebrews as a people who wander in the wilderness of this world. “The basic posture of the bearer of [God’s] revelation should, in fact, be described as a wandering,” Käsemann writes; “the attitude of faith can only be described as wandering.” He locates the identity of the church in the biblical stories of Israel in the wilderness—the church as a people estranged from imperial power.

“I of course had in mind that radical Confessing Church which resisted the [Nazi] tyranny in Germany,” Käsemann wrote decades later, reflecting on his book as anti-fascist ecclesiology—a biblical theology for a German antifa church movement. When a society coheres around a nationalist identity that designates segments of the population as “other” and therefore a threat to patriotic unity, “the church must appear as a band of deserters.” To desert such nationalistic ideologies is to wander in search for Jesus because, according to Hebrews, he appears at the edge of society, outside the civic union, beyond the border—Jesus as the one who suffers “outside the city gate,” on the other side of the wall (Hebrews 13:12).

The last chapter of Hebrews invites the faithful to solidarity with Jesus, which involves a commitment to excluded people, to scapegoated populations: “Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured” (Hebrews 13:13).

FOR AGES, THOSE living as monks, cloistered nuns, hermits, and wandering pilgrims have mastered the art of turning loneliness into solitude, creating a real presence to themselves, and to God. These spiritual explorers were often confined—as many of us are now—into narrow spaces, yet pilgrimage to the authentic self explores an interior landscape. The exterior pilgrimage often reflects the interior path of spiritual imagination conducted in confinement. Their lessons and practices are not cloistered today; they offer liberating tools that can resurrect and protect the space for real presence for all who desire detachment from the omnipresence of screens. Simply consider this: You can’t walk on unexpected pathways while looking at screens.

Untethered from normalcy

Pilgrims move in two directions at the same time—an outward direction toward a holy destination and an inward journey seeking an encounter with the sacred. Two of the best academic scholars of pilgrimages, Victor and Edith Turner, explain it in this one sentence: “Pilgrimage may be thought of as extroverted mysticism, just as mysticism is introverted pilgrimage.”

Pilgrimages, they suggest, were, and are, no walk in the park, or plain, or mountain. Embarking on such a journey, we become untethered not just from our physical normalcy. These uncertain, trusting steps also move us out of our spiritual familiarity. The pilgrim is invited not only to walk out of boxes of dogmatic beliefs but also to walk away from practices of comfortable spirituality.

This article is adapted from Without Oars: Casting Off Into a Life of Pilgrimage (Broadleaf Books, November 2020).

Ali Tranvik 3-20-2020

Photo by Getty Images

I AM TERRIFIED of tripping. Thanks to a couple memorable tumbles over the years—the most recent of which involved a face-plant while on a run—I always double-knot my shoelaces and look down at my feet when I walk. Remaining steady and stable is always in the back of my mind.

But on a trip to Berlin in 2017, I found myself repeatedly tripping over something in the ground. The source of my stumbling, I soon learned, were Stolpersteine, which translates literally to “stumbling stones,” or more metaphorically, “stumbling blocks.” Stolpersteine are cobblestone-sized bronze plaques embedded in streets and sidewalks throughout Europe, each slightly raised above ground level and engraved with the name and life dates of a Holocaust victim, including murdered Jews, members of the LGBTQ+ community, Sinti and Roma people, people with physical or intellectual disabilities, and other ethnic and political minorities.

These commemorative stones are part of an ongoing art project, installed at the last place each person lived or worked before falling victim to Nazi crimes. Above each engraved name are the words “hier wohnte,” or “here lived,” serving as a reminder that this person did not build their life just anywhere, but right here. Each day they walked on this ground.

Each is unique

THE IDEA FOR Stolpersteine began in 1991, when artist Gunter Demnig painted a white line through the streets of Cologne to trace the deportation of 1,000 Sinti and Roma who were forced out of the city just 50 years prior. “An old lady stopped by and scolded my work, insisting there had never been any Gypsies in Cologne,” said Demnig. Her denial prompted Demnig to find a way to more permanently preserve the memory of those killed in the Holocaust.

Bishop Ludwig Müller with members of the Nazi Party. Altered image from Wikimedia Commons/German Federal Archives. 

Lately, I have been asking myself the following question: How can sincere Christians embrace white nationalism? My question stems less from surprise and more from a desire to understand the mechanics. In church circles and in seminary, I heard about Barth, Bonhoeffer, and those who resisted. But I rarely heard about the majority of white Christians who supported a demagogue whose rhetoric had violent consequences.

FILE PHOTO: German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Brussels, Belgium, July 12, 2018. Tatyana Zenkovich/Pool via REUTERS

Chancellor Angela Merkel's Bavarian allies, who are pressing her to toughen up immigration policy, should remember their Christian roots and show a sense of responsibility toward the poor and weak, the head of the Catholic Church in Germany said.

A boy is carried by his father as he receives HolyCommunion during a mass on Christmas Eve at Saint Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in Cairo, Egypt December 24, 2017. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh/File Photo

“Walking together” is one of the pope’s favorite mantras. When dealing with tense theological debates inside the church, he is putting equal weight on both words.

Tom Heneghan 2-14-2018

Image via Ewa Studio / Shutterstock

“They’re amazed how little these people realize that satire can be a form of violence that hurts them, their spirituality, their view of God and the way they pray,” he said.

Tom Heneghan 1-24-2018

Image via Kai Pfaffenbach / Reuters

“Dog, cats, and motorcycles get blessings, but we’re not worth one?” Mayor Peter Hinze complained. “It can hardly be made clearer that we’re second-class people.”

Tom Heneghan 1-09-2018

Image via Karen Gillerman Harel / Shutterstock

But with Holocaust Memorial Day coming up on Jan. 27, the anniversary of the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz, her Christian Democrats have decided to wait no longer. They want the Bundestag, the German parliament, to pass a resolution calling for migrants who promote hatred of Jews to be expelled.

Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party leader and German Chancellor Angela Merkel reacts on first exit polls in the German general election (Bundestagswahl) in Berlin, Germany, September 24, 2017. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Two years after Merkel left German borders open to more than 1 million migrants, the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) stunned the establishment by becoming the first far-right party to enter parliament in more than half a century.

Tom Heneghan 7-07-2017

Image via RNS/WCRC/Anna Siggelkow

Amid ceremonies this year marking the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, one of Protestantism’s leading branches has officially said it now agrees with the Vatican on the main issue at the root of its split from the Roman Catholic Church half a millennium ago.

Marcia Mount Shoop 6-26-2017

Even more difficult than the question of whether or not we are collectively willing to break the law is the question of whether we are ready to embody what a “culture of sanctuary” holistically invites us to be.

Image via RNS/Reuters/Mohamed Abd El-Ghany

The global growth of Islam, and in particular the rise of Islamic extremism, have forced recent popes to set out, with increasing urgency, a strategy for engaging the religion.

Image via RNS/Reuters/Fayaz Aziz

Within 20 years, the number of Muslim babies being born is expected to surpass Christian births — though there will still be more Christians in the world. Muslims currently account for about 24 percent of the world population, compared to 31 percent for Christians, according to the Pew Research Center.

Image via stockfotoart/Shutterstock.com

Germany has no plans to introduce an "Islam law'"codifying the rights and obligations of Muslims, a government spokesman said on April 3, dismissing an idea floated by allies of Chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of federal elections in September.

Merkel, who will seek a fourth term in what is expected to be a close-fought ballot, has come under fire for opening Germany's doors to refugees, more than one million of whom — mostly Muslims — have entered the country over the past two years.

Image via RNS/Josephine McKenna

“There is simply no justification in our day for failures to enact concrete safeguarding standards for our children, young men and women, and vulnerable adults,” O’Malley said.

“We are called to reform and renew all the institutions of our church. … And we certainly must address the evil of sexual abuse by priests.”

Image via RNS/Reuters/Andreas Solaro/Pool

As Pope Francis marks the fourth anniversary of his revolutionary papacy, the pontiff apparently finds himself besieged on all sides by crises of his own making: an open “civil war” in the Catholic Church and fears of schism, mounting opposition from the faithful, and a Roman Curia so furious with his reforms that some cardinals are plotting a coup to topple him.

Image via RNS/Reuters/Alessandro Bianchi

In a major setback for the pope, Collins on Mar. 1 announced that she had resigned from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, established by the pontiff in 2013 to counter abuse in the church.

She said the pope’s decision to create the commission was a “sincere move,” but there had been “constant setbacks” from officials within the Vatican.

“There are people in the Vatican who do not want to change, or understand the need to change,” Collins said in a telephone interview from Dublin.

Tom Heneghan 2-14-2017

Image via RNS/Reuters/Marko Djurica

According to two extensive recent opinion polls, majorities across Europe are deeply concerned about Muslim immigration and support an immediate end to it, even as Europeans vastly overestimate the actual Muslim populations of their countries.

Voters in several countries back a complete immigration ban at levels notably higher than those in the United States. Anti-immigration politicians in Poland, Hungary, and elsewhere are gaining ground in Western Europe.