Holy Disorder - Blog Action Day

Today is Blog Action Day, when bloggers are asked to blog on Climate Change. To mark the day I am linking to this paper by Heino Falcke, part of which he read at the symposium in Utrecht where he received the ecumenical prize of the Council of Churches in the Netherlands. In the paper, Falcke is looking back at the Ecumenical Assembly in the GDR, which in many respects was a forerunner of the peaceful revolution of 1989. The assembly was challenged to face the global challenges of justice, peace and creation in the perspective of the GDR. The result was a catalogue of changes for the GDR and which provided a template for the demands of the citizens' movements and new political parties formed in mid-1989. But Heino Falcke points out now that the Ecumenical Assembly was not only directed at political changes in the GDR, but an "Umkehr", a turn to a preferential option for the poor, for non-violence and for the preservation and protection of life in the global context. Climate change was hardly known as a concept back in 1989, but this is what Falcke now has to say about the environment as seen through the texts of the Ecumenical Assembly of 1989:

The ecological situation was particularly dramatic in the GDR. Let me quote from text 11 "Energy for the Future": "The unprecedented high energy consumption in industrialized countries and energy scarcity in the Two Thirds World is leading to regional and global problems. Large-scale efficiency, combined with high risks of accidents and often cross-border pollution characterize the situation in the highly industrialized areas. The acute power shortage in the underdeveloped countries and the often very simple, inefficient burning of wood and dung contribute to desertification and other problems. Global deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels lead to dangerous changes in Earth's atmosphere. Technologies and strategies to meet energy demand have been developed only in the interests of industrialized countries. Factors such as their impact on humans and the environment and the availability in underdeveloped countries has hardly played a role. "Ot states later:" Energy use in the underdeveloped countries will increase significantly in coming decades. The absolute consumption of primary energy can and must be significantly reduced in industrialized countries during this period. This does not necessarily mean a loss of quality of life." At that time, the problem of" connectivity "of the technologies of developed countries to emerging economies had already been noted, something that is now seen as increasingly urgent with rapid economic growth in China and East Asia. These findings of the Ecumenical Assembly,of which I have quoted only examples, were almost completely displaced in the process of German reunification.

Think Globally, Act Locally - or the other way round?

At the meeting at the Augustinerkloster last night, Heino Falcke (r.) explained how the Conciliar Process linked the local and the global. The Ecumenical Assembly in the GDR focussed on the global problems of justice, peace and creation in the context of the GDR. It was a case of "Thinking Globally, but Acting Locally". The "local" was linked to the revolutionary movements in eastern Europe that led to the overcoming of the Iron Curtain. That is in the past, and a matter for historians. But the other side of the coin is still very much alive and relevant - how do we deal with globalisation in the face of the climate crisis, the continued proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the international financial crisis? German unification meant not only that the GDR became part of the Federal Republic but also the processes of globalisation - and here the statements of the Ecumenical Assembly are still relevant, perhaps even more so. The letter to the children began, Falcke noted, "The earth on which we live is threatened".

If 20 years ago what made the texts of the Ecumenical Assembly so powerful was the local relevance of the global issues, maybe now it's necesary to look at things the other way round - not so much "Think Globally, Act Locally" - but "Think locally, Act Globally."

A Light Sculpture to a peaceful revolution

The Holy Disorder campaign was launched today with a light sculpture at the tower block of the regional parliament in Erfurt, which once housed the communist-led government of the district of Erfurt. As the evening progressed the words and phrases taken from the final documents of the Ecumenical Assembly that were projected onto the building could be seen more and more clearly, while inside the building the texts themselves were projected in rolling news fashion, interspersed with words such as "courage", "justice", "peace" - all this to a sound of extracts of the texts, clips from a Bach mass and the ringing of church bells. Bishop Christoph Kähler said that this was the "writing on the wall" that East Germany's leaders refused to recognise. The artist, Ingo Bracke, explained that he de-constructed the texts in order to reconstruct the component parts in a new way. He said that of all the texts he had read for the project, the one that spoke to him most, was the four pledges in the Letter to Children.
Dagmar Schipanski, the president of the regional parliament said that the non-violent revolution would not have been possible in the way that it happened without the Ecumenical Assembly. Particularly poignant was the presence of Heino Falcke, the retired Dean of Erfurt who turns 80 in May and who is the spiritual father of the Conciliar Process in the GDR that led to the Ecumenical Assembly. Bishop Christoph Kähler said of the texts that lie behind the light sculpture, "The call for more solidarity, taking responsibility in society, and a way of dealing with human beings and the world that is responsible both ecologically and economically, is relevant and something we need to think about even today, 20 years after it was drawn up." Below there are some pictures of the event:

Letter to the children

As well as more than 100 pages of texts on the burning issues facing the GDR and the world, the Ecumenical Assembly at its final session on 30 April 1989 also agreed a "letter to children. When five months later new political parties and citizens movements were being former, one of the movements, Demokratischer Aufbruch borrowed this idea and drafted its own letter to children. The original letter from the Ecumenical Assembly was was read out again at the Prayers for Peace in Leipzig to mark the 20th anniversary of the assembly:

Dear Children

The earth on which we live is threatened. We, the adults, are the ones who are responsible. But there are some people who have realised what is happening. Thats why many people have been meeting for the third time to think about what needs to be done to save the earth. The special thing about our meeting is that we are all people who believe in God, but do so in different ways. That's what you call an Ecumenical Assembly, and the people there are called delegates. But actually they are mothers and fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers, sisters and brothers, or Godparents -in other words people who could be living in your own homes.

What have we been doing?

We have been discussing and praying and discussing again what we can do with the world that we are handing on to you in a quite dilapidated state. We've set down our conclusions and the most important points are:
- We all have to ensure that there will still be trees for many years to come, growing under a blue sky;
- We all need to act to prevent anyone ever again shooting someone else in a war;
- We all have to learn to share, so that no one will starve ever again;
- We all have to act to ensure that each little person and each big person can grow up in safety and security in a nature that is at one with itself;

If we get tired, you must take our place. It's a difficult task for which you need to be prepared. That's why we have told you something about the Ecumenical Assembly. Do not think that we know everything but have faith that we want to do everything we can.

We send you our greetings and thank you for listening.

May peace be with you - Shalom.

The delegates of the Ecumenical Assembly.

p.s. We were in Dresden. It rained a lot, and smoking was prohibited in the meeting place.

Translation (c) Stephen Brown

Prayers for Peace

If there's one thing that Leipzig is known for in recent times it is the mass demonstrations in October 1989 where the city's citizens defied the threat of a massacre by government forces and went on the streets to call for change.
The weekly demonstrations had a regular rhythm - every Monday at 5pm, because they followed the weekly prayers for peace at Leipzig's Nikolaikirche - in early 1989 it was a couple of dozen people who went out on the street after the service to demand change, then it was a few hundred, then a few thousand - until a reputed 70000 people went onto the streets on 9 October, despite official warnings that reserve brigades were being called up, and doctors saying that the hospitals had been told to clear the wards and to make sure they were ready to deal with bullet wounds.
If there was however one reason why the church became the focal point for protest in Leipzig it was the weekly prayers for peace that began on 20 September 1982. They started at a time when Europe faced the deployment of nuclear missiles in West and in East and the growth of an independent peace movement in East Germany. They have been held on Mondays ever since. Today the prayers were led by Leipzig's Pax Christi, which developed out of a grassroots Catholic group that existed already before the peaceful revolution. Today they were remembering the Ecumenical Assembly of 1989, a gathering unique in the history of the GDR that brought together Protestants and Catholics, but also Orthodox, Methodists, Seventh-day Adventists, Quakers and others, and people from church hierarchies and grassroots groups and that made unprecedented demands for change in the German Democratic Republic - and about which more very soon.
Unlike 20 years ago, when the Nikolaikirche was so full that other churches had to be opened as an overflow, today there were "only" about 50 or 60 people at the prayers. Yet the unbroken weekly rhythm means that the people who were praying today are not only joined in prayer with those at the service itself but all those who have come before and who will come afterwards.

The book cover is from,"Nikolaikirche, montags um fünf. Die politischen Gottesdienste der Wendezeit in Leipzig" ("Mondays, 5 p.m. at the Nikolaikirche: Political worship in Leipzig during the changes") by Hermann Geyer, and published by WBG.