Declaration of The Leadership of The Northelbien Evangelical-Lutheran Church, Germany

to September 11^th 2002

The Northelbien Evangelic-Lutheran Church remembers today on September 11^th the victims within the last year, the victims of the terror in New York and Washington D.C. as well as the victims of the war in Afghanistan, the victims on the Israelian as well as on the Palestinian side (in the Near East conflict). Neither the deaths in the numerous wars which do not find public interest, nor the deaths of the daily silent war of hunger shall be forgotten, neither those who have been killed by several forms of violence in our own country.

We do not only think about the victims, but also the perpetrators. Because when we as Christians invoke God not only for the victims but also for the perpetrators, there will be raised the question of motives and causes:

Looking precisely you will find a terrifying amount of humiliation, experiences of violations and of feeling powerless, which within years seduces humans more and more to search refuge in fanaticism, in the ideology of good and evil, in disdain of humans and in fantasies of violence. – What can and must mean to love the enemy, to stop hostility in those times?

Many people are afraid, call for more security and answer by war: war against terrorism. A new militarising of international relations never seen before is going on. The newly realised dangers seem to give new legitimacy to the doctrine of just war. -

But is the danger to de abolished by this?

Beyond the necessity to dam up against and to stop violence, Christians have another perspective: God’s love means everyone, also those who became perpetrators. Therefore violence will first be really to overcome when the perpetrators themselves will leave off from hate and terror, when they no longer see any desperate meaning in those acts, but instead of these join in the search of constructive solutions.

It is a long way to this – but without any alternative. We should hurry to turn into this way!

Among the first steps belongs intensified Christian-Muslim meetings and cooperation. Let us search more of those meetings, let us show ourselves, look more precisely and not avoid controversy! Our society needs us as the attorneys of intercultural dialog and of religious dissimilarity in reconciliation. “The Day of The World Religions” on November 14^th 2002 will be an important date for this.

Simultaneously the leadership of the church requests to form the ecumenical peace decade from November 10^th to 20^th under the motto “Why are You Afraid?” with these questions and perspectives.

Let us see all of this as our steps linked to the ecumenical “decade for the surmount of violence”! It lives on that violence is no solution, that violence is to get over. Not a world without conflicts is the objective, but that conflicts are realised more precisely, are fought  non-violently and patiently and regulated united. To have conquered the evil not by the evil but by the good – this shall be the crucial message we have to tell.

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