In Other Ecumenical News…

We’re focus­ing on the Lutheran-Roman Catholic con­flict of the 16th cen­tury in our forth­com­ing pil­grim­age (only 30 days away!!), but obvi­ously enough there was quite a lot of other stuff going in Reformation-era Europe. One of the many tragic erup­tions of vio­lence in those days was the per­se­cu­tion of Anabap­tists by pretty much every­body else. It seems that about 2500 Anabap­tists alto­gether were exe­cuted for their reli­gious “crimes” in all dif­fer­ent con­fes­sional regions.

Today another great event toward the heal­ing of the past hap­pens at the assem­bly of the Lutheran World Fed­er­a­tion in Stuttgart, Ger­many. Luther­ans will offer a pub­lic apol­ogy and request for for­give­ness from God and from their Men­non­ite sis­ters and broth­ers, who are the spir­i­tual descen­dants of the Anabap­tists. For­give­ness was cen­tral to Christ’s work and teach­ing, and it will have to be cen­tral to the heal­ing of Christ’s splin­tered church.

If you’re inter­ested to learn more, you can down­load two resources here: one is a sur­vey of the work of The Lutheran-Mennonite Study Com­mis­sion, which explains how it got to this point and why; the other is the offi­cial text of the LWF State­ment to Men­non­ites that will be read on the after­noon of July 22.