International Association for Religious Freedom

Rev. Dr. Andreas Rössler

The Bund für Freies Christentum (Association for Free Christianity) unites Protestant Christians of a liberal religious attitude. Most of them are members of the established Protestant Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, EKD). Since 1983a liberal Free Church, the "Tempelgesellschaft e.V.", has been a corporate member of the Bund für Freies Christentum.

The "Deutscher Bund für Freies Christentum" was founded in 1948 in Frankfurt am Main, as a nation wide union of local and regional liberal Protestant groups. It has been a member group of IARF since 1949.

The connection of German liberal Protestant Christians with IARF goes back much further. In August 1910 a World Congress of IARF ("Fünfter Weltkongress für Freies Christentum und religiösen Fortschritt") took place in Berlin, the capital city of Germany, and there the elite of academic German Protestant theology participated. Amongst the speakers of the congress were Adolf von Harnack, Hermann Gunkel, Georg Wobbermin, Otto Baumgarten, Wilhelm Bousset and Ernst Troeltsch.

After the Second World War the organised liberal groups within German Protestantism were small. Karl Barth, a definite anti-liberal, theologically influenced the leadership of the "Bekennende Kirche" (Confessional Church), which resisted Nazi ideology and politics between 1933 and 1945. These Barthian church leaders and theologians took over Church government and academic theology after 1945, although liberal-minded theologians such as Paul Tillich (who emigrated to the USA in 1933), Fieidrich Heiler and Kurt Leese also resisted Nazism. A second reason for the smallness of organised liberal Protestantism in Germany is the fact that many or most of the liberal principles were adopted by the established church as well as conservative, evangelical, pietistic and confessionalist positions.

In 1999 the Bund für Freies Christentum has 160 individual members. The corporately associated "Tempelgesellschaft" has about 700 members in Germany. The magazine "Freies Christentum: Auf der Suche nach neuen Wegen" (now published six times a year) has about 330 subscribers.

In 1998 the Bund für Freies Christentum published a book with articles which have been published in its magazine " Freies Christentum" during 50 years: Hans-Hinrich-Jenssen (editor): Offenes Christentum. Ein Lesebuch, Shaker Verlag, Aachen.

In spite of its small membership, the Bund für Freies Christentum is an active and engaged member of IARF. At the IARF congresses it has been represented by speakers (Peter Gerlitz, Jutta Reich and others), by commission leaders (Andreas Rössler and others) and by active participation in the International Association of Liberal Religious Women (Renate Albrecht, Jutta Reich). Several times, the Bund für Freies Christentum has been represented on the IARF Council (Renate Albrecht, Andreas Rössler, Jutta Reich, Peter Gerlitz).

The Bund für Freies Christentum is mainly engaged in theological questions. Political responsibility and social work takes place within the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD), and in this context liberal Protestants are active in social and political matters.

Within IARF, the Bund für Freies Christentum puts an emphasis on theological considerations and inter-religious dialogue. The purpose of this dialogue is encounter, mutual understanding and a basic agreement in questions of justice, human rights, freedom, social welfare and tolerance. Another purpose is deeper religious insight. Liberal Protestants are convinced of the finality of God's revelation in Jesus Christ, but they interpret this revelation in an inclusive, not exclusive, way. They are convinced of a universal and ongoing revelation of God, that definite truth is to be found not only in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but also in other religious traditions, in philosophy and in wisdom. For the Bund für Freies Christentum, IARF is a place where this inter-religious encounter goes on, and its special offering is personal and ongoing dialogue and friendship.

In the context of the German IARF member groups, the Bund für Freies Christentum engaged in inter-religious encounter with free religious believers and the German Unitarians. Especially during the IARF leadership of General Secretary Diether Gehrmann, this dialogue went on intensively. The "Iggelbacher Religionsgespräch" in March 1978 has proved an outstanding opportunity for a formulation of basic agreement and disagreement between liberal Christians, free religious believers and German Unitarians. The regional IARF conferences in the Evangelische Akademie Bad Boll since 1975 are also a place of serious inter-religious dialogue between adherents of different religious traditions.

In the "Hanauer Sätze" of November 1968, one of the basic position statements of the Bund für Freies Christentum on inter-religious dialogue is treated in article 13: "We intend a new relation to non-Christian religions. To dismiss them as sheer illusion or error is arrogant and contradicts the spirit of Jesus. We do not want to promote the position of 'anything goes'. But Christians can communicate some meaning and orientation to others, and they can also learn from them."

According to the leaflet of the Bund für Freies Christentum from 1997, a liberal Christian freedom has to be understood in four regards: (1) freedom from doctrinal fixations; (2) freedom to accept biblical tradition on the line of the spirit; (3) freedom of conscience, religious liberty: and (4) "freedom to encounter people of other faiths in the desire of learning and without anxiety; with the purpose to get familiar with each other and to understand each other; in the mutual attitude of openness to the unconditional ground of truth".