October 31, 2005

SAO LEOPOLDO, Brazil/GENEVA – Participants in the Fourth Conference of International Black Lutherans (CIBL) presented LWF President Mark S. Hanson with a plaque commemorating Rev. Will L. Herzfeld, presiding bishop of the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, a predecessor church body of the ELCA, 1984-1987.

Herzfeld, a former CIBL member, was the first African American to serve as presiding bishop of a Lutheran church, and was a leader in the US civil rights movement in the 1960s while pastor of a Lutheran congregation in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He died in 2002. The CIBL participants requested that the plaque be displayed at the ELCA churchwide office in Chicago.

During the CIBL conference, Hanson and Brazilian church leaders took part in a panel discussion on ecumenism. Hanson explained his response to concern about Lutherans' involvement in many different "full communion" relationships. "I always say that's because our confessions call us to seek deeper unity in the church but allow greater flexibility when there is agreement on the gospel" with other churches, he said. The conference was hosted by the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil (IECLB) in Sao Leopoldo, October 11-17.

"We have a biblical mandate for ecumenism. With the growth of evangelical churches, the question of unity is rising from within," IECLB President Rev. Dr Walter Altmann said. Rev. Luis Vergilio Batista da Roja, conference bishop of the Methodist Church said ecumenism was currently challenged to move from an institutional ecclesial to a political agenda. Recognition of slavery as a crime against humanity was essential for building new social relations, and was "a basic issue of the church and of the Protestant movement," he said. Dr Rudolf von Sinner, systematic theology professor at the IECLB theological college said contextual reality was the main polarity in ecumenism. "Ecumenism is linked to the world in one sense, so whatever we do in practical terms has strong implications for diakonia," he added.

At a press conference, Hanson drew attention to the fact that 97 percent of Lutherans in the USA were white, and that effort was needed to overcome the widespread stigma of a white church.

Founded in 1986, the CIBL comprises black Lutheran theologians both clergy and lay from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North America. (396 words)

Lutheran World Information
The ELCA News Service and IECLB journalist Caroline Straessman contributed to this article.