March 25, 2009

AUGSBURG/GENEVA – In a welcoming address on 25 March in the Golden Hall of the Augsburg town hall, the deputy mayor of the city of Augsburg, Hermann Weber, called it "a special honor" to greet the participants of the international consultation "Theology in the Life of Lutheran Churches: Transformative Perspectives and Practices Today."

On behalf of the Lord Mayor Dr. Kurt Gribl, Weber welcomed the approximately 120 theologians to Augsburg, where the gathering is being held on 25-31 March under the joint auspices of the Department for Theology and Studies (DTS) of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Institute for Protestant Theology of the University of Augsburg.

Augsburg's past is intimately intertwined with the history of the church and with that of both Catholics and Lutherans, Weber observed. From this past, he said, "we have inherited responsibilities for the future." As a result, Augsburg could rightly be considered itself the city of ecumenism, especially because it was there, on 31 October 1999, that the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification was signed.

Ecumenism was even a feature of the urban landscape, Weber pointed out, for it was common in Augsburg to see Protestant and Catholic churches standing side by side. It was a great honor for the city of Augsburg that, in the year of the tenth anniversary of the signing of the Joint Declaration, theologians from all over the world were gathering there to explore "new perspectives" for Lutheran theology.

More information on the LWF/DTS consultation "Theology in the Life of Lutheran Churches: Transformative Perspectives and Practices Today" is available at http://www.lutheranworld.org/What_We_Do/DTS/DTS-TLC_Augsburg.html.

Lutheran World Information