Lutheran “Women on the Move” – celebrating the contribution to the whole church
Statue of Katharina von Bora, wife of Martin Luther, in Wittenberg.
Photo: LWF
Wittenberg, Germany/Geneva, 20.02.2015.
On 22 February, an international LWF working group launched the three-year community process “Women on the Move” as part of the preparations for the 500th anniversary celebrations of the Reformation. “Women on the Move – from Wittenberg to Windhoek” (WMWW) conceptualizes a movement that will involve all LWF member churches, clearly articulating women’s profound contribution to the Lutheran witness throughout the church and society.
At the group’s first meeting, from 22 to 25 February in Wittenberg, the city of the reformer Martin Luther, 23 women theologians and church leaders from all seven LWF regions will develop a framework for how to carry out “Women on the Move” from 2015 until the 2017 celebrations, which will coincide with the 12th LWF Assembly. The group, coordinated by the LWF Women in Church and Society program, will develop a work plan around four thematic approaches, namely: women in leadership and decision-making; women working in theology; documenting women’s experience and contribution to the ongoing Reformation in series of stories; and how the LWF Gender Justice Policy can help empower the churches in their respective realities and contexts.
LWF General Secretary Rev. Martin Junge emphasizes the importance of this process in helping the LWF communion understand women’s concerns not merely as belonging to a particular group, but to the whole church. “It is far more profound than this: it is the church’s desire to become a reconciled body, to be borne by the Word of God and inspired by the eschatological vision of the human family living together,” he said. The themes being developed are “not on behalf of women […], but rather on behalf of the church and the Lutheran communion,” Junge added. He reminded the participants that the beginning of the Reformation was rooted in a movement of young people who mobilized in remarkable ways to make known anew what the Word of God meant for them in their context. “I therefore hope that ‘Women on the Move’ will help us remember that the Reformation is and remains a movement – a movement of the Word of God in this world, a movement of the wind, which you cannot control, which reaches people’s hearts and minds and sets people in motion.” Alongside other resources, the WMWW project website will publish stories about women from various LWF regions, beginning with some of the first ordained women in the Lutheran churches. Women leaders from LWF member churches will share reflections on the opportunities and challenges connected with the global movement as it celebrates the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.
News prepared on the basis of information provided by the LWF http://www.lutheranworld.org
Dr Thilo Fitzner Dr Thilo Fitzner LCCN/Felix Samari
Translated from English by LELBāL pastor Ieva Puriņa
Proofreader Mag. Theol. Milda Klampe