Coordination of the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC)

Dr Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz

In Summer 2006, Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz started his work as the coordinator of the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC) that is meant to be the culminating point of the Decade to Overcome Violence. This convocation is to formulate an "ecumenical declaration on just peace". Hence the coordination of the process leading to such a text is also part of his assignment.

Geiko was born in 1940 into a family of farmers in Northern Germany, close to the border with the Netherlands.

Forty years ago, after having completed his theological studies at German universities, a WCC scholarship made it possible for him to spend a year at the Yale Divinity School. That set off his ecumenical journey. After his ordination as a pastor of the German Lutheran Church, he was sent to Oxford, UK to look after the German-speaking Lutheran Congregation there. At the same time, he began working on a doctoral dissertation that focused on concepts of salvation history in the ecumenical movement.

Thirty years ago, from 1974 to 1979, he was a study secretary in the WCC Faith and Order Commission. Of those years with the WCC, he says that they were "among the most important in my life".

From 1979 to 1988, he directed the Protestant Academy of Bad Segeberg and Hamburg in Northern Germany. That ministry enabled him to deal with many ecumenical concerns at the "grassroots level".

At the end of 1988, Geiko moved with his family to Costa Rica in Central America, where he taught ecumenical theology and ecological ethics at the UN-Peace University and the National University of Heredia. Living and working with students from all over Latin America helped him to become acquainted with liberation theologies and also with the legacies of the Indigenous Peoples in the Americas.

Since his return to Germany in 1994, he has mainly been working as an independent researcher and writer with special emphasis on three related issues:

1. Reconciliation theology and reconciliation politics
2. Fundamentalism studies, with special emphasis on the situation in the USA
3. Ecological ethics and related educational and psychological concerns.

Geiko has accepted the WCC general secretary's invitation to him to undertake this task because he believes that the convocation could well be a Kairos-moment when the churches, in their ecumenical fellowship, give witness to the world about the peace of God that keeps the world going in spite of the violence that surrounds us from all sides.

Publications:

• America's Battle for God: A European Christian Looks at Civil Religion (2007), Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz, Eerdmans Publishing Company, 203 pages.
• Faszination Gewalt. Aufklärungsversuche (2006), Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz, Lembeck Verlag, 223 pages.
• Versöhnung statt Vergeltung. Wege aus dem Teufelskreis der Gewalt (2003), Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz, Neukirchener Verlag, 160 pages.
• In göttlicher Mission (2003), Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz, Droemer/Knaur Verlag, 186 pages - out of print.
• Erwecke die Welt. Unser Glaube an Gottes Geist in dieser bedrohten Zeit (2001), Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz, Gütersloher Verlagshaus, also available in English and Spanish.
• The Art of Forgiveness: Theological Reflections on Healing and Reconciliation (1996), Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz, WCC Publications, 118 pages.
  • Vergebung macht frei: Vorschläge für eine Theologie der Versöhnung (1996), Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz, Lembeck Verlag, 160 pages.