Bishop Johannes Hempel of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony, a former president of the World Council of Churches (WCC) who led his church in East Germany during the period of the Cold War confrontation, the 1989 peaceful revolution, and German unification, has died aged 91. Hempel, “particularly in the dramatic times before and after 1989, acted with great spiritual authority,” said Volker Kress, his immediate successor as bishop of the Saxony church, after the news of Hempel’s death on 23 April.
Born in the Saxon town of Zittau on 23 March 1929, Hempel was bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony from 1972 until his retirement in 1994.
He was elected to the WCC’s central and executive committees in 1975, and at the WCC’s 6th assembly in Vancouver in 1983, was elected one of the WCC’s seven presidents, a post he held until 1991.
In a tribute to Hempel, the WCC’s acting general secretary, the Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca, praised the German bishop’s commitment to ecumenism across national and confessional boundaries.
“The richness of Bishop Hempel’s contribution to the ecumenical movement will continue to benefit all the generations to come,” said Sauca. “His wisdom, his courage, and his stalwart spirituality in the face of divineness and crises is an inspiration for us all.”
Hempel invited the WCC to hold its 1981 central committee meeting in Dresden, where his Saxony church had its headquarters, in a city that was known for its efforts in promoting reconciliation after experiencing massive destruction in the closing months of the Second World War.
In 1983, when Hempel was also presiding bishop of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the German Democratic Republic, he hosted representatives of all the main Christian world communions in East Germany to mark the 500th anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther.
This was also a turbulent time in world politics at the height of the Cold War, with the deployment of nuclear missiles in Europe by the United States and the Soviet Union.
There were mass protests on the streets of Western Europe and in the German Democratic Republic a burgeoning, largely church-based peace movement mobilized around the biblical motto of “Swords into Ploughshares,” much to the irritation and anger of the communist authorities.
Hempel gave strong support to the call at the WCC’s Vancouver assembly for a conciliar process for justice, peace and the integrity of creation.
In the German Democratic Republic the initiative culminated in an ecumenical assembly in Dresden in 1989 that made unprecedented demands for political change, just months before the communist-ruled republic was gripped by mass protests.
The end of communism in the German Democratic Republic was followed by German unification in 1990, and the following year the Protestant churches from East and West Germany were reunited under the umbrella of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD).
“During this particularly important period for the growing together of the church in eastern and western Germany, he became in 1991 the first East German bishop to become deputy chairperson of the first council of the reunited EKD,” the current EKD chairperson, Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, said in a tribute.
He praised Hempel’s commitment to the WCC and his efforts “to make visible that we are the one church of Jesus Christ, whatever our confession or national or cultural background.”
* Stephen Brown is editor of the WCC’s quarterly journal The Ecumenical Review.
The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 350 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 550 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is the Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, from the [Lutheran] Church of Norway.
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