“We have a large and valuable order in the world,” says Annette Kurschus. Church has “to bring a tone into life that no one else can”. The expectations of the Church are rightly high, “because we keep hope alive with the message we live from. And hope has become a rare commodity in a world that is bleeding from so many wounds. A world that is self-conscious Vulnerability becomes more conscious than ever. ” Quiet, but at the same time eloquent – that’s how Annette Kurschus preaches, that’s how she appears as a clergyman. You will now hear them more often and more attentively in Germany.
On Wednesday, the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) elected the 58-year-old theologian and President of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia as the new President of the Council. Kurschus will now represent the 20 million Protestant Christians in the country for the next six years. She succeeds the Bavarian regional bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, who did not run again after seven years in office.
Her role as a favorite was evident early on: on Tuesday in the election for the 15-member EKD Council, from whose ranks the chairperson is elected, Kurschus was the only candidate to achieve the required two-thirds majority in the first ballot. The Hamburg bishop Kirsten Fehrs, who had also been given a good chance of being chairman, only made it into the church’s governing body in the second ballot. According to the proposal of the new council, which the synodals accepted with a large majority, Fehrs is now Kurschus’ deputy. For the first time in its history, the Evangelical Church will thus be directed by three women at the top: Kurschus, Fehrs and the Synod President Anna-Nicole Heinrich, who was elected in May.
Known as a charismatic preacher
Although Kurschus, born in Rothenburg an der Fulda in 1963 and raised in the pietistic Siegerland, comes from a pastor’s family and spent a lot of time in church as a child, she was initially drawn not to theology but to medicine. However, she quickly dropped out of her studies. After studying theology, vicarage and a position as parish priest in Siegen, she quickly rose in the hierarchy of the Westphalian Church, the fourth largest German regional church.
Today the pastor is best known as a charismatic preacher. She was noticed by a broader nationwide public in 2015 at the ecumenical funeral service for the victims of the Germanwings plane crash in Cologne Cathedral. Her sermon in a ZDF church service on Easter 2020 during the Corona lockdown also received a lot of recognition. Last week Kurschus was awarded the ecumenical preaching prize in the “Lifetime Achievement” category, which is to be awarded to her next Wednesday. The University of Münster awarded Kurschus an honorary doctorate in 2019 for her oratory, and Bedford-Strohm also praised her “brilliant sermons and devotions” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/. “We are a church of the word, that is a strength of Protestantism, “says Kurschus himself.
She would also like to work primarily as a theologian in the office of council chairperson – at least that was what you could hear from her application speech on Tuesday: “I rely on the power of spiritual and theological accents,” she said. “Wherever we as council speak up publicly, that should be clearly justified and well-considered.” But that does not mean that the EKD council chairwoman wants to stay out of political debates: “The gospel is never without socio-political consequences,” she says. Jesus himself was always on the “fringes of society”, the church must think from these fringes “and locate the real center of our actions on these fringes,” said Kurschus. In this appeal, Kurschus can feel connected to Pope Francis.
Kurschus sees the “protection of life” as the most important task for Christians: life on earth has never been as threatened as it is today, she said after her election on Wednesday: “We must do everything to protect life in its diversity and to preserve it, so that our children and grandchildren can also live on earth. “
She wants to look and listen to social injustice, but also to “her own injustice”, said Kurschus. She wants to make dealing with sexual violence in the Protestant Church a “boss issue”. At the Synod there were meetings with those affected that were “painful but necessary”. Kurschus has not yet said what she is planning to do in concrete terms: The questions now have to be “looked at closely”.
Kurschus wants to pay more attention to listening
After the intensive discussion with those affected on Monday, the church parliament feels it has a greater obligation to do so: The synod made some resolutions to improve the participation of those affected and to advance the process. Among other things, the topic of abuse is to be established annually at the synodal meetings in the future, and a synodal commission is to be founded that also wants to work with those affected and external experts. However, Kurschus said that the current structure with the Commissioner Council, which was sharply criticized by some of those affected, was to be retained. In addition, the positions in the EKD department responsible for questions of abuse are to be converted from project positions into permanent, permanent positions. Stricter disciplinary law is also planned.
During her term of office, Annette Kurschus decided to pay more attention to listening. A good example for her is the criticism of the churches in the corona pandemic: “When we were disappointed that we had not been there, we immediately took on the defensive role and listed everything we do,” says Kurschus. “Perhaps it would have been better to first ask: What do you mean, what do you need? There are expectations of us, they often come in the guise of criticism – but this is exactly where we as a church have a chance.”