Kirsten Fehrs (born September 12, 1961, in Wesselburen) is a Lutheran bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany. Since November 2023, she is an acting President of the Council of the Protestant Church of Germany. [1]
Kirsten Fehrs (born September 12, 1961, in Wesselburen) is a Lutheran bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany. Since November 2023, she is an acting President of the Council of the Protestant Church of Germany. [1]
Fehrs studied Lutheran theology at University of Hamburg. In December 1990 she was ordained as pastor in Hamburg. She worked as pastor of St. James' Church, one of Hamburg's principal churches. In 2011, the synod (church parliament) of the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church elected her bishop of the regions Hamburg and Lübeck. [2] She has been bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany since the North Elbian Church merged with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg and the Pomeranian Evangelical Church in 2012.
The Protestant Church in Germany, formerly known in English as the Evangelical Church in Germany, is a federation of twenty Lutheran, Reformed, and United Protestant regional Churches in Germany, collectively encompassing the vast majority of the country's Protestants. In 2020, the EKD had a membership of 20,236,000 members, or 24.3% of the German population. It constitutes one of the largest Protestant bodies in the world. Church offices managing the federation are located in Herrenhausen, Hanover, Lower Saxony. Many of its members consider themselves Lutherans.
The North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church was a Lutheran regional church in Northern Germany which emerged from a merger of four churches in 1977 and merged with two more churches in 2012. The NEK largely covered the area of the states of Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg where it was the most important Christian denomination. It had 2.1 million members in 595 parishes, constituting 46% of the population in its ambit.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg was a Lutheran church in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, serving the citizens living in Mecklenburg. The seat of the Landesbischof was the state capital Schwerin, with Schwerin Cathedral as the principal church. It is the most important Protestant denomination in this area.
Maria Jepsen is the former bishop of Hamburg in the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church. On 4 April 1992 the synod of the Hamburg Ambit elected her bishop, the first Lutheran woman to be a bishop worldwide, and since then she has been re-elected for a second ten-year period.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lithuania is a Lutheran church body comprising congregations in Lithuania. The ELCL is a member of the Porvoo Communion and the Lutheran World Federation.
The Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Hanover is a Lutheran church body (Landeskirche) in the northern German state of Lower Saxony and the city of Bremerhaven covering the territory of the former Kingdom of Hanover.
Margot Käßmann is a Lutheran theologian, who was Landesbischöfin (bishop) of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Hanover in Germany. On 28 October 2009, she was also elected to lead the Protestant Church in Germany, a federation of Protestant church bodies in Germany. She stepped down from both offices on 24 February 2010 following a drink-driving incident. After serving as a "Reformation Ambassador" for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, she retired in 2018.
Lutheran viewpoints concerning homosexuality are diverse because there is no one worldwide body which represents all Lutherans. The Lutheran World Federation, a worldwide 'communion of churches' and the largest global body of Lutherans, contains member churches on both sides of the issue. However, other Lutherans, including the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference and International Lutheran Council, completely reject homosexuality.
In Christianity, the ordination of women has been taking place in an increasing number of Protestant and Old Catholic churches, starting in the 20th century. Since ancient times, certain churches of the Orthodox tradition, such as the Coptic Orthodox Church, have raised women to the office of deaconess. While ordination of women has been approved in many denominations, it is still a very controversial and divisive topic.
Ralf Meister is a German Lutheran theologian, former General Superintendent of Berlin, and Landesbischof of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Hanover.
The Lübeck Martyrs were three Roman Catholic priests – Johannes Prassek, Eduard Müller and Hermann Lange – and the Evangelical-Lutheran pastor Karl Friedrich Stellbrink. All four were executed by beheading on 10 November 1943 less than 3 minutes apart from each other at Hamburg's Holstenglacis Prison. Eyewitnesses reported that the blood of the four clergymen literally ran together on the guillotine and on the floor. This impressed contemporaries as a symbol of the ecumenical character of the men's work and witness. That interpretation is supported by their last letters from prison, and statements they themselves made during their time of suffering, torture and imprisonment. "We are like brothers," Hermann Lange said.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL) is a Lutheran denomination that has congregations in Jordan and State of Palestine. First recognized as an autonomous religious community by King Hussein in 1959, the church currently has 2,500 members in six congregations.
Karl Friedrich Stellbrink was a German Lutheran pastor, and one of the Lübeck martyrs, guillotined for opposing the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany is a Lutheran member church of the Protestant Church in Germany. It was established on 27 May 2012 as a merger of the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg, and the Pomeranian Evangelical Church. It covers the combined area of all those former member churches, which are the federal states of Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Nordkirche is the only Landeskirche in Germany which covers parts of both New states of Germany and West Germany. It is also called Nordkirche. It has 1,892,749 members (31/12/2020). There are 1,704 ordained pastors and more than 84,000 volunteers working for Nordkirche (4/2016).
Bärbel Wartenberg-Potter is a German theologian. After serving as director over programs for women and children with the World Council of Churches, teaching theology in Jamaica, and serving a pastorate in Stuttgart, Wartenberg-Potter became the president of the Council of Christian Churches in Germany. In 2001 she began a seven-year term as the third woman serving as a Bishop of a Lutheran Church in Germany.
Kristina Kühnbaum-Schmidt is a German Lutheran bishop.
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