Author: Sigtunastiftelsen

Dear Colleagues, dear Members of Oikosnet Europe

In different contexts, our members, academies and educational institutions convince with their expertise. They take position in important social discourses and present their own argumentation. At the same time, they provide a platform for encounters and controversial discussions. That the latter can be important and exciting, we recently learned at an event in Zurich.

Religious communities should realize their peace potential and actively engage in peace as important actors. For this attitude, the podium guests recently voted in a debate on religious peace-keeping in Zurich. Plusbildung, the Swiss association of church educational organizations, had invited for the event.

“Religion can make conflict more difficult – religion is a successful peacemaker.” This ambiguity was presented by Silke Lechner, the deputy head of the working group on Peace Responsibility of Religions at the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin, in her keynote address with pointed theses. Wars usually have several causes, and little is said about the peace potential of churches, she said. Her team is therefore focusing on the peace policy potential of religious communities worldwide and strives to build a network of suitable religious representatives who actively promote peace. Because these are strongly networked, trustworthy key persons. And especially the participation of internationally networked religious actors is increasingly in demand from the political side, according to the former study director of the German Protestant Kirchentag.

For the first time in Switzerland representatives from politics and religious communities met and discussed on this topic. Among them were Jean-Nicolas Bitter, Senior Advisor to the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, and Rev. Thomas Wipf, President of the European Interreligious Council of Religious Leaders ECRL. On the one hand, the churches and religious communities have been encouraged to see themselves as “key players” in society, keeping an eye on the international perspective and networking. On the other hand, they were self-critical, since they still have to do their homework, that is, to break away from the ideological-embossing influence of religion and to discover the peace potential of the religions themselves.

I wish our members good luck with their efforts, be it as a “forum” or as a “factor”. And I am looking forward to meeting many delegates at our Annual Conference in September!

Walter Lüssi, President of Oikosnet Europe

Report from the Annual Conference of Oikosnet Europe
Flehingen (Germany), September 6 – 10, 2017

The Annual Conference (AC) of Oikosnet Europe brought together colleagues who work in academies and laity centers from all over Europe. This year, the meeting was scheduled in Flehingen, a cosy place of about 3,600 inhabitants close to Karlsruhe (Germany), not far from the borders to both France and Switzerland. The event was organized by Uta Engelmann and Dr Gernot Meier of the Protestant Academy Baden that in 2017 is celebrating its 70th anniversary.

The AC consisted of two parts: one dedicated to one of the key social issues of our time transforming lives, digitalization; and one business meeting focusing on administrative and organizational matters of Oikosnet Europe. Under the theme “The Digital Revolution and its Children”, members of Oikosnet Europe reflected on the impact of digitalization in peoples‘ everyday lifes, new ways of communication, changing opportunities, and challenges. After an intriguing visit to the Center of Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, the group of colleagues refleced on virtual realities and digital self-defence with IT-expert Wolfgang Schwach, and on living in a “digital society“ with Professor Axel Sikora. The political impact of digitalization was analyzed looking at “fake news“.

One of the outcomes of the business meeting was the election of a new president and a new board. After many meritorious  years in office, Jaap van der Sar passed the leadership over to Walter Lüssi, General Secretary of the Reformed Church Canton of Zürich and President of Plusbildung. In addition to Walter Lüssi, the Annual Conference elected Sören Lenz (Liebfrauenberg, France) as deputy chairman and Dr Julia Gerlach (Protestant Academy Meissen) as a new member of the Board. Nicola Murray (Corrymeela, Northern Ireland) and Dr Konstantinos Zormpas (Orthodox Academy of Crete) remained as members of the board according to the election in 2016.

The next Annual Conference will take place in the Orthodox Academy of Crete in September 2018, focusing on the nexus of crisis and innovation.

Jaap van der Sar passed the leadership over to Walter Lussi at the Annual Conference in Flehingen.

Once upon a time… So starts every fairy tale and the plot is often situated in an enchanted castle. The protestant academy of the Bavarian Lutheran church is situated in a castle, the surroundings are enchanted, and the lake of Starnberg is open to the marvellous scenery of the Bavarian Alps. But that was not the reason why the new board held its first meeting in this place. This strategic meeting allowed us to have a first contact with the new vice-director Judith Stumptner   of the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing and to present our European network.

This meeting showed that the Bavarian Academy is not only situated in a beautiful landscape but is as well an important place for seminaries and conferences concerning Church and society issues. (www.ev-akademie-tutzing.de). It would be a great asset if the academy of Tutzing would joint our network in the near future.

Our board meeting took place in a very friendly and efficient atmosphere. Additionally to the board members, Walter Lüssi (president), Sören Lenz (vice-president), Nicola Murray (treasurer), Konstantinos Zormpas and Julia Gerlach, the director of the Sigtuna foundation Alf Linderman and Karin Sallander representing our secretariat, take part in our first board meeting after the AC in Flehingen. Following issues were discussed:

• Evaluation of the AC in Flehingen

The number and the content of the returned evaluation sheets were encouraging. Maybe we could give more time to discussions and looking for more interactive forms of conferences.

• The Gender and Justice Network

In the last years we realized difficulties to organise the preconference of the Gender and Justice Network when there is no person who coordinates the whole. Julia Gerlach from the Academy of Meissen proposed to draft a mission statement on this issue. She will as well work on a proposal how to implement gender and justice issues in OIKOSNET ACs in behalf of the annual theme. The board acknowledges the work of the Gender and Justice network over the last years and we are glad that Julia wants to continue working on the gender and justice topics with a broader approach concerning all sorts of diversity in our society.

• Priorities of OIKOSNET

During the last years the mission and vision of OIKOSNET was a main issue in our ACs . We are aware that the outcome is important for our members. During the discussion in the board about aims and priorities of OIKOSNET, the idea emerged that the board could set a theme for a year and invite academies to contribute or to join in. The board could collect ideas and priorities of academies and try to find a common topic for the AC. That could be a first step to foster new common projects among our members.

Besides the awareness of the actual political situation in Europe, which concerns especially OIKOSNET as an European network we need bearing in mind the spiritual dimension of our ecumenical organisation.

After one day intense but fruitful work the agenda for the next year was fixed. We, the five board members and the staff of the OIKOSNET secretariat in Sigtuna? will meet again in march in Strasbourg to work on the details of the next Annual conference in the Orthodox academy Crete in September.

The enchanted atmosphere of Tutzing at the lake of Starnberg showed us that we need places which are enchanted and which propose the right distance to everyday life and to widen the horizon in many ways. The view on the distant mountains across the lake were a good reminder that there is a life beyond the walls of our own academies or better castles. Therefore, we need the exchange and the personal contact in our network? We do need OIKOSNET.

Sören Lenz

Gender, Media and Religion: Contemporary Challenges to Society and Democracy
1 to 4 May 2018 Sigtuna, Sweden

In recent years, we have seen the rise of many cultural tensions and conflicts, even violent terror and war, in many parts of the world. This has not least been the case in Europe and in the Arab region. Religion has been at the core in many of these contemporary conflicts.

If we wish is to see the development of healthy and well-functioning democracies in Europe and in the Arab region, we need to discuss the relation between religion and society. In doing so, we must, among other things, specifically focus on gender issues.

We hereby invite You to take part in this Arab-Europe Citizens’ Dialogue on religion and society! Whether you have been participating in any of the previous dialogue consultations or not, you are most welcome to take part in the next event. This is a pre-invitation. A more detailed invitation will follow.

The Sigtuna Consultation will start in the early evening of May 1^st, 2018, and end in the morning of Friday 4 May. We will have speakers representing Politics, Faith-based Organizations and Civil Society Institutions from both the Arab and the European region. The Consultation will be open for interested participants from both regions. The process to seek appropriate speakers has just started, but we already know that two prominent individuals from Sweden, representing Europe and Sweden, will speak at the Consultation.

• Anders Wejryd, World Council of Churches President for Europe, former Archbishop for Church of Sweden
• Karin Wiborn, General Secretary, Christian Council of Sweden

A full program will be presented early February 2018. Preinvitation as PDF
Organizers

The Arab-Europe Citizens’ Dialogue Consultation on Religion and Society in Sigtuna 2018 is organized jointly by the Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services (CEOSS), Oikosnet Europe, Church of Sweden and the Sigtuna Foundation. Feel free to contact any of the following persons if you have further questions:

For the Arab side: Samira Luka samira.luka@ceoss.org.eg 
For the European side: Alf Linderman alf.linderman@sigtunastiftelsen.se

Dear Colleagues, dear Members of Oikosnet Europe
European contexts pose many challenges. Longer-term transformation processes are superimposed by rapid changes in many areas of social life. The list of key words that try to rewrite this situation is long: secularization, traditional demise and “the end of grand narratives”, digitization and its impact on the workplace, the cult of health, institutional disenchantment, demographic change, gender and diversity, religious and inter-Christian pluralism, terrorism and counter-terrorism efforts, climate change, the tendency to “useful truths”, the changing media landscape, the endangerment of the heritage of the Enlightenment, the growing right-wing populism and increasing nationalism, migratory pressures and the phenomenon of stateless people etc.

Humans and the environment, living together and the cohesion of societies are affected. And we know that people behave differently in the face of their “Fear of Falling”. In a public survey conducted in late 2016 and early 2017 Chatham House researchers identified in collaboration with Kantar Public six ‘tribes’ across Europe that transcend national boundaries and whose members share similar opinions and life experiences: https://tribes.chathamhouse.org/.

Everyone is not doing everyting
With all these topics and their social, religious, political and spiritual implications, the members of Oikosnet Europe are working in their own specific ways. Not everyone is doing everything. The expertise is naturally limited to certain fields of research that are related to the history, tradition and strategic orientation of each organization. But what unites us in the Association of Oikosnet Europe is to preserve and promote a common Europe, the tireless remembrance of the dignity of each individual, the careful handling of other lives, care in using the limited resources in God’s creation. In this endeavor, we provide our services to the churches and a broader public and seek cooperation with other civil society actors.

Modern societies and the churches themselves within the European contexts are dependent on places of encounter, on expertise and public debates. To this Oikosnet Europe is committed. I cordially invite you to renew this commitment and share it with others within our association. Together, above all together, we are able to play a significant role and contribute to current discourses.

With best wishes,

Walter Lüssi, president of Oikosnet Europe