Wittenberg project in the news

I’m on the board of Concordia Publishing House, and we have invested some money in rehabilitating the Reformation-era school building in Wittenberg right next to Luther’s church, housing a bookstore, a visitors’ center, and a new confessional congregation in that city. I was surprised to see this written about in the Washington Post, of all places. We had some controversy with the state church, but it seems that the project has become a catalyst for a revival of interest in Luther and his faith. From the article entitled In German Birthplace of Reformation, a Revival of Interest:

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the second-largest Lutheran body in the United States, has bought a building next to the old Town Church, where Luther used to preach, and plans to turn it into a welcome center for U.S. visitors. The Missouri Synod also plans to start a congregation by reaching out to German atheists, although organizers acknowledge that won’t be easy in a city still recovering from 40 years of communist rule.

“In east Germany, you actually have to go up to people and tell them who Jesus was,” said Wilhelm Torgerson, a German Lutheran pastor who serves as the Missouri Synod’s representative in Wittenberg. “They say, ‘Oh yes, Christ. Didn’t he have something to do with Luther?’ ”

“We would like to proclaim the Gospel to unbelievers, and there are certainly a lot of them here,” Torgerson added. “Obviously, there is enough work for all of us without stepping on anyone’s toes.”

Wittenbergers have welcomed the growing American presence for the most part, but there have been some bruised feelings.

Some Missouri Synod leaders have declared that their congregation would be the only true Lutheran church in Wittenberg — an assertion that irritated members of the Evangelical Church in Germany, the largest Protestant body in the country. The Evangelical Church comprises Lutherans, Calvinists and other denominations.

“It was strange for them to come here and say, ‘We are the first real Lutherans,’ ” said Siegfried T. Kasparick, the Evangelical Church’s bishop for Wittenberg. “We’ve had a Lutheran congregation here since Luther.”

In Germany, about 30 percent of the population belongs to the Evangelical Church. An additional 31 percent count themselves as Roman Catholic.

In Wittenberg, however, the number of churchgoers is among the lowest in the country. About 15 percent are members of the Evangelical Church, and 3 percent are Catholic. The city also has a small number of Baptists.

National leaders of the Evangelical Church acknowledged that they have taken Wittenberg’s theological and historical significance for granted in the past. Many west Germans still regard the city, about 60 miles southwest of Berlin, as an east German backwater.

But such attitudes have gradually changed, in large part because of the influx of foreign pilgrims in Wittenberg since the fall of communism two decades ago.

Kasparick, the Wittenberg bishop, said the strong interest from international Lutheran groups has prompted German Protestants to take more pride in their heritage. “They make us stronger,” he said. . . .

German church leaders, however, also see the Luther renaissance as an opportunity to bolster dwindling membership across the country. In October, the Evangelical Church in Germany dispatched a senior pastor, Stephan Dorgerloh, to work in Wittenberg full time to help coordinate and promote the religious aspects of the 500th anniversary commemorations.

In the past, Dorgerloh said, international Protestant leaders would visit Evangelical Church officials in Berlin and ask to visit Wittenberg. “The German church would say, ‘Why do you want to go there?’ ” he recalled.

Since then, he said, “there’s been a rediscovery of Wittenberg by the German national church. Church leaders have rediscovered that this is the heart of the Reformation.”