WCRC welcomed as agreement approved

It’s not often that Calvin and Zwingli are quoted on the floor of the German Federal Parliament (Bundestag), let alone large sections of the Accra Confession.

But that was the case late last week when legislators voted unanimously to approve an agreement between the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) and the German government.

The legislators also seized the opportunity to welcome the WCRC to Germany and to comment on a law that is so far unique as it grants an international ecumenical organization certain privileges concerning the status of its staff and its elected officers.

The special status granted by this new legislation was welcomed by several speakers as an expression of religious freedom and plurality. The particularities of Reformed theology and the teachings of the Reformers John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli were described in some detail by a representative of the Green Party, known to be a human rights activist.

Most surprisingly the Accra Confession was quoted at length by a legislator. He highlighted the fact that the WCRC is committed to social and economic justice on biblical grounds.

In his speech before parliament Dr. Lars Castellucci, a professor of diversity management by profession and a church musician on Sundays, said that the Reformed family considers the disastrous ecological and economic consequences of the present economic world order as issues directly related to its faith and to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It can be said that during this time not only was the WCRC officially given a special legal status in Germany but that on its 10th anniversary the Accra Confession also made its official entry into the political arena by being acknowledged in a parliamentary debate of the Bundestag.

(Special thanks to reformiert-info.de for the initial article.)