Browsing by Author "Pihkala, Panu"

Previous research on the topic could not be found. From Federation to Communion: a History of LWF (Schjørring, Jens et al., 1997) mentions environmental issues only a very few times and never as a topic of its own. The aim of the study was to clarify when the issues were started to deal with in LWF and how they were dealt with. In the Curitiba Assembly the issues gained great prominence, but hints pointing to much more earlier processing of the issues were found during the setting of the aims. Due to the thesis nature of the study the research material was limited to documents around assemblies and LWF publications directly on the topic. The study aimed to clarify influential theologians and lines of thought to the processing of the issues in LWF. LWF didn t turn out to be a forerunner in ecological issues, but it did start to discuss the issues quite soon after they were raised to larger conciousness (in the beginning of the seventies). President Mikko Juva spoke about the MIT report Limits to Growth in the meeting of the Executive Committee in 1973. The first publication of LWF to deal with the issues was the Study Book for the Dar es Salaam assembly (1977), prepared by two members of the General Secretariat. The need for greater attention to ecological issues was presented in the very end of the book, the placing corresponding to the general attention paid to the issues. Interestingly two ecotheologians were quoted: lutheran Joseph Sittler and baptist Kenneth Cauthen. The Sittler quotation was from his address (Called to Unity) in the WCC New Delhi assembly (1961) and dealt with cosmological christology. However, in the end the Dar es Salaam assembly only briefly noted that more attention should be paid to ecological issues and made certain very general statements about caring for creation, which can be understood as pointing just to interhuman relations. The most influential source for ecological ponderings in LWF turned out to be WCC. It had started to deal with ecological issues after the Uppsala assembly (1969) and held its first major conference on the issues in Bucharest in 1974. (A throughout presentation of the early WCC dealings with ecology in found in Economic Growth and the Quality of Life by Lindqvist, Martti, 1975.) On assembly level the issues surfaced for the first time in Nairobi (1975), where process theologian Charles Birch held his famous address. The very influential process theology did not gain overall acceptance, however, except in the MIT conference Faith and Science in an Unjust World (1979). The Vancouver assembly (1983) gave birth to the Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation (JPCC) process, but remained quite silent about actual ecotheology. In all the LWF assemblies of the research period the WCC influence was explicitly stated in the documents: in Dar es Salaam the Nairobi influence and in Budapest 1984 the general WCC influence. The research found the first real ecotheological statements of LWF from Budapest materials, and they turned out to be theologically more precise than the Curitiba 1990 materials. The research found out significant similarities, both implicit and explicit, between ecotheological statements in MIT 1979 and Budapest 1984. Support to WCC was promised, but JPIC was explicitly mentioned only in Curitiba, where it gained prominence even to the degree that some would think of the assembly as a JPIC happening. In Curitiba ecological issues overall gained unseen attention and were definately one of the main concerns. They were dealt with, in some degree, in all the major addresses. The study found out that the ecological part of the Curitiba preamble is to an astonishing degree copied from the assembly preparation materials. Allthough the prominence of ecological issues raised dramatically in the research period, the overall line of ecotheological thinking remained approximately the same. The need to care for creation was stated, based on traditional (lutheran) creation theology and especially Luther s explanations for the First Article and the Fourth Petition. However, during the research period LWF didn t really discuss the sacramental worldview that some ecotheologians (like Larry Rasmussen) have brought out basing on Luther s theology. The ecotheological line of LWF remained anthropocentric and no intrinsic value was explicitly given to nonhuman nature. The ecotheological model was named as stewardship, but can be seen as a modified old dominion model. In the Curitiba preparation documents and some addresses (especially Ronald F. Thiemann s) there is material which points to some kind of partner/covenant/ priest of creation- ecotheological model, but these kind of sentences were not approved to the Assembly Preamble. (I m following roughly the setting of models by Larry Rasmussen in Earth Community, Earth Ethics, 1996.) LWF was influenced in its dealing with environmental issues by for example process theology, but didn t officially join the same kind of conclusions. The Strasbourg Institute s research project on the eighties, Creation an Ecumenical Challenge?, led by Per Lønning and Mark Ellingsen, was found to be highly influential. Some of its influence could be seen already in Budapest, but most of it was directed to Curitiba. Also influential were the consultations on Land organized by the Department of Studies, first under Béla Harmati and then under Götz Planer-Friedrich. Some influence by former director of the department, Ulrich Duchrow, could also be found. Alltogether in the eighties German theologians gained much attention in ecotheological issues: among these were Günter Altner, Gerhard Liedke and Jürgen Moltmann. Another prominent area was Northern America, but some Scandinavians also made contributions. On a larger level the Scandinavian lutheran emphasis on theology of creation has made way for the processing of the issues. The most prominent non-western figure in the issues was found to be Emmanuel Abraham, who dealt with the issues already in Dar es Salaam and made a major presentation on them in Budapest.