Leadership Talk by the Bishop of the Protestant Church of Austria (2008–2019)

Antisemitism is not in accordance with the Christian faith or the values of the Protestant Church. Today, we see this as a generally accepted fact. However, a couple of decades ago, this sentiment would have not been so certain. The Protestant Church of Austria was inflicted by German nationalism and Antisemitism during the first half of the twentieth century. Anti-Jewish pamphlets by Martin Luther and other reformers had a particularly adverse impact, too. The Protestant Church only began reconsidering the issue after the war in 1945.While the Roman Catholic Church as a whole committed to a strong opposition against antisemitism in their Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate in 1965, within the Protestant Church, each regional church had to go its own way.1 Some regional churches progressed faster than others. The Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, for example, issued the important Synod decision “On the Renewal of the Relationship between Christians and Jews” in 1980.2 Other regional churches followed, some with considerable delay. With their declaration “A Time for Change,” the Protestant Church of Austria accepted its joint guilt and responsibility only in 1998 and made way for a new relationship with Judaism.3 All Protestant declarations clearly and roundly condemn and oppose antisemitism. What was new about the declarations from the 1980’s and 1990’s was the Church’s understanding of the consequences these declarations should and must have both for the Church and within the Church. These consequences first and foremost concern the joint guilt and responsibility of the Churches concerning antisemitism, a phenomenon also stemming from a Christian Jew-hatred that is hundreds of years old. Second came the need to examine our own doctrines and practices to rid them of antisemitic elements. These ele-