display
Dresden (dpa) - The new pastor of the Dresden Frauenkirche, Markus Engelhardt, sees the church as a place where, in the best case, listening to each other happens.
"The Frauenkirche is an interface between church and world," said the 59-year-old before his inauguration this Sunday of the German press agency.
"If you want to put it in a more spiritual way: a place where heaven and earth perhaps touch each other even more intensely than anywhere else."
For a pastor, it is of fundamental importance here to “speak the Gospel into the world” in such a way that it really responds to the complex contexts in which the world is today.
"That it opens up new horizons and, above all, brings people and groups back into conversation with one another who otherwise seal themselves off in their bubbles," said Engelhardt.
Engelhardt, who comes from a Heidelberg theologian family and was most recently city dean in Freiburg (Baden-Württemberg), speaks of a "piece of the Protestant Church Congress".
Today the church has to go to the market instead of just being there for the congregation and asserting itself alongside other ideological providers.
For him, this includes positioning in the social discourse.
display
"When people with the Frauenkirche in the background proclaim things that are in fundamental contrast to what the Christian stands for, ironically seeing themselves as saviors of the Christian West, the Frauenkirche cannot remain silent."
According to Engelhardt, the Frauenkirche, "a hybrid" of sacred space, concert hall, event location and forum for public discourse, goes beyond the spiritual and liturgical.
"It stands for what Christianity is today."
It is important to show the limits of a Christian image of man, which simply should not be exceeded.
"And with what Pegida and the lateral thinkers do in part, several Rubikons are exceeded."
It is important, for example, to counter the segmentation of society and newly emerging fanaticisms.
“Making the Frauenkirche a place for this is practiced peace work”.
display
Engelhardt, who is also a managing director of the Frauenkirche Foundation in a double function, trusts the power emanating from this place, that time and again people are fascinated by it and then also express their solidarity financially.
As a pastor, he would like people to think about a service or a midday service in the church that was rebuilt from the rubble.
«There is also a missionary dimension to this;
in this respect, the Frauenkirche is definitely a missionary place. "
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210506-99-488343 / 2