Bishop Dr Heinrich Bedford-Strohm
8 September 2022, Karlsruhe, Germany: Bishop Dr Heinrich Bedford-Strohm of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, moderator of the World Council of Churches central committee.
Bishop Dr Heinrich Bedford-Strohm of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria is the moderator of the WCC central committee.
He was ordained in 1997, after studying theology, law, history, and political science at Erlangen, Heidelberg, and Berkeley.
From 2004 until 2011, he was part of the faculty at the University of Bamberg. In 2011, he became bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria. He served as chairman of the Council of Protestant Churches in Germany from 2014-2021.
He is an honorary professor for systematic theology and contemporary theological issues at the University of Bamberg, and an honorary professor at the University of Stellenbosch/South Africa. He has also served as the head of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Research Center for Public Theology at the University of Bamberg.
He was awarded the Albert Schweitzer Medal of the German Albert Schweitzer Center, the Augsburg Peace Prize, and the James I. McCord Award from the Center for Theological Inquiry at Princeton University for Outstanding Contributions to Ecumenical Scholarship, among many other honors. He was also awarded honorary citizenship of the city of Palermo for his commitment to the sea rescue of refugees.
A hobby violinist, Bedford-Strohm is married to Deborah Bedford and they have three sons.