News
As struggles over the global war on terrorism continue to rage, many in the United States and around the world do not understand the course of events that led from September 11, 2001, to the current expanded conflict.
Now, the coordinator of the World Council of Churches' (WCC) 2011 International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC), Dr Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz, offers us a careful, lucid exploration of the elements in America's civil religion that have steered the US on its present course.
Müller-Fahrenholz will present his new book
America's Battle for God: A European Christian Looks at Civil Religion (Wm. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2007)
on Wednesday, 16 May at 12:30 at the Ecumenical Centre, Salle I
150 route de Ferney, Geneva
From the perspective of an outsider who loves the US, Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz blends historical, theological, political, and cultural-psychological perspectives to present a nuanced portrait of how the US is perceived around the world today. Exploring super-patriotism, the lost opportunity of 9/11, and the dangerous clash of fundamentalisms, he confronts the US with the urgent need to reevaluate its core values in a global perspective.
A retired pastor of the German Lutheran Church with broad ecumenical experience, Müller-Fahrenholz worked as a theologian with the WCC in the seventies, and as director of a theological seminary in Germany from 1979-1988. He subsequently moved to Costa Rica, where he worked for several years as a professor of ecumenical theology, peace and ecological ethics, before returning this year to the WCC as IEPC coordinator.