Ethics · Society · Theology · Mission · Sociology of Religions
As every year, the Director of the International Institute for Religious Freedom and International President of the International Society for Human Rights presented the two German Yearbooks on Religious Freedom (Jahrbuch Religionsfreiheit 2017) and the Yearbook on the Persecution and Discrimination of Christians (Jahrbuch Verfolgung und Diskriminierung von Christen 2017) to Pope Francis personally.
Why Persecution and Suffering need to return to the Center of Theology and Dogma
Bp Efraim M. Tendero, Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance, together with Bp Thomas Schirrmacher, Associate Secretary General for Theological Concerns, paid a visit to His Excellency Dr. Gjorge Ivanov, President of the Republic of Macedonia.
Together with Dr Uziel Santana, law professor from Brazil and Director of the Latin American Office of the International Institute for Religious Freedom (IIRF), and Dr Gonzalo Ramirez, President of the National Congress of Costa Rica, Thomas Schirrmacher praised Regent’s Park College of Oxford University for its achievements in the last 60 years. In a small ceremony remembering, that the college was licensed by Oxford University 60 years ago, they donated a large plate, which now hangs at the main hall of the college.
The director of the International Institute for Religious Freedom (IIRF) has given a guest lecture on the philosophy of religious freedom at Oxford University. He urged the academic community to make “FoRB” (Freedom of Religion and Belief) an important topic in several academic disciplines, like law, sociology, history, and religious studies.
50 years ago the Associate Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance, Thomas Schirrmacher, who is responsible for theological concerns, decided to move Jesus Christ into the center of his life. The place where this happened was the diaconal facility Diakonissen-Mutterhaus in Lachen, Germany, and it is there that Schirrmacher gave a sermon in a worship service upon the anniversary of this occasion and thanked the two deaconesses who looked after him at that time and explained the gospel to him.
According to the opinion of the evangelical theologian and mission scholar Christof Sauer, the new Apostolic Letter of Pope St. Francis with the title “There is no greater love (maiorem hac dilectionem) – on the offer of life” is to be welcomed, as far as it concerns the definition of a martyr.