Lutheran World Federation elects Palestinian bishop as next president

Bishop Munib A Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL) has been elected president of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) by the church body’s highest legislative body.

Bishop Younan will succeed Presiding Bishop Mark S Hanson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, who has been LWF president since the organisation’s last assembly met in Winnipeg, Canada, in 2003.

According to the LWF, the Rt Rev Dr Younan received 300 votes out of the 360 votes cast at the assembly, taking place this year in Stuttgart, Germany.

Bishop Younan, a former vice-president of the LWF, is president of the Fellowship of Middle East Evangelical Churches and serves with three Jerusalem patriarchs and nine other bishops on the International Christian Committee of Jerusalem.

He is also a co-founder of the Council of Religious Institutions in the Holy Land, made up of the two chief rabbis of Israel, heads of the local churches, the Chief Judge of the Islamic Court in Palestine and other Muslim leaders.

The president-elect has headed his church body since 1998 and was the third Palestinian bishop of the church founded by Germans in the nineteenth century and previously led by clergy from Germany.

A member of the LWF since 1974, the ELCJHL has about 3,000 members.