WCC Ecumenist Explores Terrorism & Religious Factors in US Politics

An ecumenical leader from Germany is set to explore the religious factors within global politics, focusing on the struggle of the war on terrorism.

The coordinator of the World Council of Churches' (WCC) 2011 International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC), Dr Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz has expressed his belief that many in the United States and across the world "do no understand the course of events that led from September 11, 2001 to the current expanded conflict".

Dr Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz, is hoping to offer a careful, lucid exploration of the elements in America's civil religion that have steered the US on its present course.

During a launch on 16 May at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland, Müller-Fahrenholz will present his new book 'America's Battle for God: A European Christian Looks at Civil Religion'.

From the perspective of an outsider who loves the US, Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz has expressed his desire to blend 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 re-evaluate 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.