Interview
What was the first spark of ecumenism that you can remember?
Rev. Knoche: There is no real first spark I can remember. I grew up in a family with a father who was a judge and, at the same time, committed to the trade union movement, to peace, and to justice. He supported Willy Brand's Ostpolitik from the very beginning and publicly named the horrors of the Nazi regime. My mother was a very pious woman who taught us a faith that transcended denominational boundaries and who lived in ecumenical hope: “That they all may be one.” (John 17:21) I was very much engaged in the youth work of my Protestant congregation. At the same time, I took part in Catholic religious lessons in my school. And later it was the Latin American liberation theology with its ecumenical broadness that influenced me.
Did you have a mentor along the way?
Rev. Knoche: In my ecumenical journey, there was not only one mentor. But I only want to name two of them: Dr Karl-Heinz Dejung and Dr Andreas D’Souza. Dr Dejung I met for the first time during my theological and pedagogical studies in Marburg in the 1980s. He introduced to us students the ecumenical movement and the role of the WCC since 1947. He was very much committed to the WCC for more than 40 years. He kept alive the importance of the ecumenical movement for the church and civil society in Europe. Time and again, he asked the question of how ecumenism - the inhabited world - can be built in solidarity. He took me into horizons from peace ethics to personal spirituality, from the issue of justice to the credibility of the church, from human vulnerability to the question of what makes us whole. He taught me why political responsibility is also a genuinely theological task. I worked with him for many years till he passed away in July 2016.
Dr D’Souza I met for the first time 2002 in Hyderabad, India. For many years he was the director of the Henry Martyn Institute, an international Center for Research, Interfaith Relations, and Reconciliation. I was introduced through him to the importance of interreligious dialogue as one pillar for peace and reconciliation. He introduced to me the dialogue of life, the diversity of Indian cultures and religions and the peacemaking forces within them. To this day, I am touched by an image that he drew as a path to recognizing God: let us imagine this path as a climb up a high mountain. As people of different religions and different faiths, we set out on this path. Sometimes it will go better and sometimes worse; there will be places to rest, but there will also be difficult and rocky climbs. Can we imagine supporting each other as people of different faiths on this journey? Can we help each other not to lose sight of the summit and perhaps one day reach the top together? For my commitment and contributions to interreligious dialogue, I was awarded an honorary doctorate by the present director of the Henry Martyn Institute, Dr Samuel Packiam, in February 2024.
You indicate also that you will stay connected to the ecumenical movement—how?
Rev. Knoche: First of all, this means not to forget that our Christian hope has to become concrete and visible; it has to leave its footprints; it has to create justice and to overcome poverty. This responsibility is with the whole ecumenical movement. I’m now living in Gießen – a city 60 km north of Frankfurt. I will connect to initiatives working in an ecumenical understanding—for example with refugees or in supplying food to needy people. But I will also stay in contact with people in ecumenical networks with whom I built relationships in the last years. E-mail, social media, and video conferences make this possible. And whenever I’m asked for my ecumenical experiences and counselling, I hope to be available. The first invitation I got for June this year. I’m asked to give a contribution to a conference in Tübingen on “Democracy and Christianity in South Korea.”
Would you like to share some memories of the Ecumenical Centre?
Rev. Knoche: I have been working at the Ecumenical Centre since 1997 in various areas of responsibility, and during these years we always tried to involve young people in our work. I think we succeeded in this through the organization of various “International Global Youth Villages." The first of these took place as part of the Church Convention (Kirchentag) 2001 in Frankfurt. During the years we organized a few of them. Young people from partner churches in Africa, Asia, Europe, and later the USA lived together with young people from our partnership groups for a week or two and exchanged ideas about their faith, their hopes, and their cultural contexts. Visitors of the "Youth Village" took part. Encounters in the context of the other was always an important approach for me.
When we became a joint Ecumenical Centre of the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau and the Evangelical Church of Kurhesse-Waldeck in 2015, I was surprised at how different cultures exist even between the individual Protestant churches in Germany. Today, we have grown together in a common center of ecumenism, but it was a challenge not always to think only for one's own church.
One last important memory I would like to share. In autumn 2020 the Synod of the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau invited Dr Agnes Abuom as the moderator of the WCC central committee to speak on the 50th anniversary of the decision of the synod in October 1970 to support the Special Fund of the WCC Programme to Combat Racism with an amount of 100,000 German Marks from the church tax contributions. Till today we as ecumenical center understand ourselves in the tradition of this decision. In recent years, we have taken a very critical look at our own forms of racism in workshops, training sessions and seminars. This resulted in two important texts in 2024: a “Code of Conduct Anti-Racism and Anti-Discrimination” and “Racism is a Sin! Theological Foundations for Dealing with Racism”. Now it’s the task to implement them also in our church structures and bodies.
What can your ecumenical family pray with and for you as you enter this new and promising phase of life?
Rev. Knoche: First of all we all should pray for a just peace in the Ukraine, Israel, Palestine – especially Gaza – and the Near East. We should pray for the ecumenical movement that we all may be one and for our sisters and brothers in the US that democracy has a chance to survive!
And for me personally the ecumenical family can ask for the blessing of God: the God of Sarah, Hagar and Abraham, of the son born by Marie and the Holy Spirit who watches over us like a mother and father watches over their children!