Meet Ulrich Duchrow
Ulrich Duchrow is a professor of systematic theology at the University of Heidelberg, representing prophetic theology, economic justice, and interreligious solidarity. He served as director of the Department of Studies at the Lutheran World Federation (1970-1977), as guest professor at the Ecumenical Institute Bossey/Geneva and as consultant to the World Council of Churches in various contexts. He is the co-founder and honorary moderator of Kairos Europa, which is a “European decentralized network of justice, peace and creation initiatives working in collaboration with churches, social movements, trade unions and non-governmental organizations, both in and outside Europe, for a more just and tolerant society.”
He took initiative in Radicalizing Reformation—provoked by the Bible and Today’s Crises and continues to carry on such a significant project from the material perspective of liberation for life in just relationships in regards to settler colonialism in Palestine and global political economy.
Prophetic Theology and Radicalizing Reformation Project
1. You have published the bilingual book series titled Radicalizing Reformation with seven volumes, which is concerned with the general crisis of life today and committed to emancipation. What new frontiers do you approach or even cross in this provocative project?
We have just started a new phase of the project. The crises have sharpened compared to the completion of the first phase in 2017. As a matter of fact, we are talking of a final crisis of the dominating imperial capitalist civilization: as capital must grow there is compulsory growth in the economy while climate change approaches a tipping point creating a feedback mechanism destroying the life conditions of the human species. So, the ecological problem will move into the center of the project. Other focal points will be the erosion of democracy, the madness of even more militarization of international relations and “Religions for Justice in Apartheid-Israel/Palestine” – all this seen in light of the biblical and Reformation tradition of liberation for the churches and the ecumenical movement today.
2. In an earlier book, Transcending Greedy Money: Interreligious Solidarity for Just Relations, you included comparative studies of world religions among the facets of culture, modernity and economic justice that the prophetic theologian should tackle. Do you still hold this position? If so, why.
Yes, of course. My thesis is: the religions and philosophies of the Axial Age (8th-1st century BCE) from Greece to China (Pre-Socratic philosophies plus tragedy in Greece, prophets and Torah in Judah, the Buddha in India, Laotse and Confucius in China, followed by the Jesus movement and Islam on the Basis of Judaism) react to the emerging money driven civilization and its social and intellectual consequences. This is an important source for liberation theology movements in all religions today to overcome the lethal/suicidal capitalist civilization.
3. Do you distinguish between prophetic theology and public theology? What do these two forces share in common? How do they differ? How do you want the future course of public theology to go in connection with the prophetic theology?
Public theology can be a form of making liberation/prophetic theology concrete if it keeps the system transcending perspective even in pragmatic actions of implementing institutional transforma-tions. If the systemic dimension is missing public theology is the false promise of replacing liberation theology.
4. For the global connection and communicative forces, how do you see transitional justice and the Jeju 4.3 massacre? It has significance of its international politics during the period of Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. People on the Jeju Island were victimized as a scapegoat through ideological interpellation of “commies” or “Red Island.” Would you make discourse clarification and worldview construction to express your advocacy for the importance of transitional justice and innocent victims?
Yes, of course. At that time there were two superpowers at war oppressing any opposition. The international order of Cold War was driven in insane logic of rivalry and war, in which the Jeju 4.3 massacre occurred as a global-domestic symbol of victim and imperial violence. After 1989 the US was left as the only unilateral hegemon. Meanwhile the world is bound to become multipolar, but the USA is trying to keep up its unilateral imperial power – e.g. by having pushed NATO to the Russian border instead of develop-ing the system of common security between Europe and Russia as hoped for by Willy Brandt and later Gorbachev. So, the lessons of history are crucial to stop the imperialist policies of the USA, which was already done in the tragic case of the Jeju 4.3 massacre in terms of ideological misuse of communist uprising. Because of this international logic of imperial capitalism, today this may even lead us to the nuclear “end of history”.
Conclusion
Ulrich Duchrow is a prolific scholar and practitioner involved in the global networks of Kairos Europa and LWF-WCRC-WCC in advocacy for social movements and church responsibility, promoting economic justice, interreligious solidarity, human rights of innocent victims in Palestine and ecological integrity. As a prophetic Christian, he sails the rough seas of global crisis with theological skill sunk deep in a prophetic legacy of Confessing Church as embodied in Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Reformation thought of Martin Luther continues to be radicalized in this move.
Bibliography
DUCHROW, Ulrich / Hinkelammert, Franz J.
Property for People, Not for Profit: Alternatives to the Global Tyranny of Capital. London and Geneva: Zed Books in association with the Catholic Institute for International Relations and the World Council of Churches, 2004.
DUCHROW, Ulrich/Hinkelammert, Franz: Transcending Greedy Money: Interreligious Solidarity for Just Relations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
DUCHROW, ULRICH, 2015.
Die Reformation radikalisieren/Radicalizing Reformation. In collaboration with Prof. Dr. Daniel Beros (Buenos Aires), Dr. Martin Hoffmann (San José, Costa Rica/Nűrnberg), Prof. Dr. Hans G. Ulrich (Erlangen) und Prof. Dr. Craig Nessan (Wartburg Theological Seminary, Dubuque). 6 volumes, Berlin: Lit Verlag.
DUCHROW, Ulrich/ULRICH, Hans G.: Religionen für Gerechtigkeit in Palästina-Israel - Jenseits von Luthers Feindbildern, 3. aktualisierte Auflage. Otterstadt/Speyer: Stiftung Hirschler, 2020.
English: Interreligious Solidarity for Justice in Palestine-Israel – Transcending Luther's Negation of the Other, ed. Ulrich Duchrow, 2017, free on internet: http://www.reformation-radical.com/files/RR-vol-7-Eng.pdf
Intro. by
Paul S. Chung, Editor-in-Chief
Peter Watters, Assistant Editor