Photo via gruene-thueringen.de

Green politician elected Germany's senior Protestant lay person

A former East German civil rights activist, who is now a prominent Green party politician, has become the most senior lay person in the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), the country's main Protestant umbrella group, reports Ecumenical News International.

Speaking after her 2 May election as president of the EKD's synod, its highest governing body, 43-year-old Katrin Göring-Eckardt said in her new role she would speak out on economic justice and the preservation of creation.

The newly-elected synod president was studying theology in Leipzig in 1989 when public protests against communist rule in what was then East Germany broke out. She joined Democracy Now, one of the newly-formed citizens' movements which later formed an alliance with the Green party in West Germany after German unification in 1990.

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TAGS: Germany civil rights activist Green party politician senior lay person Evangelical Church in Germany Katrin Göring-Eckardt

[05/05/2009]

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