Right Rev. Dr. Dr. h. c. Johann Schneider served since June 2012 as bishop of the episcopal district Halle-Wittenberg and since 2022 as bishop of the episcopal district of Magdeburg in the Evangelical Church in Central Germany (EKM). From October 2007 to June 2012, he was Senior Theological Councilor for the Ecumenical Fellowship-Orthodoxy Department at the Church Office of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) in Hanover. From 2003 to 2007, he was executive secretary for ecumenical scholarships at the German National Committee of the Lutheran World Federation (GNC/LWF) and the Ecumenical Diaconia in Stuttgart. From 1997 to 2002, Schneider worked as a research assistant and lecturer at the Institute for Church History/History and Theology of the Eastern Orthodox Churches at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. During the same period, he worked as a pastor at the Neustädter (University) Church in Erlangen.
Born in 1963 in Mediasch, Transylvania (Romania), Johann Schneider initially completed an apprenticeship as a toolmaker (1982 to 1985), as he had not been admitted to university in Romania. During this time, he was influenced socially and above all culturally by the church community in a diaspora parish and the everyday experience of different nationalities living together. In 1985, his family emigrated to Würzburg/Bavaria, where he successfully completed his Matura/Abitur at Wirsberg-Gymnasium Würzburg in 1986.
From 1986 to 1992, Schneider studied Protestant theology and philosophy in Neuendettelsau, Tübingen, Munich and Erlangen as a scholarship holder of the Ev. Studienwerk Villigst and graduated in 1993 with the First Theological Exam in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria. He was already interested in ecumenical issues during his studies. From 1993 to 1994 he was an ecumenical scholarship holder of the LWF in Rome and studied at the Gregorian University and on the Istituto Orientale. Schneider completed his pastoral formation (vicarariat) (1994 to 1997) in Nuremberg/Bayreuth and was ordained in St. Nicholas and St. Ulrich Church in Nuremberg in March 1997 after passing his second theological exam (1997). In 2004, Schneider was awarded a doctorate in theology by the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and received the doctoral prize from the Staedtler Foundation, Nuremberg, in 2005. In 2017, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Lucian Blaga in Sibiu/Hermannstadt (Romania).
Schneider is a member of the EKM synod, the synodal committee for Constitution and Law. He chairs the Board of Trustees of the Gustav-Adolf-Werk of the EKM and is Vice President of the Gustav-Adolf-Werk of the EKD. He is also a member of the board of trustees of numerous foundations and institutions such as the Paul Gerhardt Foundation, Francke Foundations, Luther Memorials Foundation Saxony-Anhalt and the Foundation Council of the Protestant Academy in Wittenberg. Since 2018 he is the Lutheran Co-Chair of the Joint International Commission of theological dialogue between the Lutheran World Federation and the Orthodox Church.
0 Comments