Court decision:
Who believes in reincarnation can still be a member of the Danish national
Church
The highest court in Denmark has decided that the Lutheran
People's Church (the state Church) must accept members who believe in
reincarnation and not only in the resurrection of the dead at the "last day".
The magazine Kristeligt Dagblad (Christian Daily News) in Copenhagen
comments that this is the first time that a Danish court has intervened in the
teachings of the national Church.
The church minister Steen Ribers has in several "Letters to the
Editor" declared that he believes in reincarnation and regards this belief as
compatible with Christianity. As a consequence, he was 1994 excommunicated from
the Church by the pastor of his community, with the consent of bishop Erik
Norman Svendsen (Copenhagen). Ribers initiated a court procedure which he first
lost in all instances. Now the highest court has approved his reinstatement
because Denmark knows only two valid reasons for expulsion from the national
Church: converting to another religious community or founding a new religious
community.
The lector of administrative law at the University of Copenhagen,
Henrik Palmer Olsen, comments that as a consequence the national Church could
develop in different directions: "The pastor doesn't have the last word, but
also alternative strands of belief have to be possible."
Now the Danish bishops and representatives of church politics in
the parties represented in the parliament call for changes and specifications in
the law concerning membership in the national Church. The general secretary in
the Lutheran Mission Society, Jens Ole Christensen, requests that leaders and
employees of the Church should in the future have to be obliged to a written
consent to the Christian belief.
Comment:
After a court decision, which in respect to democratic
freedom of belief is progressive and a potential guidance for the future, one
now wants to take a step backwards and resort to a dictate...
An older report (which only mentions that Ribers had lost the
first court procedures) mentions that in the Danish Church 25 % of the women and
10 % of the men believe in reincarnation...