Munib Younan

Munib A. Younan (also Junan; Arab منيب يونان, DMG Munib Yunan, born September 18, 1950 in Jerusalem) is since 1998 the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land ( ELCJHL ). On July 24, 2010, he was elected president of the Lutheran World Federation.

Life

Younan was born in 1950 as the son of Palestinian refugees in East Jerusalem. He studied after graduating from Al- Ahlia College in Ramallah in 1968 Theology of the Finnish Luther Opisto College in Järvenpää and at the University of Helsinki. In 1976, he graduated there with a study on the election in Deutero with a Master of Arts.

In 1976 he was ordained by Bishop Daoud Haddad in Jerusalem and was then Vicar of Jerusalem's Church of the Redeemer and Pastor in Beit Jala ( 1979-1984 ) and Ramallah ( 1984-1998 ). From 1990 to 1998 was president of Younan ELCJHL Synod. On January 5, 1998, he was ordained in the Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem for the third bishop of the ELCJHL.

Younan translated as first the Augsburg Confession into Arabic and was a leading participant in various dialogue initiatives of the three monotheistic religions in Palestine. In addition, Younan engaged in the peace dialogue between Jews and Arabs. Among other high Christian dignitaries in the Holy Land as emeritus Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah, he is one of the signatories of the so-called Kairos Palestine document in which condemns the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories as a " sin against God " and to the urgency of peace and justice for Palestine will be remembered. In the document, reference is made to a similar appeal of South African churches from 1985 to the local apartheid regime. For Younan was heavily criticized by the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation.

Younan was elected in 2003 as Vice President of the Lutheran World Federation and held since the organization of the full Assembly in 2010, the Office of the President as the successor of Mark Hanson.

Since 1980, Younan is married to Suad Yacoub. The couple has three children.