Following attacks and violence against worshippers at the Protestant parish in Langenau near Ulm (photo), the Bishop of Württemberg, Ernst-Wilhelm Gohl, has spoken out. The background to this is the ongoing campaign against local pastor Ralf Sedlak, who expressed solidarity with the Israeli victims of Hamas terrorism in a church service in October 2023.
Sedlak, pastor of the Protestant parish in Langenau, told Israelnetz that in his sermon on the 15th of October 2023 he had initially spoken about the subject of fulfilling prayer. It was about serious illnesses and the struggle of those affected before God. Only in the second part did he refer to the terrorist attack: ‘Here, too, we reach the limits of what we would even like to imagine and where we are almost speechless and lament the suffering before God.’
A previously unknown man then stood up and shouted loudly: “This is wrong! The news is fake news!” Sedlak tried to react objectively, but this was hardly possible due to the aggression. It was only at the express request of the parish council that the troublemaker finally left the church. However, it didn’t stop there: to this day, the pastor faces hostility and is labelled a ‘fascist’ and a ‘Zionist’.
Since then, there have been repeated anti-Semitic actions and attempts at intimidation. For example, the vicarage had been shot at with a blank-firing pistol. Stickers with the inscription ‘Zionist = Fascist’ also appeared on the church and vicarage. During the Easter period, so-called ‘vigils’ were held almost weekly in front of the church – accompanied by slogans such as “It’s genocide. Boycott Israel‘ or ’Israel is a colonial settler rogue state”. The church congregation was labelled an ‘accomplice to genocide’, Sedlak himself a “Nazi” and ‘hate preacher’. In the end, the parish office was even smeared with the slogan ‘Gass Jews’.
Last Sunday, there were now physical attacks on churchgoers by Palestine supporters. Bishop Gohl spoke of the ‘fallacy’ of believing that such a conflict could be sat out. It was ‘unacceptable’ how Sedlak and his family had been defamed for one and a half years. Prelate Gabriele Wulz from Ulm and 100 other pastors and church members also called for a petition on the Internet to publicly oppose hatred of Jews. This no longer applies only to Jews, but to all those who show solidarity with Jewish life in Germany.
More and more believers are now avoiding church services for fear of being attacked. ‘Shrugging our shoulders and accepting the situation doesn’t help,’ warned Gohl. The municipality and district should have taken action long ago. State security has begun an investigation. The police have announced that they will further increase their presence in the region.
“The police have announced that they will further increase their presence in the region.”
Just nowhere near the Church