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Antisemitism is not in accordance with the Christian faith or the values of the Protestant Church. Today, we see this as ag enerallya ccepted fact.H owever,a couple of decades ago, this sentiment would have not been so certain. The Protestant Church of Austria was inflicted by German nationalism and Antisemitism duringt he first half of the twentieth century. Anti-Jewish pamphlets by Martin Luther and other reformers had ap articularlya dverse impact,too. The Protestant Church onlyb egan reconsidering the issue after the wari n 1945. While the Roman Catholic Church as awhole committed to as trongopposition against antisemitismi nt heirC onciliar Declaration NostraA etate in 1965, within the Protestant Church, each regional church had to go its own way.¹ Some regional churches progressed faster thano thers. The Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, for example, issued the important Synod decision "On the Renewal of the Relationship between Christians and Jews" in 1980.² Other regional churches followed, some with considerable delay. With their declaration "A Time for Change," the Protestant Church of Austria accepted its joint guilt and responsibility onlyi n1 998 and made wayf or an ew relationship with Judaism.³ All Protestant declarations clearlya nd roundlyc ondemn and oppose antisemitism. What was new about the declarations from the 1980'sa nd 1990'sw as the Church'su nderstanding of the consequences these declarations should and must have both for the Church and within the Church. These consequences first and foremost concern the joint guilt and responsibilityo ft he Churches concerning antisemitism,aphenomenon also stemmingf rom aC hristian Jew-hatredthat is hundreds of years old. Second came the need to examine our own doctrines and practicest or id them of antisemitic elements. These ele-The English Translation of the original contribution in German wasdone by Kerstin Mayerhofer.

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Churches have been deeply affected by migration since day one.T his article recalls the experiencest hat the Protestant churches in Austria have had with migration and describes how migration currently affects them. It outlines the different models of coexistence between migrant congregations and those in the recipient society and traces migrant congregations stages of development. It also presents and addresses the issues for churches and religious communities that research on migration has revealed, reflects upon practical experience,a nd suggests potential ways forward. Bünkersp roposal for the coexistence of churcheswith different cultural and ethnic characteristics is to apply a model of church fellowship based on the "Leuenberg Agreement", as developed for the Protestant Churches in Europe. Dr. theol. Michael Bünker was born in 1954. He has been theGeneralSecretary of the "Community of ProtestantChurches in Europe(CPCE)" since 2007 and the Bishop of the Protestant Church A.C.inA ustria since2008.