The registration deadline is
Sunday, 31 August 2025 at 10:00 PM UTC .
Description
Join the IARF Europe & Middle East (EME) region for our quadrennial conference in the historic cities of Offenbach and Frankfurt am Main, Germany, from September 11-14, 2025. We are delighted to be hosted by the Frei-religiöse Gemeinde Offenbach and the Unitarische Freie Religionsgemeinde Frankfurt, both celebrating their remarkable 180th anniversaries alongside IARF's own 125th anniversary year! Building on insights from the 2023 World Congress, this will be our first hybrid EME conference, welcoming participants both in person and online from across the globe. The main program (Sept 12-14) is preceded by an optional Pre-Conference Tour exploring the area's rich liberal religious heritage (Sept 9-11). The conference theme, “Limits of Religious Freedom and Tolerance,” selected collaboratively by EME members, will guide our discussions on navigating contemporary challenges to freedom of thought, conscience, and belief from diverse liberal perspectives.
He has been working for the Free Religious Congregation in Offenbach am Main, near Frankfurt, Germany since 2014. He studied Linguistics, Psychology, Cultural Studies and History and focused on religious content in these disciplines. In 2016 he was elected minister of his congregation in Offenbach and strengthened his connections with the IARF by visiting the World Congress 2014 in Birmingham. In 2018 he became the chair of the IARF group for Europe and the Middle East and the vice chair of the German Chapter of IARF. His congregation is rooted in a tradition of working with and for the IARF because the Rev. Diether Gehrmann, who was reverend in Offenbach from 1958 till 1967, and after that was a Unitarian minister in the USA, was the first full time General Secretary of the IARF and served the Association from 1972-1990.
