Thomas Schirrmacher

In 2016 he was ordained as bishop of the Communio Christiana (a church in the Anglican realignment). On October 27, 2020, Schirrmacher was elected the next General Secretary of the World Evangelical Alliance. His term of office begins in March 2021.

Since 2014 he is president of the International Council of the International Society for Human Rights and director of the International Institute for Religious Freedom.

Schirrmacher was chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Gebende Hände gGmbH (German: Giving Hands charitable Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung), an internationally active relief organisation, and now is its senior advisor. He is member of the commission for religious freedom of the World Evangelical Alliance and since 2008 president of the International Institute for Religious Freedom (Bonn, Brussels/Geneva, Cape Town, Colombo, Brasília). He also is their speaker for human rights. According to media he is one of the leading experts on the topic of persecution of Christians. Several times he was speaking as expert on human rights in the German Parliament. In October 2015 he was the only evangelical member of the Catholic synod on family lead by Pope Francis. He is president of the International Society for Human Rights, manager of the Religious Liberty Commission of the German and the Swiss Evangelical Alliance, and director of the International Institute for Religious Freedom with regional offices for most continents: Brasilia (Latin America), Brussels/Bonn (Europe), Cape Town (Africa), Colombo and Delhi (Asia), which cooperates with the UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Religion or Belief.

Between 1982 and 1986 Schirrmacher was pastor of several church communities in Bonn. From 1996 to 2018, Thomas Schirrmacher was rector of the private Martin Bucer Seminary, a theological seminary seated in Bonn (Germany) with campuses in several countries which he founded, and where he continues to teach systematic theology (especially ethics) as well as comparative religion studies and is vice president for International Affairs. From 1994 to 1998 Schirrmacher was professor of missions at the Philadelphia Theological Seminary and since 1995 he is professor for systematic theology at the Whitefield Theological Seminary. He is also a professor for the sociology of religion at the West University of Timişoara and lecturer in the Advanced Programme “Human Rights and Religious Freedom” at Oxford University (Regent's Park College, Oxford).

Thomas Schirrmacher studied theology from 1978 to 1982 at STH Basel (Switzerland) and since 1983 Cultural Anthropology and Comparative Religion at University of Bonn. He earned a Drs. theol. in Missiology and Ecumenism at Theological University (Kampen/Netherlands) in 1984, and a Dr. theol. in Missiology and Ecumenics at Theological University of the Reformed Churches (Kampen/Netherlands) in 1985, a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at Pacific Western University (today: California Miramar University) in Los Angeles (CA) in 1989, a Th.D. in Ethics at Whitefield Theological Seminary in Lakeland (FL) in 1996, and a Dr. phil. in Comparative Religion and Sociology of Religion at University of Bonn in 2007. In 1997 he got honorary doctorates (D.D.) from Cranmer Theological House and in 2006 from ACTS Academy of Higher Education in Bangalore.

Thomas Schirrmacher was born on June 25, 1960 to the German professor of Telecommunications engineering Bernd Schirrmacher and his wife Ingeborg. His grandfather is the history professor Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher while his great-grandfather is Carl Friedrich Schirrmacher, Director of the Danzig St. Petri School. The Schirrmacher family are Huguenots who were exiled from Salzburg in the 18th century and subsequently settled in Danzig, Prussia.