Eugen Drewermann born June 20 1940 in Bergkamen near Dortmund, Germany is one of today's most influential intellectuals and peace activists in Europe. Recipient of many awards, most recently the prestigious blank">2007 Erich-Fromm Award which he shared with musician Konstantin Wecker for their remarkable efforts toward peace, his influential work has been translated into more than a dozen languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Korean. His cultural significance as a critic of outdated forms of dogmatism was particularly evidenced when Der Spiegel (the German news magazine comparable to the English Time magazine) ran a cover story on Drewermann in its 1993 Christmas issue.

Drewermann is best-known for his passionate work toward what he considers a non-violent form of Christianity. Trained in philosophy, theology, psychoanalysis, and comparative religious studies, his calls for a religion free from fear and top-down-rule were met by the Vatican in the late 1980s and early 1990s with "deep worry," according to a May 7, 1986 letter by then-Cardinal Ratzinger Beier, M. (2006). A Violent God-Image: An Introduction to the Work of Eugen Drewermann, p. 17. , now _Pope Benedict XVI, to Drewermann's archbishop, Johannes Joachim Degenhardt. At the behest of Ratzinger, Archbishop Degenhardt of Paderborn and the Catholic Bishops Conference of Germany engaged in a long drawn-out and heated debate with Drewermann which was closely followed by the European media and public. The struggle culminated in 1991 after the dissident priest published a radical critique of what he considers to be the Vatican's psychologically cruel and mentally enslaving clergy ideal (Kleriker: Psychogramm eines Ideals [Clergy: Psychogram of an ideal]). As a consequence, on October 8 1991 the Archbishop disallowed him to teach at the Catholic Seminary of Paderborn and, shortly afterwards, revoked his license to preach--falling short, however, due to Drewermann's overwhelming popular support, of defrocking him as a priest.

After more than three decades as a priest, Drewermann quietly left the Catholic Church on his 65th birthday, June 20, 2005, a decision he announced on German television only in December 2005. Disillusioned by the Vatican's lack of willingness to engage in genuine dialogue with those wishing to reform the church from within, Drewermann believes that the Catholic Church will continue, at the expense of the human person, its single-minded focus on preserving institutional power.

Son of a Lutheran father and a Catholic mother, Drewermann, after finishing highschool (Abitur) in Germany, studied philosophy in Münster, theology in Paderborn and psychoanalysis in Göttingen. In 1972 he became a priest in Paderborn. At the same time, he worked as a psychotherapist, and from 1979 also held lectures in comparative religious studies and dogmatics at the Catholic Theological Faculty in Paderborn.

Gifted with the memory and oratory skills of a genius, the logical precision of a philosopher and scientist, and the understanding empathy of a therapist, Drewermann draws large crowds wherever he gives talks or appears on TV. He is well-known for speaking deeply to the human heart and spirit without sacrificing reason.

Influenced by Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and more recent psychoanalysts, Drewermann radically reinterprets biblical texts according to psychoanalytic, poetic, and existential criteria. His method of interpretation has been clearly outlined in the 1987-1988 two-volume work Tiefenpsychologie und Exegese. His interpretations are as immediate as poetry and aim to rediscover particularly the therapeutic message of Jesus and of the Hebrew prophets, both for the individual and for society at large.

Among his more than 80 books are dozens of titles presenting non-moralistic reinterpretations of nearly all biblical texts, including a monumental three-volume scholarly treatise on Genesis 2-11 (Strukturen des Bösen, 1977-8) and a two-volume commentary on the Gospel of Mark; a number of titles on urgent social issues such as war (Der Krieg und das Christentum, 1981), the environment (Der tödliche Fortschritt, 1982), and burning moral issues such as abortion, living will, suicide (Psychoanalyse und Moraltheologie', 1982-4, 3 vols); and, most recently, half a dozen volumes on the question of God in light of the findings of modern anthropology (1998), biology (1999), cosmology (2002), neurology (2006); a depth psychological analysis of more than twenty of the most well-known fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm and one by Hans Christian Andersen.

Since 1992, Drewermann has been working as a freelance author and speaker. He has frequent appearances in German TV talk shows and is invited to lecture all over Germany, Europe, and the world. He was the host of his own call-in radio program in Berlin, and after the September 11, 2001 attacks he used his program to advance the theory that the attacks were an expression of complex systemic and historical dynamics in which both sides in the terror war have contributed to the conflict. As a Westerner, he called on the West to take responsibility for its own contribution to the development of the current crisis and stressed especially the role of American foreign policy in the Middle East. He urged the U.S. not to retaliate, but rather to act wisely in order to avoid the unending escalation of violence that would develop through an approach that tries to bomb peace and democracy into the Middle East.

He appeared twice with the Dalai Lama in Zurich and co-authored a book on the dialogue among religions with His Holiness.