Tobias Schlingensiepen
Pastor, Legislator

“Happiness is feeling like you’re doing something meaningful in life.”
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“I was born on a Sunday, and in Germany, they say Sunday children are happy children,” said Tobias, born in Berlin in 1963.

“On Christmas Eve when I was two, we were in the church and the pastor was preaching, and nobody was listening to the pastor, everybody was watching me because I left the pew and walked forward and gently touched every Christmas ornament on the tree and then went and touched every figure of the crèche. So, I think I was born happy, which is good, because I deal with a lot of sad.”

Tobias and his family moved to the United States when he was three. For the last 20 years, he’s been senior pastor at the Topeka Congregational church he grew up in. There, he shares in the ups and downs of his congregation. As a chaplain for the police department, he consults victims and survivors in times of sadness and shock. Well known and loved around Topeka, Tobias was convinced to run for political office. After a couple of unsuccessful runs, he won a seat as a representative in the Kansas Legislature. He’s in his second term now.

He carries a proud family history of sticking up for others and for what you believe in. He carries with him the Bible his grandfather – a pastor – had as a German soldier in the trenches on the eastern front during World War II. Germany put pastors critical of Hitler in the more dangerous zones where their chances of dying were very high.

“This Bible is what he used to celebrate Christmas Eve in a trench on the Russian front. He gave it to me as a present. It’s kind of a relic. It’s a symbol of his resistance to the regime's attempt to take him out. He survived,” Tobias said of his grandfather. Stuck in East Berlin after the war, he became a critic of Stalin’s spread of communism and was imprisoned and interrogated for six months in 1953. Tobias recalled how his grandfather realized his interrogator “was as convinced of his Marxist ideology as my grandfather was of his Christianity. He felt like they were the same but that they simply held on to different fundamental beliefs.”

His grandfather felt he could have been tortured far worse and the interrogator sparred his life. A bond grew between them, maybe without knowing it at the time. After the Berlin Wall came down, Tobias’ grandfather found the interrogator. “They both recognized each other at the door immediately and hugged each other,” Tobias said. “That’s something that makes me happy, the fact that he didn't bear a grudge, that he could see something of value in another human being who gave him certainly very little cause to see any value in him.”

Tobias shared this story and posed for these photos on Palm Sunday. When asked what his message was earlier in the day to his congregation, he said, “I talked about Jesus marching to Jerusalem to confront power and to confront tyranny with the gospel of the peaceful kingdom of God.”

As Tobias preaches peace and confronts abuses of power, he does what he needs to find happiness on his own. He listens to two or three hours of classical music a day. He enjoys art, including the sculptures of his late friend, Jim Bass. He’s read the complete works of Shakespeare; “you read Shakespeare and you feel like language is being created before your very eyes,” Tobias added. He’s on sabbatical this summer to hike the Appalachian Trail.

Along the way, he’ll surely stop and enjoy nature, just as he does back in Topeka.

“Part of what I like about taking pictures of animals and trees is that they fulfill a sense of wonder. I think at the root of all religion and at the root of everything that is profound about human existence, the capacity for wonder and awe is fundamental.”

With the happiness, Tobias knows he must also confront the sadness and inevitable end we all face.

“Everything passes sooner or later. I think part of happiness is knowing that and spending more time appreciating all the lovely things that are offered to you along the way.”

"I think I was born happy, which is good, because I deal with a lot of sad.”

"I think at the root of all religion and at the root of everything that is profound about human existence, the capacity for wonder and awe is fundamental.”

"I think part of happiness is knowing that and spending more time appreciating all the lovely things that are offered to you along the way.”

This Bible is "a symbol of (my grandfather's) resistance to the regime's attempt to take him out. He survived.”

“I talked about Jesus marching to Jerusalem to confront power and to confront tyranny with the gospel of the peaceful kingdom of God.”