A Protestant pastor from the northern German city of Bremen who caused an uproar when he publicly declared that he was an anti-Semite has resigned his position as the church’s representative on a city council committee for promoting religious dialogue, Benjamin Weinthal of The Jerusalem Post reported on Thursday.

“My remarks have so unsettled the trust in my work as the representative for dialogue that I no longer want to cause lasting damage to this office and resign from my position,” Pastor Volker Keller said in a statement.

After the Post reported last month on a lecture held in his church that was criticized as anti-Semitic, Keller sent an email to the Post seeming to confirm that suspicion. “Yesterday evening the anti-Semite Arn Strohmeyer delivered a lecture to me,” he wrote, adding, “Best wishes to Israel, Yours truly, Volker Keller, anti-Semite.”

Keller was “completely unsuitable as commissioner for inter-religious dialogue for the Bremen Protestant Church and as a representative in the Council for Integration,” Gitta Connemann, a member of the Bundestag from the ruling Christian Democratic Union party, told the Post. Leaders of the Bremen Jewish community added in a statement that they “look forward to continued trustful work with the [Protestant church] and for the renewal of the Jewish-Christian dialogue. We hope that Bremen pastors neither invite haters of Israel into their communities nor tolerate that anti-Jewish slogans are spoken.”

Bremen has been the center of Germany’s anti-Israel boycott movement. Keller co-founded a group called Nord-Bremer Citizens against War that is active in the movement. But Keller claims that his original comments were meant to be sarcastic and that he is not actually anti-Semitic. “The sweeping accusations against me that I am a ‘hater of Israel’ and called for a boycott of Israeli products do not correspond to the truth,” he said. He will remain as a pastor in Bremen.

[Photo: Mathiasroesel (Diskussion) / WikiCommons ]