The trend has been going on for years, but the current figures are particularly clear: Both large churches in Germany are reporting a sharp increase in church withdrawals in 2019. And unlike usual, the Catholics are still ahead of the Protestants. More than 540,000 Christians said goodbye to their church within twelve months. There were even higher numbers in the early 1990s alone.
Now, with 43.3 million, just over half of the people living in Germany belong to one of the two large churches. Ten years ago there were around five million more. Because in addition to leaving the churches, the churches also lose because there are fewer deaths compared to baptisms. Five million – this loss corresponds to the population of Berlin and Munich, the largest and third largest German city.
The departure from the church as an official act
On the Catholic side, the statistics are already recorded a little more precisely. Accordingly, the number of those who turned their backs on their church rose again in 2019 by 26.2 percent compared to 2018. The trend is particularly drastic in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, where it meets proud and traditional dioceses such as Münster, Osnabrück, Paderborn, Trier and Cologne.
DW religion expert Christoph Strack
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Conservative forces, be they German clergymen in the Vatican or the US media, like to point their fingers at the oh so liberal Catholic Church in Germany and its statistically clean numbers when leaving the church. That is cheap. Because the distance from the church in Germany is just particularly noticeable because leaving the church here is a proper process for an authority. In other European countries, the distance can only be noticed when the church is low. The traditional ties to the churches also evaporate there.
For Germany, the latest figures have such a force that one can hardly speak of the “Volkskirche”. One may give reasons for this force. There is the ongoing issue of abuse that – among Catholics and Protestants – has not ended. Or on the Catholic side the exclusion of women (which the church bravely does not call exclusion, of course, but adherence to commandments and tradition).
What are the consequences of Corona?
The corona pandemic will reinforce this shrinking trend. The consequences of the prescribed restrictions on church life are not yet foreseeable, but a further boost to the individualization of religion is obvious. And hardly any bishop called the baptized before Easter, this most important festival of Christianity, simply: “You yourself are a church, each of you! Celebrate in the family, celebrate in a small group!”
Pastoral care would be the order of the day. Care for souls. In corona times, in the fear and loneliness of these days. Pastoral care does not mean the booming loud word. But it is more than the proper execution of services. It’s about being close to the marginalized, the failed, the despondent.
No loss of religiousness in the country
Incidentally, it would be wrong to equate the farewell to the “Volkskirchen” with loss of religiousness in the country. For example, there is a growing spectrum of Protestant free churches: Hundreds of thousands of Baptists in agile congregations gather for worship Sunday after Sunday. Just like hundreds of thousands, yes over a million Orthodox Christians in Germany, Greeks and Russians, Serbs and Copts. The Jewish community and the Muslim community are fairly stable and, it seems, have so far come through the Corona crisis better than the big churches. In addition, to name just one other religion, there is a small number of small Buddhist groups in the country.
Regardless of whether Baptists or Buddhists, Orthodox, Jews or Muslims – they have less administration and apparatus, they have hardly any educational institutions, hardly any important initiators in the university or academy for society. But they experience their faith in churches that are often network or family for them. Will the big churches manage that?
Lack of reflection on God
Religion as an offer of meaning in slums and prefabricated buildings and luxury villas. Religion as a political power factor. Religion as a vehicle for identification of the individual, since everyone is only talking about universalization and global players and the individual gets under the wheel. Society in Germany, this rich country that has been united for 30 years, this country, which also includes poverty and division, would need critical reflection on what so many call God.
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