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Cologne Cathedral: The Volkskirchen are losing members
Photo: Krystof Kriz / imago images
The Roman Catholic and Protestant Church continues to lose influence in Germany.
According to projections by experts, for the first time in centuries more than 50 percent of the people in Germany are neither Roman Catholic nor Protestant.
"It's a historical turning point because, viewed as a whole, for the first time in centuries it's no longer 'normal' in Germany to be a church member," says the Berlin social scientist Carsten Frerk from the Weltanschauungen in Deutschland (fowid) research group of the religion-critical and humanistic Giordano Bruno Foundation.
Last year, 51 percent of the German population were still Roman Catholic or Protestant.
In 1990 the proportion was 72 percent.
Officially, the latest figures (as of the end of 2021) will not be published by the churches until summer.
Figures published by the EKD show around 19.7 million members at the end of last year (20.2 million in the previous year).
Forecasts, for example from the Fowid, also see around 21.8 million Catholics (22.2 million in the previous year).
"We've seen the downtrend for a while," Frerk said.
»But it has accelerated more rapidly in the past six years than previously assumed.« While the churches lost about 0.6 to 0.8 percentage points of the population share per year in the years 2000 to 2015, since 2016 it has been about 1.0 to 1.4 percentage points.
In addition to the extinction of church members, there are also numerous resignations.
Most recently, after the presentation of an abuse report in the Catholic Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, there was a flood of church exits in Bavaria.
The motives ranged from saving taxes to protesting against the official church and its handling of cases of abuse in its own ranks, said Robert Stephanus, chairman of the non-denominational association REMID (Religious Studies Media and Information Service).
There are big regional differences in relation to the church, says Stephanus.
In Bavaria it is different than in Lower Saxony or in the area of the former GDR, where the number of members of the Evangelical Church fell from almost 15 million to 4 million between 1950 and 1989, and that of the Catholics halved to around one million.
The Decline of the Popular Church
"The churches used to have an impact on all areas of social life," says the sociologist of religion Detlef Pollack from the University of Münster.
In the 1950s they were present in people's everyday lives, determined the generally accepted family, moral and value concepts and stabilized the newly emerging political order.
In the decades that followed, too, they were heard in public, "e.g. when it came to reconciliation with our Eastern European neighbors or questions of social justice or bioethical questions on the borders of life and death".
According to Pollack, cultural upheaval began in the 1960s with the economic boom, changing family structures and the emancipation of women.
Instead of material security and social stabilization, political participation and individual self-realization became important.
The decline of the national church began.
Religious ties weakened.
Before turning away from faith and the churches, there is usually the renunciation of participation in church life.
»When religious practice is abandoned, the influence of religion on lifestyle also decreases.«
In Germany there are now more than 40 percent of non-religious people who do not necessarily have to be unbelievers, but are, for example, of the Muslim or Jewish faith.
Since there are a few million other Christians outside of the big churches, for example Free Church members and Christian Orthodox, the proportion of Christians is still more than 50 percent in this country.
hba/dpa