Almost every year the churches record new highs in the number of exits.
Not so in the Corona year 2020 - there were significantly fewer leaks.
Is it going up again now?
Experts have doubts.
Bonn / Hanover - In the Corona year 2020, significantly fewer people left the church in Germany.
Among Catholics, the number of people leaving the church fell by 18.8 percent to 221,390 compared to 2019.
Last year 220,000 people left the Protestant Church, 18 percent fewer than in the previous year.
This was announced on Wednesday by the German Bishops' Conference in Bonn and the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) in Hanover.
Despite the resignations, a little more than half of Germans are still in the church: Catholics make up 26.7 percent of the total population, Protestants 24.3 percent.
Then there are the Orthodox churches and various free churches.
In the Archdiocese of Cologne, too, the number of people leaving the church fell in 2020 - from 24,298 in 2019 to 17,281.
The crisis of confidence surrounding Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki only unfolded at the end of 2020 and is likely to have an impact especially in the current year.
Church revenues are falling
Corona caused a slump in church tax revenue: it fell for the Protestant Church by 5.4 percent to 5.63 billion euros and for the Catholic Church by 4.6 percent to 6.4 billion euros.
Crises are actually considered to be “good times” for religions, since they are then in demand to create meaning.
But the churches on Wednesday were careful not to view the slowdown in the exit numbers as a trend reversal.
The chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, Georg Bätzing, described the statistics as "painful".
"Many have lost confidence and want to set an example by leaving the church," said Bätzing.
The Chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, told the German Press Agency: "At the present time, we can hardly say how the declining number of people leaving the church is to be interpreted." At the moment, everyone experiences the church Case of a real "baptism boom" because many had postponed the celebration during the corona pandemic and now wanted to catch up.
The religious sociologist Detlef Pollack from Münster does not believe that the declining number of exits indicates a renaissance of the churches.
Studies have shown that church ties become more important for religious people in times of crisis, Pollack said.
However, this does not apply to people who have already distanced themselves from the faith and from the Church.
On the contrary, for them the importance of the crisis even tends to decrease.
"If you are far away, the crisis can no longer bring you back to faith," says Pollack.
Long-term trend reversal unlikely
Incidentally, in the event of a crisis, people often postpone personal life decisions - and that includes, in principle, leaving the church. "You postpone it because you say to yourself:" I can do that later, now I have more important things to do first. " Distance teaching had first priority.
The Catholic canon lawyer Thomas Schüller also expressed himself.
"In 2020 people simply had other worries than dealing with their church and a possible exit from the church," said Schüller of the German press agency.
“The pandemic was literally about survival, and the churches played no role in that.” They would have been given a “deceptive breathing space”.
2021 a turning point, especially for Catholics?
"Because the already known figures for 2021 show a wave of withdrawals from the church on an unprecedented scale, especially a meltdown among the Catholic Christians who are loyal to the church and who no longer trust their church," warned Schüller.
"Both churches look into the abyss of their insignificance."
According to a survey by the Protestant Church in Westphalia and Württemberg published on Wednesday, leaving the church is usually the result of a long process of alienation. Many members have been passive for a long time. "For me, the church is like a gym that I pay for but never go to," said one of the respondents. If a motive is mentioned, it is usually an inner distance to faith or the church tax.
The Catholic reform movement “We are Church” described church statistics as a “dramatic warning call”. The bishops should by no means interpret the fact that the number of resignations did not reach the peak of the previous year as an all-clear. The decline in marriages by more than 70 percent and baptisms by over 34 percent cannot only be attributed to Corona. The numbers are also the result of a profound process of alienation, criticized “We are Church”. dpa
