Full churches at Christmas: But how Christian is Germany?
Created: 12/26/2022, 06:05
By: Fabian Hartmann
Light of hope: Churches are places of community - but the members are running away from them.
© Lukas Barth/imago
At Christmas, the services are full.
The trend is clear: Christianity will not exist much longer like this.
A site visit in the Catholic Diaspora – Berlin-Neukölln.
Berlin – On a cold Sunday in Advent, the power of the Christian faith can be observed.
Around 50 people, families with children, couples, old people, came together for the Catholic service in St. Richard's Church in Berlin-Neukölln.
Candlelight illuminates the altar.
Priest Karl Hermann Lenz (64) is standing in front of the congregation.
Again and again he animates the visitors.
Ask the congregation how they are doing, something that people were thankful for recently.
A mother comes to the altar and says that she is happy that her children can grow up in peace in Germany.
"Hallelujah," shouts Lenz.
Conservative and anti-gay: the list of prejudices about the Catholic Church is long
In the 60 minutes there is singing, praying - and laughing.
A worship service to take part in.
Something you don't necessarily expect from the Catholic Church.
The list of prejudices about her is long: conservative, anti-women and homophobic, stuck in strange traditions - and then the covered-up cases of abuse.
Who can still profess Catholicism?
It is undeniable that the churches in Germany are doing badly.
Mind you: the two major official churches.
Fewer and fewer people come to the Catholic and Protestant services.
In the spring of 2022, something happened that had not happened for centuries: for the first time, a majority of the population no longer belonged to any denomination.
A historical caesura.
In 1990, more than 72 percent of the German population were members of one of the major churches.
Priest Karl Hermann Lenz from Berlin-Neukölln thinks that the church needs to take more care of people's problems.
© Fabian Hartmann
Full Christmas services can no longer hide the fact that Germans have alienated themselves from the churches.
In the past year alone, the Catholic Church in Germany lost more than 359,000 members - more than ever before.
Around 280,000 people have left the evangelical church.
Church in crisis: Christians have long been a minority in Berlin
Catholic or Protestant: In Berlin this question has not been asked for a long time.
In the capital, Christians now only belong to a small minority.
Of the 3.8 million inhabitants, 13.4 percent are Protestant and 7.8 percent are Catholic.
In the district of Neukölln, this melting pot of cultures with around 320,000 inhabitants from 160 nations, the values are similar - but this is mainly due to the middle-class southern part.
The St. Richard Church of Priest Karl Hermann Lenz is located in the north of Neukölln.
The area was notorious for a long time as a social hotspot.
In 2006, the Rütli school caused a nationwide earthquake when teachers went public with a fire letter and complained about violence and neglect.
Rütli and Neukölln became synonymous with failed integration, poverty and parallel societies.
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Neukölln is considered hip today: the church still has a hard time
Today the situation is different.
The neighborhood is considered hip, popular with newcomers from all over the world, and rents are rising.
But Arabic shops and snack bars still characterize the streetscape around the central Karl-Marx-Strasse.
Almost half of Neukölln's population has a migration background - after the Turks, Arabs form the second largest ethnic minority group.
Incomes are lower here than anywhere else.
Many people are at risk of poverty.
Anyone who gets off the subway sometimes falls into the arms of a dealer.
Drinkers hold on to their beer bottles on the stairs leading to the Karl-Marx-Strasse station exit, even on Sunday mornings.
The nearby Sonnenallee is known as “the Arabic street” in Berlin.
Not an easy environment for the Catholic faith.
St. Richard's Church belongs to the parish of the Holy Three Kings in North Neukölln, an amalgamation of three parishes.
It sees itself as a church in a social hot spot, with offers such as food distribution for the needy, warming rooms and church asylum.
The community provides rooms for Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and members regularly provide care for the homeless at Bahnhof Zoo.
Whoever visits Priest Karl Hermann Lenz in the parish hall is sitting across from a bright-eyed priest.
For many in the district he is just “Kalle”.
In 1993, the native of North Hesse came to Berlin to combine community work with a social project - and stayed.
"Back then this was the Bronx of Berlin," he says of Neukölln.
Lenz is enthusiastic about his faith.
You can also see his outrage when it comes to cases of abuse.
"These are crimes that church people have committed," says Lenz.
As a result, membership numbers have fallen.
"There are also people with us who say: No, I don't want anything to do with the association anymore," reports the theologian.
Church in crisis: why tax revenues are still high
For the Church, erosion in membership is not only a major moral problem—it's also a financial one.
At least sometime.
At first glance, it seems paradoxical that church tax receipts rose continuously up to 2019 to 12.7 billion euros.
Only the Corona year 2020 brought a slump.
But because the economy was doing well beforehand and the church tax depends on the level of income, the churches also benefited from the boom and rising wages.
But how long will the funding last?
The foundation of the church is crumbling more and more, only in individual Catholic dioceses has the wave of resignations recently doubled.
The time could come when questions arise: Why is the state still collecting church taxes when fewer and fewer Germans are professing Christianity?
Do we still need denominational religious education in schools?
And what about the so-called state payments to the two official churches?
Around half a billion euros flow from the budgets of the federal states to the churches every year.
Just like that, without anything in return.
A consequence of the year 1803, when the property of the churches was expropriated.
The traffic light coalition in the federal government is currently negotiating with the churches about replacing state services.
And then it would still have to be clarified what constitutes faith in the first place.
Above all, Catholics alienate.
Priest Lenz in Neukölln can only shake his head at certain internal church debates - such as how to deal with homosexuals and divorced people.
“God loves everyone,” he says.
Lenz believes that the church is too concerned with itself and too little with people's problems.
So many people are looking for answers.
This is already shown by the spiritual trend sport yoga or the unbroken interest in meditation.
Especially in times of crisis like now, the church could provide support.
The question is: why is she no longer able to touch people, to make them an offer?
Why the church can't just change what it offers
A call to Andreas Püttmann in Bonn.
The publicist and political scientist is a self-confessed Catholic and churchgoer.
Of course, he also notices that the number of visitors to church services is declining – even in his home country, in the Catholic Rhineland.
There are a number of reasons for this, says Püttmann.
And of course the cases of abuse also played a role.
But society is becoming more individual, more secular, and the church is competing with a multitude of leisure activities.
In addition, there is a fundamental problem: "A commercial enterprise changes the supply if there is no demand.
The Church cannot simply do that,” says Püttmann.
Your standard is the gospel.
His diagnosis: The evangelical church too often serves a supposedly progressive zeitgeist.
That puts off economically liberal and conservative Christians.
The Catholic Church, on the other hand, is too old-fashioned for some.
And too principled.
On certain issues, however, she has to remain "rebellious," as Püttmann puts it.
This includes, for example, the question of the right to abortion.
"The protection of life, the fruit of the womb, has been documented as an ethical distinction since the dawn of Christianity," he says.
Publicist: "The Church is a factor of political moderation"
But of course the church must also be capable of change.
Not every claim made by society is wrong.
"The church also had to learn something new - for example in the discrimination against women or dealing with homosexuals," says Püttmann.
In his book "Society without God" the publicist dealt with the decline of Christianity more than twelve years ago.
He is convinced that universal values such as human rights have grown out of Christian culture.
And without Christianity, society would be poorer and colder.
The influence of the church should not be underestimated even today.
"It remains a factor of political moderation," says Püttmann.
Where many believing Christians live, radical parties like the AfD would also get fewer votes.
And anyway: What happens when churches can no longer run homes for the elderly, kindergartens, schools and offer pastoral care?
For Püttman, part of the solution lies in going back to the gospel.
Shortage of priests: A congregation in Berlin helps itself
In Berlin-Neukölln, theologian Lenz is also dealing with these questions.
The community relies on being closely intertwined with the district.
to be the contact person.
To make an offer for all people.
Church in the multicultural district of a metropolis often means looking for pragmatic solutions.
The local congregation is also concerned with the issue of a shortage of priests.
And because celibacy will probably not fall in the foreseeable future, you have to help yourself.
"We enable people to celebrate a service themselves on one Sunday a month," says Lenz.
"The best compliment is when I hear afterwards that I wasn't missed."
Anyone who speaks to Karl Hermann Lenz for a longer period of time does not have the feeling that church is a concept from yesterday.
On the contrary.
Church is what people make of it.
And yet: The trend of declining membership numbers is likely to continue - despite committed clergy that exist throughout the country.
As the Bertelsmann Foundation announced just a few days ago, every fourth church member in Germany is considering leaving.
One in five members is determined to leave.
The churches themselves have set up a projection that comes to the conclusion that in 2060 only 30 percent of the population will be Protestant or Catholic.
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After the Advent service in St. Richard, Priest Karl Hermann Lenz is still standing in front of the church.
It's already noon.
Many churchgoers have gone directly, others are standing in front of the inconspicuous low-rise building and are talking.
"Today there were fewer visitors to the service than usual," says Lenz.
Difficult to say what it is.
Maybe the cold.
Maybe at the confirmation that was the night before.
The view of empty pews: It's something that pastors and priests in Germany no longer have to get used to.
You already know it.
