Losing Heaven : Religion in Germany Since 1945 [1 ed.] 9781785332791, 9781785332784

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Losing Heaven

Losing Heaven : Religion in Germany Since 1945, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2016. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Losing Heaven : Religion in Germany Since 1945, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Losing Heaven Religion in Germany since 1945

Thomas Großbölting

Copyright © 2016. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Translated by Alex Skinner

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

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Published by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com English-language edition © 2017 Thomas Großbölting German-language edition © 2013 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG Originally published in 2013 as Der verlorene Himmel. Glaube in Deutschland seit 1945 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

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Translated with the kind support of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics in the Cultures of Pre-Modernity and Modernity”, University of Münster, through funding from the Excellence Initiative run by the Federal Government and the states. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Grossbolting, Thomas, 1969- author. Title: Losing heaven : religion in Germany since 1945 / Thomas Grossbolting ; translated by Alex Skinner. Other titles: Verlorene Himmel. English Description: English-language edition. | New York : Berghahn Books, 2016.| Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016024946 | ISBN 9781785332784 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Germany--Church history. | Germany--Religion. Classification: LCC BR856.3 .G76813 2016 | DDC 200.943/09045--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016024946 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78533-278-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-78533-279-1 (ebook)

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Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Losing Heaven

vii 1

Part 1. A Christian Germany? Religious Self-positioning and Illusions after 1945 Chapter 1

Chapter 2

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Chapter 3

Faith in People’s Lives – Lives Lived in Faith? The Religious Field between Re-Christianization and Erosion

17

Organize, Standardize, Romanticize. The Churches in Politics and Society

43

Proclamation of Faith and Pastoral Work from 1945 to the Early 1960s

77

Part 2. The New Dawn and the Plunge into Postmodernity. The Religious Field in the 1960s and 1970s Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6

The Christian Religious Communities in the 1960s and 1970s

105

Politicization and Pluralization. Religion, Politics and Society in the 1960s and 1970s

133

From ‘Hellfire’ to ‘All-Embracing Love’. Transformation in the Social Forms of Religion and in the Meaning of Transcendence

167

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vi • Contents

Part 3. Church becomes Religion. Ruptures and Changes in the Religious Sphere to the Present Day Chapter 7

Faith within Life. The Diffusion and Differentiation of the Religious Field 207

Chapter 8

On the Way to a Multireligious Society? Pluralism as Challenge

228

Towards a De-Christianized Society?

259

Chapter 9

Conclusion  God in Germany – Looking Back and Looking Forward 291 309

Index

337

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Bibliography

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Acknowledgements The immediate stimulus for this book came from my move to the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster and participation in its ‘Religion and Politics’ Cluster of Excellence. A productive atmosphere that fostered debate among a group of scholars from a mix of disciplinary backgrounds and a temporary break from teaching were both vital to the book’s genesis. Many members of staff at the Chair in Modern and Contemporary History contributed to the book. Nicolai Hannig discussed the initial concept with me while Claudia Knigge got it off the ground organizationally. The team of ‘Heaven’ assistants took turns providing support: Fabian Behre, Malte Berndt, Benedikt Brunner, Julia Bühner, Matthias Friedmann, Manuela Knopik, Bianka Litschke, Laura Maring, Svenja Schnepel and Annette Wiesmann researched literature, ordered books, made copies and proofread the text. Together with the other staff, Alexia Ibrahim kept the Chair running with her always calm and thoughtful approach. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Helene and Markus Goldbeck, who provided magnificent support every step of the way, proofreading the text several times over and helping produce the apparatus of endnotes. Their engagement with the project and critical questions were at once an intellectual challenge and pleasure. It goes without saying that any remaining errors or shortcomings are entirely my responsibility. Martina Kayser, chief editor at Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, showed tremendous commitment to the project right from the outset. She proofread the text painstakingly and sensitively and her welcome persistence helped ensure its progress. This book is dedicated to my academic teachers Arnold Angenendt and Hans-Ulrich Thamer, both of whom have shaped my interest in the history of religious life in very different but highly positive ways. Münster, November 2015

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viii • Losing Heaven

Translating a book into another language is like giving it a second life. The English version of A Lost Heaven would never have seen the light of day without the wonderful work of Alex Skinner and Lilith Buddensiek. Alex produced an apt and judicious translation, taking obscure religious vocabulary in his stride. Lilith was the perfect midwife on the German side. Masterminding the communication between the key contributors to the translation process, she also read through a mountain of files and prompted me to get cracking with a mixture of gentle and more emphatic encouragement. It was a genuine pleasure to work with both of them. Finally, my thanks to Chris Chappell and his colleagues at Berghahn, who have been faultlessly professional and supportive throughout.

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Münster, November 2015

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Introduction

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Losing Heaven When European travellers returned home from newly discovered continents during the age of European expansion, they often wrote accounts of their impressions for posterity. Alongside the search for gold and other riches, it was the inhabitants of far-off countries and their cultures that chiefly captured their attention. The spirit of discovery and a greed for profit were often fused with a desire to spread Christianity, so the religion of the indigenous population was a particular source of fascination, with Christian Europe exporting its religion to the ‘heathen’ world while absorbing accounts of the traditional lifeways of indigenous peoples. This has left us with fascinating observations on religious rituals and customs from Asia, Africa and the Americas. Today this configuration is going into reverse. While a rich religious life is flourishing on four out of five continents, it is chiefly the societies of Western Europe in which the opposite applies. Here religion, usually Christianity, is declining in importance, a fact strikingly evident in the small number of European missionaries who now head off to work in foreign countries. The Catholic Church in particular is trying to compensate for a lack of priests by importing clergy from Africa and Asia. Europe, once the centre of Christianity, has long since become an object of mission itself. This transformation of our point of departure invites us to reverse the historical relationship described above. How would the current religious situation in Germany look to a nonEuropean? If such an anthropologically inclined stranger were to attempt to answer this question, she would not have to go very far to gain a plethora of contrasting impressions. If her flying visit were to take her to one of the towns or villages of Germany, then from some way off she would notice how religion and religious communities shape urban architecture. Churches, cathedrals, domes and chapels remain significant points of elevation within the urban silhouette. Now and then, alongside crosses on church spires, she can make out a mosque’s crescent. While high-rise buildings may obscure her view of the ensemble of religious buildings in large cities, in many small and medium-sized towns, but above all in villages, the church’s central place is strikingly apparent, dominating the

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2 • Losing Heaven

community’s social geography. The religious sphere is an important aspect and axis of the city, but this is even more true in many villages, and in both cases religion has become permanently embedded in their architecture. This initial impression is rapidly dispelled the moment our outsider gets a sense of how these buildings are used. While few former churches have been redesignated as residential or business premises, it soon emerges that religious buildings – as places of worship and assembly – now play a rather modest role. Church services tend to attract older people, more women than men, few families and very few young people. As they gather against a backdrop of empty pews and high ceilings, these small groups merely underline how empty their churches are. Outside hours of worship, churches are either closed or serve as tourist attractions. Visitors come to view and admire the achievements of European civilization: pictorial work, windows, sculptures, altars and pulpits – features of art historical value or that sightseers perceive as colourful, out of the ordinary and ‘exotic’. If our outsider proceeds to look for other, non-Christian places of worship and prayer she will find only a few scattered examples. Synagogues, Hindu and Buddhist temples and other places of worship are thin on the ground. A single mosque, located some distance from the town centre and with no lack of Muslim attendees, provides a counterpoint to the generally deserted Christian churches. Amid the bustle of the town centre shopping precincts, for the most part it is only Muslim women in their headscarves and a few rather forlorn-looking Jehovah’s Witnesses, proffering the Watchtower to those hurrying past, who can be identified as believers. If our outsider now asks not just the few churchgoers but also the passers-by she encounters about their attitude towards religion she will soon make a new discovery: if she is in the former GDR, just one in three are members of one of the major Churches. In what used to be East Germany, 67 per cent of the population do not belong to a religious community, and there is a firmly established culture of religious non-affiliation extending across three generations. Things are different in the larger, western part of Germany, where four out of five people are members of a religious community, with 18 per cent unaffiliated. Whether this is merely a matter of paper membership is not immediately apparent to our outside observer. But, she is told, the number of churchgoers is small in both confessions and in sharp decline. Only one in twenty nominal members, as a Protestant pastor complains, finds his way to a Sunday service.1 If our outsider speaks to his or her Catholic counterpart, he would inform her that in 2010

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Introduction • 3

barely 13 per cent of Catholics regularly attended Mass.2 And even these church attendees have a very limited knowledge of their own religion. On central matters of faith, such as eternal life, the Trinity or how to live a life pleasing to God, very few can tell you anything at all. On their own assessment, only a minority of this shrinking group of Church members are concerned ‘to lead a meaningful life with the help of religion’ or to ‘fulfil God’s will [on earth] in order to achieve eternal salvation’.3 Instead, the small number of passers-by who are willing to talk about their religious attitudes describe to our outsider a potpourri of religious ideas that they either believe or have heard about. Christian beliefs are mixed with Asian meditation techniques and elements of applied psychology. Bach flower remedies, pendulums and Ouija boards: one in three individuals has come into contact with such things. She hears other phrases as well: pilgrimages along the Camino de Santiago (or Way of St. James), feng shui, New Age and now and then the worship of angels. And did someone say something about the ‘religion of football’? Deflated by her limited success in finding examples of religion in Germany, our outsider may look for help in interpreting her observations. If she heads for an ordinary bookshop she will make another observation. It may come as no surprise that theological and sociology-of-religion books are only available on order, but our outsider’s expectations are confounded by the promoted items section. Here she finds not just the predictable literature, but also a new book by the Pope. Alongside it are writings by the Dalai Lama, head of the Tibetan religious community. Books large and small by other religious virtuosi such as Margot Käßmann, abbot primate Notker Wolf and Anselm Grün mingle with publications on wellness, esoteric topics and self-help. Going by the titles, ‘spirituality’ has much appeal whenever it provides people with advice of relevance to their own lives: ‘everyday spirituality’, ‘spirituality from below’, ‘your middle years’ and ‘the art of leading people’ are common topics in this broad field. A blend of spiritual guidance, individual self-management and general wisdom is on offer and in great demand. Should our outsider leaf through the daily papers, she will quickly ascertain that religious organizations and individuals occupy a far from marginal position. Pre-implantation diagnostics, nuclear power, the German army’s deployment abroad – the advice of senior figures from the major Christian confessions is valued within the political arena. Joachim Gauck, a Protestant minister and theologian whose religious views have done much to mould his character, was elected federal president in 2012. Evidently, then, religion is still particularly

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4 • Losing Heaven

well-suited to reminding society of its (supposedly) widely shared normative foundations. We might also mention religious events such as papal visits, World Youth Days and ecumenical or confessionally specific Church holidays, which are major annual events without having much impact on individuals’ everyday, lived religion. And any anthropologically interested traveller would quickly be struck by the fact that people also perceive religion as a threat. In Germany religion is frequently associated with the Other. Far-off lands are home to Islamic fundamentalists, perceived as pars pro toto of an unenlightened religious fanaticism since the attacks of 11 September 2001. What would our imagined outsider write if she wanted to inform the people back home about religious life in Germany? She would presumably have as much trouble neatly summing up her diverse findings as does Germany’s own copious sociological, historical and theological literature on the topic. It is impossible to narrate the history of religion in Germany in one key: the developments that have occurred during the postwar decades are far too multifaceted for that. Nonetheless, the present book’s basic thesis is that this array of different trends culminates in one key observation. For the greater part of human history, social life was pervaded by religion and in many communities and social spaces across the world this remains the case. In Western and Central Europe – for more than one and a half millennia – Christianity was the religious system that played this role, occupying a profoundly important position within society. It has now lost this importance and has in many respects been pushed to the margins of society, but – crucially – it has not declined to the point of total insignificance. Despite the massive shift away from the Churches, Christianity remains the most important provider of religious interpretation and practice in the united Germany. But it operates within a religious field that is shrinking overall and that is becoming highly plural in character. The relational matrix of religion, Church and society has been transformed. It is this transformation that the book’s title metaphor seeks to convey: heaven has not disappeared, but it has been lost to an increasing number of individuals and within an ever-expanding range of social contexts. We are very unlikely to see any ‘rediscovery’ of religion in the short or even medium term. Within the religious landscape of Christianity, this profound shift is most apparent with respect to individual Church membership and the practice of piety. As Michael Ebertz puts it, both the Protestant and Catholic Churches have long since found themselves ‘swimming against the tide’: individual religious practice, as manifested for centuries in preordained forms, is on the wane. Both major confessions, the Protestant

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Introduction • 5

regional Churches as well as the Catholic Church, find themselves facing a breach with tradition unprecedented within the religious field. Churches are emptying, the number of baptisms is constantly declining, and ever fewer men and women wish to become priests or ministers or join a spiritual community. One explanation for this decline can be ruled out right away. It is not ‘competition’ that has triggered and fostered this development. Apart from a small number of recent exceptions, there has been no missionizing Islam in Germany. West Germany has been devoid of any new Church or faith, or state-promoted secularism, that might have repressed or even replaced Christianity. So far, the trajectory of this downward trend and demographic developments indicate that this process will become even more radical, making the internal and external labelling of the Christian confessions as popular Volkskirchen or People’s Churches increasingly obsolete. In much the same way, though not in tandem with these statistically identifiable developments, the position of the Christian Churches within public life has also changed. This applies both to their selfevaluation and external perceptions. After 1945, large sections of the elite initially worked on the assumption that German society would be comprehensively ‘re-Christianized’. As ‘victors amid the rubble’, the Churches attained the status of guarantors of postwar reconstruction.4 It is apparent with hindsight that this was a wishful illusion, but the views expressed by contemporaries bring out the significance once ascribed to the Churches. Many of the structures of the early Federal Republic were moulded by this valorization and retain their institutional form to this day. This is evident in Church representatives’ participation in many sociopolitical institutions such as broadcasting councils and political committees, and in the system of Church taxes raised by the state, which privilege the major German Churches in a globally unique way. Into the 1980s, references to the Christian foundations of German society were a fixed topos of conservative politics. Only in later years did such terminology crop up less and less often as a widely accepted way for Germans to reassure themselves about the nature of their society, and was instead subject to heated debate. A third way of describing the transformation of the religious field shifts our focus beyond the Christian Churches. While they have lost their pre-eminence, new forms of religiosity have sprung up or moved to the fore. Initially, Islam in Germany was the faith of immigrants, but it has now become firmly established and is one of the most agile actors within the religious field. But in contrast to the United States, for example, beyond this the religious market has expanded very little. New religious movements such as Bhagwan, and a variety of

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6 • Losing Heaven

charismatic movements within the Christian world, have remained marginal phenomena. Nonetheless, the popular religious practices associated with them have gained in importance. Asian mysticism and the meditation techniques associated with it have become important ways in which individuals satisfy their religious needs, both outside and within the Christian Churches. This book, which begins with a sense of astonishment at this tumultuous picture, is an investigation of the religious field in Germany and its development over the past six decades. To ask how and why religion in Germany has been so fundamentally transformed is not to pursue a specialist history of religious communities. Quite the reverse: as already reflected in Thomas Nipperdey’s history of religion in the nineteenth century, the phenomenon of religion provides a comprehensive perspective on general history. Religion was and always is a ‘part of the interpretive culture that constitutes the entire reality of the lifeworld, that moulds people’s behaviour, the horizon of their lives and their interpretations of life, along with social structures and processes and, of course, politics’.5 For individuals growing up in the early twenty-first century it is almost impossible to imagine this, but in the early Federal Republic the everyday lives of broad swathes of the population were intertwined with religious practice – one centrally moulded and guided by the major Christian Churches – in a self-evident and unquestioned way. Family, male and female role models, sexuality, child-rearing and education – in the broadest range of fields the Churches laid down standards of behaviour and morality, even if these had long since become detached from their original Christian contexts. This connecting link between broad swathes of society and a religious conviction that served to guide their actions and everyday lives has been lost entirely, and this has happened within an amazingly short period of time. As a rule the history of mentalities observes changes over vast stretches of time. Yet when it comes to the religious landscape, the law of the longue durée seems not to apply. The Christianization of the areas now known as Germany extended across centuries, while the dechurching process has taken just a few decades. When it comes to Christian worldviews and Church affiliation, and the moral ideas shaped by both, Germany seems to disprove the idea that mental structures are inevitably long-lasting – and this makes analysis of this process all the more fascinating. How this transformation came about, its underlying causes and its consequences past and present: these are the basic issues explored in the following chapters. I seek to provide a narrative that illuminates both the breach with tradition within the religious field and the

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Introduction • 7

concomitant contemporary challenges from a historical perspective.6 If historical researchers aspire to make an objectifying contribution to contemporary debates on the integration of religion, they will have to depart from the familiar one-way roads of Church and confessional history. Religious history must be understood as a ‘divided history’7 of different religious communities within a shared social environment. In what follows I will therefore be looking at all forms of religiosity and its organization in as much as they have made a significant impact on society. My analysis extends from the immediate postwar period up to the present, while in spatial terms it is the old Federal Republic and subsequently reunified Germany that stand centre stage. A sense of astonishment at this comparatively rapid transformation can be productive if we demand more than the explanations and answers that have been provided so far. From the 1970s onwards, the magic key to explaining religious change was secularization. Many social scientists had long considered religiosity a relic that would necessarily and ‘naturally’ decline before ultimately disappearing. This theory – or at least its more simplistic variant – has been refuted, and not only by developments in four-fifths of the world. It has also proved incapable of describing the complex situation of religion in Germany and Western Europe as a whole. Secularization in the sense of a progressive shift away from the Churches is a fact, a basic characteristic of Germany’s religious landscape. But the more far-reaching premises and conclusions of secularization theory have turned out to be crudely inaccurate. One phenomenon in particular has escaped notice: secularization generates new religiosity even if this takes a different form and exists to a different extent. At the same time, those who speak of a renaissance of religion or even the ‘return of the gods’ in view of the new media interest in religion are undoubtedly getting carried away. It is fair to say that religious phenomena have become more visible, but this is not often associated with a new individual practice of piety. What is returning is not identical with what has disappeared. To deploy our title metaphor once again: it is not the traditional heaven that is being rediscovered. In Germany it is only too apparent that religious life today is far from congruent with the faith of the previous generation. For the most part, even in cases where the confessional label has remained the same, the religious content and practices associated with it have changed fundamentally. Recent research in the history of religion is united in its distance from grand theories of all kinds. Like the thesis of secularization, the purely quantitative approaches of an older social history have also proved unconvincing. Nowadays, if we want to get to grips with the

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8 • Losing Heaven

presence and potency of the religious sphere in the recent past, we need to do more than just count the members of a confession or of Church associations, determine the number of communicants or describe the pastoral relations between priests and the faithful. According to Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, the diverse array of ‘private Christianities’ that have come into being in recent years – not to mention the numerous hybrid religious forms found in present-day societies – can no longer be described in clear-cut, either-or categories. Instead what we need are models featuring a number of variables that allow us to analyse religiosity beyond formal membership of religious organizations. We require a methodological approach that takes account both of faith outside of religious organizations (‘believing without belonging’) and the many Church members who are acting out of habit rather than pursuing a personal faith (‘belonging without believing’, to quote Grace Davie). At the same time, the concept of religion should not unravel to the point of including anything and everything. If, for example, we go for a purely functional definition of religion, then the field will inevitably become an incomprehensible spiritual fog that even incorporates the fans of a pop group or football club, along with ‘Weight Watchers’.8 Rather than deploying a schematic definition of the subject, in this book the focus will be on what contemporaries have referred to as religious and what – conversely – they considered profane. So how we approach our topic is crucial, and this is reflected in the present book. What exactly do we understand by the term religion? How can we define our object in such a way that we take account of the relationship between religion and society as well as its transformation? In what follows I develop an understanding of religion anchored in theories of communication and conflict, making particular use of historical-anthropological methods and the tools of discursive history: religion’s key characteristic is its reference to a difference between heaven and earth, between God and world, between transcendence and immanence. Religious communities stand out from the surrounding society in their belief that they remind us of something sacrosanct. Christians understand this something as ‘God’, while other world religions find other words for it, but a good general term for this dimension is ‘transcendence’. This definition may be abstract, but already entails an important decision. It means placing emphasis on contemporaries’ understanding; so to reiterate, in this book we are crucially concerned with what they themselves define as religion. To explain a religion merely by pointing to the fulfilment of certain social functions such as providing comfort, alleviating suffering and so on is just as unconvincing as relying on typical religious narratives. Political

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Introduction • 9

ideologies, social movements and modern lifestyles have often taken religion-like forms, but without qualifying as religion as this book understands it.9 But religion never remains abstract. It finds social expression in its capacity to communicate and render productive the difference between world and God. In the language of Christianity this is called preaching, which aspires not just to communicate the ‘good news’ to the world but, ideally, to organize the world in line with its precepts. To this end religious communities deploy highly specific ways of speaking, symbols and practices that we refer to as the ‘religious code’.10 As a rule, communities and institutions emerge in which the difference between this world and the world beyond is rendered as rules for living and transmitted from one generation to the next. A striking example of this is the development of a Catholic milieu in the German Empire, which helped its members respond to the pressures of modernization. On the basis of shared religious and everyday convictions, a way of life emerged in which – ‘from cradle to grave’ – most of the issues arising in a person’s life could be dealt with within Catholic reference groups. Milieus create meaning, regulate behaviour through a shared worldview and thus crystallize a way of life that moulds everyday existence. The belief system lived within the community takes on social form in the Churches, with all their institutional branches, hierarchies, congregations and groups, but also beyond the Churches (in a narrow sense) in entire societies, in their political concepts and how they view themselves, in rituals and buildings, texts and images, power and money, war and violence, in brief: in the whole ambivalent sphere of everyday life. But social circumstances have also shaped the traditional religions. Concepts of and ways of speaking about God, symbols of the sacred and members’ everyday practices adapt to society’s forms of differentiation and patterns of inclusion. The Catholic milieu, to return to the above example, generated a political wing in the shape of the Centre Party, founded in 1870. This party intervened actively in the political affairs of the Empire and Weimar Republic and, naturally, adapted to prevailing norms such as majority decisions and the need to form coalitions. In this as in other cases, religion is profoundly ‘enculturated’; in other words, adapted to the forms and functions dominant within society. This applies without exception to the large people’s religions. It is only the charismatic and fundamentalist movements that have emerged since the 1980s that act in a decultured, ‘rootless’ way and present themselves as alternatives to the surrounding environment.11 This enculturation even shapes a given Church’s creed. While religious communities

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10 • Losing Heaven

themselves may assume a fixed, unchangeable basis for their existence, and fundamentalist Christians cement this with a literal understanding of the Bible, the forms of religious communication and symbols vary greatly. Notions of God, which differ among Christians throughout the world, provide a vivid example. God may be understood as a king or tribal chief, as a strict, punitive ruler or as a loving father. Generally imagined in Europe as a white man, in other parts of the world ‘he’ is thought of as black or female. Religious aspirations can be realized ‘on earth’ only if they are realized within societies. But at the same time, however necessary enculturation may be, religious communities must strive to ensure that their religion maintains and embodies the tension between transcendence and immanence. Religion must make an offer that interfaces with the world while also pointing beyond it. A purely worldly religion is just as inconceivable as a purely religious society. In describing changes in the connection between religion and society in Germany – which were fundamentally entwined in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – one development stands out. Not only did they move apart during the postwar decades, but many formerly close ties have been severed entirely. Christianity was profoundly embedded in German culture and society, and until the end of the Empire there was a political alliance between throne and altar into which Protestantism was thoroughly integrated. In terms of cultural history, the middle-class ideal of the nineteenth century and the ‘standard morality’ of the twentieth century drew heavily on the norms of the Protestant and Catholic Churches: notions of social order and nation, male and female role models, issues of sexuality, family and upbringing. Extending far into non-Christian circles, religious and social norms were in alignment, even if they were justified in different ways. In its approach to adultery, the Code Napoléon, a product of secular France, assumed the Christian character of marriage. Helping the poor, loving one’s neighbour, seeking justice and preserving Creation – the roots of these sentiments do not lie solely in Christianity, but they are closely linked with it. With respect to the Protestant Church, theologians mocked the ‘sitting-room Christianity’ through which, towards the end of the nineteenth century, Protestant piety entered into an often covert alliance with bourgeois life. Meanwhile, Walter Dirks – a prominent critic within the Church who also achieved a broad public impact – assailed the Catholic ‘restorative character’ of the Adenauer era. Fifty years later, in the early twenty-first century, this alliance had dissolved, and this looks likely to be a permanent state of affairs. ‘Christian Germany’ no longer exists. Just as the framework of belief provided by the major confessions increasingly lost its role in supporting

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Introduction • 11

and sustaining the social structure, the socially shared ethics and morals that rested upon this framework also began to wane.12 This holds true regardless of the Christian confessions’ ongoing role as the leading providers of a religious interpretation of the world and of religious practice. As the press office of one Protestant regional Church declared in 2009, there were still more people going to church on Sundays than watching Bundesliga football matches. What was no doubt intended as a powerful, attention-grabbing statement unwittingly demonstrates just how marginalized the Churches have become. An entity that once pervaded the whole of Sunday, the ‘day of the Lord’, is now regarded – even by its own adherents – as one competitor among many, seeking to court favour with the weekend public. Christianity has become one of many providers of meaning, one of many sources to which people turn to organize their Sundays. Christianity’s status as a choice is not limited to how people spend their free time. Quite the opposite. How people live their partnerships and families, how the political realm should operate, the correct relationship to the hereafter – the Christian tradition offers guidance on all these issues. But it is for an ever-smaller number of individuals and, most strikingly, with an ever-diminishing impact on society as a whole, that Christianity provides a solid framework encompassing all of life. For some the answers provided by Christianity continue to be significant; others combine them with other sources of meaning, while yet others reject them entirely. We now have a basic picture of the transformation of religion in Germany, a picture the following chapters will be fleshing out with empirical substance and subjecting to in-depth analysis. Of particular interest are the shifting boundaries and conflicts through which a variety of social forces have struggled over the character of the religious field, contesting what rightly belongs within it and what ought to be considered ‘profane’. Where within the religious field were traditional certainties called into question, new definitions introduced, new practices implemented? Where did conflicts arise? How were competences and thus spheres of influence redistributed? It is these points of fracture that throw religious transformation and its effects into particularly sharp relief. In each section I take a three-step approach to sketching out the web of relations between religion, society and Church. How was religion experienced and lived on the individual level? Which forms of personal piety emerged or disappeared? Contemporary surveys and findings provide initial purchase on the quantitative dimension of religiosity. But there is much more to religious practice than this: the individual acquisition of religion, as value-orienting behaviour, is generally a

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syncretic process. So rather than religious dogmas as set out by various hierarchies, it is the history of the God people actually believe in that takes centre stage. Through their religious practice individuals seek to satisfy their need for transcendence. In Germany they have often been guided by the teachings of the major Christian Churches without adhering to them in a ‘pure’ form: going to church on Sunday does not exclude a belief in reincarnation or the use of tarot cards to divine the future. How have individuals and groups appropriated notions of transcendence? What were the effects of this? In traditional societies religious systems provide crucial tools for interpreting the world. They explain what is right and wrong, why some people are rich and others poor, why some suffer and others do not and why there is injustice, tyranny and war, but they also explain the rule of the state and more besides. The answers that religions provide to these questions change as rapidly as their acceptance within society. And we must ask what exactly was at stake from the perspective of the religious community and that of the believer: eternal life, salvation in the hereafter? Or personal wellbeing and forms of self-realization? Such questions indicate that on this level religion has much to do with self-knowledge, self-construction and determining one’s identity. What is regarded as a successful life? Is religion necessary to achieving this, and if it is, to what extent and to what end? Analysis of this individual religious orientation also helps us gain a better overall understanding of how society was structured in the recent past. Such a history of religion can help us understand the pluralization of lifestyles; the weakening of rigid sociocultural milieus; the transformation of ways of life and forms of privacy; changes in patterns of primary communitization within the family, among friends and those of like mind; the erosion and transformation of what were once widely accepted principles and values of modern and late modern society – all those processes that sociology, now and in the past, has managed to describe in at best formulaic terms. Many of the developments captured by this approach are echoed in the relationship between religion and society, a topic I will be examining in my second step. How was religion defined within society?13 If we consistently historicize the concept of religion and examine what contemporaries defined as religion, we discover a striking shift in postwar German society. Initially it was the Christian Churches alone that were considered religion. It was not until the 1970s that this gave way to an increasingly plural attitude. But beyond this general question, a whole range of topics have been debated in the postwar era, such as the model Christian family, the Church’s influence on education, child-rearing and politics, and, in a remarkable narrowing of Church

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Introduction • 13

concerns, questions of sexuality, particularly birth control and abortion. How much religious influence was necessary or, to reverse perspective, permissible? Pastoral letters from Catholic bishops recommending a vote for the CDU were common in the Adenauer era, but fifteen years later they were regarded as scandalous. This indicates just how much people’s perception of the legitimacy of religious views changed within secular culture. What was still considered a moral lodestar in the 1950s was just one view among many two decades later. The religious communities of Germany have by no means been merely the passive objects of these transformations. They themselves have also undergone remarkable development. This is evident in changed forms of religious organization, theological contributions, practices of intergenerational transmission and the Churches’ own reflections on the changes that have taken place. In the nineteenth century, across Europe, the Churches still sought to assert themselves as a Christian alternative to secular society, but from the First World War onwards they began to turn, hesitantly, towards society. Subsequently, during the second half of the twentieth century, both major Christian Churches increasingly abandoned their exclusionary approach and started to open up. What strategies, theological concepts and practical forms of action did the Churches embrace to set this transformation in motion and respond to social changes? Christianity in particular is a community of remembrance centred on the shared memory of the death and resurrection of Christ. Many other Christian traditions and stocks of knowledge have developed in addition to this core. What should be passed on to the next generation? How should one respond to the increasing gap in the chain of remembrance? Comprehensive debates on the Churches’ self-understanding took place within their pastoral divisions as well as within Catholic and Protestant theology. Such selfobservation must be explored if we are to reconstruct the perception of crisis and the alternative concepts that were put forward. It is also crucial to grasp that the Churches themselves became an ever more frequent object of public debate: they were discovered by the media. The small number of academic theologians now faced competition from popular authors as a debate once limited to the Church fanned out into society. There is much evidence to suggest that religious pluralization was greatly reinforced by these debates.14 In my analysis I will be linking these three factors – practised religiosity, the relationship between religion and society and change within the Church – because it is only by illuminating their interrelations and mutual entanglement that we can truly grasp the comprehensive transformation of the religious field in postwar Germany.

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Notes

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 1. Kirchenmitgliedschaftsuntersuchung der EKD 2002, quoted in Pollack, Rückkehr des Religiösen?, 190.   2. See ‘Mitgliederschwund bei den Katholiken’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 29 July 2011.  3. Ebertz, Kirche im Gegenwind, 56.   4. Damian van Melis et al., Siegerin in Trümmern.  5. Nipperdey, Religion im Umbruch, 7.   6. See Hockerts, ‘Zeitgeschichte in Deutschland’.  7. Graf, Die Wiederkehr der Götter, 30–50; Graf and Große Kracht, ‘Einleitung’.  8. For the debate on this problem, see Pickel, Religionssoziologie, 16–19; Ziemann, Sozialgeschichte der Religion, 26–30.  9. My approach differs in this respect from, for example, that taken in Knoblauch, Populäre Religion. 10. On operationalizing Luhmann’s concept of religion, see Ziemann, ‘Codierung von Transzendenz’. 11. See Roy, Holy Ignorance. 12. With French Catholicism in mind, Danièle Hervieu-Léger has referred to this as exculturation. 13. See Riesebrodt, Cultus und Heilsversprechen, 17–42. 14. See Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit.

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PART 1  

A Christian Germany?

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Religious Self-positioning and Illusions after 1945

A church spire, damaged but still towering above the surrounding rubble; proud processions in the shadow of ruined house fronts; officers of the occupying forces in negotiations with Catholic clergy in full vestments – for the religious communities, as for German society as a whole, the end of the war in 1945 was chiefly marked by destruction and suffering. Both believers and the various Church hierarchies were caught up in the general experience of hardship, loss and insecurity. For those formerly subject to Nazi repression, the unconditional military defeat and the collapse of the old power structures meant liberation. But for the great majority of the German population, who had made their peace with National Socialism, 8 May 1945 was primarily associated with insecurity: their ‘national home’, a notion that had inspired enthusiasm for National Socialism within a context of hypernationalism, was no more. Given its uncertain future, the nation could no longer serve as an aid to orientation. The war had ended with the military capitulation; military operations and aerial bombardment had ceased, removing the immediate threat to people’s lives, but the overwhelming violence of the preceding years continued to hang in the air: every third German male born between 1910 and 1925 had died during the war. In 1944 the violence had intensified, with an escalation in the murder of Jews and others. In addition to mass killings in the concentration camps there were massacres and death marches. Although or perhaps because military defeat was already on the cards, the war re-intensified, with more than half of the 5.3 million fallen Wehrmacht soldiers dying in the last ten months of the war. In the final year of the war the Nazi state increasingly directed its violence against ‘ordinary Germans’ in an attempt to force them to buckle down and stay the course. Even after the military collapse the everyday difficulties of the war’s final years initially persisted: the strained supply situation, the shortage of homes and anxiety over family and friends, whose fate remained unclear amid the chaos of war. Foreign observers identified apathy and a sense of uncertainty as the most striking features of German society.

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There were millions of homeless people, including the bombed-out, refugees and displaced persons, as well as forced labourers from the formerly occupied territories who had been deported to Germany. In 1947 there were an estimated one million displaced individuals.1 Impoverishment and insecurity during this time of hardship and upheaval shaped German society east and west beyond the period of the currency reforms.2

Notes

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  1. See Hoffmann, ‘Germany is No More’, 598.   2. See Broszat, Von Stalingrad zur Währungsreform.

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1 Faith in People’s Lives – Lives Lived in Faith?

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The Religious Field between Re-Christianization and Erosion

Against this background of material plight, disorientation and civilizational rupture, one institution stood out: the Catholic Church. It too had suffered material damage. Some of its churches and properties had been flattened by bombs and both clergy and laity had died during the war. But as an institution, as contemporaries and subsequent accounts claimed, the Church experienced a ‘religious spring’. The preconditions for this upturn were good. In its own view and that of outside observers, the Catholic Church was uncorrupted by National Socialism. To a considerable degree the Church had managed to preserve its structures and retain the loyalty of the faithful between 1933 and 1945. While it would be wrong to suggest that there was any consistent refusal to cooperate either within the Church hierarchy or among the faithful, after the war the dominant impression was one of steadfastness and defiance of the Nazi dictatorship. Only decades later did this sugar-coated view trigger fierce debates within the Church and beyond. Since the public saw the Church as a non-Nazified institution, it gained a special authority, and not just among the German population. Of the few Germans that the Allied occupying troops accepted as interlocutors and negotiating partners there were many Catholic clergy and dignitaries. Like the Protestant regional Churches, the Catholic Church was allowed to continue its work without restriction. Both Christian confessions thus enjoyed a marked advantage over other large social organizations such as political parties and trade unions. But it was not just the external world that expected a great deal from the Catholic Church – great hopes were cultivated within it. After the disaster of National Socialism, military defeat and the break-up of the nation – according to the prognostications of leading Church representatives – there was now to be a catharsis, a period of reflection and new thinking in which Christianity would enjoy a new and privileged status. Among the German people there was ‘hopefully no longer anyone who denies the overwhelming and crucial importance

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18 • Losing Heaven

of religion, of the Christian faith, to the life of society’, in the words of the Bishop of Münster, Cardinal von Galen, and Jesuit priest Gustav Gundlach in their ‘Catholic Principles for Public Life’, published in February 1946.1 Probably more than anyone else, Cardinal von Galen embodied Church aspirations to shape the new German reality. In 1941 the national conservative nobleman had spoken out publicly in three sermons against the deportation of the disabled from Church homes and their subsequent murder. Only his popularity and the wartime situation saved him from arrest by the Gestapo. In view of his public engagement von Galen stood for the ‘other Germany’ and thus for precisely those elements of tradition on which many in the Church and beyond believed the new polity must build. With a self-image like this the Catholic Church proved especially adept at integrating past experiences of dictatorship and war homogenously into its own worldview. The collapse of 1945 was seen as a form of ‘divine judgement’. German society had allowed itself to become estranged from God. A new embrace of faith thus seemed no more than logical; timeless values must now be recognized and upheld once again. ‘We wish to organize our lives, the private and public spheres, society and state with the help of the Church, in accordance with its teachings and instruction. This is the only firm ground we have to build on. For “no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11)’, as the Bishop of Münster preached on 8 July 1945 before the ruined cathedral. ‘In paradoxical contrast to the ruined external landscape, Catholics’ self-confidence thus soared beyond anything experienced in recent history’.2 It was a very substantial aspiration that Catholics were expressing here. And they did in fact influence a number of the formative structures of the young Federal Republic: ‘social partnership’, ‘federalism’, ‘Europe’ and ‘subsidiarity’ – many of the country’s political and social foundation stones were present or at least anticipated in the Catholic theory of natural law, society and state.3 This influence is evident in the criticisms of Martin Niemöller, probably Germany’s most prominent Protestant after the war. In light of what he saw as Catholics’ undue influence, the president of the Protestant Church of Hesse and Nassau warned in 1950 that the Federal Republic was ‘conceived in Rome and born in Washington’.4 The Protestant Churches’ initial position was quite different. With the rise of the National Socialists, the German Christians (Deutsche Christen) had largely taken over the regional Church leadership, with only the Lutheran regional Churches of Württemberg, Bavaria, Hanover and the Prussian ecclesiastical province of Westphalia remaining ‘intact’

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Faith in People’s Lives – Lives Lived in Faith? • 19

from the perspective of the German Christians’ opponents. Those who worked against compliance with the Nazi state organized themselves within the Confessing Church and the Councils of Brethren. Conflicts between the two opposing camps subsequently caused deep splits within the Protestant Church: the establishment of a unified Imperial Church, the activities of Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller, a committed National Socialist and Hitler’s confidant, the co-optation of the regional Churches – on all these issues there were irreconcilable differences. Though well over half of all ministers had signed up to neither of these political movements within the Church, this conflict convulsed congregations, Church circles and regional Churches, and when the dictatorship fell these fault lines remained potent. Protestants accepted that the top officials of the German Christian organization would have to stand down. But apart from that, after the war all the open questions and disputes that had been artificially downplayed under the pressure of National Socialism regained their virulence. The public gaze was fixed mainly on protagonists such as Martin Niemöller, who had made his mark through his critical stance on National Socialism, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose resistance to the dictatorship had cost him his life. Overall, however, the Protestant regional Churches lacked institutional cohesion, so they failed to attain the role model status enjoyed by the Catholic Church. Despite this, like the Catholic Church the Protestant Churches played an important role in the postwar period. Some of their representatives were quick to anticipate this. ‘The time of the Church is not over but newly upon us’, as Bavarian regional bishop Hans Meiser wrote to his subordinate ministers as early as January 1945.5 In the public mind both Christian confessions stood for continuity. While the insignia of National Socialism had been removed and the Stars and Stripes, Tricolore and Union Flag remained alien to many, the Churches’ rites, songs and symbols remained the same. As Würzburg theologian and dean Georg Merz put it, they provided ‘a reflection of eternity that lends the Church’s words enduring substance’.6 The Churches also played a practical role. Only they enjoyed a comprehensive means of communication and mobilization, something initially available neither to the public administration system nor the political parties, which had to be rebuilt. There were more than 16,000 ministers in the Protestant Church, while the Protestant Relief Organization (Evangelisches Hilfswerk) benefited from the involvement of 90,000 laypeople. A similarly dense network enabled the Catholic Church to carry out a diverse range of practical relief activities such as the distribution of Care packages, provision of meals for children in and outside of school and

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20 • Losing Heaven

the establishment of children’s activity camps. Church members also helped provide support for prisoners and refugees. In many cities and rural communities committed Christians and Church representatives were elected to serve on local authorities, sometimes attaining the post of mayor. Bishop von Galen of Münster was even asked to head the civil government in the British occupation zone (though he declined). So in contrast to the situation in the Soviet occupation zone and later GDR, despite occasional conflicts Church members could generally assume that the occupying authorities would be supportive and well disposed towards them. So did the end of the war facilitate the comprehensive reChristianization of western Germany? The war had shaken German society to its foundations and in the immediate postwar years the Churches seemed able to meet people’s needs in a historically unprecedented way, guaranteeing continuity during a period of extreme change. Equally, they offered a new spiritual dawn, a comprehensive explanation of past events and solutions to social problems that drew on timeless values and Christian notions of God. The vast majority of Germans, who had been deeply enmeshed in National Socialism, could thus rest easy knowing that few questions would be asked about individuals’ involvement in the dictatorship, about guilt and responsibility. And both Churches were part of international networks that enabled them to at least begin to build bridges reconnecting Germany with the world community, from which it had been excluded after the Holocaust and unbridled war. Despite the promising conditions from the Church’s point of view, the ‘religious spring’, as it was referred to at the time, did not last long. From the outset this metaphor was more wishful thinking and self-delusion than a reflection of reality. To the extent that there was any truth to the idea at all it applied only to the major Christian confessions, National Socialism having rigorously repressed or annihilated other forms of religious life. Given the Europe-wide persecution and murder of six million Jews, after the war it seemed unlikely that there would ever be a substantial Jewish community in Germany again. The small number of surviving Jews in postwar Germany had little in common with the German Jewish community that had existed prior to the Nazi dictatorship: in the immediate postwar period the Jewish community ‘essentially consisted of a community of eastern European Jews who happened to have survived mass annihilation and now found themselves stranded, unwanted, in the Federal Republic’.7 It took time for a religious and cultural life to develop that was no longer solely provisional in nature, characterized by ‘packed suitcases’ ready for flight.

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Faith in People’s Lives – Lives Lived in Faith? • 21

There were other reasons why people found it impossible to pick up their religious lives where they had left off. The fact that in many parts of Europe the Churches once again occupied a key position and profoundly influenced the lives of millions of people (‘probably more intensively than ever before in history’)8 might tempt us to assume that previous conditions had simply been restored. But this is to limit oneself to religious groups’ self-perception and the hopes expressed at the time. Neither in society nor in the religious field were past realities simply re-established. In what follows, I examine three issues – lives lived in faith, the Churches’ position in society and politics, and the religious communities’ self-positioning – to demonstrate that, during a fifteen-year period after the war, considerable change occurred under the surface of supposed reconstruction. The formula ‘modernization through reconstruction’, coined to describe the two decades after the war, is at best a rudimentary description of events in the religious field and the character of lived faith, one that fails to capture the dramatic nature of the historical rupture that had occurred.9 The abandonment of Church-inspired religious practice, as evident in the statistics, tells us that the late 1960s were a period of particularly intense change. But as early as the 1950s there was much more going on than just modernization of the old or a few new developments. Even in the seemingly so conservative and backwards-looking postwar period that is inadequately labelled the ‘Adenauer era’, we find in embryonic form what would be described as a ‘cultural revolution’ towards the end of the 1960s. We can begin to pinpoint the changes and transformations in the religious field by probing shifts in ‘lived faith’ both quantitatively and qualitatively. What did Germans believe and how did they express it? To what extent was Church dogma still relevant? Did the experience of transcendence and religion take new forms? And what was the position of religion in general and the confessions in particular within society as a whole?

Religious Practice and Church Affiliation: Boom amid Dissolution The most significant supporting evidence for the idea of a ‘religious spring’ after the war was the new visibility of Church life within the public sphere. Pilgrimages, processions, full churches – these were the oft-perceived and frequently described signs of a revival among Christian organizations. But contemporary statistics on aspects such as Church membership and church attendance, the receiving

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22 • Losing Heaven

of communion and confession and participation in Church rites of transition such as baptism, marriage or burial provide an important and corrective insight into religious life. For all the limitations of these figures they reveal certain trends, and from the 1950s onwards – up to the present – they became the yardstick by which the success of religion was measured. After the war Germany was without doubt inhabited mainly by adherents of the Christian Churches: 95.8 per cent of the population were Church members, 44.3 per cent were Catholic and 51.5 per cent Protestant. This was a significant difference from the religious landscape before the Second World War, with the confessional ratio shifting in favour of Catholicism: the population movements caused by flight and expulsion and above all the division of occupation zones between east and west had redrawn the confessional map. Before 1945 only a third of the German Empire was Catholic but in the western part of Germany there was now a virtually equal balance between the confessions.10 Stronger evidence of movements and changes within the religious landscape comes from the figures on those joining and leaving the Christian Churches. In absolute terms the Catholic Church gained members between 1946 and 1948, the largest number, 31,313, in 1946. But this impressive figure only partially offset the large numbers who left the Church during the National Socialist cultural struggle or Kulturkampf against the Church. Two hundred thousand Catholics left their Church in 1937 and 1938 alone, almost twice as many as in the four preceding years. The number of those leaving then fell to around 50,000 in 1940 and 1941 and 38,368 in 1943.11 The regional example of the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising brings out the countervailing trends. Between 1945 and 1950 the number of those attending church on Sunday rose from 35.2 to 38.9 per cent, while the number of Catholics receiving communion at Easter increased from 40 to 46 per cent.12 The new outward-facing Catholicism was experiencing a boom. And yet, ‘it was a source of great concern that the number of returnees, which was still very high in 1945 and 1946, was already exceeded by the number of those leaving the following year’. In the three western occupation zones the picture was even more dramatic. The overall trend went into reverse for the first time in 1952: more believers died or left the Church than the number of those who became affiliated through birth, conversion or joining. After a slight recovery in 1953 this figure remained continually negative from 1954 onwards.13 A parallel development can be observed among Protestants, though the downward trends were more marked. Forty-seven thousand individuals joined the Church in the western occupation

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Faith in People’s Lives – Lives Lived in Faith? • 23

zones in 1945, and no less than 75,000 the following year. But as early as 1949 43,000 new members were outweighed by 86,000 leavers, so the Protestant Church gained around 75,000 new members in the immediate postwar period. Conversely, 1.3 million members had left between 1933 and 1939, a million of them at the peak of the National Socialists’ anti-Church policies from 1937 onwards. Once again we find that the prevailing impression of a mass return to the Churches after the war is deceptive; it is not backed up by the figures. A fair number of overflowing churches, which were taken as evidence of a new religiosity, can partly be explained by the fact that many other churches had been damaged and were unusable.14 The lustre of the religious spring fades further if we factor in contemporary observations on and assessments of returnees: some of those rejoining the Churches after 1945 were undoubtedly motivated in part by opportunism and the hope that Church membership would advantage them within the denazification process.15 Overall, when it comes to the absolute number of Church members, it is fair to say that while there was certainly an upturn in membership, this occurred within such a brief period and on such a modest scale that it failed to offset the losses suffered during the Nazi dictatorship. What trends can we identify in the 1950s and early 1960s, a period we cannot assume to have been moulded by the direct consequences of the war or the reassertion of prewar conditions? Various indicators tell us something about the strength of the Churches within society, but also about the internal intensity of Church life. The statistics show that Church membership was a social norm in the two decades after the war, with only a tiny minority leaving either of the major confessional Churches. Up to 1965 the number of those leaving the Church moved between 0.1 and 0.2 per cent of total membership, with a slightly higher figure generally applying to Protestants. If we look at the twentieth century as a whole, it is clear that there has ‘been no similar period during which the number of people leaving the Church fell and during which people left so infrequently as in the years between 1950 and 1967’.16 People tended to leave the Church quietly, rarely breaking away in an emphatic or demonstrative way. Marrying someone of a different confession was often the driving force. Since the Catholic Church generally ruled out marriage with a Protestant partner, permitting it only in exceptional cases and on strict conditions, for many would-be mixed-confessional couples this was a reason to formally leave their Church. Another reason for leaving relates to a specific feature of the German system of Church taxes that linked them with national taxes, with

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24 • Losing Heaven

both being collected by state tax offices. Compared with other national Churches this arrangement privileged the Christian confessions in West Germany and was one of the preconditions for the financial strength they came to enjoy. But in this and other contexts, strong state support for the Churches also had disadvantages. Whenever general taxes were increased, the burden represented by the Church Tax increased as well. Those who were merely formal members of the Church often proved quite willing to leave if their economic situation deteriorated.17 Initially, however, only a vanishingly small minority decided to leave for this reason or for the other reasons identified above. It was not until the late 1960s that the number of those doing so skyrocketed in both confessions. This relative stability accompanied by a downward trend during the first two decades after the war is confirmed by other figures on religiosity. In both confessions, church attendance started off at a high level. Among Catholics the obligation to attend Mass on Sunday is one of the Church’s five commandments; in 1949 more than 50 per cent of Catholics did so, and more than 40 per cent in the 1960s. For Protestants the figure ranges between 15 and 10 per cent during the same period. Despite slight generational discrepancies there is no great difference between age groups.18 While there is reason to doubt the absolute accuracy of the figures – in Catholic communities it was the clergy and Church employees themselves who did the counting, and they had a natural interest in quantitative success19 – they do indicate trends that require interpretation. If we summarize the indicators mentioned above and limit ourselves to what the statistics tell us, the picture that emerges is of a slightly declining but stable religiosity. For the vast majority of people, religious life was synonymous with explicit, Church-based religiosity, and it was the Protestant and Catholic Churches that provided by far the most widely accepted forms of religious expression and ritual. Above all – as the Churches’ success is sometimes explained – the religious communities’ organizational ideas and moral conceptions radiated far into society. The organization of Church life was deeply enmeshed with the ‘dominant cultural models, moulded by a mixture of traditional and bourgeois-industrial values’, and this lent the early Federal Republic its distinctive character.20 While this picture seems coherent and makes an excellent fit with Adenauer era cliché (Kirche, Käfer, Konservatismus or Church, [Volkswagen] Beetle and conservatism), there are reasons to be sceptical, with a number of facts and arguments pointing us beyond this provisional analysis. The most powerful objection comes from the

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Faith in People’s Lives – Lives Lived in Faith? • 25

figures themselves. The relative stability of the 1950s and 1960s came to an abrupt end in the early 1970s, with the number of those leaving the Church soaring four or five times over. Similar shifts had last occurred in 1938/1939 under massive pressure from the National Socialists. In the Federal Republic of the 1960s, however, the major Churches enjoyed an unprecedented degree of state support and there had been few public controversies or scandals that might explain this change. Did ‘a profound change in the form of religion’ really set in ‘overnight’, as a number of authors have claimed?21 Or were an array of major social and religious events responsible, such as ‘1968’, as code for the protest movement among students, pupils and apprentices; the Second Vatican Council of 1962–1965, as a landmark within Catholicism; and the changing social and political climate, reflected in the formation of the social-liberal government? Against these interpretations, it is clear that the causes of the abrupt decline in religiosity can be traced back well before these external events and were already inherent in the 1950s and 1960s, seemingly so successful from a Church perspective. Under the surface of a supposed process of re-Christianization and reorganization of Christian life, society had changed enormously. In terms of social history, the key factors here were population shifts as a consequence of war and the impact of the economic upturn in the early Federal Republic: the economic miracle laid the foundation stones of a consumer society that increasingly encompassed the bulk of the German population. And huge changes occurred within the religious field as well. Church members increasingly resisted the roles and lifestyles that the Churches demanded of them. Particularly on issues of morality, private life and gender roles, an increasing number of members distanced themselves from their Church, first tacitly and then in a more formal way. They did so at a time when the Churches were particularly successful in shaping society – and this was also the general perception. They received explicit support in this from the political sphere: many legal regulations on marriage, family and education, as well as national policies, were intertwined with Church ideas. But when it comes to quantitative religiosity in the twentieth century, the immediate postwar period and the subsequent decade of the 1950s are the exception rather than the rule. Statistical surveys cover just a small number of specific topics, so they can only be a provisional yardstick of religious life. In fact, counting heads and defining individual religiosity in either-or terms prevents us from perceiving alternative forms of the personal experience of transcendence and individuals’ shift away from Church precepts. Even contemporaries referred to ‘baptismal certificate Christians’

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26 • Losing Heaven

(Taufscheinchristen), those linked only formally to their religious community. Not every case of membership means strict adherence to the precepts, appeals and rules of the Church; quite the reverse, so Church statistics are by no means an objective criterion of religious behaviour. They chiefly reflect the manoeuvring of those who collected and evaluated the figures: statistics could demonstrate strength or, if they showed a downward trend, underpin appeals for unity or pressure for change. Even at the time, the left-wing Catholic co-editor of the Frankfurter Hefte journal, Clemens Münster, criticized the Church’s ‘propensity for the quantitative’. According to Münster, by presenting improving ‘statistics on receiving sacraments’ as a success, bishops were diverting attention away from the real problems.22 Contemporaries already recognized that a quantitative approach alone cannot provide an adequate description of the religious field. A number of factors reinforce scepticism about the idea of a renaissance of Christianity, highlighting fissures and changes within the religious lifeworld. Long before the 1960s (one of the most enduring periods of social reform in the Federal Republic) and thus long before Vatican II and the ‘politicization’ of the Protestant Church, it would be wrong to think in terms of an ‘ideal world’ of lived piety.23 In fact Germany had reached the high point of Church-based religiosity – that is, figures on membership and church attendance had peaked ‘around 1936, in other words during the Nazi dictatorship’.24 The brief postwar upturn came nowhere near this, but what other changes occurred? One of the key developments here was the disintegration of previously closed confessional spheres. In bi-confessional Germany it was initially immigration and internal migration caused by war, flight and persecution that brought an unprecedented mixing of what had been confessionally closed milieus. ‘The coexistence of long-term residents and displaced persons made demands of both parties that were all the more difficult to meet because they were so entirely unfamiliar’.25 It was not just the encounter with strangers of a different confession such as Silesian Protestants in the deeply Catholic Oldenburg Münsterland that could lead to friction. Even within the confessions certain tensions were felt, sometimes linked with the most practical of issues. Where exactly should their displaced co-religionists, recently arrived in Bavaria, sit during Mass – given that all the pews had been ‘rented’ to the locals in accordance with a centuries-old tradition? Cardinal Michael Faulhaber recommended keeping a number of pews free if necessary or ‘holding a special mass including a brief, spiritually uplifting sermon’26 for the Catholic newcomers. It is hard to imagine a more potent symbol of their non-integration. It was chiefly population movements and the

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Faith in People’s Lives – Lives Lived in Faith? • 27

confessional blending it had brought about that prompted Jesuit Ivo Zeiger, sent to Germany by the Vatican, to refer to ‘Germany as a land of mission’ at the seventy-second Catholic Congress in Mainz in 1948.27 But religious life had changed greatly in many other ways as well. Ivo Zeiger expressed this in dramatic terms, stating that ‘millions simply no longer [assume the existence of] God within their lives’, so pastoral care must ‘literally go back to basics’.28 This statement and the diagnosis of religious life in Germany that undergirds it contradicted the euphoria surrounding supposed re-Christianization in the first few years after the war and this is reinforced if we consider other, mostly internal status reports and warnings from this period. In 1952, in a speech at the Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Joseph Frings of Cologne presented an equally sobering synopsis: ‘the actual influence of the Catholic Church is no longer matched by any religious substance …. The laicization of hearts will – over the long term – be reflected in the laicization of social reality. The detached facade will not stand for ever. Sufficient forces are at work to dismantle the middle ages’.29 Frings identified the reason for this state of affairs as the ‘shattering of [previously] prevailing conditions’. But spatial mobility was just one factor underlying change. The confessional lifeworlds of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been described by various authors as ‘milieus’.30 On the ideal typical level this means a definable group of individuals who organize their lives within a strong group, in which a concentrated form of communication leads to a common interpretation of the world and similar individual behaviour. Particularly in the case of Catholicism, opposition to various aspects of modernization triggered the development of a dense matrix consisting of religious community, associations and clubs, schools, and political representation in the form of the Centre Party. Within this web of institutions and organizations questions of life and death were clarified and the meaning of life defined. Children were baptized and later taught in Catholic schools. Apprentices and those starting their careers were supported by bespoke clubs, while other occupational groups were brought together within a corporative framework and served by special interest groups. In the shape of the Centre Party, this lattice of groups gave rise to a political party that represented it within the German polity. Leisure activities such as football matches, bike rides and pigeon-rearing were arranged for the young. Joint activities and festivities and above all the Church year moulded the life cycle of the individual and family. A life integrated into this milieu ‘from cradle to grave’ was bookended by baptism and a Church burial, including financing for this final act through the funeral

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28 • Losing Heaven

expenses insurance scheme.31 This was the ideal type. In lived reality, uniformity and deviation constantly bumped up against one another. But this model still goes a long way to explaining the stability of the Catholic lifeworld within the Empire and Weimar Republic. The Centre Party could rely on the votes of Catholics, while the most integrated among the faithful managed to stake out an existence largely cordoned off from National Socialism. This applied far less to Protestant lifeworlds and religiosity, reflecting their general orientation towards a personal-individual faith. Milieus, moreover, saw themselves primarily as alternatives to the surrounding society. Within the cultural struggle or Kulturkampf in the German Empire, Catholics had been clearly branded as ‘enemies of the Empire’, whereas Protestants always stood in the mainstream of society. In the ‘century of associations’, however, the Protestant regional Churches had also built up a network of institutions of pastoral care and party-affiliated organizations, which stabilized the Church.32 Within the core of this milieu, Church Protestantism was organized in much the same way as its Catholic counterpart, providing a concentrated form of pastoral care, mostly for the petty and general bourgeoisie. In its religious, political and religio-political views, this core community was generally conservative. And with its diverse welfare and educational organizations and its contribution to the sacralization of the nation, Protestantism exercised a profound impact on society. In specific fields, however, such as that of work and working life, it did so only marginally, and this web of organizations and associations was far more open to the rest of the world than in the case of Catholicism. The associations and their publishing organs, for example, facilitated debates within Protestantism on Church policy and religious ideas. In both confessions, milieu formation was abruptly interrupted by National Socialism. Those organizations and associations whose reach extended into society and politics were prohibited, while the Centre Party collapsed. What remained was the memory of a time between ‘People’s Church and barricade of wagons’.33 After 1945, though the old structures were partially re-established they no longer achieved a comparable impact. A renaissance, let alone a ‘restoration’ of the milieus described above was the exception rather than the rule.34 In western Germany, into the early 1960s, it was only in regions of a strongly rural character such as Old Bavaria (Altbayern), Baden, parts of Westphalia and the Oldenburg Münsterland that there developed largely closed Catholic lifeworlds characterized by great pressure on individual members to conform. This erosion of religion in Germany had much in common with the multifaceted changes that occurred in other countries. In Catholic France this process was

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Faith in People’s Lives – Lives Lived in Faith? • 29

described as the end of civilization or ‘la fin d’un monde’, while in the Netherlands and Belgium it was discussed in terms of ‘depillarization’. Even in the far more religiously active United States the traditional confessional communities declined in importance.35 The German religious field reflected these trends though there were many national peculiarities because of the Nazi past, defeat in the world war and the division of Germany. Lifeworlds that had been highly integrated increasingly dissolved. New media such as radio and later television, leisure time opportunities, greater mobility and changes in access to education – these and other factors expanded individual horizons in multiple ways, weakening commitment to a shared worldview. How pervasive this process was is evident in the erosion of traditional structures beyond religious communities. The European labour movements, also formerly organized in a broad network of political parties and associations, increasingly lost members. In the postwar period ever fewer people liked the idea of committing themselves to a milieu. What was previously perceived as helpful and enriching to one’s identity had lost its appeal. As the religious field eroded, people’s knowledge of religion, their own confession and associated practices also declined. A 1960 survey in the diocese of Essen on Mass attendance among school pupils showed that despite four hours of religious education a week only a small number of pupils had any notion of the Eucharist resembling the sacramental definition.36 For many people the Church service was merely an element of social habit. The survey mentioned above stands as pars pro toto, however, in that knowledge of one’s religion was distributed quite differently between the generations. While older people were still reasonably knowledgeable about the meaning of Mass rituals and sacramental practice, the generations born after the Second World War were largely ignorant of such things.37 One important element in milieu integration was the maintenance of boundaries with the other confession. The powerful contrast between Protestants and Catholics extended into the political realm, moulded social life and played a major role in people’s self-definition: if you know who to distinguish yourself from, you also know how to position yourself. But the distinction between the two groups increasingly dissipated. ‘It is just forty or so years ago’, as sociologist of religion Michael Ebertz put it in 2003, ‘that a privet hedge in a playground in a small town in Hesse forced children to play separately according to their confession and that physical education classes at the teacher training college in Munich were divided up on the same confessional basis’.38 This was justified with reference to a differing religious

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30 • Losing Heaven

conception of the body that made it inappropriate for Catholic and Protestant students to play sports together. But the fact that this and other incidents of ‘confessional apartheid’ became subject to public debate clearly shows that this separation was no longer accepted as a matter of course. In this and other ways, what had previously been fairly closed lifeworlds became more diffuse. In reality, though, many of the forms of piety and socialization created through the Church milieus and re-established after 1945 were ‘no more … than a Potemkin village whose facades sought to maintain the illusion of the successful religious mobilization of the “masses”’.39

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The Family as Bastion: Role Models and Life Models Religion is more than membership in the organization of the Church and participation in the associated rituals. Religions have shaped societies profoundly, binding the individual to the greater social whole and functioning as an important hinge between the private sphere and public culture. This influencing and shaping of society have been – and continue to be – vigorously debated, the key terms here being ‘Christian nation’, ‘Christian society’ and ‘Christian-Western leading culture’. How much Church influence is legitimate? How much religious influence does the inherently secular state want? What kind of religious influence does the individual embrace or reject? In this sense religious beliefs are more than just a problem of the relationship between state and Church. They take on social form far beyond Church organizations, moulding societies in their political concepts and self-understanding, their relationship to power and money and to war and violence, their public rituals and private lives. What belongs within the religious sphere of competence, and what its representatives can legitimately influence or prescribe, is not static. The borders between the realm of the profane and the sacred were and are constantly renegotiated. One field in which we can observe these struggles and associated changes with particular clarity is that of the family. Concepts of the family and family policies are always more than just one social issue among many. They tell us about gender roles, the relationship between the generations, the value of paid and domestic labour, sexuality and partnership and many other fields. Changing norms within the family and the attendant social debates lead us directly to broader social change: after the dissolution of the estates-based society and thus throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the family was

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Faith in People’s Lives – Lives Lived in Faith? • 31

considered the most important nucleus of society and as responsible for safeguarding individuals against isolation and integrating them into a greater structure, and ultimately into society. Until well into the nineteenth century the concept of the family remained ambivalent. The dominant view was of an economic unit that encompassed production, consumption and reproduction and it was usually not just parents and their offspring but other members of the ‘household’ too that were included in this. But by the dawn of the twentieth century, as the sphere of paid employment became increasingly separated from the ‘household’, the meaning of the family narrowed: the bourgeois nuclear family emerged, consisting of father, mother and children. As a private lifeworld, the nuclear family stood in contrast to the public sphere. A gendered division of roles was part and parcel of this: the husband went out into the wider world to earn a living while the wife was responsible for the internal sphere of the family. It was no longer the differentiation or economic utility characteristic of modernity that was to constitute the family but emotion, namely spouses’ love for one another and for their children. Against individualization, emancipation and the economic division of labour, what developed was an alternative realm of warmth and security.40 Over the course of the nineteenth century this discourse declared the nuclear family of father, mother and children a ‘natural’ phenomenon. In a trope moulded by both bourgeois and Christian sentiment, the family thus advanced to the status of a ‘sanctuary in which everything possible is done to bring to light and cultivate the best that the human heart bears within it; it is a fitting hearth built by God in which burns the flame of love; it is thus also the place where the moral man finds his deepest satisfaction, his greatest happiness’.41 Accordingly, the notion of the dissolution, indeed crisis, of the ‘family’ became a standard motif. Rather than retrospective analyses these discussions were and are mostly intended as contemporary interventions, as attempts to prevent what they denounce. Piety and lived faith were intimately bound up with this social construct of the family, and in fact played a key role in creating it. With the dissolution of the estates-based society new forms of religious meaning came to focus on the sphere of the family, and this process greatly strengthened the role of the woman and mother in religious education. It was no longer the husband, who now worked outside the home, but the family-focused wife who was responsible for domestic religious life, and above all for raising the children, and despite an understanding of the family that was still male-dominated, this brought about a shift in religiously moulded gender roles. Through its focus on the family,

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religion tended to lose its claim to encompass the whole of society and underwent a process of moralization and privatization. Political convulsions and the rise of National Socialism reinforced this trend, with the prohibition of milieu organizations eliminating socializing agents such as the youth associations. The family was now the only place in which religious instruction and education could take place. This focus on the family endured into the Federal Republic, with conservative forces and the two major Christian confessions seeing themselves as the preservers of the traditional family. Among bishops and in Church publications the family was regarded as the ‘Church in miniature’42 and both the Catholic and Protestant Churches saw attitudes towards the family as a yardstick of their impact: the valorization of Church marriage; the affirmation of marital morality, which chiefly found expression in the joy of having children and the stability of marriage; child-rearing ideals and the character of familial piety – these were, to quote just one example, the criteria of the Church’s success listed in 1960 by moral theologian Bernhard Häring.43 While this focus on the family was stylized as natural and something that had always existed, it was in fact a product of the twentieth century. As early as the eighteenth century the Catholic Church was condemning birth control but only half-heartedly punishing it. In the nineteenth century it became increasingly strict, and in the early twentieth century condemned birth control unreservedly: ‘the struggle against abortion became a central pillar of the Church’s struggle against modern culture’.44 In Germany the special connection between family and religion in the process of modernization reached another peak in the Catholic milieu formation of the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century.45 The Catholic Church declared its marital teachings fundamental to the faith, thus marking itself off from Protestant precepts. Protestantism also made correct behaviour within marriage and the family a fundamental value but it did not set out what this meant with the same degree of formality, allowing for greater openness towards new developments within society.46 National Socialist family policies were highly ambivalent. On the one hand they were a continuation of trends apparent in the Weimar Republic. When propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels waxed lyrical at the opening of an exhibition in March 1933 that the woman had ‘the first and best place‘ in the family, the place that ‘suits her’, he was building on the bourgeois model of the housewife.47 But against this bourgeois conception, motherhood was now stylized as a national and racial duty. At the same time, under the cloak of its ideology the Nazi leadership pursued a policy that massively fostered women’s economic

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Faith in People’s Lives – Lives Lived in Faith? • 33

activity; when Germany became a war economy, and particularly as the war progressed, the country was highly dependent on women’s labour. But the regime’s policies succeeded only to a limited degree, with the number of women in paid employment rising only slightly.48 After the war, rather than questioning a mother ideal that had been imbued with a national-chauvinist and racial charge, Germans instead sought to build seamlessly on the bourgeois model of the ‘housewife marriage’, in which the woman remains in the home to look after her husband and children, a model that had formed the cultural lynchpin of gender arrangements since the early twentieth century. In the 1950s this model was realized on a wide scale for the first time. Men and women now interpreted freedom from paid employment as an expression of prosperity and privilege.49 Immediately after the war the Churches interpreted the war years not just as a period in which the family had come under moral threat but as one in which every sexual norm had disintegrated. The postwar period was thus characterized by a ‘desperate search for normality’50 and here the family and the familial ideal played a key role, particularly in Church activities,51 with the sixth of the Ten Commandments, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’, with all its attendant implications, moving centre stage in the 1950s.52 The findings of social history stand in stark contrast to this idealized restoration of the traditional nuclear family: under the surface of the supposed re-establishment of traditional family life, it was in fact profound change that characterized the lifeworld of most West German families in the 1950s, family constellations having been impacted by the war, demographic shifts and increasing prosperity. The immediate postwar years were defined by disorganization. A new role division between man and woman, ‘incomplete’ families, and, not least, the elimination of small-familial intimacy as a result of the housing shortage – these and other factors changed the lives of every family fundamentally. Contemporaries reacted to this with strong defensive anxieties and clung ‘to old ideals and illusions despite a changed reality’.53 A high marriage rate, particularly among younger couples, a high birth rate within marriage and the resurrection of the ‘housewife marriage’ embodied this attempt to return to old structures. But increasing paid employment among women and improved educational opportunities for women were already signalling further change.54 Under the label ‘part-time work’, for example, women’s paid employment was rendered socially acceptable: what was initially legitimized as a means of coping with the war was later regarded as an important branch of the economy. The job on the side helped fulfil

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34 • Losing Heaven

consumerist desires. These new attitudes found palpable expression in the Employment Office’s decision to open sub-offices in shopping centres.55 Towards the end of the 1950s there was a shift in the politics of women’s work and the desire to top up one’s income was now regarded by many as an expression of a new ‘need for work’ and a changed attitude towards life among married women. When the traditional family type was re-established, a great deal that was new arose within the old forms. This was no straightforward renaissance. The ‘nuclear family’, then, invoked so often and so vehemently, existed within the complicated social structure of the postwar period more as verbal construct than reality. The asserted ‘sexual conservatism’ of the 1950s can be interpreted as a counter-reaction to the sexual freedoms under National Socialism and the latter stages of the war. At the same time, this construct allowed people to avoid coming to terms with the immediate past by focusing attention on ethics and family morality.56 And yet people dealt with family and sexuality in highly ambivalent ways. Despite many activities and large-scale campaigns by state and Church targeting ‘smutty and trashy literature’ the postwar decades saw the emergence in Germany of Beate Uhse’s new mail-order company and comparable firms trading in love and lust.57 Sexuality had gained a new semantic charge by the time of the publication of American scholar Alfred Charles McKinsey’s sex studies, which made a big splash in the media. In the struggle over morals, the key actors in Germany tended to evoke scenarios of decline and decadence in an attempt to deter their fellow Germans from succumbing to moral degeneracy. McKinsey now offered an ‘alternative to the culturally pessimistic moral discourse’: ‘rather than decline and loss, he thought in terms of progress and enlightenment’.58 This scholar of sexuality contested doctors’ and theologians’ interpretive monopoly. Rather than viewing sexuality as a moral pillar of society, he primarily saw it as a key aspect of the individual’s private happiness and enjoyment of life. ‘Collective subjects such as “community” and “people” [Volk] increasingly receded into the background and were supplanted as leading social value by the free development of the individual’.59 Regardless of this, the norms espoused within the Church and much of society continued to exist; they were maintained on the verbal level and, particularly in the Adenauer era, were buttressed by the political sphere and legislation. To what extent did Germans live up to the Churches’ stance on these issues? A ‘Survey of the Intimate Sphere’ carried out as early as 1949 by sociologist Ludwig von Friedeburg on behalf of the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research indicated a trend that was to

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Faith in People’s Lives – Lives Lived in Faith? • 35

strengthen in subsequent decades. Just 16 per cent of the population and just 40 per cent of regular churchgoers considered sexual relations between the unmarried reprehensible in 1949. Seventy-one per cent of respondents considered premarital or extramarital sex permissible or even necessary. Significantly fewer regular churchgoers, though a not inconsiderable 42 per cent, were of the same view. Affiliation to a particular confession was not statistically relevant here, only the intensity of ties to the Church. Friedeburg not only asked about attitudes but also practices, again yielding a sobering picture from the perspective of Church pastoral strategists: 67 per cent of regular churchgoers indicated that they had had sexual relations outside or prior to marriage.60 Only with respect to the high esteem in which marriage as an institution was held – an attitude undergirded by the general value canon of the time – were Church precepts still binding for a majority of churchgoers. The discrepancy between observable behaviour and normative postulates was bridged in a highly pragmatic way. A widespread phenomenon in the 1950s was the ‘uncle marriage’ in which the widow forwent marriage with her new partner in order to retain pension entitlements from her first relationship.61 The official Church did not approve of this but refrained from sanctioning such behaviour in any way.62 In many fields double standards were apparent that many believers struggled with. ‘If God judged as harshly as the priests no married person would ever get into heaven’.63 This was how a working-class couple in the late the 1950s, both in their mid thirties, described the conflict between Church guidelines on contraception and personal sexual practice. As a consequence of this ‘marital necessity’, as Dutch sociologist of religion Osmund Schreuder summed up the results of his qualitative study of suburban life, in practice many young married couples who felt religiously committed sharply separated Church and marriage. ‘This separation was achieved primarily by leading a fairly “nonsacramental” religious life’.64 As early as the 1950s, then, marriage and the cohabitation of man and woman were detached from Church tutelage and interpretation,65 with much of the population flouting the precept of premarital chastity and considering Church guidelines on marital sex life detached from reality. The consequences of this development extended into other spheres of religious life and changed, for example, Catholic sacramental practice: the individual or ‘auricular’ confession has now almost entirely disappeared as a sacrament. For many men and women with ties to the Church, this sacrament, in which the Church’s interest in marriage and family was virtually reduced to the

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issue of contraception, became a psychological burden: the Church’s static concept of sin, as taught in the catechism, was out of sync with most Germans’ moral ideas.66 Those born between 1930 and 1950 who grew up in West Germany inhabited a religious environment that seemed robust and orderly. Yet many of these individuals grew away from Church morality.67 ‘Without openly criticizing Church norms’, as Lukas Rölli-Alkemper summed up his investigation of the bourgeois-religious model of the family and the practice of family life, ‘the majority even of those Catholics who were loyal to the Church no longer took their lead from these norms but from general societal templates’.68

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From the ‘Fallen Girl’ to ‘Absolute Understanding’: Changes in Sexuality and Sexual Morality Despite these changes in behaviour the ascription of roles to the faithful remained unchanged until the mid 1950s. Church guidelines on morality and lifestyle were in many respects more rigid with respect to girls and women than male Church members: ‘the fallen girl’, according to the magazine Der Jungführer in 1954, has ‘fallen in a more thoroughgoing sense than the boy. Just as the fallen angel is more terrible than the fallen human being, the fallen woman is more terrible than the fallen man’.69 A selfish Eve, giving in to her desires, was stylized in popular magazines as the antithesis of a placid, humble and mystically devoted Mary. Widely distributed religious tracts presented a black and white picture, portraying the Church’s sexual norms as an infallible source of guidance. These texts’ typical message was that those who transgressed these norms exposed body and soul to grave risk.70 Pamphlets with titles such as ‘Love as Moral Dilemma’, ‘Lust or Love’ and ‘Marriage at any Cost?’, all published in the 1950s and early 1960s, modelled the behavioural norms: girls who remain ‘pure’ will have a happy marriage; girls who have premarital relations will end up in the gutter; but at the very least premarital sex will result in despair or spiritual collapse. Men despise girls who surrender their chastity before marriage. Abortions end in death for both developing child and mother, and both are buried with shame and as ‘quietly’ as possible. In order to pursue this ideal, in practice youth work continued to uphold the ‘damming principle’ during puberty, in other words the strict separation of male and female adolescents.71 Resistance to this role attribution first erupted publicly in numerous ‘little conflicts’ and discussions from the mid 1950s onwards. ‘Is

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Faith in People’s Lives – Lives Lived in Faith? • 37

it acceptable for a Catholic girl to wear make-up?’ and ‘Is flirting reprehensible?’ – questions such as these, posed within both the Catholic and Protestant youth press, regularly provoked a tremendous reader response. Clashes over roles continued in debates on the appropriate choice of occupation for women and above all on the ‘household year’ – a one-year period of maid-like employment that the young woman was supposed to complete before marriage to internalize and demonstrate humility and a willingness to serve.72 The qualitatively new dimension was that from the mid 1950s onwards young women began to publicly express their disagreement with these precepts. Dissatisfaction in Church circles and groups found expression in correspondence and readers’ letters and intensified among the leaders of Church associations. In 1954, in a talk entitled ‘Be Modern Catholics’, Heidi Karl, federal leader of the Women’s Group of the Federation of German Catholic Youth (Bund der Deutschen Katholischen Jugend or BDKJ), called for Catholics to abandon the battle against the insignia of the modern world and avoid isolating the Church within society.73 The nascent debate on an appropriate Catholic lifestyle saw a clash of views but no sign of mediation between divisive positions, and authoritative statements by leading Church figures brought such discussions to an end only temporarily. These debates either prompted girls and women to distance themselves internally from Church guidelines or to leave the Church entirely. Between 1953 and 1959, for example, more than 40 per cent of girls and women in the Catholic associations and clubs of North Rhine-Westphalia gave up their membership. In contrast, the figure for boys and men in the same region was just 15.8 per cent.74 It seems likely that rigid role expectations did much to prompt girls and young women to move away from the Church. In a parallel development, Catholic associations and community youth work changed their approach and shifted away from doctrine, gradually abandoning strategies intended to draw clear moral boundaries. Church pastoral care became less exclusive and instead saw itself as giving a general upbringing and education an additional confessional accent, integrating believing Catholics’ lives and experience into a religious framework. Formerly religious or religiously aligned value communities such as the Bündische Jugend youth movement, the Boy Scouts (Pfadfinder) and the federations of community youth groups were organizationally centralized, subjected to legal regulation and ‘socialized’ in their objectives.75 From the mid 1960s onwards ‘published opinion’ within Catholicism changed as well: rather than religious tracts it was a new form of journalistic youth work that now set the tone. An illustrated magazine

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for young adults, conceived by journalist Hermann Boventer and bearing the programmatic title Kontraste (‘Contrasts’), was intended to provide an alternative to Twen magazine, which had attracted a large readership.76 Every issue of Kontraste, which first appeared in 1961, addressed the topic of sexuality, not just at the margins but directly: articles still suggested that abortion almost inevitably entailed physical and psychological damage. The old-new motif of male chivalry and corresponding female behaviour still flared up at times.77 Beyond this, however, the magazine broke through the clear-cut dichotomy between good and evil typical of the pamphlets of the past and made room for new perspectives. Young couples’ ‘marital necessity’ was now met with understanding and an exemplary ‘Catholic couple’ extolled: they ‘go to mass every Sunday, are well-versed in the Commandments and thus also know that all common and reliable means of contraception are considered a sin – nonetheless, they have only two children’. The author remarks that this attitude is not consistent ‘but it preserves some of the solemnity of the sexual act, if only ostensibly’.78 Rather than sweeping condemnation, Church publications now sought to understand, though without abandoning their own opinions. In subsequent years, views and ways of life that clashed with Church doctrine were increasingly discussed: the man who has given up the priesthood and married; the 25-year-old woman teacher who has to put up with others’ contempt as a single mother, and other ways of life that diverged from religious precepts. Overall, the fictional discussions with which readers were presented were now determined from within society rather than by the Church. Christian sexual morality served to advance the ‘liberation of the human being’, according to moral theologian Johannes Gründel in a 1972 Kontraste article.79 The ‘anthropological turn’ executed by some Catholic theologians in the wake of Vatican II was particularly evident in the arguments put forward in the popular confessional press, as the doctor and psychologist appeared alongside the clergyman as a source of advice – before replacing him entirely in 1974.80 These developments signalled a fundamental shift in the impartation of the Church’s sexual morality. The authoritarian proclamation of a confessionally based conception of marital and familial practices was supplanted by a discursive field in which a wide array of voices found articulation. The Church’s exclusive forms of expression and approach were now replaced by inclusive ones. In principle this opening to greater participation provided an opportunity to win over a larger group of individuals to Church views, but the ideal-typical ‘absolute understanding’ approach entailed potential for disagreement and made

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Faith in People’s Lives – Lives Lived in Faith? • 39

positions previously considered unalterable subject to negotiation. No issue could be excluded from the outset81 and the Church was now under pressure to justify its sexual morality. Ill-suited to the task, its previously tight moral straitjacket began to come undone. The theological and pastoral reorientation instigated in the wake of Vatican II, however, lagged behind the general process of value change in society and was undermined by the Church hierarchy’s fixation on a sexual morality that was increasingly rejected by practising Catholics.82 This discord then escalated, as noted by broad swathes of the German public, at the Essen Catholic Conference of 1968, where many laypeople called for the revocation or modification of the papal letter Humanae Vitae, widely known as the ‘Pill Encyclical’. The notion of the Church’s ‘incompetence’ with respect to sexual morality was and is very widespread. With the help of public opinion data collected towards the end of the 1990s, sociologist of religion Andrew M. Greeley demonstrates that not just the Roman Catholic Church but many large religious communities have fundamentally failed in their selfproclaimed goal of regulating believers’ sex lives. ‘The majority of laypeople seem to be convinced that the Church has no idea what it’s talking about when it comes to the ethics of human sexuality’.83 This description from 2003 clearly points up how things have changed since the 1950s: in the mid twentieth century religious thought provided norms that informed both general social critiques and the discourse on the family,84 but since the 1960s and 1970s the Churches have lost their always limited but sometimes substantial power to standardize sexual behaviour. Since then, any return to the kind of close linkage of social morality and religious sexual doctrine observable in embryonic form in the 1950s has become unthinkable.85 Living in faith encompasses more than just concepts of the family and sexuality: religion provides rules and advice relating to almost every aspect of life. And yet these concepts were central because the sphere of marriage, partnership and sexuality was particularly associated with Christian moral views. The limits of religion’s sphere of influence gradually but continuously shifted, ultimately leading to the ‘profanization’ of this field as the tendency for people to contravene religious norms – something that had not or at least not officially existed before – gradually became the norm. Everyday culture and lifeworlds increasingly freed themselves from religious-confessional moulds and it was only in media scandals that the close connection between partnership, sexuality and religious or confessional doctrines retained its virulence beyond the 1960s.

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Notes   1. Edited in Löffler, Bischof Clemens August Graf von Galen, 1305.  2. Damberg, Abschied vom Milieu?, 108.   3. See Resch, Mehr als man glaubt.   4. Martin Niemöller, ‘Lieber russische Diktatur als Dauerspaltung’, Die Neue Zeitung, 17 December 1949, 2.   5. Circular of 22 January 1945, quoted in Vollnhals, ‘Die evangelische Kirche’, 154.   6. Report on public sentiment to the Regional Church Council of 4 September 1945, Landeskirchliches Archiv Nürnberg, Vorgänge bei der militärischen Besetzung, quoted in Vollnhals, ‘Die Evangelische Kirche’, 114.  7. Brumlik, Jüdisches Leben, 8.   8. Pasture and Kenis, ‘The Transformation’, 7.   9. See Schildt and Sywottek, Modernisierung im Wiederaufbau. 10. Figures here and later, based on official Church statistics, are taken from Dütemeyer, Dem Kirchenaustritt begegnen, 101–63. 11. For the figures, see Hockerts, Die Sittlichkeitsprozesse, 185–89. 12. See Fellner, Katholische Kirche in Bayern, 79–81; following quotation, 80. 13. Ziemann, ‘Das Ende der Milieukoalition’, 93. 14. See Schildt and Siegfried, Deutsche Kulturgeschichte, 26. 15. See Löwenstein, ‘Religiöse Einkehr’, 463–70. 16. Gabriel, Christentum zwischen Tradition und Postmoderne, 47. 17. See Ziemann, ‘Religion and the Search for Meaning’, 693; Dütemeyer, Dem Kirchenaustritt begegnen. 18. See Gabriel, Christentum zwischen Tradition und Postmoderne, 36. 19. See Ziemann, Katholische Kirche und Sozialwissenschaften, 59–75. 20. Gabriel, Christentum zwischen Tradition und Postmoderne, 52. 21. Gabriel, Christentum zwischen Tradition und Postmoderne, 46. 22. Münster, ‘Die Aussichten des Christentums’, 903. 23. See Fitschen, Die Politisierung des Protestantismus. 24. Damberg, ‘Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte der BRD’, 386. 25. Hürten, ‘Aufbau, Reform und Krise’, 398. 26. Quoted in Fellner, Katholische Kirche in Bayern, 70. 27. Zeiger, ‘Die religiös-sittliche Lage’, 35. 28. Zeiger, ‘Die religiös-sittliche Lage’, 38. 29. Quoted in Ziemann, ‘Codierung von Transzendenz’, 386. 30. On the research history and the concept itself, see Arbeitskreis für kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, ‘Katholiken zwischen Tradition und Moderne’. 31. Klöcker, Katholisch. 32. On this topic and the following remarks, see Reeken, Kirchen im Umbruch. 33. Reeken, Kirchen im Umbruch, 419. 34. See Ziemann, ‘Das Ende der Milieukoalition’. 35. See Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion, 71; for a summary and detailed overview of the relevant literature, see Hellemans, ‘Transformation der Religion’. 36. See Damberg, ‘Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte der BRD’, 388.

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Faith in People’s Lives – Lives Lived in Faith? • 41

37. See Damberg, ‘Religiöser Wandel’, 183–90. 38. Ebertz, Aufbruch in der Kirche, 17. 39. Ziemann, ‘Codierung von Transzendenz’, 384. 40. See Wirsching, Agrarischer Protest, 58. 41. Pädagogisches Handbuch, 434. 42. See ‘Hirtenbrief der deutschen Bischöfe über die Kriegsfolgen vom 20. August 1946’, quoted in Rölli-Alkemper, Familie im Wiederaufbau, 67. 43. See Häring, Ehe in dieser Zeit, 178, 190. 44. Roy, Holy Ignorance, 57. 45. See Tyrell, ‘Katholizismus und Familie’. 46. See Rölli-Alkemper, Familie im Wiederaufbau, 50 f. 47. Quoted in Mühlfeld and Schönweiss, Nationalsozialistische Familienpolitik, 61. 48. See Opielka, ‘Familie und Beruf’, 4. 49. See Kolinsky, Women in Contemporary Germany, 24. 50. Herzog, ‘Desperately Seeking Normality’. 51. See Rölli-Alkemper, Familie im Wiederaufbau, 279. 52. See Beilmann, Eine katholische Jugend, 112. 53. Willenbacher, ‘Zerrüttung und Bewährung’, 618. 54. See Kaelble, Social History of Europe; Niehuss, Familie, Frau und Gesellschaft. 55. See Oertzen, Pleasure of a Surplus Income. 56. See Herzog, ‘Desperately Seeking Normality’. 57. See Steinbacher, Wie der Sex nach Deutschland kam, 242–66. 58. Steinbacher, Wie der Sex nach Deutschland kam, 354. 59. Steinbacher, Wie der Sex nach Deutschland kam. 60. Friedeburg, Die Umfrage in der Intimsphäre, 48 f. 61. For a contemporary account of this phenomenon, see Bohne, Das Geschick der zwei Millionen. 62. See Davis, ‘Rebuilding the Soul’. 63. Quoted in Schreuder, Kirche im Vorort, 432. 64. Schreuder, Kirche im Vorort, 436. 65. See Menne, Kirchliche Sexualethik, 251. 66. See the autobiographical sketches in Scheule, Beichte und Selbstreflexion, 78. 67. See Kaufmann, ‘Die heutige Tradierungskrise’, 60–73. 68. Rölli-Alkemper, Familie im Wiederaufbau, 236. 69. N.n., ‘Polarität der Geschlechter’, 365. 70. See Rohde-Dachser, Die Sexualerziehung Jugendlicher; Schwenger, Antisexuelle Propaganda. 71. On the tradition underlying this idea, see Muckermann, Stauungsprinzip. 72. For more detail, see Ruff, ‘Katholische Jugendarbeit’. 73. N.n., ‘Jahresthema: Das christliche Menschenbild’, 1. 74. See Ruff, ‘Catholic Elites’, 262. 75. See Münchmeier, ‘Die Vergesellschaftung von Wertgemeinschaften’. 76. See Koetzle and Beckmann, Twen. 77. See n.n., ‘Der Sex hat seine Schuldigkeit getan’. 78. N.n., ‘Sex mal Sex’, 40. 79. Gründel, ‘Du sollst nicht’, 44.

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80. Parallel developments occurred in Swiss Catholic women’s magazines. See Künzler, Sexualmoral, 137–51. 81. On the field of liturgy, see Fuchs, ‘Gefährliche Modernität’; Großbölting, ‘Wie ist Christsein heute möglich?’, 68 f. 82. The key developments here are outlined by Lange, Ehe- und Familienpastoral, 196–204. 83. Greeley, Religion in Europe, 83. 84. See Ellwood, The Fifties Spiritual Marketplace, 230. 85. On the ‘Abstinence Only’ programme put forward by the ‘Alliance for Families’, which the Bush administration promoted in state schools’ sex education lessons, see Chwallek, ‘Sex, nein danke!’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 23 July 2002.

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The Churches in Politics and Society

The popular idea of comprehensive re-Christianization was bound up with hopes that the Churches’ moment had now arrived in a political sense. Heinrich Krone, co-founder of the CDU and close confidant of Konrad Adenauer, noted in his diary on 1 September 1945: ‘History teaches us that every attempt to give the German people a political form that excludes the Churches from its construction has failed … The only choice open to us as a people is to profess our faith in Christianity’.1 Krone was not the only one to hold this view, far from it, and he expressed it at the start of a period that saw the West German Churches granted various privileges and special opportunities to influence policy, which did much to shape their character and activities in the new polity. Concurrently, the three occupation zones administered by the United States, the United Kingdom and France were developing into democracies of a Western stripe, their fate determined not primarily by political forces within Germany but by the Allied occupying powers and their ideas on the country’s future development.2 In the three Western zones, and later West Germany, Germans’ views were thus mostly informed by the Allies’ ideological precepts: the political systems of the United States, France and the United Kingdom were founded on the separation of state and religious communities, an arrangement replicated in the Western occupation zones. At the same time the institutional order of the Weimar Republic provided a crucial blueprint for the structure of state-Church relations. While the tendency was for West Germany to distance itself from the Weimar constitution with respect to permitting certain political parties or the nature of the office of president, its basic structures were retained when it came to the Churches. After the war there thus developed a specific German practice of interaction between state institutions, societal forces and religious communities that strongly influenced the political culture of early West Germany.

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Religion and Politics: Traditions and Dispositions of the Christian Churches Like German society as a whole, the Churches, their elites and members initially had to learn democracy and give life to the institutional moulds laid down by the Allies.3 Both Protestantism and Catholicism were thus entering new territory, given that neither of the confessions had previously envisaged a Western-style democracy. Prior to 1945 the relationship of the Catholic Church and Catholics to the various forms of German state was marked by many shifts. The national-Protestant German Empire of 1871 had offered Catholics a political home only to a limited degree. Particularly during the socalled Cultural Struggle or Kulturkampf (1871–1878/87), Bismarck and the Liberals attempted to push Catholics into the role of ‘enemies of the Empire’ and thus limit Church influence. The clash between the Prussian state and the Church reinforced Catholics’ efforts to seal themselves off: through the Centre Party, their only form of political representation, a dense network of clubs and associations and many charitable-social institutions, Catholics created a special, separate world for themselves that condensed into a full-blown Catholic milieu. When the confrontation between state and Church tailed off, both Church hierarchy and the faithful responded in a highly ambivalent way. On the one hand Catholics tried to shake off their reputation for national unreliability through demonstratively national behaviour. On the other hand they kept a distrustful distance from the political culture of the German Empire, which was so obviously Protestant in character. Catholics were, moreover, integrated into a global Church and were thus part of a transnational framework. During the Weimar era the political ideal advocated by a section of the Catholic elite was an estates-based, corporative model of society with markedly authoritarian characteristics, rather like Franco’s Spain. These Catholics drew much of their inspiration from the internal structure of the Church itself, which was of course centralized and authoritarian in structure. But in addition to these authoritarian tendencies, certain developments were prompting Catholics to embrace a democratic polity. The Centre Party, for example, played a long and active role in imperial governments as Catholics’ political representative, thus developing into one of the pillars of the Weimar Republic and through this engagement many Catholic Centre Party politicians evolved into practical, pragmatic democrats. The Centre Party Reichstag group’s consent to the National Socialists’ 1933 Enabling Act and the party’s selfdissolution were not anchored in approval of the Hitler government. In

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Organize, Standardize, Romanticize • 45

foreign policy terms the party simply adhered to the Vatican line, which was pushing for a concordat with the Nazi regime. With hindsight it is clear that in terms of Germany’s internal politics the Catholic Church had fatally miscalculated how best to maintain its position. Many Catholics felt that they had successfully defied the Nazi dictatorship and on the basis of this foundational myth, postwar political Catholicism started out brimming with self-confidence. Pope Pius XII smoothed the way for democracy, as defined by the Allies, in a December 1944 radio address, distancing himself from the Church’s previous official indifference to all state forms. Democracy, the Pope declared as the Western Allies advanced across Western Europe, was in harmony with citizens’ dignity and freedom to a greater degree than other state forms and was therefore desired ‘by all the peoples of Europe’.4 Just five months later the Nazi dictatorship lay in ruins thanks to the Allied military campaign. Institutionally and organizationally the Catholic Church now built on old structures: parishes, deaneries and dioceses had been retained with the exception of changes resulting from the cession of territory to Poland and the division of Germany. This was a major difference from Protestantism, which could not, and had no wish, to fall back on established structures and institutions. The concordat concluded between the Vatican and the Hitler government on 20 July 1933, which had granted Catholicism a number of safeguards and privileges, remained in force in international law, guaranteeing the free practice of religion and the secrecy of confession. The Church drew on this agreement when it came to the reintroduction of confessional religious instruction in schools and in negotiations on the Church Tax. But just how the Catholic Church ought to position itself against the background of this continuity was a matter of dispute among the bishops, the key representatives of Catholic Germany. Should the Church aim to ensure the establishment of an emphatically Christian state, one enshrined in the new polity’s constitution? Or was the goal to support a fundamentally secular state order – but one in which Christians were guaranteed wide-ranging opportunities to pursue their vision of how society ought to be organized and structured? This debate came to a head during consultations on the Basic Law. A number of bishops called on the Church to reject it for failing to enshrine core Catholic demands. But under the leadership of Josef Frings, Cologne cardinal and spokesman of the Bishops’ Conference, and the prelate Wilhelm Böhler, who had been appointed key Church contact for the Parliamentary Council (Parlamentarischer Rat) by the Fulda Bishops’ Conference, it was a pragmatic approach that held sway. Frings and Böhler ensured that the Catholic episcopate refrained from

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opposing the constitution, something the two churchmen achieved in significant part through highly effective lobbying. Through personal contacts, local and regional Catholic committees, large-scale press and letter-writing campaigns and even statements by the Bishops’ Conference, they managed to get many Catholic positions accepted without them being emphatically enshrined in the constitution.5 After 1945 and in subsequent years the sense of disorientation was initially greater within Protestantism, the experience of dictatorship and war having challenged the governmental and religious system that it had formerly embraced. Since the Reformation the Protestant Church had been able to rely on an at least neutral but usually benign regime and even during the period of the petty states ‘throne’ and ‘altar’ had generally stood cheek by jowl. By the time of the Empire at the latest, they had become even more tightly entwined, to the point that ‘Protestant and German, throne and altar, imperial rule, German Empire and Protestantism … [were] increasingly identified with one another’.6 Despite national defeat and the abdication of the monarch in 1918, Church and state remained close and around 80 per cent of clergy maintained their highly authoritarian stance and German national sympathies even during the Weimar Republic.7 This close connection with the state limited any urge for independent political representation, while attempts to establish an emphatically Protestant party within the political system of the Weimar Republic either quickly ran aground or merely produced small splinter parties. These initial conditions meant that after the Second World War, unlike Catholics, Protestants were unable to build on pre-existing structures and political parties. Instead there was a need to fundamentally redefine Protestantism’s relationship to politics. In theologicalecclesiastic terms as well, Protestantism lacked the basis of a unified Church that might have brought all Protestants together. In theological terms Protestantism’s closeness to the state was grounded in Martin Luther’s two kingdoms doctrine, which defined both Church and state as ruled by God. In his 1532 tract ‘On Secular Authority. How Far Does the Obedience Owed to it Extend?’, the reformer had emphasized the Christian’s obligation to the authorities without developing his ideas into a full-blown ethics of political conduct. But the text’s subsequent reception strongly underlined the idea that Christians must accept the existing temporal order as God-given and take their lead from it. It was not until Protestantism had to come to terms with National Socialism that Dietrich Bonhoeffer broke with this line of thought and showed that it was in fact quite possible to use Luther’s doctrine to criticize the authorities. But under Nazism he was unable to make much impact.

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Organize, Standardize, Romanticize • 47

During the National Socialist era the Protestant mentality continued to privilege government and state within and beyond the ecclesiopolitical camps that quickly emerged from 1933 onwards. The pro-Nazi German Christians (Deutsche Christen or DC), a group close to imperial bishop Ludwig Müller (who took office in September 1933), couched their arguments in terms of the two kingdoms doctrine, declaring that Christians should self-evidently obey imperial chancellor Adolf Hitler as the legitimate representative of the state.8 And rather than working to oppose enforced conformity (Gleichschaltung) in politics and society, the Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche or BK), which had been established in opposition to the German Christians, focused on defending the Church against encroachment by the state. Prominent theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller founded the Pastors’ Emergency League (Pfarrernotbund) as a core element of the BK in response to the so-called Aryan paragraphs. On 6 and 7 September 1933 the Old Prussian Synod, which was dominated by the German Christians, resolved that the ‘Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service’ issued by the Nazi government should apply to Church offices, and as a consequence Jews baptized as Christians were dismissed from positions within the Church. It was against these and other measures that the BK’s resistance was directed. Convinced that the Church was strictly tied to scripture and tradition, its supporters saw it as their duty to defend the Church against political and especially National Socialist influence or appropriation. The resistance put up by the Confessing Church thwarted the Protestant Church’s total co-optation by the Nazi state as pursued by the DC. On the level of the parishes and in the regional Churches, many religious societies and confessional communities resisted the pressures emanating from the dictatorship. The German Christians’ organizational strength rapidly diminished due to internal disputes, leaving it with a membership of around 2,000 pastors in 1934. The Confessing Church, meanwhile, enjoyed the support of 7,000. The broad middle of the Protestant Church, however, was affiliated to neither of these ecclesio-political camps. But in terms of power politics the German Christians gained the upper hand in 1933 with the support of the Nazi movement. Following the establishment of a Protestant Imperial Church, at the synodal elections of 23 July 1933 the German Christians achieved a two-thirds majority and occupied key Church offices. The regional Churches’ key organs and synods had now lost all distance from the state; only in the Lutheran regional Churches of Württemberg, Bavaria and Hanover were the bishops not ‘German Christians’.

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After the war these realities were still very much in people’s minds and formed the experiential background against which the Protestant Church sought to reorient itself. How should it respond to this recent past? How could the Church avoid finding itself ‘powerless’ against the state in future? The reorganization of the Protestant Church in Germany, then, touched on far more than just the organizational and practical dimension: it was bound up with central theological issues and principles. Prominent Protestant theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Helmut Thielicke and others had already called for an end to traditional Church and congregational life before the end of the war. In their view, as an ‘institution of salvation’ the Church had succumbed to bureaucratic structures that had led to ‘juridification, objectification and above all depersonalization’.9 For reform-minded critics it was chiefly the consistories – the regional Churches’ core administrative organs – that embodied this malformation; they saw the Church primarily as a community of brothers and sisters congregating around the Gospel10 and felt that these small circles and groups should now move to the centre of Church life. Such vibrant communities could function autonomously, avoiding any return to dependence on political movements or state authorities. Theologically, these and other ideas developed by the Councils of Brethren and those close to them were often anchored in the ‘kingship of Jesus Christ’ model formulated by Karl Barth, which was adopted by the Confessing Church in its Barmen Theological Declaration of 1934: because Christ rules without qualification, the political sphere has no claim to absolute independence. Like all other fields of life, the polity comes under divine law, so human law and the state must take their lead from it. The Church is thus political in the sense that it seeks to reconfigure the earthly state on the model of the heavenly one.11 Karl Barth had formulated his ideas on the ‘kingship of Christ’ in opposition to the National Socialist regime and in this context his theology did much to arm the Church spiritually against Nazi encroachments and impositions. But in the new political environment after 1945 these ideas could provide no spiritual model for the relationship between state and Church. Neither the theology of the ‘kingship of Christ’ nor the two kingdoms doctrine smoothed the way theologically into the emerging democracy. The difficulties to which these theologies gave rise are evident in light of the contentious debates on the establishment of the Christian Democratic Union (Christlich Demokratische Union or CDU). Was it legitimate to found a party that saw itself as emphatically Christian? Naturally, this was rejected by

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Organize, Standardize, Romanticize • 49

theologians associated with the Councils of Brethren, who took their lead from the thought of Karl Barth. In their view the Church must not be part of the political field but must instead act politically from a distance. But even Lutheran theologian Walter Künneth, who framed his arguments in light of the two kingdoms doctrine, could only approve of the Christian Democratic Union as a ‘stopgap measure’.12 The various theological schools thus offered no easy way into the West German state and its party-based democracy. As a result Protestantism tended to work out its approach to the West German political system on the basis of practical experience.13 In organizational and institutional terms virtually none of the radical but vague plans put forward by the Church renewers in the Councils of Brethren were implemented. Quite the reverse: the approach that the Church ultimately took was that advocated by, among others, Württemberg regional bishop Theophil Wurm, who believed that the Church ought to build on prewar Protestantism. What Wurm proposed was not restoration but the comprehensive replacement of personnel in the Church authorities and parochial leadership positions. But Wurm was entirely opposed to sacrificing the structures of the Protestant Church preserved under National Socialism to the theological and organizational demands of Martin Niemöller and other representatives of the left-wing Protestant minority. The prospect of achieving a compromise within the spectrum of Protestant opinion was also impeded in another sense. The Lutheran Churches sought to re-establish the old structures, which provided for a Church under the leadership of a bishop with a strong emphasis on the spiritual office and no lay participation through synods. Efforts in this vein by the regional Churches of Bavaria, Württemberg, Hanover and Saxony to establish a Lutheran Church federation were thwarted only with difficulty in favour of the Protestant Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland or EKiD, later EKD). When it created this body, the 1945 conference of Church leaders in Treysa in northern Hesse, which set the tone for the Church’s future organization, was far more focused on re-establishing old forms than creating new ones. What ultimately happened may be described as a ‘change of government within the old system’:14 the regional Churches and the unifying approach they espoused again took precedence over the Councils of Brethren, though the majority of regional leadership positions were now occupied by members of the Confessing Church. And yet the question – posed so often by contemporaries and throughout the history of the Church – of whether this was a new beginning or a restoration of the status quo ante leaves the most important

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issues untouched. This imagined contrast presupposes two things. The great majority of Protestants underwent an astonishing transformation. Their emphatic orientation towards the nation and the powers that be, as found particularly in the Lutheran regional Churches, was a considerable ‘nondemocratic historical legacy’. Subjects were obliged to recognize the ‘representative of state authority’ as sovereign. The significance and legitimacy of this representative was drawn from its anchorage in God and was therefore independent of the will of the citizenry. At first glance this conception contravenes every notion of democracy.15 In practice, however, this stance had a stabilizing effect. The lingering echoes of the two kingdoms doctrine suggested to many Protestants that they ought to recognize the constitutional organs of West Germany as legitimate, integrate themselves into the new state and participate within this framework. This attitude undoubtedly helped consolidate representative democracy.16 The other strand of Protestantism, the Councils of Brethren and the Confessing Church, also helped shape the political culture of West Germany in important ways. Certainly, the new models of selforganization discussed within the Protestant Church in the post-Nazi era had no immediate impact. But this period saw the beginning of a longterm internal debate featuring frequent calls for the reform of Church institutions. Alternative visions of Church and politics, then, were always present, emphasizing a grass-roots Church, strong lay participation and the freedom of the individual to resist institutional rules and regulations. The rearmament of West Germany, the founding of the West German army (Bundeswehr), the issue of German reunification – virtually every political debate in the early days of West Germany triggered the airing of these visions and the associated political ideals. They took on new importance by the late 1960s at the latest, when Protestantism became highly politicized. The deep chasms between the various ecclesio-political and theological factions led to a broad range of opinion within the Protestant Church. The EKD thus spoke less often with one voice than the Catholic Church on political and social issues. The West German Catholicism of the 1950s was not monolithic either – quite the opposite – but the Roman magisterium permitted no fundamental theological or ideological differences and the fairly solid structures of political and social Catholicism conveyed an image of cohesion to the outside world. The representatives of both confessions were imbued with a strong sense of self-confidence. Borne up by a widespread euphoric sense of re-Christianization, they sought to make a major contribution to the structure of the new polity. The basis for this attitude was the

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Organize, Standardize, Romanticize • 51

assumption, shared by Catholics and Protestants, that they had successfully resisted the multiple pressures and strains of National Socialism, and as self-proclaimed victors over the dictatorship they now saw themselves occupying a position of strength. This attitude not only meant evading their own susceptibility to the Nazi movement but also fostered a tendency to overstate their potential contribution to Germany’s political restructuring.17

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Religion in the Emerging West Germany: The ‘Halting Separation’ of Church and State One important milestone on the way to the foundation of the Federal Republic was the preparatory work carried out on the Basic Law and state constitutions. A number of Church leaders were determined that the associated documents would embed the objective of reChristianization, and both the Protestant and Catholic Churches thus sought to influence consultations in the states and the activities of the Parliamentary Council. In initial drafts of what was to become the Basic Law, just one of twenty articles touched on the Churches’ concerns, namely the issue of religious education in schools. Unsurprisingly neither the CDU as a Christian party nor Church representatives were content with this. At the very least, the ‘constitutional safeguarding of parental rights in the field of education and schooling and the preservation of life and physical integrity’ should also be acknowledged, as EKD chair Theophil Wurm wrote to the Parliamentary Council.18 The so-called right of co-decision for parents was a political demand that was to become highly significant in the subsequent debates. Parents, both the Catholic and Protestant Church demanded, should be able to determine their child’s spiritual and above all religious path. In practical terms Church representatives encouraged their members to call for Catholic or Protestant schools for their offspring, the objective being a comprehensive system of confessional schools guaranteed by the state. Of similar significance was the Churches’ demand that the planned constitution enshrine their right to a role in public life. Both confessional Churches did in fact manage to attain a privileged position within the West German political system on both the state and federal level. The Weimar constitution, which served as the informing framework for the creators of the new Basic Law, had already described the state-Church relationship in terms of a well-ordered bifurcation of worldly polity and legally independent religious associations. West

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Germany thus declined to define itself as a laicist state featuring a strict separation of state and Church, and the framers of the new constitution drew as far as possible on the Weimar constitution, incorporating the Weimar articles 136 to 139 and 141 into article 140 of the Basic Law, thus guaranteeing basic religious freedom, the ideological neutrality of the state and fundamental self-determination for all religious communities.19 Religious practice continued to be understood as a public matter that the state must safeguard but whose content it could not influence in any way. In particular, the Churches’ status as public corporations undoubtedly granted them ‘a variety of benefits, if not political privileges, vis-à-vis other groupings within a plural society’.20 Both at the time and in later decades this constellation was described as the ‘halting separation’ of state and Church.21 This starting point laid the groundwork for cooperation in specific fields. Particularly in the school system but also in the field of charity, special regulations placed the Churches on the same level as public office holders. Christian holidays were protected by the state; in the states, confessional religious education was made a regular subject in schools. The state universities maintained theological faculties under Church guidance, while the Churches could found their own universities. With the foundation of the West German army, both Christian Churches were legally guaranteed responsibility for pastoral care in the armed forces and this was also realized in practice. Church representatives were granted seats and votes on the state broadcasting authorities and on the commissions of enquiry and ethics councils established by the government. In political practice the new legal regulations put structural parameters in place granting certain religious communities a privileged position, and this involved making them non-state corporations and endowing them with public responsibilities.22 Though every religious community can achieve this status under certain conditions, within the political culture of early West Germany the focus was on ensuring cooperation between the state and the Catholic and Protestant Churches. One important aspect of this arrangement was the Church Tax. To this day the Christian religious communities in Germany are considered particularly wealthy in international comparison. In addition to properties and donations, their wealth derives mainly from the German system of Church Tax. The Basic Law, adopted on 23 May 1949, upheld the Churches’ right to raise taxes on the basis of the civil tax list. Religious communities that achieved the status of corporation could now raise a tax, which – subject to a fee – was collected by the state finance authorities and deducted directly from employees’ wages.

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This established a form of Church Tax collection that guaranteed a substantial and continuous flow of revenue at times of strong economic growth. Of course, other forms of finance would also have filled Church coffers, such as a contribution paid directly by the faithful or a collection system. But the contemporary debate already highlighted the quantitative differences: the automatic collection of taxes could be expected to produce a regular and markedly higher income. The decision to adopt a system of state-organized Church Tax not only brought in more money but also had consequences for how the Church saw itself institutionally and theologically. In a system in which parishes receive funds directly from the faithful, the latter are more involved in how their money is spent. Market mechanisms also come into play: when the faithful are content, Church income rises. If consciously paid as a Church levy, a direct contribution to the financing of parochial life can even strengthen people’s ties to the Church. A system of Church Tax collection tightly linked to the state and administrative system did not have this effect. The individual did not consciously decide to support the religious community to which he belonged; the tax was raised automatically as long as the individual did not consciously choose to leave the Church. The procedure adopted thus lent bureaucratic and state support to Church structures and in many cases helped preserve them in both practical and financial terms. From the perspective of contemporaries and in light of their experience with National Socialism, this arrangement gave pause for thought in another respect as well. Should the collection of the Church Tax really be left to the state, making the Churches dependent on it? Should the Church not regulate its financial affairs itself, denying the state any prospect of grabbing the Church ‘by the throat’ and bending it to its will?23 In principle it was also an open question whether the parishes themselves rather than an intermediate authority such as a consistory ought to receive the Church Tax. This would have been in line with the conception of the Church favoured by the Councils of Brethren, which placed the parishes centre stage. Ultimately, however, it was a centralized organizational form that prevailed, with funds initially going to the regional Churches or dioceses before being distributed. This was justified chiefly on pragmatic grounds, such as avoiding the costs of a separate Church system for raising and collecting taxes. But it undoubtedly created a power gap between central administration and local parishes.24 The regulations initially adopted were subsequently adapted in various ways but remained largely intact.25 Even when the two German states were reunified, the East German model of direct Church funding was abolished in favour

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of the West German arrangement. As critics note, the almost total lack of a ‘People’s Church’ in the five states of the former GDR make an alternative funding method seem like an obvious choice.26 From the early 1960s until the middle of the next decade, the economic boom and inflation ensured that the Churches had more money than ‘Scrooge McDuck’, in the words of Church historian and contemporary witness Wolf-Dieter Hauschild in allusion to the avian tycoon from Duckburg.27 The immediate postwar decades saw a particularly intense phase of church building. ‘A new church every fortnight’, as Cardinal Joseph Frings proudly summed things up on New Year’s Eve 1959.28 In his archdiocese of Cologne, around 40 per cent of the budget, and no less than 67 per cent in the archdiocese of Munich-Freising, was used for the reconstruction or construction of churches.29 Later the money was used to employ a large number of personnel. The Church attempted to respond to those groups identified as the new targets of pastoral care through community and special pastoral services and bespoke institutions on the intermediate level.30 ‘Many innovative activities were instigated and institutionalized because there was plenty of money that somehow had to be put to sensible use’, as Wolf-Dieter Hauschild concludes.31 Both developments allowed the Churches to develop a wide array of activities and make a major impact on society. In two respects, however, this financial abundance became a burden: in both Churches, critical voices often questioned whether such affluence was compatible with the commission of the Gospel.32 The system of Church funding was also repeatedly called into question from outside the Churches.33 In a tangible sense, the wealth characteristic of the Church from the early 1960s until the 1980s became an Achilles’ heel as a result of shrinking budgets in the 1990s. ‘Financial crisis’, as Hauschild observes, has since become ‘the most-discussed subject in the institutional life of Protestantism’.34 If we look at the Catholic dioceses of Cologne, Munich-Freising and Limburg, there has been an ever-growing chasm between income and outgoings since the mid 1970s. The initial cause was the recession throughout West Germany in the second half of the decade and the lowering of the Church Tax rate from 10 to 9 per cent. In the following years, however, personnel and material costs grew exponentially so that income from the Church Tax no longer covered running costs. While state support, donations and interest income initially made up the shortfall, since 2000 underfunding has become a structural problem of great concern to the Church leadership.35 Overall, West Germany certainly did not become any kind of clerical state. But tensions and problems remained. In 1951, Protestant constitutional and Church lawyer Rudolf Smend described the

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innovations that had occurred despite comprehensive recourse to the articles of the Weimar constitution. The relationship between Church and state had ‘irrevocably and unmistakably’ entered into a new phase against the background of the Nazi experience. From a Church perspective, he stated, the Church had re-emphasized its independence and detached itself from the state. The state, meanwhile, had failed to clearly define its position vis-à-vis the Churches. The legislature had believed it could brush aside this problem through the ‘necessarily compromise-based Bonn constitution’.36 According to Smend, the Churches’ freedoms had thus been guaranteed but without defining their ‘simultaneous, fundamental limitation by state sovereignty’. The conferral of the status of public corporation and thus the acknowledgement of the Churches’ public aspirations had occurred merely in a positivist and formal sense. ‘Only a substantive definition of the character of the state including its self-evidently presupposed self-limitation, particularly with regard to the Church, can determine the legal position of, and place healthy limits on, the fundamental legal situation of the Church vis-à-vis the state in present and past’.37 The debate on article 140 that Smend called for did not take place – a debate that would according to him have helped West Germany ‘regain a critically cleansed and thus justifiable and viable foundation for discussing all disputes been state and Church’. A new and practicable relationship of association and demarcation between state and Church thus developed on a more practical basis. The young West Germany had given itself an institutional order that integrated the Church into important spheres of society. ‘With their still high degree of religiosity, both major Churches [were] respected and influential institutions with responsibilities in every sphere of society’38 and in the political culture of the 1950s relations between state and Churches were mostly free of tension. Only at the margins did individuals or small groups question this setup: in general their relationship was regarded as appropriate and correct. To this day West Germany is a ‘religion-friendly state’ and continues to demonstrate this in the special place it grants to the two major Christian Churches.39 With increasing political and religious pluralization, however, this arrangement is coming under scrutiny. How can the state guarantee the freedom and equal treatment of the various religious groups under pluralized conditions?40 Today adherents of Islam make up the third largest religious group in Germany. In 2000 around 3.5 million Muslims lived there, with only 10 per cent of them having German citizenship. For this large group the system of ‘halting separation’ of Church and state provides no access: it

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is denied the status of public corporation because Muslims in Germany have no central religious organization, stipulated by the legislator as a precondition for this status. Within Islam itself the divinely focused legal tradition clashes with the separation between religion and law and between Church and state as practised in Germany.41

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Deconfessionalization and Pluralization: Christians in Society, Politics and Political Parties Between the end of National Socialism and the establishment of democratic practices there was a phase of ‘fermentation’ in which West Germany had to overcome state and societal authoritarianism and habituate itself to democracy.42 The Allies laid down the formal institutions of democracy, press freedom, approval of political parties and above all the gradual expansion of German self-administration, starting at the local level, building up to the federal structures and finally encompassing the national government. This framework had still to be brought to life, and this was associated with significant difficulties. The first priority was to overcome widespread political apathy and passivity. The forms of parliamentary democracy, moreover, were by no means always accepted. Studies of ‘civic culture’ in Germany, particularly those carried out by American social scientists, revealed a discrepancy between formal participation in democratic rituals such as elections and a strong internal rejection of democracy as a whole.43 As late as 1960, in one of the major surveys of religion, 82 per cent of both Protestants and Catholics stated that they were unwilling to join a political party.44 This finding shows that for many Germans the state as an ensemble still stood above the parties, which were felt to clash with the ideal of a conflict-free society.45 Political parties, however, as later federal president Gustav Heinemann stated, are not ‘ideological communities’ but ‘vehicles for realizing political goals’, and he consistently made the case for a pragmatic but participatory approach to democracy. ‘From now on the government is to be our servant rather than our master. We all bear responsibility for its nature and decisions’, emphasized Heinemann, founder of the All-German People’s Party (Gesamtdeutsche Volkspartei).46 Adenauer’s chancellorship shows the tension inherent within the democratization project: the Catholic from the Rhineland cultivated a ‘semi-authoritarian’ style of governance.47 Through his personal authority and negotiating skills he united multiple competencies

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in the office of chancellor, diminishing the significance of other constitutional offices.48 This style of governing had an unintended but important effect. Those who continued to call for a strong leader felt satisfied with Chancellor Adenauer and before long he was regarded by both critics and supporters as a ‘bourgeois ersatz emperor’.49 The Adenauer government persuaded those sceptical of the form of the West German state that a results-oriented and vigorous politics was possible under democratic conditions. And it embraced a values-based conservatism on many issues. Upholding the traditional family, integrating the Churches into the education system – was the democratic state helping to realize a Christian vision of society? This notion helped change attitudes, making the new state form acceptable to groups previously hostile to democracy and thus modernizing society under conservative auspices. With respect to the confessions, Catholics saw the gruff Rhinelander as one of their own, while Protestants could point to his ‘emphatically ecumenical and entirely “unclerical”’ politics.50 But overcoming religiously based reservations about the democratic state was just one of the tasks facing German society. The competition between the Christian Churches continued to deeply mould the political culture of West Germany and confessional affiliation was an inescapable variable within both the political sphere and everyday culture. The socalled Ochsenfurt Incident symbolized this tension. On 28 June 1953 a row broke out over the planned consecration of the country’s largest sugar factory in Ochsenfurt, Lower Franconia. Initially Catholics and Protestants had held separate church services. Afterwards Catholic bishop Julius Döpfner and Protestant regional dean Wilhelm Schwinn were to jointly consecrate the factory. The programme coordinators had overlooked the explosive nature of the planned joint consecration: in any case, they had done nothing that might have defused the situation. The bishop declared that he could undertake no act of consecration if the Protestant cleric was present in his cassock and also intended to consecrate the factory. The dean then cancelled his participation with great indignation. The incident could not be kept from the attendees, since the blessing by the Protestant cleric had been included in the programme. The Gnostadt mounted escort, which was supposed to accompany the Protestant dean, grew almost riotous and had to be calmed down; the bishop’s entrance was accompanied by vociferous protests and a Protestant CDU Bundestag deputy loudly warned of consequences.51 The Ochsenfurt Incident was not just a provincial farce that gave full reign to the conceits of clerical dignitaries. The press attention this incident garnered is itself testimony to the fact that it

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touched on a more profound tension extending deep into West German political culture.52 Just how strongly this tension was anchored in politics and the administrative system is evident in a dispute from the mid 1950s that clearly went beyond the regional level. In a 1955 polemic, political scientist Thomas Ellwein, later doyen of the administrative sciences, condemned the ‘clericalism of German politics’. His point of departure was a Catholic-Protestant dispute over key posts within the Federal Defence Ministry. Were Catholic employees being systematically favoured for promotion as Hanoverian regional bishop Hanns Lilje publicly complained on 9 October 1955? In response, the Defence Ministry published a list detailing the ratio between the confessions among its employees. Could or should affiliation to a religious community, a liberal public sphere now asked, be a criterion for appointment to high office?53 As Ellwein asked in 1955, in light of overall conditions, had Germany – ten years after the war – still not managed to ‘develop ideas on how the different worldviews might “cohabit” that point the way forward and apply to all’?54 The dispute over appointments to high office peaked with Ellwein’s intervention and the associated public debate. But the confessional factor was palpable in many other political and social fields as well. The debate on the best approach to organizing schools was long focused chiefly on the establishment of faith schools for both confessions. Discussions surrounding the founding of the German army and the associated rearming of West Germany were pervaded by religious arguments, as was the issue of nuclear weapons. Even the German question was discussed from a strongly confessional perspective: various Protestant groupings advocated rapid reunification and thus possible concessions to the GDR or Soviet Union. The chancellor’s policy of integration with the West, meanwhile, constantly aroused suspicions that for confessional reasons the Catholic Adenauer was less concerned with the fate of the Protestant brothers and sisters in the east. Beyond the German question the political field was pervaded by religious and especially confessional tensions. Liberal, social democratic and Protestant voices were repeatedly raised in protest at Catholics’ alleged power grab. As early as 1950 Kurt Schumacher referred to the Catholic Church as the ‘fifth occupying power’ in West Germany and to Europe as a ‘conservative, clerical, capitalist and cartel-like’ league of states.55 Liberal Thomas Dehler seconded him, referring to a ‘Vatican Europe’; and in a memorandum for the EKD leadership, Protestant theologian and Church official Heinrich Bornkamm warned against the advance of Catholicism in Germany and internationally, which

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was occurring in four ways: territorially, politically, spiritually and biologically. Even the CDU, Bornkamm remarked, was ‘under obvious or tacit Catholic leadership’ and many of the Catholics within it viewed it as the ‘contemporary continuation of the old Centre Party’. The AllGerman People’s Party, founded in 1952 around former minister of the interior Gustav Heinemann, was essentially based on ‘pan-GermanProtestant resentment’ against an allegedly Catholic West Germany.56 The politics and society of the 1950s were strongly moulded by religious motifs and particularly by the basic tension between the confessions. By the 1960s, however, the confessional factor was no longer making such an impact and subsequent decades stand out as quite different from the early period of West Germany. Various factors and learning processes were responsible for this shift. On the level of lifeworlds and everyday culture the mental and emotional barriers between the confessions palpably diminished. One key indicator here is the increasing number of so-called ‘mixed marriages’. It was long considered reprehensible for a Catholic and Protestant to marry and this aversion found expression in the term ‘mixed marriage’ itself. It was only in the mid 1970s that the less discriminatory term ‘marriage between different confessions’ gained ground. In the 1950s in particular the bishops were concerned about the ‘rate of mixed marriages’, since minimizing them was evidence of their own pastoral success. The Protestant Church Yearbook from 1953 warned that every fourth marriage was of a confessionally mixed nature.57 The ‘mixed marriage’ was just one sign of a change that was not widely discussed by contemporaries but was certainly noted at the margins: ever fewer Christians accepted the warnings of their Church superiors to do their utmost to choose a partner from their own confession. As early as 1951 registry offices had recorded 171,000 marriages between two Catholic partners and 109,000 marriages between individuals of a different confession. According to calculations by the pastoral offices, the rate of mixed confessional marriages thus stood at 64 per cent. This share stabilized in the first third of the 1950s, but then rose from 1958 and dramatically from 1962. In 1965, the rate of mixed confessional marriages stood at 79.6 per cent and at 88.5 per cent in 1970, dramatic testimony to the progressive decline in the consciousness of confessional boundaries in everyday life. Opinion polls lend additional support to this interpretation: in a 1960 survey 42 per cent of Protestants and 56 per cent of Catholics were in favour of the amalgamation of their confessions into ‘a single Christian Church’.58 Such findings show how misguided it would be to assume a pronounced confessional consciousness.

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When making up their minds about political issues ever fewer Germans took their lead from the Christian faith, let alone a particular confession. A number of obvious explanations suggest themselves: the social milieus associated with the Churches were increasingly melting away and the bond between hierarchy and laity was loosening, while political views within the religious communities were moving closer to the spectrum of political beliefs within society as a whole. It was not just anonymous processes of modernization that brought about this shift; particularly on the level of the political parties we find active forces fostering deconfessionalization and pluralization. In West Germany it is the Christian Democratic Union (Christlich Demokratische Union or CDU) and the regional Bavarian party the Christian Social Union (Christlich-Soziale Union or CSU) that stand out, with the CDU becoming one of the most successful political parties in postwar Europe. Like few other political alliances, for almost four decades these Christian conservative parties were able to unite most German voters behind them and their parliamentary cooperation did much to shape policies in the German Bundestag. For this reason alone the CDU played a special role with respect to the religious field among an overwhelmingly Christian population. But there is more to the links between the CDU and Christian Churches than the statistical overlap of votes in elections and a Christian populace. Both in its name and aspirations it functioned as a Christian coalition movement and over the course of the 1950s the CDU developed into a party that was not only a respectable but also an attractive choice for voters of both confessions. For the majority of Catholics and large numbers of Protestants it became their almost natural political home. That the CDU would gain the acceptance of voters of both confessions was initially far from self-evident. The CDU’s success in the early days of West Germany was based chiefly on its ability to garner the votes of bourgeois Protestants while retaining its Catholic base and this it did through policies that were neither specifically confessional in character nor particularly Christian. As early as the 1950s and 1960s its practical, pragmatic policies often had little or nothing in common with Church positions. Nonetheless, with compromise formulae such as references to a ‘Christian worldview’, it integrated members of both confessions, binding them into the political sphere. It thus made an active contribution to binding Catholics and Protestants into the new Federal Republic and its political system and therefore to overcoming bi-confessionalism as a basic fissure of German history.59 In later decades the CDU increasingly emancipated itself from the shrinking religious communities though without abandoning its claim

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to be a Christian party. Until the 1980s the various Christian Democratic leaders successfully played the religious card with respect to key issues. These debates have now been supplanted by discussion of a putative German ‘leading culture’ in which the religious factor now appears only on the periphery. It was by no means obvious that the CDU would bring about the integration and conciliation of the two confessions. Initially Adenauer had to work to prevent the revival of the Centre Party, which, as the traditional political representative of Catholics, threatened to become a serious competitor for the CDU.60 The support of the Catholic bishops could not immediately be taken as read either. But support from a number of Catholic dignitaries such as Münster cardinal Clemens August Graf von Galen was a trump card in the political debate. Ultimately the revival of the Catholic associations also played into the hands of the CDU, with a number of lay Catholic organizations virtually becoming affiliated to the party.61 After a long struggle within the Catholic Church it came to a clear decision. The CDU now had a partner in its aggressive canvassing of Catholic voters and the majority of bishops and their various dioceses massively supported the Union in the elections of 1949 and 1953, not just through more or less open appeals to voters to support the party but also by making Church infrastructure available to it. In the diocese of Cologne alone the diocesan committee organized forty-six major rallies in various cities and sent 13,390 outline speeches and sermons, 966 letters and 650,000 leaflets to the 63 deaneries of the archdiocese.62 At the next federal election in 1953 the Centre Party was no longer a serious competitor, having declined to the status of splinter party supported by just a few Catholic regions. The alliance between Catholics and the CDU could no longer be ignored: in the impending elections Adenauer could rely on the support of the Catholic hierarchy and the majority of Catholic clubs and associations. As early as 1949 the Catholic bishops had almost unanimously backed the Union parties and urged Catholics to vote for ‘Christian-minded deputies’ in the 1949 Bundestag election.63 Very much in this vein, in early September 1953, the Central Committee of German Catholics, the highest lay organ, published its ‘Thoughts on the Bundestag Elections’. It not only reminded people of their obligation to vote but also urged them to vote ‘correctly’: ‘vote in such a way that your vote will strengthen the Christian forces’.64 This close alliance endured at least until the end of the Adenauer era, and to some extent beyond it. Through their efforts on behalf of the CDU the bishops hoped not just to support a political force far more successful than the Centre

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Party. Ideological agreement and numerous interconnections on the level of personnel promised much more, with the episcopate hoping to exercise a strong influence on politics and society via the party. That such hopes were misplaced or were never to be fulfilled in the way the Church envisaged is evident in a number of ways. The coalition with the Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei or FDP) after the 1949 election, for example, greatly displeased one of the most important Catholic political figures and right-hand man of Cardinal Frings of Cologne, the prelate Wilhelm Böhler. In a letter to the bishops he suggested that the government risked arousing the distrust of the working classes. Could Catholic social teaching, certain expressions of which had been incorporated word for word into the Christian Democrat manifesto, truly be implemented? He advised representatives of the Catholic social organizations to make a point of contacting Catholic deputies in order to ‘talk over the tasks at hand in light of Catholic social teaching’.65 One key field in which Adenauer enduringly curbed the soaring confessional ambitions of the Catholic Church and its milieu was education policy. The Centre Party had been particularly active on this issue during the Weimar Republic and, according to the united view of the episcopate and many leaders of Catholic associations, now that the war was over the Catholic character of the new republic must again shine through in its schools. This issue was already a political hot potato before the adoption of the Basic Law. While the Parliamentary Council had adopted the Weimar articles on the Church, thus guaranteeing religious education and the system of private schools, it had not enshrined ‘parental rights’, in other words the right to have one’s children attend a confessionally based school. In seeking to retain the Catholic school system, the Church leadership was fighting to maintain a ‘bulwark’ of the Catholic milieu:66 given that the preservation of Catholic schools had been subject to dispute during the Nazi dictatorship, it now seemed impossible to abandon this cause in the new West Germany. As late as 1963 Catholic and CDU family minister Franz-Josef Würmeling, who was particularly exposed on this issue, declared that any restriction on guaranteed confessional schools would result in the ‘violation of parents’ conscience by introducing compulsory nonconfessional schools’.67 Ultimately, these strenuous efforts were part of an attempt to mitigate, at least institutionally, the progressive dissolution of the confessional lifeworld. As consultations on the Basic Law proceeded, it began to seem unlikely that it would enshrine the crucial parental rights, and in January 1949 the Catholic faithful mobilized to secure them. In the

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Parliamentary Council, however, this issue had already succumbed to compromise: ‘While Catholics called for parental rights in meetings, submissions, and so on, while the organizations and associations in Cologne assembled for a rally on 30 January 1949, the Christian Democrats had already abandoned this position without consulting Church offices’.68 In line with the uncompromising demands of Church representatives such as Bishop Keller, should the episcopate now call on Catholic deputies to vote against the Basic Law? Adenauer made a point of speaking to Frings, Böhler and others, imploring them not to withhold their approval, and he ultimately got his way: the Bishops’ Conference published a position paper criticizing the fact that ‘principles indispensable to the construction of a healthy state have been disregarded’, but contented itself with this general formula.69 For the first time, Catholic dignitaries were given a tangible demonstration of the new order: the CDU was no ‘political committee’ of Catholicism as the Centre Party had been during the Weimar era. This large People’s Party had to satisfy the various interests and factions within it, placing significant limits on the Catholic Church’s influence. But the contentious confessional debates on schools were by no means over and continued to make waves throughout the 1950s, chiefly to the detriment of a group that rarely got a mention, namely the pupils themselves. The decision to uphold the principle of the confessional school led to an increase in the number of small and tiny schools, particularly in rural regions, making it virtually impossible to educate children to modern standards. ‘For Catholic Christian Democrats in particular, the goal was not to satisfy the educational or occupational demands of the modern age but to entrench the Christian worldview. Though the majority of the German population saw things differently, with a certain ideological dogmatism and a strong focus on the past this group clung to the Centre Party’s core political objectives, pointing up the CDU’s limits as what was supposedly a purely pragmatic political coalition’.70 By consciously avoiding the topic and a personnel policy that marginalized particularly avid proponents of confessional schools, the party leadership around Adenauer pursued a both pragmatic and effective course.71 The goal was to avoid offensively undermining the Catholic position while ensuring that Protestant voters were not put off by an overzealous Catholicism: in the Bundestag election campaign, on the instructions of the party leadership, party workers avoided using the schools issue to drum up support. The fact that the constitution allocated educational matters to the states made this easier for them. In its selection of personnel the CDU leadership ensured that in

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subsequent years leading posts in the ministries of education and culture were occupied by Protestant Christian Democrats or members of the other coalition party, de-emphasizing specifically Catholic ambitions within the CDU. The party thus initially embraced, then qualified and finally watered down a specific feature of Catholic politics and a key characteristic of confessional identity, namely the schools issue and the associated commitment to confessional schools. The Catholic Church’s strong support generated some vexing conflicts for Adenauer and the CDU leadership. In order to oust the Centre Party the CDU initially had to adopt emphatically Catholic positions, arousing the distrust of Protestant members and voters. In subsequent years the Catholic Church’s demonstrative support continued to cause problems, peaking in the ‘Cologne Cardinal policy’ pursued by Josef Frings, who created a tremendous stir by joining the CDU in autumn 1948. This not only raised eyebrows within the occupying authorities but also gave new impetus to Protestant distrust.72 The election campaigning by Münster bishop Michael Keller in 1957 in favour of the CDU had a similar effect. ‘The Centre Party after all’ (‘Und doch Centrum’) – this back to front reading of the CDU’s acronym articulates the view of many Germans in Protestant regions after the war, and Protestants as a whole would harbour suspicions about the CDU until the 1970s.73 But it was not just the supposed or actual supremacy of the other confession within this ‘Catholic’ party that prevented Protestants from developing a similarly unambiguous political preference. The EKD was never to run campaigns of the kind launched by the Catholic bishops in favour of the CDU and from the outset the upper echelons of German Protestantism kept their distance from the party, eager as they were to hold together the highly divergent political and ecclesio-political wings in their own ranks. A majority Protestantism of a Lutheran hue contrasted with a smaller but vociferous strand that drew most of its inspiration from the Councils of Brethren. The regional Churches, moreover, included a number of confessions: alongside the United and Reformed Churches it was the Lutherans that stood out, a grouping that had its own liberal and orthodox wing. While the majority of Protestants wished to preserve or re-establish Church structures, the minority, inspired by the Councils of Brethren, favoured an avant-garde group-based Church anchored in the parishes. The CDU tended to provide a political home for the first group. After a brief dalliance with the All-German People’s Party, the second faction tended to embrace the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands or SPD). But only the bourgeois-conservative section of Protestantism, which had rallied around High Consistory

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member Hermann Ehlers, who was elected Bundestag president in 1950, was unreservedly committed to the Christian Democrats from the outset. The CDU now began to systematically implement policies to the benefit of their Protestant members and voters and here one of their main instruments was confessional proportionality. Although never formally adopted, this approach was considered an unwritten law within Adenauer’s CDU. Since it was primarily Catholics that could win constituencies, places on the regional lists of West Germany’s system of proportional representation tended to go to Protestant candidates. When it was stipulated that regional chairs must represent the confessional majority in their state, in Schleswig-Holstein and Saarland, for example, Catholic party leaders had to give up their posts within the regional or district leadership to make way for Protestants. There were frequent discussions on whether to adopt a system of confessional proportionality to ensure that a Catholic chancellor would always be accompanied by a Protestant president and these were not limited to the highest offices of state, with many other party bodies engaging in similar debates. In 1952 the Protestant Working Group (Evangelischer Arbeitskreis or EAK) was established within the CDU as a sub-organization tasked with promoting Protestant concerns. In his memoirs, Christian Democrat education minister of BadenWürttemberg Wilhelm Hahn emphasized that the goal of this initiative was to ‘translate, indeed transform, the language of the CDU such that it had no need to walk on eggshells in the manner of the Centre Party and was compatible with the ideas of Protestant ethics’.74 Overall, the Working Group did not succeed in developing emphatically Protestant policies. But it did manage to ensure the appointment of numerous Protestant personnel and demonstrated by its very existence that Protestant concerns were dear to the heart of the CDU.75 Impossible though it is to precisely delimit one cause from another, it is fair to say that other factors were also crucial to the integration of Protestants and Catholics and the decline of a confessional mindset. The CDU made an ideological offer to its members and voters that levelled off confessional peculiarities and here it was anti-communism that formed the most important bridge between the confessions. ‘Why are you in the CDU?’, asked an early Christian Democrat leaflet. The answer: ‘We’re in the CDU because during the war we saw exactly what was happening in the Bolshevist East: materialistic, deadened people, mere tools of Bolshevism … We see a great danger in this that can only be banished by a large Christian Democrat block of all the peoples of Europe’.76 The united front against the East – represented chiefly by the Soviet Union but occasionally by the leaders of the GDR

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– not only united Protestants and Catholics but was also a major factor in integrating other citizens into the new state. Confessional and other differences receded behind this widely perceived confrontation. The early Federal Republic and the CDU/CSU as governing party highlighted the contrast between the threat from the East and ‘ChristianWestern civilization’, a phrase that not only represented an ideological position in the fight against communism but also the common ground between the CDU/CSU and the Churches. Since it was free of specifically confessional content both Catholics and Protestants could rally around this verbal formula.77 Adenauer himself constantly underlined that he formulated policy not in light of a confessional mindset but in the spirit of a ‘Christian worldview’. This umbrella term and the associated slogans were so open and vague that they could encompass highly divergent views and beliefs. Humanism, democracy, social responsibility – these catch-all terms were meaningful only against the background of Cold War culture, bound up as they were with vehement anti-socialism and an even more pronounced anti-communism. These and other ‘programmatic compromise formulae’, which Adenauer developed together with his closest advisers, did much to integrate Christians of differing confessions. This approach only rarely sparked serious protest – though for CDU members who wished to pursue a specifically religious or even confessional style of politics this levelling-off of the party’s aspirations was sometimes a bitter pill to swallow. Otto Schmidt, founder of the Wuppertal CDU, who resigned from the regional association over these issues in 1946 while publicly airing his criticisms, is one of the exceptions that prove the rule.78 The lack of a Christian profile also prompted Protestant politicians such as Gustav Heinemann and Theodore Steltzer, whose priority was to turn Christianity into practical policies, to leave the CDU. In the Catholic camp it was left-wing Catholics such as Walter Dirks who quickly recognized that there was no place for them in the party. Despite his prominent public profile as founder of the Frankfurt CDU district association, Dirks quickly distanced himself from the party, disputing that it had any right to present itself as the ‘party with a capital C’ in its name, suggesting that it ought to be replaced with a K for ‘konservativ’.79 But these and similar voices were few and far between and it was the CDU that integrated the majority of Christians into the West German political sphere. First and foremost, then, CDU policies towards the Churches defused the competition between the confessions. Despite the often scathing accusations and insinuations that typified relations between Protestants and Catholics in the CDU, the conflicts between them

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generally had few major consequences. Adenauer and the CDU leadership skilfully moderated these disputes, ensuring that attempts to emphasize confessional issues came to nothing.80 During Adenauer’s time in office and into the 1960s, distrust flared up on many occasions, but this was increasingly defused by religion’s declining importance within society as a whole. When the Adenauer era came to an end disputes over confessional proportionality had not vanished entirely but confessional particularism made increasingly little impact on the political debate, and was increasingly supplanted by disputes over regional proportionality. Catholic leaders and the faithful had positioned themselves well within this political constellation. To avoid putting the CDU’s success at risk, Catholics mostly expressed criticisms internally rather than publicly. This tended to tone down vehemently Catholic views, which gave way to a focus on achieving consensus. The transformation that occurred among those sections of Protestant conservatism that had found a political home within the CDU was even more pronounced: invocation of the ‘West’, political romanticism, hostility to democracy, nationalism, contempt for political parties, the insistence on a special, positively understood German path – if they did not disappear completely, these characteristics, so essential to the Protestant conservative self-image, tended to recede into the background. Leading representatives of this faction now saw themselves and the German nation explicitly as part of a Western community of values that must be defended against communism.81 Once again, the sharp edges of confessional peculiarity were smoothed down in favour of a more general political profile. The ‘democratic but authoritarian leadership of Adenauer and the “Christian” Union, as the strongest governing party, [facilitated] a belated, mild shift away from the mentality of political romanticism as the dominant Protestant view of politics’.82 As a result national-Protestant peculiarities diminished, and the basic convictions and ways of life so central to the Catholic milieu lost much of their particularity. The CDU’s confessional character had disappeared, at the latest, when it transitioned into a People’s Party, opened itself up to new voter segments and broke away from the Adenauer system. This development was in conformity with general trends: here as well, the political but above all economic success of the West German state broke down boundaries. Individuals’ perception broadened, and an awareness of identity was increasingly detached from membership of a religious community, diminishing the significance of confessional affiliation to people’s attitudes and conduct. This benefited the political culture of West Germany, as it encouraged the Churches and their members to integrate themselves into a consensus-

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based democracy – an important step in the country’s Westernization. And yet a confessional consciousness was constitutive of the religious field as it developed in the postwar era. To the extent that the CDU dissolved the tension between these facts through the comprehensive, crucial and rather meaningless term ‘Christian worldview’, it helped – quite against Konrad Adenauer’s intentions – to minimize the potency of religion.83 Rather than being answered in the affirmative or negative, the question of West Germany’s confessional character was simply no longer asked. The fact that tensions flared up now and then in the course of German unification, this time with prominent Catholics asking whether Germany was once again becoming ‘Eastern and Protestant’, is testimony to two things:84 these stereotypes had become entrenched among sections of the political elite but found little resonance beyond them and they proved unproductive both in election campaigns and in debates within the parties. For the majority of Germans, these images and caricatures were and are entirely irrelevant. Nonetheless, the early period of the Federal Republic continues to shape Germany’s political culture. The old debate on confessional proportionality is occasionally rekindled when individuals are appointed to key offices of state, as in March 2012 when Protestant pastor Joachim Gauck was elected president. At least within the CDU concerns were raised that in addition to Protestant chancellor Angela Merkel, the highest office of state was now occupied by a committed Protestant. Election research shows that voting behaviour is still determined partly by religious affiliation: at the first Bundestag election, of 100 Catholic voters 47 opted for the CDU/CSU, 29 for the SPD, 8 for the FDP and 5 for the Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands or KPD). Among Protestant voters the figures were 26 for the CDU/CSU, 39 for the SPD, 17 for the FDP and 8 for the KPD. A large number of Protestant voters thus lent their support to avowedly laicist parties. ‘As early as 1948/49 there was a discrepancy within Protestantism between Church office-holders’ guiding sociopolitical ideals and party political preferences and the views of the great majority of Protestants, a gap significantly more pronounced than in the case of Catholicism’.85 In the early 1950s even conservative Protestant circles still had major reservations about the CDU. The party seemed too Catholic-social and too Rhenish-West German; outside its heartlands it established itself as a major party only in the Catholic regions on the Rhine and Ruhr. While the party still attracts a preponderance of Catholic voters, it has managed to overcome its previous limitations and increasingly appeals to bourgeois-conservative Protestants. By the time of the second Bundestag election on 6 September 1953 the share

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of Protestant votes for the CDU had climbed to 34 per cent, which was surpassed at the third election in 1957 with no less than 41 per cent.86 The CDU leadership’s strategy for integrating the two confessional groups had proved successful. The voters saw little problem in the CDU’s interconfessionalism. At the Bundestag election of 1953, despite internal spats over confessions, the CDU/CSU was highly successful, obtaining 243 seats in the Bundestag with 45.2 per cent of votes. The All-German People’s Party, meanwhile, presenting itself as the Protestant alternative to the transconfessional and seemingly ‘Catholic’ CDU, remained politically meaningless with just 1.2 per cent of votes. It was disbanded in 1957. From the voters’ perspective, cooperation between the two confessions was a positive rather than a shortcoming. Christians’ political engagement in the early days of West Germany was by no means exclusively limited to the CDU. Nonetheless, neither the Social Democrats as the second major People’s Party nor any of the smaller parties had the same importance to the religious field. The Liberals in particular remained unattractive to the majority of religious individuals, their initial pronounced nationalism and subsequent embrace of various kinds of economic liberalism offering little to inspire Christian voters.87 Certain members of the FDP did strike a decidedly Christian pose: federal justice minister Thomas Dehler, for example, claimed that Liberal policies were anchored in the Gospel, while Paul Luchtenberg, education minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, frequently expressed appreciation for the present-day impact of the Reformation. These and other statements, however, were essentially concessions to a religiously imbued zeitgeist rather than successful strategies for winning members or voters. There was contact between the Churches and the SPD in the immediate postwar period, with Protestants in particular able to build on major areas of common ground. A long-term connection already existed in the form of the political school of religious socialism, though this was always very limited in terms of personnel. After the war, figures such as Heinrich Albertz, vicar and pastor in the Confessing Church and member of the Lower Saxony state government since 1948 as ‘minister for refugees’, sought to build bridges between the labour movement and Protestantism. He found an ally in the shape of Göttingen professor of theology Hans-Joachim Iwand. With the ‘Darmstadt Statement’, the latter initiated one of the most important contributions to the Protestant Church’s attempts to come to terms with National Socialism. Particularly in the text’s preliminary drafts this theologian of the Confessing Church assailed Protestant condemnation

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of Marxism and distance from the labour movement as the ‘wrong approach’.88 In the SPD Bundestag group, a Protestant faction grew up around Adolf Arndt, Wilhelm Mellies, Hans Merten and Ludwig Metzger. When the All-German People’s Party broke up in 1957, many members joined the SPD, including Gustav Heinemann, Johannes Rau, Erhard Eppler, Friedhelm Farthmann, Jürgen Schmude and – former chair of the Centre Party – Helene Wessel. For Protestants as for Catholics the SPD’s Godesberg programme represented an important shift. This programme, which applied until 1989, embodied the party’s transformation from a socialist workers’ party into a People’s Party. In the course of this de-ideologization the Social Democrats also changed their attitude towards the religious communities. ‘The Social Democratic Party respects the Churches and religious communities, their special responsibilities and their independence. It fully supports their protection in law as statutory bodies. The party is always happy to cooperate with the Churches within the framework of a loose partnership’.89 The ‘freethinking’ (freidenkerisch) element in the SPD had thus receded into the background. The Churches were no longer regarded as the custodians of purely bourgeois class interests, but rather as partners within society, within which they, like the political parties, had a role to play in shaping the West German polity. A number of symbolic acts backed up this shift: lists of deputies and committee members would now indicate confessional affiliation.90 Finally, when Willy Brandt concluded the speech announcing his candidacy for the chancellorship with the sentence ‘so help me God’, he was assured of the approval of certain sections of Protestantism. Since the 1960s, then, the SPD has developed into the key political interlocutor for a large swathe of West German Protestantism. The SPD also maintained contact with leading Catholics such as Walter Dirks, Carl Amery and Eugen Kogon. And in the early 1950s a circle around Bundestag deputy Herbert Wehner was in dialogue with a group of Catholics with a social policy focus, centred on social ethicist Father Eberhard Welty. Yet despite some areas of overlap in social policy, the Catholic demand for parental rights and confessional schools remained an insurmountable obstacle for the Social Democrats91 and the Catholic elites in particular long sought to keep their distance from the SPD. In 1956 the SPD vastly increased its vote share in local government elections in Catholic strongholds in North Rhine-Westphalia, triggering a defensive response from Bishop Keller. At an event arranged by the Catholic Employees’ Movement (Katholische ArbeitnehmerBewegung) he went so far as to claim that Catholics could not vote for the Social Democrats.92 The fact that Keller felt the need to impress this

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belief so explicitly on his listeners is testimony to how permeable the relationship between SPD and Catholics had already become, and the bishop’s direct and undiplomatic approach was rooted in the Church hierarchy’s fear that Catholics’ attitude towards the SPD was becoming too relaxed. Here he was anticipating a development that intensified in the 1960s: the adoption of the Godesberg programme was a major milestone in the ‘de-ideologization’ of the SPD while Vatican II opened up Catholic doctrine to political cooperation. In reality there had already been a number of attempts at rapprochement. In the Bundestag election of 1969 the SPD won a total of 42.7 per cent of votes, gaining 33 per cent of Catholic voters, an increase of 7 per cent on the previous election.93 And there was plenty of contact on the diplomatic stage. In 1964 Pope Paul VII received an SPD delegation in the Vatican, though the awkward nature of this event is evident in the absence of consultation with the West German government or the episcopate, a ban on photography and the fact that the contents of the talks were treated as confidential. It was not until 1967, when prominent Social Democrat and federal minister Georg Leber was admitted to the Central Committee of German Catholics (Zentralkomitee der deutschen Katholiken) that this kind of secrecy was rendered unnecessary, at least on the national political level. In the 1970s, rather than focusing on the burgeoning left-wing Catholic groupings, the SPD leadership continued to canvass the support of mainstream Catholicism.94 But the party leadership’s objective of prompting the Catholic Church to adopt equidistance between the political camps was achieved only to a limited extent. Against the background of an overall relaxation of tension between the Catholic Church and the SPD there were a number of serious conflicts, in relation, for example, to the reform of paragraph 218, with Social Democrat support for liberalizing abortion contrasting sharply with Catholic demands for the ‘protection of the unborn child’. The religious communities’ relationship to the political parties thus showed many signs of diversification and pluralization. Just how pernicious and conflict-ridden the shift towards a new type of civil society could be is strikingly evident if we examine another political issue, namely the rearmament of West Germany, and the contrasting terms deployed in the associated debate. Was this a matter of ‘rearmament’, a ‘contribution to defence’ or ‘re-militarization’? This issue was not only ethically charged but also closely bound up with attitudes towards the two German states and European issues. This debate created waves in both confessions but followed a quite different course in each, providing an almost ideal-typical illustration

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of how differently Catholicism and Protestantism acted within the political field. Within Catholicism clear guidelines were already laid down by the episcopate’s fundamentally affirmative stance. The bishops made it abundantly clear that they supported Adenauer’s strict policy of integration with the West and the rearmament of West Germany, and a few years later the Catholic contribution to government policy culminated in the composition by seven distinguished moral theologians of a justification for nuclear weapons – a text that was pilloried as excessively complaisant even at the time and that was controversial within Catholicism itself.95 The French bishops, for example, rejected the deployment of nuclear weapons out of hand during the same period.96 The ‘Catholic guidelines’, as der Spiegel mockingly noted, did have one thing going for them, namely their ‘clarity’.97 As on many other political issues, the Catholicism of the 1950s largely spoke with a single voice. It did so not because there were no dissenting views within the Church but because its strong hierarchical structures made it near impossible for dissenters to make themselves heard.98 Despite the fact that its raison d’être was directly affected, in 1957/58 the West German section of the pacifist Pax Christi movement made no public contribution to the debate on nuclear weapons in the West German army: internal clashes with the bishops over the rearmament issue in the early 1950s still exercised a constraining effect. In contrast, the Church’s views were expressed publicly at a major Catholic peace rally in the context of the seventy-eighth German Catholic Conference (Deutscher Katholikentag) in Berlin, a significant demonstration of unity and cohesion that symbolized not opposition to the military build-up but to communism and was thus supportive of the West German government’s policies.99 Meanwhile, with respect to nuclear weapons, the Protestant All-German Synod declared that ‘we remain united under the Gospel and strive to overcome these conflicts’, a statement that became known for its ‘powerlessness’.100 Diametrically opposing views emerged at a Protestant meeting at the Johannesstift in Spandau, Berlin, in late April 1958. The very manufacture of nuclear weapons could not be morally justified, according to opponents; under certain circumstances, asserted supporters, the deployment of nuclear weapons was ethically justifiable.101 Right from the start of the debate the representatives of the Lutheran regional Churches had rejected the idea of using the Bible to discuss peace and the armed forces: in line with the traditional two kingdoms doctrine, they considered these and related issues a problem of the temporal sphere, and it was not for the Church to espouse political views on them. The majority supported

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the Adenauer government, which considered nuclear weapons as necessary as integration into the West. The section of the EKD that took inspiration from the Councils of Brethren, led by Martin Niemöller and EKD head Gustav Heinemann, retorted that their ethics assumed that Christ’s kingship extends to every sphere of life. Because of Germany’s guilt in the Second World War and to avoid jeopardizing the goal of reunification they rejected the idea that West Germany must contribute to the defence of the West. In alliance with the Protestant Church in the GDR, some West German Protestants occasionally aired the idea of a third way for Germany between capitalism and socialism but such views could never attract the support of a majority and, more than once, the Protestant Church was ‘on the verge of a split’ as a result of these debates.102 Only a minority of German Protestants played an active part in the political campaigns of the 1950s, but the movements involved still made a broad impact. The range of political views within Protestantism was far broader than within Catholicism, placing it closer to the general population. The ‘Not in My Name’ movement against rearmament and the ‘Fight Nuclear Death’ campaign of the late 1950s, meanwhile, were important elements in the protest culture of the troubled 1950s, with many of their protagonists continuing their engagement amid the process of profound liberalization that occurred in the 1960s. Politically, the immediate postwar period and the 1950s were a phase of both consolidation and change for the religious communities: the Basic Law, the equivalent state agreements and the Church Tax arrangements undoubtedly laid the foundation for both Christian Churches to become key institutions in West Germany and a dense network grew up linking the Church and the political sphere. The close collaboration between the Catholic Church and CDU did not always straightforwardly advance the party’s political interests: overzealous clergy often turned off Protestant voters and those distant from the Church. But the Churches’ sphere of influence at the local, state and national political level had grown: it had become virtually impossible for contemporaries to imagine the fields of education, family or media policy without them. In the public sphere of the 1950s the sociopolitical competencies of Church and theology were a virtually uncontested element. In the mass media too, while the close intertwining of Church and politics was occasionally discussed, only in exceptional cases was it vigorously criticized, as in the debate on ‘clericalism’ in German politics. The two major Christian Churches were fully accepted political interlocutors whose voices were not only respected but which others often cited to legitimize their own interpretations.

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Yet major changes were under way. Some were disgruntled at the symbiotic structures fusing Church and politics and this sentiment began to make itself felt at the dawn of the 1960s, both within the Churches and beyond them. Over the course of the 1960s this criticism spread to specific thematic fields, ‘mixed marriages’ and ‘confessional schools’ probably being the most discussed. Some claimed that latent clericalism and confessionalism demonstrated that the state was behind the times, overextending and overemphasizing the Church’s responsibilities – and such criticisms were a key element in a widely deployed rhetoric.

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Notes   1. Krone’s diary, 1 September 1945, Archiv der Christlichen Demokratie und Politik, 277, quoted in Gauly, Kirche und Politik, 25.    2. See Braun et al., Die lange Stunde Null.    3. See Braun et al., Die lange Stunde Null.   4. Aufbau und Entfaltung, 3469.    5. See Gotto, ‘Die katholische Kirche’.   6. Sauer, Westorientierung im deutschen Protestantismus?, 5.   7. See Nipperdey, Religion im Umbruch, 100.   8. See Bergen, Twisted Cross.   9. Diem, Restauration oder Neuanfang, 48.   10. See Kaiser, ‘Der Zweite Weltkrieg’, 228.   11. See Immer, Bekenntnissynode.   12. See Klein, Westdeutscher Protestantismus, 457.   13. See Greschat, ‘Kirchen und Öffentlichkeit’.   14. Boyens, ‘Treysa 1945’, 48.   15. See Lepp, ‘Wege des Protestantismus’, 176.   16. See Sauer, Westorientierung im deutschen Protestantismus, 40 f.   17. See Greschat, Die evangelische Christenheit, 305 f.   18. Nicolaisen and Schulze, Die Protokolle des Rates, 686 f.   19. See Wittreck, ‘Bonn ist doch Weimar’.   20. Bald, ‘Neue Konturen’, 52.   21. On this term, see Stutz, Die päpstliche Diplomatie, 54.   22. See Heinig, ‘Der Körperschaftsstatus’.  23. Memorandum on the planned Church Tax reform in the Protestant Churches of Westphalia and the Rhine province of Wuppertal-Elberfeld of 10 August 1946, Evangelisches Zentralarchiv B 13/B 3, quoted in Kampmann, ‘Die Neuordnung’, 87 f.   24. On developments within the sphere of the Catholic Church and a detailed evaluation, see Schlief, ‘Die Entwicklung der Kirchensteuer’.   25. See Engelhardt, Die Kirchensteuer.   26. See Romberg, ‘Die Einführung der Kirchensteuer’.   27. Hauschild, ‘Evangelische Kirche’, 65.

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  28.   29.   30.   31.   32.

‘Predigt Sr. Eminenz am Silvesterabend 1959’, 9. See Oehmen-Vieregge, ‘Wandlungsprozesse’, 27. See Tripp, ‘Struktureller Wandel’, 74 f. Hauschild, ‘Evangelische Kirche’, 65. A tendentious account of this debate can be found in Lohmann, ‘Reizthema Kirchensteuer’.   33. See Wilken, Unser Geld.   34. Hauschild, ‘Evangelische Kirche’, 65.   35. See Oehmen-Vieregge, ‘Wandlungsprozesse’, 26.   36. Smend, ‘Staat und Kirche’, 5.   37. For this quote and the following, see Smend, ‘Staat und Kirche’, 13.   38. Lepp, ‘Wege des Protestantismus’, 175.   39. See Nolte, Religion und Bürgergesellschaft.  40. See Rink, ‘“Die Verfassungsbeschwerde ist begründet”’; Brugger, ‘Trennung, Gleichheit, Nähe’.   41. See Reuter, ‘Religionen im Prozess von Migration’.   42. See Kuhlemann, ‘Nachkriegsprotestantismus’, 26.   43. See Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture.   44. See Schmidtchen, Protestanten und Katholiken, 214.   45. See Kuhlemann, ‘Nachkriegsprotestantismus’, 28.   46. Heinemann and Koch, Einspruch, 58 f.  47. Jarausch, Die Umkehr, 179.   48. See Doering-Manteuffel, ‘Strukturmerkmale’.  49. Jarausch, Die Umkehr, 183.   50. Hehl, ‘Konfessionelle Irritationen’, 169.  51. See Materialdienst des konfessionskundlichen Instituts. Evangelischer Bund – Konfessionskundliches Institut, May–August, 3/4, 1953, 48–53.   52. See Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit, 197.   53. ‘Wohin die Reise geht’, Der Spiegel, 16 November 1955, 13 f.  54. Ellwein, Klerikalismus, 252.   55. The quotations in what follows from Hehl, ‘Konfessionelle Irritationen’, 178 f.   56. Greschat, ‘Konfessionelle Spannungen’, 19.   57. ‘Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland’, Kirchliches Jahrbuch 1953, 437.  58. Schmidtchen, Protestanten und Katholiken, 459 ff.   59. According to a 1986 debate contribution by Rudolf Morsey documented in Buchheim, Konrad Adenauer, 109.   60. See Schmidt, Zentrum oder CDU.   61. See Gauly, Kirche und Politik, 151.  62. Gauly, Kirche und Politik, 172.  63. Fitzek, Katholische Kirche, 88.   64. Zentralkomitee der deutschen Katholiken, ‘Ein Wort zur Wahl’.   65. Quoted in Gauly, Kirche und Politik, 173.  66. Damberg, Abschied vom Milieu?, 423.   67. Quoted in Bösch, Die Adenauer-CDU, 128.  68. Schewick, Die katholische Kirche, 113.   69. Baadte and Rauscher, Dokumente deutscher Bischöfe, 289.  70. Bösch, Die Adenauer-CDU, 138.

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 71. Bösch, Die Adenauer-CDU, 135.  72. See The British Zone Review 19, 8 June 1946.   73. See Bösch, ‘Zu katholisch’, 396.  74. Hahn, Ich stehe dazu, 92.   75. See Bösch, Die Adenauer-CDU, 427.   76. Stubbe da Luz, Von der ‘Arbeitsgemeinschaft’ zur Großstadtpartei, 406–8.   77. See Gauly, Kirche und Politik, 156 f.  78. Bösch, Die Adenauer-CDU, 64.   79. Dirks, ‘Schwierige Nachbarschaft’, 15.   80. See Hehl, ‘Konfessionelle Irritationen’, 185.  81. See the revealing study by Sauer, Westorientierung im deutschen Protestantismus?  82. Klein, Westdeutscher Protestantismus, 468.   83. Greschat, ‘Konfessionelle Spannungen’, 31.   84. ‘Spiegel-Interview mit Volker Rühe’, Der Spiegel, 18 June 1990.   85. Vollnhals, ‘Die Evangelische Kirche’, 166.  86. Schmidtchen, Protestanten und Katholiken, 322.   87. See Klein, Westdeutscher Protestantismus, 320 f.  88. Klein, Westdeutscher Protestantismus, 413 f.   89. Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, ‘Godesberger Programm’, 15.   90. See Koch, Willy Brandt, 260–66.   91. See Hering, ‘Die Kirchen als Schlüssel’, 242 f.   92. See Brehm, SPD und Katholizismus.  93. Ummenhofer, Hin zum Schreiten, 52 f.   94. See Hering, ‘Die Kirchen als Schlüssel’, 251.   95. See Auer, ‘Ein katholisches Wort zur atomaren Rüstung’.   96. See Greschat, Protestantismus im Kalten Krieg, 285.   97. ‘Billigt Gott A-Bomben?’, Der Spiegel, 14 May 1958, 50–52.   98. See Doering-Manteuffel, Katholizismus und Wiederbewaffnung.   99. See Gerster, ‘Von Pilgerfahrten zu Protestmärschen’, 324. 100. Ringhausen, ‘Die Kirchen’, 38. 101. See Hoeth, Die Wiederbewaffnung Deutschlands, 422. 102. Lepp, ‘Einleitung’, 15.

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Proclamation of Faith and Pastoral Work from 1945 to the Early 1960s Religion becomes a profound ‘social fact’ when it takes on specific tasks within and for society: representing the community, explaining the twists and turns of fate, motivating people to show brotherly love and much more besides. This functional analysis of religions tells us a great deal about their social significance but it fails to illuminate the internal sphere of the religious consciousness. From the perspective of religious communities themselves, these and similar functions are not their primary tasks but at most derivative ones: religions see themselves chiefly as agents of worship and the preaching of transcendence, so in the great monotheistic religions acts of worship of various kinds stand centre stage. In the case of Christianity these are prayer and the celebration of Mass, which commemorates the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and promulgates and interprets texts regarded as sacred. This substantive definition of religion focuses on worship and its practice. In the Middle Ages the term ‘religiosus’ was used chiefly to refer to a member of a monastic order or priest dedicated to the tasks of worship. Only in the modern era did the term ‘religion’ develop into a collective singular encompassing a number of social and symbolic forms and practices. The contemporary sociology of religion focuses primarily on the social practice generated by religion and on religions’ organizational forms but is not much concerned with the content of faith and individual conviction – so it disregards a core element of religion, namely the focus on transcendence. Protestant theologian Friedrich Wilhelm Graf suggests that one of the basic problems ‘of the research currently being done on religion by historians, social scientists and legal scholars [is] that it talks a great deal about environment, nation, identity and communitization but the faith of the pious, their piety (or in Catholic terms spirituality), their religiously coded habitus and, not least, their confessional autobiography rarely get a mention’. The question here is whether it is possible to write the history of religion while leaving out ‘the genuinely religious element in religion, emotions and passions, terrors and hopes of redemption’.1

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In what follows I try to shed light on the religious ideas through which Catholics and Protestants formed their worldview, explained the events of the past and planned future action in the two decades after the war. In the language of Christianity, how was the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ celebrated? How did Christians seek to bring this commemoration up to date, to spread and transmit it? How did the forms and contents of the religious communities change? This attempt to write a history of ‘lived faith’ cannot be a history of theology in a narrow sense. Academic theology is a provider of impulses, an agent of reflection, and functions in part as the memory of a religious tradition. But in a history of lived faith it is not theological tomes and academic lectures but hymnals and prayer books and pulpit preaching that stand centre stage. Which notions of transcendence did the religious communities develop? How did professional Church employees, pastors and pastoral workers believe they could reach the faithful? How did they try to talk to young people and pass on the faith to the next generation?

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A New Dawn after the War? ‘Re-Christianization’ and the Discussion of Guilt In 1945 religious life unfolded against a turbulent background: the end of the war, which many Germans perceived as a defeat, occupation, imprisonment, hunger and other hardships – all these fundamental experiences required religious interpretation, as did the structure of the new German polity. On a practical level the Churches and their religious teachings stood above all for continuity. The core of pastoral care, the holding of church services and administering of sacraments remained virtually unchanged. Of course, armed conflict and later destruction placed restrictions on ritual practice and external forms sometimes required adaptation. Due to a lack of candles a ‘celebration without light’ was permitted in the archdiocese of Bamberg, for example, and Church leaders warned pastors not to use too much consecrated oil on Maundy Thursday in 1945 as it had almost run out.2 Despite these restrictions the normal weekly and annual cycle remained in place: even on 8 April 1945, as reports from the dioceses attest, many parishes celebrated First Communion between air raids. State authority collapsed, Nazi functionaries fled, occupying troops moved ever closer – yet amid all this confusion religious life retained its traditional form. ‘On the morning of 13 April, when the town was occupied and his parsonage

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Proclamation of Faith and Pastoral Work from 1945 to the Early 1960s • 79

temporarily seized, the pastor of Burgebach held four services. The next day, as on every Saturday afternoon, the pastor of Pregnitz sat in the confessional box – though he was alone at first because everyone was expecting the occupation to begin at any moment’.3 But despite attempts to stick to tradition many changes undoubtedly occurred. In cases where pastors and vicars in Protestant communities had been called up, pastors’ wives took on a wide range of responsibilities that grew far beyond their normal tasks: they not only held Bible study meetings and ‘reading services’ but also performed burials and church services in addition to providing a wide range of other diaconal support services.4 This laid the groundwork for the first major gender shift in a traditionally male-dominated domain. In a society that lay in ruins in the immediate postwar period the clergy gained a special role as agents of continuity. They were there on the ground, sharing in local communities’ everyday hardships and were as affected as anyone by bombing raids and armed conflict. They suffered the loss of family members and fellow clergy. To alleviate suffering they accommodated refugees and evacuees. The broad public impact made by the clergy during this period is evident in the New Year’s Eve sermon by Cologne Cardinal Joseph Frings in 1946. ‘To frings’ became a fixed expression after the clergyman had declared that in view of the desperate material circumstances ‘the individual will have to take what is necessary to sustain his life and health if he is unable to obtain it in any other way through his work or begging’.5 This statement was perceived and remembered as justifying the stealing of coal and other forms of petty theft. Few paid any attention to the bishop’s subsequent qualifying statement that theft had often gone beyond the satisfaction of basic needs and that such ‘unjust goods’ must immediately be given back. Within the pastoral routine, which was maintained as far as possible, Germans were unlikely to encounter conscious theological or practical efforts to chart a new course. Quite the opposite: it took a lot of effort to preserve traditional structures and this became the central goal of both theology and the Church. But the Nazi dictatorship and the war had changed many things, as adumbrated by the new role of the pastor’s wife. In a society in ruins and after the experience of National Socialism there was a shift of emphasis in the preaching of both the major Christian confessions. National Socialism had supported the Churches’ work within society but towards the end of the dictatorship religious life itself was played out mainly within the religious communities, with both instruction and worship being carried out in Church spaces. After the war this focus was retained in a theological sense as the Church sought to focus on what it considered essential. The general tenor was

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that only radical religious renewal, a return to Christ, could reverse the trend towards secularization, which was seen as one of the roots of the totalitarian systems. A focus on the Church as a cohesive community, its distinction from the world, saving others: these were the maxims and guiding principles emphasized in the religious educational and catechismal literature of the immediate postwar period. The Church thus retained the emphatically ‘pious’ notion of religious instruction that had developed under National Socialism and to some extent earlier. It clung to this approach despite the fact that, or perhaps because, it was increasingly apparent that many Germans, above all the younger generation, felt alienated from the world of the Church. The obligation to attend church on Sunday for Catholics and warnings about the importance of participating in community events for Protestants; a duty to raise children in a Christian way; and the centrality of a religiously sound marriage – beyond all theological differences, these were the three pillars that the confessional Churches tried to inculcate in their members as a practical guide to religious life. Theologians and churchmen justified this emphasis with reference to the recent past. Widespread de-Christianization and a failure to venerate God had resulted in the destruction and suffering of the world war and dictatorship. People must now change course and return to an emphatically Christian way of life. ‘Current events in all their terribleness and mysteriousness’, as Walter Künneth, a theologian employed in the deanery of Erlangen, argued, ‘are in urgent need of interpretation through Biblical truth as an “apocalyptic” event and divine judgment. This collapse has smashed the livelihoods and immanent faith of countless individuals. In the face of this plunge into “nothingness” and despair, the only route open to us is to witness to the Gospel of Christ as unshakable foundation and enduring source of support’.6 For many believers and Church representatives, politics and religion were not categorically separate but mutually entwined and the majority of pastors and Church officials described the social and cultural situation not in political but in metaphysical terms. In nationalProtestant circles in particular, even the future prospects of the nation were interpreted from the perspective of Christianization. One example was Edmund Schlink, director of the seminary of the Westphalian Church. In his 1946 text ‘The Grace in God’s Judgment’, he began by interpreting the collapse of Germany as a ‘disaster’ that ‘heralds God’s last judgment’. His advice was unambiguous: If we fail to do penance and make a new beginning, bowing deeply before Jesus Christ as the Lord, we will go to rack and ruin and even the remnants of the German essence that have survived National Socialism

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and its collapse will disappear. We will become the grit of world history, a mere addendum to the great amorphous mush of peoples into which Western civilization threatens to descend.7

Both Catholic and Protestant clergy declared that the objective of pastoral care was to set people on the path of a vibrant Christian discipleship that would generate a radical Christianity of decision and change the world. Comparable re-evangelization initiatives were being launched across the globe: in the United States, United Kingdom, Italy and France, regardless of the very different political and social contexts.8 In Germany the experiences of dictatorship, war and a society in ruins formed the specific background against which the Churches’ direction was discussed. The Churches and their local representatives played a particularly important role in the debate on guilt. To what extent were the majority of Germans entangled in National Socialism? Who bore how much responsibility for the emergence of the dictatorship, and above all for the persecution and murder of the European Jewry? Within this debate both confessions carried out very similar functions for the German people, rejecting the accusations emanating from the Allies and the global public sphere. In the shape of the collective guilt thesis the debate centred on the idea that all Germans shared responsibility for the crimes that had been committed. This was met with tremendous resistance. Had the average German not simply done his duty and obeyed orders? The Churches not only backed this view, which was widespread in Germany, but legitimized it in a special way by protesting against these accusations. The ‘Law for Liberation from National Socialism and Militarism’ of spring 1946 issued by the Allied Control Council (Alliierter Kontrollrat) and the practice of denazification based on it also aroused profound opposition. On a practical level the Churches often supported Germans called before the denazification courts by vouching for their non-Nazi convictions and helping them obtain a socalled ‘Persil certificate’. A great deal of symbolic and social capital was accrued to both Churches through their opposition to the collective guilt thesis. As the ‘people’s advocates’ they catered to a general sentiment that led many Germans to avoid coming to terms with the past. Through their protest against denazification they in fact encouraged many Germans to stylize themselves as ‘victims’ of the Allies’ supposedly arbitrary and unjust stance. In the case of the Catholic Church this attitude was a direct result of its interpretation of the events of 1945 and its role in them. ‘We are witnessing the collapse of Germany, our fatherland. The bishops would

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not be Germans if they did not feel the deepest sense of empathy with their people’.9 This was the tone of the bishops’ discussion at their plenary assembly in August 1945 and they could turn to statements by Pope Pius XII to back up this interpretation,10 which was also central to the pastoral letter approved by the German episcopate on 23 August 1945. Certainly, there was an acknowledgement of guilt. ‘Many Germans, some from among our ranks, allowed themselves to be led astray by the false teachings of National Socialism and were indifferent to the crimes committed against human freedom and human dignity; many displayed an attitude that aided and abetted the crimes and many became criminals themselves’.11 But the tenor of the subsequent debate was that while certain individuals had behaved wrongly this was not true of the Church itself. The image of the Church as an intact institution that had resisted the corrupting effects of National Socialism had a dual effect. In the wider world the Church could actively push for its involvement in shaping the new society without having to examine itself. Internally, meanwhile, the Church provided a means of integration for all its members, sparing them the need to look critically at their own past. The objective was ‘change through Christianization’, which according to the Church leadership included the comprehensive pacification of society in the spirit of Christian reconciliation. It would be undesirable to exclude the many supporters of National Socialism from this. The Church’s message was particularly evident in its preaching: ‘Sermons warned that “no one should repay evil with evil … do not take vengeance upon yourselves”, “tolerate one another … if you have grounds for accusing someone of something, forgive one another”, which fostered a process of social psychological normalization, as did the Church’s generosity in vouching for people’s non-Nazi views and its fundamental reservations about denazification’.12 Other pastoral letters like that of 19 October 1945 were also compromises that sought to smooth out internal divisions between the bishops during the years of the dictatorship rather than indicating how German society might deal with the dictatorial past.13 The Church leadership thus fostered an ‘atmosphere of restrained leniency’.14 The few critical contemporary voices struggled to be heard in the face of this basic sentiment. In the case of Protestantism the debate on the Church’s attitude towards the recent past was both more far-reaching and more contentious. While the Catholic Church emphasized its self-image as an intact resisting force, which underpinned the legitimacy of its present ecclesio-political and political action, this route was closed to Protestants: the formation of the Hitler government had been perceived with sympathy in most regional Churches, but at the very least accepted

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with the usual loyalty to the authorities. The Confessing Church was established in 1943 in opposition to the German Christian movement, which went out of its way to accommodate National Socialism. An opposition movement had thus emerged within the Church that rejected application of the so-called Aryan paragraphs to the Church and many of the German Christians’ theological views, thus preventing the Church in its entirety from making an active and unambiguous choice to conform to the National Socialist system. Within the Church it engendered a profound split. The postwar debate on guilt compelled those participating in it to think big: it touched not only on the recent past in all its controversy but also on the organizational and theological future of Protestant Christianity in Germany. Who should now speak for the Protestant Church as a whole? How should it be organized? Which theological school should Protestants follow? And in view of the expectations of the international oecumene and within Germany, how should the Church relate to National Socialism and guilt, issues that required discussion with respect to Germany as a whole and the Church itself? Church leaders, gathered in Stuttgart for the Assembly of the Protestant Church in Germany, tried to answer these urgent questions. They articulated their stance in a key passage:

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Through us endless suffering has been inflicted upon many peoples and countries. What we have often witnessed to our own communities we now proclaim in the name of the entire Church: for many long years we undoubtedly fought in the name of Jesus Christ against the spirit that found terrible expression in the National Socialist regime of violence; but we lament the fact that we did not profess our beliefs more courageously, pray more faithfully, believe more joyously and love more fervently.15

This passage is still quoted and remembered as the core message of the Stuttgart Document. But despite the tone of this excerpt the Document was not an unqualified confession of guilt: the text approved by the newly founded Protestant Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland or EKD) was pervaded by compromises. Even in this brief passage the very different views represented at the EKD assembly shine through. In the first sentence Niemöller, transformed from a supporter of National Socialism into one of its most resolute opponents, underlined the importance of a personal declaration of guilt by means of the potent phrase ‘through us’. But just two sentences later the Church is placed among the opponents of National Socialism. It was certainly true that individual members had put up resistance, but overall the Church was dominated by a tradition grounded in the Lutheran two kingdoms doctrine, a tradition that valorized the

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authoritarian state and the nation. It was in this spirit, for example, that EKD Council chair Theophil Wurm opposed increasing the burden of guilt on Germany – because the nation remained a core value for many Protestants. In a letter to Niemöller of December 1945 he explained how difficult he found it to criticize the close linkage of people, fatherland and religious concerns: ‘while it is true that I am not Prussian I did grow up entirely within the tradition of the Bismarck Empire …’.16 The Stuttgart confession of guilt was thus undoubtedly ‘a compromise and as such it surely represented all that was achievable within German Protestantism at the time’.17 The declaration negotiated in the upper echelons of the Church had to prove itself at the grass roots and there the theologians’ and Church officials’ proposal was generally met with criticism, rejection and blank incomprehension. This response was partly provoked by the late publication of the declaration, which meant that many people first read it in the press – and the newspapers and magazines highlighted the admission of German war guilt. But even when people read the original text it mostly triggered resistance rather than contemplation. The section of the Church grass roots that expressed itself publicly regarded the Stuttgart Declaration as ‘dishonourable’ and ‘undignified’. Indignant critics asked how the Church could stoop to such ‘treason against the German people’, and its authors were repeatedly attacked as politically short-sighted.18 While there were repeated calls for Protestants to face the past in Protestant circles in the 1940s and 1950s19 they came mostly from prominent theologians and officials and even in this elite group they resonated only with a minority. It was not until fifteen years later, in the 1960s, that the Stuttgart Declaration and other texts such as the so-called Darmstadt Word of 1947 were deployed by various commentators to critique the Church. Another factor should be noted. If we look at opinion polls during this period we find that West Germans’ approval of the National Socialist past or at least their willingness to defend it increased as they were subjected to the Allies’ denazification measures. For many people denazification and above all the associated courts had an effect opposite to that intended. These purges not only mutated into a ‘nonresisters’ factory’ that categorized vast numbers of individuals who bore considerable responsibility as non-resisters. They also encouraged Germans to stylize themselves as the victims of Allied policy. Driven into a criminal system and forced into a war by the National Socialists then bombed out by Allied air attacks or displaced, many Germans now saw the debates on German guilt and above all the laborious denazification procedures as a new form of injustice.

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The Protestant regional Churches and the EKD constantly underlined the necessity for a comprehensive process of denazification but this verbal commitment contrasted with their condemnation of the Allies’ approach. Martin Niemöller was one of the major opponents of Allied policy in this regard. He vehemently rejected the form and process of denazification: the questionnaire and the court trials, he claimed, compelled the individual to justify himself and provide evidence of his own innocence. But according to Niemöller, rather than encouraging insights into one’s share of guilt, this search for defensive evidence had the opposite effect, allowing people to avoid all self-doubt.20 Niemöller was surely right in his analysis of the social psychological process of repression, the tendency to fend off accusations and stylize oneself as a victim. Just how negatively West Germans perceived the Allies’ measures and how much these measures eliminated any urge to confront the past is evident in the fact that even formerly resolute supporters of denazification changed their stance. One example is the Württemberg Church-Theological Society, which took much of its inspiration from the theology of Karl Barth and the Confessing Church. In 1946 it was still rejecting the EKD’s criticisms of the Liberation Law but in March 1947 it changed its position and expressed opposition to the denazification measures. The growing sense of discontent found its champion in the Churches, which gave expression to this sentiment and thus, as with other issues, found themselves aligned with much of the population. It was in fact the overlap between the interests of Church and middle-class circles that later enabled the Churches to become powerful advocates of the societal and professional reintegration of former National Socialists.21

Old Answers to New Questions: Theology and Church Organization These attitudes towards denazification were in keeping with the pastoral practice and theological-dogmatic mentality of the time. If it was necessary to confess guilt, perhaps even to do penance, then this should be done at most on an individual level. Generally, though, the view taken within the Churches was that the Nazi disaster had occurred chiefly because people had turned away from God. In response, Protestant theology and above all Protestant preaching developed an elaborate theory setting out how a return to God could occur by ‘looking inwards’. Beyond all theological and ecclesio-political camps within the Protestant Church, this essentially meant the Bible and Bible

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reading, which were seen as a means of guiding people back to Jesus Christ. Many gloomy Church brochures and tracts described the world as chaotic in an attempt to underline the reader’s need for redemption. Only a return to God could offer salvation, and the slogan ‘Christ or doom’ was heard in a number of different contexts.22 But even dialectical theology, which had little in common with the ambitions of most pastors, who envisaged a People’s Church, drew similar conclusions from the Church Struggle. Swiss theology professor Karl Barth exercised a huge theological influence in Germany, his writings making a broad impact in the Councils of Brethren and Confessing Church. He declared that the main task of contemporary sermons was to proclaim ‘Jesus Christ as the true reality’. This was ‘the message that the Christian Churches today as at all times should and must promulgate loudly and clearly’.23 Arguments like this strengthened the Confessing Church in its struggle with Volk-based theology, as it sought to oppose the National Socialists’ politicization and co-optation of this belief system. But in postwar conditions this stance often seemed detached from reality. The ‘Göttingen sermon meditations’ of theologian Hans Joachim Iwand pointed in a similar direction, aiming to provide practical guidance on how to listen to and open oneself to God’s Word. In his view, the chasm between university theology and pastoral practice would be overcome as preachers disclosed the spiritual content of biblical texts to both themselves and others. As Wolfgang Scherffig, spokesman of the Rhenish Brotherhood (Rheinische Bruderschaft), which grew out of the Confessing Church, warned, all other issues such as ‘reorganization of the Church, the electoral system, the question of guilt, the confessional issue, the structure of church services, ecumenical issues, the Christian’s political responsibility and so on and so forth’ must take a back seat to exegesis.24 What these and many other examples articulated was the deep influence of Bible readings produced by a Church elite of theologians and pastors. As early as the 1950s, however, it was clear that this kind of piety was highly ambivalent. For those close to the Church and eager readers of the Bible these ideas and practices provided a spiritual home. But they alienated the majority of Christians, who longed for a People’s Church: it was the social type of a Bible-focused, pious but unworldly Christian who was being addressed and encouraged. ‘What all too easily happens as a result is that which makes this type often seem so awkward and ineffectual in interaction with non-Christians: they draw on a language, mentality and means of expression that seem to exonerate them from truly penetrating, from genuinely confronting

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the existing world’.25 The formulae used, their linguistic form and the associated images generally seemed esoteric and exclusive to outsiders rather than persuasively advertising the faith and inviting people to embrace it. Viktor Klemperer, a Jew who had survived persecution under National Socialism and now worked as a Romance studies scholar in postwar Germany, commented acerbically on a radio sermon by theologian Otto Dibelius. After a gripping start, according to Klemperer, there came the ‘disappointment’. ‘One simply has to “change one’s ways”, to look to Jesus, for Jesus is the aspect of God turned towards the human being, the recognizable aspect. Now I know what’s what and can believe in the goodness of the heavenly Father despite all the atrocities of recent years’.26 But it was not just intellectuals who were disturbed by the rhetoric of introspection and the associated unworldliness. Those working in male-focused pastoral care and the Protestant People’s Mission (Volksmission) confirmed the widespread sense of alienation from the Church’s message, as did those tasked with developing workers’ associations. The term ‘sermon failure’ (Predigtpleite) did the rounds. Nine-tenths of all sermons were claimed to be meaningless, and failed to reach ‘those who have grown thoughtful, whose lives have been shattered and who have succumbed to despair’.27 When it came to theology and pastoral work the ‘religious spring’ proved little more than wishful thinking cultivated by a small Church elite. The experience of ‘total war’, the dictatorship, but also the rapid shift in postwar conditions threw up questions that could no longer be answered with the traditional interpretive means. Scepticism about supposed re-Christianization, expressed at the grass roots by a fair number of both Catholic and Protestant pastoral workers, was entirely justified.28 It was not until the early 1960s that the Church began to find new ways to express key aspects of the Christian faith. The Church’s unworldly approach was coupled with maintenance of the traditional ways of organizing Protestantism. This was all the more remarkable, since the relationship between Protestantism and state authorities, formerly viewed as unproblematic, had changed fundamentally during the period of dictatorship and war. Since the Reformation the Protestant Church had been able to rely on an at least neutral but generally beneficent state. ‘Throne and altar’ had been close even during the period of fragmented German statelets and with the establishment of the German Empire the two then moved even closer together. Particularly in the regional Churches, where the German Christians had taken over key posts in June 1933 either through steered elections or ministerial decree, the Church had lost all autonomy. How

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was the Church to respond to its ‘powerlessness’? Theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Helmut Thielicke and others had called for an end to a ‘People’s Church’ excessively close to the state. The ‘institution of salvation’ and its machinery, particularly the consistories, should be replaced by small circles and groups, vibrant communities that could function independently and autonomously.29 The bureaucratic Church, on this view, led to ‘juridification, objectification and above all depersonalization’. But the Church, reformers asserted, must primarily be realized as a community of brothers and sisters united under the Word.30 In organizational and institutional terms virtually none of these radical but vague plans were put into practice. But with the end of National Socialism the Protestant Church did consider new models of organization and fragments of these ideas had cropped up again by the late 1960s. In terms of Church politics, in some respects the ‘Church Struggle’ extended into the postwar period. Prominent representatives of the German Christians were excluded from discussions in which attempts to get to grips with National Socialism and to examine the Church’s own established views triggered intense debates at conferences of Church leaders in Treysa in 1945 and 1947 and Eisenach in 1948. The Councils of Brethren favoured a united Church anchored in the parishes. Decisions should be made and the Church developed by the grass roots, not a powerful superordinate authority. The six theses of the Barmen Theological Declaration had been formulated to defend the Church against National Socialism and the German Christians and it asserted the Church’s comprehensive right to self-determination, which must be guaranteed by the state. The fourth thesis emphasized internal Church organization and the associated power relations: ‘the various offices within the Church do not justify any dominion of one person over others but rather the performance of service that is entrusted to the entire community. We reject the false teaching that implies that beyond this service the Church can and should give itself or allow itself to be given leaders endowed with authority over others’.31 This was not only an act of resistance to the threat of enforced conformity under Nazi dictatorship but also articulated far-reaching principles that supposedly ought to undergird the Protestant understanding of the Church and Church law within a democracy. ‘The principle of a Church as ekklesia semper reformanda stood opposed to real or imagined rigid institutional structures and to the securing of clerical privileges and power interests that constantly seemed to push the Church’s genuinely religious tasks into the background’.32 It was particularly those associated with the Councils of Brethren that pressed for changes, first because they were

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eager to make Church structures reflect the valuable lessons learned from the clash with National Socialism and, second, because they knew they had only weak support in most regional Churches, so substantial changes would have to happen quickly if they were to happen at all. In reality just a few of their ideas were put into practice and soon those close to the Councils of Brethren were complaining about the restoration of previous conditions. The Evangelical-Lutheran Churches shared neither the critique nor general approach of the Councils of Brethren. Instead their representatives supported and promoted a reorganization of the Church intended to return it to its pre-1933 condition. Rather than the small circle of devout Christians envisaged by the Councils of Brethren, in their view it was the broad-based structures of a People’s Church that should form the Church’s basic structure. The spiritual office and thus the bishop should top the organizational pyramid and the consistories should regain their important role as administrative structures. Councils or synods of laypeople, meanwhile, would play no major role. These clashing perspectives demonstrate how closely theological, (ecclesio-)political and pragmatic-practical considerations were entwined and remained a feature of postwar Protestantism beyond these particular debates. For the Catholic bishops, too, the turn to Jesus Christ stood front and centre as the core of the Christian message and to foster this turn they tried to foster both continuity and a new beginning as they set about reorganizing pastoral life. The Church continued to promote the churching of Catholicism, in other words to restrict the range of lay activities and associations outside of the Church as narrowly understood. The goal was to focus instead on those structures present in the parish, in its pastoral activities – and above all in Mass. This approach incorporated elements of the liturgical movement, which had worked to achieve the reframing and internalization of the Mass celebration. National Socialism had forced Catholics to gather round the altar when it prohibited the activities of Catholic associations and clubs, but for the episcopate the ‘restriction to liturgy and pastoral care [entailed] not so much a loss of function as an opportunity to focus on what really mattered and was thus an improvement’.33 The bishops were not keen to revive the once powerful Catholic lay associations topped by their influential lay bodies. Yet these structures did re-emerge. Lay associations, above all the Kolping Association (Kolpingverein), were refounded on the initiative of a number of laity and without the support of the Church hierarchy. The Church leadership could not and did not wish to stop this engagement but it did take steps to integrate it into the official Church.

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The Bishops’ Conference put its faith in ‘Catholic Action’ as a new means of Christianizing society. The key aim was to create an elite of active Catholic laity through intensive religious education and religious moulding, an elite that would pursue missionary work of its own accord. But lay initiative was strictly controlled by the Church hierarchy, operating chiefly via the local ‘holy priest’. Officially the Church strictly distanced itself from all party political groupings – a doctrine derived from the development of the Azione Cattolica in fascist Italy. But in reality, throughout the 1950s at least, the Christian Democrats could rely on the support of Catholic bishops and laity. This reorientation of the well-ordered phalanx, the acies bene ordinata, of Catholic Action, was realized at best partially. But even as a thought experiment this pastoral model is revealing, clearly demonstrating that the bishops no longer felt that traditional Church structures and authorities were up to the task of preaching and transmitting the Church’s teachings to the next generation. So they embraced a new concept that in some respects recalled the organizational principles of left-wing cadre parties: the development of an elite group that would then mobilize the masses.34 In a comparable way to the Protestant concept of ‘looking inwards’, ultimately Catholic Action, too, entailed an ‘individualizing approach’: it addressed every individual, who must form his conscience in accord with Christian requirements and obey the priest. The special form of pastoral power, according to pastoral strategists, was geared more deeply and comprehensively towards the individual than in earlier times.35 People were no longer expected to focus on outward adaptation to rituals and Church practices but on inner participation and the incorporation of religious and Church precepts. In contrast to Italy and France, for example, the structures that ultimately took hold in Germany were only loosely connected with Catholic Action in its pure form. After returning from war and imprisonment people rapidly re-established clubs and associations in the Catholic dioceses so that what emerged was a mixed form of community pastoral work and association-based Catholicism. In the shape of the Young Christian Workers (Christliche Arbeiterjugend or CAJ), the Church borrowed a French template in an attempt to create a professional association focused on young people. Like the other associations, its goal was to impart the missionary spirit. But ‘towards the end of the 1950s at the latest … postwar Catholicism’s drive to achieve the “Christian renewal of the individual person” and the “Christianization of the surrounding world” ground to a halt’.36 The membership figures of the professional associations stagnated and declined in the early 1960s and the Church failed to create a Catholic

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lay elite on a scale that might have allowed it to function as a religious fermenting agent within society. By the time of Vatican II, which sought to open up Catholicism to the world, the idea of the acies bene ordinata was no longer in keeping with the times. Nonetheless, concepts were formulated and processes stimulated that ultimately exercised a major impact on the religious field: individualization of faith, equalization of the relationship between clerics and laity and the aspiration to increase the participation of laity in spiritual life and in the Church. In sum, in the immediate postwar period the Churches rapidly reorganized and attained a privileged public position, at least for a time. In neither of the Christian confessions was this bound up with a new religious or spiritual dawn. The ruptures and insecurities that dictatorship and war had undoubtedly caused were reflected neither in theological models nor pastoral orientation: theology and preaching hardly responded to the hardships of the postwar period or, most strikingly, to the experience of war and dictatorship. The older generation of Catholic parish priests interpreted the events of the war in the traditional way, which boiled down to the toleration of suffering as representative penance for the sins of the world. It was on this foundation that both Churches sought to conceive of the new beginning in 1945 and it was this that governed pastoral work and religious communication. This religious conception did not satisfy Germans’ need for persuasive interpretations of reality and among the younger generation in particular it soon came up against its limits. ‘And if today we contemplate life, the deeper life, death and God what we generally see first is war, destruction, hatred, adversity, suffering. … Where is God?’.37 This fundamental scepticism persisted after the end of the war. The new generation of Catholic students, for example, consciously distanced themselves from older ideas. ‘It’s incredible that the speaker has the nerve to get up and talk, and to talk in such a way, when it was he and his generation that ruined the Weimar Republic and thus brought about the rise of Hitler and the war’. This is how – according to his own memoirs – right-wing Cologne student Rainer Barzel protested against the appearance of a Centre Party politician in 1946, lambasting him for failing to apologize for the destruction of Barzel’s house and the torn uniform jacket he was forced to wear.38 In the Protestant Church as well, as Clemens Vollnhals sums up, re-Christianization remained an ‘illusionary concept’. ‘As a result of its unworldly concentration on personal faith … and in view of the ongoing impact of the traditions and burdens of German Protestantism’, this flawed approach was unable to fill the ‘spiritual vacuum’ left behind by the National Socialists.39

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Calling on the Young: From ‘New Dawn’ to ‘Arctic Conditions’ Nowhere is the success or failure of Church pastoral efforts more apparent than in the sphere of Church youth work. Like most other religions, Christianity is a system of belief geared towards and dependent on the imparting of faith and religious practice to the next generation. The future of religious communities hangs on the success or failure of this process of intergenerational transmission. The less the next generation self-evidently grew into the faith and corresponding milieu structures, the more the Christian confessional Churches had to strive to facilitate this process. Since the Weimar Republic at the latest, both confessions had recognized youth education work as a key factor in their self-preservation.40 Both in the Protestant regional Churches and in the Catholic dioceses specific forms of youth work and ways of organizing it were forged that endowed the new start after 1945 with a clear direction. The focus on the younger generation after the war was part of a general trend. The ‘call to the young’ was omnipresent and rang out just as much from the occupying authorities as from the reopened schools, universities and welfare institutions. When people talked about a new beginning it was the young in which they placed their hopes. Society was to be reborn ‘out of the spirit of alert youthfulness’, according to an idealistic exhortation by educationalist Karl Seidelmann. At the same time, ideas of this kind were linked with the massive demands that were being made of younger people, formulated by adults who – in a society that lay in ruins – could derive their authority solely from tradition.41 Vociferous appeals to the young undoubtedly served to obscure their parents’ and grandparents’ responsibility or to push it into the background.42 Then as now, debates on young people are always ‘a conversation society has with itself about itself’, that ‘is carried on in the idiom of “youth”’.43 The analysis of young people’s situation by Church officials and pastoral workers overlapped in a number of respects with analyses of the crisis allegedly afflicting society as a whole. Youth workers and social scientists both painted an utterly hopeless picture, describing the young generation as ‘detached youth’ or the ‘sceptical generation’. Such descriptions ultimately became widespread generational markers.44 In much the same way as other Church representatives, in late October 1947 the diocesan youth pastoral worker of the Diocese of Münster, Heinrich Roth, depicted young people’s situation in drastic terms: the experience of years of military life; individualism, which for the time being wants nothing to do with community work, including that within the Church, because people have been forced to live for so long as part

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of the mass; the loss of precious, valuable years of youth in the context of personal and professional education; the hopelessness of a dark future; the destruction of local area and family home; the disappearance of trust in any authority or leadership after the great betrayal perpetrated by the national leaders; the flight into superficial pleasures.45

The intention of this and many other accounts was clear: to underline the urgency of youth pastoral work. In both major confessions it was tradition that informed the new beginning, though no particular path was laid down in toto. One important difference in Church youth work compared to the prewar period was that the Church leadership wanted close links with existing Church structures. Institutional forms established during the Nazi period were thus preserved. The ‘regional youth pastor’ and ‘Gemeindejugend’ were not just an interim solution to the Protestant regional Churches’ struggles under Nazism, a solution that had resulted in the de facto prohibition of youth associations in 1936. In the postwar period these institutions became the leading organizational models and the ‘Gemeindejugend’ and other youth organizations were integrated into the structures of the regional Churches through youth chambers and youth conferences. The Protestant Youth of Germany (Evangelische Jugend Deutschlands), founded after the war, was an amalgamation of individual associations defined as a ‘voluntary community rooted in the parish’.46 The Catholic bishops, too, pursued rigorous churchization with the aim of integrating the formerly independent youth associations more strongly into the Church hierarchy. But the autonomous existence and interests of the traditionally high-membership youth associations proved so strong that this conception could not be implemented without compromises. In the shape of the Catholic Youth League (Bund der katholischen Jugend or BDKJ) an umbrella organization was established that brought the ‘Gemeindejugend’ and the other youth organizations into one body. The great bulk of BDKJ members, however, were provided by the Catholic Youth Community (Katholische Junge Gemeinde), which was integrated into the Church via the local clergy and whose members occupied most leading positions in the BDKJ. This centralization policy was a marked change over earlier approaches. But links to the religiously influenced youth movement of the Weimar Republic (the so-called Bündische Jugend) were not cut entirely: maxims such as ‘the young educate themselves’ and ‘the young leading the young’ were preserved in the practices, forms and guiding principles of youth work. ‘Holy enthusiasm for the kingdom of God’ and ‘reverent love for young people’ should ideally be reflected in the youth leader, who youth pastoral workers in both the Catholic

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and Protestant Churches regarded as the key means of winning over the next generation. The theology of pastoral care was dominated by precepts similar to those prevailing in practical pastoral contexts. These included ‘rallying under the Word’ and coming together for group Bible study in accordance with uniform work and reading plans. Practical work was geared towards a form and content whose origins lay in the nineteenthcentury revivalist and community movements and that had become particularly popular during the struggle with National Socialism. A 1947 report from Wehdem in Westphalia provides an insight into typical Church youth work practices. ‘A group of young men (twelve on average) gathers on Monday evenings. These meetings serve to discuss a number of issues of faith but are mostly a way of gathering around the Word, which leads to dialogue … On Tuesday the girls’ group meets (25–30 attend on average) to sing and study the Bible’.47 The ‘retreat to an existence from a religious perspective’ continued even without the external pressure of Nazi repression.48 The key actors driving this reversion to previously successful forms of youth work, with their pastoral emphasis, were pastoral workers and association leaders who had been active before the National Socialist era. The ‘men of the last hour’ before the ban on organizations in 1933 thus ‘resumed their old positions at the helm of youth work’ after the war.49 In the Catholic camp it was 56-year-old Bavarian prelate Ludwig Wolker and 67-year-old Sauerland priest Hermann Klens, along with prominent pastoral youth workers from the dioceses, that stood out. There was, for example, much continuity of personnel within Church youth work in the Diocese of Münster, extending to the smaller of the newly established or re-established associations.50 In the Protestant camp it was individuals such as Manfred Müller, chair of the Youth Chamber of the Confessing Church since 1942 and leader of the EKD Youth Chamber after the war, and Erich Stange, imperial warden of the Young Men’s Association (Jungmännerwerk) since 1921, who took the initiative. How successful was this approach? Young Catholics certainly lived up to the accolade of ‘well-ordered phalanx’ in their marches and large-scale rallies and here they were acting in accordance with the vision of Catholic Action, which set the tone for pastoral care during this period. In the case of the Protestant Church, meanwhile, the Boy Scouts demonstrated their cohesion through similar rituals. But it was all a facade. As in other areas, in Church youth work the supposed ‘religious spring’ was followed not by a summer but – to stick with the metaphor – initially by a period of cooling and later by downright Arctic conditions. Even in the 1950s, many of those at the

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parochial and associational grass roots already felt that their activities were marked by ‘a certain tiredness’. ‘The great majority of our young people play no part in Church life’, complained the presbytery in Isenstedt-Frotheim in 1957, a representative example of many similar observations.51 These contemporary impressions were reflected in membership figures. While the Protestant Pastoral Youth (Pfarrjugend) did without a formal admission procedure, the Catholic Church and its dioceses kept track of membership: statistics on the ‘degree of organization of Catholic youth in the Diocese of Münster’ show that the youth organizations declined, particularly between the immediate postwar period and the 1960s. The Nazi period had also damaged the Catholic youth organizations. In 1953 the degree of organization, at 30 per cent, was already markedly below the comparable figure for 1932, which was no less than 38 per cent. Between 1953 and 1963, however, this trend rapidly accelerated, with membership declining by a third, and slowed only in the late 1960s before finally coming to a stop at a low level in the 1970s.52 The statistical data match the self-perception of both confessions and their analyses of crisis, and in the early 1960s the decline of youth work became a topic of public debate. In the daily Welt newspaper Bernd Nellessen lamented the growing discrepancy between the ‘reality and appearance of the German youth organizations’. Their representatives, the journalist claimed, took their lead more from Church guidelines than from the needs of their clientele. As early as 1959 an internal paper produced by the Conference of Schleswig-Holstein State Youth Pastors adumbrated the journalistic debate, stating that ‘things are going to rack and ruin’ and resignedly acknowledging that ‘young people are simply different now’, with Church associations now standing apart from the ‘boys and girls’. Deploying the usual rhetoric, they called for youth pastoral work among young Christians to create ‘mighty fortresses’. In the Catholic Church this discourse of crisis took off two or three years later. Even observers close to the Church were unable to describe the Federal Youth Festival (Bundesjugendfest) put on by the Catholic Youth in Dortmund in 1965 – with fewer participants than previous meetings – as an ‘impressive proclamation of young Catholics’ intentions’ but at best as a ‘pale imitation of times past’, as Kontraste magazine put it.53 According to the statistics, however, the erosion of the associations and community youth work had begun earlier, in the mid to late 1950s. This was accompanied by major changes within youth pastoral work and the youth organizations that may be regarded as concomitant to, response to or cause of this decline: even if the official Church guidelines and guiding principles had remained unchanged, the practices of the

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bündisch groups, associations and community youth organizations had undergone a paradigm shift. Strategies intended to establish clear boundaries with the secular world were gradually abandoned. Church youth work and bündisch groups saw themselves in less and less exclusive terms and sought to give general upbringing and education an additional confessional accent. The goal, as these groups saw it, was to integrate young people’s lives and experiences into the religious community. What they had in mind was not the establishment of a special confessional world but of a ‘third agent of upbringing’.54 This new approach did not go uncontested in the Church youth confederations. In fact it was a constant source of dispute, particularly between the generations, and there were mounting signs of a chasm between the older members’ conception of the youth organizations as an elite or alternative to the outside world and the younger generations’ mentality. In 1921 the Jesuit Order had founded the New Germany Federation (Bund Neudeutschland) youth organization to carry out pastoral work among high school students. A highly exclusive confederation focused on creating an elite, as late as 1958 its leaders still discussed ‘throwing out’ less worthy members and until that year there were clear criteria for inclusion and exclusion. By 1961 and even more in the context of Vatican II this mentality seemed outlandish, the Church’s aim now being to ‘open up to the world’. This entailed intensifying its work in schools, while some in the Church even discussed whether and if so how there might be a rapprochement with social democracy and, later, with the non-parliamentary opposition. Youth work within the Protestant Church developed in a similar way. One leader of the Christian Boy Scouts (Christliche Pfadfinderschaft) in Lower Saxony summed things up in 1963 by stating that the organization would have to give up its ‘elite consciousness’. ‘We are not better than other youth organizations. The Christian Boy Scouts is gradually developing into a youth organization like any other’.55 This attitudinal shift was more than a conscious adaptation to young people’s changed realities and attitudes: institutional, conceptual and personnel-related upheavals coincided. Personnel were now less often drawn from the original bündisch youth movement and had less often experienced the Church Struggle: leading figures in the Young Men’s Association and the Burckhardthaus Association, which specialized in working with girls, resigned, as did older youth pastoral workers lower down the hierarchy. Between 1953 and 1958, for example, 14 of 22 state youth pastors in Schleswig-Holstein left office.56 When Pope John XXIII succeeded the conservative Pius XII, the Catholic Church saw a similarly dramatic and highly symbolic

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generational shift at the top. This was greeted with euphoria by many of those working in youth pastoral care. ‘We were the 58 rather than 68 generation’ as one Catholic youth pastoral worker born in 1936 expressed the meaning of this shift for his age cohort.57 There was an institutional and organizational shift as well. Church youth work had seen itself as in competition with similar initiatives by the state or political parties. But after initial scepticism about institutions such as the Youth Circles (Jugendringen) the Church youth organizations began to make use of these representative bodies. Against its original objectives the Federal Youth Plan (Bundesjugendplan), which had existed since 1950, developed into a tool for fostering the wide range of projects carried out by the Youth Aid (Jugendhilfe) organization, which opened up tremendous possibilities for the Church. As a consequence of these developments, from the mid 1950s onwards key terms such as hierarchy, order of business, concepts and responsibilities were added to the guiding principle of ‘struggle and contemplation’, which had been central to much Church youth work after 1945. The charismatic youth leader could not hope to master the bureaucratic process of applying for and administering funds, which required a grown-up executive working on a full- or part-time basis. As a glance at the staffing schedules of German dioceses and regional Churches shows, the educationalists and lay theologians employed as the youth groups professionalized developed into a new, ever-larger status and interest group that subsequently competed even with pastors. In the late 1960s it was this group of Church employees that often led protests against the Church hierarchy. The organizational integration of Church youth work into state structures changed the former fundamentally. The Church youth association had formerly been considered a ‘home’ for those of like religious mind, but from the end of the 1950s it turned into an institution of general youth social work. Confessional organizations of young people, previously centred on or close to the Church, were increasingly centralized, subjected to legal regulations and ‘socialized’ in terms of their objectives. In the immediate postwar era youth associations were intended to integrate young people into the Church’s missionary apostolate. Now they saw themselves as providing the young with a space for educational development. Was this approach still compatible with the Church’s responsibility to preach the Gospel, and if so to what extent? From the mid 1960s onwards this question evolved into a permanent reflection on the character and meaning of Church youth work and the bündisch groupings. But it was no longer possible to achieve a shared understanding of what the key attributes of Christian,

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let alone confessional, socialization ought to be, even among the main actors in a narrower sense. Should Church youth work seek solely to create a community? Or should it include a Church-centred, religious or biblical element? These were the basic questions posed in the ‘polarizing debate’ that occurred in the Protestant Church from 1969 onwards. As a result, on the practical, local level Church associations shifted away from spiritual exercises and religious instruction towards democratic-political engagement in school and society. Traditional and new approaches stood opposed to one another, personified respectively in the Church leadership and full-time youth officials from the associations. The at times bitter clashes between them neither produced a basic framework that might have generated a consensus nor stopped the outflow of members as association leaders had hoped. The trends in youth organizations and youth pastoral work sketched above began well before Vatican II and the threshold year of 1968 and thus far earlier than has so far been acknowledged in many Church circles. Vatican II and the alleged cultural revolution of ‘1968’ do not explain the rapid decline in young people’s ties to the Church. Both in society as a whole and in religious youth work these two events made such a strong impact only because many conventions and seemingly shared values had long since eroded: in the ‘long 1950s’ the modalities of religious socialization had been transformed in both major Christian confessions. The developments we have identified with respect to young people close to the Church and involved in Christian organizations apply even more to religiosity in Germany as a whole – and in this sense the changes in youth work outlined above were very much avant-garde phenomena that prefigured trends in religion as a whole.

The Postwar Era and its End: ‘Re-Christianization’ as Ideal and Chimera In the 1950s, wrote Church historian Hugh McLeod, it was still possible to refer to Western Europe as Christian.58 The same can be said of the three Western occupation zones and of the later West Germany: both the Protestant and Catholic Churches were held in tremendous public esteem. Initially recognized by the occupying powers as important interlocutors in postwar Germany, they were also greatly respected in the early days of the Federal Republic. Now that nationalism had been disavowed as a guiding principle, religion offered itself as a source of new values. The Churches aspired to promote ‘re-Christianization as a means of overcoming secularism’, a formula that promised to banish

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National Socialism without the need for genuine changes – and this moral framework served many Germans’ interests. The great majority of the population was still nominally Christian and a fair number of people rejoined the Church, initially feeding the illusion that it might be possible to make up for the mass exits of the National Socialist period. Strong relationships were formed between the religious and secular elites in politics and society and the ‘halting separation’ of Church and state helped the Christian confessions retain a prominent place, particularly in the education system, while the special system of Church Tax collection by the state guaranteed strong finances. Above all, the CDU held out the prospect of policies that reflected the Churches’ ideas. A large number of children and young people grew up and were raised in Church institutions, so the transmission of the faith to the next generation seemed guaranteed. The Churches had a strong influence on prevailing moral ideas and thus on their legal codification, while the Churches’ institutional construction and reconstruction went hand in hand with the establishment of bourgeois ideas of morality and decency. All of this condensed into a conglomerate within which the Christian religious communities held interpretive sovereignty in many areas and could thus exercise a profound influence on society. But this simple picture of comprehensive reconsolidation is just one side of the coin. In West German society as a whole the immediate postwar years and the 1950s were more than just a phase of ‘stagnation’ or ‘restoration’.59 And this was also true of the religious communities, in which new beginnings, transformation and a break with earlier developments occurred between the early stages of the Adenauer era and the early 1960s. In retrospect the perception of comprehensive ‘reChristianization’ emerges as a chimera: in a number of respects this supposed process consisted of short-term developments that quickly faded away. There was no completely closed religious lifeworld even before the Second World War and in postwar West Germany it was all the more difficult to maintain the cohesion of the Church milieu. Population movements triggered by war, flight and displacement, growing social mobility initiated by the ‘economic miracle’ that began in the late 1940s, an expansion of the individual horizon and worldview – all of these and other factors set strong and enduring changes in motion. What was new was that these developments no longer occurred only outside the religious communities. In the past they had largely succeeded in shielding themselves from modernization within a separate world, but this was no longer effective. The changes identified above thus had a strong impact on those West Germans strongly committed to Christianity and their milieus.60

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With respect to quantifiable religious practice, as expressed chiefly in membership and church attendance, the religious spring was short and never turned into a summer. The euphoria to which certain Church leaders succumbed was often rooted in facades: ‘my baptismal covenant stands firm forever’, as German Catholics sang at Mass. This song text not only highlights the new importance of quantifying evidence of religious success within the Church but exemplifies how, after the war, both Churches drew on traditional forms of pastoral work and practices of piety. Believers’ growing distance from these practices showed that they no longer satisfied their religious needs. ‘Behind the facade of an “ostensible religiosity” elements of its dissolution were already visible’.61 Particularly in the formulation and propagation of moral ideas, Church teaching and bourgeois society sometimes proceeded hand in hand: the family was regarded as the Church in miniature and the nucleus of society. Deviant behaviour such as sexual relations outside marriage or non-heterosexual contact was disdained as diverging from the moral norm. But in everyday life the binding force of these moral claims became ever weaker. Neither the Church’s moral notions nor the associated roles of girls, boys, men and women retained their vigour. Quite the opposite: the creeping exodus from the Church youth organizations was striking testimony to the erosion both of the Christianreligious lifeworld and the cross-generational chain of tradition. Ties also loosened in the political sphere. While the links between Catholicism and the CDU or CSU were to endure for a long time to come, pressure for change had already arisen within the Protestant Church, mainly as a result of attempts to come to terms with National Socialism. The relationship between ‘throne and altar’ traditionally stood for an emphatic closeness to the state but after the ‘Church Struggle’ such a constellation had become unthinkable. The convictions and political practices developed within the Councils of Brethren and Confessing Church ruled out a return to the old ways.

Notes   1. Graf, ‘Von der Baustelle’, 10.   2. Here and the following: Blessing, ‘“Deutschland in Not, wir im Glauben …”’, 61.   3. Blessing, ‘“Deutschland in Not, wir im Glauben …”’, 61.   4. See Greschat, Die evangelische Christenheit, 65.  5. Trippen, Josef Kardinal Frings, 227–334.   6. Quoted in Vollnhals, ‘Die Evangelische Kirche’, 162.

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 7. Schlink, Die Gnade in Gottes Gericht, 28, 49.   8. See Beck, Westfälische Protestanten.  9. No. 1030/II, ‘Protokoll der Plenarkonferenz der Deutschen Bischöfe’, Akten deutscher Bischöfe, 673. 10. See Repgen, ‘Die Erfahrung des Dritten Reiches’, 131. 11. No. 1030/IIb, ‘Hirtenwort des deutschen Episkopats, Fulda’, Akten deutscher Bischöfe, 689 f. 12. Blessing, ‘“Deutschland in Not, wir im Glauben …”’, 70. 13. Hummel, ‘Gedeutete Fakten’, 513. 14. Großbölting, ‘Wie ist Christsein heute möglich?’, 512–18. 15. Greschat, Die Schuld der Kirche, 102. 16. Wurm to Niemöller on 30 December 1945, quoted in Vollnhals, ‘Die Evangelische Kirche’, 152. 17. On the state of the debate, see Vollnhals, ‘Die Evangelische Kirche’, 134–36; quotation 136. 18. Vollnhals, ‘Die Evangelische Kirche’, 136–40. 19. As evidence of ruptured continuity in Pollack, Rückkehr des Religiösen, 223–35. 20. See Greschat, Die evangelische Christenheit, 209–11. 21. Vollnhals, ‘Die Evangelische Kirche’, 143. 22. Vollnhals, ‘Die Evangelische Kirche’, 162. 23. Barth, Die christlichen Kirchen, 102. 24. Quoted in Greschat, Die evangelische Christenheit, 300. 25. Evangelische Welt, 1 July 1949, quoted in Vollnhals, ‘Die Evangelische Kirche’, 163. 26. Quoted in Greschat, Die evangelische Christenheit, 296. 27. Quoted in Vollnhals, ‘Die Evangelische Kirche’, 164. 28. See Kösters, ‘Kirche und Glaube’. 29. See Kaiser, ‘Der Zweite Weltkrieg’, 228. 30. Diem, Restauration oder Neuanfang, 48. 31. Busch, Die Barmer Thesen. 32. Kaiser, ‘Der Zweite Weltkrieg’, 232. 33. Hürten, Kurze Geschichte, 244. 34. See Damberg, Abschied vom Milieu?, 506. 35. See Große Kracht, ‘Die katholische Welle der “Stunde Null”’, 176–83. 36. Damberg, ‘“Radikal katholische Laien an die Front!”’, 158. 37. Schleicher, Aus Feldpostbriefen, 315. Cf. Holzapfel, ‘Das Kreuz der Weltkriege’. 38. Barzel, Ein gewagtes Leben, 71. Quoted in Schmidtmann, Katholische Studierende, 457. 39. Vollnhals, ‘Die Evangelische Kirche’, 163. 40. Götz Olenhusen, Jugendreich, 159. 41. See Götz Olenhusen, Jugendreich , 261. See also Allerbeck and Rosenmayr, Einführung in die Jugendsoziologie, 2. 42. See the research overview in Boll, ‘Jugend im Umbruch’. 43. Hornstein, ‘Nachwort’, 561. 44. Schelsky, Die skeptische Generation; Bondy and Eyferth, Bindungslose Jugend. 45. Damberg, Abschied vom Milieu?, 316.

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46. Decree of the ‘Protestant Youth in Germany’ (‘Evangelische Jugend in Deutschland’ or EJD),15/16. May 1946, quoted in Haasler, Evangelische Jugendarbeit, 74. 47. Report by the parish of Wehdem to regional youth pastors Wellmer and Hüllhort on youth work in the parish, Advent 1947, quoted in Beck, Westfälische Protestanten, 367. 48. Beck, Westfälische Protestanten , 368. 49. Ruff, The Wayward Flock, 187. 50. See Damberg, Abschied vom Milieu?; Ruff, ‘Catholic Elites’. 51. Quoted in Beck, Westfälische Protestanten, 367. 52. Figures in Damberg, Abschied vom Milieu?, 307–416. 53. Quoted in Schwab, Kirchlich, kritisch, kämpferisch, 76. 54. See Schwab, Geschichte der evangelischen Jugendarbeit, 76. 55. Buschmann, ‘Zur Einführung’, 3. 56. See Großbölting, ‘Wiederbelebung’, 68. 57. Großbölting, ‘Wie ist Christsein heute möglich?’, 262. 58. McLeod, The Religious Crisis, 31. 59. See the basic thesis of the anthology by Schildt and Sywottek, Modernisierung im Wiederaufbau. 60. See Gabriel, ‘Die Katholiken in den 50er Jahren’, 430. 61. Kleßmann, ‘Kontinuitäten und Veränderungen’, 417.

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PART 2

The New Dawn and the Plunge into Postmodernity

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The Religious Field in the 1960s and 1970s

The 1960s were turbulent times. They stand for a period of dramatic and profound change and not just in retrospect – contemporaries too perceived them as such, though from a quite different perspective. ‘For the times they are a-changing’ wrote Bob Dylan in 1963, putting his interpretation of these changes into song. It was not only rock musicians but also politicians who perceived that something special was underway. The same year federal chancellor Ludwig Erhard set out his government’s first-term programme, affirming that ‘not just West Germany but the entire world is in the process of emerging from the postwar period’.1 The Vietnam War and the worldwide protest movement against it, the civil rights movements emerging in North America, May 1968 in Paris, the student rebellions in Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich – these and other events lend credence to the view that these were ‘dynamic times’. Sociohistorical, economic and cultural factors further reinforce this picture. But the changes were not limited to ‘1968’. In many cases they were of a more long-term nature:2 the baby boom beginning in the early 1960s made the population of West Germany younger than it had ever been, with the share of the population under twenty years of age at 28.8 per cent in 1960 and climbing to 31.1 per cent by 1970. While the displaced and refugees had already increased the population, the economic miracle added the first great wave of new immigrants. The economic upturn of the postwar period brought massive structural change: ever fewer employees worked in the primary and secondary sectors while the service sector grew. With an unemployment rate of less than 1 per cent, there was in effect full employment, while rising incomes meant an overall increase in prosperity. Average incomes in blue-collar, white-collar and civil servant households increased by half in this decade to more than 1,300 marks,3 and the average earner could now afford things quite beyond his reach in the previous decade.4 The amount of free time increased as a consumer society featuring a wide range of experiential options began to take shape.

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There were also changes and upheavals in the sphere of (mass) culture and the media: radio was joined by television as the second electronic mass medium.5 Though the broadcasters initially transmitted only for a few hours or half a day, this enhanced individuals’ ability to obtain information beyond their own social circles and to gain an impression of other cultures and distant worlds by audiovisual means. Weekly news magazines such as Der Spiegel and Die Zeit and critical TV programmes such as Panorama expanded the media spectrum, as did the new rororo-aktuell book format. Many were captivated by previously little-known forms of entertainment culture: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and many other bands became the avant-garde of a special and increasingly internationalized youth culture. These changes and many others besides mark out the 1960s as a period characterized above all by a lifestyle revolution. The student unrest and political protests from 1968 onwards, meanwhile, were not a singular event but the high-water mark of a longer development. A combination of change and innovation against the background of stable political conditions and rapidly increasing prosperity led the way out of the classical modernity of industrial society. This touches on a topic that has been widely discussed in the past few decades in the idiom of postmodernity or a second modernity. The period beginning in the late 1960s differed fundamentally from classical modernity as it had existed from the final third of the nineteenth century. With respect to Western Europe, British historian Eric Hobsbawm went so far as to refer to fundamental changes that are still ongoing:6 social systems’ need for reform, the crisis of Fordist production, the erosion of standard, socially protected working conditions for the male breadwinner, the dissolution of the associated gender-specific division of labour in the modern nuclear family and major demographic change – these few points on a long list document the complexity of the changes that continue to challenge politics and society.

Notes  1. Behn, Die Regierungserklärungen, 114.  2. Evidence and figures on the phenomena mentioned below in Schildt, ‘Materieller Wohlstand’, 21–53.   3. Rytlewski and Opp de Hipt, Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Zahlen, 141 ff.   4. See Schildt, ‘Materieller Wohlstand’, 26.   5. See Hickethier and Hoff, Geschichte des deutschen Fernsehens.  6. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, 402–31.

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The Christian Religious Communities in the 1960s and 1970s The religious field was central to these changes because they profoundly influenced both forms of collective meaning-creation and individual constructions of identity.1 Until the 1950s the religious communities could at least partially seal themselves off from secular developments in their own milieus and social contexts. Now they found themselves at the heart of a transforming society. But the Churches and religious communities were not just passive objects buffeted by change: in many fields it was they that inspired and stimulated it. Research on both Christian Churches is virtually unanimous in underlining the profundity of this change. The 1960s were probably ‘of more far-reaching significance to the Catholic Church and Catholics than to any other institution or social group within German society’, as emeritus professor of theology and social ethicist Karl Gabriel puts it.2 Church historian Martin Greschat describes the situation of the Protestant Church in similar terms: ‘within a short time, namely from the mid-1960s to the end of the decade … an obvious and increasingly dramatic change in the parameters of religious and Church life’ had occurred.3 Hugh MacLeod, one of the leading experts on the international history of religion, emphasizes that in Western Europe and North America this period engendered a rupture that bears comparison with the Reformation and schism of the sixteenth century.4 What were the reasons for this transformation? Why was it so intense? And why did it occur during these years? These questions cannot be answered monocausally. In what follows, then, I seek to identify changes both within the religious communities themselves and in their relationship to society and politics.

‘Why Don’t You Leave the Church?’ The Church Crisis and its Public Discussion Despite all the early signs of decline, in the 1950s the West German religious field seemed cohesively Christian. The majority of the

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population belonged either to the Protestant or Catholic Church and society was – at least nominally – thoroughly Christian in character. The number of openly agnostic or atheist individuals was vanishingly small. There were few Muslims, Buddhists or members of other religious communities and they were almost entirely absent from public awareness. Only a few Jews had survived the Holocaust and chosen to live in post-National Socialist Germany. Religious pluralism was not yet a social fact. Against this background both Christian Churches led opinion in many fields. Particularly with respect to marriage and family, sexuality and education, and questions of morality, in many cases government policies went hand in hand with the Churches’ behavioural precepts. This changed in the 1960s and 1970s. ‘Why Don’t You Leave the Church?’ was the question asked on the cover of the April 1967 issue of der Stern magazine, which published a survey of West Germans’ religious life.5 A problem that had been intensifying for some time was thus being tackled directly and publicly: the dechurching of much of society. Examination of the statistical data brings out the contours of this process. In 1956, of 53 million Germans, just 2.1 million belonged to a religious community other than Catholicism or Protestantism or to none. By the mid 1960s things had changed. Of just under 62 million inhabitants, while the vast majority were still members of one of the Christian Churches, the 7.45 million non-Christians could no longer be ignored.6 The confessional communities, moreover, were experiencing longterm and intensifying decline. The number of citizens leaving the Catholic Church soared: while around 22,000 Catholics left the Church in 1966, the figure for 1970 was no less than 70,000. In the half-decade between 1968 and 1973 the number of those attending church on Sunday fell by a third. The figures are even more dramatic if we distinguish these findings by age group. Among 16- to 29-year-olds, almost 50 per cent no longer attended Mass. From the Churches’ point of view this hardly suggested a bright future. Public opinion researchers at the time were already highlighting the observable trends: ‘the sudden turn away from the Church’ applied to every age and demographic group but by no means to the same extent. ‘It was above all men, more educated groups, city-dwellers and especially young people who stayed away from church services’.7 The figures for the Protestant Church followed a similar trend: until 1967 an average of 44,000 members left each year. In 1968 this figure climbed to 60,000 and by 1969 it had reached 112,000 before surging to 203,000 the following year. The Protestant Church does not regard

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Sunday church attendance as obligatory for the individual believer so it was always lower among Protestants than Catholics, ruling out direct comparisons between the confessions. But if we observe trends within the Protestant Church a clear picture emerges. With the rate of church attendance at 15 per cent, the two postwar decades from 1945 until the mid 1960s stand out as a time when ties to the Church were strong and pastors reached a large proportion of their community. Within a few years this high percentage had fallen: in 1973 just 7 per cent attended church on Sunday. In parallel to developments within the Catholic Church, among Protestants, too, it was younger believers in particular who ceased to attend Sunday services. If we look at Protestant Christians aged 45 or under, until 1963 11 per cent regularly attended Sunday services; in 1967 6 per cent still did so, but this had fallen to just 3 per cent by 1973.8 Both Churches carried out research and engaged social scientists and public opinion experts in an attempt to shed light on this exodus. In the context of the General Synod of the Dioceses in West Germany, the German Bishops’ Conference commissioned sociologist Gerhard Schmidtchen to survey German Catholics. His methodology, which involved sending every member of the Church a questionnaire, was highly contested among experts: this approach could not guarantee a representative finding, since it is the particularly engaged and critical who tend to express their opinions rather than the more moderate majority. But the bishops wanted to demonstrate their openness so they stuck with this method. The findings were striking and triggered impassioned debate.9 In detailed questionnaires Schmidtchen asked how much Catholics’ personal values matched or clashed with those of their Church.10 Among other things, he tried to establish which Church precepts the faithful regarded as helpful or unhelpful. Analysis of the findings showed that all those who felt hindered in their personal efforts to achieve social justice or personal happiness distanced themselves from the Church. The ‘structures of Church and society’, as Schmidtchen commented, were perceived by many Catholics as ‘discrepant’: it was no longer the Church but society that laid down key values and informed people’s self-image. ‘This is modern secular consciousness’, the study asserted. ‘There are widespread expectations of progress and of human beings’ ability to shape their own reality that bear utopian-religious characteristics. Many people no longer perceive the Church and Christian traditions as instrumental to these values. These individuals thus come into conflict with Christian tradition or what they consider to be Christian tradition and abandon the Church’.11

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This survey was complemented by a qualitative study, also carried out in 1972, that examined religiosity in a city in the Ruhr region.12 Sociologist Ursula Boos-Nünning showed that the majority of Catholics had left behind a Church-centred form of religiosity. Many continued to look for a sense of peace and security in a higher power, for help through faith or consolation in their final hours. They continued to articulate their desires in words and images strongly influenced by Christianity. But the rituals and forms, the Sunday service, the confessional or involvement in the parish played only a modest role in satisfying these needs. Even the spiritual life of the roughly half of Catholics identified as religious or highly religious was characterized by mixed forms of informal or new religiosity and traditional Church practices. Similar developments were evident in Protestantism. In 1972 a survey commissioned by the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany (Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische  Kirche in Deutschland) revealed that depending on age group just 2 to 9 per cent of those asked about their value system explicitly agreed with Christian-bourgeois values, while 23 per cent identified freedom and independence and 25 per cent a progressive society as important goals.13 How Stable is the Church?, asked a study commissioned by the EKD and published under this title in 1972, which showed that the Church was becoming less stable and cohesive, particularly among the young and educated.14 These figures began to deteriorate not in the 1960s but in the mid 1950s. A decade after the war, leading Church office holders were increasingly convinced that it would be impossible to achieve comprehensive reChristianization. The new methods being deployed to comprehend and portray the state of religious life were one of the factors contributing to this insight. In the Catholic Church the early enumeration of church visits had developed into a social science-based sociogeography and it was now possible, for example, to determine more precisely than before which Catholics had stopped participating in Sunday services and no longer received Easter communion. It emerged that working men and women between 20 and 60 years of age were scarcely being reached at all. These and other findings made it clear that the religious communities were no longer capable of penetrating society as a whole. Contrary to hopes of re-Christianization, the major religions seemed like a realm detached from other spheres of life.15 In summary it is fair to say that both Churches lost much of their integrative power. But most people did not make a radical break with confessionally organized Christianity. Rather than leaving the Church in a publicly visible way many believers initially maintained ties with their religious communities. At least on a formal level they

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remained members while distancing themselves from the Churches’ religious principles and behavioural demands. Statistically, many of the structures of the People’s Church survived but over the long term this attitude shift had fundamental consequences. ‘Baptismal certificate Christians’, Church members for form’s sake only, could not be expected to raise their children to become vibrant members of the religious community. Religious socialization thus crumbled in a crucial sense: since the mid nineteenth century at the latest, the family had become one of the most important agents of religious education. From the second half of the twentieth century onwards this link in Christianity’s chain of tradition functioned only to a limited degree. The web of religious socialization that extended from Church schools, through children’s and youth associations to occupational organizations for adults, became increasingly frayed, making it even harder to pass on the faith to the next generation. Another new factor helps explain the overall decline in Church membership, particularly the dramatic increase in the numbers of those leaving in the late 1960s: the crisis revealed with social scientific methods became the subject of a broad public debate. In the past, conversely, evidence of an eroding People’s Church from statistics and public opinion studies were discussed only within the Church in the newly founded pastoral divisions and general vicariates. It had long been suspected in Catholic circles that certain findings had been kept secret and that surveys had been carried out that were intended solely for the bishops’ bookshelves.16 These manifestations of crisis were widely discussed in the second half of the 1960s. ‘What Do Germans Believe?’, asked Der Spiegel in December 1967, building on Stern’s successful issue of April the same year. In this issue Der Spiegel published the findings of a specially commissioned survey, attracting a great deal of public attention. ‘For every third West German God is dead. Just half the population believe in life after death. Most Catholics do not consider the Pope infallible’.17 We need only read the first three sentences of the lead story to see that it was discussing fundamental rather than marginal aspects of the Christian faith. After presenting detailed figures and colourful charts the article came to a sobering conclusion: Germany was dominated by Christians outside the Church. They are neither for nor against the Church. They have no wish to abolish it but consider it superfluous. Its presence is required only for family celebrations – a bit like a dear old aunt. They are neither for nor against God. They get by without him; for them he has died. Some people have hardly noticed this. In any event they do not mourn him. They are neither for nor against the Christian

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faith. They believe what and how they like. … Half of West Germans now reside in the no-man’s-land between belief and non-belief. There are no Church opponents to appal them and perhaps drive them back to the Church. But nor are Church leaders succeeding in fetching them back into the dwindling Christian flock.18

Overall the article found increasing indifference to religion. More and more Germans constructed their faith out of a variety of different materials, including some unrelated to the Church. More important than this analysis itself, articles like the one above and other commentaries in the mass media signalled a new era, in which the significance of this and other surveys was hotly debated, in public and to a wide audience. Magazines such as Der Spiegel and Stern – seeking to sell as many copies as possible – devoted a great deal of coverage to these topics. The debate had broken out of the inner circles of the Churches, and in the shape of the media non-Church institutions were now actively involved in it. An air of persecution hung over Church representatives as they struggled to respond to these publications. According to reports of the responses to the Der Spiegel cover story, students at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich used the survey as an opportunity to encourage their fellow students to leave the Church.19 Initial responses from the Church tended to follow a typical pattern, with Church newspapers and sermons dismissing the survey findings.20 Chief editor of the Catholic News Agency Konrad W. Kraemer, for example, accused Der Spiegel of failing to present the full facts and of ‘appalling distortions’. ‘On closer inspection the claim that “God is dead” for a third of Germans shows, to put it tentatively, all the signs of being unfounded hearsay’.21 In the issue presenting the survey and subsequent editions, Der Spiegel reported the responses of a number of Protestant and Catholic theologians, who sought to achieve a nuanced evaluation of the findings and took a scholarly approach to its conclusions. In a commentary on the Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen channel, for example, television journalist and theologian Elmar Maria Lorey called for ‘panic-free’ analysis of the survey findings and a detailed examination of the ‘misunderstandings’ they had revealed among many of the faithful.22 But this and other responses succeeded only marginally in injecting objectivity into the debate on the article.23 The true significance and impact of such reportage lay not so much in the detail as in its general – explicit and implicit – message. What West Germans learnt from a cursory reading of this Spiegel article and other reports was that distance from the Church was by no means an exception, a characteristic of outsiders in a thoroughly Christian society. The many bar and pie charts left the religious reader in no doubt that

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his convictions were shared by only a small section of society. To be a believer was just one option among others. By demonstrating that there was no Christian – let alone confessional – interpretive sovereignty within public debate, these media analyses undermined the Church’s claim to lead public opinion on lifestyle and morality issues. Reports and statistics of this kind implicitly showed that people were now dealing with religious convictions and precepts in a new way. The creators of these studies by no means asked only about Church catechisms but blended together various elements of Church-related and nonChurch religiosity; only in this light do questions about respondents’ ties to the Church make sense. The editor thus took on the role of a ‘religious middleman who rearranges the typical motifs of Christian dogmatics and religious truth and thus reinforces the trend towards a religious patchwork’.24 It was no longer the Church but the individual that the media stylized as possessing interpretive sovereignty over religion. The illustrations accompanying the Stern article underlined the increasingly apparent contrast between belief and non-belief. In one illustration Michelangelo’s depiction of Creation shows God the Father floating above the waters, pointing his finger to separate water and earth. This image is juxtaposed with a photograph of a spacecraft bearing the caption: ‘Heaven destroyed. Space rockets have made the one-time divine residence an arena for human wonders’.25 Another study on images of God in Germany carried out by the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research, again commissioned by Stern magazine, had a similar effect. ‘What does God look like?’ asked Stern on its cover. According to the magazine, thanks to a ‘precisely formulated catalogue of questions’, it had succeeded ‘in breaking into the zone of silence surrounding private concepts of God’.26 This had torn away the veil of intimacy and the results showed two things: first, that many Christians associated ‘no specific external form’ with the notion of God, with 72 per cent of Protestants and 64 per cent of Catholics agreeing with this statement. Second, what the accompanying texts and images demonstrated above all was pluralization. God was visualized as Creator, as Trinity, as a pensioner or as a mathematical or scientific formula. The magazine also printed a large number of paintings by schoolchildren showing their ideas of God, underlining the central role that personal ideas of religion played in these reports. The media’s approach could only mean one thing: ‘the authority to define a canon of belief seemed to move ever further away from the Churches and was instead conferred on the individual human being’.27 The terms ‘privatization’, ‘individualization’ and ‘syncretization’ did not appear as such but they were clearly central to both articles and illustrations.28

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Christians in the 1960s: Identity Formation Through, Alongside and Without Religion Like society as a whole, since the 1960s the religious communities have lived through a period of tremendous change. Rather than binding rules and precepts, society supposedly offers a wide array of options and opportunities. The individual is released from ties and liberated from conventions. Religious as well as ethnic, social, political and generational affiliations exhibit not just greater pluralism but also greater instability. Processes of modernization, and the dissolution of traditional spatial contexts as a result of migration and globalization, have made formerly stable narratives and identities much more fluid.29 The disappearance of traditional ties and sources of security dovetails with the individualization of life paths and patterns of identity formation. Modern individuals must create their identity consciously and reflexively. They are in a position or – to reverse perspective – are forced to choose their life path from a number of possibilities and to fill this path with meaning for themselves and others.30 But this abstract description fails to fully convey one of the most remarkable upheavals of the past century. In 1976 American essayist Tom Wolfe captured this profound shift well in the term ‘me decade’. According to Wolfe the alchemists’ eternal obsession with transforming metal into gold had found a new focus in the cult of personality: ‘the star was me’.31 People now sought to sculpt their own identity and ensure their own well-being, while the social context faded into the background. Lifestyles became more plural and traditional sociocultural milieus dissolved. There was a shift in the patterns of primary communitization in the family and among friends and those of like mind. In this sense the ‘1968’ protest movement was by no means a political caesura but essentially a lifestyle revolution and thus the foundation of an ‘alternative milieu’.32 Experts in the interpretation of society tried to comprehend this change through a variety of concepts. The typical description of society in terms of ‘classes and strata’ was supplanted by new models. It was no longer the production process and the individual’s place with in it that served as analytical pivot: new categories such as consumption, leisure time, preferences of style and taste were taken into account or replaced the old perspectives entirely. The terms coined to describe this transformation oscillated between grandiose ones such as ‘postmodernity’, ‘second modernity’, ‘reflexive modernity’ and those with a specific focus: the term ‘risk society’, popularized by sociologist Ulrich Beck, refers to the intensification of choice and the associated risks for the individual’s lifestyle and everyday

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The Christian Religious Communities in the 1960s and 1970s • 113

experience.33 The broad interpretation of society as an ‘experience society’, Gerhard Schulze’s attempt to capture trends since the 1970s, aims to connect the individual lifestyle and its cultural integration, as does Peter Gross’s term ‘multi-option society’.34 What these approaches share is the conviction that social contexts are changing or dissolving. The question is how to evaluate this process: are there countervailing forces ensuring the cohesion of society? Because religion is an important element in the formation of personhood and identity, it was not just part of this process but in many ways a pioneer of change. In their traditional form religions provide rituals and interpretations that allow individuals to locate themselves in time and space and in relation to social groups.35 Until the 1960s Catholicism in particular but also sections of Protestantism condensed into an interpretive system and a way of life that influenced their members’ everyday lives, integrated them socially and made many practices and interpretations of the world seem self-evident. Even in the heyday of these milieus, how people understood these models of religion and the associated practices was never uniform. How they should deal with the tension between transcendence and immanence within their lives was always subject to contestation; conflicts over the correct interpretation of sacred texts and the right way to live one’s life run like a thread through the history of every religious community. Outside the Churches there developed forms of non-institutional religiosity: referring to the dawn of the twentieth century, historian Thomas Nipperdey identified monism, a new Volkbased paganism and the religious transfiguration of life through the life reform movement.36 At the beginning of the twentieth century these and similar novel religious phenomena were still exceptions to the rule but both within the Churches and outside them they have grown exponentially. And to the extent that confessional and milieu-specific precepts eroded, the Churches’ normative precepts also lost much of their power to mould people’s lives and everyday reality. Religion diffused, pluralized and individualized. This was a process that occurred chiefly within the large religious organizations: ‘under the cover of their teachings’ they underwent a ‘radical individualization of faith’.37 Just a few studies have shed light on the individual acquisition of religious notions of transcendence in Germany and how it has changed.38 A large number of oral history projects have certainly examined the transmission of remembered history in relation to generational patterns and influences, but for the most part they have not considered Church or religious experiences and patterns of orientation. This is particularly

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regrettable because the epistemic value of such studies is so great: their findings provide important complements and correctives to overarching but explanatorily weak processual terms such as ‘secularization’, ‘individualization’ and ‘privatization’. In this vein, for example, some studies have analysed (auto)biographical accounts by working-class Austrians or questioned Catholics who attended university in the 1950s and 1960s.39 Rather than reconstructing history these studies unearth experiences that have built up over the course of a number of life stages. In terms of quantitative social history, then, they do not depict a representative cross section but they cast a qualitative light on the lifeworldly mechanisms and logic according to which individuals relate to Church precepts and their own religiosity.40 If we look at these studies in light of the transformation of the religious field since the 1960s, their findings only partially support the descriptive aspirations of the grand sociological terms. On the level of memories we find few clear ruptures. Rather than consistent goals it is ambivalences, inconsistencies and vagueness that dominate the individual acquisition of religion.41 The basic tenor of Catholic respondents’ recollections is a view of the 1960s as a ‘strange time’ in which people were searching for new sources of guidance. The background here is a fairly closed milieu in which everyday life moved to the rhythm of the Church. While there were many signs of individuals distancing themselves from the Church during the first half of the century, it was not until its second half that they did so in any full sense.42 Processes of erosion and transformation are particularly apparent in the recollections of Catholic students in the 1950s and 1960s. It was above all the younger members of this group, who went to university during the second half of the 1950s, that developed a pronounced generational consciousness. Less influenced by National Socialism and war than older students, the ‘good Catholic’ home and the village context were key tropes in this group’s generational self-image.43 Its members recall the Catholic milieu in all its ambivalence, contrasting the narrowness of the confessional world with positive experiences of Catholic youth culture. Trips and children’s camps crop up again and again as special spaces of an independent, self-determined and dynamic life. Overall the dominant experience is of a closed and coherent world. In this vein journalist Herbert Riehl-Heyse recounts his youth in a Bavarian pilgrimage site: ‘In Altötting we sang “Maria zu lieben” during the procession of lights; and then we fed coins into the jukeboxes in Café R. until late into the night, always requesting the same song so that Mr Frank Sinatra could get it through Rosi the waitress’s head that the lady was a tramp. When Rosi’s current boyfriend had finally kicked us out

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we called him a stupid pig and may well have gone to confession to own up to it. It all fit together perfectly’.44 Within this closed and intact milieu many male students became quite politicized. In comparison to older cohorts they exhibited a ‘close entwining of ethical norm, political imperative and concrete activity’45 and this comes across clearly in their recollections. ‘It is quite simply part of the Christian’s duty to engage with society’, to quote lay theologian and Church employee Hans Kath.46 Political engagement, he explains, was grounded in a worldview informed by clear beliefs and a sense of separateness. Catholics who were students during this era repeatedly mention motifs such as the ‘adoration’ of Konrad Adenauer, a combative rejection of the SPD and a ‘fear of Russians’ – gleaned from parents’ stories of war and imprisonment and Cold War anti-communism – as key aspects of socialization, including their own. Students typically worked in youth organizations or the CDU. Reflecting the close fusion of Church and society, faith intervened in the world. ‘The impact of a reinvigorated and restructured Catholic sphere of influence’ shaped ‘youngsters’ horizon of values’.47 At the same time, the associated convictions had a deep impact on everyday life, endowing many decisions and actions with meaning: within their own self-perception and vis-à-vis the rest of the world, Catholics expressed their approval or disapproval of highly palpable milieu norms – not just through their choice of political party but also in how they dressed or their taste in music. In many cases, rather than extending ‘from cradle to grave’, this generation’s attachment to the Catholic milieu ended with matriculation.48 From the interviewees’ perspective, the beginning of their university studies heralded a tremendous expansion in their spatial and ideological horizons and marked the dissolution of the closed world of childhood and early adolescence, a world they generally perceived as coherent and harmonious. ‘“Change” is a key theme in the lives of virtually all those born since the second half of the 1930s’.49 Many identify leaving a religiously informed lifeworld and being confronted with other views and systems of thought as a crucial experience. Historian and teacher Johanna Ehler, for example, identifies a clear boundary between the lifeworld of her childhood and schooldays on the one hand and university on the other. In particular she contrasts German lessons at a grammar school run by nuns and her university study of German: there ‘we had always diligently read Rilke, Wichert, Gertrud von Le Fort and Langgässer; they were all close to God and now (laughs) they were … there was no sign of them, what we read was classical literature – classical literature, all kinds of realism,

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but even in the interpretations their relationship to God was simply not an issue’.50 Her impressions of her study of history prompt similar recollections and she sums up her experiences as follows:

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the things that I had thought crucial had somehow suddenly disappeared. … That came as a surprise to me because I had thought, without ever really thinking about it, that everyone [was] somehow similar to this milieu of the school run by nuns, in other words that that would continue. I was genuinely surprised and it took some time for me to fully grasp that quite different rules applied in this environment.

In much the same way, Klaus Breinfeld, who graduated in astrophysics in 1961, relates how his studies fostered a new way of thinking: namely the need to establish the rationality of statements through an individual procedure.51 Catholics thus increasingly formed opinions in light of their own conscience. This did not render Church precepts and milieu standards obsolete but they now had to demonstrate their validity in confrontation with a new way of thinking. Theology students in particular tell of striking learning experiences during their studies that affected their appropriation of religion, Catholicism and Church. Normative precepts and the way in which they were derived from tradition and scripture were recognized as open to question and debate. Here radical new approaches to New Testament exegesis played a special role, with the historical-critical method calling into question much that had previously been regarded as true. Lay theologian Katharina Strate, for example, recounts how shattering she found the questioning of the status of the Three Wise Men or the Virgin Birth as historical facts. ‘When I heard that for the first time, which is of course the standard view today, but I still remember how that shook me, the historical-critical method’. In contrast to the older students who presented themselves as enjoying ‘great authority and certainty in their religious orientation and practice’, respondents of the younger generation told of the strong impact of theological innovations on their individual religiosity. Interviewees explain changes in religiosity and lifestyle not so much as the result of spectacular events but as a ‘gradual reorientation’.52 Here a key role was played by the observation of some individuals’ ‘double standards’, which undermined the world of Catholic meaning. Changes within Catholicism itself also triggered new departures. Journalist Herbert Riehl-Heyse, for example, who stated that he used to be a keen disruptor of opposition election campaign events, recalls the lasting impression made on him by the invitation of SPD politician Herbert Wehner to the Catholic Academy in Munich. ‘It’s almost impossible to imagine how offended the good Catholic circles were by this betrayal.

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And how profoundly satisfying it was to tell my mother about this unheard-of event, including the fact that SPD politician Georg Leber was said to be a proper Catholic’.53 These events were still having much the same effect at the Catholic Conference in Essen in 1968, which he recalls as a special symbol of the ‘new era’.

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It was at a Catholic conference of all things that I first learned just how much things were beginning to change in the Fatherland, but where it also struck me, me especially – don’t I know from home how pro-state, lamb-like and boring Catholics are? … And now Pope Paul has composed his famous encyclical against the contraceptive pill – and it is the German Catholics of all people who are causing him more trouble than anyone … inflammatory speeches are made opposing the Pope and bishops, people are calling openly for disobedience. … Are the young people, who are now constantly setting the tone, really allowed to do all this? In any case they are doing it and no lightning strikes the roof of the Grugahalle.

When the shifts within the Catholic sphere became visible and observable, for many respondents a new stage began in which ingrained dichotomies were questioned. The traditional ties between the Catholic Church and the CDU came under particular scrutiny. ‘We didn’t have anything against the CDU … but against this entanglement of Catholicism and the Adenauer state. That was something we didn’t want’, recalls Peter Hertel, who grew up in the Ruhr region and was later a journalist and critic of the conservative Opus Dei group.54 But even the majority, who remained committed to the CDU or CSU, began to justify their links with the party in new ways. They now explained their cross on the ballot paper with reference to genuine political or worldly factors. ‘Confessional identity alone no longer justified any specific political decision’.55 Against this background the Second Vatican Council, which took place from 1962 to 1965, was perceived in a wide variety of ways. But observers are unanimous in noting that the Council was not a decisive rupture but rather one stage in the transformational process of the 1960s. As both supporters and opponents of the Council concur, changes had already begun to manifest themselves long before. Peter Hertel remembers the Council as ‘the catalyst for a diffuse sense of discontent’ with the 1950s Church concept of mission. And when the Second Vatican Council erupted, that was a great freedom. The way the Church opened up at that time. And we all thought: that’s how it has to be now. This Church has to get down into the world and approach the world. And that’s why attempts were also made to extend liberation into society. In other words into the political ties, to break those ties.

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At the same time the interviewee underlines that the Council was not an absolutely new beginning.

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I remember we had already talked about it in 57/58 and we said: we have to break the links. How do you do that? We didn’t know. And there was very little movement at the time. Because there were too many contraints. But it’s not as if the Council came along and we all shouted hurray, as if we experienced something entirely new. The ground had been prepared ideologically long before.56

Theologian Elizabeth Knell describes her impressions of Vatican II in much the same way. But she is highly critical of the Church Council and the subsequent changes. Of course, she explains, she understands the Council’s impulse to open the Church up to the people. ‘But I couldn’t understand the break with such a long tradition because after all traditions have a certain binding power. So I do see myself as part of a generation that was somehow pushed out. They simply standardized something’. While previously the Mass ritual had offered an always identical and thus reliable source of orientation, she described the reform of the Mass as ‘quite a big rupture’.57 On many other issues, the students of the 1960s spoke of their Christianity and their Christianness as something that was independent of the Church. Even in this group with strong ties to the Church, the individual increasingly became the shaper of her or his own faith. This did not mean that people suddenly broke away from their religious community. But the way they explained traditions and rendered them plausible to their own conscience changed fundamentally. Rather than simply accepting daily prayers at table, Sunday church attendance and participation in Corpus Christi processions or similar activities as selfevident givens they questioned and discussed them. This meant that in principle they could reject them. The interviews also hint at another fundamental development: rituals and forms of piety lost significance within Christians’ selfimage, while individuals’ practical, charitable or political activities were endowed with religious dignity. Faith should shape practice and demonstrate its social relevance. Only then did the representatives of this generation questioned in this survey see it as a good thing. This had major consequences for individuals’ behaviour. Rather than continuing to live piety in the style of their parent’s generation, many students – even highly religious ones – changed their own practices, which they certainly perceived as religious in nature. ‘Rather than going to mass people wrote critical articles, rather than attending confession they read Hans Küng, rather than becoming a priest they became a trade union official’. This behavioural change cannot be interpreted

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as secularization in the sense of individuals or groups distancing themselves from their religiosity. Instead, people continued to operate within a Christian frame of reference but their priorities had changed. It was the inner worldly and social dimension of religion that now stood centre stage while religious worship declined. This change, described here with reference to a small group, occurred not outside the Church but at its core, and pastoral workers strove to address and integrate Catholic students in a variety of ways, regarding them as an important source of support within the community. But this group was particularly inclined to find new ways of interpreting traditional religious beliefs and it was above all their departure from the constraining structures of the Catholic milieu that set this process in motion. Of course, the individualization and pluralization observable in Catholic students was bound up with an array of other developments. Not just within the Church but far beyond it individuals’ values changed. Self-realization and quality of life were society’s new lodestone following the expansion of education. The desire for selfrealization lent significance to individual free time, not least because reduced working hours meant more time for leisure activities. The mass media benefited greatly from this. Within twenty years of 1970 average media consumption increased from around 4 to around 5 hours per day and thus by 25 per cent. Classical forms of religious socialization thus faced surging competitors in a number of different fields. But this wave of subjectification within West German society was conspicuously and enduringly correlated with developments in religion. For example, the rhetoric of the ‘project’ and associated practices now began to spread via the ‘alternative milieu’ and its media. Particularly among the younger generation, leisure time and professional life revolved around various ‘projects’, which might mean explorations in collective living or helping out with artistic, political, artisanal, journalistic and, not least, academic initiatives. And young people with a formally better education were also particularly inclined to conceive of religion as a personal syncretic project separate from the Churches.

Liberation: Conflicts over Sex, Family and Authority ‘Essen was different’:58 this was the pithy conclusion reached by Franz-Maria Elsner, a member of a local preparatory committee, in the official report on the eighty-second German Catholic Conference in Essen of September 1968. ‘A young, open, turbulent, hopeful, critical Catholic conference’ had taken place, according to the euphemistic

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summary of events at this great gathering of German Catholics by Essen bishop Franz Hengsbach. Simply because of the mixture of attendees, added Bernhard Vogel, president of the Central Committee of German Catholics, in retrospect, this major event clearly showed that the ‘process of socialization had arrived in the Church’. In a year of protests, demonstrations and critique of social institutions, according to Vogel, the Church stood at the centre of society and had become a forum for discussion.59 What had happened? The eighty-second Catholic Conference had been shaken by an open and unprecedented revolt. Far more significant than previous gatherings, according to Dutch daily newspaper De Tijd, the conference had ushered in a ‘new era for the Catholic Church in Germany’.60 The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported ‘increased tensions’ and ‘stark antagonisms’ after the conference that thwarted plans for the usual ‘military parade’ by the Catholic associations and lay initiatives, while the left-liberal Frankfurter Rundschau celebrated the Essen event as a ‘successful lesson in disobedience’.61 While in many respects critical Catholics managed to convey their reformist concerns to a broad public, the debate – which generated a great deal of media attention – on the Pope’s Humanae Vitae, which became known as the ‘pill encyclical’, soon turned into a major dispute. On 25 July 1968, Pope Paul VI issued an encyclical that was not only obligatory reading for every Catholic but whose tenets must also be strictly complied with. The circular’s title referred to a highly specific topic, and in his remarks the Pope prohibited any sexual practice that deliberately prevented the woman’s impregnation. ‘Any action [is excluded] which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation – whether as an end or as a means’.62 This was due to the Church’s interpretation of the relationship between marriage and procreation, which posited a direct link between the significance of affection and that of procreation in marital sexual intercourse. As the Pope set out, to dissolve this relationship through the use of any kind of contraception was ethically impermissible. Abstention was declared to be the only acceptable means of avoiding conception during phases of female fertility. The encyclical formulated ‘a commandment that must be obeyed and that applies without exception – the only options are obedience or violation’.63 The author of the encyclical, as canon lawyer Norbert Lüdecke shows, knew there was more at stake here than just sexuality and procreation. The very title ‘Humanae Vitae’ indicated the momentous character of this document, which asserted that the internal structure of the sexual act, as inscribed in the nature of man and woman, was

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an embodiment of God’s plan, which the Pope interpreted as binding on believers. ‘This plan not only regulates the individual sex act but along with it the understanding of the sexes, particularly of the woman, sexuality, relations between couples and parents, conscience, human freedom and reason’.64 By underlining the tremendous importance of this topic, the encyclical left the faithful in no doubt about the importance of their personal compliance. The Pope, after all, spoke for the ‘Church, Mother and Teacher of all peoples’. And it was not just argument that counted: the Pope’s authority enjoyed the support of the Holy Spirit. The individual believer must abandon all resistance. The Pope called on bishops, priests and theologians to find the right language to communicate Church teachings ‘with joyful humility and submission’. Neither the confessional nor preaching should allow the slightest doubt to arise about the Catholic Church’s position. That the Pope and his advisers were aware how difficult people would find all of this is evident in a striking comment in the magazine Die römische Warte, which regularly made reports and commentaries from the Vatican magazine L’Osservatore Romano available to a German readership: the imperative to obey applied even if the believer felt that these requirements made no sense, explained Dominican Friar and professor of theology Rosario Gagnebet. The believer must conduct himself like a patient who could not understand his doctor’s advice or ‘soldiers in the last war … who carried out their commanding officers’ orders despite their ignorance of the top leaders’ strategy and their immediate superiors’ tactics’.65 This seemingly martial exhortation was a response to events in Essen. Rather than carrying out their orders like the soldier or trusting like the patient, many of those attending the Catholic Conference had refused to obey, and not quietly and secretly but loudly and publicly: ‘Hengsbach we’re coming, we’re the religious left’ (‘Hengsbach wir kommen, wir sind die linken Frommen’). Chanting slogans and waving banners, members of the grouping known as ‘Critical Catholicism’ interrupted Ruhr bishop Franz Hengsbach during his opening address, catapulting the Churchinternal opposition into the headlines.66 But events at the ‘Marriage and Family’ forum, which was pervaded by the spirit of Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae, were of an entirely new, hitherto almost inconceivable quality. According to the report on the associated debate, banners bearing slogans such as ‘sinful rather than responsible’ (‘Sündig statt mündig’), ‘obedient and neurotic’ (‘Gehorsam und neurotisch’) and ‘bow your head and witness’ (‘Sich beugen und zeugen’) were initially intended to provoke a critical discussion but were soon removed when it became apparent just how open the dialogue was becoming.67 Of around 3,000

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participants, with just 90 votes against and 58 abstentions, the majority declared that they were unable to comply with the Church’s official statements on contraception and demanded a ‘fundamental revision of the papal teaching’. Concluding the dialogue, moral theologian Johannes Gründel warned ‘the overzealous’ not to turn the debate into a test of obedience and thus close it down while also rejecting attempts to use it as an opportunity to oppose the Church’s authority. Essen moderator Hans Schroer, meanwhile, declared the event evidence that German Catholics were in the process of ‘entering a realm of freedom, breaking out of the pen that holds a carefully guarded flock’. Decisions on marriage, he stated, could not be made without married couples having a say. People were as one with the Pope in his determination to ensure ‘a correct understanding of marriage’ but were resistant to the ‘patronising schoolmarmish attitude’ prevalent in curial circles and especially in the Vatican magazine L’Osservatore Romano, which ‘seeks to press capable, devout and grown-up Christians into the role of mute underlings’.68 The event’s organizer, the Central Committee of German Catholics, incorporated the protesting resolution into the official records of the Catholic Conference. Of course, the Committee stated, this was not a declaration endorsed by the Catholic Conference as a whole – but a large group of people had expressed their opinion and the resolution deserved to be taken seriously.69 German Catholics were not the only ones to react adversely to the encyclical: both within and outside the Church the Pope’s action provoked international criticism.70 Particularly dramatic was the resignation of American suffragan bishop James Patrick Shannon on 23 November 1968: the conduct demanded by the Church, he explained, was simply impossible for many of his flock and he could not believe it was the will of God.71 Within global Catholicism ten bishops’ conferences, representing 56 per cent of diocesan bishops, were critical of the encyclical and sought to tone down the Pope’s demands. The German bishops were among them: their ‘Königstein Declaration’ moderated the Pope’s demand for obedience, replacing it with a call for the faithful to do their utmost to comply. Anyone who believed himself incapable of accepting the Pope’s decision ‘must conscientiously examine himself to establish whether – free of subjective arrogance and a rash, know-it-all attitude – he can justify his standpoint’. At the same time, the bishops warned the faithful to respect ‘the laws of dialogue within the Church’ because ‘only those who do so are in compliance with the Church’s authority and their own duty of obedience as correctly understood’.72 The crucial subtext shines through here: the

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encyclical dealt with sexuality and particularly contraception but was also concerned with authority and obedience within Catholicism. The foundation of belief on which Humanae Vitae sought to build had long been hollowed out, most Catholics having already tacitly moved away from the Church’s sexual morality in the 1950s and early 1960s. On the issue of premarital sex and beyond, most believers no longer complied with the Church hierarchy’s instructions and defied the precept of chastity. An increasing number embraced contraception: ‘they regarded instructions on marital sex as detached from reality’.73 Church norms influenced people’s imagination and discourses far more than their actual social behaviour. But the notion of a sexual revolution, as widely associated with ‘1968’, was as inaccurate in the religious field as with respect to society as a whole. What dominated within private behaviour was not a revolutionary breach with convention but an increasing distance from the Church’s behavioural precepts. In reality many no longer saw any connection between sexuality and Church or Christianity. What was ‘revolutionary’ was the public discussion of this dissent, with many Catholics harbouring great hopes that the Church would act to remedy the ‘marriage crisis’ and overcome the discrepancy between Church teachings and everyday practice. Catholicism in the 1950s sent out mixed signals: on the one hand, with implacable conviction, certain Catholic authors calculated that the earth could accommodate many times its present population – so there was no need for contraception.74 On the other hand, prominent bishops and theologians often hinted at a new approach. In 1963, in a theological Journal, Josef Maria Reuss, suffragan bishop of Mainz, wrote that married couples should decide freely and autonomously on issues of family planning and contraception methods.75 In 1964 Cologne cardinal Josef Frings had ‘marital guidance’ read out in his diocese that not only eschewed a canonical style but was also quite different in terms of content: rather than recapitulating the ‘purposes of marriage’ in order of their importance, Frings described marriage as ‘the most intimate shared and loving relationship that exists on this Earth. The man and woman should be happy in their love and give life to new human beings through God’s creative power’.76 The catechism of a Dutch bishops’ conference went a step further, clearly separating physical love and procreation: fertility was associated with marital love but not with each individual sexual act.77 While traditional practices continued to dominate within pastoral work, the neoscholastic limitation of sexuality to the act of begetting children had already been watered down. A personal understanding of marriage broke through at a time when the Church was still emphasizing the

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significance of marriage as an institution.78 The Second Vatican Council ushered in a sense of a new dawn, its documents fulfilling Catholics’ expectations at least in embryonic form: the Gaudium et Spes pastoral constitution placed marital love on an equal footing with the begetting and raising of children.79 But the Church said nothing about contraception, since the Pope had brought consultations on the subject to an end and claimed exclusive jurisdiction over such matters. Council participants learned that a secret papal commission had been working on the issue of demographic developments since 1963. Pope John XXIII had initially established a small working group that gradually developed into a much larger grouping. Press reports on these secret consultations then appeared in 1967. Indications that the expert body might recommend a change in Church practices prompted Paul VI to instruct an episcopal commission to report first, though on 28 June 1966 it failed to produce a unanimous verdict. The majority of the bishops recommended changing the Vatican line, while a minority declared any form of contraception unethical and beyond justification.80 The Pope then discussed this with close confidants for another two years before the promulgation of his encyclical. Hopes of reforms faded as a result of Humanae Vitae. There were to be no changes. ‘It is not scholarly expertise and the lived religious beliefs of married couples that are decisive when it comes to moral issues but solely the magisterium. Doctrine is not to be adapted to life but instead life must be brought into conformity with doctrine through the leadership of the Church. This was and remains the strategy of the magisterium’.81 The question of authority was in fact the Archimedean point of the conflict. The Protestant regional Churches were at most marginally involved in the debate on the Second Vatican Council and the papal encyclical. Since there was no central doctrinal authority within the structure of the EKD there was no intense debate of the kind that occurred within the Catholic Church and the Protestant Churches had in any case adopted a more moderate stance on the issue of contraception. The Protestant Church was nonetheless deeply involved in attempts to conceive of a new sexual morality. Sections of the Church had been just as rigid in their pastoral practice as their Catholic counterparts. In the Weimar Republic both Catholic and Protestant societies for moral purity had taken off, their activities and objectives virtual mirror images of one another. And in the Adenauer era many within the Protestant Church had adhered to the strict sexual morality of the time.82 After 1945, however, the Catholic People’s Guardian Association (Volkswartbund or VWB) dominated this field, influencing legislation through its lobbying activities.83

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It is not surprising, then, that it was initially Protestant theologians who set about redefining human sexuality. Towards the end of the 1960s, prominent theologians, clergy and Church representatives called for the liberalization of the divorce law, greater understanding for sex before marriage and greater appreciation for sexuality within marriage. Marburg theologian Siegfried Keil emerged as a leading figure here though he continued to criticize masturbation, homosexuality and every form of heterosexuality ‘if the other is not loved for his own sake but is merely regarded as an object of one’s own drive satisfaction’.84 But he was vociferous in promoting the acceptance of non-marital sexuality between a man and woman if this was loving and progressing towards a partnership. In the much-noticed ‘Memorandum on Issues of Sexual Ethics’85 of 1971, the EKD put forward a number of very liberal positions – according to the assessment even of Church critic, reviewer and sex scientist Volkmar Sigusch in Der Spiegel: going by the statements on sex education for children and on masturbation, he claimed, one might think one was ‘dealing with liberal sex education teachers’.86 But Sigusch criticized other passages as backward-looking and mystifying. The Stern, one of the leading illustrated magazines in Germany at the time, caricatured the new openness in a cartoon: a pastor stands facing the door of a church, shouting inside: ‘get dressed children, the service is about to start!’.87 Catholic critics took issue with their Church’s official line in much the same way. Jesuit Roman Bleistein assailed its fixation on limiting sexuality to marriage and called for revision of its teaching. Celibacy inevitably came up for discussion in this context as well. These discussions became even more intense with the formation of so-called priests’ and solidarity groups, a faction within the Church that sought to represent and publicize dissenting views.88 But these contributions to the debate failed to gain much traction, chiefly serving to brand the majority view within the Church as backward-looking and traditionalist. In the 1960s theologians and bishops were either cited as authorities or criticized, but religion now seemed ‘to have become obsolete as a frame of reference for sexual conduct’.89 For many West Germans and the media, the Churches were no longer competent on these issues: in this vein, at a Church conference in 1965 the staff of Church advisory services noted that the advice section of just one mainstream magazine received a daily total of around fifty letters asking for advice on love and marriage. Taken together, the roughly 100 confessional advisory institutions in West Germany received vastly fewer letters.90 We might view this as a mere snapshot but the practice of Church advisory services showed that

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they were in fact perceived in a very one-sided way. Church marriage guidance functioned primarily as a means of repairing existing marriages and resolving crises within them. Nonetheless, the staff providing these services had long since abandoned an institutionalcanonical understanding of marriage: ‘individual persons and their needs rather than the abstract values of the institution were the main focus of advisory services’.91 Still, knowledge of the Church’s official positions undoubtedly deterred individuals from seeking advice. ‘Infidelity, a feeling of emptiness within marriage, impotence’ and other problems came up in the advisory practice of the 1960s but not birth control, contraception or abortion.92 The field of sex underwent a process of pluralization in the 1970s as a result of the ‘sex surge’ and a booming porn industry. It was not just sex scientists who offered their expertise: the market in erotica advertised its products by presenting itself as a source of advice. Looking back, the leader of the Protestant Central Office on Ideological Issues (Evangelische Zentralstelle für Weltanschauungsfragen) saw this as a dramatic case of alienation between Church and faithful: ‘in this intimate sphere’ pastoral care had ‘to a limited extent passed to the doctors and to a great or very great extent to the weekend press, illustrated magazines and mail order companies’.93 Within the public sphere, then, there had been a dramatic shift away from conditions in the 1950s, when the Churches dominated the field of private and public morality. Ultimately, it was mainly the many attempts to regulate sexual conduct that kept sex as a topic on the public agenda – though without significantly influencing such conduct. By the 1970s at the latest the Churches had been pushed to the margins and enjoyed little success in their efforts to promote their sexual morality. Freed from their religious straitjacket, interpretations of family and gender roles and socially prevalent models of sexuality underwent considerable change during the 1960s and 1970s. Before the 1960s the nuclear family, consisting of father, mother and one or more children, was considered the ‘natural’ state of family life and came to be seen as ‘normal’. The religious communities had contributed hugely to this interpretation. Other ways of life, meanwhile, were branded as deviant, though for the most part they were regarded not as something people had chosen but as the result of unfortunate circumstances.94 This social norm changed over the course of the 1960s. The fathermother-child(ren) model did not disappear. Quite the reverse: from a social history perspective, the nuclear family remained the most common model and it largely retains this status today. But this family template lost its dominance as role model. The normal family was no

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longer a binding norm: particularly in recent decades, it came to be seen as one of a number of family types, denaturalizing its role and forms of authority.95 Divorced and remarried, cohabitation without the blessing of the Church or without a marriage certificate from the government, a conscious decision not to have children, children from a first marriage within a new relationship, same-sex relationships, gay couples who fulfil their desire for children through adoption: many constellations exist and in contrast to earlier times they are acknowledged as legitimate rather than branded as deviations. Diversity became normality, a paradigm shift especially palpable in law and jurisprudence: attempts to restructure gender relations within marriage in 1977 sought to establish equality between men and women, divorce was made easier, the legal position of ‘illegitimate’ children was improved and homosexual partnerships were recognized. All these changes pointed in the same direction: the law increasingly declined to prescribe a particular way of life. Instead the individual could and was compelled to choose from a diverse range of legally equal constellations. In political terms, the religious communities and above all the Catholic Church found themselves under pressure. In the 1950s they had exerted significant influence on policy and jurisprudence, particularly in the fields of marriage and family,96 but Catholic lobbyists now had to accept defeat on various issues. With the support of the CDU and CSU, after the war the Catholic Church had sought to hinder divorce under all circumstances and thus lend legal stability to the institution of marriage. But in 1970, despite resistance from the Churches, the law on non-marital status was changed.97 Among other things, the new law referred to unmarried mothers and their children as ‘families’, stabilizing their legal position and ‘illegitimate’ children were now entitled to a share of their biological father’s estate. These and many other changes aimed to make children and parents in nonmarital circumstances equal to ‘normal families’. Like many other legal reforms, the change in the law on non-marital status revealed ‘changed parameters for the assessment of and approaches to a different way of life and family form’.98 This shift had social ramifications. ‘The “classical” stereotype became dysfunctional: single mothers could no longer be thought of as “wanton hussies” or children conceived outside of marriage as degenerate criminals’. These hackneyed images were superseded by the fundamental equality of those individuals and groups whose conduct differed from that of the majority. When it came to public debates on sexual morality, the Churches found themselves robbed of their former interpretive sovereignty. In the 1950s they had to some extent dominated but at the very least strongly

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influenced the public process of communication about these issues. They now suffered a massive loss of credibility, plausibility and authority. In the realm of politics, they represented one lobbying group among others and when the law governing sexual offences was amended, for example, the Catholic Church failed to have its views enshrined in law.99 In the media and in public perception the Catholic Church in particular was left with just one role: that of the backward-looking institution that continued to promote the Church sexual morality of the 1950s. Media reports focused primarily on scandals. This kicked off with the media exploitation of the ‘case’ of Georg Denzler. When the Bamberg-based Church historian and Catholic priest in the parish of Breitbrunn am Ammersee announced that he was marrying his housekeeper, who was carrying his child, the Augsburg diocesan bishop Josef Stimpfle stripped him of the right to work as a priest.100 In the Catholic Church’s reactions to such press coverage the frontlines of the 1950s resurfaced and were eagerly seized upon by the media. While the religious communities were less and less concerned to demarcate their mutual boundaries and instead focused on mutual understanding and ecumenicalism, the media made a very sharp distinction between the Catholic and Protestant Churches with respect to sexual morality. In the media coverage of the 1960s it was Catholicism that dominated because its position was more distinctive and open to attack. It was regarded as isolated and hierarchical while the Protestant Church was perceived as dialogue-oriented and open to the world.101 It was not until the 1970s that confessional differences faded in this field, with media coverage increasingly highlighting the opposition between traditionalists and reformers within both Churches as the ProtestantCatholic distinction receded into the background. If we look at societal norms concerning the family, marriage and sexuality, we find a comprehensive and far-reaching shift of role models. Within just fifteen years, not just in Germany but in every (Western) European society, the normative framework had shifted fundamentally. ‘Such a comprehensive shift in the opportunities and risks of personal choice from institutions to individuals over such a brief timespan is historically without precedent’, as sociologist Ulrich Beck puts it.102 The fact that the model of the nuclear family remains highly influential to this day does not contradict the fundamental nature of this change. Many individuals continue to view ‘forming a successful (nuclear) family’ as a key element in their vision of a fulfilling life, but this has been joined by ‘having a successful career’ as an almost equally important objective. At the same time, alternative ways of life are automatically and self-evidently included in such visions as further options.

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This mental shift was and is problematic for the religious communities, which had associated themselves with the classic ideal of the family in a special way. The internal conflicts of the 1960s and 1970s became a tremendous burden and the Church’s fundamental assumption that the family is the key agent of religious socialization began to look shaky. The upheavals caused by this shift remain palpable to this day, while nostalgia for this ideal of the family has become entrenched in the Christian Churches. American anthropologist of religion Penny Edgell has observed how strongly anchored the traditional ideal of the family remains in American religious communities. Surprisingly, this restricted vision applies not only to conservative and traditionally oriented parishes. Even in liberal religious communities the longing for a family serves as background to their activities. Certainly, these communities’ statements and self-representations highlight the need to integrate single parents and divorced individuals. But in pastoral practice, song texts and narratives, community activities and everyday conversation or simply in decisions on when church services begin, it is the traditional father-mother-child model that continues to dominate.103 This implicit orientation ultimately functions to exclude all those groups who do not live according to this model: if we look at accounts of the current state of Christian communities in Germany and prognoses regarding their future, here too we find a group strongly oriented towards the parish, one that fuses a focus on ministry with practices strongly geared towards Church institutions. This includes Sunday church attendance and a petty bourgeois cultural style that valorizes the traditional nuclear family.104 In religious communities, then, individuals congregate whose mentality, social habitus and family structures fit together. Intensive community life induces a high degree of internal homogeneity. The flipside of this is the maintenance of barriers to non-members. Those who live, believe, work, spend their free time or live family life differently do not belong. New mechanisms of closure and exclusion thus develop that run counter to individuals’ aspirations to hospitality, openness and perhaps even mission.105

Notes   1. For a very perceptive overview, see Doering-Manteuffel and Raphael, Nach dem Boom.    2. Gabriel, ‘Zwischen Aufbruch und Absturz’, 528.    3. Greschat, ‘Protestantismus und Evangelische Kirche’, 546.

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  4. McLeod, The Religious Crisis, 1.   5. Stern 13, 1967.   6. Eicken and Schmitz-Veltlin, ‘Die Entwicklung der Kirchenmitglieder’, 589.    7. Köcher, ‘Religiös in einer säkularisierten Welt’, 175.    8. Figures in Greschat, ‘Protestantismus und Evangelische Kirche’, 547.   9. See Ziemann, Katholische Kirche und Sozialwissenschaften, 167–187.   10. See Schmidtchen, Zwischen Kirche und Gesellschaft.  11. Schmidtchen, Zwischen Kirche und Gesellschaft, 68.  12. On the methods and findings, see Boos-Nünning, Dimensionen der Religiosität.   13. See Schmidtchen, Gottesdienst in einer rationalen Welt.  14. Hild, Wie stabil ist die Kirche?   15. See Ziemann, Katholische Kirche und Sozialwissenschaften, 338.   16. Quoted in Katholische Kirche und Sozialwissenschaften, 153.   17. ‘Diesseits und Jenseits’, Der Spiegel 52, 1967, 38.   18. ‘Diesseits und Jenseits’, Der Spiegel 52, 1967, 52.   19. ‘Was glaubt wohl Gott vom Spiegel?’, Der Spiegel 6, 1968, 44.   20. See Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit, 324 ff.   21. ‘Was glaubt wohl Gott vom Spiegel?’, Der Spiegel 6, 1968, 44.   22. ‘Was glaubt wohl Gott vom Spiegel?’, 44.   23. See ‘Was glaubt wohl Gott vom Spiegel?’, 67.  24. Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit, 323.  25. Stern 13, 1967, quoted in Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit, 321.  26. Schnippke, ‘Wie sieht der liebe Gott aus?’, Stern 52, 1968. Quoted in Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit, 325.  27. Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit, 326.  28. Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit.   29. See Häußler, ‘Reflexive Identität und Authentizität’, 230–49.   30. See Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, 52.   31. Wolfe, ‘The “Me” Decade and the Third Great Awakening’, New Yorker, 23 August 1976, 32.   32. Reichardt and Siegfried, Das Alternative Milieu.   33 Beck, Risk Society.  34. Schulze, Die Erlebnisgesellschaft; Gross, Die Multioptionsgesellschaft; Beck et al., Reflexive Modernization.   35. See Knoblauch, ‘Religion, Identität und Transzendenz’.  36. Nipperdey, Religion im Umbruch, 143 ff.   37. Graf and Große Kracht, ‘Einleitung’, 14 f.   38. For an exception, see Heller et al., Religion und Alltag.  39. On this and the following remarks, see the excellent study by Schmidtmann, Katholische Studierende.   40. See Heller, ‘Zur Sozialgeschichte des Katholizismus’, 297.   41. See Schmidtmann, Katholische Studierende, 479.   42. See Heller, ‘Zur Sozialgeschichte des Katholizismus’, 298.   43. See Schmidtmann, Katholische Studierende, 423.  44. Riehl-Heyse, Ach, du mein Vaterland, 156.  45. Schmidtmann, Katholische Studierende, 458.

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 46. Schmidtmann, Katholische Studierende, 457.  47. Schmidtmann, Katholische Studierende, 433 f.   48. See Schmidtmann, Katholische Studierende, 417.  49. Schmidtmann, Katholische Studierende, 467.   50. For this quote and the following, see Schmidtmann, Katholische Studierende, 443.  51. Schmidtmann, Katholische Studierende.  52. Schmidtmann, Katholische Studierende, 467.  53. Riehl-Heyse, Ach, du mein Vaterland, 75 f.  54. Schmidtmann, Katholische Studierende, 475.  55. Schmidtmann, Katholische Studierende, 477.   56. Quoted in Schmidtmann, Katholische Studierende, 476.   57. Quoted in Schmidtmann, Katholische Studierende, 483.   58. Elsner, ‘Essen war anders’, 15.   59. See Elsner, ‘Essen war anders’, 19. Elsner is referring here to a provisional appraisal by Vogel of 29 September.   60. Elsner, ‘Essen war anders’, 18.  61. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 9 September 1968 and Frankfurter Rundschau on the same date. For an overall press review see the entries in Hehl and Hürten, Der Katholizismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 626 f.  62. See Humanae Vitae.   63. Lüdecke, ‘Humanae Vitae’, 534.   64. Lüdecke, ‘Humanae Vitae’, 535.   65. Gagnebet, ‘Die Autorität der Enzyklika Humanae Vitae’, 269.  66. Hengsbach, ‘Grußwort’, 169. On the ‘critical Catholic conference’ see Gorlas, ‘Umfunktionierter Katholikentag’.  67. On this and what follows: Mitten in dieser Welt, 280–85 (report on the discussion forum).  68. On the debate over the encyclical Humanae Vitae, see Schatz, Zwischen Säkularisation und Zweitem Vatikanum, 323. An important contemporary document is the so-called Königstein Declaration by the German bishops. See ‘Wort zur seelsorglichen Lage nach dem Erscheinen der Enzyklika “Humanae Vitae”’, 30 August 1968.  69. See Mitten in dieser Welt, 173.   70. See for example Joannes, The Bitter Pill.   71. See Lüdecke, ‘Humanae Vitae’, 536.   72. Deutsche Bischofskonferenz, Dokumente, 470.  73. Rölli-Alkemper, Familie im Wiederaufbau, 215, 225.   74. See Mosshammer, Werkbuch der katholischen Mädchenerziehung.   75. See Reuss, ‘Eheliche Hingabe und Zeugung’.   76. Quoted in Rölli-Alkemper, Familie im Wiederaufbau, 165.  77. See Glaubensverkündigung für Erwachsene.   78. See Rölli-Alkemper, Familie im Wiederaufbau, 165.  79. See Gaudium et Spes.   80. See Sartory and Sartory, Strukturkrise einer Kirche.   81. Lüdecke, ‘Humanae Vitae’, 542.   82. See Raeder, Warum werden so viele Ehen unglücklich?   83. See Steinbacher, Wie der Sex nach Deutschland kam, 32.

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 84. Keil, Sexualität – Erkenntnisse und Maßstäbe, 17.  85. See ‘Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland’, Denkschrift zu Fragen der Sexualethik.   86. Sigusch, ‘Liebe kann doch nichts dafür’, Der Spiegel, 26, 1971, 137.   87. Stern, 49, 1971, reprinted in Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit, 467.   88. On the postconciliar discussion, see Großbölting, ‘Wie ist Christsein heute möglich?’  89. Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit, 298.  90. Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit, 287.  91. Rölli-Alkemper, Familie im Wiederaufbau, 366.  92. Rölli-Alkemper, Familie im Wiederaufbau, 364.   93. Hutten, ‘Die sexuelle Revolution’, 112.   94. See Beck, A God of One’s Own, 120 ff.   95. See Beck, A God of One’s Own, 121.   96. See Simon, Katholisierung des Rechts?   97. See Buske, ‘Die Debatte über “Unehelichkeit”’.   98. This quote and the following: Buske, ‘Die Debatte über “Unehelichkeit”’, 346.   99. See Faulstich, Die Kultur der 70er Jahre, 211–19. 100. See Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit, 297. 101. See Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit, 304. 102. Beck, A God of One’s Own, 122. 103. See Edgell, ‘Religion and Family’. 104. See Gabriel, Christentum zwischen Tradition und Postmoderne, 182. 105. See Ebertz, Kirche im Gegenwind, 136 ff.

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5 Politicization and Pluralization

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Religion, Politics and Society in the 1960s and 1970s

Over the course of the 1950s and 1960s German society underwent tremendous change: still fundamentally moulded by the National Socialist dictatorship after the war, twenty years after its foundation the Federal Republic seemed to have been ‘Westernized’. The United States, United Kingdom, France and other Western European democracies were the role models for a polity that was breaking new ground both economically and politically. What was astonishing here was not so much the dramatic economic development, which was already being declared an ‘economic miracle’ at the time: West Germany was able to build on an industrial base that, in combination with the Korea boom, provided an excellent starting point. What was breathtaking was the development of the political culture that West German democracy had managed to generate. Within just under two decades, politics and society, institutions and culture had been profoundly democratized. The early Federal Republic can be fairly described as a combination of authoritarian norms and behaviour patterns on the one hand and a dramatic process of technological and economic modernization on the other. One of its defining characteristics was ‘politicization from above’, with individuals’ democratic engagement limited to such minimal forms as voting. Many authoritarian attitudes and behaviours persisted. From families through school and university to offices, it was often still the traditional structures of authority derived from National Socialism, the Weimar Republic and the German Empire that continued to dominate many spheres of private and public life. But in the 1960s this form of political culture came under pressure. Traditional constellations and political standards were increasingly rejected. This was particularly evident in election campaigns and political disputes. In 1965 chancellor Ludwig Erhard embraced the concept of the ‘formierte Gesellschaft’ as a key element in his re-election campaign: this upheld a conservative vision of a stable society governed by a strong state capable of suppressing special interests and focusing on the common good – a response to the advanced division of labour

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and social differentiation now characteristic of West German society.1 Erhard failed to attract much support with this. Even CDU workers quickly abandoned the concept in the face of an unimpressed German public. Erhard’s vision manifestly ran counter to a zeitgeist highly resistant to the idea of integrating the individual into a ‘performanceoriented community’. It was Willy Brandt who had his finger on the pulse of West German society with his slogan ‘dare greater democracy’ (‘Mehr Demokratie wagen’), first deployed in October 1969. The opposition CDU protested vehemently.2 Had democracy not already been realized since 1949 in the institutions of the state and in the rules of procedure governing parliament and the Bundesrat? In formal terms, this criticism was quite right: the Allied occupying powers had installed a democratic system along with the corresponding institutions and ensured compliance with their rules. But there was still a long way to go before West Germans could be said to truly live democracy. Beginning in the 1960s, critical assessments by various commentators generated an overall ‘critique of the age’ that decried the lack of such lived democracy in what was lambasted as a ‘chancellor’s democracy’ under Adenauer. This critical impulse culminated in the period stretching from the late 1960s into the early 1970s, which was characterized by both participation and polarization and summed up in the catchword ‘1968’.3 West Germans’ scepticism about democracy, a subservient attitude towards the state and general political passivity, the ideal of conflict-free political harmony and peoples’ unwillingness to get involved in politics were supplanted by a culture of participation. West Germans became increasingly politicized: they were prepared to discuss publicly both issues of societal development and seemingly private matters. The ‘responsible society’ superseded the ‘formierte Gesellschaft’ as the prevailing template and, to some extent, reconfigured West German political culture.4 It was not just the opposition’s move to the government benches and shifting coalitions among the political parties that demonstrated the functionality of the liberal-democratic parliamentary system. The state form established twenty years earlier was now accepted and lived by broad swathes of West German society. If we look at Catholics and Protestants we find that many of them gradually abandoned their reservations about democracy and became actively involved in the polity. West Germans generally had in fact not only formally accepted democracy but increasingly internalized it as well.5 Political extremism was the exception, as evident from a glance at the left and right political peripheries beyond the constitutionally approved

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political spectrum: despite the short-lived success of the far-right National Democratic Party (Nationaldemokratische Partei or NDP) in the late 1960s, it remained a marginal phenomenon. Similarly, acts of terrorism by the extreme left Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion or RAF) undoubtedly triggered a pervasive sense of threat but failed to destabilize West German democracy. In the international community, too, from the late 1950s onwards, West Germany was regarded as a stable and liberal constitutional state. This advanced democratization went hand in hand with extensive and fundamental liberalization: everyday behaviour and manners, values and authority structures became more open and informal. Formerly closed worldviews and interpretive models dissolved. Religion, as a model of individual and group-related interpretations, was no exception here. If society and politics changed, the connection between state and Churches could scarcely remain the same. Their relationship changed in two ways. First, like society as a whole the religious field became more diverse and multiform. There were of course other religious communities alongside Catholics and Protestants in the 1950s, but public awareness of them was as negligible as their political influence. This changed from the 1960s onwards. The re-establishment of Jewish communities in Germany, which had been almost entirely destroyed under National Socialism, attracted as much attention as Germany’s growing Muslim population. But others’ religion and the associated diversity was perceived by the established Christian Churches primarily as a challenge and problem. Despite this increasing pluralism, the Protestant and Catholic Churches continued to be the largest religious organizations in Germany, which meant they were still the most important interlocutors of the political institutions and, especially, the political parties. The established connections grew weaker but continued to be utilized. The Catholic Office (Katholisches Büro) in Bonn and the Protestant Liaison Office for Parliament and Government (Evangelische Verbindungsstelle zu Parlament und Regierung) remained functioning Church lobbying institutions and an important point of contact for the political sphere. But despite these continuities the structures of the Christian religious communities changed markedly as lived Christianity took on a wide range of forms. The earlier homogeneity of the confession gave way to a more individual orientation, uniformity to greater pluralization. As a result the relations between religion and politics were also transformed, along with the ‘colour theory’ of the 1950s. ‘Black’ no longer automatically stood both for Catholic and Christian Democratic. The ‘red’ of the Social Democrats now became more attractive to

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both Protestants and Catholics. New social movements and citizens’ initiatives, which were committed to women’s rights or achieving world peace, found supporters among Christians, who pursued similar objectives within their religious communities. Some of these activists later joined the Green Party (die Grünen) in 1980. Founded to promote environmental issues, in the 1980s this party also attracted some conservative environmentalists from the Christian Churches whose key political goal was to preserve Creation. These changes had highly practical consequences: political parties and government representatives no longer negotiated solely with high Church representatives, presbyteries, bishops’ conferences or Christian social organizations but also engaged in debate at Church conferences and spoke to a diverse array of religious youth groups and Christianinspired protest movements. In analogy to developments in the political sphere, the major Christian Churches had also begun to change. The cohesiveness of the acies bene ordinata, the well-ordered phalanx, as promoted by Pope and bishops in the shape of Catholic Action as a special form of lay organization, was superseded by a new diversity. In its structures, forms of expression and ways of speaking, Catholic Action gradually came to reflect the spectrum of political and ideological convictions and movements characteristic of society as a whole.

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Faith in Politics? State, Political Parties and Churches up for Debate In West Germany in the 1950s most social actors implicitly supported the close cooperation between state and Church, which they regarded as a matter of course. But as the political culture changed this constellation began to provoke criticism. Even before ‘1968’, the array of close connections between the political system and the Churches was subject to vehement debate. It became clear on a number of levels that the climate of opinion had changed, as criticisms of the Church, previously few and far between, now began to proliferate. In 1964, in the field of jurisprudence, jurist Erwin Fischer called for the ‘halting separation of state and Church’ to be replaced by a genuine separation of the two spheres. This, FDP man Fischer believed, was the real route to guaranteeing religious freedom.6 This concern linked the jurist with the Humanist Union (Humanistische Union or HU) which was founded as a cultural and political association in 1961 and was supported, among others, by prominent intellectuals such as Alexander Mitscherlich, Fritz Sack and Otto Schily. Its declared goal

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was the ‘liberation of the human being from authoritarian and clerical shackles’.7 This initiative was necessary in West Germany, explained HU co-founder Gerhard Szczesny, because a ‘Christian-confessionalist form of governance’ was increasingly undermining the basic rights of freedom of opinion, conscience and religion. ‘We have become the tacit supporters of a conspiracy that demands our disenfranchisement and enforced conformity, this time in the name of the Christian doctrine of salvation’, according to the founding proclamation, clearly alluding to the Nazi period that then lay fifteen years in the past. ‘What we have in mind here is not the right of the believing Christian to seek to disseminate his faith. What is at issue is the increasingly undisguised and overbearing attempts to subject a society that consists only in part of believing Christians to the totalistic Christian regulation of language, thinking and behaviour’. As early as 1959, Szczesny, journalist and editor at the Bavarian Broadcasting Company (Bayerischer Rundfunk) had published a much-noted book entitled The Future of Unbelief in which he criticized the close intertwining of the political parties and the Churches.8 The immediate reason for founding the organization was the ban on performing Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro, imposed by the Bavarian minister for education and culture Aloys Hundhammer in 1961. Objections were raised to the stage set, on whose ceiling a number of putti had been painted. This was regarded as ‘indecent’ by the minister and representatives of the Catholic Church. Criticism of Church influence played a major role in the Humanistic Union’s founding proclamation: ‘the democratic political parties, which are called upon to protect our state’s independence from religion, ideology and the Churches have either placed themselves explicitly at the service of Christian totalitarianism or are captive to a public opinion that represses and suppresses anything that might cast doubt on the “fundamentally Christian” character of the Federal Republic’.9 The Humanist Union had few members and negligible organizational structures. With just 4,200 members in 1967, its social reach was always limited. Nonetheless, its existence had a certain signal effect: ‘just five or six years after its establishment, though it is not among the leading forces shaping our society, it has become a fixed element in public life’, to quote a contemporary observer.10 The Union attracted this attention chiefly through its vigorous attacks on the two main Christian Churches. Such behaviour was an exception within the political sphere, and this explains much of its public impact. The latitudinarian Union’s efforts attracted support only at the margins of the political parties: the Young Democrats (Jungdemokraten), home to young and up-and-coming FDP politicians, adopted the

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Union’s criticisms of the Churches and called for a complete separation of Church and state. The FDP’s national conference in October 1974 took up this demand and raised it to the status of party resolution though in watered-down form.11 But it was far from becoming government policy: the FDP’s SPD coalition partner did not endorse it, and both Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt explicitly rejected it. No emphatic atheism had survived in Germany despite the freethinking traditions of the labour movement and liberalism and none was spawned by the protest movement of 1968. Direct criticism of the close entanglement of state and Church remained the exception. As a rule, proponents of greater separation discussed specific aspects of institutional arrangements put in place when the Federal Republic was founded as well as in the 1950s. The debate on the semi-state Church Tax system, for example, flared up again and again. For critics, the levy collected by the finance offices was a ‘religious rip-off’.12 Other constellations, too, were frequently debated: was it necessary, indeed permissible, for the Churches to provide military chaplaincy? Through the law on military chaplaincy of 26 July 1957, the Protestant Church had concluded a state-Church treaty that provided it with the organizational and financial means to carry out pastoral care among the soldiers of the newly founded West German army. The Catholic Church initially began its work in the armed forces within the framework of the Reich Concordat of 1933, which was superseded by the 1957 law. From the outset the issue of military chaplaincy was highly contested in the Protestant Church. Many Protestants felt an aversion to all things military in light of the Second World War and the Church’s first public statements in the early 1950s focused chiefly on providing support and protection for those who declined to perform military service. So when preliminary steps towards the creation of a West German army were taken in 1955, the EKD synod in Espelkamp in North RhineWestphalia responded by appointing a committee to provide support for conscientious objectors.13 Unsurprisingly, then, the conclusion of a treaty on military chaplaincy provoked major tensions and it was not until 26 April 1960 that the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau gave its consent to this.14 A quieter period governed by this new normality ensued, but the overall process of politicization in the late 1960s revived the debate and conscientious objection developed into a movement that attracted an increasing number of young men. Certainly, the right to refuse military service had been included in the Basic Law and the Civilian Alternative Service Act had already come into force in April 1961. But just a few

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of those liable for military service had made active use of this option. For the most part it was members of free Churches and small religious communities such as the Mennonites or Quakers who refused to serve for religious reasons. It was not until the late 1960s that Alternative Service (Zivildienst) became popular, before gradually developing into a large-scale movement. In 1967 just under 6,000 young men rejected military service but by 1968 the figure was already almost 12,000, in 1970 19,363 and in 1971 30,000. The startled leaders of the West German army began to think about how they could reduce this figure. Unexpected help arrived in the shape of a committee of military chaplains, who, from their perspective as clergy, recommended measures that might persuade young men to do military service. After this confidential report became known, its ideas provoked a divisive debate, particularly within the Protestant Church. People asked again what form pastoral care of soldiers ought to take in order to avoid clashing with the Christian emphasis on peace.15 Theology faculties at state universities also provoked debate: in 1970, sociologist Rütger Schäfer lamented the ‘plight of the theology faculties’.16 Schäfer declared theology unscientific and Churchcontrolled faculties unconstitutional since they limited the freedom of science, and he called for their transformation into departments of religious studies detached from the confessions. Ultimately, virtually none of these or similar radical demands were ever realized, so the close connection between state and Church largely persisted. Neither the long-governing CDU/CSU nor the SPD, which governed from 1969 onwards, were interested in reforms that might have been seen to encroach on the Churches’ sphere of activity. Serious changes occurred nonetheless. One example is the disappearance of the confessional elementary school or Volksschule. The Catholic Church had been particularly keen to establish and maintain these schools, yet within a few years an institution that had been declared a core element of Church policy in the 1950s had disappeared without a murmur. The Volksschule, initially stylized as a crucial pillar of the education system, lost this positive image and was increasingly seen as an obstacle to resolving the ‘German educational disaster’, a task perceived as urgent.17 But the most important education policy debate of the decade began at the time of the ‘Sputnik shock’. In 1957, the Soviet Union succeeded in sending the Sputnik satellite into space and the West’s technological advantage, previously thought to be secure, suddenly seemed in danger. Was there now a risk that the West, and thus also West Germany, would be outdone in the Cold War

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technology race? Theologian and educationalist Georg Picht addressed this issue in 1964 when he described the state of the West German school and university system as an educational disaster. In articles that initially appeared in the weekly magazine Christ und Welt, he excoriated education spending in Germany, which was low in international comparison, criticized the small proportion of pupils completing their high school leaving certificate or Abitur, lamented the great differences between urban and rural areas and called for fundamental reforms of the three-tier system of schools and adult education.18 In the search for ‘educational reserves’, one group of individuals took on a virtually proverbial status: it was vital, reformers believed, that the educational lot of the Catholic country girl be improved. It was chiefly confessional schools that appeared to be responsible for the ‘special “Catholic educational deficit”’19 identified in 1965. In any case, they stood in the way of attempts to remedy this deficit. Limited to just one confession, such schools generally had only a few pupils so they could frequently assemble just one class per age group or had to teach pupils of different ages together. This made it impossible to establish modern forms of instruction, let alone provide highly specialized lessons. For many contemporaries, the model of the confessional school was unable to cope with the new requirements and hopes associated with the school system and, at least implicitly, they regarded it as incapable of providing an education in keeping with the times. Within an incredibly short period of time even Catholicism had abandoned its advocacy for the confessional school. This step caused major convulsions within the Church: supporters of the confessional principle included the majority of the German episcopate and a number of Catholic occupational organizations. Those who called for the abandonment of this principle were primarily pragmatic politicians from the Union parties and the educational bureaucracy, who couched their arguments in terms of power politics and education policy.20 But pressure from regional politics and the new approach to schools policy triggered by Vatican II helped Catholics to rapidly ditch their old views. The Vatican Council’s Gravissimum Educationis declaration of 28 October 1965, which was of crucial importance in this regard, affirmed the state’s responsibility for education. At the same time, the document underlined the importance of avoiding a state monopoly on schools. The reality of a pluralist society, it claimed, made it vital to steer clear of any one-sided concentration of educational authority. On the occasion of the Catholic Conference in Bamberg, Jesuit and editor of Stimmen der Zeit magazine Wolfgang Seibel interpreted the Council’s statements with respect to the situation of Germany. For the Council, he asserted,

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the ideal Catholic contribution to education was ‘a Catholic school that is free of the state but endowed with public funds’ because ‘this is the best fit with the pluralism of contemporary society and the modern state’s ideologically neutral structure’.21 The old-style confessional school had been explicitly renounced. As a result of these discussions, towards the end of the 1960s almost all the German states had abolished confessional schools. Only in North Rhine-Westphalia and in Lower Saxony do confessional elementary schools continue to enjoy a status equal to that of regular schools; in parts of these states they are in fact the dominant school type. But with this exception, within just a few years a standpoint that the Catholic Church was still doing its utmost to defend in the 1950s had been abandoned. There were a number of reasons for this: above all, the old educational barriers and traditional forms of confessional segmentation had been swept away by the impact of competition between ‘capitalism’ and ‘communism’, the new requirements of a transforming economy and the widespread desire for more democracy and emancipation. Again, though, while the religious communities were more than just passive observers of these developments, having updated their views on a number of key issues, they tended to lag behind rather than set the pace. It was not just the conflict over schools that saw a major shift in the political and ideological camps of the 1950s. Catholics and Christian Democrats no longer acted in concert as a matter of course. In the schools dispute, for example, the opposing factions crosscut these two groups. To be Catholic no longer automatically meant voting Christian Democrat, let alone being a member of the CDU. The CDU itself also shed its Catholic image: over the course of the 1970s it managed to become the strongest party in overwhelmingly Protestant states such as Lower Saxony and Hesse. ‘The era of the “Catholic CDU” was definitively over’.22 There was no lack of friction. Certainly, the old mechanisms of confessional proportionality continued to function. The Protestant Working Group of the CDU (EAK), for example, continued to record the confessional affiliation of top officials and deputies in the party though this no longer played a major role in society.23 At the same time, the Churches themselves became more diversified and thus a less straightforward partner for the CDU. The protest movement of students, pupils and apprentices of 1968 did not leave the Churches untouched, and sections of the Protestant regional Churches in particular became highly ‘politicized’, profoundly irritating the CDU, which had begun to re-emphasize its anti-socialism. In 1968, for example, deploying the typical Cold War rhetoric of crisis, Ernst Lemmer, former federal

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minister and co-founder of the CDU, reported to the CDU federal chair that in Berlin ‘an estimated 80 per cent of the active clergy, above all the entire younger generation, [is] on the communist-promoting wing’. ‘That section of the Protestant population that retains a sliver of civic responsibility is turning away from this Church and seeking to establish free Churches because these people are Christian and they want to stay Christian’.24 Overblown responses of this kind prompted young Protestant clergy in particular to turn away from the CDU. ‘In light of such accusations the Protestant Church milieu that had been drawn with much effort towards the Union under Adenauer turned left, in some cases permanently’.25 While Adenauer’s CDU had been committed to a magnanimous policy of integration, such extreme rhetoric repelled many opinion leaders in the Church, education and media. The Church-affiliated CDU organizations came into their own as bridge builders in this context. The Protestant Working Group, for example, organized Christian Democratic talks in Berlin, whose reach extended far into the universities, thus maintaining contact with politicized intellectuals. On the other side of the party spectrum the distance between the SPD and the Churches diminished significantly. After participating in government in the grand coalition of 1966, in 1969 the SPD finally managed to win the chancellorship and supplant the CDU, the ‘eternal party of government’. The Social Democrats’ success was due in part to their ability to win over more Christian voters and for many Protestants in particular the SPD had become a natural political home. In the 1950s and 1960s, Protestant leaders tended almost self-evidently to favour the CDU: individuals such as Martin Niemöller, Gustav Heinemann, Kurt Scharf and Westphalian synod head Ernst Wilm were the exception. From the late 1960s onwards, however, Protestant affinity to the SPD strengthened, and a decade later many supported the Greens as a younger generation of pastors moved into the parishes and were appointed to key offices. It was not just their status as governing party that made the Social Democrats attractive to these clergy but also a number of policy agreements. In the 1970s, the key example here was Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik. After 1982 it was the fight against nuclear weapons, nuclear power and the preservation of Creation that helped make the Greens attractive.26 The old ideological boundary between the Catholic Church and Social Democracy also became more permeable. As early as 1964, Jesuit Oswald von Nell-Breuning, a leading Catholic social ethicist, saw ‘no more and no less than a concise recapitulation of Catholic social teaching in the social policy element of the Godesberg programme’. The Catholic

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hierarchy, in the shape of Cardinal Julius Döpfner, dismissed this as ‘unconvincing’. Contemporary debates on the relationship between ‘red’ Social Democrats and ‘black’ Catholics showed that it was gradually beginning to change. Apart from Georg Leber and Hermann SchmittVockenhausen, there were no prominent Catholic Social Democrats, bemoaned one section of the Catholic press when the Brandt government took power, in an attempt to remind its readers of the traditional relationship between the Church and the SPD: ‘two Catholic politicians in the top ranks of the SPD … Is that all? The most one can find is a KAB [Katholische Arbeitnehmer-Bewegung (Catholic Workers’ Movement)] or Kolping Association member here or there who is now a Bundestag deputy’.27 Conversely, by the time of Brandt’s candidacy for the chancellorship, prominent Catholics at both the federal and regional levels were advocating a vote for the Social Democrats.28 This enthusiasm for the charismatic SPD politician, embodied in the slogan ‘Vote for Willy’ (‘Willy wählen’), also extended to Catholics. What had once been nearunanimous aversion began to break down. And the SPD itself sought to overcome its traditional distance from Catholicism: it is no coincidence that Willy Brandt incorporated references to God into various speeches. In 1973 he created two Church divisions within the SPD executive board tasked with systematically improving the party’s relations with the Protestant and Catholic Churches. In 1978, in Freiburg, Hermann Schmitt-Vockenhausen then became the first prominent Social Democrat to give a significant speech at the Catholic Conference, and another barrier fell.29 An event that took place in 1980 provides a striking example of how diverse and complex the relations between political parties and religious communities had become since the 1950s. On 21 September, exactly two weeks before the Bundestag election, the German bishops disseminated a pastoral letter that was clearly intended as a criticism of the SPD-led federal government and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Its main complaint revolved around liberalization of the abortion law, which, according to the Bishops’ Conference, had undermined the ‘basic right to life’. The letter also rejected the tendency towards ever higher national debt and called for the government to do more to promote civic engagement. Catholics, the letter stated, were now faced with a ‘moral decision’ on ‘which values and goals are to define and sustain politics in the coming years’.30 In its demands and modes of expression, this text was strikingly reminiscent of the pastoral letters dispensing electoral advice that appeared in the 1950s. But in the new

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political situation of the early 1980s, this episcopal statement met with a very different response. The SPD criticized it as a biased piece of electioneering that diminished trust in the Church, while prominent Catholics such as Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde and Franz Böckle publicly rejected the episcopate’s approach, provoking an internal debate on whether the Bishops’ Conference had any right to promote a particular political party.31 The era in which Catholic bishops could openly promote the CDU without dissent were definitively over. Relations between the Catholic Church and Christian Democrats increasingly diversified. In 1980 Helmut Kohl referred for the first time to the need for a ‘change of spiritual and moral direction’ – a slogan that raised expectations that were never to be fulfilled as far as the Catholic hierarchy and many Catholic associations were concerned. The diversity of opinion in society as a whole was increasingly reflected within Catholicism. Logically enough, political constellations and preferences also began to diversify depending on the topic at issue: on the Christian influence in schools, the Catholic Church generally remained closer to the CDU, while on immigration and asylum it had more in common with the SPD. Some sections of associational Catholicism, such as the Catholic Workers’ Movement, also felt closer to the Social Democrats on many issues. In terms of the functioning of West German democracy, then, a degree of normalization set in: in general and even with respect to their own members the religious communities had lost their capacity for ideological and political mobilization. The political preferences of Catholics and Protestants were less influenced by their religious affiliation and they increasingly engaged in the spectrum of politics found in society as a whole.

Politics through Religion? Termination of Pregnancy and Protection of the Unborn Child Greater politicization, pluralization and polarization in both society and the Churches, among other trends, changed the association between Church and state fundamentally. The Christian Churches lost their special place within the West German political system and became lobbying groups among many others. In no other political field is this transformation more readily apparent than in the political and ideological disputes over Paragraph 218 of the West German Penal Code. The issue of the options for and limits on ending a pregnancy touched on other fields as well: on concepts of family, femininity, motherhood

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and women’s rights as well as issues of sexuality, physicality and contraception, while demography and eugenics ultimately played into the debate as well. The Churches felt challenged in their own ideological backyard: long before the 1950s family policies and sexual morality had been important fields of religious and pastoral activity. Beginning in 1970, within the framework of Penal Code reform, the Social Democrat-Liberal coalition planned changes in the law on abortion. The ensuing debate, which lasted until 1976, revolved around two fundamentally opposing models: the ‘indication regulation’, favoured by the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, allowed abortions only under certain medical and ethical conditions, such as pregnancy resulting from rape or if the mother’s life was in immediate danger. According to the ‘time limit regulation’ supported by the SPD and FDP parliamentary groups, abortion would on principle be permitted with impunity until the twelfth week of pregnancy. Following protracted consultations, on 26 April 1974 the Bundestag voted by a narrow majority for a time limit regulation. But this was soon overturned: a complaint by the CDU opposition prompted the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) to strike down this law and in February 1975 it declared the time limit-based solution unconstitutional. In light of the Court’s ruling, on 6 May 1976 the Bundestag finally reached a compromise in the shape of a modified indication regulation: within a stipulated time limit and given specific indications it would be legal to terminate a pregnancy. This included risks to the life of the pregnant woman (medical indication) and the likelihood of serious impairment of the unborn child (embryopathic indication). Abortion would also be legal in cases of rape (criminological indication) and for women facing extreme social hardship (social indication). These plans provoked intense public debate whose apogee was reflected in the cover story of Stern magazine on 6 June 1971. ‘We have had an abortion’ declared 374 women on the initiative of women’s rights advocate Alice Schwarzer. Prominent personalities such as actresses Romy Schneider, Senta Berger and Sabine Sinjen publicly acknowledged that they had broken current laws and their initiative added fuel to a debate that had already gone on for several months. For supporters of reform the mother’s personal right stood front and centre and for some members of the women’s movement the planned reform failed to go far enough. Chanting the slogan ‘my tummy belongs to me’, they fought to have Paragraph 218 deleted from the Penal Code entirely. Opponents of reform, meanwhile, underlined the unborn child’s unqualified right to life. The Catholic Church remained thoroughly wedded to this position: there was no sign of movement on that front. The Protestant Church,

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conversely, developed a more nuanced stance on the termination of pregnancy as the public debate proceeded, compelling it to consider just what its political stance ought to be. As the Churches determined or sought to determine their position on the legislative plans they touched on other fundamental issues as well. How should the Churches act within the public sphere and participate in the life of society? This triggered a second debate within the Protestant Church centred on who could legitimately speak for the Church as a whole and how spiritual leadership ought to be practised. This fundamental question surged to the fore again in the early 1970s at a point when traditional approaches had become far less effective. The range of possible forms of Church intervention in society extended from pastoral care of the individual all the way through to Church representatives’ direct participation in political bodies. But how much influence on social debates should the Churches have? To put it from a different vantage point, how secular can, should or must the state be when it comes to the formulation of fundamental social values? Within the Protestant Church, the dispute over Paragraph 218 developed into a debate on the authority and leadership claims of a Church elite vis-àvis the autonomy of the individual Church member. Heinz Zahrnt, Protestant theologian and president of the German Protestant Church Conference (Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag or DEKT) emphasized the special significance of the debate on the abortion paragraph and in 1973 he referred to the ‘218 experimental game’: the discussion over the abortion paragraph, according to him, provided an opportunity for Christianity to practise its new public role. ‘Christianity no longer represents the absolute majority in our society, so it no longer calls all the shots. In future it can only be one of those responsible for ensuring that the balance of forces within society remains healthy as it progresses into the future’.32 An initial statement issued in December 1970 had already provoked discussions on the very issues raised by Zahrnt. This was the first ecumenical letter, authored by Bavarian regional bishop Hermann Dietzfelbinger, chair of the Council of the Protestant Church, and Cologne archbishop Cardinal Josef Höffner, and it was prompted not just by the planned reform of Paragraph 218 but also by proposed changes in the divorce law and abolition of the ban on pornography. In both its form and mode of presentation, the statement penned by these two Church dignitaries, which was entitled ‘The Law of the State and the Moral Order’, drew heavily on EKD memoranda. Soon known as the ‘Orange Paper’ on account of its distinctive layout, this publication went through multiple print runs and rapidly achieved wide

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circulation: it was sent not just to every member of the Bundestag and key press, radio and television companies but also to every Protestant and Catholic pastoral office. It was thus widely perceived as an official Church statement despite its formal status as merely the personal opinion of two leading representatives of the major confessions. The ideas and hypotheses in this document were in fact expounded with an air of religious authority:

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The order of law and society is based on moral values of universal validity. The legislature too is bound by them. If this principle is abandoned society loses its capacity for community and the potential for agreement on a universally valid legislative process. State and society ultimately destroy themselves if they cease to recognize a certain basic stock of moral convictions as binding on society.33

Should the state ‘rashly’ abandon its responsibilities in response to ‘the trends of the modern age’, then ‘ideological systems [would fill] the space formerly occupied by values’. This, the authors believed, would risk destroying society. Above all, the prohibition on taking human life was ‘a moral axiom of such fundamental significance to any human community that it must be anchored in the law of the state’. But it proved impossible to enforce the authors’ validity claim in the political and public sphere – and even within the Protestant Church. A number of different levels were fused within the internal Church debate: there were divisive clashes not just on the abortion paragraph and the correct Protestant Church stance on it but also on more general issues of authority and opinion formation within the Church. Initially, the ecumenical initiative by the Church dignitaries provoked a devastating response, with only the Church press expressing a moderately positive view.34 ‘The mass media were as one in attacking us’, to quote a private letter by Hermann Kunst, the EKD Council’s delegate to the Federal Government, who was directly involved in composing the statement.35 Criticisms focused on the substance of the views expressed in the ‘Orange Paper’: the unequivocal rejection of abortion in any form had in fact been subject to divisive debate among Protestant theologians and social ethicists since the early 1960s. While the Catholic Church had ruled out any form of deliberate and induced abortion in the Humanae Vitae encyclical, Protestant scholars showed greater interest in the contexts and ramifications of pregnancy. Alongside the prohibition on killing, upheld by laws protecting the unborn child, they also recognized the imperative of love, which they related to the pregnant woman herself. In various ways, Protestant thinkers weighed up her right to life and self-determination against the protection of the unborn.36

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As the debate on the reform of Paragraph 218 proceeded, these theological and scientific considerations took on political force. Two months after the appearance of the ‘Orange Paper’, an ‘alternative paper’ criticized the views expressed by Dietzfelbinger and Döpfner, both of whom were close to the CDU. The critics’ main complaint was that rather than making a convincing contribution to the debate, the ‘Orange Paper’ had succumbed to a general argument of dubious quality. ‘Regression to the Authoritarian State’ was the title chosen by Protestant political scientist Horst Zillessen. Against the idea of a timeless legal norm that must be enforced in authoritarian style, the authors of the ‘alternative paper’ advocated individuality and emancipation. ‘The starting point for every democratically sound notion of order is socially mediated individuality. It will always be necessary to ask to what extent this individuality can be allowed space to unfold without impinging on the individuality of others’.37 The huge gulf that had opened up between the opposing camps on abortion and other ethical and moral problems was impossible to miss. While Döpfner and Dietzfelbinger ‘fought against the sexual revolution’ as ‘the preliminary move in and expression of a social revolution’, their opponents focused on a contrasting programme, seeking to overcome legal norms no longer in keeping with the times in the spirit of liberal emancipation. As a result of this controversy, the EKD and its regional Churches failed to adopt a clear position on the termination of pregnancy. ‘On the one hand and on the other’, ‘yes and no’ and ‘neither yes nor no’ were the contemporary expressions of this compromising attitude,38 which was alternately criticized as indecisive and praised as open. It proved impossible to fuse together the broad range of opinion within the Protestant Church into a cohesive contribution to the political debate. Attempts to directly influence the parliamentary deliberations and draft legislation were not only limited by the political sphere: the diversity of opinion within the Church itself obstructed a united political approach of the kind seen in the 1950s. What this demonstrates is that the Church could no longer understand itself as an institution located above or outside of society. It had to learn to see itself as one segment of society – and to act like one. This dispute over the Church’s approach was not really between the Church on the one hand and the state or political parties on the other. Zeit editor Hans Schueler commented on the ‘Orange Paper’ by suggesting that the Churches had ‘thrown down the gauntlet for a new cultural struggle in a limited field’ and he advised the government to take up this challenge ‘and put the representatives of clerical claims

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to power vis-à-vis the state and a no longer homogenous Christian society decisively in their place’.39 But overall the dispute remained very moderate within the political field. The CDU opposition signalled its consent to the views articulated in the ‘Orange Paper’ but expressed mild criticisms of its undiplomatic style. For tactical reasons the Social Democratic-Liberal government exercised restraint and responded with low-key criticisms and offers of dialogue. Not without ulterior motives did SPD Bundestag deputy Claus Arndt call on ‘leading churchmen’ to direct their attention to ‘the harsh criticisms they have received from among their own ranks’.40 What chiefly prompted protests within the Church was the fact that the two authors of the ‘Orange Paper’ had failed to uphold principles that the Church had supposedly embraced. Just one year before, in early 1970, the EKD had published a paper setting out the template for official documents: the core task of Church statements should no longer consist in tying Protestantism down to substantive positions. Instead they must focus on providing stimulating ideas, easing hardened fronts and thus contributing to overall consciousness and value formation.41 Arguments rather than warnings, expertise rather than authority – Dietzfelbinger and Döpfner had turned these principles upside down. In its style and impetus, the ‘Orange Paper’ was in fact the epitome of the ‘top-down, authoritarian proclamation’.42 Critics of the Church leadership called for a shift away from this paternalistic approach, while supporters of the Church’s traditional, authoritative political mandate portrayed this tendency as an existential threat. Before the EKD Synod of 1971, Council chair Dietzfelbinger evoked dramatic parallels to convey this. ‘Are those who refer to a nascent period of spiritual confusion and despair entirely wrong?’ as he put it indirectly but provocatively. ‘All the signs are that we are now engaged in a religious struggle, a Church struggle, next to which the Church Struggle during the third Reich was merely a preliminary skirmish. The oddest thing is that this present struggle is often scarcely recognized, for the most part downplayed and is proceeding under the cloak of terms such as pluralism’.43 The political debate over the reform of Paragraph 218 dragged on into 1976 with no resolution of the abortion issue. Practically and theoretically, during this period the Protestant Church developed a new understanding of its ‘public mission’ centred on activities tailored to a plural political environment. While EKD bodies’ interventions previously targeted political decision makers, they were now aimed at the Church itself. Instead of competition and repression they now sought to raise consciousness and encourage an open process of opinion formation – and thus to deal constructively with divergent views.

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The ‘218 experimental game’ had shown that the ‘end of feasibility’ prophesied by alert contemporary Heinz Zahrnt had now been reached: in the first half of the 1970s, the Protestant Church increasingly shifted away from the pursuit of specific political goals. Like the Catholic Church it adopted a practical approach, focusing on the provision of support services for pregnant women that made having a child less daunting. Rather than criminal law, counselling services now became the centrepiece of the Church’s approach to abortion and the EKD became an ‘intermediate and intermediary’ within the political debate.44 The EKD maintained this approach even after the Federal Constitutional Court’s 1975 ruling, which saw the overturning of the ‘time limit’ regulation by West Germany’s top court and thus confirmation of majority Protestant opinion. Erwin Wilkens, the main author of the Church’s vota on the abortion debate, felt obligated to ‘heal wounds, calm the waves and help formulate a regulation with broad parliamentary and societal support’.45 On this and other political issues the EKD sought to highlight what was acceptable and unacceptable in light of Christian belief and to inject this perspective into the public debate. This marked a clear difference from the attitude of the Catholic Church, with the episcopate insisting on total rejection of any form of abortion. In a 1973 joint declaration by the Catholic and Protestant Churches on the reform of criminal and abortion law the bishops managed to accentuate their views while the more nuanced Protestant attitudes receded into the background,46 provoking vehement exchanges within the Protestant Church. As a result the EKD refused to involve itself in ecumenical initiatives over the next few years. Within the Catholic Church, the conflict over abortion remains unresolved in structural terms. Practice within the Church is typified by a ‘vertical schism’: while the hierarchy continues to stick to an unconditional ‘no’ and refuses to engage in reflection on the topic, lay initiatives such as Donum Vitae push for Catholics to play an active role in the provision of advice even if clients sometimes end up terminating their pregnancy.47 To this day both Churches actively engage in political lobbying and are sometimes highly successful.48 But both the EKD and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference have generally abandoned attempts to force through their political views at all costs. This shift is rooted in the insight that such an approach is politically infeasible and clashes with how the Churches conceive of their role, and in the knowledge that rapid dechurching has diminished the political influence that they could still wield in the 1950s. In terms of Church policy, the EKD and Bishops’ Conference expressed this new attitude in the ‘Joint Statement on the Economic and Social Situation in Germany’ (Gemeinsames Wort

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zur wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Lage in Deutschland). ‘The Churches have no wish to pursue politics themselves. They wish to make politics possible’, to quote the 1997 document.49

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1968 in the Churches: Polarization and Pluralization ‘1968’ has long since been divested of its mythical connotations. Ostensibly at least, the protests by students, pupils and apprentices failed to fundamentally change the political culture of West Germany or the character of the Churches. As contemporary witness and Church historian Wolf-Dieter Hauschild has underlined in a number of publications, the Church mainstream was at most marginally affected by this highpoint of the extra-parliamentary opposition that was active between 1967 and 1969 and by the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s more generally. On the surface, it was undoubtedly ‘fundamental continuities in structures and mentalities’ that dominated. Church constitution, parochial structure, pastoral practice and above all excellent finances – all these fundamental aspects remained in place. ‘At least until 1970’ it was a ‘mentality of saturated contentment’ that dominated.50 But this superficial impression was deceptive. The high-water mark of political and cultural change in the 1960s impacted on the religious communities and the established Churches in a number of ways as social movements and the year of protests in 1968 promoted both shortand medium-term shifts. At the margins of Church-religious life, in particular, changes undoubtedly made themselves felt. The new social movements were bound up with a culture of protest that impacted on the Churches in a variety of ways. But changes had long been underway in the religious communities. The Church offshoots of the youth and protest movement active at the dawn of the 1970s coincided with the contested reception of Vatican II in the Catholic world and the debate on ‘demythologization’ within Protestantism. From a social history perspective, the dissolution of the social milieus linked with the Churches was in full swing. So it would be quite fair to apply to the Churches’ 1968 what Jesuit journalist Mario von Galli stated so melodramatically with respect to the protest-pervaded Catholic Conference in Essen: Church critics, whom he described as ‘eager to cause an explosion’, were running ‘with their torches into a house from which flames were already erupting’.51 A number of developments converged towards the end of the 1960s, greatly intensifying the impact of the protest movement in both confessions.

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First came direct attempts by representatives of the Berlin student movement to gain a hearing within the Church. Within the Catholic Church the 1968 ‘Catholic Protest Conference’ in Essen is still remembered as a crucial event and its counterpart in the Protestant Church is the confrontation between the Berlin Kaiser-WilhelmGedächtnis-Gemeinde and a section of the Socialist German Student League (Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund). In June 1967, immediately following protests against the Iranian Shah’s visit to Berlin, students sought to use a church in the city’s Westend district for a hunger strike. Their objective was the release of the communard Fritz Teufel, who had been arrested during demonstrations sparked by the death of Benno Ohnesorg. The Church leadership was able to prevent this from happening. A few months later, in October 1967, the local council, fearing the imminent launch of a new political protest, forbade the student community from using the Memorial Church. No doubt partly in response to this, students staged a protest during the 1967 Christmas service, their banners calling for solidarity with Vietnam. Student leader Rudi Dutschke attempted to reach the pulpit but was violently repulsed and suffered a head injury in the subsequent scuffle. Photographs of the bleeding Dutschke appeared in newspapers throughout West Germany, ensuring massive media attention far beyond Berlin. Within Protestantism this conflict was followed by a fundamental debate. While it began with a demand for the right to demonstrate one’s support for the protest movement, the exclusion of the students from the centrally located Memorial Church turned it into a ‘concrete political struggle between two camps’.52 The key question here was: how political should the Church be? Or, to reverse the perspective, should the Church be deaf to political concerns? The local congregation of Berlin espoused a ‘conservative’ position. Referring to Luther’s ‘two kingdoms’ doctrine, they insisted on a strict separation of state and Church that ruled out the use of churches for political events. The ‘progressives’, meanwhile, highlighted the Church’s duty to take political action on behalf of the weak and oppressed. The Church’s ‘distance from politics’, they claimed, undermined Christianity’s true message. This clash extended far beyond the end of 1967 and remained a key bone of contention for different camps within Protestantism and far beyond.53 The spirit of ‘1968’ soon spread to theology students and in some cases their professors as well, while student associations of Protestant and Catholic provenance also underwent tremendous politicization. It was at the universities that the process of ‘contestation’ within the Church found its central locus,54 because it was here that the student unrest made its most

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direct impact, enveloping theology faculties and other university-based Church institutions. The Protestant and Catholic student congregations were rapidly transformed from pious organizations offering various pastoral services into highly politicized institutions. In both confessions the student congregations were originally founded to ensure, for the length of their university education, ongoing pastoral care and guidance for students no longer embedded in their home parishes. Through social events these organizations created a sense of community, gave students the opportunity to deepen their theological knowledge through a programme of extracurricular activities, and helped them with practical issues of university life and personal problems. Other Church associations and groups, but above all the confessional fraternities, also played a major role in the life of the student congregation. The aspiration to provide an overarching form of Christian guidance through religious education was retained until the 1960s. This approach culminated in periodic ‘mission weeks’, which sought, in line with the motto ‘students pursuing mission’, to give every member of the congregation a role in preaching the Gospel and promoted a comprehensive catalogue of personal rules – advising students to engage in ‘continual and urgent prayer’ and to ‘go to bed early’. Again, what shines through here is the aspiration to pursue a comprehensive Christian mission within society, along with norms drawn from a milieu-based lifeworld.55 The student congregations were ‘generally immune’ to ‘political and social activism, let alone agitation’, according to the retrospective assessment of the editors of the Catholic Herder-Korrespondenz magazine.56 This soon changed. Politics student Elmar Halsband, who began his studies in Göttingen in the summer semester of 1968, recalls a Catholic student congregation (KSG) ‘in a state of upheaval’: first there was the traditional KSG: a student pastor who had already worked for the congregation for many years, a local council to which Catholic fraternities as a body could still send representatives, and a congregational life of a generally leisurely character: in addition to church services there was a Bible study group, free-time events, possibly talks. Then there was the oppositional KSG: a working group then called the “Rothenfels University Circle” discussed controversial theological topics such as compulsory celibacy, democratic reform of the congregation and ecumenical matters.57

The impulse, emanating from the student movement but soon spreading beyond it, to ‘question’58 the legitimacy and actions of the formerly ‘sacrosanct’ authorities, found fertile ground in the Churches. The urge to reform the universities and society as a whole came up

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against a situation of movement and reorientation within the Church that had been stimulated, among other things, by Vatican II. The media response ranged from astonishment to dismay. Under the heading ‘Problem Report on Contemporary Events’, the staff of the Catholic Herder-Korrespondenz sought to inform its readers about student protests and developments in the university congregations. In 1968, these journalists regarded the ‘ferment’ in these congregations, which had previously shown very little sign of political activity, as remarkable,59 but by 1969 they already saw the student congregations as ‘infected’ by the ideologies of the Socialist German Student League. Hitherto, according to the Herder-Korrespondenz, ‘pulpit storming’ and ‘church services as debates’ had been found ‘primarily in Protestant churches’. But, the authors asserted, things had now also come to a head in the Catholic world, and the Catholic corporations in the student community, which had been sealed off for so long, were now confronted with ‘similar “radicals” as in the universities’. Evidence of the change within Catholic academic associations was seen in phenomena such as the ‘Initiative Committee of the Catholic Student Congregation of West Berlin’, the ‘Student Working Group for Critical Catholicism’ or the ‘Rothenfels Circle’, which had emerged out of the Quickborn Catholic Youth League.60 But what contemporary actors and observers in both camps often portrayed in black-and-white terms in response to these upheavals61 was actually a far more complex process. Only a minority of the student congregations and Church academic institutions became highly politicized. Representatives of the student congregations’ umbrella organization, the Catholic German Students’ Union (Katholische Deutsche Studenteneinigung or KDSE) gained a more nuanced picture during an information-gathering trip. In July 1970, KDSE officials Pater Romanus and Klaus Lang62 referred to the ‘mouse-like behaviour’ of the students in the Göttingen KSG. Particularly in the smaller universities, the report stated, the congregations stood apart from university politics even at the high point of the student movement. The report quoted a statement by the student pastor in Hamburg as symptomatic of the majority of university congregations visited by the KDSE representatives: ‘at present our work amounts to no more than providing social activities’, which involved a small clique getting together ‘like a secret society’. This clique, he stated, had no need to become active in university politics or even within the congregation, since it was used to a situation in which ‘everything was done from “above”’. The ‘Liturgical Working Group’ was limited to ‘selecting songs’, while the theological groups had ‘shrunk’ to two or three participants.

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But there were also unmistakable breaks with past forms of university congregation. The fraternities had comprehensively withdrawn from the student congregation and – as the chaplain at the University of Göttingen reported – now ‘the only one they were causing any theological “stress” was the student pastor’.63 With this exception, there was virtually no demand for guidance from the pastor. According to their analysis, which was not exhaustive but which its authors believed to be representative, the Catholic dormitories also showed virtually no interest in the work of the student congregation, preoccupied as they were with their own campaign to relax dormitory rules.64 It was now only ‘services’ such as statistics study groups, subject-specific libraries or premises available for use that linked students to the various student congregations. This snapshot from 1970 reveals the majority of student congregations to be institutions with a pretty low profile both in theological-pastoral and (university) political terms. Only a minority of university congregations had enduringly absorbed the impulses emanating from the student movement and sought to reflect them in their own work. In this group, the Young Bochum Student Congregation (Junge Bochumer Studentengemeinde) was in the vanguard.65 In addition, according to a KDSE debate submission of February 1971, Frankfurt, Freiburg, Berlin and ‘recently also Bonn’ had developed into ‘progressive congregations’ in the wake of the 1968 movement. Immediately after the ‘hot’ period of the student movement, then, the Catholic student congregations presented a diffuse picture: the spectrum extends from those congregations whose politicization phase has long since passed and whose political engagement has just blown over (such as Berlin and Freiburg), congregations that are currently seeking to put political-theological theory into practice (such as Frankfurt) and those overwhelmingly or almost exclusively concerned to critique the Church (such as Münster) all the way through to … oneman-band congregations.66

For contemporary observers, the Protestant student congregations (ESG) in particular were politically active associations that ‘outdid’ even the general student body ‘on the left’.67 Extreme conflict flared up, for example, between the regional Church and the Protestant student congregation in Hamburg. The Church leadership, which stressed the importance of a stable and rule-governed political system, found itself confronted with the inner circle of the ESG, which was entirely caught up in the process of discussion and radicalization typical of left-wing students.68 Pious exercises such as Bible reading and scriptural exegesis had rapidly given way to new practices; Third World groups and students who sympathized with liberation movements came together in the ESG.

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Was it appropriate for the ESG to carry out a blood donation campaign to aid the Vietcong, who were fighting the United States in North Vietnam? This was a question that provoked intense debate. What the Church leadership rejected as a sign of ‘bias’ and ‘unwillingness to embrace reconciliation’, the ESG declared to be its true task. Radicals claimed to be emulating Jesus of Nazareth, who had championed the oppressed in a ‘biased’ way. This dispute came to a head in light of the ESG’s links with the Hamburg squatting scene, which in turn maintained close contact with the Red Army faction (Rote Armee Fraktion or RAF). When the ‘2 June Movement’ murdered Günter von Drenkmann, president of the Berlin Court of Appeal, in response to the death of hunger-striking terrorist Holger Meins, the ESG clearly distanced itself from ‘murder as a political instrument’. Nonetheless, the Church Office responded to the close relations between the ESG and the RAF-supporting scene by axing certain posts and reducing the premises available to the former. The situation then escalated in 1978 when the North Elbe Church Office had the police clear the ESG premises, which had been occupied in protest. In its intensity the conflict over the Hamburg ESG was an isolated case but it was emblematic of a fundamental question of much wider significance: where should congregational engagement begin and end? The Münster KSG aimed to be as open as possible without taking sides. Groups active within university politics should have access to KSG premises as long as they were not pursuing emphatically terrorist aims; as one local council member put it in April 1973: ‘in future, if at all possible, we should avoid a situation in which people are making explosives in the KSG’.69 With respect to this and similar practical issues, the approach adopted here was to allow the pious Schönstatt University Group (Schönstatt-Hochschulkreis), the Marxist Spartacus League (Spartakusbund) and the Anti-Imperialist League (AntiImperialistische Liga) to use KSG premises. Generally, though, it was not political debate that stood centre stage. Instead it was small changes in style and conduct that made the student congregations and faculties the avant-garde of a broader development. As one student at the University of Bethel, located in Bielefeld, recalls, students there heard little about big events in Berlin, Frankfurt and elsewhere. It was considered a sensation that one of his fellow students had joined the Socialist German Student League at the nearby Pedagogical University. So in many contexts it was the small changes rather than the major political ruptures that marked the process of transformation: while the students still used the formal ‘Sie’ for ‘you’ in the 1967/68 winter semester, this form of address had disappeared by summer 1968 with as little fuss as joint prayers at table.70

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The style had changed decisively: students no longer wanted to be instructed in a religious worldview and the associated norms for their edification but instead approached these topics in study and discussion groups.71 The KSG tried to support alternative lifestyles and accommodation options by providing practical support, as in Münster, where the Martinsverein, run by the KSG, rented flats that it then made available to mixed-sex student flat-shares.72 The work of student pastors, which entailed mediation between the student milieu on the one hand and the Catholic milieu on the other, provides a clear sense of how much things had changed, particularly with respect to lifestyle and sexual morality. In their pastoral work, student pastors found themselves positioned between very different age cohorts when it came to issues of marriage and sexuality. In a letter to parents who had broken off contact with their son because of his ‘living in sin’, the Münster pastor combined empathetic understanding for people clearly up in arms about a couple legitimized by the state but not the Church – ‘in their day this was unthinkable, particularly for Catholic Christians’ – with a reference to changed attitudes to sexuality and the sacrament of marriage.73 Having himself grown up with the notion of the imperative of chastity before sacramental marriage, the cleric stated, his pastoral work had given him a new perspective on these issues. ‘Almost never’, the priest stated, ‘would someone show understanding for those who declare their behaviour immoral or irresponsible’. In an age ‘when sexuality, as an expression of mutual affection and shared experience, can be separated from the risk of having a child unintentionally or irresponsibly, there is a need to rethink the idea that, for the sake of responsibility and love, sexuality is limited to marriage, to a firm commitment’. The response to this attempt at mediation could not have been more forthright. Church teaching had not changed. All that was new was that ‘in the name of the Church, young people are being told what they want to hear’ and ‘our youth [has thus been] poisoned’ through ‘dubious hypotheses’. There could scarcely be a clearer expression of the conflict between the generations. Parents and children now had fundamentally different views on the content and binding nature of Catholic sexual morality. The student pastor, between a rock and a hard place, was in no position to mediate. A reference by student pastor Reinhold Waltermann in a 1971 radio interview to the granting of space within the Catholic student community to a – to use the contemporary term – ‘homophile’ student group provoked vehement protest. Waltermann countered the vehement demands from third parties that he refrain from helping gays in any way by asking whether it was right for ‘Christians to hinder such

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minorities in openly discussing their problems if this helps them rid themselves of feelings of inferiority?’74 In many respects student congregations functioned as fields of experimentation, in which students tried out new forms of community organization and church service. They provided a religious home for advocates of alternative lifestyles and sexual orientations. And new forms of sociopolitical engagement became established within them that were later found in many congregations: campaigns promoting world peace and the preservation of Creation were part of this, as were Third World and later ‘one world’ groups that pursued development policy cooperation in various ways. These developments had a broader impact when theologians who were educated during these years, including ever more women, became active in the pastorates and as teachers of religion. With respect to the Protestant Church from 1975 onwards, Wolf-Dieter Hauschild identifies a generational shift that brought into leading positions individuals moulded by the ‘spiritual upheaval of the “68” movement’.75 With respect to Catholicism, we must bear in mind that from the 1970s onwards theology was increasingly studied by students who later worked as laypeople within the Church. This meant that the parish priest gained support and competition from the expertise of lay theologians. Not only that, but for the first time a significant number of women graduates took on the role of religious experts. It remains an open question how much this changed the structure of roles within the parish and its mediation practices and what the consequences of this may have been. But the 1960s not only brought changes and new approaches in the progressive sections of the religious communities. The student movement of ‘1968’ also triggered a number of countervailing movements within society as a whole. In European politics French president Charles de Gaulle is the most striking example of this. Denouncing May 1968 in Paris as a ‘pigsty’, he tapped into the mood among many of his voters and secured another decade in power for the French conservatives. In much the same way, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl and Jacques Chirac gained office with vital momentum from a conservative movement opposed to ‘1968’. The religious communities’ ‘1968’ also mobilized countervailing forces. In some cases conservative-fundamentalist currents gained new impetus, in others protest groups were re-established. In January 1966 a number of Protestant initiatives and groups combined to form the ‘“No Other Gospel” Confessional Movement’. At a major event in Dortmund’s Westfalenhalle, 22,000 supporters came together and demonstrated against every tendency towards ‘unbelief’ in the

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Protestant Church and Protestant theology.76 The immediate reason for many of those gathered there was the Cologne Church Conference of 1965: evening performances of Brecht plays and appearances by controversial theologians Dorothee Sölle and Günther Klein were shocking to believers of a pietist persuasion. For such Christians, scholars and activists widely known for their political activities were like a red rag to a bull. An article by theology professor Hans-Werner Bartsch in the weekly Zeit on 31 December 1965 made an even greater splash: since modern exegesis had revealed the biblical stories of Jesus’s birth to be mere legend, it would only be logical to abolish the religious festival of Christmas, suggested the theologian, provoking bitter protest.77 The Church representatives and traditional believers gathered in Dortmund rallied against this idea, viewing it and other attacks on traditional creeds and dogmas as a ‘new Church struggle’ in which it was vital to resist the subversion of religious fundamentals.78 This confrontation helped to actualize and disseminate a conflict that had been smouldering in small groups since the late 1940s. The key source of tension here was Protestant theologian Rudolf Bultmann and his demand for the ‘demythologization’ of the New Testament. As early as 1941 he had provoked debate in theological circles with his lecture on the ‘New Testament and mythology’ but his ideas had failed to appeal much beyond this group. For him the stories and views found within the New Testament were profoundly moulded by the mythological perspective and language of antiquity. This worldview, he argued, was alien to the modern person, inevitably rendering the statements of the Bible incomprehensible and implausible. The idea that Mary bore Jesus as a virgin, for example, could only be understood in light of the mythical notion of the begetting of rulers, not as a realistic account of what happened. As a consequence he recommended the demythologization of the New Testament in order to render statements of faith understandable to contemporaries.79 As early as the 1950s, Bultmann had provoked resistance on a number of fronts through his way of reading the Bible, with Christians who continued to view scripture as the unquestioned basis of faith mobilizing in Württemberg and Westphalia in particular. The virgin birth, the miracles reported in the Bible, a belief in ghosts and demons, Christ’s descent into hell, the resurrection as a ‘real and historical event’, the ascension to heaven and ‘the fact of Christ’s return’ – all these and other events previously considered to be true now seemed to have been called into question. Lay pietist groups in Württemberg were profoundly disturbed by this, but their appeals to the Church

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leadership and theology faculties to do everything in their power to save the parishes from the resulting confusion mostly fell on deaf ears.80 In the early 1960s a number of theologians working in the Westphalian regional Church founded the so-called Bethel Group (Bethel-Kreis), which changed the direction of the conservative movement by expanding its activities. The group’s work maintained the usual focus on Church policies. Through open letters they sought to propagate their cause while also limiting the impact of Bultmann’s followers, such as Herbert Braun, Ernst Fuchs, Ernst Käsemann, Günther Klein and Willi Marxsen. But those involved also increasingly saw themselves as a coalition movement in which unsettled believers could organize. In this vein they organized penitential and rogation services as well as local and regional gatherings whose form and character emulated the much-discussed appearances by American preacher Billy Graham. The year 1966 saw another key watershed in the organization of the conservative movements within the Protestant Church. While it was chiefly individuals or local groups that campaigned against Bultmannian theology in the 1950s, its opponents now sought to strengthen the organization of the initiatives that had emerged in the 1960s. The 1966 Dortmund conference was an important rallying point that brought together the various local and regional initiatives critical of Bultmann’s ideas. The Emergency Association of Protestant Germans (Notgemeinschaft evangelischer Deutscher), a registered association (eingetragener Verein) that fused protest against modern theology with agitation against the so-called Eastern memorandum (Ostdenkschrift) published by the EKD, was also in attendance. In 1965 the EKD had called for reconciliation between West Germany and its eastern neighbours anchored in recognition of the Oder-Neisse Line, while the highly conservative Emergency Association defined its role as follows: ‘the Association’s goal is to encourage reflection on the Church’s task, which is to correctly propagate the Gospel. This inevitably entails loyalty with respect to our worldly obligations to family, neighbour, People and Fatherland’.81 The movement’s programme and theology was expressed at the mass gathering in Dortmund: its chairman Rudolf Bäumer opened the conference, declaring that the goal now was to test the various ‘spirits’. According to him, theology fails to understand Jesus if it regards him as mere human rather than God.82 The keynote speaker was Walter Künneth, professor of systematic theology, and in his speech on ‘the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus’, he placed his confession of faith in opposition to modern theology: the ‘resurrection of Jesus’ was ‘the fundamentum christianum’ and must be embraced by every Christian.

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Christology was central to this confession of faith: to regard Jesus merely as a human being and to understand the ‘proclamation of his atoning death as a time-bound investiture of the message of salvation’ was to put at risk the core of the Christian faith. If some went so far as to affirm that Christ had revealed himself ‘anonymously’ in other religions, they were abandoning the original reformatory precept of ‘solus Christus’, that salvation can only be achieved through Christ. And the Lutheran notion of ‘sola scriptura’, that the revelation is found only in the Bible, was believed to be at risk whenever radicals asserted that the Bible ‘fuses the word of God with that of human beings’. This ‘denied the revelatory character of the Holy Scripture as the sole source of authority’. Ultimately, the Protestant message would be supplanted by political education and by attempts to solve social problems and create a humane global order. For the protest movement this was the root cause of the status confessionis, of the confessional emergency that must be resolved at all costs.83 The Confessional movement took things one step further by releasing its own confessional statement at a gathering in Düsseldorf on 22 November 1967. Even more emphatically than had hitherto been the case, the movement identified itself with the anti-Nazi Confessing Church, the text’s structure borrowing from that of the Barmen Theological Declaration of the 1930s. An increasing number of parishioners called for ‘an unambiguous contrast to be made … in order to distinguish between biblical truth and the false teachings of contemporary zeitgeist theology’. The proclamation rejected ‘the findings of historical-critical Bible exegesis’ and the ‘claims to objectivity made by historical criticism’. Instead the Holy Spirit was regarded as the crucial principle that must guide the reading of scripture and lead to understanding. In their own magazine, Licht und Leben, traditionalists asserted that the Düsseldorf Declaration was ‘more significant than the “Barmen Declaration” was in its day’.84 The ‘“No Other Gospel” Confessional Movement’ stepped up its activities, organizing more regional groups mainly in United and Reformed parishes in the Rhineland, Baden and other regions. In Lutheran circles ‘Church’ and ‘Protestant’ assemblies were instigated that saw themselves as closely aligned with the Confessional movement but remained independent. In 1970, these initiatives then united to form the ‘Conference of Confessing Communities in Germany’ (Konferenz der bekennenden Gemeinschaften in Deutschland). Gradually, within and alongside this overarching framework, a structure developed in parallel to the organizational forms of the regional Churches that encompassed (popular) mission and

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ecumenicalism, theological education and journalism. From 1973 onwards, supporters were invited to a ‘Congregational Conference under the Word’ (Gemeindetag unter dem Wort), a competitor of the German Protestant Church Conference, which traditionalists rejected due to the participation of modern theologians. As an alternative to the Protestant Press Service (Evangelischer Pressedienst or EPD), the Information Service of the Protestant Alliance (Informationsdienst der Evangelischen Allianz or ‘Idea’) was established, which focused mainly on the concerns of the confessional movements. A web of institutions that paralleled the organizational structure of the regional Churches and the EKD had thus taken shape. At Easter 1970 traditionalists issued another dramatic appeal for an ‘assembly of all Christians’ who ‘recognize the seriousness of this Church struggle and [are willing to embrace] the slogan of the first Church Struggle of the 1930s, [namely] “Church must remain Church”’.85 Despite calls for ‘centres of resistance’ to fight the distortion of the Christian message, the Confessional movement refrained from taking the ultimate step of establishing a separate Church. While the movement itself amounted to a barely concealed form of separation within the EKD, it opted not to appoint an alternative Church leadership or break officially with the institutional framework of the Protestant Church. This restraint can be interpreted in a number of ways. One reason was probably highly pragmatic in nature: the associated risk of losing Church Tax income. It may also be that the EKD Churches had become so pluralized that any attempt to establish a clear boundary may have seemed virtually impossible or undesirable in the first place. Over the medium term it emerged that the various traditionalist groupings were united chiefly in their rejection of Rudolf Bultmann’s demythologization. Otherwise there was little common ground or dogmatic unity. The notion that every last word of the Bible was directly inspired by God, for example, was espoused only by a few of those within the movement.86 There were also major differences on social issues and Church politics. The Württemberg pietist firmly embedded in his regional Church, who felt that his views were wellrepresented in its synods, had little in common with the evangelical critic of established Church structures who was chiefly concerned with mission and emphasized the authority of the Bible and a personal relationship to God.87 Furthermore, from the late 1960s onwards, in other words in its prime, West German traditionalism increasingly saw itself as part of an international movement. Alongside commitment to the Bible and the confessions of faith, movements calling themselves ‘evangelical’ added

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a missionary aspiration. There was a great deal of overlap between these movements and the conservative Confessing Christians and few felt that the two should be separate: a common commitment to the Bible and the confessional statements was fused with the objective of evangelizing, in Germany and worldwide, and gaining new adherents to their brand of Christianity. It was in this context that the term first appeared in Germany, when the Conference of Evangelical Missions (Konferenz evangelikaler Missionen) was convened in 1969.88 The highly politicized student congregations and the conservative confessing movements are examples of the two ends of the ecclesiopolitical spectrum of the 1960s and 1970s, and they are linked to many other contemporary conflicts that generated similar structures of dispute. Beyond the short- and medium-term changes instigated by these clashes, internal Church protest had an important and farreaching impact. Though the great majority of Protestants and Catholics did not necessarily agree with the positions expressed on the Church’s right or left margins, these clashes made one thing absolutely clear to most Church members: there was more than one answer to questions of confession and faith and there were a number of ways to live one’s religious belief in the world. Formerly, the Church leadership – or local priest when it came to the individual believer – had formulated a binding stance that the Protestant or Catholic could either embrace or reject. But the public debates, very much in the spirit of ‘1968’, had now shown that there were different ways of interpreting Church dogma – or rejecting it with reference to original and other sources. This new pluralism was evident in the dispute over the ‘true spirit’ of Vatican II in the Catholic Church and clashes over the correctness of the confession of faith in the Protestant Church. What all these disputes had in common was their openness. There had always been conflicts over the Churches’ direction but, in contrast to earlier decades, clashes over practices of piety and theological views were now highly visible. Rather than a single truth, it had become clear that a number of positions, attitudes and modes of behaviour were possible. Against the traditional emphasis on authority and obligation, pluralization became established as an alternative way of thinking and ordering experience. By the late 1960s this transformation was no longer restricted to a small elite but encompassed large numbers of Christians.

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Notes   1. Speech by chancellor Ludwig Erhard at the 13th CDU party conference in March 1965 in Düsseldorf, Archiv der Gegenwart 1965, 1776.   2. See Brandt, Government statement, 28 October 1969. Stenographic reports, 6th German Bundestag, 5th session of 28 October 1969, 33 f.   3. See Siegfried, ‘Politisierungsschübe’, 32 ff.   4. Metzler, ‘Am Ende aller Krisen?’, 91 f.   5. See Jarausch, Die Umkehr, 201–4.   6. Fischer and Härdle, Trennung von Staat und Kirche.  7. This quote and the following: Szczesny, ‘Aufruf zur Gründung einer Humanistischen Union’.   8. Szczesny and Heer, Die Zukunft des Unglaubens.   9. Szczesny, ‘Aufruf zur Gründung einer Humanistischen Union’. 10. Hofmann, Die Humanistische Union, 3. 11. See Esch, ‘Freie Kirche im freien Staat’. 12. Schelz, Die fromme Schröpfung. 13. See Greschat, Protestantismus im Kalten Krieg, 256. 14. See Greschat, Protestantismus im Kalten Krieg, 268. 15. See Bieber, Ist die Truppe noch zu retten?, 22. 16. Schäfer, Die Misere der theologischen Fakultäten. 17. Picht, Die deutsche Bildungskatastrophe. 18. See Picht, Die deutsche Bildungskatastrophe. 19. Erlinghagen, Katholisches Bildungsdefizit. 20. See Grossmann, Zwischen Kirche und Gesellschaft, 468. 21. Seibel, ‘Die Aussagen des Konzils’, 206. 22. Bösch, Die Adenauer-CDU, 418. 23. See Bösch, Die Adenauer-CDU , 416. 24. Federal Executive Committee, 10 May 1968, ACDP VII-001–017/2, quoted in Bösch, Die Adenauer-CDU , 406. 25. Bösch, Die Adenauer-CDU. 26. See Hauschild, ‘Kontinuität im Wandel’. 27. Deutsche Tagespost, 2 December 1969. 28. See Damberg, ‘Bernd Feldhaus und die “Katholische Gesellschaft für Kirche und Demokratie”’. 29. See Hering, ‘Die Kirchen als Schlüssel’, 252. 30. Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz, Wort der deutschen Bischöfe. 31. See Hering, ‘Die Kirchen als Schlüssel’, 254 f. 32. Zahrnt, ‘Planspiel 218 oder das Ende der Machbarkeit aller Dinge’, 3. 33. This quote and the following: Döpfner and Dietzfelbinger, Das Gesetz des Staates, 12 f. 34. See Mantei, Nein und Ja zur Abtreibung, 67 f. 35. Quoted in Mantei, Nein und Ja zur Abtreibung, 68. 36. See Mantei, Nein und Ja zur Abtreibung , 37 f. 37. Zillessen, ‘Rückfall in den Obrigkeitsstaat’. 38. See Mantei, Nein und Ja zur Abtreibung, 572. 39. Schueler, ‘Aufruf zum Kulturkampf’, Die Zeit, 8 January 1971.

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40. Arndt, ‘Erfüllt § 218 des Strafgesetzbuches noch seinen Zweck?’ 41. See ‘Aufgaben und Grenzen kirchlicher Äußerungen zu gesellschaftlichen Fragen’. 42. Odin, ‘Das politische Wort der Kirche’, 6. 43. ‘Kirchenkanzlei der EKD’, 33 f. 44. Mantei, Nein und Ja zur Abtreibung, 574. 45. Letter to Benda, 5 March 1975; quoted in Mantei, Nein und Ja zur Abtreibung, 575. 46. See ‘Erklärung des Rates der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland und der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz zur Reform des § 218’. 47. See Eilers, Zehn Jahre donum vitae. 48. See Liedhegener, Macht, Moral und Mehrheiten. 49. See Heimbach-Steins and Lienkamp, Für eine Zukunft in Solidarität und Gerechtigkeit, 7. 50. Hauschild, ‘Evangelische Kirche’, 59. 51. Quoted in Elsner, ‘Essen war anders’, 19. 52. Gettys, ‘Wie politisch darf die Kirche sein?’, 227. 53. See Hannig, ‘Axel Springer, Rudolf Augstein und die mediale Politisierung der Religion’. 54. On the contemporary form and reception of the concept in the Germanspeaking world, see the remarks in n.n., ‘Im Zeichen der Kontestation’. 55. See BA Münster, Akte Nr. 81, unpag.: Studentenmission 1954–58–63. 56. N.n., ‘Ideologische Auseinandersetzungen’, 182. 57. Halsband, ‘Erinnerungsbericht’, 163. 58. Krockow, The Germans in their Century, 264: ‘A new and slightly sinister verb entered the vocabulary, gaining prevalence in 1968: hinterfragen. It means “questioning”, with subtle implications of hiding, secrecy, suspicion, querying, doubting and examining. Though an ugly and certainly inelegant word in the German language, it acquired a precision and a certain relevance to the times in reflecting routine scepticism of everything purporting to present authority’. 59. See n.n., ‘Gärung in den Studentengemeinden’, 274. For an initial overview of the response in the media, see the bibliography by Hehl and Hürten, Der Katholizismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 205 f. 60. N.n., ‘Zu den Studentenunruhen’, 227. 61. For evidence of the appropriation of the ambiguous texts produced by Vatican II by both ‘traditionalists’ and ‘progressives’, see Hauer and Zulehner, Aufbruch in den Untergang?, 27–32. 62. On this and the following, see KHG-Archiv Münster: KDSE 1970/71, unpag.: ‘Dear brothers’, sgd. Pater Romanus, dated July 1970. 63. See KHG-Archiv Münster: KDSE 1970/71, unpag.: ‘Dear brothers’, sgd. Pater Romanus, dated July 1970. Similar statements were made in Kiel, Braunschweig (‘problems of degeneracy’ affecting the fraternities) and Hanover (‘highly regressive tendencies’). See Kühr, ‘Katholische und evangelische Milieus’, 256. 64. See KHG-Archiv Münster, KDSE 1970/71, unpag.: ‘Dear brothers’, sgd. Pater Romanus, dated July 1970.

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65. See Hücking, ‘Kann die katholische Studentengemeinde “Avantgarde der Kirche” sein?’, 72: ‘So far the revolutionary movement among Catholic students has had the greatest impact at the new Ruhr University in Bochum’. 66. KHG-Archiv Münster, Akte KDSE 1970, unpag.: Thomas Gawron, Discussion material on the work of the KDSE, draft 4 on the parish representatives’ conference in Münster, February 1971. 67. On this and the following: KHG-Archiv Münster: KDSE 1970/71, unpag.: ‘Dear brothers’, sgd. Pater Romanus, dated July 1970. 68. See Linck, ‘“Jetzt hilft nur noch eine Flugzeugentführung!”’. 69. KHG-Archiv Münster: KDSE 1970/71, unpag.: Minutes of the Local Council meeting, 4 April 1973. 70. See Kaiser, ‘Resümee’, 290. 71. See BA Münster, KSG 6, unpag.: Report on summer semester 1969: ‘1. There is less interest in talks and in podium discussions. On the other hand there is more interest and participation in working groups and committees that meet regularly and involve active, intensive work. Among other things, the more receptive participation in talks is viewed critically, above all a programme overwhelmingly focused on education’. 72. See interview with Kerstien in Großbölting, ‘Wie ist Christsein heute möglich?’, 173. 73. See the correspondence in BA Münster, KSG 143. 74. For an exemplary case, see the correspondence in BA Münster, KSG 143: letter from H.L. to student pastor Waltermann, dated 5 May 1971. 75. Hauschild, ‘Evangelische Kirche’, 62. 76. Hammann, Rudolf Bultmann, 431. 77. See Zeit, 31 December 1965. 78. See Bäumer et al., Weg und Zeugnis. 79. Bultmann, ‘New Testament and Mythology’; cf. Nüssel, ‘Rudolf Bultmann’. 80. See Hermle, ‘Die Evangelikalen als Gegenbewegung’. 81. Mecklenburg, Handbuch deutscher Rechtsextremismus, 381 f. 82. See Stratmann, Kein anderes Evangelium, 66 f. 83. Bäumer et al., Weg und Zeugnis, 128 f., 169, 205; Hermle, ‘Die Evangelikalen als Gegenbewegung’, 346 f. 84. Quoted in Hermle, ‘Die Evangelikalen als Gegenbewegung’, 338. 85. Bäumer et al., Weg und Zeugnis, 125. 86. See Holthaus, Fundamentalismus in Deutschland, 261. 87. See Hermle, ‘Die Evangelikalen als Gegenbewegung’, 348. 88. See Jung, Die deutsche evangelikale Bewegung.

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6 From ‘Hellfire’ to ‘All-Embracing Love’ Transformation in the Social Forms of Religion and in the Meaning of Transcendence

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It was not just the Churches’ relationship to society and politics that changed in the 1960s and 1970s. The religious communities also changed internally in a process that contemporaries perceived and subjected to contentious debate. A visible sign of this, within and beyond the Catholic Church, was the Second Vatican Council, which took place between 1962 and 1965. Pope John XXIII, who convened the Council, set the almost 2,500 top Church officials an ambitious goal: the pastoral and ecumenical renewal of the Catholic Church. But the Council’s grand vision inspired little enthusiasm among Catholics. Jesuit Jakob David, for example, believed the Catholic Church in Germany to be in a state of ‘trauma’ in December 1969.1 In an article for the Münster diocesan magazine Kirche und Leben (‘Church and Life’), he painted a gloomy picture of the general mood among Catholics. According to David, the political crisis of the old order – ‘and Europe, our good old Europe – who knows what the future holds?’ – had gone beyond the worldly sphere to encompass the Church. Unrest and upheaval … are rampant. They have even enveloped that which seemed most secure and steadfast, particularly for us Catholics: the Church and our faith. Perhaps the most disquieting thing is that this thawing and these storms have not only broken over us from outside but have broken out within the Church itself, within theology. The most visible example is the millennia-old liturgy – but the most unsettling is the new interpretation of revelation and faith.

The author advised his readers to remain calm amidst these adversities, the Church having survived worse tempests. But David was not wholly pessimistic about the future. ‘Unrest can also have a healing effect’, suggested his article’s subheading, putting a positive slant on the many changes that had occurred. What the Jesuit regarded as ‘healing’ was primarily the dropping of outdated religious practices and childish, naive beliefs that hindered people from truly embracing the faith.

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Through this focus on the essence of Christian teaching, the author suggested, the community of the faithful would be led ever closer ‘to the true core of the faith’. The positive slant of Jakob David’s analysis will not have resonated with all his readers. Alongside the Council’s supporters, some of whom greeted its findings with euphoria, a number of critical voices were also raised. Both rejection and euphoria generated a sense of sweeping crisis. But this basic mood was not restricted to Catholicism: the profound loss of tradition and, above all, the weakening ties to the Church evident in the numbers of those leaving and diminishing church attendance, affected both the major Christian Churches equally. In both confessions pluralization and politicization were perceived as a major change, sometimes as an opportunity, but more often as a threat. This contemporary perspective opens up another way of looking at the religious field in Germany. It was not just influences from outside that changed the traditional social form of the religious communities – if we wish to understand the transformation of the religious field as a whole we must also examine how the religious communities themselves changed. As the dominant religious communities, the Christian Churches actively grappled with the challenges and potential, models and ideas, movements and problems thrown up by a changing society. The Council’s task was enormous. On the one hand Christianity must maintain the notion of transcendence as something sacrosanct and immutable in order to guarantee the faithful security and eternity. On the other hand, however, there was a profound change in the ways in which this transcendence-within-immanence was described and rendered accessible, changes that can be understood as part of the religious communities’ attempt to modernize. Whether consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or driven by outside forces, the Churches responded to the transformation of contemporary culture.2 And it was not just the Churches’ self-image, organization and approach to preaching the Gospel that were affected, but also the language and symbols through which transcendence-within-immanence was represented.3

Vatican II: A ‘Council of the Church on the Church’ and its Reception The Second Vatican Council, between 1962 and 1965, is widely regarded as the most significant event in twentieth-century Church history, ushering in radical changes in the Catholic Church and Catholicism

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itself. It was already viewed by contemporaries as an attempt at root and branch reform, an aspiration that influenced other religious communities as well: in bi-confessional Germany the Council had a major impact in the Protestant Church. While hopes of intensive ecumenical dialogue and closer relations between the two Christian confessions were dashed just a few years after Vatican II, it made waves in every Christian Church. So Protestant theologians and Church historians are quite right to state that the key caesura for the Churches in Germany ‘probably [came] in the early 1960s’.4 Why was the Council so significant? And why was this assembly of bishops and cardinals, which triggered an often euphoric response, followed by a reception phase that confounded these high expectations? As in many national Catholicisms, the sense of a new dawn rapidly gave way to a wave of disillusionment. First of all, even in purely formal terms the Council was a very special event for the Catholic Church. In accordance with the Codex Iuris Canonici of 1917, the Church law of the day, all the leading Catholic office bearers and dignitaries – in the shape of the 2,540 bishops and cardinals with voting rights – came together on this occasion to exercise the highest level of doctrinal and legislative authority with and under the Pope.5 Inherent in this framework was a specific conception of the Vatican’s competencies and options: rather than just the Pope’s advisory body, the Council was regarded as a collective office holder. Yet it remained ‘under’ the Pope and had no influence beyond the limits set by him. Its resolutions, for example, became binding only if confirmed and published by the Pope. By the same token, the Pope was in no way dependent on the Council or bound by its resolutions. Particularly in the case of precepts on sexual morality, Pope Paul VI made full use of his primacy, prohibiting discussion of the issue in the Council and later issuing the Humanae Vitae encyclical. In terms of Church law, then, to quote professor of systematic theology Otto Hermann Pesch, Vatican II was endowed with a ‘powerless authority’.6 To grasp how this paradox was resolved and understand the Council’s impact, we need to look beyond the legal dimension. Of crucial significance were the dialogues and debates inspired by the Council and its findings, which were published in the form of so-called constitutions. Expectations were running high in the run-up to the Council and commentators were soon describing it, colourfully, as an aggiornamento. Aiming to bring the Church ‘into the present day’, when Pope John XXIII inaugurated this major event he conveyed his intentions through a compelling metaphor: the goal was to wrench open the windows and allow fresh air to flood into the

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inner workings of the Church. Just as the individual requires periodic spiritual renovation, the Church as institution must confront the modern world and its needs and tailor its preaching to these realities. There must be theological debate on ‘the Church in today’s world’.7 How should Catholic Christianity position and structure itself in the modern age? The Pope’s opening remarks made it clear that virtually every sphere of Church life would be addressed. Church dogmatics, in other words the Church’s understanding of itself as derived from faith, must fit perfectly with its activities and preaching in the pastoral context. To put it in abstract terms: there was a need to modify the relationship between transcendence and immanence. In this vein John XXIII proclaimed the Second Vatican Council an ‘encounter’ with the ‘world of today’. ‘Dialogue’ became the ‘Council’s watchword’.8 The Council’s ‘finest hour’, which reflected this new openness even in its modus operandi, was its first session. In the opening ceremony Pope John XXIII broke with traditionalism and the absolutist conception of the office of Pope as practised by the Pius popes in a number of ways. Stimulated in part by the Pope’s opening address, the assembly of Council delegates began to develop its own dynamics and self-consciousness and defied the Vatican Curia, which tried to rein in its reformist zeal: rejecting the prepared lists, the assembly of bishops and cardinals elected their own candidates to the committees and working groups. In its approach and working methods the Second Vatican Council was the polar opposite of its immediate predecessor, the First Vatican Council. This assembly of the Church, also held in Rome in 1869 and 1870, focused on dissociation, in other words with sealing the Church off from the world and the influences of modernity and creating an alternative reality. This tendency was evident in the Syllabus Errorum published in 1864 by Pope Pius IX, which identified a wide range of ideas, from religious freedom and improving relations between the Catholic Church and other religious communities, through freedom of scientific enquiry to socialism and democracy, condemning them as ‘errors of the century’. Catholics zealous in their loyalty to the Pope regarded this list not only as the Magna Carta of their relationship to the modern world but as the basis for the First Vatican Council. Catholicism’s integrative aspirations were even more evident in the Pastor Aeternus constitution adopted on 18 July 1870, shortly before the Council’s summer break. This text codified the Pope’s infallibility, the absolute correctness of his ex cathedra pronouncements on matters of faith, and thus entailed an unambiguous assertion of authority. It is difficult to imagine a clearer expression of the Church’s hostility towards the world.9 In Germany this tendency to seal the Church off

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from the secular world was embodied in the formation of a Catholic milieu in which believers, ensconced in their own lifeworlds and social circles, could arm themselves against a rapidly changing society. Vatican II turned all this upside down. In Church teaching, everyday life and lived piety, dialogue with the world was to supplant the Churchas-fortress and a one-sided approach prompted by the Reformation, Jansenism, Enlightenment and modernity.10 The scale of the task that the Council had set itself involved a fundamental problem that hampered its later reception. ‘The tremendous departure represented by the Council, the significance of its boldest and profoundest interventions, were impossible to capture in its written conclusions’, as contemporary observers were already arguing.11 This was partly due to the complexity of the issues addressed by the Council. Furthermore, the key declarations, the Council constitutions, tried to avoid escalating the internal tensions between the two opposing camps of Council Fathers. They did so through ‘juxtaposition’, that is, by placing progressive and conservative formulae side by side in an attempt to satisfy both camps. In this way the Curia and Pope sought to integrate the conservative minority in the Council. ‘Rarely in the history of the Church has a minority, and not even a qualified one – … between 300 and 500 fathers among 2,700 – been treated so carefully, tactfully even, to the detriment of the Pope’s public “image” and at the price of contradictory or at least ambiguous formulae in the Council texts’, to quote theologian Otto Hermann Pesch’s sobering assessment.12 The dispute over how to interpret these texts and the true ‘spirit of the Council’ was hugely significant in the years after the Church’s general assembly. But despite the ambiguities, which were subsequently exploited to the full within Church politics, it is possible to identify the dominant principles of the constitutions and decrees. In a number of ways the Vatican redefined core aspects of the Catholic self-image. The Church’s self-definition as the ‘people of God’, for example, ushered in a radical shift as the Council constitution Lumen gentium and other key texts broke with a hierarchical conception solely focused on the Church as institution. According to the Council’s new definition, the Church had access to the divine mystery as a community of the faithful. What may seem like the conclusion of a purely theological debate had far-reaching consequences, strengthening local churches vis-à-vis the Church headquarters in Rome and laity vis-à-vis clergy. When the Council, borrowing from 1 Corinthians, stated that the faithful as a whole form a single body through Christ, it tended to level off hierarchical distinctions and emphasize the significance of the individual decision of faith. All

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baptized Christians were ‘constituted among the People of God; they [were] in their own way made sharers in the priestly, prophetical, and kingly functions of Christ’.13 This reorientation not only found expression in theological tracts but also in Church practices, including its treasury of songs. ‘My baptismal covenant will ever firm remain, and to the Church I will listen. Never will I fail to show her my faithfulness and obedience to her teachings (‘Fest soll mein Taufbund immer steh’n, ich will die Kirche hören. Sie soll mich allzeit gläubig seh’n und folgsam ihren Lehren’). In the 1810 version of this popular hymn Christians sang of a new self-image focused on the Church as institution. In the Catholic Gotteslob hymn book of 1974, the emphasis had clearly shifted in favour of the individual believer’s maintenance of his faith: ‘I will strive to follow the path of faith and obedience to God’s teachings’ (‘Ich will den Weg des Glaubens gehn und folgsam Gottes Lehren’).14 But in addition to defining the Church as the ‘people of God’, the Council constitution retained passages upholding its status as a hierarchical institution. In the Council itself it was necessary not just to discuss the redefinition of authority theoretically but to apply it practically: what was the relationship between the Bishop of Rome’s collegiate approach to his fellow office-bearers in the Council and his notion of himself as head of the Church? Against those who wished to strengthen the role of the Council assembly, a Nota praevia explicativa emphasized that this collegiality could not contradict the Pope’s primacy. To the extent that the Council was composed of many individuals it illustrated the diversity of the people of God; to the extent that it was gathered together under one leader it represented the unity of Christ’s flock. This fusion of papal claim to primacy and principle of collegiality presumed a wholly unrealistic state of harmony.15 It provided no guidance on how the Church leadership, priests and laity were to strike the right balance between authority and obedience in everyday life, particularly in cases of conflict. Following Vatican II this issue developed into a field of conflict in local Churches that remains virulent to this day. The pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes sought to redefine the Church’s attitude towards the world. Previously, committed to the strict separation of Church and world, the Catholic magisterium had tried to establish a clear boundary between the secular realm and the sphere of the religious. Vatican II changed this fundamentally, asserting that the Church must confront the challenges of the present. Its engagement must not be limited to abstract, timeless formulae but must be realized through dialogue. This open view of the relationship between Church and world valorized the position of the individual

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Christian and redefined attitudes towards non-Catholics. ‘In fidelity to conscience’, Christians were linked with other human beings ‘in the search for truth, and for the genuine solution to the numerous problems which arise in the life of individuals from social relationships’.16 This not only explicitly included dialogue with those of different faiths, but also, for example, with Marxists. The fundamental recognition of, and support for, freedom of religion and conscience in the Dignitatis Humanae declaration pointed in a similar direction, drawing a line under the struggle against democracy and liberalism enshrined a century earlier in the Syllabus Errorum, recognizing the autonomy of the political sphere and embracing pluralism of opinion.17 The Church’s adaptation to processes of pluralization and democratization is particularly evident here. Rather than defining itself as an authority alongside or even above the state, the Church now saw itself as one element within an ideologically plural framework. Rather than claiming exclusive access to the truth, it incorporated the modern precept of tolerance and personal rights into its teaching. Abandoning antagonism towards non-Christian religions, the Church declared that ‘[t]he Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions’.18 The rejection of religious freedom, as clearly expressed by the magisterium in the nineteenth century, was now abandoned in favour of its recognition, grounded in natural law. While the Church had previously always assumed the primacy of its own dogma, it now dropped this claim to exclusivity. The Dei Verbum, the Council’s dogmatic constitution on divine revelation, instigated another theological paradigm shift, of great significance to pastoral work, when it liberated exegesis from the need to uphold a positivist view of Scripture. As late as the 1950s Catholic Bible scholars often had to submit to theological dogmatics, either by helping legitimize through their exegesis various tenets gleaned by the Church from Scripture or by exercising restraint whenever their findings contradicted the Church’s doctrinal statements.19 As a result of the Council the Catholic Church now accepted the so-called historicalcritical method. This meant that Bible texts were no longer read and interpreted as timeless documents but in light of the circumstances of their genesis and history of transmission – recapitulating developments initiated by sections of Protestant theology during the Enlightenment. These and other changes of direction had a far-reaching impact through the reform of the liturgy, which impacted directly on every committed Catholic. The Sacrosanctum Concilium constitution cleared the way for the replacement of Latin as the language of the Mass by the various national languages. In Germany this eliminated a key

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difference between Protestants, who had held church services in German since Luther, and Catholics, who had demonstratively and controversially stuck to Latin. In the non-European countries the mass ritual was opened up to country- and culture-specific elements of celebration and worship. And further innovations contributed to the de-clericalization of the Mass, valorizing the congregation as its true vehicle: the altar moved into the centre of the nave, the priest celebrated the transubstantiation amid the congregation rather than with his back to it, and readings and their interpretation gained greater importance. In abstract terms, the ritual of Mass was thus opened up to all participants. In the Tridentine Mass the priest, as the key actor in the Eucharistic celebration, embodied all that was mysterious and sacred, but now the distinction between celebrant and onlookers was played down. Everyone could experience and understand everything. But this aspiration to open up the mystery celebrated in Mass to everyone quickly came up against its limits. The kind of absolute understanding envisaged here automatically included possible critique: if a ritual is viewed as something that has developed over time and as open to criticism, it loses its claim to represent the sacred and sacrosanct. The post-conciliar debate laid bare the ambivalence of the liturgical reform. While the reform-minded wished to expand options for participation, their opponents sought to return to an ‘unabbreviated’ representation of the ‘mystery’ inherent in the Mass ritual.20 Writer Martin Mosebach still laments the ‘heresy of formlessness’ through which the previously sacred ritual has, as he sees it, degenerated into a group dynamic, navel-gazing event.21 There is an overall tendency at work here. A matrix of organizational structures, normative ideas and behavioural precepts with a clear profile since the Reformation became increasingly ‘fluid’ or was washed away entirely. Dogmatically and in terms of Church politics, from the nineteenth century until the 1960s the Catholic Church deployed profoundly modern means to oppose modernity. The Church’s exclusive claim to truth and concomitant devaluation of other routes to salvation, the tendency to seal itself off from the rest of the world, and the specific structures of control and authority that sought to maintain inclusion and exclusivity – the Church’s character lay in a tense interaction between social opening and closure. At the centre of the Church stood a clerical monopoly on the interpretation and administration of salvation. ‘Extra ecclesiam nulla salus’ – no salvation outside the Church, to quote the unmistakable message both to those within the Church and the rest of the world. Vatican II placed a question mark over this absolutist claim. By ceasing to deploy dogma to justify

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and stipulate the form of the Church, it opened the way theologically for the transformation of a social form that was already much eroded. How faith and religious convictions are lived is determined only to a negligible degree by official Church doctrines. It is rare for the conduct of the individual and official guidelines to be in alignment and into the eighteenth century individual piety and religiosity as collectively practised in family, village or parish diverged greatly from Church precepts.22 Only in the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century did this change as a result of a modern organization, the efforts of numerous pastoral workers, and the establishment of religious, social and cultural associations and religiously motivated political parties – which reflected the Church’s self-understanding and selfstylization as an agent of authority and power. The changes wrought by Vatican II pulled the rug from under all this and in the years after 1960 the intellectual edifice of Catholicism and the associated social forms collapsed. Vatican II was not the only source of this development and many examples of discontinuity, reformation and renovation began before this crucial event. Nonetheless, the Council and the changes it initiated played a key role because it redefined the Church’s dogmatic selfimage, a factor of huge significance to constellations of power and dependency. So it was bound to cause controversy. The Catholic Church showed no sign of evolving a new social form, and at the same time there were virtually no limits on the Church’s imagined remit. ‘Therefore’, according to sociologist of religion Michael Ebertz, ‘the “symbolic struggle” between interest and status groups within the Church over the validity of religious values and norms, over the definition and competence to define the truths of salvation and benefits of salvation [Heilsgüter] became steadily more acute’.23 Theology and research on religion have mostly interested themselves in the approved Council texts and their genesis, so the Council’s progress and the emergence of the constitutions have frequently been explored and interpreted. Theologians struggled to get to grips with the Council, but its reception and the implementation of its resolutions in the local context proved even more difficult. While no comprehensive examination of the popular reception of Vatican II in Germany has yet appeared – though it was here that the true challenge lay24 – we can outline its main contours. Like ‘1968’ with respect to West Germany’s political culture, Vatican II became a key locus of remembrance for the Catholic Church, one on which opinions continue to differ. Before the Council had concluded, many observers oscillated between euphoria and scepticism but almost

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all of them were beset by a sense of uncertainty. ‘The Council is laying down the tracks – but where the train will arrive is something that, at this historical moment, we are not yet in a position to say because the forces of tradition and progress are still locked in battle’, to quote Church historian Hubert Jedin, who was also a Catholic theologian and observer of the Council.25 Karl Rahner, one of the leading and most influential Catholic theologians of the 1960s and 1970s, declared that ‘it cannot be denied’ that ‘the Council, its proceedings and discussions … have aroused a deep sense of astonishment and disquiet’.26 ‘Let them in Rome decide whatever they want – I’m staying Catholic’.27 This popular, jocular and most likely apocryphal dictum, attributed to a Catholic peasant in Südoldenburg, conveys the deep sense of uncertainty among many Catholics, whose main concern was for Church life to remain as stable as possible. Changes in the liturgy were particularly polarizing: was a practice that had long offered a spiritual home being lost? Could the new stock of spiritual songs really express worship in an appropriate way? The vexation unleashed by the new practices is evident in a statement by Austrian Catholic Felix Gamillscheg: ‘when I think of how, in the old catechism, we were threatened with the most terrible torments of Hell if we ever so much as touch the host – and then suddenly they introduced communion in the hand! It was unthinkable!’.28 The dispute over the appropriate form of the Mass celebration was one of the reasons why the Society of St. Pius X, on the extreme right of Church politics, split off from the Catholic Church. Conversely, a fair number of contemporary accounts demonstrate the verve with which some Catholics took up the tasks set in the liturgical constitution. As Freiburg pastor Dietmar Baader reported, ‘a group of devotees enthusiastically set about … arranging the choir of the Donaueschingen parish church, built in the Bohemian Baroque style, in such a way as to retain the beauty and the historical heritage while also accommodating the ideas so central to the liturgical reform’.29 Again, participation, the large-scale involvement of the laity, was fundamental to the new approach. Alongside the liturgy, the system of councils and committees established in the parishes and dioceses also developed into an important field of activity. The tendency was thus for religious engagement to move from the Catholic associations and clubs to the parish councils. These changes allowed the Church to respond to the demand for broader participation but, as some have lamented in retrospect, also led to a narrowing of pastoral practice on the part of the reform-minded. In 1969, Franz Kamphaus, Catholic theologian in the diocese of Münster and Bishop of Limburg from 1982, described the dire consequences of

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a ‘roundabout’ within the Church. The Bishop of Münster, Heinrich Tenhumberg, made similar comments two years later, criticizing the ‘narrowing of areas of responsibility’: ‘many pastoral committees seem to have lost sight of everything but issues of liturgy, administration of the sacraments and preaching in church. … The committee progress reports show very little concern for the working world, the factories, the stores and businesses in which the men and women of the parish work, or for minorities within society’. Church historian Wilhelm Damberg states that this inward focus had long-term consequences: for many years it was the generation moulded by the Council that set the parochial agenda. This focus on internal problems limited Church engagement with the rest of the world. The model of the 1950s that saw parishes as a militant ‘campaigning alliance made up of professional associations’ had thus been abandoned, giving way to a Churchfocused self-image and practice. For supporters of reform Vatican II was an important if belated step by the Church towards reconciliation with modernity and this group saw the ‘spirit of the Council’ as superseding if not breaking with the pre-conciliar past. But for some delegates the Council was a half-hearted effort to catch up with a society that had already changed beyond recognition. In subsequent years there were occasionally calls for a third Vatican Council in order to address remaining and novel problems. More conservative circles, meanwhile, interpreted the Second Vatican Council as an irreparable break with Catholicism’s uncompromising heyday. One of its sharpest critics, Roman Catholic archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who was later suspended by the Pope, excoriated the Council as an act in which the Church had been betrayed by the Reformation, the French Revolution and their principles.30 A large number of office-bearers and dignitaries within the Catholic Church, and prominent theologians, rapidly changed their minds about the Council. While many initially harboured great hopes that Vatican II would usher in a new efflorescence of Church life, scepticism soon reigned supreme. This shift in sentiment was triggered by the acute Church crisis that followed the Council. From the perspective of many theologians and Church officials, the Council had aimed to facilitate the cautious and homogenous development of Church traditions, but the overzealousness of a fair number of reforms had unsettled the faithful to the point where many had left the Church. But if we look at the figures on organized religiosity it soon emerges no such connection exists: the downward trends of the 1960s were merely a continuation of those of the 1950s. What is true is that the Council proved unable to halt this process of erosion.31

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In many circles the Council was perceived chiefly as the accompaniment to or cause of crisis, and this is primarily due to muchnoted developments within Dutch Catholicism. Beginning in the mid 1960s, a Catholicism that had previously been tightly organized and impressively self-contained collapsed entirely within just a few years.32 What is striking here is that this transformation was not caused by outside forces but was generated from within – and it was the Dutch bishops themselves who stood out as the key agents of change. As early as 1965 the Dutch bishops’ conference had published a New Catechism, whose statements on sin, redemption, the virginity of Mary, but above all on the Pope’s position within the Church had provoked tremendous controversy. In an attempt to overcome this discord, but first and foremost in order to implement the findings of the Second Vatican Council, a Dutch Pastoral Council was convened in 1966. This Pastoral Council mutated into a comprehensive ‘experiment in renewing and rethinking the Church’.33 Reflecting their interpretation of Vatican II, the Dutch bishops sought to define the Church primarily in terms of human beings’ religious needs. ‘The starting point was a radical shift away from the principle of collective identity and, by the same token, the demand for the thoroughgoing individualization of confessional identity’. From now on the Church was to evolve in light of practical experience, with forms of fellowship emerging directly from the surrounding society.34 The Church attempted to meet these demands for participation and democratization as fully as possible, turning traditional organizational forms and the conventional understanding of hierarchy upside down. Many Catholics felt unable to cope with this radical process of reorientation and redefinition, with one letter to the Pastoral Council vividly comparing it to ‘putting a plate of sauerkraut and sausage in front of an infant’.35 Subsequent clashes between a progressive majority and conservative minority deeply divided Dutch Catholicism. Within just a few years – while this debate was still in progress and even more subsequently – an almost hermetically sealed Catholicism, one characterized by a high degree of religiosity, had fallen apart. For many German Church workers and theologians this was a horror scenario that must not be repeated in Germany. Many Catholics there believed they could see its harbingers in various disputes: the Essen ‘Protest Conference’ of 1968 and the heated dispute over the Humanae vitae encyclical were seen as signs of crisis, as was the bitter debate over the folding of the Publik weekly newspaper. Established by the Bishops’ Conference, many Catholics saw it as expressing a political

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commitment to the aggiornamento programme. Its discontinuation due to a lack of subscribers triggered a vehement dispute.36 Meeting between 1971 and 1975, the Würzburg Pastoral Synod was one attempt to move the implementation of Vatican II in a productive direction.37 Even Church critics acknowledged that this German council was an ‘open forum’ typified by a ‘willingness to listen and learn’.38 Nonetheless, it failed to resolve numerous bones of contention such as celibacy, the ban on using the contraceptive pill, and the Church’s approach to the remarriage of divorcees. More relevant to the Synod’s lack of impact, however, was the general failure of its much-praised committee reports to inspire the Church grass roots. There was no renewal movement that might have animated its texts and programmes or any sense of a new dawn of the kind that had prevailed after Vatican II. Despite the extensive involvement of delegates, the Synod came across as a ‘reform from above’, and this traditional approach to achieving broad-based renewal failed to achieve its goals. Had Vatican II made the Catholic faith fit for the future, as the reformminded saw it? Or was it the beginning of the end, as their opponents feared? Catholics continued to argue about this long after the Council had completed its work. Tellingly, this dispute became entrenched among Church experts and their various factions. As Catholics’ sense of a new dawn abated, many of the disappointed left the Church, but this was just the first and, with hindsight, the smaller step towards the transformation of Catholicism. The fact that the Würzburg Synod, seen by many as a ‘German version’ of Vatican II that strove to implement the Vatican’s aggiornamento within the West German Catholic Church, failed to make a broad impact, was a further symptom of the accelerating alienation of the Church grass roots. As early as 1977 Catholic journalist David Seeber addressed that wing of Catholicism avidly seeking to propagate the ‘spirit of the Council’. The real danger for the Church, he asserted, did not lie in the debates inspired by Vatican II and the Catholic variant of the student movement. In fact, ‘young people’s [tendency to] “stay away”’ represented the more serious challenge. In light of this, the permanent conflict that developed in the late 1960s between Church critics, who saw themselves as ‘progressive’, and the Church hierarchy was a dispute between two ever-diminishing elites. To quote the Jesuit Seeber’s perceptive comment: ‘what remains of the dispute within the Church loses virtually all significance in view of the contemporary religious situation and the Church’s delayed response to it … The really disquieting thing may well be the desire for peace and quiet’.39 If we shift our attention away from the debate within Catholicism on

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the significance and interpretation of the Council, this dispute quickly emerges in its true proportions. The Council of the ‘Church on the Church’40 was part and parcel of much wider changes.

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Church Conferences and Church Academies: Change of Form and Function in the Church’s Public Engagement It was not just the structures but also the self-image and perception of the major Christian Churches in West Germany that changed radically. As early as the late 1950s the Churches’ theological and societal forms underwent renegotiation, and this occurred both within the Churches and in the burgeoning mass media. Taken together, these two factors were both the product and promoter of the tremendous changes observable in the religious field. The margins of the established Churches in particular were the site of numerous innovations, some instigated by the Church hierarchies and others that developed at grass-roots level. The Protestant Church conferences and Catholic conferences are one example of traditional forms of organization and public engagement adapting to new needs and objectives. Nowadays these Church occasions have the aura of major religious events whose most striking feature is the great mass of participants, with tens of thousands attending the main inaugural and closing services. Only recently has Protestantism lost to Catholicism its record for the largest gathering of Christians in Germany: the Cologne World Youth Day 2005, which was centred on the visit of Pope Benedict XVI, brought around one million people together. Previously it was Protestant and pan-German Church conferences that achieved the highest visitor numbers: on 11 July 1954, for example, 650,000 individuals attended the concluding event of the Protestant Church Conference in Leipzig.41 If we examine the attendees at Church and Catholic conferences we find a phenomenon not usually associated with the Church, namely the presence of a large number of young people – mixing with the greying middle and older generations so typical of traditional parochial life in both confessions. In the early 1990s the proportion of those under thirty was as high as 70 per cent. But in the following two decades attendees’ age structure fell into line with the national average. The Church and Catholic conferences influenced the Churches by becoming sites of experimentation with new forms of spiritual music. From the spiritual through ‘sacropop’ to the rediscovery of the trombone choir – many of the forms practised in the parishes found a key medium of

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dissemination in the Church conferences. ‘A bit of a class outing, a bit of Taizé, a bit of a pop concert feeling, something for everyone and just the right amount of everything’42 – through their characteristic blend of elements these major events have developed a character all their own. The fact that the Catholic and Protestant Church conferences (held on a rotating biennial basis) appear almost like close kin to many observers illustrates just how much they have changed: their confessional character was long central to them.43 In the case of the Protestant Church conferences, after 1945 there was a marked shift away from their national-conservative and democracy-sceptic beginnings in the Weimar Republic. In 1949, Prussian jurist Reinold von ThaddenTrieflaff revisited the original focus on lay initiative and, in the shape of regular Church conferences, launched a movement that networked the Protestant regional Churches and free Churches in a globally unique way.44 As the most important meetings for Catholic laity and their umbrella organization, the Central Committee of German Catholics, the Catholic conferences also took on special importance to the community of the Church as they demonstrated both self-understanding and self-awareness.45 After the First World War, the attendance figures for Catholic conferences, first convened in 1848, constantly increased. Both outside and within the Church they attracted either amazed or mocking criticism as ‘military parades’ or ‘autumn manoeuvres by the Centre Party’.46 Under National Socialism these events were prohibited and returned only in 1948. In contrast to the prewar era, Catholic conferences now featured more sacred elements and developed ‘from a mass political rally into a pilgrimage’.47 In the event programmes of the 1950s it was official manifestations, services and various forms of prayer that dominated. The podiums were mostly manned by clerical dignitaries, who, as ordained priests, had the authority to preside over sacred acts.48 For both confessions, these Church events were also a key opportunity to ‘stage’ their fellowship with the other German state. What mattered was the impression made on the outside world, as thousands of Christians sang and prayed their way through the streets of an often secular environment. At least for a time, their rituals and symbols shaped public spaces, with carefully orchestrated mass events demonstrating the cohesion, missionary spirit and ultimately the strength of the religious community. In the 1960s the form and functions of the Protestant Church conference and the Catholic conference changed. After the building of the Berlin Wall there was less need to take account of inter-German politics. More importantly, though, the changes within the Church were now reflected in the character of the conferences. From a demonstration

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of Church strength and a place of lived piety, they gradually developed into a forum for debating Church and worldly initiatives within a confessional frame, as evident in the slogan ‘Living with Conflicts’, adopted by the Dortmund Church Conference of 1963. This was the first of a number of events that explicitly sought to stake out a clear position on social policy: conference slogans included ‘Consisting in Freedom’ (Cologne 1965), ‘Peace is Among Us’ (Hanover 1967) and ‘Hunger for Justice’ (Stuttgart 1969). At both Protestant and Catholic conferences, then, there was a new modus operandi: it was no longer the straightforward talk but the working group that stood centre stage. People should have a say and participate in these major events – an approach that was intended to at least complement, if not replace, the nurturing of fellowship. Among Catholics, initial positive experiences with this new way of working inspired ideas that pointed beyond the narrow context of the Catholic conference. One reporter for Stimmen der Zeit magazine, for example, asked whether it might be advisable ‘to give Church members other opportunities to express their views in this way, for example through suggestion boxes after sermons and talks?’ By the same token the journalist excoriated interminable and tedious speeches: ‘the people endure such things. But despite the best of intentions they switch off. And they’re quite used to doing so. What a shame, what a shame’.49 By the time of the next Catholic conference in Hanover the organizers were already viewing forms of active participation by attendees in public gatherings as ‘part and parcel of the Catholic conference’, but also as a model for preaching and educational work. Catholics ‘have learned to ask questions’, stated the functionaries of the Central Committee of German Catholics, seeing it as a good sign that ‘the believer wanted information about the whys and wherefores of faith’.50 And in 1964 the president of the Central Committee, Karl Fürst zu Löwenstein, saw an analogy between the ‘reorientation of our people [within political life], which is not yet entirely complete and is often heavy going, away from the authoritarian state and towards democracy’ and developments within the Church, not without highlighting that as a result of this new openness ‘time-honoured obedience’ must now be replaced by the ‘voluntary discipline of fitting in’.51 The Church and Catholic conferences became more diverse from a lifeworld perspective and more plural from a political one. The potential for conflict thus also increased. At the Church Conference in Stuttgart in 1969 Protestantism’s inner turmoil was laid bare to visitors and observers. ‘These five intense days’, rather than a ‘comfortable home for Christians, amount to a Church conference of controversies and

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hard debate’, commented Günter Geschke, reporter for the Protestant Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt newspaper.52 The ‘No Other Gospel’ confessing movement called for a boycott of the Hanover gathering, and in Stuttgart it tried to raise its profile through a forum of its own called ‘Dispute over Jesus’ (‘Streit um Jesus’). On the left of the Church there emerged forces geared towards grass-roots democracy, and they made the ‘Democracy’ working group their key forum. When both wings sought to disrupt the closing rally through ‘go-ins’ and statements, attendees responded with catcalls. For the ‘little Catholic Conference’ of 1966 in Bamberg, the Catholic Church deliberately kept the group of direct participants small, the aim being to facilitate a ‘familial dialogue’.53 In reality, as Grossmann convincingly states, ‘those responsible, probably realistically, felt unable to direct the debates that had flared up among Catholics everywhere into forward-looking channels within the framework of a Catholic conference’.54 But the criticisms of this approach demonstrate how much such organizational precepts clashed with widespread expectations: this ‘closed event’ had excluded the great mass of German Catholics from making their voices heard.55 But in the case of what went down in history as the Catholic Protest Conference of 1968 in Essen, it was no longer discussions among functionaries and prepared speeches but debates among participants that were its ‘manifest result’.56 In this respect the 1968 conference completed something that was already in the pipeline: a new form of institutional openness within the Church whose beginnings lay in the late 1950s. In subsequent years protests and the public demonstration of alternative religious models took a variety of forms, with the ‘Catholic conference from below’ becoming an unofficial but almost integrated part of this major Church event.57 Thus, in parallel to the Church’s diminishing doctrinal sway over its members, the Catholic conference increasingly presented itself as an array of Christian forms that had little in common with the ‘military parades’ of the 1950s. Among Protestants the evangelical groups in particular initially focused on arranging alternative events that were not integrated into the German Protestant Church conference. Prominent theologians such as Gerhard Bergmann and Walter Künneth advised the faithful not to attend the latter, regarding its president Heinz Zahrnt as grossly uncommitted to Scripture and the confession of faith.58 In contrast to the DEKT, its opponents took a fundamentalist approach, upholding the claim of absolute scriptural truth. In 1973, the ‘Congregational Conference under the Word’ (Gemeindetag unter dem Wort), as it called itself, which drew on the traditions of the Confessing Church, managed to

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attract more people than the official Church Conference in Düsseldorf held the same year, which registered a mere 7,500 official attendees.59 What characterized these large-scale religious events was no longer cohesion, let alone uniformity, but the ‘Market of Options’ (Markt der Möglichkeiten) launched under the aegis of the Protestant Church conferences. These major events, which began in Düsseldorf in 1973 but received their distinctive title in 1975, provided and continue to provide an opportunity for (almost) every religion and civil society group, movement and organization to present its concerns and discuss them with conference attendees. The Catholic conferences have adopted similar forms, and here too a colourful mix of religious ideas and ecclesio-political positions are gathered together under one roof: the Donum Vitae stand, which offers advice to pregnant women, can be found next to that of the Legio Mariae, which propagates a conservative form of Marian worship. Nowadays even their organizers regard the Church and Catholic conferences as ‘colourful festivals of faith’. This new self-image was particularly evident in Mainz in 1998, when an advertising agency was tasked with promoting the public image of the Catholic Conference. A dolphin, a key New Age symbol, became the event’s main logo. The message was clear: Christians and the Christian faith are ‘full of zest for life, solidarity and the friendliness of the dolphin’. The organizers and the priests officiating at church services, however, sometimes struggled to re-embed this image in Christian forms and symbols.60 Just how much this type of event has influenced religious life is evident in discussions among pastoral theologians and sociologists of religion, who have identified ‘Church conference Christians’ as a new type of believer that emerged in the 1990s and particularly in the third millennium. As open to social problems as they are to new forms of spirituality, these Christians never miss a Church conference, though they maintain only loose ties to their home parishes.61 Among Catholics it is not just Catholic conferences that have moved in this direction; the so-called World Youth Days also exercise a special fascination. Since the mid 1980s, every other year the Pontifical Council for the Laity and a given host country invite the ‘youth of the world’ to a meeting with the Pope. This is a highly popular event: four million people attended the closing service at the Manila World Youth Day in 1995. Since the event was held in Paris in 1997 these youth gatherings have also been increasingly popular in Europe, attracting between half and one and a half million young people from all over the world. There has always been controversy over whether these meetings are a ‘Catholic Woodstock’ or a ‘genuine festival of faith’. But this question fails

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to capture the essence of these large-scale Church events, as it is rooted in a false alternative. Certainly, hundreds of thousands of people gather on these occasions in search of their own form of spirituality and relation to transcendence. But this is by no means associated with any renewal of the traditional piety and religious life that formerly characterized the everyday life of the West German Churches. So the Protestant and Catholic Conferences and the World Youth Days, their globalized counterparts, stand for a new type of religious engagement aimed at those believers who wish to spend some of their time participating in this religious event. Whether and if so how they might continue to involve themselves in Church life is generally left up to the individual. Another phenomenon, which is more integrated into the Church as an institution, is the Church academies; these have been fairly described as ‘agencies of Church “self-modernization”’.62 As a mixture of folk high school (Volkshochschule) and spiritual centre, these bodies have changed significantly over the decades both in their practices and self-image. So they are more than the ‘programmatic expression of a changed conception of the Church’; they have also functioned as ‘laboratories’ of modernization as the Church tried to develop new organizational forms and reimagine itself.63 The academies started out as a new form of religious engagement with the public sphere. While they built on various strands of prewar pastoral care, as institutions they were entirely new. In both the Catholic and Protestant Churches the impulse for their establishment was a belief in the need for specialized institutions that not only educate their own members but also impact on the ‘world’ in a special way. In the words of an academy head in 1955, the goal was to ‘find new ways and forms in order to get closer to the modern individual’.64 This form of words points to a perceived deficit. Clearly, the modern person, the person of ‘today’, could no longer be reached in the old ways and seemed to be losing his confessional commitment. So alongside their function as place of education, chiefly for those with ties to the Church, academies were intended as forums that would open up new access to confession and religion for those lacking such ties. ‘Sites of encounter’ or ‘dialogue’, ‘bridges’ or a ‘third place’ between Church and world – it was through these and similar metaphors that the academies defined their self-image.65 The first initiative to establish an academy reflected these intentions and was launched by Protestant pastor Eberhard Müller. His conferences, first held in Bad Boll in 1945, for ‘men of the law and economy’, functioned as a template for the academies, as did the Protestant Weeks organized by the Confessing Church between 1935 and 1936, the Nazis’ training camps

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(Dozentenlager) and evangelical missionization of American provenance. By 1961 the number of annual events had increased to around 1,000, reaching up to 50,000 people each year.66 The Catholic Church emulated its Protestant counterpart, establishing a variety of Catholic social, diocesan and supra-diocesan regional academies after the Second World War. The Catholic Social Institutes (Sozial-Institute) and Social Academies (Sozialakademien) focused on imparting the essentials of Catholic social teaching, the goal being to help shape the political culture of West Germany. Just how ambitious these aspirations were is apparent in the case of the Social Institute founded in the diocese of Paderborn. The Kommende Social Institute in Dortmund adopted the motto of the 1949 Catholic Conference, ‘Justice Creates Peace’, and focused on developing a social and political order rooted in Christian social thought. Other establishments such as the Franz-Hitze-Haus in Münster staked out an identity as a mixed institution that fused social and political education with a philosophical, theological and cultural orientation.67 During and after Vatican II and in light of its drive to create a more open Church a number of other academies were founded, including those in Trier (1962), Lingen (1963), Augsburg (1965), Berlin (1966), Nuremberg (1970) and Hamburg (1973). The academies are of special interest because they allow us to trace a number of developments within the Church as if through a magnifying glass. The Protestant academies in particular stand out as innovative and avant-garde, imagining the relationship between religion and politics in varying ways. In the 1950s, the ideal they sought to live up to was that of the ‘neutral broker’ providing the various forces within society with a ‘forum’ for debate. The EKD expressed this aspiration again, in the form of a coherent programme, in the 1963 paper ‘The Services Provided by the Protestant Academies within the Framework of the Church’s Overall Tasks’ (Der Dienst der Evangelischen Akademien im Rahmen der kirchlichen Gesamtaufgabe). The academies were not intended to function as ‘guides’ but merely as ‘forums’ in which social conflicts might be overcome. The Church’s specific objective was ‘to make a lasting connection between the spheres of life explored by the academies and the Church’.68 Just fifteen years later this orientation had changed markedly: the Church no longer saw itself merely as a ‘forum’ in which actors with differing views could communicate within a religious setting, but increasingly sought to make itself a ‘factor’ within the political sphere. Despite persistent disputes, by 1976 at the latest this debate had been settled in favour of a more defined Church position on sociopolitical matters. On 11 May of that year, many of those at a meeting of Protestant academy leaders spoke in favour of

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greater sociopolitical engagement for their institutions. The director of the Arnoldshain Academy, Martin Stöhr, justified this new approach by claiming that the Gospel itself calls upon us to reject neutrality and aid the oppressed.69 This changed the academies’ self-image. Depending on their leadership and its attitudes, academies were to act as ‘advocates’ and sometimes even as ‘agents of emancipation’ with respect to various social issues and interest groups. Through their efforts on behalf of the women’s, peace, environmental and Third World movements, both the Protestant and Catholic academies functioned as key interfaces with the social movements of the 1970s and 1980s. For some Protestant academies, campaigning against the Apartheid regime in South Africa became crucial to their identity, as it fused Protestant-ecumenical work with political agitation in aid of the oppressed. The Catholic academies tended to be geared more towards the views of the official Church. Consciously setting themselves apart from their Protestant counterparts, they placed greater emphasis on the ‘dichotomy’ between Church and world, which allegedly required the academies to take on a mediating role. This was directly related to the claim to truth so central to the Catholic faith. From this perspective a number of critics assailed the activities of their Protestant sister academies, lamenting the ‘broad room for non-commitment’ they had supposedly opened up.70 In the political and ecclesio-political debates of the 1960s and 1970s, the academies of both confessions functioned as internal clearing houses. In the debate on how to achieve peace, for example, they provided an excellent forum, though without managing to integrate minority views.71 Through this and other feats of moderation, and as a think tank and laboratory for new religious ideas and forms, the academies took on an important role in the Churches’ public work into the 1980s and up to the present.72 But when it comes to the debate outside the Churches, it became clear over the course of the 1970s and 1980s that the influence of both Protestant and Catholic academies was diminishing in parallel with the confessional communities’ (party) political influence. Within West German civil society these institutions had become one voice among many.

The ‘End of Hell’ and ‘God is Dead’ Theology: New Concepts and Forms of Church and Religious Life The profound erosion of Church-based religiosity and the transformation of the Churches as communities were accompanied by an equally dramatic change in the way they saw themselves. What,

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and above all who, is the Church? The answers that the Protestant and Catholic Churches came up with lay between two poles: that of a highly institutionalized Church and the idea of a loose coalition of engaged individuals and groups. Church as institution became Church as movement, a movement that those alienated from Church rituals could – and from the Churches’ perspective should – also consider themselves part of. So both the Protestant and Catholic Churches increasingly saw themselves in less exclusive terms. Fixed criteria for membership and the associated behavioural rules – of the kind typical of the Churches in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century – became obsolete or at least receded into the background of religious practice. Rather than rigid, clear-cut criteria of inclusion and exclusion, the Churches increasingly put their faith in inclusive forms of communication intended to address as many people as possible. They no longer saw themselves as an alternative to the world but as part of it and they no longer regarded only the baptized as members but also felt a special connection with individuals of ‘goodwill’, to quote the contemporary and characteristically vague formula. The tendency was for the Churches to move away from the nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury Anstaltskirche, which envisaged a clear institutional structure. Instead they opened up a vaguely defined space whose contours consisted of a melange of the old and new. Within the mainstream of both Catholic and Protestant pastoral work, the confessions increasingly developed into communities of communication and experience devoid of hierarchical gradations. A number of theologians sought to mediate between the traditional concept of the Church and its new self-image but religious practice and preaching underwent a profound shift in which, rather than being ostentatiously abandoned, the statements and forms cultivated in the past receded into the background and were now discussed only on the Church periphery. Changes in the image of God and in associated ideas of the beyond played a key role in this transformation. The torments of Hell, which – as generations of believers had been assured for centuries – would be imposed in the hereafter by a punitive God, were supplanted by the idea of a ‘profoundly human God’, one who, through his ‘loving creativity, puts right’ all those things that are ‘not completely out of the question’.73 This process established an entirely new relationship between immanence and transcendence, this world and the hereafter. As a result of and in parallel to this change, Church practices also took on new forms: in the 1970s the authoritarian propagation of Christian messages was superseded by religious advice on ‘vital issues’. The

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mission of the 1950s, which took a top-down, authoritarian approach to imparting Christian ideas, was gradually replaced by communicative strategies intended to persuade, mediate and facilitate dialogue.74 This transformation made a broad impact, affecting a number of formerly central axes of religious life in Germany. This change is apparent in those theological contributions that reached a broad public from the late 1960s onwards, in other words those ideas that attracted attention beyond universities and academies. In the case of the Catholic Church, Vatican II provided a key stimulus here through its ‘People of God’ theology. Its counterpart in the Protestant sphere was the Lutheran notion of the ‘priesthood of all believers’, which now received renewed emphasis. Drawing on German-American theologian Paul Tillich, at the Church Conference of 1965 Protestant theologian Dorothee Sölle distinguished between a ‘manifest’ and ‘latent’ Church, neither of which the Church could do without.75 Clearly distancing itself from this view, in 1968 the Protestant Central Office on Ideological Issues (Evangelische Zentrale für Weltanschauungsfragen) warned that the Church had ‘long since lost a clear sense of the difference between “believers” and “nonbelievers”’.76 Catholic theologian Karl Rahner described his religious community in a similar way as a ‘Church of asynchronicity’ in which a distinction must be made between ‘old Christians’ and ‘new Christians’. The latter in particular, who guaranteed the future of the Church, were not necessarily members by baptism. According to Rahner it was necessary ‘to effectively count within the Church those who are close to and sympathize with it’.77 He later conveyed this through the term ‘anonymous Christianity’.78 These discussions went beyond theology and made a broad impact, with criteria of inclusion and exclusion subject to frequent debate from a wide variety of perspectives. This trend reached its provisional apogee in the ‘polarization debate’ within the Protestant regional Churches, which began in 1969 and spilled over into Catholicism a few years later.79 Does Christianity consist in the mere fact of creating community or ‘agape’? Or is a religious or biblical element a crucial requirement? The trend towards inclusion evident here is merely the outward manifestation of a development also evident in theological discourse. And this change was strikingly apparent in the redefinition of key beliefs. From the 1960s onwards, pastoral practice in particular saw a shift of emphasis as the relationship between God and world was reimagined: rather than guilt and forgiveness or the Fall and redemption, the key terms through which pastoral guidance, edifying literature and even Church newspapers now described the relationship

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between God and world, between transcendence and immanence, were personal suffering and healing.80 This transformation was especially profound within Catholicism, which was more homogenous than Protestantism. By examining Catholic sermon drafts over the past 150 years, sociologist of religion Michael Ebertz has probed changing ideas of God and the associated notions of the hereafter, and identified profound changes.81 According to traditional Catholic doctrine, death denies the human being any further opportunity to seek salvation or even to receive the sacrament of penance as administered by the Church. He or she will then be subject to God’s judgement. Here God is just, rather than automatically merciful, conferring upon souls their appropriate status in the hereafter: Hell, Purgatory (including the possible cleansing of sin) or Heaven – the alternatives are clear and mercilessly final. Everyone should understand that they will be allocated to one of these categories. The tendency was clear. Heaven was portrayed as a positive and scarce ‘good of salvation’ reserved for the few. Within the imaginative world of the Catholic sermon, some people, if not the majority, were bound for Hell and all its torments. In the nineteenth century Church notions of just what proportion of the population would end up in Hell were already vague, but it was clear that it would be the majority. In this context God appeared as ‘excessively brutal, cruel, filled with rage, terrifying’ and ‘characterized by negative emotions (such as revenge)’. This God possessed ‘sovereign power to dispense his retributive but – as frequently emphasized – punitive justice’ vis-à-vis a human being who could never be quite sure of the extent of his own sinfulness, including sinful thoughts.82 Only Mary as mother of God and advocate, along with the saints, could mitigate the potential for eternal damnation. Above all, though, this idea took on direct relevance to this-worldly action. There were just two things individuals could do to enhance their prospects: they could improve the odds of getting to Heaven through the confessional and the associated sacrament of penance, and by living a sin-free life pleasing to God. This overall picture of death, sin and guilt did not go uncontested intellectually and theologically. And according to Ebertz the triad of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory was discussed less and less often after 1850. While initially all three elements of the eschatological code were mentioned, from the mid twentieth century onwards there was a steady decline in references to Purgatory and Hell.83 Priests in Catholic orders, who drew on these images and ideas in traditional popular missions, reported that lay people ‘split their sides laughing’ at descriptions of Hell.84 Nonetheless, this approach

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dominated Catholic teaching until the 1950s and had far-reaching consequences for the understanding of the Church, the associated role of the priest and lay piety. Just a few years later this salvific pessimism, observable into the 1950s, had been turned on its head: ‘the love of the Father: that is Jesus Christ. Through him we have become the children of God, through him salvation is bestowed upon us. … This comes first: God sanctifies us. Prior to our decision for God is God’s decision for us. He wants our salvation. And he will accomplish it. This is our hope’.85 This sermon draft from 1970 typifies the new approach to describing the relationship between earthly life and the beyond. Hell had become a taboo topic. The formerly distressing symbol of fire, to the extent that it was still used at all, was reinterpreted in terms of ‘becoming fire and flame’ for God’s love.86 While ‘Hell’ and ‘Purgatory’ increasingly disappeared, ‘Heaven’ became even more significant.

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“Heaven”, which was originally a scarce good of salvation “socially restricted” to a small number of people, was thus … transformed into a good of salvation freely available to all, making it less attractive. In sum, the exclusionary concept of transcendent bliss was replaced by an inclusionary one. To put it even more briefly but more ambiguously: Heaven is, as it were, “a gift”.87

And in those cases in which the ‘term Hell is still used, it has lost much of its fire’.88 The eschatological depiction of God as an authority that may punish or pardon thus gave way to that of a ‘loving, mild God on whom everyone can count for mercy at all times’.89 This is not the place to examine theological assessments of the ebb and disappearance of eschatological conceptions. What matters here are the consequences of these changing notions of the hereafter for the social and cultural form of the Church. If Christians receive mercy on a virtually automatic basis rather than threats of Hell and its horrors, this undoubtedly maximizes the scope and inclusiveness of mercy. But at the same time it eliminates the tension between immanence and transcendence because mercy no longer relates to how one lives one’s life. As ‘“Hell” receded into the shadows’ it threw up the ‘question of why one [ought to] bother with “Heaven”’.90 The tension between immanence and transcendence, as the driving force of a religious way of life, had thus been removed in an intellectual sense but above all in the context of pastoral and religious practice. The sacrament of penance indicates the consequences for practical pastoral work of this tendency to ‘ignore or say nothing about the traditional features of the eschatological code or discourse’.91 While the confessional was formerly characterized by a tension between

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sin and forgiveness, a new pastoral ideal was to govern the dialogue between priest and faithful: the confessional was now chiefly intended to help alleviate personal suffering through communication. This did not result in the successful reformulation of this sacrament. Against the background of an overall process of dechurching, there was a decline in the significance of all sacraments, but the traditional practice of confession collapsed completely. This recast other elements of Catholic piety as well. The worship of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who played a special role in Catholic thought as the mother of Jesus, lost its key reference point. In addition to a number of saints, it was above all Mary that people called upon as advocate ‘at the hour of our death’, to quote the Ave Maria. As an element of piety, to this day Mary is worshipped primarily by those groups that explicitly honour the old eschatological code and operate on the margins, or within the spectrum, of Christian fundamentalism. The issue of the nature of God made waves in a variety of contexts, provoking an array of responses. In addition to fundamentalist attempts to go on as before, others found other ways of addressing the issue. ‘God is dead’ theology, and a political theology closely associated with it, became particularly popular. In Germany its reception and dissemination is associated chiefly with the name of Dorothee Sölle,92 a Protestant theologian who took up this old idea and developed it further. Philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel had already discussed the ‘death of God’ in the early nineteenth century, and it was addressed by other prominent thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard and later theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich. All the variants of ‘God is dead’ theology were underpinned by a shared starting point, which boiled down to the following idea: in view of the suffering in the world, it is impossible to conceive of God as allpowerful, eternal and merciful. Instead, according to one intellectual solution, God himself must be thought of as weak and suffering in light of inhumanity. The civilizational rupture of Auschwitz was the specifically German context that rendered an all-comprehending, alljustifying and all-regulating God inconceivable. Could one really imagine that ‘God in all his glory sat on his throne up there and helped bring about such things in Auschwitz’ to quote the provocative question posed by Dorothee Sölle.93 Against the background of this aporia, redemption as a basic Christian concept should not be postponed until ‘Heaven’ or the end of times, but must instead take place chiefly on earth itself. American and British theologians such as John Robinson, who was extremely

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popular in Germany, emphasized the immanence of God in the world and the obligation to take action. Rather than referring to God as a transcendent authority who either stops or punishes injustice at the end of all times, the individual must take responsibility within his own life and work towards achieving a more humanitarian world. This required redefinition of the relationship between transcendence and immanence: Dietrich Bonhoeffer had called on Christians to take up the cause of a ‘religionless Christianity’, not to distance themselves from the world but to see it as their special field of action.94 In much the same way, in one of her books Dorothee Sölle encouraged people to ‘believe in God atheistically’.95 In the context of the religious, theological and Church-centred changes, ruptures and new dawns that typified the 1960s, these ideas seemed to strike a chord with a broad (reading) public and – as a result of dechurching and the increasing disentanglement of society and religious communities – they enjoyed an unprecedented popular reception. In Germany a broader debate on these ideas was set in motion by the book Honest to God by Anglican bishop Robinson (entitled ‘God is Different’– Gott ist anders – in Germany), which went through ten print runs in two years.96 Its key precepts, stated theologian Helmut Gollwitzer on the book’s appeal, were not new but ‘common fare’ in theology. But they had not yet reached a broader public, according to Gollwitzer, so Robinson’s refreshing prose had a special appeal.97 While theologians such as Protestant Jürgen Moltmann and Catholic Johann Baptist Metz developed elements of these ideas further in their political theology and became well-known far beyond their own specialisms, it was Dorothee Sölle who became the leading exponent of ‘God is dead’ theology: dedicated, and as disputatious as she was publicly active, she combined her theological ideas with a powerful political impulse. She not only advocated developmental cooperation with the ‘Third World’ and supported the feminist movement but also staked out a profile as critic of the Church: in her view, the Churches in Germany had again gone too far in cooperating with the state and the powerful, so that belief in Jesus Christ was in no way genuine Christian discipleship. Quite the opposite: theology and Church had domesticated Jesus and were an obstacle to the new world he demanded. Christianity, Sölle provocatively stated, would perish unless it managed to liberate itself from these shackles and become the true discipleship of Christ.98 In addition to Sölle’s writings and media contributions it was chiefly the ‘Political Night-Prayers’ that made her concerns and those of her allies widely known. ‘The fact that “political theology” in this country was more than just one strand of theological literature and teaching

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was due in large part to the Political Night-Prayers’, according to contemporary witness and theologian Peter Cornehl.99 In search of new forms of religious service, their initiators, who included journalist Vilma Sturm and author Heinrich Böll along with prominent theologians, combined elements of the protest culture of 1968 with impulses emanating from the political theology of the day. This ecumenical initiative began with a scandal that assured it of tremendous media interest from the outset. The organizers of the Essen Catholic Conference banished it to the evenings to keep public interest as low as possible. The event, which got its name in response to this move, was to be repeated later in Cologne. ‘Czechoslovakia – Santo Domingo – Vietnam’: Cardinal Frings of Cologne was unwilling for his church to be used for a night-prayer with this title and prohibited the use of Church buildings in his diocese. Chiefly as a result of a dispute with the leadership of the Protestant regional Church, in whose Cologne Antoniter-Kirche the meeting took place, two generations within the Church clashed: regional Church president Joachim Beckmann opposed the event, and not just because of theological differences. For a former member of the Confessing Church it was out of the question for a church service to play this political role. The place for politics was in the Gürzenich, Cologne’s Festival Hall, not a church service, according to the theologian.100 This met with incomprehension among the Prayers’ initiators. They saw their services as problem-oriented events focused on a topic and on information exchange. ‘Discrimination’, Paragraph 218, mixed marriages, ‘The Penal System – (too) Humane?’, ‘Alarm Signals from Greece’, ‘Pre-election Political Night-Prayer’, ‘Dictatorship of Capital (Capitalist City Planning)’ and, again and again, the Vietnam War – virtually every topic discussed in the extra-parliamentary alternative scene was addressed in the Night-Prayers. Talks, appeals, agitation – in their form, extreme verbosity and in terms of the texts that were handed out, these get-togethers resembled university seminars. It was the teach-in adopted from the student movement rather than any kind of Christian service yet seen that provided the role model for the Political Night-Prayer.101 These events attracted a great deal of public attention and were soon being imitated in various cities in West Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The Cologne group broke up just three and a half years later, chiefly as a result of internal differences: in practical terms, how much neighbourly love was desirable if it risked supporting the existing system? How important should the Christian element be in social change? And how should ‘socialism’ be defined as a key point of

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reference for most of the participants? These and other questions led to irreconcilable differences that swiftly brought an end to the experiment. On a regional level, some members of the group continued to hold Night-Prayers in a modified form, though only sporadically. Other initiators came together in the Christians for Socialism (Christen für den Sozialismus) initiative, placing greater emphasis on the political dimension of their activities. One aspect of the Political Night-Prayers’ enduring significance lies in the fact that they helped establish a new ‘leading voice’ within Protestantism and beyond. And in the shape of Dorothee Sölle a woman had penetrated the top ranks of Church figures in the public eye; in fact she left others trailing in her wake. This too was a novelty within a male-dominated Church.102 ‘God is dead’ theology and political theology was paralleled by the reception of Latin American liberation theology in Germany. A number of German Christians of both confessions euphorically embraced a movement mostly sustained by South American Catholic theologians. Theologians and Church figures such as Leonardo Boff, Oscar Romero and especially Dom Helder Camara, who was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, attracted a great deal of attention during their lecture tours.103 This enthusiasm for Latin American theology was essentially due to the situation in Germany. Particularly for those progressive German Christians whose hopes of comprehensive Church reform and renewal had been dashed, the Latin American Church representatives represented a welcome alternative to the Church hierarchy: cutting a modest figure, living a spartan lifestyle and direct and open in their statements, they ‘seemed to embody a positive alternative and were hence hailed as “prophets”’.104 Also significant was the image of the Latin American ‘grass-roots communities’ as a form of Christian communitization that was self-organized, geared towards eliminating oppression and, above all, bursting with vigour. Particularly in their romanticized form, they offered many of the things Westerners felt were missing from their religious communities. The enthusiasm for liberation theology, however, was little more than hype that diminished over the course of the 1980s. Against the background of the general process of dechurching, there were several reasons for this. The social and political contexts of Latin America in which this new interpretation of Christianity had developed were scarcely comparable to conditions in Germany. The socialist and Marxist tendencies of many liberation theologians, for example, were hardly appealing to large numbers of people within the Cold War political culture that dominated in Germany in the 1980s. In many respects,

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the enthusiasm for Latin America seems to have been a generational project pursued by those who wished to bring the impulses of the 1968 students’ movement into the Christian Churches. Just a few years later and these ideas were attracting very little support. Nonetheless, the innovations generated by ‘God is dead’ theology, political theology and the reception of liberation theology had major consequences. These approaches remained popular not just in student congregations, youth associations or theology faculties but also in professionalized Church development bodies such as Misereor and Adveniat. The Third World and later One World groups that were an obligatory feature of many ordinary parishes later built on this current.

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Breach with Tradition and Transformation in the Long 1960s The ‘long’ 1960s had a crucial impact on the development of religion in Germany. The period between the end of the first postwar decade and the first half of the 1970s saw the acceleration of a trend that had begun to emerge earlier: people’s ties to the traditional confessions, their organizational forms and religious practices were in dramatic decline. The number of Catholics and Protestants was falling; they were less willing to attend church on Sunday and receive communion; there were fewer church marriages and baptisms; and ever fewer children were educated in confessional schools. The religious communities in Germany were thus the drivers and objects of a development also observable in the societies of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. There too confessionally moulded lifeworlds changed, in some cases dramatically.105 Starting out with varying levels of religious or Church commitment, these countries underwent a process of religious erosion, with some features such as the Catholic ‘pillar’ in the Netherlands disintegrating almost entirely. Organized and visible religion lost a lot of its integrative power and religious life became ‘more indistinct, less visible, more hidden away’.106 In subsequent decades the religious spheres of these societies were more diverse, more plural and in many cases less vigorous. Did these developments induce a shift away from religiosity in the sense of far-reaching secularization? Or has the need for guidance from a transcendent vision simply found other reference points and forms of expression? While commentators are unanimous in acknowledging how strongly dechurching has influenced religious life, other issues are highly contested. What was the true core of the religious crisis of the 1960s? Was it a sudden rupture or an evolutionary development due mainly

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to the intensification of long-term trends? What drove it? This throws up another question that is subject to heated debate, particularly in the religious communities: should this transformation be understood as an element in a comprehensive process of social upheaval, such that greater mobility, growing prosperity and changes in media consumption can be identified as its causes? Or is it chiefly developments within the religious communities themselves that instigated this break with the past? As so often, there are no certain answers to these questions. But the 1960s clearly represented a caesura for religious life in Germany. ‘What really happened’ – and here the words of Belgian historian of religion Patrick Pasture can also be applied to Germany – ‘is mainly a fundamental break with history’.107 It was during this period that Heaven, which appears in the title of this book as a metaphor for the Christian relation to transcendence, was lost. It did not disappear entirely but for an increasing portion of the population it was no longer relevant. Abruptly, ‘overnight’ as it were, this transformation became a public phenomenon; internalized as a core value by many, it was now widely visible.108 A four- or fivefold increase in the number of those leaving the Church, a third fewer individuals attending church services and other indications of radical change stood out within contemporary perceptions, particularly in contrast to the immediate postwar period and the 1950s when the degree of religiosity had been consistently overestimated. The rapid decline in the late 1960s was perceived and debated in correspondingly dramatic terms. This process was part and parcel of an overarching social upheaval whose effects extended far beyond the religious field. The classical form of industrial society melted away as social structures and society’s self-image changed rapidly. Social boundaries between the classes and social strata that had been keenly perceived grew weaker; above all, Germans increasingly ceased to view them as the key features of society. While the economic base remained the same, more and more people perceived themselves beyond classes and strata. Among other things, this was due to the breakthrough of mass consumption. Integration into the global exchange of goods and the impact of the so-called economic miracle provided many with new opportunities for consumption. Increased mobility was symbolized by the motor car and trips to faroff destinations, both of which came to fill increased leisure time and holidays. The television, meanwhile, largely supplanted the radio as lead technology within a comprehensive process of mediatization. Images and information from all over the world expanded viewers’ horizons, giving them entirely new things to think about. Of course, it was not just

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the religious field that was affected by this transition from industrial or high modernity to a different type of modernity, but every large group milieu. The workers’ milieu, for example, still firmly entrenched in the days of the Weimar Republic, eroded within just a few decades and thus at a rate comparable with Church or religious lifeworlds. But beyond these general statistical or quantitative phenomena, other factors also demonstrate that the long 1960s represented a rapid and profound rupture in the religious sphere. Most prominent among them are the changed perception and public discussion of the Church crisis. As early as the 1950s, Church leaders were not unaware that the efflorescence of organized religiosity rested on a shaky foundation. But this insight was discussed at most internally and was not subject to public debate, and it certainly did not provide headlines for highcirculation magazines as happened in the 1960s and 1970s. This changed discourse about the crisis was the product of a looser relationship between politics, society and religion and also accelerated this process. The media made it clear that having close ties to the Church was no longer a social norm. Rather than the exception, being religiously different or even abstaining from religion entirely was now widely regarded as a lifestyle option. This applies even more to the establishment of norms of family and sexuality, areas with which the major Christian Churches had felt particularly connected. Attempts to uphold traditional values and moral notions became the hallmark of both confessions, but especially the Catholic Church, and both set about reversing the supposed or actual loosening of morals. In the immediate postwar period the Churches saw themselves as allied with and supported by the political sphere in this endeavour. And yet, even before the lifestyle revolution of the 1960s, much of society and many of the Churches’ own members refused to comply with their wishes on this and other issues. The flouting of traditional norms was increasingly taken for granted. While this tended to happen covertly in the 1950s, the new style of Church criticism brought this topic into the public sphere. The rejection of traditional values often went hand in hand with a shift away from those institutions that were particularly identified with them. A phenomenon that was generally restricted to small groups in previous decades developed into a mass phenomenon over the course of the 1950s. At the end of the 1960s and in the wake of the Church’s ‘1968’, issues of sexual morality itself and associated issues of authority emerged as the key bones of contention within the Churches. The religious communities were not just passive objects but active shapers of this transformation, as evident in the changed ‘religious code’.

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The paradigm shift, so apparent within popular religious literature, from ‘salvation and damnation’ to ‘love’, ‘injury’ and subsequent ‘healing’, was matched by a new social conception of the Christian as ‘seeker’. Of course, the history of the Christian Churches records a large number of ‘seekers after God’. Particularly in the monastic tradition but also in the motif of the pilgrim, the idea of doubt and searching was always present. But as ideal and template this motif existed only for an elite minority of the religious community while the majority of Church members felt duty-bound to maintain unity and obedience. These tendencies were strikingly evident within the Catholic milieu but also existed in the structures of the Protestant ‘People’s Church’ of the nineteenth and twentieth century. In the 1970s this went into reverse. The previously dominant semantics of exclusion, which was intended to stake out clear boundaries around the Churches, was gradually replaced by inclusive patterns of speech and thought. In pastoral work and preaching believers were no longer viewed as part of a collectivity, let alone as the constituent parts of a ‘wellordered phalanx’. The emphasis in parochial pastoral work shifted to the individual’s freedom to follow his own path, gain experiences and correct himself (an emphasis that still pertains today). The ‘seeker’ replaced the individual faithfully following his Church’s teaching. Pastoral theologians and sociologists of religion described these processes through terms such as ‘Christianity by choice’, ‘bricolage’ and ‘people’s religion’, terms whose origins lie in the ‘long’ 1960s. These changes in the way religions and many believers saw themselves had serious consequences for the social forms of religion: rather than forms of communitization based on social isolation, it is unstable processes of religious identity formation with syncretic characteristics, and new practices intended to achieve broad-based social inclusion, that have typified (and continue to typify) the religious communities’ public activities. These forms of pluralization and individualization that characterized the religious field in the 1970s and 1980s signalled a final departure from the historically and culturally exceptional position enjoyed by the Churches in the immediate postwar era and 1950s. Their place in society had changed and so had the forms in which religiosity was lived, both individually and collectively. An epochal threshold had been crossed and a specific social form of religion superseded. But to describe the rupture that occurred between the 1950s and 1970s in these terms is to reject the idea that religion had disappeared. The ‘long’ 1960s dramatically changed but did not eliminate religion in Germany. Instead there developed open, plural forms of religious life that were only loosely geared towards the major confessions.

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Notes    1. David, ‘In der Erschütterung’.    2. On the concept of the self-modernization of religious communities, see Hellemans, ‘Trans-formation der Religion’.    3. See Tyrell, ‘Religionssoziologie’, 450; Ziemann, Sozialgeschichte der Religion, 163.   4. See Nowak, Geschichte des Christentums, 10; see also Hauschild, ‘Evangelische Kirche’, 58.    5. The account here and in the following sections is based on Pesch, Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil.   6. Pesch, Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil, 29.   7. Pesch, Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil, 77.    8. Pottmeyer, ‘Modernisierung in der katholischen Kirche’, 132.   9. See Pesch, Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil, 36 f.   10. See Smolinsky and Schatz, Kirchengeschichte der Neuzeit, 190.  11. Seeber, Das Zweite Vatikanum, 352.  12. Pesch, Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil, 373; 356 f. provides a list of the ‘ambivalent results’.  13. See Lumen Gentium, 31.  14. Quoted in Ebertz, ‘Deinstitutionalisierungsprozesse im Katholizismus’, 384.  15. See Lumen Gentium, 22.  16. See Gaudium et Spes.   17. See Smolinsky and Schatz, Kirchengeschichte der Neuzeit, 186.  18. Nostra Aetate, 2.   19. See Ebertz, ‘Deinstitutionalisierungsprozesse im Katholizismus’, 385.   20. See Fuchs, ‘Gefährliche Modernität’.  21. Mosebach, Häresie der Formlosigkeit.   22. See Holzem, Religion und Lebensformen.   23. Ebertz, ‘Deinstitutionalisierungsprozesse im Katholizismus’, 394.   24. But see Arens, Der unvollendete Aufbruch; Schmidt, Das Bistum Essen.  25. Jedin, Lebensbericht, 219.   26. Rahner, ‘Kirche im Wandel’, 437.   27. Quoted in Pesch, Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil, 21.  28. Hauer and Zulehner, Aufbruch in den Untergang?, 52. Quotation from contemporary witness Felix Gamillscheg.   29. Gallegos Sánchez, Aggiornamento, 83.   30. See Lefebvre, An Open Letter To Confused Catholics, 105–13.   31. See Soetens, ‘Impulsions et limites’, 624.  32. For an initial reconstruction of the events, see Damberg, Abschied vom Milieu?, 521–613.   33. Roes, ‘Het Pastoraal Concilie’, 20.   34. On this quote and what follows, see Damberg, Abschied vom Milieu?, 611.   35. Quoted in Damberg, Abschied vom Milieu?, 602.   36. See Albrecht, Politik und Konfession, 535–64.   37. See Bertsch, Gemeinsame Synode; Bertsch et al., Gemeinsame SYNODE.

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  38.   39.   40.   41.   42.   43.   44.   45.

Werners, ‘Erfahrungen mit der Würzburger Synode’, 34. Seeber, ‘Das falsche Konfliktgerede’, 384. Rahner and Vorgrimler, Kleines Konzilskompendium, 24. See Schroeter-Wittke, ‘Der deutsche Evangelische Kirchentag’, 214. See Grossmann, ‘Katholikentage und Kirchentage’, 573. See Grossmann, ‘Katholikentage und Kirchentage’, 561. See Grossmann, ‘Katholikentage und Kirchentage’, 564. For the essentials of the history and function of the Catholic conferences, see Hürten, Spiegel der Kirche; Grossmann, ‘Katholikentage’.   46. Quoted in Hürten, Spiegel der Kirche, 86.   47. Roegele, ‘Pilgerziel Messehalle’, Rheinischer Merkur, 3 September 1982.   48. On this and developments more generally, see Großbölting, ‘Als Laien und Genossen das Fragen lernten’.  49. Rössler, ‘Neue Formen auf dem Katholikentag’, 11. The official report provides information on the proceedings of the forum discussions. See Zentralkomitee der deutschen Katholiken, ‘Unsere Sorge’, 84–86.   50. Zentralkomitee der deutschen Katholiken, ‘Glauben, Danken, Dienen’, 138.   51. Closing remarks by Karl Fürst zu Löwenstein, president of the Central Committee of German Catholics, in Zentralkomitee der deutschen Katholiken, ‘Wandelt Euch durch ein neues Denken’, 376.   52. Geschke, ‘Die fünf heißen Tage’.   53. Zentralkomitee der deutschen Katholiken, ‘Auf Dein Wort hin’, 390.  54. Grossmann, Zwischen Kirche und Gesellschaft, 176 f.   55. Archiv des Zentralkomitees der deutschen Katholiken 2202/2, ‘Analysis of press commentaries on the 81st German Catholic Conference, 13–17 June 1966 in Bamberg’, quoted in Grossmann, Zwischen Kirche und Gesellschaft, 176.  56. Hürten, Spiegel der Kirche, 97 f.   57. See Hürten, Spiegel der Kirche, 101.   58. See Jung, Die deutsche evangelikale Bewegung, 116.   59. See Schroeter-Wittke, ‘Der deutsche Evangelische Kirchentag’, 219.  60. Gilles, Durch das Auge der Kamera, 221.   61. See Lehmann, ‘Schlussdiskussion’, 358.  62. Mittmann, Kirchliche Akademien, 225.   63. Mittmann, ‘Moderne Formen’, 217.   64. Quoted in Mittmann, Kirchliche Akademien, 55.  65. Mittmann, Kirchliche Akademien, 13.   66. Figure in Ziemann, ‘Religion and the Search for Meaning’, 698.   67. See Mittmann, Kirchliche Akademien, 47 f.  68. Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, Der Dienst der Evangelischen Akademien, 15.   69. See Mittmann, ‘Moderne Formen’, 226.   70. Quoted in Mittmann, ‘Moderne Formen’, 230.   71. See Mittmann, Kirchliche Akademien, 121.   72. See the following chapter.   73. Ebertz, ‘“Tote Menschen haben keine Probleme”’?, 294.   74. See Mittmann, ‘Moderne Formen’, 218 f.   75. Sölle, ‘Kirche ist auch außerhalb der Kirche’.

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 76. Wöller, Meinungen über Jesus, 14.  77. Rahner, Strukturwandel der Kirche, 38 f., 76.   78. Rahner and Neufeld, Selbstvollzug der Kirche, 494.   79. See Stettner, Missionarische Schülerarbeit, 76 f.   80. See Ziemann, ‘Codierung von Transzendenz’.   81. See Ebertz, Die Zivilisierung Gottes, esp. 202–338.   82. See Ebertz, Die Zivilisierung Gottes, 335.   83. See Ebertz, Die Zivilisierung Gottes, 198 f.   84. Quoted in Ziemann, ‘Codierung von Transzendenz’, 401.   85. Quoted in Ebertz, Die Zivilisierung Gottes, 347.   86. Ebertz, ‘Tote haben (keine) Probleme?’, 250.   87. Ebertz, ‘Tote haben (keine) Probleme?’, 250.  88. Ebertz, Die Zivilisierung Gottes, 349.  89. Ebertz, Die Zivilisierung Gottes, 343.   90. Ziemann, ‘Codierung von Transzendenz’, 401 f.  91. Ebertz, Die Zivilisierung Gottes, 341.  92. On this and the following, see Herzog, ‘The Death of God in West Germany’.   93. Brauck, ‘Theologin ohne Elfenbeinturm’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 28 April 2003.   94. On the various interpretations of these ideas put forward by Bonhoeffer, see Neumann, Religionsloses Christentum.  95. Sölle, Atheistisch an Gott glauben.   96. See Herzog, ‘The Death of God in West Germany’, 439.   97. Gollwitzer, ‘Christentum leicht gemacht? Helmut Gollwitzer über John A. T. Robinson: “Gott ist anders”’, Der Spiegel 26, 1964, 78–79.   98. See Sölle et al., Stellvertretung.   99. Cornehl, ‘Dorothee Sölle’, 266. 100. Seidel et al., Aktion politisches Nachtgebet, 132 ff. 101. See Cornehl, ‘Dorothee Sölle’, 276 f.; see also Ziemann, ‘Religion and the Search for Meaning’, 699. 102. See Cornehl, ‘Dorothee Sölle’, 279. 103. See Câmara, Friedensreise 1974; cf. Ziemann, ‘Religion and the Search for Meaning’. 104. Ziemann, ‘Religion and the Search for Meaning’, 701. 105. See the wide range of evidence in McLeod, The Religious Crisis. 106. Gabriel, Christentum zwischen Tradition und Postmoderne, 60. 107. Pasture, ‘Christendom and the Legacy of the Sixties’, 113. 108. See Gabriel, Christentum zwischen Tradition und Postmoderne, 67.

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PART 3

Church becomes Religion Ruptures and Changes in the Religious Sphere

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to the Present Day

In many respects the conflicts and developments that have taken place since the end of the Second World War extend to the present day. The place of religion in general and the influence of Christianity in society have been subject to debate and still are. Does religion have a role to play in present-day society – and if so which? Has its influence declined in the face of growing secularization? Or are we seeing the ‘return of the gods’?1 This is closely bound up with the question of how to evaluate the influence of the religious sphere: is Germany (still) a Christian society? Or is it a multireligious nation? The preconditions for this and other debates were laid in the 1970s as perceptions of the religious field became more open. Religious phenomena were, for example, increasingly discussed in the media and these constant public discussions changed the understanding of what religion is. The ‘Church radio’ of the 1950s, which chiefly broadcast news and background reports on the Catholic and Protestant Churches, was supplanted by ‘religious affairs’ units that informed listeners about ‘religion’ – an umbrella term that encompassed a much broader spectrum of religious orientations. ‘Religion’ now included Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus as well as those committed to the New Age, astrology, occultism or other ways of interpreting the world. In the language of the media and public sphere more generally, then, the Churches had been downgraded to one provider of religion among many.2 The religious field was in fact already diverse in 1950s West Germany but in the public mind it was still limited to the two major confessions. Now the media and media reports made the general population increasingly aware that there was a range of other ways to live and express religion. Perceptions of the religious field became more complex and multifarious both in public debate and scholarly accounts. The debate on religion and its development is polyphonic and differentiated. Analysts of the contemporary era who regularly take the pulse of Germany and German society would immediately agree

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that religion is again attracting much attention in the public sphere but they have very different views as soon as we depart from this general level. Even if we leave jihadism to one side there is no lack of evidence, nationally and internationally, that underscores the presence of religion in contemporary history. In the political upheavals of the 1980s in Central and Eastern Europe both the Catholic and Protestant Churches played an important role, demonstrating that religion is once again (or remains) a significant political factor in Europe. This influence sometimes extended well into the 1990s in Germany’s eastern neighbours, but we are confronted with an ambivalent picture when it comes to the GDR and later united Germany. The Protestant regional Churches, one of the few independent institutions under the SED dictatorship, undoubtedly helped lay the groundwork for the peaceful revolution through their very existence and their specific structures. Among other things, then, the root of the GDR’s demise lies in the Church leaflets and church halls and was brought about – not solely but to a significant extent – by an opposition and civil rights movement generated in part by the Protestant milieu. And yet just as strikingly, this function of the Protestant Church in 1989 and 1990 was not reflected in the religious practice or political culture of reunited Germany. The east of Germany is one of the most deeply secularized regions of Europe and the Protestant opposition movement has only marginally influenced the Bonn and Berlin political scenes.3 Taken together these facts demonstrate unambiguously that religion has not disappeared ‘automatically’ as a result of modernization, as many social scientists and (allegedly) ‘enlightened’ thinkers long believed. The new visibility of Islam, the transformation of Jewish communities in Germany through the influx of new members from Eastern Europe, the media presence of Christianity in the form of television series about pastors and nuns or mega events such as the Catholic Church’s ‘World Youth Day’ show that, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the terms ‘religion’ and ‘religiosity’ remain relevant to key spheres of society and to the collective and individual search for identity. But the conclusions drawn from all this diverge greatly. Are these phenomena really due to a renaissance of religion? Did the public and scholars temporarily forget religion as an important social and cultural factor but have now remembered it again? Or should we make a much sharper distinction between discourse on religion and discourse on the basis of religious conviction? In other words, are we dealing here chiefly with a discursive phenomenon while under the surface, a surface so avidly discussed in the newspapers’ culture pages, lived religiosity continues to erode?

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Part 3: Church becomes Religion • 205

What is plainly apparent is that today religious life is quite different from that of the previous generation. Even if the confessional designation has stayed the same, the religious belief and practices associated with it have shifted fundamentally. Talk of the ‘return of religions’4 or ‘return of the gods’5 thus wrongly implies that it is the old gods that we encounter in contemporary religion. Instead, these gods, or to be more accurate the ideas people hold about them, have undergone dramatic transformation over the last few decades. The God imagined by European Christians in the 1950s, for example, has become a rare occurrence in contemporary religious and theological discourse.6 In terms of social and structural history as well, the form of Christianity in West Germany, as in other European countries, has changed profoundly. In the 1950s, at least with respect to West German Catholicism, there were still good reasons to think in terms of a fairly cohesive social and moral milieu, but this began to disintegrate in the wake of the Church Crisis of the late 1960s if not before, triggering a mass exodus of members from the Churches that has persisted to this day.7 So ‘secularization’, in the sense of dechurching, is a process of immense significance in the development of religious life.8 If we think in terms of the (renewed) presence of religion in modern Western societies, therefore, this does not involve a return of old forms but a new ‘post-secular’ religion (Jürgen Habermas) that is characterized – compared with earlier patterns of religious history – by pluralization and individualization of personal beliefs and the no less vigorous fragmentation and amalgamation of various elements of tradition. Both the individual and group-specific search for meaning often takes place in changed if not entirely new contexts. Though the metaphor of the market applies only to a limited degree to the religious field in Germany, there has been tremendous growth in the number of ‘providers’ of religious systems of meaning and interpretation.9 Here the ‘consumers’ are in search of a personal and immediate source of meaning and associated experience of transcendence – and despite adaptation by the established religious communities they are not finding it in traditional, mostly family-centred religiosity. But international and particularly transatlantic comparison shows that relatively few Germans take their lead from the new forms of religious interpretation.10 Often, because the history of this recent past extends into the present, it is not the discipline of history but the sociology of religion and social science in the broadest sense that seek to describe the religious landscape. Many of the developments they address are still in a state of flux, making some of their statements unavoidably cursory. We must also remember that these analyses are often intended as contributions

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to contemporary debates – so scholarly analysis, interpretive struggles and ideological manoeuvrings often merge into one another. Against this background, the following sections try to bring together the plethora of data on and claims about the development of religion in Germany and, with all due caution, to describe the trends of the past three decades.

Notes

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 1. Graf, Die Wiederkehr der Götter.   2. See Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit, 358.   3. For a recent example of the extensive literature, see Wohlrab-Sahr et al., Forcierte Säkularität, 13, passim.  4. Riesebrodt, Die Rückkehr der Religionen.  5. Graf, Die Wiederkehr der Götter.   6. See the stimulating essay by Graf, Missbrauchte Götter.   7. See McLeod, The Religious Crisis.   8. See Pollack, Säkularisierung; Pollack, Rückkehr des Religiösen?   9. See Knoblauch, Populäre Religion. 10. Pollack, Rückkehr des Religiösen?, 86 ff.

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7 Faith within Life

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The Diffusion and Differentiation of the Religious Field

We begin with figures that provide us with a first impression of the present situation and recent developments. The findings here are multifarious, sometimes intertwined, and at times deliver contradictory results, throwing up as many questions as answers. If we look at formal affiliation to the religious communities a clear trend emerges. According to the Federal Statistical Office (Statistisches Bundesamt), as recently as 1970 almost 95 per cent of the West German population were members of one of the major Christian Churches (49 per cent Protestant and 44.6 per cent Catholic), while just 3.9 per cent were identified as ‘confession-free’ and 1.3 per cent as Muslims.1 Seventeen years later the ratio had shifted fundamentally: in 1987 Catholics at 42.9 per cent and Protestants at 41.6 per cent comprised 83.5 per cent of the population, while 11.4 per cent described themselves as ‘confessionfree’ and 2.7 per cent belonged to Muslim religious communities. As a result of reunification in 1990 the share of those belonging to no religious community surged: the confession-free, at 22.4 per cent, now compared with Protestants at 36.9 per cent, Catholics at 35.4 per cent and Muslims at 3.7 per cent. But the growth in the number of the confession-free was not just an effect of reunification. In both parts of Germany the number of those who belonged to no confession was growing before reunification in 1990 and this remained true after it, so that by 2003 this group comprised 31.8 per cent of the population and was beginning to catch up in quantitative terms with the two Christian confessions. Just a few years later and this group had overtaken them: by the end of 2007, the number of the confession-free had risen to 33.8 per cent, while the number of Catholics and Protestants had now fallen respectively to 30.1 and 30.2 per cent. This trend continues: by the end of 2010 the number of those affiliated with the major Christian Churches had fallen again (29.3 per cent Catholic and 29.2 per cent Protestant) while the confession-free made up 37.2 per cent and thus, in absolute terms, around 30 million of a total of 81.8 million Germans.

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These figures reveal two little-noticed facts. The majority of the population is still linked to one of the religious communities, at least formally. But if we project recent trends into the future, then around 2025 the majority will no longer belong to any of the Christian confessions.2 As sociologist of religion Gert Pickel puts it, ‘over the next few decades, throughout Germany, confession-free status seems likely to become the rule rather than the exception’.3 This underscores the importance of those who do not belong to a religious community. If we considered the confession-free a confession they would be the largest in Germany, yet they are largely ignored in both research and public debate. Members of this group can be viewed in contrast with those with confessional ties. Often, however, they are indifferent to religion of all kinds, or practise other forms of religion, and there is no common objective uniting them. The urge to advertise one’s lack of religion is the exception to the rule: only around 37,000 individuals, a fragment of the confession-free, are organized in agnostic, atheist or free-thinking associations and actively seek to propagate their belief in the value and meaningfulness of non-religious status.4 The prediction that the number of Christians in German society will soon fall below the symbolically significant threshold of 50 per cent is backed up by trends in the two major Christian confessions. If we consider the period between reunification and today the number of members of both confessions has declined, with the Protestant Church losing 0.6 per cent of its members annually. Compared with 1990, the Protestant Church in Germany had around 4.9 million fewer members in 2008: 3.7 million had left since 1990 and 6.7 million had died. The Church had added 4.2 million newly baptized members and 1.1 million who had rejoined. But while the numbers of those dying increased, births and thus potential baptisms declined markedly. It is not just the low birth rate that has brought about this change: decreased willingness to have one’s children join the Church has deepened the deficit. In the mid 1960s half of all infants were still being baptized as Protestants but this had fallen to below 30 per cent by 2000.5 The Catholic Church has seen a similar trend, also losing around 0.6 per cent of its members annually. In the past, fewer people left the Catholic Church than in the case of its Protestant counterpart and oscillations in membership were also less stark, but Catholicism has now caught up, with the number of those leaving surpassing the figure for Protestantism for the first time in 2010. Scandals over the sexual abuse of minors in Church institutions and what many believers felt was the Church leadership’s inadequate response prompted around 180,000 Catholics and thus 50,000 more than in the previous

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Faith within Life • 209

year to formally leave the Church. The Protestant regional Churches, meanwhile, recorded 150,000 leavers.6 In total the Catholic Church had 3.1 million fewer members in 2008 than in 1990, largely due to 5.2 million deaths and 2.3 million leavers.7 This contrasted with 4.5 million baptisms and other new members, which compensated for around 60 per cent of the losses. But the number of baptisms has fallen continuously: 310,000 new members joined the Church in 1990 and in recent years the annual total was around just 200,000. While reunification caused the number of Catholics to increase at least a little, the number of baptisms has fallen even further below the nadir of 250,000 reached in the mid 1970s. If we evaluate the causes of the decline in Church membership it quickly emerges how distorted common perceptions are. While the number of those leaving the Church is much discussed, less attention is paid to demographic change. And yet this unremarked process is making a major impact in this as in many other spheres of society. Even if no one else was to leave the Church in future it would merely slow down the process while making no difference to the absolute degree of dechurching. The consequences of this demographic shift are immediately apparent in diminishing Church Tax revenue. If we assume an average annual contribution of 150 euros per Church member, then between 1990 and 2008 the Protestant Church lost a total of 7 billion euros – one and a half to two times annual Church Tax revenue. In the Catholic Church, revenue losses are 4 billion euros – the Church Tax revenue for one year.8 Beginning in the 1970s both major Churches responded to Churchleaving by providing an ever more varied range of pastoral care, particularly on the regional Church and diocese level.9 Due to financial losses it will be impossible to pursue this strategy in future: the lack of priests, which is limiting the potential for pastoral care particularly in the Catholic Church, is accompanied by ever tighter budgets in both confessions. This general retreat is likely to intensify the erosion of what is left of the ‘People’s Church’. These figures and the predictions derived from them clearly show the trend towards dechurching. The early 1970s marked the end of a period of religious history in which lived faith and commitment to the Church were largely coterminous. Not religion as such but certainly one of its social forms had thus come to an end. These key turning points affected both confessions but they are particularly evident if we look at Catholicism, which has ‘reinvented’ itself several times over the course of its history: in the early nineteenth century, the Church of the ancien régime, strongly geared towards the nobility and landed property, developed through adaptation to industrial modernity. At the end of this

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transformation there stood a large-scale organization, oriented towards the central authority in Rome, in which practice, culture and dogma had merged. ‘For the first – and last – time’ in the history of Catholics, the ordinary member’s life was regulated down to the last detail.10 Developments among Protestants proceeded in a very similar though less intense way. A religious practice organized around the congregation and Church associations developed in the Pietist and Lutheran communities in particular, but in the postwar period these ‘People’s Church’ structures melted down into core milieus, often of a fundamentalist persuasion, or declined. This upheaval and the shift away from the previously ‘dominant bourgeois structure of life’, including its ‘fundamental Christian-conservative mindset’ by no means affected only the religious field but ‘here these profound changes were particularly intense’.11 In the Protestant Church this process was accompanied by an internal debate on how ‘secular’ the Church should in fact be. Protestant theologians such as Friedrich Gogarten interpreted secularization, which was clearly perceived at the time, in a positive way: through the process of modernity ‘Creation [becomes] visible in all its desacralized worldliness’ and ‘faith [is] liberated to take on a “mature” role in the world’.12 On this view the Church was no longer an alternative to the world but an integral part of it, heralding an expanded concept of ‘religion’ within the spectrum of the established Churches. In the 1960s and 1970s in particular, this idea of opening the Church up to the world was highly appealing to many people but by the 1980s at the latest it had passed its peak. Both within parochial practice and at Church conferences people searched for new forms of spirituality that re-emphasized transcendence and were more withdrawn from earthly concerns.13 It is apparent here once again that rather than causing the disappearance of religion dechurching led to multiple transformations. Towards the end of the 1960s there thus arose a melange of traditional forms of Church-based piety, old and new fundamentalisms and various practices of individual religiosity in and outside of the Churches and the Christian tradition. The general direction of the upheaval observable in the final third of the twentieth century was unambiguous: more individuality rather than an orientation towards the collective, choice and decision rather than dogma and obligation, all in all more fluid forms of lived faith. We will be looking later at the contours of the religious field beyond this. But what is certain is that this upheaval was also a departure: in their broad impact, the new social forms of religious life were far more limited than the old structures. A vastly expanded notion of religion had taken hold.

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Faith within Life • 211

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The Media Penetration of Religion: Church Crisis and Individual Religiosity In addition to the family, contact with members of a religious community and instruction in schools and religious organizations themselves, it is chiefly the media that shape and develop our knowledge of religion. This phenomenon intensified as the significance of the mass media grew during the second half of the twentieth century. Television, which supplanted radio as the leading medium from the late 1960s onwards, broadcast images from all over the world into people’s homes every evening, tremendously expanding their horizons. This trend further intensified with the rise of the Internet, which not only multiplied the flood of information but also reinvigorated religious narratives and symbols in the widest variety of contexts. At least on the margins of society, new specialized forms of religiosity became established that were directly linked with specific forms of media. To mention just one particularly striking example, in 2001 around 25,000 Australians declared themselves adherents of the Jedi Order, made famous by the Star Wars films, on their census forms.14 Ever fewer Germans attended religious events or were socialized into religion by their families, but an increasing number came into contact with religious phenomena through the media. From the radio church services of the 1950s through reports on major Church events such as an EKD synod or a papal coronation to reports on Buddhist monks and their teachings – ‘the media attained the status of key agent for imparting and interpreting religion’, as historian Nicolai Hannig puts it.15 If we try to tease out the stages that led to this state of affairs, we find that illuminating the connections between religion and media helps explain the transformation in people’s understanding of religion and the social forms based on this understanding. In the 1950s the Protestant and Catholic Churches themselves went on air, as the public broadcasters provided them with their own slots for services and prayers. Other coverage was closely coordinated with Church representatives in the broadcasting authorities. The Allies, meanwhile, had enshrined the Churches’ influence in the broadcasting councils, which functioned as supervisory bodies. This influence was less direct in the print media but there too commentators emphasized the Churches’ supporting role within society and remained within the narrow framework of a theological and popular interpretation of Church teaching.16 It was not until the 1960s that a critical journalism of religion independent of the Churches began to develop. Within both the print media and radio and television, individual journalists and

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editorial teams freed themselves from the affirmative rhetoric that had previously tended to prevail. The journalism of religion now began to distinguish itself through an independent form of reporting that no longer adopted a Church-internal perspective but instead strove to provide a critical, external view. The majority of those within the media who addressed religious topics saw themselves as agents of enlightenment who uncovered institutional abuses while imparting to believers knowledge that the Churches were supposedly withholding from them. Rudolf Augstein and his report on ‘Jesus of Nazareth. The Chosen One’ did much to set the tone here. In the 1958 Christmas edition of Spiegel magazine he took the discovery of the Qumran Scrolls as an opportunity to provide a major report on the Churches’ approach to scripture. Contrasting theological views of the historical Jesus with non-Christian sources on his life, he criticized what he saw as the Churches’ failure to provide sufficient information on the fragmentary foundations of biblical faith.17 The theologians he had challenged responded defensively, dismissing his criticisms out of hand from a scholarly perspective.18 But the question of whether the Churches were deliberately withholding historical information that might damage them in the present remained open. Their authority to interpret both the Bible and the historical Jesus had at the very least been dented.19 In other cases, too, journalists stopped limiting themselves to reporting major Church events and began to choose their own topics. The media penetrated the boundaries of religion, which was removed from the unique aegis of the Churches, anchored within the public sphere for all to see and subjected to a general and contentious debate. ‘The media were no longer a bridge between Church and community but instead an independent third level on which religion was debated in a new and widely visible way’.20 The TV politics programmes Panorama and Report and print media such as Stern and Spiegel magazines played a pioneering role here by providing critical reports on the Protestant and Catholic Churches in response to a wide range of contentious contemporary issues such as the close entanglement of Church and state and later controversies over lifestyles and Christian sexual morality. In the so-called ‘hellfires affair’, editor-in-chief of Stern magazine Henri Nannen lamented that Christianity and its institutions had increasingly become a taboo topic. Here he was responding to a deluge of attacks on the magazine in response to one of its reports. ‘Are there really fires burning in hell?’ asked journalist Jürgen von Kornatzki, linking this question with what he saw as the Catholic Church’s pursuit of power and backing up his claims with reference to what he regarded as Catholic fundamentalist

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Faith within Life • 213

laws on marriage and divorce. It was mainly Gerd Bucerius, Stern editor and CDU Bundestag deputy, who took the flak for this, as his colleagues in the parliamentary CDU pressured him to prevent the publication of these and similarly critical reports, prompting him to resign his seat. An article critical of the Church had triggered a serious political conflict.21 As in every sphere of life in West Germany, during the 1960s the post-history of National Socialism became a particularly fraught topic for the Churches. With the unearthing of continuities in Church personnel, a number of media commentators dropped the ‘consensus journalism’ of the 1950s and distanced themselves demonstratively from the Churches.22 By the same token, a number of prominent Church representatives found themselves exposed to critical public debate for the first time and felt compelled to act in accordance with the rules of media society. This increasingly critical attitude generated a form of coverage that pushed the Churches to the margins of public life. While the religious communities had previously been valued as integral and constituent components of society, their image in the media changed radically. They were stripped of the authority formerly ascribed so selfevidently to them with respect to education, norms governing families and sexuality and even certain political issues such as nuclear arms and cultural policy. What had been normal practice in the 1950s was now perceived as obsolete, namely to refer to a transcendent entity or couch one’s arguments in religious terms – whether on issues of school organization, pensions or national defence. The Catholic Church was the target of particularly intense criticism during this period. As far as issues of authority and hierarchy were concerned, the Church was out of sync with the general trend towards democratization, making it easy for the media to build scandals around it. Conversely, the Protestant Church appeared in media reports as comparatively dialogue-oriented and engaged in the world. But this distinction between the confessions soon faded once the press began to focus on internal differences between traditionally oriented believers and those keen on reforms.23 Two ubiquitous motifs in reports on religion from the 1960s onwards were particularly significant in shaping perceptions of religion and thus the contours of the religious field itself: the crisis afflicting the established Churches and, closely bound up with this, the individualization of piety and faith. The apogee of reporting on the Church crisis came in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a period when debates within the Churches were particularly contentious, with many editorial teams pouncing on

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the strife between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘progressives’. While reports initially expressed much sympathy for the reformers and condemned overly conservative views, they later warned the Churches against neglecting piety as their core concern. This reversal is clearly evident in the media stylization of Hans Küng. In the early 1960s the Spiegel still saw the Tübingen-based theologian as a ‘prominent scholar’ and ‘leading theological talent’, but just a few years later it was calling him a ‘Catholic upstart’ and ‘rebel theologian’.24 The politicization of religion promoted by certain wings of Catholicism and Protestantism was criticized – chiefly by the Springer press and Stern magazine – as the abandonment of religion. Axel Springer and Rudolf Augstein, otherwise very different publishers, were as one in warning that the Churches ought to keep their distance from overly temporal matters and focus on the salvation of souls in the hereafter. Both traditional and progressive currents were subjected to massive criticism, while the broad middle of the People’s Church was largely ignored. A matching martial rhetoric reinforced the impression of a tremendous escalation in hostilities within the Church. The development of a bespoke journalism of religion independent of the Churches was a precondition for the expanded concept of religion used in the media since the 1970s. The media left no one in any doubt that the Christian confessions no longer possessed a religious monopoly, but also demonstrated the new plural landscape on a practical level, ‘slipping into the role of arranger of a variety of religious styles’25 and publishing numerous reports on the sociology of religion that demonstrated increased individualization. The media also commissioned surveys or provided a forum for individual believers who recounted their personal, highly syncretic beliefs and practices. In 1961, for example, youth magazine Twen launched a series of articles with a call for open debate: ‘eight girls talked about God. Three say yes, two say no and the rest aren’t sure. … With this interview Twen is launching a debate on God, religion and confession. Or should there be no debate? We think it’s vital that there is one’.26 The implicit message of this and many other articles was that faith could take a variety of forms and that different elements of religion could be combined in various ways, placing a question mark over the major Christian confessions’ insistence that their conceptions and practices were binding on believers. ‘Church teachings became interpretive options and while they continued to exercise an appeal their claims to authority were rarely borne out’.27 Organized and Church-based faith of the kind offered by the Protestant and Catholic Churches increasingly contrasted with individual religiosity.

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This media penetration of the Churches cannot simply be described as secularization if this means that religion had been marginalized. Quite the opposite: overall, media interest in religious issues increased. Religion and belief became important topics. But religion was allocated a very different place within society. Media coverage made the traditional large confessions look socially marginal while giving new, previously unknown forms of religious practice a degree of attention quite out of keeping with their actual embedding in society. Though just a few Germans embraced the new religious movements, for a time they were subject to intense media focus.

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A ‘Spiritual Revolution’? The Search for Meaning through New Religious Forms While the overall trend was towards dechurching and secularization, Germany and Europe as a whole also saw the development of new forms of religiosity, mostly within the major confessions. This process of pluralization within the Churches involved both a turn towards the world, seen as progressive at the time, and the narrowing of religion into traditionalist-fundamentalist channels. Communione e Liberazione, a lay movement, and Opus Dei, which was on the political right, exemplify the broad spectrum of groupings that emerged within the Catholic Church. But while public awareness of this internal pluralization was negligible, other religious innovations aroused great interest, particularly those whose origins lay in Asia and North America. With reference to the United States, sociologist of religion Robert Ellwood has described this process as a ‘spiritual awakening’, dating its peak to the 1960s.28 As a reaction against rationalization and a fixation on materialism and technology, some members of the North American baby boomer generation sought new forms of enchantment, finding it chiefly in Asian religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, to which they took an eclectic approach. Asian religions had occasionally inspired a critique of the West and the development of a counterculture within the context of nineteenth-century colonialism, but it was not until the 1960s that a broad movement took off that used these traditions to its own ends. The obligatory trip to India for adherents of hippie culture was just the peak of a larger trend. But if we examine prominent cultural intermediaries, it soon emerges that this trend was not limited to the small group of subcultural actors but rapidly diffused into popular culture: the Beatles from the English city of Liverpool visited Maharishi

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Mahesh Yogi, George Harrison’s song ‘My Sweet Lord’ was inspired by the Hare Krishna movement and John Lennon discovered Buddhism.29 Certain gurus or their disciples, meanwhile, set out on missionary journeys to the West or admitted foreign guests to their spiritual centres or ashrams to instruct them in their teaching. The Asian spirituality that became popular in the West mostly took the form of modern interpretations of specific movements, schools or even specific elements of Buddhism or Hinduism, the form and content borrowed from these world religions being adapted to the North American and European contexts, sometimes beyond recognition. One example is the so-called transcendental meditation taught by Indian yogi Maharishi Mahesh and his followers. Its origins lay in Hinduism but by the 1970s at the latest it had almost entirely lost any connection to it. In much the same way, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness detached itself from its religious roots and adapted to the spiritual market of the United States and other Western societies.30 Among other groups, orange-clad Hare Krishna adherents and ‘Moonies’ or members of the Unification Church founded by Korean Sun Myung Moon established a presence in major West German cities from the late 1960s onwards. Though they never had many members – in 1971, for example, around 100 Moonies were active in twenty-one community centres – they managed to make a major impact because of the attention they attracted in the public and political spheres.31 But in this case the media were more than just agents of pluralization: their coverage stigmatized these groups as criminal organizations chiefly concerned to enrich their leaders, prompting so-called youth sects in particular to abandon their world-denying, apocalyptic approach and propagate new forms of membership. But these groups were just the most conspicuous symptom of a profound change. In addition to the offshoots of East Asian religions, referred to as ‘sects’ at the time, a diverse array of religious forms became established or re-established as Westerners sought spiritual orientation. Traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, reiki, shiatsu, Zen meditation, yoga, family therapy, astrology and shamanic healing rituals proved highly popular in most Western societies. While the focus was generally on Asian belief systems, Westerners also rediscovered numerous forms of wandering religiosity such as spiritualism or occultism, which had been popular in the final third of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century.32 But in the final third of the twentieth century there was far greater acceptance of non-Church religion as various trends of the 1960s converged to create a ‘highly disorderly assemblage of different traditions, variants, heresies, innovations and syncretisms’.33

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Why should we consider these movements a trend despite all the differences in their appearance and modus operandi? First, all these new religious forms attracted increasing public attention in the late 1960s and 1970s. Their social springboard was an alternative milieu sustained mostly by the 1968 students’ movement, a milieu that generated grass-roots communal projects, residential communities and producers’ cooperatives, some of which functioned as agents of new religious ideas and practices. While this social segment soon faded to a remnant of its former self, its most significant impact lies elsewhere: those elements of the youth protest movement of a new religious bent reinforced the shift away from the tacit equation of religiosity with the institutions of the Christian Churches and gave fresh impetus to the search for new forms of religious life. As they developed further, the various offshoots of the new religious movements lost all connection to the counterculture out of which they had grown. Turning inwards and adapting to market mechanisms, they made themselves compatible with modern and postmodern society as the alternative religious lifestyle once practised by beatniks and hippies diffused throughout society. In addition to the burgeoning New Age literature, this is chiefly evident in the psychological boom of the 1970s and 1980s with its various forms of therapy and self-help discourses. Feng shui, rebirthing, yoga and Bach flower remedies had become anything but ‘elite, obscure practices. As forms of “ancient wisdom” they are increasingly an element in the leisure activities of large swathes of society’.34 Nowadays holistic approaches are even found within management training intended to enhance the productivity of senior staff. The wellness movement too has adapted many of the magical practices once typical of the New Age, placing them in a context largely devoid of religious connotations. What unites this diverse range of phenomena is a focus on individual well-being and personal improvement. ‘Self-knowledge’, ‘selfdetermination’ and ‘self-realization’ – this was the triad around which the esoteric practices and discourses of the 1970s and 1980s revolved. New Age authors certainly claimed that they wished to change society, but it was changing yourself that they presented as the key to achieving this. This focus contrasted with trends around the same time in the major Christian confessions, which were turning towards the world, as exemplified in movements inspired by liberation theology. Esoteric practices, meanwhile, put the self centre stage. At the centre of this process of self-exploration stood one’s own body and thus individual psyche: Your Body Speaks its Mind, to quote the title of a book by Stanley Keleman, one of the more prominent New

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Age authors.35 According to George Trevelyan, the individual must take responsibility for his body ‘as the temple for the new mysteries’, which will lead him to higher understanding.36 This therapeutization and disciplining of the body as a project of subjectification was largely unknown in the West Germany of the 1950s and 1960s.37 The various new factions propagated the idea that the individual can attain transcendence in and through his body, thus changing his consciousness. So religion was psychologized while the cult of the body and psychological selfexploration received a patina of sacredness. The self and subjective experience became the starting point for religion. Today the experience of transcendence is no longer geared towards something external but instead emanates from the individual, who is both the point of departure for experience and the ‘agent who looks for meaning in his own experiences’.38 This mindset is significant in a dual sense: in comparison with the Christian confessions, which emphasize the mediation of priests and other authorities, here the individual believer is profoundly valorized. A number of sociologists of religion describe this as the ‘self-empowerment of the religious subject’, which constitutes much of the appeal of the new religious movements.39 Closely bound up with this, a new mode of perceiving religion is taking hold: rather than the ‘second-hand’ religion offered by the Christian Churches in their pastoral work into the 1950s, it is personal experience that takes centre stage in the new religious movements. Whether this involves hearing angelic tongues, making contact with the dead or entering a state of religious ecstasy – it is always the individual who experiences the higher realms directly or who feels cosmic energy, whether in the context of a religious event such as the World Youth Day in Rome, during a meditation session at an Indian ashram or joining a yoga class in a German town. For the individual, personal experience and the holistic approach hold out the prospect of overcoming the fragmented nature of modern life and healing physical and mental wounds. The contrast with the established Christian forms of piety is obvious: with the exception of small elites such as the Christian mystics, standard Christian piety aimed at a mediated rather than immediate encounter with God. New religious and esoteric services are provided by ‘institutes’, ‘academies’, ‘centres’ and spiritual experts, who offer an integrated and standardized package of associated services. In North RhineWestphalia, for example, there are currently around 1,000 such institutions and individuals advertising their spiritual services on Internet forums and publications as well as in family education centres, organic food markets and alternative fairs. By the end of the 1990s, in

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Germany as a whole the number of spiritual healers, shamans, so-called Hildegard doctors and ‘forcefield prophets’ (Kraftfeld-Propheten) stood at around 10,000.40 There are no precise figures available on turnover or profits but the efflorescence of these activities indicates a growing market.41 One of the factors making it difficult to paint a precise picture of this web of new religious activities is its many interconnections and overlaps with other advisory, therapeutic or other kinds of service in the field of sexuality, wellness, fitness and many other popular forms of bodywork, self-improvement and leisure activities. Accounts of this web of new religious activities that deploy an economistic vocabulary point up one of its most crucial features: a previously unknown form of religious participation has taken off that differs greatly from traditional religious communities but is in continuity with the traditions of small-group spirituality developed in the communes. Traditional forms of membership have been supplanted by temporary access whose intensity is determined by the individual. While the major Churches require specific conduct of their members such as fasting, sexual abstinence and more besides, the new religious institutions mostly offer activities that the client (or customer) can embrace or reject as she pleases. You can draw on religious meanings in line with your personal situation and needs. A long-term, perhaps even lifelong commitment is thus being superseded by short-term, episodic relations. Psychologically manipulative cults that induce a disastrous state of dependency in their members are the exception. As a rule, supply follows demand, which is centred on a loose, non-binding form of involvement. For the representatives of the new religious movements, then, the goal is not to provide a coherent, self-contained interpretation of the world and a set of meanings. Instead their ‘success’ depends primarily on their ability to develop ‘flexible “service relations” to customers and clients’.42 As French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu observed, new religious movements can no longer be reduced to the institutional forms of religion but are instead becoming an element of the overall culture. The religious field is becoming increasingly diffuse.43 In order to assess the significance of a social phenomenon it is vital to determine how pervasive it is. Is Germany on the road to becoming a thoroughly spiritual society of the kind predicted by sociologist Hubert Knoblauch? Or is the number of adherents of new religious forms and the New Age negligible? At least half of all Austrians have experience with therapies, counselling or meditation techniques but only a quarter have experimented in a sustained way with various practices and interest is generally greater among younger age cohorts. The core group of

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‘spiritual explorers’ who engage with such practices intensively over a long period, meanwhile, is rather small, amounting to between 5 and 8 per cent.44 In his analysis of sociological surveys of religion in western Germany, sociologist Detlef Pollack makes a very similar observation: in 1997, just 0.5 per cent of western Germans indicated that they belonged to a new religious community, while just 1.9 per cent in the west and 1.2 per cent in the east had attended a meditation course. While there is great interest in Zen meditation and reiki, reincarnation, pendulum dowsing, clairvoyance and astrology, just a small number of people have experienced these forms of non-Church, New Age ‘religion’, 2.8 per cent in the case of western German respondents. Only pendulum dowsing and horoscopes were better known, though in both cases the majority of respondents had a low opinion of them. A number of studies show that the acceptance of new religious views and practices has increased since the 1980s without spawning a mass phenomenon.45 Two other factors are important in assessing the influence of this scene on the religious field as a whole. First, the increasing interest in new religious practices has by no means offset the process of dechurching in the Christian religious communities. The abandonment of traditional religious forms does not necessarily entail an upswing in new ones.46 Second, the idea that individuals are moving away from the offerings of Church or Christianity and filling the resulting void with new religious forms fails to capture present realities. Around a third of those who show great interest in these phenomena also have ties to Christianity. For some religiously active individuals, Yoga courses, Bach flower remedies and Christmas services are not mutually exclusive but are interwoven in their biographies as a matter of course. The overlap between the traditional social forms of religion and their new forms are extensive – and it is perhaps here that their true relevance lies. If we restrict ourselves to examining membership figures or the circulation of publications we will end up with a very limited if not false view of the significance of the new religious movements. It is not just their degree of organization or the number of actors involved that make them important to the religious field, but the extent to which the beliefs and practices they promote impact on and spread throughout society. The so-called New Age movement was not an isolated phenomenon. Quite the opposite: ‘in fact, after “1968” esoteric practices and discourses were publicly communicated and assimilated on a massive scale’.47 While we must be careful about suggesting any straightforward relationship of cause and effect here, the parallels are obvious: the rise and spread of the new religious movements went hand in hand with the comprehensive psychologization and therapeutization of society.

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The major Churches were both absorbed into this trend and for a time actively contributed to it. The 1970s and 1980s have correctly been described as ‘therapeutic decades’ with respect to Catholicism and Protestantism, a time of major change in the Churches’ self-image and pastoral work.48 The goal of the latter was now to address the whole human being, to bring together body and mind and subject them to ‘therapy’ during every stage of life. Instead of religious instruction, specialized Church personnel now sought to help people cope with problems in their everyday lives, an approach that drew, at most, marginally on religion. In this sphere, too, the Church academies played a pioneering role by emphasizing event-based activities and actively assimilating new forms of meditation and counselling into their services.49 In the shape of psychologists, remedial teachers and social workers and, later, lay theologians, entirely new professions now entered the religious stage, significantly expanding the spectrum of religious experts. This necessitated the expansion of the Church’s institutional apparatus and brought more and more women experts into the field. While women are still unable to become priests in the Catholic Church, and women’s ordination was normalized within the Protestant Church only in the second half of the twentieth century, there have always been occupations such as pastoral assistants and catechists in which women are well represented. The arrival of women graduates in psychology and pedagogy further reduced male dominance in the interpretation and communication of religion. In a variety of ways, the Churches changed their institutional structures in response to a trend already clearly apparent at the religious grass roots: only in exceptional cases did dechurching signify a complete break with the Church. Generally, this process entailed the rejection of a lifestyle strictly based on Church precepts as a formerly strong commitment was transmuted into a more or less open approach to specific activities. Increasingly, affiliation to a religious community no longer meant regular church attendance or participation in every parochial event. For many people, religious activities, especially rites of passage such as baptism, communion, confirmation and a Christian burial provided a kind of background music that was occasionally played but whose melody and rhythm no longer determined their lives. The Christian with strong ties to the Church did not disappear as a social form but became a peripheral figure. Within the spectrum of those committed to the Church there now appeared different religious types such as the Church Conference Christian who chiefly sought to experience religion through the mass event. ‘The kind of

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footloose religiosity formerly observable at the blurry margins of the Protestant Church can now be found inside the Church itself’, lamented theologian Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, as ‘colourful syncretic “cafeterias” featuring holistic body experience, imported hopes of reincarnation and narcissistic emotionalism are now celebrated even at Church Conferences’.50 But to dismiss these changes as a ‘carnival of spiritual searching’, a ‘swirling mass of dangerous cults’ or ‘supermarket spirituality’ is at least partially to misunderstand them.51 These developments were in fact prefigured in the Churches themselves. The major People’s Churches were never as homogenous as some Church officials and religious leaders would like to believe. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Ernst Troeltsch, one of the founding fathers of the sociology of religion, expanded on a distinction between Church and sect highlighted by Max Weber by adding a third religious form, ‘spiritualism’, in which ‘the world of ideas which had hardened into formal worship and doctrine is transformed into a purely personal and inward experience’.52 This tendency was always present in medieval mysticism, the sacred practices of monks and certain forms of lay piety, but it was generally restricted to small groups. It undoubtedly intensified from the late 1960s onwards as a variety of practices of piety and religious forms came to coexist under the overarching framework of a given Church or – the less harmonious alternative – institutionalized a permanent conflict.

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The Non-Religious: A Portrait of an (Almost) Unknown Group The diagnosis of resacralization so popular today tends to obscure an obvious development in the religious field: the eroding social consensus on religious matters has not only triggered different conceptions of religion and the pluralization of religious styles but has also enlarged the group of those who belong to no religious community and who are, as a rule, not religious. In Germany around a third of the population is in this group. The tendency is for their number to increase because a larger proportion of the younger generation are without confession.53 Examination of developments in this group over the past twenty years helps us both to assess the scope of this social phenomenon and get a sense of its dynamics. In 2008 every sixth western German and two out of three eastern Germans indicated that they did not belong to any confession. In regional terms, then, the distribution and cultural

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embedding of this phenomenon is highly variable: in the west of Germany, opting to leave a confession continues to be a decision against the social mainstream, in which confessional affiliation remains the norm. Nineteen per cent of the population are unambiguously nonreligious.54 In the east of Germany 63 per cent of the population have no confession, a form of validation for those who decide not to join a religious community. A culture of confessional affiliation in the west thus coexists with a culture of non-confessionalism in the east. But these facts should not mislead us into thinking that reunification is the sole explanation for the high share of those without confession. If we look just at the territory of the old West Germany, we find that there too the number of those without confession has tripled since the 1980s. Given that it has occurred in less than two decades, this is a ‘massive movement’.55 The contrasts between eastern and western Germany that continue to exist are beginning to level off in other respects as well. If we look not just at membership but also at Church-based practice, the differences begin to fade: in both western and eastern Germany, church attendance and direct engagement in the parishes are the exception rather than the general rule. The primary difference is in formal membership and here the east is playing an avant-garde role and in a sense anticipating the west’s future. After reunification the Protestant Church and its Catholic counterpart hoped that the level of Churchbased religiosity in the former GDR would approach that of the west. But in fact the opposite has occurred over the past twenty years: the long-term trend points to a low level of confessional membership in both parts of Germany, likely to fall below the lowest figures currently recorded in the former GDR.56 In addition to the tendency for people to leave the Church it is chiefly the break in the chain of intergenerational transmission that is behind this trend: ever fewer parents raise their children in line with the Churches’ precepts. Around two thirds of those identified as nonreligious in 2008 were raised that way. So in addition to those who have made a personal decision to leave there is an ever larger group who were socialized into their non-confessional status. Because religion is an ever less prominent part of the classical repertoire of education within family or school, the proportion of the non-religious is increasing virtually automatically as this chain of transmission breaks.57 Non-confessional does not necessarily mean non-religious. A person who is not a member of any religious community may cultivate forms of commitment to religious transcendence within his own private world. But this is unlikely. Through a variety of data collection and survey methods, the sociology of religion has established that at least 70 per

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.

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cent of those who are not members of any confessional community are not religious and do not avail themselves of any form of non-Church religiosity or spirituality. Issues of transcendence or ultimate things play no role in their lives. Half of them do have an intellectual interest in religion and contemplate the topic. But what lies behind this is not so much subjective religiosity as a bundle of motivations ranging from scholarly engagement to an atheistic sense of mission. By way of comparison, even among members of Christian Churches public opinion researchers have identified a share of non-religious individuals: 15 per cent of Protestants and 17 per cent of Catholics.58 In both social and political terms the non-religious are marginalized and generally ignored. So far, those who study religion and those who read their work have tended to regard non-religious status as the dark side of secularization. When ties to the Churches erode, this is most commonly viewed as a loss. The non-religious thus tend to be presented as deviant, as believers who have lost their way or, in German society, as lapsed Christians. The term ‘non-confessional’ (Konfessionslose) itself reveals how strongly this group is conceptualized in contradistinction to (what is still) the majority society. Scholars have paid attention to the non-religious whenever they have mobilized, on the assumption that associations of agnostics, atheists and freethinkers on the margins of the labour movement and within the liberal spectrum helped advance freedoms and human rights through their calls for religious freedom. Otherwise it was in the market of books and ideas that scholars noticed the exponents of this current, analysed their ideas and presented them to a broad public.59 Again, then, the perspective on the non-religious that took hold was focused chiefly on exceptions. Non-religious status as a mainstream, demographically significant category, meanwhile, continued to be ignored and has only recently been discovered as a topic in its own right. The main reason for this reticence is the difficulty in precisely defining the non-religious. In other countries it was a long time before non-membership of a religious community, which is generally easy to determine in Germany because of the Church Tax, was systematically surveyed. In deeply Catholic Ireland, for example, before 1961 statisticians and demographers placed all those who did not belong to a religious community in the category ‘not stated’.60 It was not until the final third of the twentieth century, when the religious and cultural dominance of the Churches began to diminish, that a new sensitivity to this group began to develop. Those who make a political issue of their religious abstinence and organize in associations represent a mere fragment of the non-religious

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Faith within Life • 225

as a whole. The Humanist Association of Germany (Humanistischer Verband Deutschlands or HVD), for example, the largest ‘cultural and interest-based organization of individuals … who feel no connection with any religious worldview’, has just 10,000 members.61 The majority of the non-religious have no desire to actively demonstrate their status in public life or to battle for associated rights. Even activists in the most varied range of societies and associations are united by little. They have just two things in common: scepticism about the major religious systems and the confessions based on them and a rejection of the claim that as non-religious individuals they have no values. But they have highly divergent views even on the conclusions that should be drawn from this defensive posture.62 While the small International League of Nonreligious and Atheists (Internationaler Bund der Konfessionslosen und Atheisten or IBKA) has staked out a strong public profile as a sharp critic of the Churches, others, such as the German Coming of Age Association (Verein Jugendweihe Deutschland), are mainly interested in creating alternatives. And while the Confederation of Free Worldview Communities (Dachverband freier Weltanschauungsgemeinschaften) campaigns for the abolition of all forms of Church or religious tax, members of the Federation of Free Religious communities (Bund Freireligiöser Gemeinden) actually levy such taxes. This assemblage of groups, many of them tiny, is far from being a potent political movement. But there are signs of changes in specific initiatives that may have far-reaching significance for a putative movement of the non-religious as a whole. Only a minority, chiefly members of the older generation, are interested in arguing with religious individuals about ‘ultimate matters’ or the justification for their faith. The Humanist Association, for example, to take the most recently founded example, has distanced itself from the freethinking approach to Church and religion taken by the early twentieth-century atheist societies and has increasingly focused on representing the non-confessional politically. Regardless of these associations’ interests, their aspirations should remind the political sphere of an important challenge: the debate over the position of religion within society is not only being carried on between the various religious communities, with the state acting as neutral broker between them. A pluralistic German polity and its political representatives are increasingly required to consider the nonconfessional and their interests.

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Notes  1. Generally speaking, the statistics overstate the size of the Muslim population: often, all the immigrants from a Muslim country are counted automatically as devout. But recent statistical data such as the BertelsmannReligionsmonitor suggest that as of 2008 there are also a number of nonreligious individuals in this group, ranging between 16 per cent (Shias), 31 per cent (Sunnis) and 32 per cent (Alevis). See Heine and Spielhaus, ‘Sunnis and Shiites’, 26–27.  2. Forschungsgruppe Weltanschauungen in Deutschland, ‘Religions­ zu­ gehörig­keit, Deutschland’.   3. Pickel, ‘Atheistischer Osten’, 75.   4. Patalong, ‘Unter Gottlosen’.   5. Figures in Eicken and Schmitz-Veltlin, ‘Die Entwicklung der Kirchen­mitglieder’.   6. N.n., ‘Zahl der Kirchenaustritte steigt um 40 Prozent’.   7. See Eicken and Schmitz-Veltlin, ‘Die Entwicklung der Kirchenmitglieder’, 583 ff.   8. See Eicken and Schmitz-Veltlin, ‘Die Entwicklung der Kirchenmitglieder’, 579, 583.   9. See Oehmen-Vieregge, ‘Wandlungsprozesse’. 10. Hellemans, ‘Transformation der Religion’, 31. 11. Greschat, ‘Protestantismus und Evangelische Kirche’, 545. 12. Quoted in Hölscher, ‘Wie “säkular” darf Kirche sein?’, 43. 13. See Hölscher, ‘Wie “säkular” darf Kirche sein?’, 47. 14. See Piasecki, Religion in der Mediengesellschaft, 89. 15. Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit, 388. 16. See Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit, 45. 17. Augstein, ‘Jesus von Nazareth. Der Erwählte’, Der Spiegel 52, 1958. 18. See Pesch and Stachel, Augsteins Jesus; Pesch and Stachel, Augsteins Jesus. Eine Dokumentation. 19. See Hannig and Städter, ‘Die kommunizierte Krise’, 164. 20. Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit, 390. 21. See Hannig and Städter, ‘Die kommunizierte Krise’, 165 f. 22. On the term, see Hodenberg, ‘Die Journalisten’; cf. Hannig, ‘Die Affäre Waltermann’. 23. See Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit, 304. 24. Quoted in Hannig and Städter, ‘Die kommunizierte Krise’, 172. 25. Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit, 180. 26. Quoted in Hannig and Städter, ‘Die kommunizierte Krise’, 168. 27. Hannig, ‘“Wie hältst du’s mit der Religion?”’, 184. 28. Ellwood, The Sixties Spiritual Awakening. 29. See Pasture, ‘Religious Globalisation’. 30. This and other evidence can be found in Pasture, ‘Religious Globalisation’, 81 ff. 31. Hannig, Die Religion der Öffentlichkeit, 380. 32. See Nipperdey, Religion im Umbruch, 143 ff.

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33. Barker, ‘Neue religiöse Bewegungen’, 337. 34. Hero, Die neuen Formen, 16 f. 35. Keleman, Your Body Speaks its Mind. 36. Trevelyan, A Vision of the Aquarian Age, 73. 37. Eitler, ‘“Alternative” Religion’, 341. 38. Knoblauch, Populäre Religion, 129. 39. Gebhardt et al., ‘Die Selbstermächtigung’. 40. See Hero, Die neuen Formen, 13 f. 41. For an initial survey on a scant evidential basis, see Höllinger and Tripold, Ganzheitliches Leben, 223–66. 42. Hero, Die neuen Formen, 206. 43. Bourdieu and Egger, Das religiöse Feld, 245. 44. Höllinger and Tripold, Ganzheitliches Leben, 268 f. 45. See Pollack, Rückkehr des Religiösen?, 146 f. 46. See Dubach, ‘The Religiosity Profile of European Catholicism’, 494. 47. Eitler, ‘“Selbstheilung”’, 171. 48. Ziemann, ‘The Gospel of Psychology’. 49. See Ziemann, ‘Zwischen sozialer Bewegung’. 50. Graf, Die Wiederkehr der Götter, 259. 51. On these phrases and further remarks, see Höllinger and Tripold, Ganzheitliches Leben, 13 ff. 52. Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, 993. 53. See Wohlrab-Sahr, ‘The Stable Third’. 54. On this and other issues, see Wohlrab-Sahr, ‘The Stable Third’, 158. 55. Pickel, ‘Atheistischer Osten’, 45. 56. See Pickel, ‘Atheistischer Osten’, 74. 57. See Wohlrab-Sahr, ‘The Stable Third’, 162. 58. See Wohlrab-Sahr, ‘The Stable Third’, 159. 59. See Groschopp, Dissidenten; on the United Kingdom, see Budd, Varieties of Unbelief. 60. See Brown, ‘The People of “No Religion”’, 54. 61. See Fincke, Woran glaubt, wer nicht glaubt?, 6. 62. In describing the individual organizations I follow Fincke, Woran glaubt, wer nicht glaubt?

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8 On the Way to a Multireligious Society?

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Pluralism as Challenge

The religious field in Germany was never homogenous or wholly Christian. In addition to the Christian Churches, the major world religions of Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism have also been present and have shaped and continue to shape public perceptions of religious life.1 Today the largest religious community in Germany after Christianity is Islam. According to a 2009 survey by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge) between four and four and a half million Muslims live in Germany, a group highly present within current debates on the relationship between faith and society. In 2015 there were also 100,500 practising Jews organized in the communities registered with the Central Council of Jews in Germany (Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland). The Religious Studies Media and Information Service (Religionswissenschaftlicher Medien- und Informationsdienst or REMID) estimates the rest of the Jewish community at 90,000. This group chiefly consists of immigrants from the Eastern European countries, most of whom do not practise their religion, and there are also around 5,000 Jews in communities of a generally liberal orientation who are not registered with the Central Council. In addition to the two major Christian Churches (which statistically include the various Protestant free Churches) and the Jewish congregations, only a few communities have access to reliable, regularly updated surveys of their membership or adherents, so figures are mostly estimates. On this basis the number of Buddhists and Hindus in Germany in 2015 was 270,000 and 102,500 respectively. In both cases most are immigrants from various countries. The number of ‘Western Buddhists’, those who have converted to Buddhism in Germany, is estimated at 130,000. The number of Western Hindus is 7,500, though there is a fluid boundary between this Hinduism and the new religious movements. The membership structure of the new religious communities, ranging from Anthroposophists through Wiccans to members of reiki associations, differs fundamentally from that of the confessional Churches; the communities that show up in the statistics tend to exhibit

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On the Way to a Multireligious Society? • 229

a fairly high degree of organization and strong ties to their members. Around 800,000 individuals are involved to a significant degree in groups within the new religious spectrum or other religious currents. It is important to bear in mind here that the realm of alternative spirituality is typified by fluctuation, loose ties and double or multiple membership. Workshops, seminars and therapy sessions invite participation without the need for conventional forms of membership. If we shift perspective and include looser ties or the tendency to occasionally try out specific practices, the followers of alternative religious movements would amount to two to three million individuals, though they are not organizationally integrated in the traditional sense.2 In its publications, spiritual practices, religious objects and events, this religious arena is more diverse than ever. Within the shrinking religious field in Germany, immigration and the rise of new religions and new forms of religious commitment have created a more diverse landscape, not excluding the major Churches.3 Is Germany multireligious? The facts above might seem to suggest that it is but the answer is no. Christians of both confessions, along with the free Churches and other Christian-inspired communities, continue to encompass the majority of the religiously active. Three quarters of people in the west and a fifth of those in the east of Germany continue to belong to one of the major Christian Churches and their influence in society and politics remains substantial. The situation, particularly in what used to be West Germany, can be described as ‘asymmetrical religious pluralism’.4 Just how much the German religious landscape is still influenced by the Catholic and Protestant Churches is evident if we compare it with the immigration-based society of North America, where religious pluralization is far more apparent. It is not just the number of religious organizations and the individuals associated with them that allow us to make statements about the degree of religious pluralization.5 How citizens perceive this development is also of interest. Do they see society as plural? Do they want religious pluralism? Or do they generally regard it as a threat? How do they evaluate ‘other’ religions and their adherents? Ideally there would be a shift away from fear of differences, then acceptance of them and ultimately a view of diversity as something that enriches society. In political, economic and social scientific discourses diversity is firmly established as an important and positive term. A comparative European survey carried out by the ‘Religion and Politics’ research group at the University of Münster in 2010 and 2011, however, describes a very different attitude. More than half of Germans state that they have a negative attitude towards Muslims (57.7 per cent

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in the west and 62.2 per cent in the east) and see growing religious diversity as a threat. In contrast to other countries, awareness of the potential for cultural enrichment and diversity inherent in the pluralization of the religious world and in other religious communities is … less developed. Germans see religious pluralism and Islam in particular in an overwhelmingly negative light. They are less sensitive to the ambivalent aspects of the religious realm and show little awareness of the opportunities inherent in cultural diversity.6

We can explain these findings by examining the history of Islam and Judaism in the German religious field.

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Here to Stay: Islam in Germany ‘Muslims fight for Catholics’, reported Die Welt am Sonntag newspaper on 8 January 2012.7 Like every diocese in Germany, Essen was planning to abolish and consolidate Catholic parishes, including six churches in north Duisburg near the largest mosque in Germany. Muhammed Al, chair of the Association of the Merkez Mosque, emphasized that his organization had always maintained active contact, indeed friendly relations, with the Peter and Paul congregation. The foundation for these close ties between Catholics and Muslims was laid by the ‘Marxloh miracle’, which saw the Mosque Association, Christian communities and the city government not only cooperate but work together closely to facilitate the establishment of the mosque there. In light of this the Muslim Association had written to the bishop in charge, Franz-Josef Overbeck, asking him not to abandon the Catholic congregation and its church. The vicariate general of the Ruhr diocese lost no time in replying that there was no alternative to closure. Just 19 per cent of those living in the district were Catholics so it was essential to consolidate pastoral structures. ‘Now’, as the article summed things up, ‘it seems there is a need for a new miracle, this time for the district’s Christians’. The ‘Marxloh miracle’ shows religious actors of different traditions united in their determination to support one another. Religious diversity, according to the implicit message, benefits the religious field through cooperation, as evident in this case, but also through the increased vitality generated by religious competition. When it comes to the history of Islam in Germany, however, this episode is more exception than rule. This is a history characterized not by cooperation but by disregard, marginalization and competition

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On the Way to a Multireligious Society? • 231

and since the 1990s the building of mosques has repeatedly prompted (sometimes bitter) disputes. The first thing to note here is the general failure to grasp that Muslims have had a presence in Germany for far longer than is commonly recognized.8 After centuries of occasional contact, it was the First World War that first brought a significant number of Muslims to Germany. These Ottoman prisoners of war were held in Berlin, where a mosque was built for them. Muslims were also active in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, mostly followers of the Lahore branch of the Ahmadiyya movement, who founded a ‘Muslim community’ and commissioned the building of a mosque in Berlin-Wilmersdorf in 1925 that is still standing today. Under National Socialism there was repression of those Muslims who, for example, violated the so-called race laws, though this never amounted to systematic persecution. The Islamic Central Institute (Islamisches Zentral-Institut) in Berlin, meanwhile, turned itself into a mouthpiece for the National Socialists in 1942 as its scholars sought to build ideological bridges between Islam and Nazism. Islam had modest beginnings in West Germany. Between the end of the war and the early 1960s the number of Muslims grew from 8,000 to 16,000. Hamburg, Munich and Aachen emerged as the centres of Muslim life in Germany, but Islam remained quantitatively and socially marginal.9 It was not until the 1960s that the Muslim population grew dramatically: in 1971 250,000 were already recorded, and half a million one year later. The estimate for 2009 is 3.8 to 4.3 million Muslims in Germany. It is difficult to give more precise figures because Islam knows neither any ritual of admittance nor any form of membership comparable to that of the Christian Churches. As a result scholars generally infer religious affiliation from immigrants’ nationality. Just how imprecise this method is can be seen in a correction made in 2008: statisticians and pollsters revised their estimate of the number of Muslims in Germany upwards by one million because they had previously failed to examine a sufficiently large number of regions of origin. The main trigger for increased Muslim immigration to Germany was the recruitment agreement (Anwerbeabkommen) concluded by the German and Turkish governments on 30 October 1961, which enabled the Federal Employment Office (Bundesanstalt für Arbeit) to recruit workers for German businesses. Similar agreements had been made before and after this, with Italy in 1955, Spain and Greece in 1960, Morocco in 1963, Portugal in 1964, Tunisia in 1965 and Yugoslavia in 1968. But the most consequential agreement of this kind was that between Germany and Turkey: the immigration it triggered was not only important socially and economically but had far-reaching

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consequences in religious terms. Immigrants of Muslim faith came from the Balkans, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries but the vast majority came from Turkey. In Germany this soon triggered the emergence of new centres of Muslim life. In addition to a number of regions of Bavaria, Hamburg and Hesse, it was above all the Ruhr region and Berlin in which Muslim immigration was concentrated and in which it developed its own lifeworld and religious structures. Around 80 per cent of Muslim incomers were Sunnis, the branch of Islam to which most Muslims in the world adhere. Next came the Alevis at 15 per cent, then Shias (4 per cent), followed by members of smaller Muslim communities.10 The development of these immigrants’ religiosity was closely bound up with their lifeworld and legal situation in Germany.11 In the 1960s and early 1970s it was ‘labour migration’ that predominated. Individual Turks, generally male, worked and lived in Germany without their families, often on short-term contracts. In both cultural and religious terms they were strongly geared towards their countries of origin: pensioners often returned to their earlier homes and those who died in Germany were often flown out and buried in their place of birth.12 Under these circumstances the desire to live one’s religion came up against a number of practical problems. There were no religious organizations, places to pray or provisions for coordinating working life and prayer times. If help was provided it came from other religious communities, with the first collective Muslim prayers generally taking place in Catholic churches, including Cologne Cathedral. In the receiving society of Germany, Islam initially attracted little attention. In the perception of contemporaries Muslims’ behaviour precisely matched the prevailing image of their religion, which was viewed as an ‘integral element of an agrarian, premodern way of life’.13 The general expectation was that either the ‘guest workers’ would soon leave or, if they stayed longer in ‘modern’ Germany, would adapt to local realities, in other words display the generally expected tendency towards secularization and distance themselves from Islam. Against this background the ‘other’ religion of Islam was mostly perceived not as threatening but as a source of secular self-affirmation. This is markedly different from social expectations in the United States, where retaining one’s religion was and is considered a prerequisite for successful immigration. In the early 1970s the lives of immigrants in Germany changed. When all the recruitment agreements were terminated in response to the economic recession that began in November 1973, many Turkish Muslims, against expectations, choose not to return to their countries of

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origin. This confirmed a trend that had been adumbrated earlier: rather than remaining temporarily in Germany, many immigrants made arrangements to live and work there permanently. Their families came to join them and the Turkish population increased. Temporary labour migration was superseded by permanent immigration and settlement.14 In parallel to this, ‘guest worker Islam’, which tended to take its lead from its country of origin, developed into ‘immigrant Islam’15 as the second and third immigrant generations grew to maturity. The Muslim communities showed some signs of secularization but more often an intensification of religiosity. For those who grew up in Germany being Muslim was not a matter of course. Instead they had to consciously acquire their religion against the background of a majority Christian society. A commitment to the Muslim faith thus required a personal decision that had to be continuously renewed, realized and justified. In this way, to quote French religious studies scholar Olivier Roy, being Muslim increasingly became an individual decision rather than a cultural given. Islam as practised distanced itself from the religiosity of a particular country of origin and now stood on a foundation that differed from the religious attitudes of parents and grandparents.16 The parameters laid down by the majority society exercised a major influence on changes in religiosity. Religious institutionalization, as comparative studies of Muslim immigration in a number of countries have shown, is far more dependent on the receiving society and its religious, legal and political preconditions than on the religious customs and beliefs that immigrants bring along with them.17 As we shall see in what follows, Muslim life in Germany became established and developed primarily within the structures laid down by the German religious field. The many mosque associations that emerged from the 1970s onwards formed the main point of departure for the strong institutionalization of Islam in Germany. In order to become formally recognized, active players in the public sphere, the founders of these bodies generally opted for the status of association under private law, which granted them a certain amount of tax relief but not the privileges enjoyed by statutory corporations such as the Christian Churches. The mosque associations’ first goal was to establish places of prayer for Muslims living in Germany and to this end they rented or bought buildings, often in courtyards or other unimposing sites. Because these spaces simultaneously served as meeting places and sites of religious instruction, they frequently developed into social centres for the immediate neighbourhood and more distant areas. To meet the requirements of a Muslim way of life specialist shops and markets usually opened near these religious centres,

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selling such things as halal meat butchered according to Islamic ritual. A diverse network of social, cultural and religious activities gradually developed, eventually including Islamic newspapers and websites. At present the number of mosques in Germany is estimated at around 2,600. The majority still reflect the forms described above: while some are richly decorated in the traditionally ornate style, within the cityscape they make little impression or are invisible, as typical of the phase of guest worker Islam. Unlike the Christian church, a mosque is not a consecrated space, and it is only the presence of supplicants and believers that turns it into a house of Allah. The requirements for Muslim prayer are straightforward: the template for this space is the Prophet Muhammad’s residence in Medina, so it may be very simple. A clean space, a choir-like mihrab or wall niche indicating the direction of prayer, and perhaps a pulpit and washing facilities are all that is needed. Mosques are also places of instruction. Sermons are intended to provide believers with guidance both in their daily lives and with respect to political issues. Mosques thus fulfil a large number of functions. The faithful gather for collective prayer but mosques also serve as schools and sites of sociality, as youth and community centres, businesses and meeting places, canteens and cafés. In architectural terms, the first mosques reflected not just the presumed temporariness of Islam in Germany but also Muslims’ marked reticence within public life. Islam in Germany started out as a ‘courtyard religion’.18 The first large mosque buildings, erected in the 1950s, were the exception to the rule and the forerunners of a later wave of constructions with a different orientation, namely the Fazle Omar Mosque (1957), the Imam Ali Mosque (1960–1965) in Hamburg, the Bilal Mosque in Aachen (1964–1968) and the Islamic Centre in Munich (1972), which were no longer surrounded by an aura of provisionality but instead visibly declared Islam’s permanent anchorage in Germany. But it was not until the 1980s and 1990s that mosques truly left the courtyards and became established as important buildings within the cityscape. The new, second-generation Islamic houses of prayer such as the Fatih Mosque in Pforzheim and particularly the Yavuz Sultan Selim Mosque in Mannheim, constructed between 1993 and 1995, were the external sign of what was already a social fact: Muslims and thus Islam had become an intrinsic component of German society.19 This changed the style and architecture of Islamic houses of prayer in Germany. Rather than the edge of town or less significant areas, large-scale projects were now planned for the centre of major cities. In Cologne’s Ehrenfeld district the umbrella organization known as the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (Türkisch-Islamische

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Union der Anstalt für Religion or DITIB) is erecting a central mosque that puts earlier buildings in the shade both in its size and external appearance. Since the early 1990s, neighbourhood, courtyard mosques have increasingly been supplanted by imposing, publicly visible main or Friday mosques.20 Ideally, the construction of central mosques can contribute to understanding between Christians and Muslims, as exemplified by the ‘Marxloh miracle’ in North Rhine-Westphalia. A meeting place, an Islamic Centre and generous financial support from German and European bodies make the Marxloh mosque, designed for 1,500 people, a widely praised showpiece. As a rule, however, during their planning and construction mosques generate conflicts quite different from the disputes typically thrown up by major public buildings. The abstract right of freedom of religion and religious practice granted in Article 4 of the Basic Law takes on concrete form in the building of a mosque, providing a ‘litmus test of religious freedom’.21 How large can the dome and minaret be? Often the main bone of contention is the mosque’s relationship to neighbouring Christian buildings and their church towers. Is the muezzin permitted to sing out the call to prayer? If so how often and how loudly? There have already been debates on noise pollution with respect to Christian church bells. These issues are particularly challenging for secular citizens who feel adversely affected by religious practices and they have often been fought out in court, in the media and in public demonstrations. All too often, however, mosque-building projects prompt fundamental debates beyond these issues. Like ‘key images’ (Aby Warburg) they provoke intense symbolic conflicts over recognition. At issue here is the status of Muslims in German society and what significance the nonMuslim majority wishes to grant them.22 Views on both sides sometimes become overinflated: mosque building may then be stylized by Muslims as a test of integration. ‘If I get the opportunity to build a mosque I feel accepted and then I see this as my homeland’, to quote a member of a mosque association in Wertheim am Main who makes mosque building central to his identity as a German.23 During the building and designing stages, religious features such as the dome, minaret and muezzin then become core elements of a conflict over identity. As a result of the confrontations so often involved in the diaspora situation, some Muslim communities have a tendency to embrace outmoded forms and designs that have already become less popular in new sacred buildings built in Islamic countries.24 Among sections of the German majority, mosques provide a projection screen for fears of being ‘swamped’ by foreign forces, a

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sentiment that reflects anxieties about parallel societies and jihadist terror. Many commentators have called for more liberal regulations in Islamic countries: while the German constitution permits every religious community to establish buildings for worship and services, Christian communities in Islamic countries are often prohibited from doing so, a fact often exploited by right-wing populist or far-right groups in an attempt to further politicize these conflicts. According to political scientist Claus Leggewie, in order to avoid unnecessary confrontations and use mosque projects productively, what is needed are compromises that avoid hyping the associated debates into ‘all or nothing’ decisions and are instead used as an opportunity for a deeper encounter.25 Many Germans’ desire to preserve their country’s traditional appearance clashes with the Islamic associations’ aspiration to adequately articulate Muslim religious life. This is a conflict of interests but not a clash of civilizations. We should also bear in mind that in local conflicts over mosque building religion is usually just one dimension among many. ‘To simplify, these clashes are less to do with defending the triune God against the Islamic variant of monotheism than with the notorious scarcity of parking places or the vandalism that is an everyday experience in “neglected” districts’.26 The problematic nature of mosque construction is matched by the contentious issue of the organization of Islam in Germany. While local or regionally oriented mosque-building associations initially took on a representative function that went beyond this remit, new umbrella organizations soon appeared that sought to champion Muslims’ religious and political interests. But very few of these umbrella groups managed to transcend the ethnic-national, religious-theological or political-ideological boundaries within the Muslim community. Quite the opposite: in many respects these confederations mirror the theological and political disputes within Muslim countries themselves. The most prominent example is probably the various groups representing Turkish Muslims in Germany. Prompted by the profound conflict between laicism and Islamization, the Süleymanlı and Millî Görüş movements, which are banned in Turkey, have taken the opportunity to win over Turks abroad to their cause. For a number of years, Millî Görüş has been under surveillance by the German intelligence service but is not prohibited. In the 1980s Turkey’s state religious authority, Diyanet, responded by creating another organization, the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (Türkischislamische Union der Anstalt für Religion or DITIB), which was tasked with looking after Turks living abroad and is organizationally part of the Turkish consulates. To this end the DITIB runs community centres, prayer rooms and mosques.

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Two key organizations have tried to bring the Turkish community together or, depending on your perspective, to dominate it: the Central Council of Muslims in Germany (Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland or ZMD), in addition to generally left-wing and trade union-based associations such as the Union of Turkish-Islamic Cultural Associations in Europe (Union der Türkisch-Islamischen Kulturvereine in Europa), includes DITIB, the more liberal Turkish umbrella organization. Competing with this is the generally conservative Islamic Council of the Federal Republic of Germany (Islamrat der Bundesrepublik Deutschland or IR), which Millî Görüş associations and a number of other groups have joined. But even these organizations do not represent Muslims in Germany in any comprehensive sense, with the ZMD and IR covering just a portion of the various groups and movements. The Association of Islamic Cultural Centres (Verband der islamischen Kulturzentren or VIKZ) and the confederations of Alevi Muslims and non-Turkish immigrants are just a few examples of the great diversity that exists outside them. The bodies invited to an official gathering by the Federal Minister of the Interior for the first time in 2006 represented fewer than 25 per cent of the Muslims in Germany and surveys of Muslims show that only a few feel adequately represented by these groups.27 The Islamic conference that then took place responded to this by inviting a further ten independent representatives in addition to the five delegates from the Islamic organizations. The Coordinating Council of Muslims (Koordinierungsrat der Muslime), created in 2007 and familiar to just ten per cent of Muslims surveyed, proved even less effective. The main reason why the degree of institutionalization is so low is that this kind of organization is alien to the various branches of Islam. To be a Muslim one must profess one’s faith in Islam before two Muslim witnesses of legal age, but beyond this there is no ritual of admission or form of registration. There are still Muslim commentators who are highly sceptical of any further ‘churchization’ of Islam of the kind that has occurred through the establishment of these associations and organizations.28 The various organizations and confederations reflect the ethnic, national, political and religious differences among Muslims in Germany and show how multiform this group is in itself. The claim frequently made by Islamic organizations that they represent ‘Muslims in Germany’ remains a political assertion that does not reflect reality. This heterogeneity is something new within the established framework of state-Church relations in Germany and thus represents a special challenge. The German state assumes the right of self-determination

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of religious communities so it has not pushed for a specific way of organizing Islamic interests. The state’s passive approach may seem like a liberal concession but might turn out to be a disadvantage over the long term. To remain within the tried and tested channels of stateChurch relations and refrain from activities beyond them is no solution: the legal construct of the ‘statutory body’ utilized by the major Christian Churches and free Churches as well as Jewish synagogue congregations, the Salvation Army and Jehovah’s Witnesses is inappropriate for Muslims. Federal courts often question the ‘longevity’ and ‘constitutional loyalty’ of petitioning Muslim umbrella organizations. These grounds for dismissal were softened in 2005 when the Federal Administrative Court (Bundesverwaltungsgericht) attributed to the Muslim umbrella organizations the status of a religious community. ‘The Federal Administrative Court is thus accommodating Muslims with respect to a key aspect of their religious-theological self-image – namely their organizational constitution, which diverges from the Churches’ model’.29 But problems continue to be thrown up by the impossibility, from a legal perspective, of unambiguously determining the ‘membership’ of an Islamic community. In the political sphere the main problem is the lack of a hierarchy, which makes it more difficult to identify an interlocutor. According to Claus Leggewie, ‘Islam a priori fails to fit into the present state-Church system, which in some respects approximates a neo-corporatist cartel’.30 Nonetheless, political scientist Leggewie expects that Muslims will comply with this system because it offers religious communities many advantages. According to the most recent debates there are no insurmountable obstacles from a legal perspective. Simply to avoid undermining the legitimacy of the state-Church system in Germany, to quote the assessment of constitutional lawyer Hermann Weber, there is an imperative to apply it as broadly as possible.31 These remarks make it abundantly clear that the desire for a state that keeps out of the religious field, supposedly ensuring the maximum degree of religious freedom, is an illusion. The very fact that courts and state authorities must stipulate legally and administratively what they accept as a religious organization and thus as interlocutor means they are actively shaping this sphere. Intentionally or otherwise, they are contributing to the standardization and ‘formatting of religions’.32 Many sources of friction and practical difficulties are rooted in a fundamental difference: state-Church relations in Germany assume the separation of state and Church and on this basis they define ‘shared concerns’ such as religious education lessons, which are undertaken by Church and state independently and on an equal basis. This fundamental contrast between state and society is unknown in Islam,

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which conceives of the two spheres as united, so there was no need for Muslim communities to develop clear membership rolls, parochial structures or representative organs that could have set out authoritative positions internally vis-à-vis the believer and externally vis-à-vis state and society. Leading religious figures or specific universities may lay claim to a certain authority but this does not fill the gap and there is certainly no unanimity among Muslim associations and organizations. Quite the opposite: on key issues of integration they frequently contradict one another. It is very difficult to obtain a clear overview of the diverse range of confederations, their mutual relations and connections with foreign authorities. On every level, ‘you come up against the same dilemma: there is no defined, organized substrate of members whose administrator might act with binding effect on the community with respect to religious issues’.33 If the aim is to achieve functional, productive cooperation, both state and Muslims in Germany will have to change in a number of ways. The state will have to think outside of its traditional relationship with the religious communities and modify the system of ‘halting separation’ of state and Church.34 By the same token the Islamic communities and organizations will have to find ways of developing reliable, comprehensive and stable forms of representation vis-à-vis the state on the foundation of the Basic Law. That these are more than theoretical possibilities is evident from the Muslim diaspora in South Africa and Austria. The Jewish religious communities have successfully created communal forms in similarly difficult situations.35 In light of all this it remains to be seen whether there can be legal equality between the Muslim communities and Christian Churches.

Indifference, Fear and Competition: German Society and Islam Again and again we find that international factors influence the image of Islam and thus the perception of Muslims in Germany. As many observers noted at the time, the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran triggered a marked shift in the image of Islam as leading cleric Ayatollah Khomeini toppled the autocratic Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi with the support of religious currents in Iranian society. Many observers feared the rise of an Islamic theocracy that might pose an international security risk. This debate now lies more than thirty years in the past, but in much the same way the attacks of 11 September 2001, the death threats against Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, and the dispute over the Muhammad caricatures in Danish newspaper

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Jyllands-Posten have shaped the image of Islam and Muslims in our media-saturated society. Personal experiences and views tend to recede into the background in the face of this flood of images. At present Germans have a significantly worse relationship with non-Christian religions than their European neighbours, to quote the central finding of a representative survey carried out by the ‘Religion and Politics’ research group at the University of Münster in 2010.36 ‘They have a more critical image of Muslims, Buddhists, Jews and Hindus than the French, Dutch and Danes, more frequently express opposition to the building of mosques and minarets than the general publics of France, the Netherlands and Denmark and are less willing to grant equal rights to adherents of other religions’, according to project leader Detlef Pollack. When asked about their personal attitude towards members of different religious groups the differences are particularly striking. In countries such as France, the Netherlands and Denmark, despite current and highly emotional debates on Islam, a clear majority of respondents have a positive view of Muslims, but this is only true of a minority in Germany: in the former West Germany 34 per cent have a positive opinion of Muslims and 26 per cent in the former GDR. In the Netherlands, meanwhile, around twice as many, 62 per cent of respondents, have a positive attitude towards Muslims. If we try to probe the details of negative images, the prejudices of Western Europeans turn out to be similar. When they hear the word ‘Islam’, around 80 per cent think of discrimination against women, around 70 per cent associate it with fanaticism, around 60 per cent with a propensity for violence and around 50 per cent with narrowmindedness. Western European respondents are largely as one in this. While the image of Islam is also overwhelmingly negative in France, only there is the critique of Islam substantially more moderate. If we reverse perspective and ask about Islam’s positive qualities, a marked difference again emerges between evaluations in Germany and other European countries. Less than 5 per cent of respondents in Germany ascribe tolerance to Islam, while more than 20 per cent do so in Denmark, France and the Netherlands, and the same kind of figures apply when it comes to human rights and peacefulness. ‘With respect to characteristics such as tolerance, peacefulness or respect for human rights as well, then, though the majority in other countries do not assess Islam positively we do find a significantly better picture than in Germany’.37 What are the reasons for such different perceptions in different countries? The study itself offers two. In contrast to Denmark with

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its cartoon controversy and the Netherlands, which was profoundly shaken by the murder of film director and Islam critic Theo van Gogh, in Germany religiously charged conflicts have been less visible, so the public debate on the position of Islam has been less intensive. The goal must therefore be to step up efforts to educate Germans about Islam. The above-mentioned researchers also highlight the importance of respondents’ personal encounters with Muslims: the statistics suggest that the more people meet Muslims the more likely they are to develop a positive relationship with them. Markedly fewer Germans than French people report personal encounters. In western Germany 40 per cent have at least minimal contact with Muslims while in the former GDR the figure is just 16 per cent. The fact that contact with members of unfamiliar religious communities are mostly perceived as pleasant shows that there is political, social and cultural potential to improve things. ‘However, the substantial differences in attitudes towards religious diversity and religious openness between Germany and the other Western European nations we investigated also shows how much remains to be done before we can achieve amicable coexistence with other religious communities and their members’.38 Study of the history of the relationship between Muslims and Germans can help us contextualize and qualify this finding. In the 1960s immigrants from Islamic societies were primarily viewed as ‘guest workers’ deploying their labour power in Germany, but the recession in the early 1970s problematized the employment of foreign workers. ‘The Turks are coming – run for your lives’ ran the headline of Spiegel magazine on 30 July 1973, which painted a sensationalist picture of imminent disaster: legal and illegal Turkish workers were claimed to be swarming into Germany ‘in ever greater waves’ from ‘the shores of the Bosporus and the Anatolian highlands’. While Kreuzberg was once a traditional area of Berlin, a new lifestyle had now taken hold. ‘In Kottbusser Tor the pub on the corner was once a genuine slice of Kreuzberg – with its Berliner Kindl beer, rissoles and a savings club in the back. Now there’s a buffet with the shish kebab rotating away on its vertical axis, the coffee is sweet and thick and oriental music drones from the jukebox’. In all its predictions and caricatures the article underlined competition in the labour market, lack of education and hygiene and other ‘foreign ways’. Initially the strangers’ religion played no role.39 To begin with, the political sphere largely ignored immigration and above all the immigrants themselves. Then in the 1980s a lengthy political dispute flared up, centred on two antagonistic political concepts. In line with the ideal of the ‘multicultural society’, should every grouping be

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allowed to arrange its existence according to its own rules, unobstructed by others and the majority German society? Or, as the CDU/CSU and FDP tried to stipulate in their 1982 coalition agreement, was it vital to uphold the principle that Germany is not a ‘country of immigration’? Both concepts were out of touch with reality and did more to obstruct than foster pragmatic solutions. While the immigrants’ religion initially played no role, over the course of the 1970s it became a key definitional criterion: regardless of the national, social and religious diversity of immigrants they were described chiefly in terms of their religious affiliation. Muslims rather than Turks were now perceived as the largest group of immigrants and the ‘guest worker’ was supplanted by homo islamicus. The debate in Germany was thus embedded in a paradigm shift in which religion became the key means of defining cultural identity. Immigrants were stylized as the ‘significant other’ because religious difference is such a powerful way of highlighting otherness. Up to and including the Islam conference convened by the Federal Minister of the Interior in 2006, the tendency to refer to Islam in the singular and in a culturally essentialist way has continued, linking ‘Muslims’ to specific norms, values and patterns of action despite the plural reality and obscuring the fact that many integration problems are not really religious in nature but have social, economic or political causes.40 The essentialist perspective implies that a group’s culture can be pinned down objectively with reference to certain attributes. The group is thus defined through its culture, with culture being conceptualized as a combination of language, customs, mentality, religion and so on. A group-based concept of culture is deployed here according to which culture means the shared norms, values, patterns of action and interpretation of a group or community. In this context cultural identity revolves around the semantic definition and codification of a group culture’s key features and for the group member it means he or she is tied to this predefined culture. The tendency to emphasize religiosity interfaced with a parallel development in the migrant milieus themselves. Immigration, as numerous social scientific studies have shown, is a process extending across several generations. For the first and second generation religion represents at most one aspect of a given group culture. Only in the third generation does it then become a definitive medium of the articulation, preservation and redefinition of ethnic concerns.41 This is confirmed by the development of migrant communities in Germany: disputes over the recognition of Muslim identity markers such as the headscarf worn by Muslim women or the building of

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imposing mosques are a phenomenon of the 1980s and above all 1990s and thus of the transition from the first to second and third generations of immigrants. During this period a ‘religious turn’ occurred that is reflected in the organizations of Turkish immigrants. This reappropriation of Islam by the younger generation is frequently perceived by the majority society as ‘disturbing and frightening’.42 The Christian Churches played a special role in the German discourse on Islam and in the construction of the homo islamicus. The Protestant and Catholic Churches were not only regarded as the ultimate religion experts but were also the most important interlocutors of the political sphere when it came to its relationship with Islam. Muslim commentators soon denounced this as a ‘grotesque situation’, with the competition being asked for advice rather than Muslims themselves.43 The Christian Churches also felt challenged in a special way by the growing presence of Islam in terms of their self-image. In the mid 1970s, for example, the Protestant Central Office on Ideological Issues (Evangelische Zentralstelle für Weltanschauungsfragen) predicted ‘a permanent, increasingly important presence of Islam in Germany as in Western Europe as a whole’.44 Representatives of the Catholic Church expressed similar sentiments. Islam, to cite the general tenor of both temporal and religious media, was expanding. And this expansion was taking place not just in ‘far-off lands’ but ‘on our doorstep’: in Church discourse Islam was imagined not only as a homogenous religious community but also as a threatening competitor. In the same vein, in 1971 the Protestant Central Office on Ideological Issues underlined that an Islam ‘presumed dead’ had become ‘competitively viable’. This new competitor was bound to seem all the more threatening because, around the same time, the modern social sciences had demonstrated the dramatic process of dechurching, and its impact was subject to broad debate. How did society and the Churches respond to Muslim immigrants? Interestingly, they were not contrasted with an emphatically religious Other. Even the Churches did not focus on religion by presenting ‘Christians’ as Muslims’ opposite number, instead emphasizing how superbly adapted their own religion was to West German structures. According to Thomas Mittmann, the Protestant Church was particularly keen to underline its modernity as a ‘“secular Church” and thus as an appropriate form of communitization for “modern” Western society’, as embodied above all in the Church’s commitment to the liberaldemocratic order and modern constitutional state. The Catholic Church was initially more reluctant to postulate its own secularism but in the mid 1960s Vatican II had cleared the way for identifying common

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ground between Islam and Christianity. Ultimately, however, according to Mittmann, Catholics too tended to highlight the need for Islam to adapt itself to European traditions and interests.45 Islam came to function as the counter-image of ‘modern’ Christianity: as the Evangelische Kommentare journal asserted in 1987, Islam had ‘a long way to go’ before it could be considered ‘secularized in the manner of European Christianity’; only ‘if Islamic society creates its own rationalist culture will it be possible to banish the medieval instincts and religious excesses from the faith of the Prophet’.46 The Catholic journal Herder-Korrespondenz put forward similar arguments, explaining Islam’s failure to achieve a cultural resurgence as due to the irreconcilable antagonism between ‘Islamic tradition’ and ‘the needs of a modern state’.47 In this ‘Church strategy of exclusion’ it is impossible to overlook the parallels with the conservative discourse on the West of the 1950s, which also expressed a Western and specifically German sense of superiority.48 This redefinition of the issue of immigration as a religious conflict entailed clear allocation of the ‘roles’ necessary to resolving it: the Islamic clergy supposedly bore the main responsibility for integration and had a duty to explain to the Muslim faithful how to integrate into democratic Western society. While presenting their analysis of Muslim immigration, then, the Churches simultaneously put themselves forward as institutions uniquely able to accompany if not guide this process of modernization. Here the image of Islam, Muslim commentators complain, is moulded ‘by a missionary literature based on a competitive mindset that consciously denigrates Islam while constructing it as a threat to Christianity’.49 Tensions mounted towards the end of the 1970s. The fall of the Shah of Iran and the establishment of the Islamic Republic inspired a widespread sense of anxiety and associated fantasies. Islam had ‘sounded the attack’, a ‘wave of re-Islamization’ was underway and the ‘far-reaching threats to the Western world’ could not be ignored, as various West German media asserted in dramatic headlines.50 The Churches’ demands for Muslim adaptation to the democratic social order and changes in Islamic theology and religious life now went hand in hand with secular commentaries. In the 1980s these were increasingly fused with calls for the Muslim community to do more to promote religious freedom in its countries of origin. The planning or construction of a mosque in Germany almost always inspired the remark that Christian communities in many Muslim countries are still prohibited from building churches. At present the notion of Islam as a potential security risk continues to draw on the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States.

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The discourse of threat intensifies every time jihadist terrorists rise to prominence in international conflicts. According to a study carried out by the German Institute for Human Rights (Deutsches Institut für Menschenrechte) in Berlin, established by the Bundestag in 2001, a sceptical attitude towards Islam is now found in every political camp and in the most varied range of social milieus. A wide variety of motives underlie this attitude: in addition to fears over the loss of cultural identity and national security, the sense of threat extends to anxiety over the preservation of secular and emancipatory accomplishments that are supposedly at risk from Islam.51 This growing scepticism towards Islam has also taken hold in the Churches, whose official statements have been more critical since the turn of the millennium. A November 2006 paper on Christian-Islamic dialogue in Germany published by the EKD Council under the title ‘Clarity and Neighbourliness’ (‘Klarheit und gute Nachbarschaft’) differs from earlier declarations in its cooler, more reserved tone. Again, here the Churches are reflecting general social attitudes, which fail to adequately distinguish between militant Islamic forces and their terrorist offshoots in the Arab world and German Muslims. Muslim associations responded with disappointment and sometimes bitterness to this declaration.52 In a religious sense, however, the encounter with Islam has proved challenging not so much on the (ecclesio-)political level as in the context of concrete interactions between religiously active individuals. Processes of individualization and pluralization are occurring among Muslims but not to the same extent as in the Christian population. According to the 2008 Religion Monitor compiled by the Bertelsmann Stiftung, 92 per cent of Sunnis living in Germany are religious and 42 per cent highly religious, while the figures for Shias is 90 per cent and Alevis 77 per cent. If we look just at Turkish-speaking Muslims, at 92 per cent they not only leave the average German far behind them but are also more religiously active than Muslims in Turkey, where the figure is 86 per cent. Furthermore, many Muslims in Germany live their faith in a public way. For almost half of male Sunnis and a quarter of Shias, Friday attendance at mosque and regular prayers are normal practice. Precepts on fasting and clothing are important to many Muslims and render their faith visible. They place great value on a religious education for their children, another difference from the Christian majority. This and many other factors show Muslims to be an internally differentiated group characterized by a high degree of religiosity. Do church bells sound different if the muezzin is issuing the call to prayer nearby? Have Muslim immigrants and their aspiration to

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public religious practice inspired growth in individual and cultural awareness of the Christian majority religion? ‘When a primary school class in Bremen makes a visit to a church, it is the Muslim kids who are full of questions. Their interest spills over to the majority of (baptized) Christian kids and generates new motivation to understand religious phenomena’.53 This is how one Protestant pastor has turned the interaction between Christianity and Islam into a positive, but he also recounts difficulties: the very encounter with believing Muslims demands ‘the preservation of some-kind-of-Christianity’, but many baptized Christians struggle to accomplish this for want of knowledge and personal reflection on the subject. More often, however, it is not the encounter between two religions in the sense of a Christian-Islamic dialogue that is at issue. Instead religion is generally used as a pretext, as a means of backing up one’s position on other issues. If the ringing of church bells is valued as a European custom while the call of the muezzin is considered noise pollution, here religion functions chiefly as a way of valorizing the prevailing culture and widely accepted traditions. The public presence of a new religion prompts people to invest in their ‘own’ religion, even if they were formerly indifferent or dismissive towards it. By drawing on this ‘cultural Christianity’ they strengthen their own group identity, reinforcing the status of their ‘opponents’ as alien and other. Sociologist Steve Bruce has characterized this reaction as ‘cultural defence’ but he also points out that this ‘anti’ attitude is mobilized only to a limited extent and wears off with time.54 His analysis holds out the prospect that an attitude of ‘cultural defence’ may be an essentially transitional phenomenon. A pragmatic policy of conciliation will need to avoid the trap of religious dramatization. It is vital both to avoid conceding political influence to radical Islamist groups at the expense of the silent majority of moderate Muslims and to prevent ostensibly Christian and populist hostility from gaining the upper hand among Germans. ‘Islam’ will become a self-evident part of Europe and of Germany if its multiformity is acknowledged and the political world enables it to occupy an appropriate place within society.

Jewish Life in Germany Would there ever be a Jewish community in Germany again? This was not a rhetorical question in 1945, when the ending of the Second World War and National Socialism by outside forces laid bare the full extent of the persecution and murder of the European Jewry. While more than

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9 million Jews lived in Europe in 1939, the figure had shrunk to just 3.5 million in 1945. Nearly 5.7 million Jews had lost their lives through persecution and murder under National Socialism. Between 500,000 and 600,000 Jews had lived in Germany before the Shoah, with a census carried out in June 1933 recording 502,799. By 1939 this figure had more than halved to 215,000 as a result of emigration and persecution. When the deportation of Jews to the death camps began in 1941, their number had fallen even further to 163,696. A survey of 1 April 1943 then identified just 31,897 survivors. Of the approximately 15,000 Jews still living in Germany after the war around a third probably escaped persecution by hiding. Most of the others had managed to go on living in Germany because of their so-called privileged marriage with a nonJewish partner.55 In light of these events, in 1946 Jewish journalist Robert Weltsch concluded that ‘Germany is no place for Jews’ and called for the ‘remnant Jewish settlement’ to be dissolved as quickly as possible.56 Survivor and Jewish theologian Leo Baeck, one of the leading representatives of Reform Judaism in Germany, spoke in similar terms when he asserted that the ‘era of Jews in Germany [is] over once and for all’. The hope that ‘German spirit and Jewish spirit could come together on German territory, their union proving a boon’ had not been fulfilled.57 As late as 1948, in the same vein as many Zionist organizations, the World Jewish Congress declared that no Jew would ever step on German soil again.58 Yet despite the persecution and murder of Jews in Europe and despite the declaration by the World Jewish Congress, Jewish life in Germany has survived and developed in new ways: on 11 April 1945, prior to the military capitulation, a Jewish congregation had already been established in Cologne and similar initiatives followed in other major cities.59 There was also the Jewish portion of so-called displaced persons, the term used by the Allied forces’ Supreme Headquarters for the estimated 13.5 million individuals who had left their homes during the war, for a number of reasons, and could not or did not wish to return there. Among them were many who had been displaced by the Nazi regime as forced labourers, ‘voluntary helpers’ (non-Germans who volunteered to serve in the German Armed Forces on the Eastern front) and camp inmates, including around 50,000 Jewish concentration camp survivors. Together with Jewish survivors who had fled to the West after the war to escape anti-Semitic campaigns in Eastern European countries, they were accommodated in so-called DP camps. Here more than 140,000 individuals found a generally temporary home, since many of them had no wish to remain in Germany but instead sought to emigrate to the United States, United Kingdom and Palestine. For this

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group the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 was a key turning point and the number of Jewish DPs plunged to 30,000: the new state offered many Jews the longed-for avenue of escape. Despite all the hardships, a diverse social and cultural life sprang up even in these refugee camps thanks to the common Yiddish language and a shared fate, though this did not provide much long-term stimulus for Jewish life in Germany. The continuation of Jewish life was not usually based on Jews’ conscious decision to remain in Germany but on special reasons rooted in the fate they had suffered. For a number of those who had fled from Nazi Germany their new ‘host country’ had never ceased to feel alien, while others had found negligible career options. Others again returned to their old homeland of Germany to look for family members or friends and resume their previous way of life. They often faced a dual difficulty: Jews outside Germany reproached them for having left the country too late, while their new life was hindered by the German majority society. Anti-Semitic attacks, verbal and physical aggression and the desecration of Jewish cemeteries occurred even after the demise of National Socialism.60 Neither the German authorities nor the later West German government appealed to or invited émigré Jews to return. On the fiftieth anniversary of the National Socialists’ seizure of power, Jewish literary scholar Hans Mayer, who had returned to Germany in 1946, declared the ‘failure to make a gesture that was expected but never came’ to be a great mistake. ‘They didn’t fetch back [the persecuted], the idea didn’t even occur to them’.61 Surveys carried out by the American military administration and by opinion pollsters revealed the persistence of considerable latent antiSemitism. In 1952 37 per cent of respondents stated that it would be better if there were no Jews in the country. The number of those holding this opinion declined to 26 per cent in 1956 and to just under the 20 per cent mark in the 1960s.62 This was not contradicted by state ‘philoSemitism’: for the Adenauer government in particular, the commitment to making amends was chiefly a means of rapidly reinserting Germany into the Western community of states. Within West German society too, ‘the public avowal of a pro-Jewish stance mostly [followed] stereotypical patterns and was highly symbolic in character’.63 German Jews’ personal or collective experience of the Holocaust dovetailed with the rejection they suffered after 1945, making them feel like ‘foreigners in their own country’.64 Going by various studies and autobiographical statements, Jewish life in Germany was strongly moulded by this ambivalence. This is especially evident in biographical interviews. In a 1992 retrospective, Isaac Waterstein, who remained in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1945 as a twenty-five year old, related that:65

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My wife is a German Jew and went through the whole thing, the concentration camp and so on. We got married in 46. Since she spoke German well and felt more emotionally connected to Germany we delayed [leaving the country]. We wanted to be the last ones, as it were. … But I’ll tell you something … That’s something we are ashamed of now, my wife and I, that for various reasons we didn’t manage to get out of Germany.

Even decades later the next generation continued to feel great ambivalence. References to ‘sitting on packed suitcases’ became a common way of describing the Jewish condition, often combining promise and apology in one. ‘I’ve got used to living here as a takenfor-granted thing’, recounted Gloria Kraft-Sullivan, born in Germany in 1946, in 1979.

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Do I feel threatened? No. Despite it all – thank God! – even for a Jew like me life is more than just grappling with anti-Semitism old and new. No, not threatened. Just a little uncomfortable from time to time. But that doesn’t make me sit on the legendary packed suitcase. But it’s there in the cellar as a backup just in case. Sometimes I go down there and dust it off.66

As a number of authors have confirmed, until 1989 this experience of persecution and victimization was the core element of cultural identity for Jews in Germany. Erica Burgauer identifies the phrase ‘Hitler made me a Jew’ as a ‘form of words that comes up again and again’ in an attempt to sum up this experience.67 While attempts were made here and there to build on the long tradition of German Judaism, after the war there was very little continuity with the Jewish communities that existed before 1941. As a rule, Jews in Germany now refrained from teaching their children about German Jewish history. Instead the congregations offered them an identity beyond German society by educating them about the state of Israel. On occasion this led to tensions between the Zionist Youth of Germany (Zionistische Jugend Deutschland), founded in 1954, and the congregations: while the former vigorously advocated emigration to Israel, the latter felt that this belittled their diasporic existence in Germany.68 Stay or go? This existential question pervaded the Jewish congregations not just immediately after the war but well into the 1990s. The development of congregational structures after the war was hampered by the lack of rabbis and cultic objects. The Jewish clergy who had arrived with the American army mostly adhered to the orthodox tradition, rarely had an advanced knowledge of German and remained in Germany only for a short time. Under these circumstances it was quite impossible to build on pre-1933 religious life. The liberal tradition and dogmatics that had once dominated in Germany, for

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example, receded into the background: liberal Judaism was associated with German-Jewish history before 1933 and many saw it as a failure. Instead, unified congregations were established offering forms of worship acceptable to the orthodox, bringing together German Jews, newcomers from Eastern Europe and a variety of Jewish currents.69 At the start of the 1950s no more than 25,000 Jews lived in the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany and according to official figures this had fallen to around 21,500 by the end of 1951. New members were added from the so-called ‘Eastern Block’ countries, with a first wave of immigration from the Soviet Union in the 1970s. For a large number of these immigrants it was the western part of Berlin that provided a new home. Nonetheless, the Jewish community grew only a little and in 1989 there were around 26,000 Jews living in Germany.70 For the Jewish religious community institutional consolidation came with the foundation of the Central Council of Jews in Germany (Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland) in 1950. As a ‘statutory body’, this central organ of the Jewish communities enjoyed a status that allowed it to play a political role. Critics point out that this form of Jewish representation enabled the young Federal Republic to demonstrate how it had changed to the rest of the world and facilitated its reabsorption into the international community.71 The character of this institution changed when Werner Nachmann was elected chairman: before 1969 the Central Council had seen its main role as reminding Germany of the past and warning of the dangers of political radicalization, but Nachmann focused on expanding cooperation with the political sphere. Internal critics saw his term in office as dominated by the ‘politics of dignitaries’, a period of excessive enmeshment in political structures. His defence of Hans Filbinger, Minister President of Baden-Württemberg, who had been criticized for working as a navy judge during the Second World War, met with an outraged response in the congregations. Younger Jews in particular questioned the authority of the Central Council as a representative of the German Jews, calling it ‘hollowed out’.72 Major change came only towards the end of the 1980s. The death of Werner Nachmann in January 1988 was accompanied by the discovery of a financial affair that further discredited his tenure and prompted his successor Heinz Galinski to make a fresh start.73 But the greatest challenge was thrown up by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of its sphere of influence. In December 1990, one year after the fall of the Wall, the approximately 350 Jews living in the GDR became members of the Central Council. Most significantly, though, around 190,000 so-called quota refugees (Kontingentsflüchtlinge) from the former

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Soviet Union arrived in Germany, around half of whom joined Jewish congregations. Observers and religiously active Jews agree that without this immigration many of the existing Jewish associations would have been unable to survive. At present more than 108 Jewish congregations, with around 105,000 members, are affiliated to the Central Council of Jews in Germany, while another 3,000 or so belong to liberal congregations and there are about 90,000 non-active Jews. The immigration from Eastern Europe presented the Jewish communities with new challenges. Since the 1990s they have become more ethnically, culturally and religiously heterogeneous. Ninety per cent of the members of Jewish congregations are recent immigrants, who came from the former Soviet Union over the last two decades, and their children. Though often referred to as ‘Russians’, many of them are in fact Ukrainians, Belarusians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Kazakhs and Moldovans. As a result of this immigration the Jewish community finds itself in the peculiar position in which the small minority of German Jews must supposedly integrate the majority of immigrants: 29,089 registered Jewish congregation members in 1990 had grown to 106,435 by 2008. Two very different groups, the established German Jews and the immigrants, continue to seek positive forms of coexistence. Immigration requires major feats of social and religious integration. Many immigrants have found it impossible to continue their old careers in Germany and there are different conceptions of the Jewish community, with many of the new arrivals regarding it as more of a cultural than religious group. ‘Synagogue or cultural association?’: it is within this spectrum that the debate between German and immigrant Jews is played out.74 The relationship to the past is a key point of contestation here. For the Jewish communities in Germany the Shoah continues to be the key historical reference point. Of course, this group’s relationship to it has changed over time. The number of survivors is diminishing as they are supplanted by members of the second and third postwar generations. In internal Jewish discourse the congregations of the 1950s were criticized as ‘mourning’ or ‘liquidation’ congregations, who merely clung to the past, and at present the Jewish community is reworking its relationship to this past.75 This has found expression in the change of leadership of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, with the chairmanship passing from Charlotte Knobloch to Dieter Graumann and thus to a representative of the postwar generation. Though the third generation is working out a new relationship to the Shoah, as a historical experience it remains constitutive of the Jewish relationship to German state and society.

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For many ‘Russian’ Jews, conversely, it is the Second World War that stands centre stage in the collective memory.76 From a Soviet perspective the ‘Great Patriotic War’ ended on 9 May 1945 with victory over Hitler’s Germany. Should this anniversary be celebrated in the Jewish communities of Germany? For Jews of Russian origin the medal-covered chests of war veterans and collective singing of old battle songs are expressions of their cultural identity. They also convey an image of the Jewish soldier who triumphed over National Socialism as a soldier in the Red Army or partisan. For many German Jews these commemorative elements are an unsettling way of bringing the past into the present that diverges greatly from traditional practices. The victory pose, as they see it, shifts attention away from the victims of the Shoah. And attitudes towards the state of Israel also differ in these two groups: the intense, axiomatic loyalty to Israel articulated by Jews whose origins lie in Germany contrasts with a weaker commitment among ‘Russian’ Jews. The present condition of Jews in Germany has been summed up as follows: ‘a minority formerly defined essentially through the Holocaust in its public self-image and others’ perception’, is ‘increasingly characterized by internal processes of negotiation over the future form of a heterogeneous community that is increasingly and self-evidently asserting its place in Germany’.77 This process of reorientation is more than a power struggle between two different groups or sets of interests. Through these debates the religious, cultural and political place of Judaism in Germany is also subject to renegotiation. Conflicts are inevitable. Does the Central Council of Jews have a duty to represent the approximately 3,000 liberal Jews who have founded their own congregations and, since 1997, come together in the Union of Progressive Jews (Union progressiver Juden)? Or is it up to the latter to give up their independence and fit their concerns into the unified congregations and Central Council? A dispute over funding was resolved in the summer of 2004. But there is more than this to the fundamental question of how to appropriately represent the various Jewish schools in political and religious terms.78 As in other religious communities, this and other debates fuse practical organizational problems with matters of principle: the much-discussed religious awakening among a small number of the highly engaged cannot obscure the fact that the congregations are reaching an ever smaller proportion of their members in a religious sense. How does one deal with growing secularization among believers? How is growing religious pluralism best represented externally? How much internal unity and how much pluralism can and should there be? To what degree should congregations see themselves in secular terms in their

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social and cultural activities and to what extent can and must religious practice be to the fore? The generational shift, immigration from Eastern Europe and the renovation and recovery of various theological and religious schools – the multiformity of Jewish life as evident in these and other processes is an indication of this community’s vitality. While some observers still wonder whether this process of reorientation will be successful, others consider German Judaism, with its reworkings of the liberal and orthodox traditions, the ‘most dynamic Jewish diaspora in Europe’.79 The social environment is a key factor in this process of transformation: the renaissance of Jewish centres and educational and cultural establishments such as the Academy of Jewish Studies (Hochschule für jüdische Studien) in Heidelberg or the Abraham Geiger College (Abraham Geiger Kolleg) in Potsdam has attracted intense public interest. Most of the students and many of the visitors to Jewish cultural institutions, events and exhibitions are not themselves Jews. They come out of curiosity, to learn or to enjoy a cultural experience. While this cultural appeal should not be confused with lived religiosity, it does open up an array of opportunities for exchange with the non-Jewish environment. And this trend cannot obscure the fact that anti-Semitism of various kinds still exists – though its days as a widely accepted social attitude are over. The largely ritualized and sometimes sclerotic philoSemitism of the old West Germany has been supplanted by an openminded interest in exchange that is sensitive to both history and religion. To understand this change and, perhaps, the more relaxed relationship between Jews and the non-Jewish environment, it is revealing to consider changes in the religious field as a whole: the religious minority in contrast to which the majority society constructs its own identity is no longer Judaism but Islam. In the 1980s and 1990s it was topics linked with National Socialism to which the newspapers’ culture pages referred as they argued over who ‘we’ are, over who should be considered part of this category. The following two examples demonstrate this tendency. In the 1986 ‘historians’ dispute’ historian Ernst Nolte and philosopher Jürgen Habermas clashed over the correct approach to the Shoah in the discipline of history and within the public sphere. And in a 1998 speech delivered as part of the events surrounding conferment of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, author Martin Walser warned against using the German past as a ‘moral club’ to beat people with and against the instrumentalization of Auschwitz. In this and other debates on identity Judaism has consistently been the centre of attention. In recent years attempts to get to grips with the Shoah have been superseded, partly though not completely, by attempts to come to terms

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with Muslim immigration. A simple example demonstrates the present state of the debate. While every mayor considers the local synagogue an important symbol of lived tolerance and pluralism, disputes over mosque building seem virtually unavoidable. Changed attitudes on the part of the Christian Churches have contributed to the more relaxed relationship between Jewish congregations and the non-Jewish population. For centuries both the Catholic and Protestant Churches were agents of a pronounced anti-Judaism that was justified in religious terms, which could easily mutate into political and social practice and often degenerated into race-based anti-Semitism. While some Christian theologians struck a more thoughtful tone before and especially after the Shoah, both Christian confessions continued to cling to various antiJewish stereotypes even after 1945. One of the most common Christian notions is that of substitution, as expressed by representatives of the Councils of Brethren on the Jewish question in the 1948 Darmstadt Word, which asserted that the Jews had forfeited their status as ‘chosen people’ by crucifying Christ. God’s ‘old covenant’ with the people of Israel had supposedly been superseded by the ‘new covenant’ with Christianity. The Councils of Brethren acknowledged Jews as errant brothers ‘whom [the Church] loves and calls to’ but still interpreted the recent past in light of traditional substitution theology, declaring that Israel was ‘under judgement’ as a ‘perpetual warning from God to his community’. ‘That God permits no one to scorn him is the tacit preaching of the Jewish fate, a warning to us and admonition to the Jews to consider whether they ought not to convert to that which, despite everything, offers them the prospect of salvation’.80 In the Catholic Church anti-Jewish beliefs found expression, for example, in the Good Friday liturgy, in one of whose ‘intercessory prayers’ Catholics prayed annually for the ‘faithless Jews’. God is asked to remove the ‘veil from their hearts’, help them to know Jesus Christ and thus wrest them from the ‘blindness of their people’ and from ‘darkness’, to quote the 1884 German translation of the Latin Mass text.81 The ‘Guilt with respect to Israel’ (Schuld an Israel) declaration produced by the EKD Synod in Berlin-Weißensee of 1950 was markedly different in tone, distancing itself from the condemnation of Israel: ‘we confess our faith in a Church that is a fusion into one body of Jewish Christians and heathen Christians and whose peace is Jesus Christ. We believe that God’s promise regarding the people of Israel, whom he had chosen, remained in force even after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ’, to quote the second and third of a total of eight key principles set out in the declaration. The Synod members admitted their own guilt with respect to the Holocaust, calling on believers to treat Jews in a

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‘brotherly’ fashion and to actively oppose anti-Semitism.82 Many bodies within civil society, some of them of a trans-confessional nature, such as the Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (Aktion Sühnezeichen), and associations for Christian-Jewish cooperation, strove to improve Christian-Jewish dialogue, but their influence remained limited. Representatives of both forms of Christian theology in Germany such as Johann Baptist Metz, Jürgen Moltmann and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza saw it as a special challenge to develop a form of Christian faith ‘after Auschwitz’. The much-discussed ‘Synodal Resolution on the Renewal of the Relationship between Christians and Jews’ (Synodalbeschluss zur Erneuerung des Verhältnisses von Christen und Juden), drawn up by the Regional Synod of the Protestant Church in the Rhineland on 11 January 1980, made a particular impact, consciously moving away from the idea of a ‘mission to the Jews’ and instead underlining Israel’s ongoing election by God.83 Two decades after the Shoah, according to Cardinal Karl Lehmann, the Catholic Church performed an ‘almost complete about-turn’. There had been attempts to redefine Catholicism’s relationship to the Jews but they had failed to make much impact overall.84 The Nostra aetate declaration, however, ushered in a new approach as the Council Fathers of Vatican II argued against the notion of ‘deicide’, which had underpinned discrimination and persecution for centuries. ‘True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today’. And ‘the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures’. Finally, the declaration states: ‘in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone’.85 The Church’s changed liturgy and teaching has facilitated a more relaxed relationship between the Catholic Church and Judaism up to and including the present day. Nonetheless, centuries-old tensions sometimes flare up, as in 2008 when Pope Benedict XVI published an intercessory prayer for the Jews in the revalorized Tridentine Good Friday liturgy, which reinvigorated the notion of a Christian mission to the Jews. The lifting of the excommunication of Richard Williamson, a bishop in the Society of St Pius X and Holocaust denier, also provoked heated debate. In the contemporary debate on ritual circumcision in Judaism and Islam representatives of both the Protestant and Catholic Churches have

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stated that both religious communities ought to be allowed to retain this ancient practice. Here Christians, Jews and Muslims are united in their support for religious freedom. But this should not necessarily be viewed as a sign of rapprochement between the world religions. It is most likely evidence of a growing awareness in the Christian Churches that in a society generally tone deaf to religion religious rituals as a whole are up for debate. From a structural perspective the controversy over circumcision has parallels not just with the debate on the Muslim headscarf but also with the dispute over crucifixes in classrooms, which were banned by Germany’s highest court in 1995. What all three debates have in common is a distrust of religious rituals. The Cross is viewed as an instrument of mission and propaganda and is thus subject to the same scepticism that sees the headscarf as a vehicle of women’s oppression and circumcision as the mutilation of underage boys. The fact that these debates involve more than one religious community points up the widespread potential for friction and conflict between lived religiosity and society.

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Notes  1. All figures represent the current situation as described by the REMID religious studies information service. REMID, ‘Religionen & Weltanschauungsgemeinschaften in Deutschland’.   2. See REMID, ‘Religionen & Weltanschauungsgemeinschaften in Deutsch­land’.   3. See Krech and Hero, ‘Die Pluralisierung’.   4. Gabriel, ‘The Churches in Western Germany’, 118.  5. Beckford, Social Theory, 77.   6. Pollack, ‘Wahrnehmung und Akzeptanz religiöser Vielfalt’.  7. Welt am Sonntag, 8 January 2012, NRW, 3.   8. See Abdullah, Halbmond; Wokoeck, ‘Wie lässt sich’.   9. Reuter, ‘Religionen im Prozess von Migration’, 383. 10. Hanifzadeh, Islam; Reuter, ‘Religionen im Prozess von Migration’. 11. For the following outline account I draw on Reuter, ‘Religionen im Prozess von Migration’. 12. See Beinhauer-Köhler, ‘Moscheen in Deutschland’, 25. 13. This quotation and the following: Reuter, ‘Religionen im Prozess von Migration’, 379. 14. See Herbert, Geschichte der Ausländerpolitik, 225 f. 15. See Reuter, ‘Religionen im Prozess von Migration’. 16. On the concept of decultured religion, see Roy, Holy Ignorance. 17. See Rath, Western Europe, 287. 18. Abdullah, ‘Religion im Hinterhof’.

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19. On the significance of the Mannheim mosque, see Kraft, Islamische Sakralarchitektur, 257, passim. 20. See Frishman and Khan, The Mosque. 21. Leggewie, Auf dem Weg zum Euro-Islam?, 22. 22. See Leggewie, ‘Warum es Moscheebaukonflikte gibt’, 118. 23. Beinhauer-Köhler, ‘Moscheen in Deutschland’, 37. 24. See Beinhauer-Köhler, ‘Moscheen in Deutschland’, 37. 25. Leggewie, Auf dem Weg zum Euro-Islam? 26. Bielefeldt, Das Islambild, 22. 27. Haug et al., Muslimisches Leben, 173–81. 28. See Aries, ‘Islamische Kirchenlosigkeit’. 29. Reuter, ‘Religionskulturen’, 396. 30. Leggewie, Auf dem Weg zum Euro-Islam?, 13. 31. See Weber, ‘Muslimische Gemeinschaften’, 107. 32. Roy, Holy Ignorance, 187. 33. Loschelder, ‘Religiöse Unterweisung’, 205. 34. Stutz, Die päpstliche Diplomatie, 54. 35. See Loschelder, ‘Religiöse Unterweisung’, 209. 36. On this and the following remarks, see Pollack, ‘Wahrnehmung und Akzeptanz religiöser Vielfalt’. See also Leibold and Kummerer, ‘Religiosität und Vorurteile’. 37. Pollack, ‘Wahrnehmung und Akzeptanz religiöser Vielfalt’, 3. 38. Pollack, ‘Wahrnehmung und Akzeptanz religiöser Vielfalt’, 4. 39. ‘Die Türken kommen – rette sich wer kann’, Der Spiegel 31, 1973. See Schönwälder, Einwanderung und ethnische Pluralität. 40. For a very clear account, see Tezcan, Das muslimische Subjekt. 41. See Schiffauer, ‘Religion und Identität’. 42. Tietze, Islamische Identitäten, 29. 43. See Abdullah, ‘Der Islam’, 108. 44. Mildenberger, Dialog der Religionen, 2; quoted in Mittmann, ‘Säkular­ isierungs­vorstellungen’, 274. 45. See Mittmann, ‘Säkularisierungsvorstellungen’, 286. 46. N.n., ‘Islamisches Glaubensfeuer’, 491 f. 47. Vöcking, ‘Innerislamische Entwicklungen’, 109. 48. See Mittmann, ‘Säkularisierungsvorstellungen’, 280. 49. Abdullah, ‘Der Islam’, 109. 50. For a summary, see Mittmann, ‘Säkularisierungsvorstellungen’, 281. 51. See Bielefeldt, Das Islambild. 52. See the outline in Bielefeldt, Das Islambild. 53. Kahlert, ‘Wir, die unser Heil annehmen’, 19. 54. Bruce, Secularization, 50. 55. Figures in Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland, ‘Vorgeschichte’; Herzig, Jüdisches Leben, 62 ff. 56. Maor, Der Wiederaufbau, 9. 57. Quoted in Schoeps, Mein Weg, 237. 58. See Richarz, ‘Juden in der Bundesrepublik’, 14. 59. See the overview in Müller, Zur Bedeutung von Religion, 52 ff. 60. See Herzig, Jüdische Geschichte, 264.

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61. Mayer, ‘Als der Krieg zu Ende war. Wir haben uns zu rasch mit der Vergangenheit eingerichtet’, Zeit, 1 February 1982. 62. Quoted in Benz and Bergmann, Vorurteil und Völkermord, 402. 63. Stern, ‘“Ein freundlich aufgenähter Davidstern”’, 732. 64. To borrow the title of the book by Broder and Lang, Fremd im eigenen Land. 65. Heenen-Wolff, Im Land der Täter, 85. 66. Broder and Lang, Fremd im eigenen Land, 240 f. 67. On this and the following, see Burgauer, Zwischen Erinnerung und Verdrängung, 51. 68. See Burgauer, Zwischen Erinnerung und Verdrängung, 54. 69. Herzig, Jüdische Geschichte, 273. 70. See Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland, ‘Judentum in der BRD’. 71. See Bodemann and Geis, Gedächtnistheater. 72. Bodemann and Geis, Gedächtnistheater, 41. 73. See Müller, Zur Bedeutung von Religion, 83 f. 74. Körber, ‘Puschkin oder Thora’, 250; see also Müller, Zur Bedeutung von Religion, 90. 75. On these terms, see Bodemann and Geis, Gedächtnistheater, 56–79. 76. On this and the following, see Körber, ‘Puschkin oder Thora’. 77. Körber, ‘Puschkin oder Thora’, 254. 78. Volker Hasenauer, ‘Schritt für Schritt. Der Streit zwischen Zentralrat und Union entspannt sich’, Jüdische Allgemeine Zeitung, 22 July 2004, 2. 79. Bodemann, In den Wogen, 188. On the debate more generally, see Müller, Zur Bedeutung von Religion, 101 f. 80. Rendtorff et al., Die Kirchen und das Judentum, 540–44. 81. Quoted in Wolf, Pope and Devil, 93. 82. Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, Kirchliches Jahrbuch 1950, 5 f. 83. Rendtorff et al., Die Kirchen und das Judentum, 605 ff. On this development, see Aring, Christen und Juden. 84. See Damberg, ‘Die Katholiken und die Juden’. 85. See Nostra Aetate.

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Towards a De-Christianized Society? The question of how much Christianity (still) influences or ought to influence society has been debated many times since the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany. In the Churches themselves but also in the media this issue has prompted various actors to expound their views. And in the Christian Democratic Union, debate on the ‘capital C’ is a firmly established though lacklustre ritual of internal party critique.1 In 1990 the meaning of Christianity in society was not just subject to debate in the newspapers’ culture pages. Reunification brought together two states that were very different in religious terms. In West Germany a relationship between state and Churches had become established that granted them many opportunities and a number of privileges. While the structures of the ‘People’s Churches’ had suffered major erosion, more than two thirds of the population nonetheless remained (at least formally) linked to them through baptism. In many respects the five ‘new’ states were the religious opposite of West Germany. The SED dictatorship had sought to diminish and if possible eliminate the influence of the Churches, the Christian character of society and the faith of the individual. The policy of reChristianization in the west was the mirror image of dechurching and de-Christianization in the east. Following the line of their Soviet masters, the SED leadership pursued policies that propelled the dechurching process. ‘For a region the size of the former GDR to be so thoroughly alienated from Christianity spiritually and culturally within just four decades is probably an unprecedented event in the history of Europe’, to quote Catholic theologian Konrad Feiereis, who worked and taught in the GDR for many years.2 His analysis is borne out by the figures: within forty years the Protestant Volkskirche, which encompassed more than 80 per cent of the population when the GDR was founded in 1949, now comprised a minority of just 25 per cent. The number of Catholics fell from around 11 to 4 per cent during the same period, while the number of those without confession increased from 7 to just under 70 per cent.3

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The sweeping secularization in the so-called five new states is globally unique, giving eastern Germany the ‘number one spot internationally’.4 Since the Second World War the only other cases that have come close to such a massive decline in ties to Church and religiosity have been Estonia and what is now the Czech Republic. What is striking in the former GDR is the speed and enduring impact of this process, with the Churches losing two thirds of their members within just thirty years. Christianinspired lifeworlds did endure in the Catholic Eichsfeld region and parts of the Protestant Erzgebirge. But in other regions and industrial centres Christian life disappeared almost entirely. This process has proved lasting in the sense that widespread expectations of a renaissance of Christianity after the fall of the SED regime have gone unfulfilled. Reunification has profoundly changed the religious field in Germany. But this should not mislead us into thinking that reunification is the only cause of the profound transformation of the religious sphere in Germany. In western Germany, too, the social position of religion has changed greatly. The close alliance between Churches and the political world so typical of the 1950s has dissolved. And the influence of Christianity has declined not only politically and institutionally but also for an increasing number of individuals and their lifestyles. Does this development signify the ‘death’ of Christianity as diagnosed by historian Callum Brown with respect to Great Britain?5 This hypothesis has been criticized as oversimplified with respect to the British Isles and in Germany, too, a more nuanced picture emerges. It is undoubtedly true that many individuals became increasingly disconnected from the Church and that the established practices of piety disappeared. Dechurching has greatly affected both major confessions in Germany and will continue to do so. But new social and cultural forms have arisen through which individuals have positioned themselves religiously both within and outside of the Christian tradition.

Eastern Germany as a Special Case? The Development of the Religious Field in the GDR and in the New States When the SED collapsed in 1989 many people expected a renaissance in religious life in the soon to be ex-GDR. Had the citizens of East Germany not been forced to forego religion for more than forty years? Was this not bound to go into reverse? One particularly good reason for thinking so was the important role played in the peaceful revolution by Protestant Christians, and to some extent the Protestant Church as an institution. Beginning in the late 1970s, it was often in the parsonages

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and church halls that the opposition movement took shape. Pastors and many other employees of the Protestant Church played a substantial role in the overthrow of the SED regime. Examination of the GDR opposition elite, who remained in the first ranks of political life after reunification, clearly shows this influence: under the GDR Joachim Gauck, Markus Meckel, Rainer Eppelmann, Marianne Birthler and a number of others served in the Protestant Church and continued their careers in the political sphere of reunited Germany. But Church representatives’ hopes that the churches would quickly fill up were soon dashed. A brief upsurge during the peaceful revolution proved ephemeral and to this day the proportion of non-believers and convinced atheists in the former GDR is particularly large. A 2008 study by the University of Chicago that examined belief in God in fortytwo countries declared eastern Germans ‘the greatest God-doubters in the world’.6 More than twenty years after reunification it is fair to say that a culture of non-confessionality prevails in the former GDR. Because three quarters of the population are without confession, nonconfessional status is firmly anchored in the lifeworld and is regarded as self-evident. In much the same way as Church membership is passed on from parents to children in highly religious societies, the reverse applies to disinterest or explicit renunciation. The number of those who do not belong to a religious community and show no interest in religious issues has grown continuously over the last few years and at present there is nothing to suggest that this trend is going into reverse. How profound this rupture was and how amazingly fast it occurred is evident from comparison with the situation immediately after the Second World War. Certainly, the population of some regions of eastern Germany was already less tied to the Church than elsewhere at the beginning of the twentieth century. For example, in many Protestant areas of central Germany participation in communion was already declining from 1910 onwards, a significant difference from other parts of Germany7 that was due to a higher degree of industrialization, heavy immigration and emigration and, bound up with this, greater dissolution of traditional religious structures. There were few Catholics in these areas. Only in the Eichsfeld region did a Catholic lifeworld emerge that managed to survive, to a limited degree, beyond the end of the GDR. The real change began after the Second World War. In 1945 91 per cent of the population belonged to one of the Christian Churches. Forty-five years later it was just a quarter. Religious practices and participation in rites of passage such as baptism, weddings and funerals became the exception to the rule. Why did this happen? One answer is obvious and it explains a great deal, though not everything: the main reason for

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the decline in religiosity was the state’s ideological transformation of society. The establishment of the one-party state went hand in hand with a policy of discrimination and repression of the Christian Churches. The GDR saw itself as an atheist state. While the SED’s anti-Church policies were modified and generally toned down over the years, the state ideology made it abundantly clear that there was no room for religion of any kind in a developed socialist society. From a Marxist-Leninist perspective people could cling to religious beliefs only in the face of common sense and the findings of the natural and social sciences. The Christian faith was viewed as unmodern, outdated and irrational.8 And in power-political terms the Protestant Church was inevitably a thorn in the flesh of the SED: following the co-optation (Gleichschaltung) of the political parties, it was the only large organization capable of acting with relative autonomy and independent of state influence – one of the main reasons it became a key nucleus of the peaceful revolution. But despite this ideological and political antagonism the SED did not pursue unconditional confrontation with the Churches. Simply in terms of domestic political strategy, but also in light of the relations between the two German states, the East German government initially preferred to avoid a clash in which large numbers of those with ties to the Protestant Church might oppose the party line. The struggle between state and Church would essentially be resolved by who could command the loyalty of Church members and thus a large portion of the population. In a range of ways, then, the state-Church relationship was embedded in developments within society as a whole. Before achieving its stranglehold on political power the SED pursued a comparatively liberal policy on religion. The Soviet Military Administration (SMAD) had instituted a strict separation of state and Church but its leading figures had also indicated that the religious communities were to be incorporated into the ‘process of antifascistdemocratic development’. The Churches were, for example, allowed to deal with denazification among their own members. On occasion the representatives of the SMAD even acted to support the Churches in response to harassment by local SED functionaries. In line with this basic approach to Church policy, the GDR constitution of 7 October 1949 guaranteed ‘full freedom of religion and conscience and the right to practise one’s religion unimpeded’. It also allowed the religious communities ‘to express their views from their own perspective on vital issues affecting the people’, including the right to provide religious education in the classroom.9 After the state was founded in 1949, however, the SED toughened up its approach to the Churches. The conflict between the two escalated in

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1952/53 in a dispute over the Young Congregation (Junge Gemeinde), the Protestant Church’s main youth organization, and over the introduction of coming of age ceremonies (Jugendweihe) from 1954 onwards. In both these disputes the SED’s goal was to weaken the Churches’ influence on young people in order to achieve a monopoly on the socialization of the next generation. Spying for the West, working against the state and profound dereliction of duty by Church workers – the SED unleashed a whole arsenal of accusations, from 1952 onwards, to justify closure of the Railway Mission (Bahnhofsmission), expropriation of Church orphanages and nursing homes, the ending of state collection of the Church Tax (formerly a point of continuity with the Weimar constitution) and curtailment of the activities of the Young Congregation. These anti-Church measures were accompanied by extensive action in other fields intended to expedite the ‘construction of socialism’ as resolved at the second SED party conference. Those involved in the Young Congregation faced expulsion from secondary school. Only with the ‘New Course’ dictated by the Soviet Union in June 1953 did the SED moderate its stance and thus change its approach to the Churches. Partly due to the uprising of 17 June 1953, at least for a short time the state acted with greater restraint towards the Churches. Within the party this about-turn required a difficult process of reorientation: many members of the state youth organization had been vigorously mobilized against the Young Congregation and now had to be reined in. Under the circumstances the Churches saw themselves as the victors in this clash, having stuck by the Young Congregation and mobilized their own members. But this very belief that they were a match for the SED later proved fatal in the struggle over the ‘coming of age ceremony’, which was not a GDR invention but a tradition with deep roots in the labour movement. In the late nineteenth century this ritual was already marking the transition from childhood to adolescence in the Free Protestant Churches. In the labour movement the coming-ofage ceremony had become popular during the Weimar Republic but even in this milieu it was never more than a marginal phenomenon. It had never seriously challenged let alone supplanted Church rituals of transition such as baptism, marriage and burial. It was precisely because of this that the SED was still reluctant to introduce the coming-of-age ceremony in 1949, fearing the influence of the Churches and their supporters. Even the majority of SED members still maintained ties to a confession, as an article in the party magazine Der Funktionär stated, so that taking a hard line seemed an unpromising approach.10 Only in the second half of the 1950s was this restraint

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abandoned. Following a brief period of moderation following the uprising in 1953, the regime redoubled its efforts to reconstruct society and intensified its anti-Church activities. The introduction of the coming-of-age ceremony was chiefly intended to break the Church’s monopoly on rites of passage. In the shape of baptism, confirmation, marriage and funerals, Christian rituals had shaped the lives of many at key moments. This was now to change: the coming-of-age ceremony provided by the state was to exist alongside of confirmation – or perhaps replace it entirely. The highlight of this secular celebration was the incorporation of fourteen-year-old children into the circle of adults. The oath sworn on this occasion changed greatly over the years and took on an intensely political form. In 1954 participating adolescents promised to work for a united Germany, while the version published in 1957 already had the speakers promise to ‘do their utmost for the noble cause of socialism’ and ‘work to achieve friendship among peoples and secure and defend peace, together with the Soviet people and all peace-loving people of the world’.11 The evolution of the oath is paradigmatic of the ideological escalation of the state-Church conflict as a whole. The state initially continued its pretence of ideological neutrality despite the fact that the timing and character of the coming-of-age ceremony clearly showed it to be the competitor of confirmation. Why, the SED’s approach implied, should both rituals, the temporal and the religious, not coexist? The Protestant and Catholic Churches made it clear to state bodies that they were implacably opposed to this state rite of passage. Both confessional communities demanded that their members choose between confirmation and the coming-of-age ceremony, which they declared to be incompatible, and those who participated in the state ceremony were denied the Church sacrament. As the Church leadership saw it, there could be no middle way. The first few months of the conflict seemed to prove the Church leaders right. Many East Germans initially stuck to the traditional religious forms and in some places even SED members had their children take part in Church confirmation rather than its socialist substitute. Only from 1957 onwards did the tide turn. The coming-of-age ceremony gradually developed into a mass event and ultimately into a ‘popular custom’ in which up to 90 per cent of families participated.12 This turnaround was the result of concerted action by state authorities and organizations: Walter Ulbricht, General Secretary of the SED Central Committee and thus the most powerful man in the state spoke to around 1,000 young people and their parents in Sonneberg, Thuringia, on 29 September 1957 on the occasion of their coming-of-age ceremony,

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calling on them to rid themselves of old and antiquated beliefs. The SED had thus abandoned its efforts to present itself as neutral towards religions.13 Not just the political parties and mass organizations but state schools as well were to do their utmost to increase participation in the state ceremony: the voluntary principle was abandoned. Those who opted not to take part faced disadvantages in school, studies and profession. Over time the coming-of-age ceremony lost this political, militant tone and was accepted by much of the population not just as a matter of course but as an essentially non-political, family occasion. The Churches emerged from this conflict as clear losers: over the long term just a few young people, mostly the children of pastors or strict Catholics, obeyed the Churches’ instruction and refused to participate in the coming-of-age ceremony. The Catholic Church cleaved to the principle of the incompatibility of confirmation and coming-of-age ceremony until the end of the GDR, thus seeking to disassociate itself from the dictatorial environment to the greatest possible extent. The Protestant Church, meanwhile, sought to build bridges in order to integrate participants in the coming-of-age ceremony back into the Protestant community. Nonetheless, confirmation became peripheral to Church life in both confessions. In a situation requiring a clear choice, as this conflict had shown, many Church members were unwilling to obey the religious authorities. In this conflict both Churches started out as tradition-conscious institutions that represented an alternative to the state but then had to abandon this self-image. Redefining themselves required a special balancing act. On the one hand it was imperative to retain their identity in the face of state repression and encroachments. On the other hand, however, they faced the challenge of responding to a rapidly changing society in which they wished to live their Christian faith and disseminate it. In the wake of both general processes of modernization and the reworking of power relations and social structures as pursued by the dictatorship, the Churches were compelled to seek out new fields of action and new forms and modes of expression for imparting their beliefs in the world. Both tasks – identity preservation and ensuring their continued impact on society – called for virtually opposing strategies. In practical terms the former meant retreating into themselves and acting to seal themselves off from the world. Upholding their responsibility to preach the Gospel not just to a small flock but to everyone, meanwhile, meant making their peace with the GDR system and the society shaped by it – even within the political framework of the SED state. The two Christian confessions took very different approaches to asserting themselves under these circumstances.14

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Simply due to their large number of members and associated political weight the Protestant regional Churches exercised a particular influence on the religious field and society of the GDR. How difficult it was for them to strike the right balance between identity preservation and openness to society is evident from examination of their membership figures. During the conflict over the Young Congregation membership declined, as did participation in Church rituals and in 1953/1954 the number of baptisms and confirmations in the Protestant Church fell by a sixth while the number of those leaving increased by 15 per cent. In the period between 1957 and 1959, when state and Church were locked in battle over the coming-of-age ceremony, the number of baptisms and confirmations both fell by around a third. Even those who did not wish to leave the Church often opted not to have their children baptized during this period of state repression in order to avoid disadvantages and possible conflicts. The numbers of those leaving, already high, doubled. Two and a half per cent of members were now leaving the Protestant Church annually. How high this figure is can be brought out by comparison with West Germany. There too there was a wave of departures in the late 1960s and early 1970s that was regarded as dramatic and threatening. But its highest point, reached in 1974, equated to just 0.8 per cent of Protestants.15 The conflict over the coming-of-age ceremony demonstrated that Church leaders in the GDR had lost the battle to retain the people’s loyalty. In the dispute over the Young Congregation and the comingof-age ceremony they had still seen themselves as representing a tradition-rich, powerful and high-membership organization that could assert itself against the state, but this conviction had now been revealed as an illusion. Until the late 1980s this experience continued to influence Protestant Church leaders. They no longer sought direct trials of strength with the state and no longer fundamentally questioned the political system. Instead they tried to strengthen their position through negotiation. At summits between the state and Protestant Church its representatives refrained from seriously criticizing the GDR’s dictatorial character and instead pursued a policy of small steps, seeking to obtain greater room for manoeuvre in pastoral work and in the context of Protestant Church politics. The Protestant Church also acted more cautiously vis-à-vis its own members, no longer forcing them to adopt an ambiguously ‘pro-Church’ and ‘contra-state’ position. Instead its goal was to keep as many people in the Church as possible. To explain this change we have to look at a number of developments that prompted the Protestant Church to rethink its role in the GDR in the 1960s and after. The great sociopolitical and power-political upheavals

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such as land reform and large-scale expropriation of industry had been completed and the political parties co-opted. The building of the Wall in August 1961, meanwhile, is rightly regarded as the secret or second foundation of the GDR, as a result of which power was exercised in a new way. While there was no let-up in the repression of those of a different political persuasion the dictatorship’s authoritarian approach was modified and became more subtle. The omnipresent state encroached even further on the everyday life of the Church. ‘No building could be roofed without the authorities’ consent, no guest invited from abroad, no newsletter printed, no leisure time activities organized’.16 The Church’s dependency was palpable and increasing. Given the circumstances, was it advisable for the Church to run itself ragged through permanent conflict or to seek an accommodation with the state? The building of the Wall so curtailed links with West German Protestantism that no further support could be expected from that direction. Common positions and political activities also became more difficult to sustain because Church and society were developing so differently in the two parts of Germany. What, to mention just one example, would a pan-German Protestant approach to refusal of military service look like, given that the situation of conscripts permitted to do non-military work (Bausoldaten) in the GDR was so different from that of West Germans opting for alternative service (Zivildienst)? Protestant theologians in the GDR were prominent among those arguing for the abandonment of total opposition to the SED state. Was the Church not failing in its duty to preach the Gospel and carry out pastoral work if it spent most of its time sparring with the state? Christians should not be partisans of the West but must instead build bridges between East and West, warned Johannes Hamel in his muchdiscussed book A Christian in East Germany (Christ in der DDR), published in 1957.17 His spiritualizing stance, which entailed abandoning any political perspective, remained a minority view but was nonetheless emblematic of the direction in which many other theologians and synods were going: the Protestant Lutheran Church in Germany (Evangelisch-lutherische Kirche in Deutschland) and the Protestant Church of the Union (Evangelische Kirche der Union), a federation of the Old Prussian regional Churches, stood by their critique of the dictatorship but interpreted conditions in the GDR creatively enough to allow them to endorse their members’ engagement in society.18 In this process of consolidation and accommodation the Protestant Church faced the increasingly pressing question of what role it ought to play in GDR society. For the Church to oppose socialism seemed

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like an unpromising approach that risked overburdening its members. ‘A community of witness and service in the GDR will have to think carefully about its place: the Church must not stand alongside or against this society, with its particular character’, to quote the Federation of Protestant Churches in the GDR (Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR or BEK), which split from the EKD, previously a pan-German body, in June 1969.19 The aim was to be a Church ‘not against, not alongside, but within socialism’.20 Through this formula the BEK not only confirmed its claim to a legitimate place within GDR society but also its intention to play an active role within society and help shape it. While the SED and those circles within the Church who believed in conforming to the system eagerly and pointedly interpreted this as implying comprehensive adaptation, in reality it did not signal abandonment of the Church’s aspiration to autonomy vis-à-vis the state. The essence of the idea of the ‘Church within socialism’ was the conviction that Christian life could be realized not just within a bourgeois system but also in one that called itself socialist. The Protestant Church thus acted decisively to open itself up to society. Was this change of course, informed by the notion of a ‘Church within socialism’, the right thing to do? This question was subject to bitter dispute after 1989. Despite all the changes that affected it, hindsight allows us to state with certainty that for many in the GDR the Church remained attractive because it retained a high degree of independence. As the only non-state organization it was able to maintain autonomous institutional spaces, with its own educational establishments, funding options, access to the public and decision-making bodies. The Church thus had the potential to be obstructive, different and maladjusted. The SED continued to regard the Church as an ‘unpredictable foreign body’ within the state and the GDR authorities went to a great deal of effort to keep it under surveillance and infiltrate it.21 Precisely because of this, in the 1980s the Church’s social prestige increased among those sections of the population without Church ties. Many people saw the religious community as appealing because it provided space for a worldview and political beliefs beyond the state’s uniform ideology. This was most palpable in the many peace, environmental and human rights groups that organized their oppositional work under the aegis of the Church. But beyond this mainly younger people and those on the margins of ‘socialist’ society were attracted to the Church as an alternative model. The parsonage not only represented a religious offering but an alternative lifestyle as well. The pastor was an outsider within GDR society and thus an appealing figure in certain circles. The study of theology, for example, attracted not just those with an interest

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in religion but also those in search of theoretical alternatives to the universities, which had been ideologically co-opted. It was not summit talks between state and Church but this grassroots scene that made important societal contributions during the GDR’s final decade. The ‘Berlin Appeal – Achieving Peace without Weapons’, jointly published by youth pastor Rainer Eppelmann and SED dissident Robert Havemann in January 1982, made it clear that oppositional initiatives were unwilling to limit themselves to the internal sphere of the Church and were determined to go on the offensive against the dictatorship.22 The Church leadership itself eschewed this oppositional role: while it occasionally acted more robustly vis-à-vis state representatives, it continued to put its faith in conflict resolution and promoting understanding. Not until September 1989 did Church leaders abandon their conciliatory approach and clearly distance themselves from the SED regime. What appealed to those involved in the protest movement were the wide range of options provided in and through the Church: the Nicolaikirche in Leipzig and many other churches were the starting point for the protest movement in the cities, a movement that did much to bring about the overthrow of the SED regime. ‘Autumn 1989 was a unique and exceptional time for the Churches: they had never been closer to the people’, as East German theology professor Peter Maser euphorically put it.23 But in absolute terms, as sociologist Detlef Pollack reminds us, the Church remained separated from the majority of the population right to the end.24 Even during the peaceful revolution only a few of its representatives at most spoke on behalf of a certain section of the population. When leading BEK officials warned against rapid reunification, if not before, the Church’s political views ceased to match those of the majority. For many of those who streamed into the churches in autumn 1989 the Christian lifeworld remained alien. It was not religious matters or needs but political concerns that brought them into the Church. ‘The mass encounter between people and Churches in the GDR was an episode limited to just a few months’.25 The comparatively small Catholic Church took an approach different from that of its Protestant counterpart. Its existence in the GDR was shaped by a dual diaspora. In common with the Protestant Church it saw itself as a minority confronted with an anti-religious and anti-Church state but at the same time it also constituted a minority in comparison to Protestants. Only in the Eichsfeld region, parts of Lusatia and in and around Erfurt did Catholic enclaves take shape that endured beyond the fall of the GDR. Immediately after the war incoming refugees caused the proportion of Catholics in the Soviet occupation zone to surge

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temporarily to 12.2 per cent and the number of Catholics then peaked at 2.77 million in 1949 and 1950. One of the Catholic Church’s greatest challenges in the immediate postwar years was not just to overcome hardship and destruction but to cater to this group’s religious needs. Well beyond the foundation of the state the Catholic Church remained one ‘of refugees and displaced persons’.26 Many of those who had initially migrated from their original homes to the Soviet occupation zone or GDR did not stop there but went on to settle in the western part of Germany. Prior to the building of the Wall in 1961 the number of Catholics declined by 1.1 million; between the founding of the state in 1949 and the uprising of 17 June 1953 alone, the number fell by 860,000. This decline was caused both by out-migration and by the dechurching triggered by the regime’s anti-religious policy. Active profession of the Catholic faith led to political and social discrimination and the 1950s in particular were marked by open persecution of the Churches. In the years between the building of the Wall and the end of the GDR the number of Catholics declined by another 670,000. This trend was by no means reversed by the fall of the Wall and the collapse of the GDR but instead intensified further: the Catholic community in the so-called new states lost almost 140,000 members between 1989 and 1991.27 There were several aspects to the Catholic Church’s self-image in the GDR, with attempts to describe the prevailing conditions going handin-hand with the invocation of idealized scenarios. According to Bishop Otto Spülbeck, apostolic administrator of the diocese of Meißen, at the Cologne Catholic Conference of 1956, for Catholics the SED state was an ‘alien home’ that they had not built and that rested on false foundations. The goal was not to help construct it but to ensure that ‘we ourselves can still live in this house in a humane and Christian way’.28 After years of intense confrontation it was this stance that predominated from the late 1950s onwards. In August 1961 representatives of Church and state hammered out a ‘working relationship’ at a number of summit meetings. The Church promised ‘loyalty’ to the state in the form of ‘political abstinence’.29 In return the state guaranteed the unity of the Church, and particularly of the diocese of Berlin, by allowing Berlin Bishop Alfred Bengsch, who lived in the eastern part of the city, to travel unhindered to its western portion. Politically, the blend of conflicts and partial cooperation generated a certain routine to which both sides accommodated themselves. From the perspective of the Catholic Church this set-up helped preserve its identity, though at the price of an overall withdrawal into itself. It was not until the last days of the GDR that a new approach

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was taken, to a limited degree, when Catholic laity and priests joined the protest movement of autumn 1989. Another image utilized by GDR Catholicism to articulate its view of itself was that of the ‘little flock’,30 which alluded to the diaspora situation in which the Catholic Church found itself and also drew on a widespread pastoral topos that highlighted the notion of the pastor bonus, the good shepherd looking after his sheep. In addition to the care and trust inherent in this image it also entails a hierarchical relationship: the policy of ‘loyal distance’ practised by the Catholic Church vis-à-vis the SED state depended on a high degree of cohesion in its own ranks. This policy served both to protect the Church’s members and enhanced its ability to exercise control over them, reinforcing the precept that Catholics must adhere to the official Church line. But while this approach may have been a legitimate means of forging a bulwark against the state during times of massive repression of the Churches, as in the 1950s, it later lost this function. The reception of Vatican II in the GDR made the ambivalences all too apparent: theologically, the ‘Council of the Church on the Church’ had stimulated the Church’s embrace of the world, laid the ground for greater pluralism and strengthened the position of the laity vis-à-vis clergy and hierarchy. Catholics in the GDR were involved in this and other phenomena associated with the global Church and were thus challenged to rethink their position and find ways of serving the people without giving up the Church’s identity and allowing it to be integrated into the socialist system. The surge of individualization that intensified across the developed world in the early 1970s also enveloped Catholics in the GDR. It was becoming virtually impossible to compel the faithful to obey the Church’s – sometimes morally rigid – precepts concerning individuals’ lifestyle. And as in West Germany the process of dechurching was accelerating, causing community-based Catholicism to fray at the edges. It was no longer out-migration but individual leavers and a form of practical withdrawal from the Church that was causing the parishes to shrink. Catholicism faced the prospect of the ‘pensionerization’ of its faithful.31 While few of the conflicts and processes of pluralization within the Church made much public impact, by the end of the 1980s GDR Catholicism was far less homogenous than it was generally imagined to be. The centre of the Catholic community still consisted of those focused on traditional forms of piety and church services, a group whose members tended to take their lead from the local priest and the Church hierarchy. In the 1970s and 1980s new spiritual groups and movements then emerged on the margins of this parish-focused Catholicism that called for internal reforms and a modern approach to

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the Church’s political role. This small elite, which consisted of laity and priests and represented an alternative to the bishops, was forthright in its calls for change but was thwarted by a fatal interplay between the Church leadership and state organs of repression: while the Ministry of State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit) was suspicious of any kind of critical movement, the Church hierarchy saw any breaking of ranks within its ‘flock’ as a threat to the Church’s internal and external political course. At times, then, Stasi subversion went hand in hand with the Church’s own disciplinary measures.32 This modernizing movement within East German Catholicism was fostered by connections with the global Church and events in its West German counterpart, which was undergoing an intense ‘1968’. Further, the episcopate was subject to a generational shift, most strikingly embodied in a new bishop in Berlin. In 1980 Joachim Meisner not only assumed leadership of the diocese but also, two years later, chairmanship of the Berlin Bishops’ Conference, succeeding Alfred Bengsch, who had been committed to sealing the Church off from the state and had consistently rejected Vatican II. Bengsch refused to sign up to the Gaudium et Spes pastoral constitution, which sought to open the Church up to the world. As the ‘Bengsch era’ came to a close East German Catholicism had achieved as much political autonomy vis-àvis the state as it could within the limited framework of its ‘little flock’ ideology, which left it with a very limited capacity to shape society. Against this background Hugo Aufderbeck, Bishop of Erfurt and probably the most influential Catholic theologian in the GDR, sought to define a new role for the Church. ‘Building up the body of Christ [in the GDR] rather than fighting communism’ was his programme of action, one that guided the actions of many Catholics in the 1970s and 1980s.33 His successor as Bishop of Erfurt, Joachim Wanke, built on this approach, developing new pastoral practices. In his muchnoted ‘Vision Statement’ (‘Standortbestimmung’) of October 1981 he described the Church’s tasks in terms that contrasted starkly with its 1950s self-image. ‘We want to belong here not because we have no other option but because, for the sake of this country, for the sake of its people, we wish to find a way to translate the Gospel of Jesus Christ into “Middle German”’. In talks at two priests’ conferences in Erfurt and Heiligenstadt he also claimed that the Church was ‘not yet far … along this path of truly embedding the Good News in the real world’.34 In sum, a generation of Catholics socialized in the GDR strove to overcome the Church’s fixation on the state-Church relationship and to liberate diaspora Catholicism from the narrow form it had taken. This new programme has been fittingly described as a process of ‘Catholic identity

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formation’, though this was always subject to a marked ‘ideological qualification’.35 The new approach found expression at the Catholic meeting in Dresden in 1987 at which 100,000 faithful demonstrated the new Catholic self-confidence and aspiration to shape the world. Whether this attempt to break out of its self-imposed isolation was appropriate and perhaps even successful is subject to heated debate. With the benefit of hindsight it is clear that this ‘new dawn’ made very little political impact. When the GDR collapsed, for example, the Catholic Church as an institution was conspicuous by its absence, inspiring occasional critique after 1990.36

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The End of the ‘Priestly Church’: New Roles and Structures in the Religious Field Over the last few decades secularization in the form of dechurching has moulded the religious field in West Germany, the GDR and reunified Germany. But it would be a mistake to think of this development in absolute terms, not least because the Christian Churches are still the most important institutions providing religious interpretation and practice. They have preserved this dominant position because they have changed fundamentally, yielding to the transformative pressures of the postwar era.37 To mention just one example: a Catholic who grew up with the religious practices of the 1950s will find a contemporary youth service to be a quite different experience. But while this adaptation was a prerequisite for remaining relevant it entailed certain costs. Monotheistic religions are based on an absolute claim to truth, so changes are difficult to communicate, both internally and externally. Furthermore, it is the very ‘unwieldiness’ and unadaptedness of Church-based religiosity vis-à-vis developments in society that make up much of its appeal. Religious communities represent a model that is opposed to the ‘world’ in many ways and for many believers this is what makes them attractive. Inevitably, then, there are intense debates on whether changes are possible, necessary or permissible and if so to what degree. And yet transformations and changes are normal in the Churches. Not just over the last few decades but throughout history religious communities have adapted their forms of expression, practices and internal structures to historical conditions. The dechurching so evident at present, then, will by no means inevitably mean the end of Christianity. One observation in particular undermines this assumption.

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Christianity is on the march worldwide as the number of adherents surges so it is not the religion as such that is facing an existential crisis: only its European variant is confronted with rapidly emptying churches in a number of its former national strongholds. But rather than passively observing these changes the religious communities are responding to it in a variety of ways and with varying degrees of success – another reason to doubt simplistic predictions of impending extinction. At times this self-transformation is intentional, the outcome of reflection, and at other times it is unconscious, but it is always compelled by powerful pressures to change. Since the 1960s the social forms developed by the Churches as they grappled with modernity from 1800 onwards have dissolved. A number of factors indicate just how profoundly this transformation has shaped the inner workings of the religious communities, including the new roles allotted to clerics and laity, which have turned relations of power and dependency almost upside down. The emergence of Church professionals in service institutions such as hospitals, schools and nurseries has also greatly modified the Churches’ internal structures. Many of these processes are still in a state of flux but if we survey the last few decades we can identify trends and fundamental shifts that appear set to shape the future. One crucial change involves role attribution and role expectations vis-à-vis specific groups within the religious communities, a change that has been particularly dramatic with respect to the relationship between laity and clergy. For more than 150 years, priests, pastors and members of religious orders played a special role as religious experts. Through the status conferred by the sacrament of holy orders or ordination, they presided over church services, interpreted scripture, issued blessings and administered sacraments, giving them a special place within the web of relationships that make up the Churches. For most believers they were the true ‘face’ of the religious community, its local embodiment, and until the second half of the twentieth century they functioned as the key connecting link between private lifeworld and the Church as organization. They were not only predestined for this role by ordination: as aspirants they had submitted to a strict selection procedure and had been prepared for their work through the study of theology and additional seminary training. The extent to which priests as a group were professionalized, triggering the development of a pronounced priestly ideal, is particularly evident in the Roman Catholic Church. The Curia modernized priests’ training, officially after the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century but in reality from the late eighteenth century onwards. The template here

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was the system of priestly training devised by vicar general Franz von Fürstenberg in Münster: in the early nineteenth century academic studies were supplemented by compulsory attendance at a seminary, a form of education entailing a high degree of theological discipline and professional ethics.38 Clerics’ special position was matched by their self-image, by theological interpretations and by the demands made of this group, as expressed especially during the era of supposed re-Christianization in the 1950s. Münster bishop Michael Keller, for example, identified the three pastoral tasks inherent in the priestly mission: ‘teaching, sanctifying and leading’. Despite all the secularism of the modern age, the priest was to sanctify souls by celebrating the Eucharist, administering sacraments and preaching the Gospel. As one who shared in the sovereign authority of the Pope and the bishops, the priest was explicitly designated to lead his congregation, though this aspiration must always be geared towards the role model of Jesus Christ.39 ‘First and foremost the priest must be a homo dei, a man of God, a great sayer of prayers’, declared the bishop in a 1959 article, assuming that this description of the priestly ideal also reflected the wishes of the congregations. ‘Essentially, people today – even if they are not explicitly aware of it – want a holy, sincerely pious priest, though one who embodies this rather than making a show of it, a priest who “lives the mass”’. Dignity, greatness, holy calling, sense of mission – these were some of the terms the bishop used to describe and valorize Catholic priests. As the spiritual leader explained at a ceremony marking the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the priestly seminary, to exercise the office of priest it was not enough to have reached ‘any old stage of perfection’. What was required was an ‘outstanding spirit of virtue’. ‘The difference between priest and upright layman should be as great as that between heaven and earth. Priestly virtue must therefore mean not just avoiding serious sin but even the tiniest of errors’, as Keller quoted Pope Pius X.40 On this view there was a world of difference between clergy and laity. In much the same way, the pastor’s role was imbued with a sacred charge in parts of the Protestant Church. Lutheran neo-orthodoxy, which became influential in Prussia in the mid nineteenth century, emphasized the pastor’s sacerdotal charisma, which incorporated administration of the sacraments and preaching. This school of Protestantism was sceptical about critical university-based theology, regarding attempts to give liberal cultural values a religious underpinning as a potential attack on the Gospel and Church teaching. For Pietists it was personal piety and a special depth of faith that qualified the clergy and marked them off from the normal believer. Like Catholic priests, the representatives of these currents also distinguished themselves from the ordinary believer through their public

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appearance and clothing, with the Protestant collar band corresponding to the Roman clerical collar. The Protestant white stock completed the dark, usually black gown and was worn and tied in various ways depending on confession. Their vestments served both Protestant and Catholic clergy as a kind of uniform that enabled the individual cleric to recede into the background behind the status of his office.41 Meanwhile, liberal, so-called culturally Protestant pastors, who were firmly embedded in society, associated individual piety with critical rationality and a modern faith in education. Their professional ethos was dominated by erudition, personal achievement and civicmindedness, while piety and religiosity received less emphasis. Rather than presenting their office as something set apart from the congregation, it ‘obtained its “decorum” primarily through the pastor as a “person of authority and trust”, as a “learned citizen”’.42 Despite all the differences in conceptions of the pastor among rationalist, orthodox and Pietist congregations the professional image of the cleric came to be dominated by one overarching belief: the pastorate was a ‘total role’ in which the office holder must meet the highest of standards in both his professional activities and private life. At times he was considered a model of civic life, an initiator of higher education, at others an educator of the people and moral enforcer and later the nucleus of German life – in a range of ever-shifting ways, the Protestant parsonage and its inhabitant were imbued with a powerful symbolic charge and were also subject to political appropriation. Even in the 1970s, when this positive evaluation was turned on its head and the parsonage was criticized as a component of a German special path or Sonderweg, the special role ascribed to the clergy still shone through, though now from a different perspective.43 The idealized image of pastor and priest forged in the nineteenth century essentially endured into the twentieth – and the sacral and ethical elements of this extreme, unrealistic conception ultimately formed the background to a debate in which this status group saw a severe plunge in its reputation. From the late 1960s onwards the key term ‘priestly crisis’ cropped up initially in Church newspapers but soon in their non-religious counterparts as well. The image of the priest was transformed. And here it is revealing to look at the opinion surveys commissioned by the Catholic Church, which also questioned priests. For Karl Lehmann, professor of dogmatics and later cardinal, one of the ‘most striking and also most shocking findings’ of the survey carried out at the 1974 synod in Würzburg was the extremely broad spectrum of pastoral and theological views among clerics.44 Survey leader Gerhard Schmidtchen put it succinctly: ‘there are hardly any issues of

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fundamental significance left on which priests are of one mind and on which they do not express very clear views one way or the other’.45 Further, to quote a committee established by the Würzburg Pastoral Synod, young priests in particular had ‘problems identifying’ with the Church as institution. Among many other things they were resistant to the reform of Church structures and were particularly unhappy about celibacy and the prohibition on marriage.46 They even had different ideas about how their office ought to be exercised. And in their lack of unanimity Catholic priests were no different from Protestant pastors. Was the focus on preaching the Gospel, as developed during the National Socialist dictatorship, still appropriate for the pastor of the 1970s? For the older generation of pastors who saw themselves as ‘advocates of the Word’ it was generally more important to hold a ‘good sermon’ than to engage in ‘mundane conversations with people in their houses or on the street’ that ‘do not reach the level of the theologically essential’.47 The Church’s turn towards the world, as particularly evident in the various strands of 1970s political theology, put such views under pressure. Large sections of the Church now focused on social and political issues, seeking to advance emancipation and improve the world. This expanded the range of things pastors had to do. They were now to promote congregation members’ options for participation and powers of judgement in the spirit of a new political approach. They also had to function to a greater extent as pastoral workers, helping congregation members cope with the trials of life. Social worker, mediator, therapist – their burgeoning role pushed pastors’ theological competence into the background. From the end of the war until into the 1970s, the image of the pastor developed from ‘witness’ through ‘adviser’ to ‘agent of crisis’, as evident both in autobiographical accounts and in the expectations of the general public. As a consequence of these internal debates one issue became a permanent source of conflict among both Protestant pastors and Catholic priests. Should clergy exercise their office with a focus on the congregation, in other words ‘horizontally’? Or should they take a more ‘vertical’ approach, underlining the spiritual authority that the priest embodied? The wide range of views of the office, and of others’ expectations of it, is evident in the two ends of the spectrum: the holy man as a sayer of prayers with a direct line to God contrasted with the more or less secularized social worker who focused chiefly on giving advice and helping people cope with life’s challenges. The discrepancy inherent in this debate was matched by a changing public perception and portrayal of the priest. In the 1950s it was only films that depicted the social figure of the priest plagued by doubts

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about his office. It was a traditional image that dominated: the priest as man of faith and administrator of sacraments, a source of authority mostly at home in the rural world. In the late 1950s this imagery changed as a number of films criticized celibacy, portraying the priest as an individual ruined by the dogmas of the institutional Church. In the mid 1960s the press began to lead opinion on this topic, creating an alternative image: the traditional view of the priest was now joined by that of the cleric protesting against his role as laid down by the official Church. An extreme example is a photograph published by Der Spiegel on the occasion of the Celle Conference of 1968 and 1969, when critical theology students assembled at the various meetings calling for the Protestant Church to embrace the neo-Marxist impulses emanating from critical theory and the student movement. The photograph, furnished with the caption ‘Red Bible’, presented the reader with a number of shouting, bearded young men in front of a poster of Mao, a scene no different from other images of student protests and one that provided no indication of any Church or religious background.48 This stereotype of the Church rebel did not oust the conventional image of the ‘reverend’ but did at least supplement and pluralize it.49 The wider context of these changes was the debate on traditional forms of authority. The policeman, formerly viewed as an embodiment of state authority, became ‘your friend and helper’. At the universities the professors lost their gowns and a form of autonomy was instituted that granted students a greater say. This trend was not limited to secular fields but also encroached on clerical terrain as the public position and image of priests and pastors changed. Within the Churches this change was reflected in the establishment of priestly and solidarity groups. On the model of trade unions these groups advocated improved working conditions, participation in decision-making and theological reforms. They thus viewed themselves as part and parcel of a zeitgeist moulded by the process of contestation within the Catholic Church, a process that drew much of its inspiration from the worldly ‘1968’.50 Just a few years earlier it would have been unthinkable to break away from the traditional hierarchy and the spiritual bond with the bishop, on which the Church had placed renewed emphasis. Finally, Vatican II provided powerful theological impulses for the Catholic world. The Council Fathers refrained from formulating an exclusively juridical theology of the clergy, instead placing the priesthood within the overarching concept of the People of God. The Catholic cleric thus had to redefine his role to a greater extent even than Protestant pastors. On the one hand there was the new notion of the shared priesthood of all believers, a levelling concept that challenged

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the authority of the priestly office. On the other hand priests still aspired – and to some extent were expected – to distinguish themselves clearly from other believers. For many contemporaries this placed the unsettled clergy among the ‘victims of the Council’.51 In the 1970s, in parallel to internal Church debates, there was a growing awareness that ever fewer young men were opting to study theology and embrace the priesthood. As early as September 1965 the weekly Spiegel magazine reported that the bishops of Aachen, Essen, Münster and Paderborn had commissioned an advertising agency to identify the causes of these falling numbers. The Catholic pupils surveyed complained that the occupation of priest had lost its ‘social esteem’ and offered insufficient earnings for essentially unlimited working hours and terms of service.52 The ‘priest issue’ became increasingly central to the Catholic debate on reforms, a ‘“seismograph” recording the various forms of internal unrest’ in the Church.53 ‘Are priests dying out?’, asked a popular 1973 book, scrutinizing a development that was ever more apparent. According to the German Bishops’ Conference the number of new priests was falling: in 1962 557 priests had been ordained, but this had levelled off to between 200 and 300 by the 1980s. In 2010 the number of ordinations reached a provisional low of 80.54 The Protestant Church has yet to suffer a lack of pastors. While a considerable number will have retired by 2020, according to calculations from 2011 the number of theology students seems large enough to cover the Church’s needs.55 Two significant differences from practices within Catholicism explain this divergent development: the member Churches of the EKD permit the ordination of women and there is no celibacy.56 The lack of priests so clearly apparent in the Catholic Church has prompted a debate on priestly celibacy that is still ongoing.57 In his 1989 book Kleriker (‘Clerics’), priest and psychoanalyst Eugen Drewermann produced what he called a ‘psychogramme of an ideal’: according to him obedience to authority – to the point of self-denial – and the tremendous suppression of sexual needs have profoundly warped the clergy psychologically.58 The debate that this sparked off was both product and promoter of the decline of a priestly ideal that was linked in a special way with Catholic sexual morality. The issue of the admission of married men and women to the priesthood, meanwhile, has been subject to repeated and intense debate. So far demands for change have fallen on deaf ears as both the episcopate and Rome are determined to uphold the traditional priestly office. The debate on the Catholic priesthood reached its lowest point by far in connection with the discovery – initially in the United States in 2009 and later in

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Germany and other countries – of the sexual abuse of children and adolescents in their care by Catholic clergy and members of religious orders. Not just the deeds themselves but also the Church’s efforts to impede investigation and defame the victims triggered a massive crisis of confidence even among active Christians. In parallel to the decline of the priestly ideal and the falling numbers of those aspiring to the priesthood, a new group has gained in importance and influence in the Churches: full-time employees, who are no longer bound to the religious community by a spiritual vow but by employment contracts and collective wage agreements. Only a minority of these individuals are theologians or engaged in pastoral work; most are active in institutions that are supported by the Church but publicly financed and that are not ‘religious’ in the strict sense of the term. Just how large this group of employees is can be seen if we examine the major welfare institutions of the two Christian Churches. In 2005, the Catholic Caritasverband employed 499,313 individuals and the Protestant Diakonisches Werk almost as many at 452,244. Comparison with other enterprises indicates the scale of these figures: the Siemens conglomerate has 348,000 employees around the world, carmaker Daimler around 275,000 and its competitor Volkswagen around 592,586. At present the Caritasverband is the largest non-state employer in Europe. In the field of so-called non-statutory welfare services (freie Wohlfahrtspflege), both Christian Churches are major businesses, far larger than associations such as the German Red Cross, the Federation of Welfare Associations (Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband) or Workers’ Welfare Association (Arbeiterwohlfahrt) in terms both of turnover and number of employees.59 For both the Churches running these bodies and their employees this development has far-reaching consequences. The religious characteristics of the Church welfare institutions are becoming opaque, as evident simply in the composition of their staff. In 1950 the Caritasverband included 60,447 order members and 45,611 laypeople. More than half of the somewhat more than 100,000 employees were thus bound by religious vows. In 1990, of 347,566 employees, 21,110 belonged to an order or were priests. The share of clergy among a workforce that had more than trebled thus amounted to little more than 6 per cent. This growth in staff numbers was a response to growing demand and the associated specialization. It was no longer the dedication of a devoted nun, deaconess or member of a religious order but the special skills of a doctor or nurse that embodied and still embodies the efficacy of the welfare and health system. Overall, as Karl Gabriel sums up his in-depth studies on this segment of the Catholic Church, ‘the

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shrinking clergy is on its way to becoming the aged top stratum of the organizational matrix that frames the Church’s work’.60 The associated activities also began to lose their Christian aspirations, as evident in the Churches’ advisory services. In the 1950s marriage guidance counselling was still at least partly a missionary activity, but in later decades this approach receded far into the background. Instead the aim was to contribute to a successful life that, ideally, might be religiously inspired to some degree. From the mid 1970s onwards the Churches, which funded many marriage and family advisory services, pushed in vain for greater emphasis on religion and Church. But ‘professionalization centred on the human sciences’ advanced inexorably as religion receded into the background of these advisory services and the formerly Christian self-image of Catholic Caritas and Protestant Diakonie melted away.61 As a result of the dramatic changes in the welfare state and in medicine and care work, from the 1950s onwards Caritas and Diakonie underwent a fundamental transformation. How could their workers maintain a Christian and confessional profile while also keeping pace with the modernization and professionalization demanded by the advancing welfare state? The first attempts to organize lay staff within confessional professional communities and to create a special confessional identity within them soon proved ineffective. The conception of a ‘spiritual community of service’ was informed by the idealized image of the bishop and his priests, or a religious order whose members saw themselves as united in faith. But this was to think in terms of a conflict-free situation that bore no relation to reality. It also meant denying employees fundamental rights: Church institutions long lacked any system of worker representation and the option of stopping work in order to advance one’s interests. In much the same way, to this day Church educational establishments such as colleges, which supposedly combine religious and technical education, frequently struggle to strike a balance between these two aspirations.62 The Churches also demand loyalty from their staff in their lifestyles. In the concept of the ‘spiritual community of service’ the individual’s freedom of religion, protected by the Basic Law, collides with ‘tendency protection’ (Tendenzschutz) for enterprises, which is also legally enshrined. What was previously conceptualized as the spiritual foundation of shared endeavour has now emerged as a source of constant conflict: is it acceptable for the divorced and remarried educator to lead a Catholic nursery school or for a lesbian doctor to operate in a Protestant hospital? Again and again, these and similar questions have triggered lawsuits in which a number of legal

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principles collide. Caritas and Diakonie run between 40 and 50 per cent of welfare institutions and in regions such as the Rhineland, BadenWürttemberg and Bavaria the figure is as high as 80 per cent. Under these circumstances Church membership is virtually compulsory for occupational groups such as educators, social education workers (Sozialpädagogen) and doctors. Conversely, in many cases confessional commitment can no longer be assumed. When the Churches took over welfare institutions in the former GDR it was virtually impossible to insist on this entry requirement. The clergy find themselves particularly challenged by those working full-time in pastoral contexts. Lay pastors (Pastoralreferenten) are not ordained but have gone through a theological education identical to that of priests. As a result of their college studies parochial assistants (Gemeindeassistenten) have sometimes received better practical training for their tasks than ordained theologians. If we examine staff appointments in the 1970s we find that the diocese of Limburg, which was suffering from a particularly severe lack of clergy, had 176 priests, 20 chaplains and 306 laypeople working full-time in pastoral care. In 2001, 9,605 religious and secular priests contrasted with 7,107 parochial assistants and lay pastors.63 The introduction of lay theologians was accompanied by an intense debate: clerics feared that these new pastoral workers might be insufficiently committed to their office and their Church. And the role of the clergy changed fundamentally as a result: the charismatic man of God had to turn himself at least partially into a team leader coordinating the work of various pastoral workers. ‘The face of the traditional “priestly Church”’, as Ziemann sums up, ‘probably changed more due to the advance of lay theologians in the 1970s than any other development’.64 But it was not just lay theologians that spelt competition for priests. The relationship between priests and laity had been turned almost upside down: in Catholic imagery the simple Church member was long regarded as part of a large flock to be led and guided by the clerical shepherd. In the postwar era the ‘former sheep [turned into] demanding consumers’, while the ‘authoritarian shepherd of the past’ became the ‘overwhelmed service-provider’.65

New Forms of Religious Self-Positioning In, Alongside and Outside the Churches ‘When I’m dead, I’m dead. Then it’s all over’, stated former racing driver, prominent Austrian and aviation entrepreneur Niki Lauda in an interview of 4 April 2012, having rejoined the Catholic Church. It was

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not his criticism of the Pope and the Church hierarchy but primarily his ideas about death that triggered protests from pious Catholics. Lauda’s views were scarcely orthodox. Was it permissible for him to deny central elements of the Christian creed? What priest, asked an appalled commentator on the conservative website kath.net, had failed to instruct him in the catechism for adults? Or, as other visitors to the website suspected, was the Church only interested in creating a baptismal certificate Christian and benefiting from his no doubt substantial Church Tax?66 Lauda’s case attracted attention because of the former top sportsman’s prominence. Conservative Catholics ostentatiously demanded orthodoxy and the associated religious practice from Lauda, highlighting a widespread and in their view reprehensible laxity of faith. But even kath.net’s readers and commentators were aware that their demands are scarcely enforceable whether with respect to wellknown individuals or anyone else. Ultimately, Lauda is relating to the religious precepts of his religious community in much the same way as most other Christians, selecting those elements that seem plausible to him and rejecting everything else. Patchwork religiosity, pick-and-mix Christianity, bricolage – through these and similar terms sociologists, pastoral theologians and representatives of other academic disciplines have tried to capture how people today deal with the precepts of institutionalized religion. These descriptions and verbal images are underpinned by one key observation: the dissolution of traditional structures releases the individual from entrenched ties. Commitment and coercion are replaced by individual selection and decisions as the distance grows between institutional religious offerings and religiosity as lived individually. To pre-empt one common misunderstanding: certain individuals have always had their ‘own God’ that they have sought to approach through contemplation and personal dialogue. But the Church did not envisage direct, individual contact with God for the ordinary believer. Instead the experience of God was embedded in dogmas, rituals, liturgies and the predetermined exegesis of sacred texts. At least since the late eighteenth century the individual was born into the religious community and socialized into its rights and practices, ensuring that traditional forms were adopted. But these conditions relaxed in the 1960s as individuals detached themselves from the tutelage of confessional beliefs and indeed religious precepts as a whole. The individual believer either assembled his or her own cocktail of religious convictions or simply ceased to engage in

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spiritual activity. British sociologist of religion Stephen Hunt succinctly described this trend as a shift ‘from “Church” to “choice”’.67 If we want to understand this change we cannot limit ourselves to the religious field: its causes and effects lie deeper, extending far into society. In the 1970s the ‘second modernity’ ushered in a wave of change that encompassed the most varied domains and entailed ‘social change of a revolutionary quality’.68 This change is evident on a number of levels: in the socio-economic field we can identify the crisis of the Fordist production process, the erosion of socially protected working conditions for the male breadwinner, the disintegration of the associated gender-specific division of labour in the modern nuclear family and major demographic change. These developments went hand in hand with the erosion of sociocultural milieus, the pluralization of lifestyles and new forms of communitization, particularly in the family, among friends and in groups of like-minded individuals. This also meant changes for individuals in their experiences, life plans and practices.69 For many contemporaries ‘1968’ was already code for a sweeping lifestyle revolution in which the development of an ‘alternative milieu’ was the most visible effect of a broad-based change. In the United States essayist Tom Wolfe referred to the ‘me decade’, centred on the desire to shape one’s personality and ensure one’s wellbeing.70 Social science has observed these shifts in values and mentality through the studies carried out by the Allensbach Institute, which confirm the decline of the values of duty and acceptance in favour of personal development.71 While critical voices have questioned whether such findings are really capable of showing a shift in mentality, ‘value change’ soon became a political battle cry.72 Much evidence suggests that in terms of how society sees itself the collective receded while the individual advanced, a shift of emphasis that saw changes in ties and authority structures in the religious communities and beyond. Political parties, trade unions, associations and societies also found themselves confronting crumbling and erratic memberships. The health system, media and other institutions, meanwhile, faced a public with changing aspirations: patients, pupils, voters, employees, plaintiffs, viewers and consumers wished to move on from their spectator role and pushed for participation and inclusion or – to mention the alternative in fields such as politics or consumption – rejected what they were offered. By the early 1960s sociologist of religion Thomas Luckmann was perspicaciously predicting that the Churches would experience similar changes. As the religious creation of meaning was increasingly thwarted in a differentiating society, Luckmann believed, the relationship to transcendence would become privatized. ‘Once religion is defined

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as a “private affair” the individual may choose from the assortment of “ultimate” meanings as he sees fit’. All that matters then are the ‘preferences that are determined by his social biography’.73 While these observations have undoubtedly been borne out, Luckmann’s further conclusions are unconvincing. His metaphor of ‘invisible religion’ works on the assumption that religion will take on a social and cultural form that can no longer be identified as religion in the conventional sense. According to him, ‘little transcendences’, in which the individual can reproduce the experience of the divine, have superseded the ‘big’ interpretive systems of the traditional religions. The experience of transcendence, Luckmann tells us, can be accessed directly and repeatedly, in small groups, in New Age meditation, the bodybuilding studio or the football fan club. In the German religious field at least this does not seem to have happened. Once again we must consider the division of Germany and look at the east separately: contrary to expectations, the majority of eastern Germans have continued to exhibit a clear and seemingly enduring non-religiousness. It was not just dictatorial pressure that brought this about. As biographical interviews show, many actively chose to distance themselves from transcendence, integrating this attitude into their view of life; many perceived the choice between state and Church as self-evident and did not question it. ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and render unto God the things that are God’s’, as one respondent put it, expressing a widely held view.74 The Churches themselves fostered this either-or logic of membership when they declared the coming-of-age ceremony and confirmation incompatible. Many of those who joined the SED or took up a profession linked with the state assumed that the latter could expect them to leave the Church. In the days of the GDR, non-confessionality made life less complicated, whereas Church membership entailed risks and could lead to conflicts. Many East Germans internalized this perspective on religion regardless of their other political beliefs. Another antagonistic conception has become deeply entrenched in popular attitudes. The scientific worldview, the SED ceaselessly asserted, is incompatible with a religious one, and many eastern Germans continue to view rationality and religion as diametric opposites. As Monika Wohlrab-Sahr concludes in light of her studies, secularism in the east is to a considerable degree an attitude imposed by the SED dictatorship but it also interfaced with, or established, beliefs supportive of a non-religious worldview.75 Under conditions of ‘forced secularism’ values developed that in some ways took on the function of religious beliefs and, particularly

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after 1990, were idealized with much nostalgia. Eastern Germans often contrast the experience of community before 1990 with the coldness of the reunited Germany, constructing the ‘honest soul’ concerned for the common good as an alternative to the capitalist money-grubber and stylizing work as a value that integrates people into the community and gives them dignity. If eastern Germans are interested in religion it is the impulses associated with the above ideas that motivate them: members of the younger generation in particular tend to find the experience of community, the critique of materialism, and intellectual and creative work on the self in the new religious movements rather than the major religious communities. Mostly, however, families without confession in the second generation lack any Christian or religious bedrock. Many GDR citizens ‘were so alienated from all faith-related or religious knowledge that even when it would have been easily possible in political terms they found no way into faith or Church’.76 Overall, in eastern Germany it is not so much other providers of religion that are challenging the Churches as a widespread religious indifference. The Protestant Church in particular failed to benefit from the collapse of the SED regime and reunification. Many of those who felt attracted to the community of the Church as an alternative to the socialist state prior to 1989 distanced themselves after reunification. The political system of the Federal Republic offered different spaces of freedom within civil society so that the Church as ersatz public sphere lost relevance. But the Church’s appeal diminished even for those who felt religiously committed. The religious communities in the east are suffering from the largely inevitable change of form they underwent when they were incorporated into the Church structures of the Federal Republic. As a result of assimilation to western German conditions, religious communities based on core congregations were turned into a Church organization devoid of much of  its former charisma. The Protestant Church in particular had gained much of its standing from the perception that it supported the people against the state, but its image changed significantly after reunification: religious education in state schools, a state funding system, remuneration for pastors resembling that for civil servants, military chaplaincy – as it adapted to the structures of the Federal Republic, many people began to regard the Church as a component of the state.77 With respect to the personal acquisition of religion conditions were initially very different in western Germany: membership of a confession was long the norm and to some extent still is. Leaving the Church is not, therefore, a matter of course. It tends to entail more disadvantages than staying because it may lead to social stigmatization. ‘Belonging

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without believing’, in other words membership of the Church in the absence of religious conviction, is thus a widespread phenomenon. The confessionally moulded religious field supports the traditional forms of religion. Other social forms of religious practice, meanwhile, are becoming established only on a modest scale: from a quantitative perspective, neither the new religious movements nor a privately lived spirituality are major factors in the religious field. According to surveys fewer than 5 per cent of all Germans have experienced Zen meditation, Buddhism or other forms of alternative religion. And in those areas where they have more experience, such as fortune telling or astrology, respondents are mostly negative about them.78 Even in the face of individualization and pluralization the major Churches continue to be the most significant religious institutions in Germany, providing the religious vocabulary, imagery and ideas from which individuals take their lead and through which they express themselves religiously. But this continuity cannot conceal the profound changes to which the Protestant and Catholic Churches have been subject. Both Churches have managed to maintain their privileged position in politics and society in part because of their religious monopoly, but also because they have themselves changed. They have not only incorporated yoga, meditation and new religious forms but have also fundamentally changed their mise en scène of the religious dimension as their addressees exercise an ever stronger influence on what the Church ought to be. It is no longer the precepts of the institution but the demands and religious needs of believers that have increasingly determined how faith is celebrated.79 These changes began in response to the erosion of their members’ commitment, competition from youth cults and other providers and in light of new theological approaches, the key here being not just to become more attractive but to facilitate more participation, giving members greater say while also discussing topics they care about. As in many other areas, the Church academies and the Church and Catholic Conferences were pioneers of the ‘eventization’ of Church formats that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s.80 Workshops, working groups, conferences and other new forms of event played a range of different roles. They were a response to demands for the democratization of Church structures, facilitated religious experience and ‘self-realization’ and, ideally, caught the interest of those on a religious search who had been turned off by traditional religious forms. One example is the ‘workshops for feminist theology’ introduced at the Academy in Bad Boll in 1979. The organizers expressed their aims

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by declaring that ‘women themselves [must become] the subjects of theological work and action as they search for their own identity’ and they should be able to include their ‘own experiences’ as part of this process.81 At the Church and Catholic Conferences, along with open services, formats such as these were soon part of a highly popular standard repertoire. Against this background it is no surprise that the liturgy was subject to change as well. The ‘liturgical night’, for example, established a form of service intended to appeal to all senses and experiential levels. Participants were no longer passive recipients but were called upon to actively fill the framework laid down by the organizers: a musical or meditative ‘opening’ was followed by a ‘communicative phase’, a procession and supper. A key component was a ‘room to move’ (Spielraum) in which every guest was given the opportunity ‘to do and experience what they enjoy’.82 By definition the event lives from its attendees, whose participation gives it a character all its own. It provides participants with their own experiential possibilities by tackling topics they care about but ones that are not necessarily covered in traditional worship. Significantly, many of these forms are merely temporary and require no long-term commitment from participants. ‘Concepts of “Church” were increasingly adapted to the individualized patterns of people’s lives and, indeed, to such an extent that what was often at issue here was not so much the future shape of the “Church” as the future shape of the individual “Christian existence” as such, which could also take on “non-Church” characteristics’.83 The need for biographization and authenticity felt by many individuals was recognized by the Churches. As the Churches responded, emphasizing participation, relevance and experience, they fostered and reinforced this new attitude. In earlier times, too, the major Churches had frequently adapted to contemporary circumstances but as a rule it was the political status quo to which they paid attention. From the 1970s onwards, the Churches tried to gear themselves to the needs and desires of those they sought to attract. In many respects this meant assimilating trends towards social pluralization, fragmentation and relativization. This new orientation clearly involved the radical renunciation of centuries-old practices, and religion in the Churches became more open, plural and subtle.

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Notes   1. For a recent treatment, see Ockenfels, Das hohe C.  2. Materialien der Enquete-Kommission, vol. 5/1, 585.   3. See Pollack, Kirche in der Organisationsgesellschaft, 373–445.   4. Wohlrab-Sahr et al., Forcierte Säkularität, 117.  5. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain.   6. Smith, ‘Beliefs about God’. For this phrase, see ‘Ostdeutsche sind größte Gott-Zweifler der Welt’.   7. See Hölscher and Bendikowski, Datenatlas.   8. Schmidt-Lux, ‘Labor omnia vincit’, 405.   9. See Maser, Die Kirchen in der DDR, 18. 10. Helmberger, Blauhemd und Kugelkreuz, 237. 11. Quoted in Helmberger, Blauhemd und Kugelkreuz, 237. 12. Helmberger, Blauhemd und Kugelkreuz, 238, 241. 13. Quoted in Pollack, Rückkehr des Religiösen?, 262. 14. See Pollack, Rückkehr des Religiösen?, 265. 15. Pollack, ‘Integration vor Entscheidung’, 145 f. 16. Pollack and Richter, ‘Protestantische Theologie’, 695. 17. Hamel, A Christian in East Germany. 18. See Pollack and Richter, ‘Protestantische Theologie’, 705 ff. 19. Sekretariat des Bundes der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR, Kirche als Lerngemeinschaft, 172 f. 20. Punge and Zander, Zum Gebrauch des Begriffes Kirche, 6. 21. Goerner, Die Kirche als Problem, 1. 22. See Maser, Die Kirchen in der DDR. 23. Maser, Die Kirchen in der DDR, 149. 24. Pollack, Kirche in der Organisationsgesellschaft, 445. 25. Maser, Die Kirchen in der DDR, 145. 26. Pilvousek, ‘“Innenansichten”’. 27. All figures in Pilvousek, ‘“Innenansichten”’, 1135 ff. 28. Quoted in Haese, Katholische Kirche, 16. 29. See Schäfer, The East German State and the Catholic Church, 277. 30. See Ehm, Die kleine Herde, 204. 31. Grütz, Katholizismus in der DDR-Gesellschaft, 471. 32. See Großbölting, ‘Nachkonziliarer Katholizismus’. 33. See Friemel, ‘“Nicht Bekämpfung”’; on Aufderbeck as an individual and his theology, see Grütz, Katholizismus in der DDR-Gesellschaft, 107–21. 34. Reprinted in Pilvousek, Kirchliches Leben, 237. 35. Kösters, ‘Sozialistische Gesellschaft’, 138. 36. See Pilvousek, ‘Katholizismus und katholische Kirche’. 37. See Damberg and Hellemans, ‘Wie sich Kirche verändert’. 38. See Schulte-Umberg, Profession und Charisma. 39. On this and the following quotations, see Keller, ‘Priesterliche Heiligkeit’. 40. Keller, ‘Priesterliche Heiligkeit’, 116. 41. See Janz, Bürger besonderer Art. 42. Owetschkin, Die Suche, 319.

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43. See Janz, ‘Das Pfarrhaus’, 236. 44. See Lehmann, ‘Bleibendes und Wandelbares’. 45. Schmidtchen, Priester in Deutschland, xii. 46. See Bertsch, Gemeinsame Synode, 600. 47. Quoted in Owetschkin, ‘Zeuge – Berater – Krisenagent’, 41. 48. See Städter, ‘Visuelle Deutungen’, 107 f. 49. See Städter, Verwandelte Blicke. 50. See Großbölting, ‘Wie ist Christsein heute möglich?’, 99–101. 51. Roegele, Krise oder Wachstum?, 101. 52. ‘Priester-Werbung’, Der Spiegel 39, 1965, 18. 53. Hemmerle and Weber, Der priesterliche Dienst, 8. 54. Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz, ‘Katholische Kirche in Deutschland. Zahlen und Fakten 2010/11’, 12. 55. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Oldenburg, ‘EKD-Experte: Kein unbewältigbarer Pfarrermangel zu erwarten’. 56. For a recent contribution to the debate on the role of the Protestant pastor, see Graf, Kirchendämmerung, 50–69. 57. See Siefer, Sterben die Priester aus? 58. Drewermann, Kleriker. 59. See Frerk, Caritas und Diakonie, 21–44. 60. Gabriel, Christentum zwischen Tradition und Postmoderne, 186. See also Gabriel, Caritas und Sozialstaat. 61. Kaminsky and Henkelmann, ‘Die Beratungsarbeit’, 90. 62. See Henkelmann and Kunter, ‘Diakonie und Caritas’. 63. See Ziemann, ‘Zwischen sozialer Bewegung’, 389 and endnote 133. 64. Ziemann, ‘Zwischen sozialer Bewegung’, 390. 65. Hellemans, Das Zeitalter, 178. 66. Brüggler, ‘Problem liegt beim Papst’; ‘Eintritt in die Kirche’. 67. Hunt, Religion and Everyday Life, 95. 68. Doering-Manteuffel and Raphael, Nach dem Boom, 10. 69. For a sociological outline, see Reckwitz, Das hybride Subjekt, 441–630. 70. Wolfe, ‘The “Me” Decade and the Third Great Awakening’. 71. See Noelle-Neumann, Werden wir alle Proletarier? 72. See Rödder, ‘Vom Materialismus zum Postmaterialismus’. 73. Luckmann, The Invisible Religion, 99. 74. See Wohlrab-Sahr et al., Forcierte Säkularität, 331. 75. See Wohlrab-Sahr, ‘Forcierte Säkularität’. 76. Pollack and Müller, ‘Die religiöse Entwicklung’, 143. 77. See Neubert, “Gründlich ausgetrieben”. 78. See Pollack, Säkularisierung, 149–82. 79. See Mittmann, ‘“Christliche Identität”’, 156. 80. See Mittmann, ‘“Christliche Identität”’. 81. Quoted in Mittmann, ‘“Christliche Identität”’, 161. 82. Quoted in Mittmann, ‘“Christliche Identität”’, 167. 83. Mittmann, ‘“Christliche Identität”’, 168.

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Conclusion

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God in Germany – Looking Back and Looking Forward Our historical analysis has brought us to the present but it permits no linear, forward projection of past trends, no reliable prognosis for the future. In the decades between the end of the Second World War and the new millennium the religious field continued to develop in nonlinear ways. Against secularization theories that assert an automatic connection between modernization and loss of religion, we have seen that processes of change are the outcome of specific conflicts and decisions. What should be considered religion, how it is internally differentiated, what significance it has or ought to have for society and the individual – all these issues are negotiated between state, religious communities and political and social actors. And this insight into the fundamentally open nature of past developments applies to the future as well. Still, looking back over history allows us both to identify trends over the past few decades and those areas likely to show dynamism over the next few years and decades.1 A historical retrospective, in other words, can at least begin to identify key themes of probable future significance. From a bird’s eye view the dominant impression is one of change. For much of human history social life was saturated with religion and in many communities and social spaces throughout the world it still is. In Western and Central Europe it was Christianity that predominated for more than 1,500 years. There, compared with the past and in terms of their potential to shape society, religion and religious life have been marginalized but – it is important to underline – without having lost all significance. It is this transformation that the metaphor in the present book’s title seeks to capture: heaven, as a symbol of a concern with transcendence, has not crumbled away or disappeared. But for an increasing number of individuals in Germany its meaning has changed and in ever more social contexts heaven has indeed been lost. Over the short and medium term we are very unlikely to see any return to earlier religious forms or the ‘rediscovery’ of the ‘old heaven’.

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This loss of heaven is not self-evident, let alone ‘natural’. Religion in Germany differs strikingly from that in many other parts of the world. The United States serves as a useful contrast here, a highly modern society that has developed in a quite different direction. There too the major Protestant Churches – the Lutherans, Baptists and Methodists – and Catholicism have lost members and have less social presence. But in parallel to this secularization, which has been modest compared to its European counterpart, a religious market brimming with vitality has emerged in which a number of providers of religious meaning and interpretation disseminate their teachings, compete for members in the absence of major institutional barriers or state influence and seek to assert themselves politically. The situation in Germany seems far less vibrant. In the United States and many other parts of the world religions are on the advance. The big winner here is not just Islam, as is constantly claimed to political ends: Christians are spreading their message even more successfully than the followers of Muhammad. But it is evangelical movements rather than Catholicism or Protestantism that have been most successful. One example is the Pentecostals. A small Methodist group founded in Los Angeles in 1906 rapidly developed into one of the quantitatively most significant variants of Christianity, one that spread throughout North America, South America and the African continent: in 1970 just 6 per cent of Christians worldwide were members of Pentecostal Churches but by 2006 they made up a third of all Christians. At present the number of Pentecostals is estimated at around 500 million and there are around 150 million charismatics within the traditional Christian Churches.2 In Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North America today religion is flourishing as much as ever. In many places, in fact, its significance appears to be increasing as the political sphere has ceded a greater role to religion than in the past.3 These few observations alone demonstrate one thing clearly: it is not religion in general that is dying out. It is the Christian religious communities in Germany and other Western European countries that have suffered severe dechurching and thus, measured against their social impact in earlier decades, a tremendous loss of significance. For centuries Europe was the seedbed of Christianity. The great missionary movements and theological impulses came from countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom and from the offshoots, with essentially European roots, of these religious communities in the United States. This European dominance is definitively over; the Christian world has been turned upside down as its centre of gravity has shifted away from Europe to other parts of the world. Europe has become the exception to the rule.4

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Against this background it is even more apparent how unusual developments in Germany are. There is little sign of religious vitality, let alone a new religious dawn there. If we wish to determine the reasons for this special development we must first examine the two major Christian confessions, which are still the largest religious communities. Is Christianity in Germany dead? This was the question posed in the 1970s in light of what was perceived as dramatic dechurching. In much the same way British sociologist of religion Callum Brown has proclaimed the death of Christian Britain.5 Germany demands a different diagnosis: Christianity as such is not dead. It is true, however, that the specific social forms developed chiefly by Catholicism and parts of Protestantism over the past 150 years have come to an end: namely the Church as an organization resting upon ascribed (rather than voluntary) membership and allotting its members predetermined roles that they must carry out largely regardless of their own wishes. The most obvious embodiment of the collapse of the Church-asinstitution (Anstaltskirche), identified more than a century ago by Max Weber with respect to Catholicism, is the profound dechurching between 1945 and the present day. Church membership has declined and so has church attendance, receipt of the sacraments and many other forms of participation. There is nothing to suggest that this trend is coming to an end. At present it is not so much waves of leavers as in the 1970s that are further eroding the structures of the People’s Church as demographic developments, which are changing the social form of the Churches from the bottom up. Contemporary changes contrast markedly with exuberant hopes of re-Christianization in the immediate postwar period and form part of a far-reaching trend towards secularization: ties to the Churches were declining by the final third of the nineteenth century and even earlier in some regions. For a time this trend was greatly accelerated by the National Socialists’ antiChurch policies. Religious developments in the immediate postwar period only partly compensated for this downturn and the tendency to leave persisted even in the absence of political pressure, gathering momentum in the final third of the 1960s. But it is not the increasing number of leavers in the late 1960s that was the most important change. It was in discursive rather than social terms that the religious field changed most crucially. After the Second World War both major Churches hoped for comprehensive reChristianization, that is, that they would be in a position to give society a profoundly Christian cast. Of course, German society has never been entirely saturated by Christian beliefs and morality. The idea that it has

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was an ideal or bogeyman in the imaginations of those who believed it could benefit them politically or in other ways. Nonetheless, until the mid 1960s key areas of West German society were highly influenced by Christianity and its ideas of order and morality. Tellingly, there was little that was Christian or religious about the foundations of West Germany’s economic and political order. The construction of economic life and the welfare state, which both Churches still claim to have greatly contributed to – the key term here being social market economy – occurred with very little reference to the Churches’ ideas. Instead it was diverse issues of style and morality, cultural expression, public entertainment, art and culture that stood centre stage when it came to the nature of the relationship between Church, society and state. In these fields of individual and collective identity politics state efforts to impose order went hand in hand with religious convictions. Particularly with respect to family, marriage and sexuality and issues in education and upbringing this influence was remarkable. What was good and bad, what was becoming and what ought to be avoided, how to behave and what not to do – many of these norms were defined by the two major confessions, which aimed to make them binding not just on their own members but on society as a whole. This does not mean that these precepts were socially potent or put into practice. Particularly in the immediate postwar years, German society was far from realizing the ideal of the Christian family. But public discourse on areas where private lives overlapped with the public sphere was greatly influenced by the Churches. The roots of the vocabulary, forms, images and verbal images typically involved here lay in a repertoire moulded by Christianity and did much to shape, for example, the policies of the Adenauer government. At the margins, however, as early as the 1950s trends were emerging that then became palpable in the 1970s: the Christian Churches’ interpretive sovereignty was not only crumbling away in conversations over a beer down the local pub but in nurseries and school playgrounds and, above all, in the beds of married and unmarried couples. By the 1970s the omnipresence of Christian moral discourse was part of the past. Christianity was no longer a leading cultural force in German society either with respect to its own members’ conduct or in terms of its public activities.6 Many elements contributed to the end of the brief period in which the social mainstream, political power and Church precepts seemed to coincide. In the political sphere the end of the Adenauer era undid the alliance between Churches and government and the former had to forge new links with the CDU-SPD coalition and later with the

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SPD government under Willy Brandt. Affiliation to the Church as organization was less and less undergirded by political power or social pressure. And older motives such as ensuring one’s welfare through religiously supported networks or welfare institutions were becoming less important or losing all significance, because the secular welfare state had long since supplanted the religious communities in this regard. Much also changed within the Churches: there were more debates and more bones of contention. In the EKD, in particular, the common core of belief sometimes disappeared amid the cacophony of voices and disputes between left and right, progressives and traditionalists. The facade of consensus the Catholic Church presented to the world also crumbled away rapidly, leaving a wide array of (ecclesio-)political positions in its wake. Theologically, Vatican II did much to help open up the Church to the world and reinforced impulses for reform and change. But it was not the political, social or theological parameters that were decisive. The driving force of change was the conduct of numerous individuals, who no longer embraced the roles laid down by religion, no longer married only members of the same confession and now raised their children as they saw fit or as advised by a worldly pedagogy and many forms of advisory literature. They distanced themselves from the Churches, either quietly through a form of internal withdrawal or for all to see by leaving. Those who stayed made their own demands, which they addressed to Church leaders. Religion, the associated interpretations of the world and behavioural requirements were no longer accepted as givens but were instead discussed and negotiated. This attitude was part of a profound process captured only inadequately by the term individualization: the dissolution of traditional ties and the forms of security provided, for example, by national, ethnic and religious affiliations dovetailed with the fluidification and individualization of stable narratives and identities. The modern individual, as sociologist Anthony Giddens has set out in ideal typical terms, must create her or his identity independently and reflexively,7 calling into question any automatic, unreflecting commitment to a religious system or any other worldview. The formerly self-evident adoption of dogmas, rituals and moral conceptions, a system into which one was socialized from birth onwards, became the exception, while questioning things, the personal acquisition or rejection of tradition, became the rule: religiosity became one option among several. Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has done more than anyone to bring out the transformation associated with this. Society changed from a social context in which ‘it was virtually impossible not to believe in God,

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to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others’.8 In terms of intellectual history this option was recognized in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment but made a marginal impact on society as a whole. In the premodern era religious dissidence or active non-religiousness was the exception that proved the rule. But in the final third of the twentieth century this mode of thinking and behaving made a broad social breakthrough, eventually encompassing almost the entire religious field. What did the rise of this option mean? To put it in stark terms – were formerly enslaved individuals now breaking free from their chains, which, according to critics such as Karl Marx, included religion? Were they now free to choose and find their ‘true selves’? Carried away by the discourse of postmodernity, some have told this story of emancipation. But what this fails to acknowledge is how strongly the individual search for meaning is bound up with mental structures and their communication by the media. Human beings are not freer but merely move within different contexts and constraints. It is still markets, supply structures and language regimes that frame the religious offerings individuals may embrace or reject. Individualization neither makes individuals happier nor does it make them more authentic or reconciled to themselves. The opportunity to choose also forces people to choose. The ultimate outcome of this process is highly ambivalent. Of course, those who formerly felt oppressed by religion will experience a sense of liberation. Others, meanwhile, who express a diffuse longing for religion, are now less able to specify it semantically and have been deprived of a religious home. What became enduringly entrenched was the desire for selfdetermination, self-affirmation and self-realization. The individual and her or his own personality emerged as an important evaluative yardstick. People began to judge not just themselves but also their environment in light of the imperative of listening to one’s inner voice and attaining a state of harmony with oneself and the world. And they began to desire and demand authenticity as the golden key to fulfilment.9 The search for meaning turned inwards. As the leading providers of interpretation and religious meaning the Christian Churches were greatly affected by this development. Rules and traditions became questionable, while institutions had to submit to evaluation in light of the new criterion of credibility. The ‘sacred canopy’ (Peter Berger) no longer self-evidently encompassed the life of the individual but instead became subject to negotiation. At the same time knowledge of other religions and sources of meaning expanded: confessional boundaries had mostly fallen way and

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theological or dogmatic differences no longer played much of a role. Only in the wishful thinking of Church functionaries did Protestants and Catholics inhabit different mental worlds let alone lifeworlds. Knowledge of Asian religions and sources of meaning spread through the media, while the New Age and the associated practices of physical and psychological self-formation began their triumphant advance. The knowledge and awareness of religious pluralism grew at a time when affiliation to a religious community was receiving diminishing social and political reinforcement. This development was further stimulated by the fact that the major Christian confessions themselves were moving in the same direction. They were the products and promoters of a process in which the individual, his view of himself and his needs, were moving centre stage. This is evident in the change in the dominant imagery within the religious communities: rather than the believer firmly anchored in the institution and its rituals, it was the social type of the ‘seeker’ that the major Churches’ pastoral work increasingly addressed. Traditionally, preaching, religious practices and the intergenerational transmission of religion were vertical in orientation and hierarchical in organization. Heaven, understood here as a metaphor for a transcendent dimension, was the starting point and endpoint of the religious cosmos and the Scriptures revealed the will of God. Priests not only represented God on earth, but as experts they also interpreted the Scriptures and inducted the faithful into forms of life pleasing to God. The faithful behaved accordingly, directing their prayers to heaven. A great prize awaited them: eternal life and entry to heaven or, if they failed to behave in the right way, an eternity in hell. This system was selfcontained and ultimately exclusive: those who obeyed the rules belonged while everyone else would be denied salvation. Particularly within Catholicism, the Church as organization stylized itself as the only means of access to transcendence. Until the 1950s this model was the ideal type of religious life as it was supposed to be lived in the congregations and parishes. More than in other periods of Church history, in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century there was a successful synthesis between high religion, popular piety and everyday life. The fusion of these spheres distinguishes this period from today, when much of everyday life and most cultural, political and social assumptions are no longer affected by Christianity. The mode of religious communication has changed fundamentally: the Church member, the layperson or – to draw on the traditional symbolism of the Christian Churches – the sheep has become the client that the

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Church must win over and look after. In line with this, preaching and instruction have become pastoral care. The goal here is to help people cope with existential crises and generally help them develop as they proceed through life and – if all goes well from the Churches’ perspective – to enclose these processes within a religious frame. Again, an example brings out the shift from an exclusive to inclusive form of communication. ‘Church services in schools are like gingerbread’, declared a contributor to a religious education journal in 1991. Because pills were as yet unknown as a way of administering medicine, medieval monks mixed healing herbs and juices with a pleasant-tasting medicinal cake. Like gingerbread, the religious educator continued, Church services in schools are ‘baked’ by pious individuals and should ‘be good for’ everyone who participates in them. ‘They should taste good, give pleasure, console, heal wounds and bolster individuals’ capacity to cope with life’.10 This example demonstrates how pastoral practice is conceptualized in an inclusive fashion. In figurative terms the pastoral worker holds the world in an all-embracing hug, seeking to include as many people as possible, facilitating self-awareness and spiritual experience. While Church members have become much sought-after clients, the former shepherd has turned into the provider of spiritual services who must seek out members of the public, who now have their own ideas, ideally winning them over and turning them into loyal adherents.11 The opposing model is represented by the image of the shepherd who nourishes and cherishes the sheep but also, to shift perspective, controls and harasses them. The associated definition of Church members’ role, featuring clear behavioural requirements and rules, still exists within the official Church’s preaching and in theology – but it exercises a negligible influence on pastoral practice. The individual impact of this structural change – what believers make of it – can be captured only as a trend and takes a wide range of forms. For the majority of those in the traditional People’s Churches, however, consciously ‘individualized Church membership’ is neither common nor subjectively desirable. The ordinary Christian is mostly characterized by an unconscious background religiosity in which affiliation to a confessional community can be explained as much in light of a sense of home, emotional security and social adaptedness as with reference to a religious need. If these parameters melt away, as happened in the GDR through the establishment of the SED dictatorship and as was increasingly the case in West Germany from the late 1960s onwards, this loose arrangement tends to fall apart: people leave their Church because they no longer feel a sense of security, are disgruntled about the Church Tax or one of the many scandals or – when it comes to the former GDR –

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because it was politically opportune. The alternative is to remain in the Church, though this is often motivated more by habit or inertia rather than religious conviction. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the chain of intergenerational transmission breaks and the next generation within the family is no longer socialized into the traditional faith. No crystal ball is necessary to predict that one trend is very likely to continue: the erosion of currently existing forms of Church-based religiosity. In eastern Germany, attempts to roll back developments that began under the GDR and establish the structures of a People’s Church will not succeed. What is left of the People’s Church in western Germany will continue to dissolve, very likely at a faster rate. Entirely profane factors such as demographic developments and the resulting decline in Church Tax revenue are further fuelling this development. The Catholic Church is also struggling with an enormous lack of priests. In recent decades the Churches have had to start dismantling pastorates, consolidating parishes, withdrawing from society. For those interested in religion and those actively seeking religious meaning, this structural change has meant becoming far more self-sufficient than before, as the individual aspiration to religious authenticity has become entwined with the fluidification of religious dogmas and beliefs in the Churches. The German People’s Churches have thus developed into highly plural organizations. Of course, even in the past the Churches were never as uniform as Church leaders would have liked. Now, however, diversity has moved into the foreground. Very different styles of piety and forms of faith exist alongside one another within the religious communities: the pious Catholic and Protestant have been joined by the casual Christian, who generally attends Mass only at Christmas and Easter and remains in the Church chiefly for fear of missing out on a Christian burial; the rosary-reciting member of the Legio Mariae has been joined by the Secret Heart Catholic, who sees his fulfilment in the practice of neighbourly love; the traditional Lutheran has been joined by the Protestant member of the Green Party (Die Grünen), who campaigns for the preservation of Creation and the strengthening of grass-roots democracy in Germany. In the Churches, in addition to rituals and the order of worship, it is primarily lifestyle issues that spark off debates between the different groups. Demands that the Church as institution be credible and authentic have become central to the expectations of engaged members. The discrepancy between these high aspirations and Church practice weighs heavily on the religious communities because it increases the potential for internal conflict and upheaval. A question illustrates the conflict between inclusionary practices and exclusionary rules. Is it

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acceptable for a divorced, remarried Catholic to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion? At the World Meeting of Families held in Milan in June 2012, Pope Benedict XVI referred to the conflicts associated with this topic as ‘one of the great sufferings of today’s Church’ while resolutely refusing to endorse the above practice – at least in theory. This stance becomes dubious if even Church leaders frequently break their own rules. At a private audience granted by the Pope on the occasion of his eighty-fifth birthday to Horst Seehofer, Bavarian minister-president, the politician, who is on his second marriage, knelt and received communion from the Pope himself. The head of the Catholic Church thus acted as the majority of Catholic priests would probably have done. What priest enquires into communicants’ marital status before distributing the host or turns away when confronted with a remarried person? But if not a simple village priest but the Pope himself violates his own precepts, what does this mean for the demands of the Church as organization? 12 Against this background it is very difficult to give religious reasons for refusing to administer this sacrament to less prominent remarried divorcees. The Church-backed publisher Weltbild, which makes some of its money out of erotic literature; members of the younger generation of bishops who seek to cut a lavish figure, with luxury cars and private chapels; and above all else, the Church’s internal and public approach to the sexual abuse committed by some clergy, a terrible blow to the Catholic Church’s self-image – disputes over these and other issues revolve around the Church’s aspiration to credibility and are a heavy internal burden. While in earlier years and decades the associated critique was brushed aside as mere rebelliousness on the Church’s left flank, it has now become widespread. A recent example is the overview provided by former Italian archbishop and influential cardinal Carlo Maria Martini. ‘Our churches are large and empty, our bureaucracy grows ever larger, our customs are puffed up and our vestments pompous’, according to Martini – viewed as a possible candidate for Pope in 2005 – shortly before his death. Contraception, the place of women within the Church, the approach to remarried divorcees: his critical agenda reflects the Church’s internal history of conflict over the past forty years.13 Protestantism, meanwhile, currently appears better prepared to deal with its own pluralization. This is partly because recognition and affirmation of religious individualism was a basic impulse of the Reformation, so criticism of the Church as institution is primordially Protestant. The decade of reform launched in 2007 aims to achieve a ‘Church of Freedom’, breathing new life into the Protestant Church in

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the run-up to 2017, the 500th anniversary of Luther’s theses-posting in Wittenberg.14 There has in fact been a certain amount of movement on the level of Church committees and draft papers. But their strikingly economistic language has come in for criticism as it has fuelled fears that the regional Churches and the congregations are to be run like businesses. There is also anxiety about the increasing centralization of Protestantism. The Protestant Church has settled many of the issues most contested in Catholic circles in favour of a liberal solution, but the ordination of women, pastors’ taken-for-granted right to marry and the admission of remarried divorcees have not halted the Church’s decline. Instead a conservative Protestant critique has emerged that condemns the loss of religious substance and what it sees as excessive efforts to adapt to the zeitgeist.15 What is clear is that mediating between unity and diversity will be one of the most important tasks facing both major Churches in future. If they wish to avoid degenerating into marginal, socially insignificant groups, little gatherings of the upright, they will have to see themselves as broad Churches that permit varying degrees of engagement and a range of religious styles. They will have to avoid putting off those who wish to live their faith in a traditional way, opening up spaces of freedom and participatory options for the engaged and the spiritual seekers while attempting to retain their appeal for those who use pastoral services and seek to satisfy their spiritual needs on an occasional basis. From the perspective of the traditional Church practices of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this often means trying to square a circle. Christian ways of life seem to be particularly successful in the world when they manage to integrate themselves into society, link their own foci with other social issues, and make contact with nonreligious social groups while maintaining their profile through their concern with transcendence. At present this seems to be happening only in a few very small groups. Examples include the convergence of Christian efforts to preserve Creation with the ecological movement and the Christian advocacy of peace, which is linked with anti-war initiatives in civil society. Generally, however, the conditions are poor for any renewed, broad social embedding of Christianity or fundamental internal reforms: the Churches’ decline and internal fragmentation and the broad disappearance of their social anchorage permit no positive prognosis for the future of the People’s Churches. What does the process of secularization outlined above mean for the religious field as a whole? If we consider the different religious communities to be competitors for the attention of those with an interest in transcendence it makes sense to assume that the religious field will

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become increasingly plural and that other religious communities will grow in strength. But what we observe in many countries and especially in the United States seems to be happening only on a very modest scale in Germany. Religion outside the Churches remains relatively weak. The Catholic and Protestant Churches are so heavily institutionalized that there would appear to be very little space for other religious communities. Even those who are religiously or spiritually active outside of institutions ultimately draw many of their symbols and much of their language from the Christian inventory. But appropriation is also occurring in the other direction: Asian meditation techniques, Zen Buddhism, expressive dance – many practices drawn from other religions or of other provenance have been absorbed into a nebulous form of Christianity. The price is a growing freedom from obligation and an arbitrariness, which have provoked internal resistance. Karl Gabriel has aptly described the contemporary state of religious practice in western Germany as ‘asymmetric religious pluralism’: a religious field that is in sharp decline and becoming more plural continues to be heavily influenced by the major Churches.16 If we look at Germany as a whole then both factors – pluralism and asymmetry – are even more apparent and take on emphatically political overtones: four million Muslims, whose religion is of course part of present-day Germany, have radically changed things. Through reunification in 1990, meanwhile, the lack of religion in the east reinforced trends in the west so that now a third of Germans are no longer religiously committed. This observation points up a striking asymmetry. The fact that the major confessions in both western Germany and the generally de-Christianized ‘new states’ are virtually the only religious institutions and continue to dominate the religious field is due less to the appeal of Christian beliefs than to their state and institutional support. In the wake of reunification the political sphere self-evidently drew on the ecclesio-political toolkit of the old West Germany to regulate the relationship between state, society and religion. It is not only with respect to reunification that the politics of religion in Germany has shown itself to consist chiefly in administering the status quo. Efforts are typically made to incorporate occasional disruptive factors into the existing nexus of state, society and religious communities while doing nothing to change the essentially cooperative relationship between state and Christian Churches. This dilatory conduct stands in sharp contrast to the transformation of religious conditions. Things have changed profoundly in both western and eastern Germany since the 1950s, when religion could still be equated

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with the Christian Churches, and the erosion and pluralization of the religious field described for the period since 1945 seem set to intensify. Our historical retrospective has dire implications for the future, for at least two reasons. Overall, it seems, the German political sphere and German society underestimate the challenges thrown up by the pluralization of religion. In light of developments so far it would be illusory to believe that state and society could behave in a religiously abstinent and thus ‘neutral’ way in the religiously plural future. In many ways the roots of such thinking, which sees religion as an entirely private matter, lie in the fantasies of secularization that emerged in the twentieth century. State and civil society will have to do more to actively address the reality of a religiously pluralizing society as religious conflicts mount and become more multifaceted. The clumsiness shown by a range of actors in the debate on circumcision among Jewish and Muslim boys indicates how poorly prepared society and politics are for this task. The new realities require not just a more active but also a different religious politics. The pluralization of the religious field fundamentally challenges the self-sufficiency with which the ‘halting separation’ of state and Christian Churches has been practised. In Germany there is a particularly pronounced connection between state and society on the one hand and the two major Christian confessions on the other and in the past both sides benefited from this; in some ways it remains advantageous to both parties. From a political perspective, the Churches were not just neatly incorporated into the societal system and thus unproblematic but also proved effective upholders of the moral underpinnings of the Bonn Republic. From the perspective of the Churches it is the many privileges and concessions that made and continue to make this set-up attractive: state-guaranteed religious education and the Church Tax system, among other things, helped preserve the People’s Churches despite their crumbling grass roots. Critics within the Church, however, might wonder whether too much adjustment and adaptation to the state and administrative framework – including some office holders’ overemphasis on their own material welfare – has faded the inspirational dimensions of the Christian message. In German Catholicism this debate has recently received new stimulus from an unexpected direction. During a visit to Germany in 2011 Pope Benedict XVI called for the Church to become ‘detached from the world’, enabling the ‘Church’s missionary witness’ to come to the fore. ‘The Church, when freed from material burdens and privileges, is better able to address the world in a truly Christian way, to be truly open to the world’. ‘Instances of secularization’ such

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as the ‘expropriation of Church property, … the abolition of privileges and so on’ help the Church refocus on its roots and mission.17 There has been much speculation over what Benedict may have meant by this. The German Catholic hierarchy has sought to ascribe these remarks solely to Benedict’s theology, assuming that Joseph Ratzinger had not mentioned these beliefs during his many years as a theology professor and Catholic dignitary. In a vain attempt to defuse the debate, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, chair of the German Bishops’ Conference, explained that the Pope had neither called for the Church to withdraw into secluded self-sufficiency nor for the abolition of the Churches’ special legal status in Germany. Before long the range of interpretations reflected the entire spectrum of ecclesio-political and theological positions within Catholicism. Regardless of what the Pope actually meant by his comments, what is most striking is how quickly and inconsequentially even this discursive impulse petered out through the rituals of Catholic introspection.18 For state and society, growing religious pluralism means that ‘business as usual’ is not an option when it comes to the privileged position of the Protestant and Catholic Churches – if this means ignoring other religious communities and the concerns of the non-religious. State policies on religion can improve on their past performance by treating the religious communities equally and thus justly. At present this is mainly an issue for Islam in Germany. It is not just in media reports, which frequently present it as a foreign threat associated with jihadism, that Islam finds itself hitting a glass ceiling. Catholic and Protestant representatives not only sit on the radio and TV governing bodies but also provide politicians with advice as ‘sect experts’, helping them evaluate other religions. In a fundamental sense, then, German religious politics preserve the influence of the Christian Churches, placing them in a stronger position than, for example, Islam, and forgetting that while Christianity is certainly the personal confession of many citizens it is not the German state religion. The German state has at last begun to think about eliminating the ‘halting separation’ of state and Christian Churches by granting the same opportunities to those of other faiths and – another key task – considering the growing group of the non-religious. At present, religious politics are tailored to the two major Churches through constitutional regulations and state-Church treaties. The common legal instrument of the statutory body, through which politics and society integrate these special institutions into public life, is an obstacle for Islam, one that is virtually impossible for it to overcome both theologically and organizationally. The first regular Islamic religious

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education in Germany, which has begun in North Rhine-Westphalia, the treaty between the city-state of Hamburg and the Muslim community and the establishment of three centres of Islamic theology at German universities are the first steps towards the political equality of the religious communities. Equal treatment of the religious communities is vital if state and legislature are to provide them with a framework for their activities in society.19 The crucial proviso here is that religions must accept the modern, secular, constitutional state, which can neither tolerate any religiously based right of mandate or veto nor accept any divine law that imagines itself outside, let alone above, worldly legislative authority. Religion, in other words, can flourish only within the framework of the constitutional state, which in the German case has enshrined religious freedom, stipulating that it can be limited only by the claims of other values with constitutional status. The liberal society of the Federal Republic, moreover, offers religious groups every opportunity not only to live their religion but also to promote their views within civil society. These conditions should make it easy for the religious communities to recognize the institutional framework of the state. For the religious communities, toleration and recognition of the state is not a matter of course; it requires them to adapt. This is not just a problem for Islam but ultimately affects every religion. Within Catholicism, for example, the foundations for such adaptation were laid only through Vatican II. At present it is mainly in Muslim countries that we see disputes over the detachment of the state from a religious foundation. The great majority of Muslims living in Germany and their associations, however, accept the German constitutional state and its underpinnings without qualification. If the state is fundamentally equidistant from all religious communities and the rights of the non-religious are guaranteed, there is no reason why the relationship between state and religions cannot be a cooperative one. The close connection between Catholicism and Protestantism in West German society in the 1950s and 1960s was fruitful for both parties. If this utility is to persist then state, society and the religious communities will have to commit to ensuring that the latter, rather than sealing themselves off, maintain dialogue with society and one another. This places a responsibility on religions to foster peaceful coexistence within a plural society, which in turn presupposes a capacity and willingness to sustain the encounter with other religions and deal productively with religious pluralism and the associated irritations and insecurities. This is evident with respect to the controversial cartoons depicting religious figures such as Jesus and

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Muhammad: those unable to laugh at themselves and their religion are not compelled to do so but they will have to put up with it when others do – as long as this does not amount to blasphemy as legally defined. This statement is not necessarily directed at, let alone against, Islam: in the early period of modernity the Catholic Church responded to the challenge of pluralization by sealing itself off in its own lifeworld. Only after lengthy learning processes did it become more open again. The process of interreligious dialogue is not simple either: how difficult it is to recognize a neighbouring religion – not as ‘the same’ but as enjoying equal standing – is evident simply by looking at the initially faltering efforts at ecumenicalism among Catholics and Protestants in Germany, which have essentially ground to a halt. Despite all the intellectual and practical problems, forging a productive relationship between the religious communities and society is well worth the effort. It is impossible to imagine Germany today without the major Christian Churches, the other world religions and the smaller religious communities, which not only provide their members with a religious home but make important contributions to civil society. Their interventions stimulate the polity to discuss its ethical foundations and thus help it understand itself better. But every religious community must do this in the awareness that it is one voice among many and can make no exclusive claims that go beyond the power of argument and political mobilization. Throughout history the Christian Churches have been key protagonists in debates on moral values, but they have no monopoly in this field. Many values, such as equality between women and men, the recognition and protection of children’s rights and even the democratic foundation of our politics can be justified on a religious basis. But to a large degree they have been implemented socially and politically by other movements and forces. If they wish to contribute productively to society’s evolving selfimage, the religious communities must resist the temptation to lapse into limiting fundamentalist forms. They must become self-reflexive religions featuring a high degree of openness and great capacity for dialogue with both society and other religions. This is their best chance of helping to meet human beings’ multifarious religious needs and continuing to contribute to the cohesion and character of society.

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Notes See Hockerts, ‘Zeitgeschichte in Deutschland’. Figures in Graf, ‘Der eine Gott’, 4. See Toft et al., God’s Century. See Davie, Europe: The Exceptional Case. See Brown, The Death of Christian Britain. From an intellectual perspective it is easy to agree with Hans Joas that sexual morality provides no challenge to Christian teaching and that it must ‘glean all its principles from the ethos of love’. Joas, Faith as an Option, 135. But I think this is to underestimate the explosive force of this topic in people’s lives.   7. For the essentials, see Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity.  8. Taylor, A Secular Age, 3.   9. See Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity; Saupe, ‘Authentizität’. 10. Rupp, ‘Schulgottesdienste’, 157. 11. See Hellemans, ‘Transformation der Religion’, 19. 12. Boenke, ‘Seehofer schweigt sich über verbotene Kommunion aus’. 13. ‘Die Abrechnung des Kardinal Carlo Martini’. 14. Rat der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland, ‘Kirche der Freiheit’. 15. For an outline sketch of recent debates within Protestantism, see Graf, Kirchendämmerung. 16. Gabriel, ‘The Churches in Western Germany’, 118. 17. Pope Benedict XVI, ‘Die Entweltlichung der Kirche’. 18. For an outline of the debate within the Church, see Erbacher, Entweltlichung der Kirche? 19. As set out by Habermas, ‘Faith and Knowledge’, 329.

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  1.   2.   3.   4.   5.   6.

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Published Sources Abdullah, M. ‘Religion im Hinterhof. Der Islam in der Bundesrepublik’, in A. Buchholz (ed.), Im Namen Allahs. Der Islam – eine Religion im Aufbruch? Beiträge zu Geschichte, Gegenwart und politischen Perspektiven eines neuen Herrschaftsanspruchs, Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1980, 129–40. ———. 1984. Halbmond unter dem Preußenadler. Die Geschichte der islamischen Gemeinde in Preußen (1731–1934), Altenberge: Verlag für ChristlichIslamisches Schrifttum. ———. ‘Der Islam will in Deutschland heimisch werden’, in J.Micksch (ed.), Deutschland – Einheit in kultureller Vielfalt, Frankfurt: O. Lembeck, 1991, 106–18. Akten deutscher Bischöfe über die Lage der Kirche 1933–1945, Vol. 6, 1943–1945, Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald, 1985. Albrecht, D. (ed.). 1983. Politik und Konfession. Festschrift für Konrad Repgen zum 60. Geburtstag, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Allerbeck, K. and L. Rosenmayr. 1976. Einführung in die Jugendsoziologie. Theorien, Methoden und empirische Materialien, Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer. Almond, G. and S. Verba. 1989. The Civic Culture. Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations, Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Arbeitskreis für kirchliche Zeitgeschichte. 1993. ‘Katholiken zwischen Tradition und Moderne. Das katholische Milieu als Forschungsaufgabe’, Westfälische Forschungen 43, 588–654. Archiv der Gegenwart 1965, Königswinter: Siegler, 1966. Arens, H. 2010. Der unvollendete Aufbruch. Die Wirkungen des Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils (1962– 1965) auf das Leben des Bistums Aachen (1962–2008), Aachen: Einhard. Aries, W.A. 1997. ‘Islamische Kirchenlosigkeit und ihre Integration in einer kirchengeprägten Gesellschaft’, Moslemische Revue, 46–53. Aring, P.G. 1987. Christen und Juden heute, und die »Judenmission«? Geschichte und Theologie protestantischer Judenmission in Deutschland, dargestellt und

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Index Aachen, 231, 234, 279 abortion, 13, 32, 36, 38, 71, 126, 143, 145–50 Abraham Geiger College Potsdam, 253 absolutist conception, 170 Academy of Jewish studies Heidelberg, 253 acies bene ordinata, 90–91 Action Reconciliation Service for Peace, 255 Adenauer, Konrad, 10, 13, 21, 24, 34, 43, 56–58, 61–68, 72–73, 99, 115, 117, 124, 134, 142, 248, 294 administration of the sacraments, 177, 275 admission of married men/women to the priesthood, 279 of remarried divorcees to the Protestant Church, 301 to Islam 237 to the Catholic Church, 95 to the Protestant Pastoral Youth, 95 aggiornamento, 169, 179 Albertz, Heinrich, 69 All German People’s Party, 56, 59, 64, 69, 70 Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research, 31, 111 Allied Control Council, 81 Allied policy, 84–85 Allies, 43–45, 56, 61, 81, 84–85, 94, 183, 211 Alternative Service, 138–39, 267 Altötting, 114 Anti-Imperialist League, 156 anti-Semitism, 248–49, 253–55 Arndt, Adolf, 70 Arndt, Claus, 149 Arnoldshain Academy, 187

Aryan paragraphs, 47, 83 Association of Islamic Cultural Centres, 237 Association of the Merkez Mosque, 230 astrology, 203, 216, 220, 287 Aufderbeck, Hugo (Bishop), 272 Augsburg, 128, 186 Augstein, Rudolf, 212, 214 Auschwitz, 192, 253, 255 Baader, Dietmar, 176 baby boom, 103, 215 Bad Boll, 185, 287 Baeck, Leo, 247 Bamberg, 78, 128, 140, 183 baptismal certificate Christians, 25, 109 Barmen Theological Declaration, 48, 88, 161 Barth, Karl, 48–49, 85–86 Bartsch, Hans-Werner, 159 Barzel, Rainer, 91 Basic Law, 45, 51–52, 62–63, 73, 138, 235, 239, 281 Bäumer, Rudolf, 160 Bavarian Broadcasting Company, 137 Beck, Ulrich, 112, 128 Beckmann, Joachim, 194 Benedict XVI (Pope), 180, 255, 300, 303 Bengsch, Alfred (Bishop), 270, 272 Berger, Peter, 296 Berger, Senta, 145 Bergmann, Gerhard, 183 Berlin, 72, 103, 142, 152, 154–56, 181, 186, 204, 231–32, 241, 245, 250, 254, 269, 270, 272 Bethel Group, 160 Bible, 10–11, 72, 79, 85–86, 94, 153, 155, 159, 162–163, 173, 212, 278

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Biblical truth, 18, 80 Bielefeld, 156 Birthler, Marianne, 261 Bishops’ Conference, 27, 45–46, 63, 90, 107, 122–23, 136, 143–44, 150, 178, 272, 279, 304 Bochum, 155 Böckenförde, Ernst-Wolfgang, 144 Böckle, Franz, 144 Boff, Leonardo, 195 Böhler, Wilhelm, 45, 62–63 Böll, Heinrich, 194 Bolshevism, 65 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 19, 46–48, 88, 192–93 Bonn constitution, 55 Bonn, 55, 135, 155, 204, 303 Boos-Nünning, Ursula, 108 Bornkamm, Heinrich, 58 Bourdieu, Pierre, 219 Boventer, Hermann, 38 Boy Scouts, 37, 94, 96 Brandt, Willy, 70, 134, 138, 142–43, 295 Braun, Herbert, 160 Brecht, Berthold, 159 Breinfeld, Klaus, 116 Breitbrunn am Ammersee, 128 Brown, Callum, 260, 293 Bruce, Steve, 246 Bucerius, Gerd, 213 Buddhists, 106, 203, 228, 240 Bultmann, Rudolf, 159, 160, 162, 192 Bundesrat, 134 Bundestag, 57, 60–61, 63, 65, 68–71, 143, 145, 147, 149, 213, 245 Bündische Jugend, 37, 93 Burckhardthaus Association, 96 Burgauer, Erica, 249 Camara, Helder, 195 Caritasverband, 280–82 catechism, 36, 80, 111, 123, 176, 178, 283 Catholic Action, 90, 94, 136 Catholic educational deficit, 140 Catholic Employees´ Movement, 70

Catholic German Students´ Union (Katholische Deutsche Studenten-Einigung, KDSE), 154–55 Catholic News Agency, 110 Catholic Office, 135, 169 Catholic Protest Conference, 152, 183 Catholic schools, 27, 62 Catholic student congregation (Katholische Studierendengemeinde, KSG), 153–54, 156–57 Catholic students, 91, 114, 119 Catholic Workers Movement (Katholische ArbeitnehmerBewegung, KAB), 143–44 Catholic Youth Community, 93 Celle, 278 Central Committee of German Catholics, 61, 71, 120, 122, 181–82 Central Council of Jews in Germany, 250–52, 282 Central Council of Muslims in Germany (Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland, ZMD), 237 centralization policy, 93 Centre Party, 9, 27–28, 44, 59, 61–65, 70, 91, 181 Chirac, Jaques, 158 Christian burial, 221, 299 Christian Democratic Union (Christlich Demokratische Union, CDU), 48–49, 51, 59–69, 73, 99–100, 115, 117, 127, 134, 139, 141–42, 144–45, 149, 213, 242 Christian Social Union (Christlich Soziale Union, CSU), 60, 66, 68– 69, 100, 117, 127, 139, 145, 242 Christian society, 30, 110, 149, 203, 233 Christian worldview, 6, 60, 63, 66, 68 Christian-Islamic dialogue, 245–46 Church academies, 180, 185, 221, 287

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Index • 339

attendance, 21, 24, 26, 100, 107, 118, 129, 168, 221, 223, 293 crisis, 105, 177, 198, 205, 211, 213 dogmatics, 170 hierarchy, 17, 39, 44, 71, 89–90, 93, 97, 123, 179, 195, 271–72, 283 leadership, 18, 54, 62, 82, 89, 93, 98, 149, 152, 155–56, 162–63, 172, 208, 264, 269, 272 life, 21, 23, 48, 95, 105, 170, 176–77, 185, 265 marriage, 32, 126, 196 religiosity, based on, 24, 26, 187, 273, 299 struggle, 86, 88, 96, 100, 149, 159, 162 Tax, 24, 45, 52–54, 73, 99, 138, 162, 209, 224, 263, 283, 298–99, 303 within socialism, 268 churching, 89 churchization of Islam, 237 circumcision, 255–56, 303 Codex Iuris Canonici, 169 Cold War, 66, 115, 139, 141, 195 Cologne Church Conference, 159 Cologne, 27, 45, 54, 61–64, 79, 91, 123, 146, 159, 180, 182, 194, 232, 234, 247, 270 coming of age, 225, 263–66, 285 communism, 65–67, 72, 115, 141, 272 Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, KPD), 68 Confederation of Free Worldview Communities, 225 Conference of Confessing Communities in Germany, 161 Conference of Evangelical Mission, 163 Conference of Schleswig-Holstein State Youth Pastors, 95 Conference under the Word, 162, 182 Confessing Church, 19, 47–50, 69, 83, 85–86, 94, 100, 161, 183, 194 confessional communities, 29, 47, 106, 187, 264 confessional identity, 64, 117, 178, 281

confessional movement, 158–59, 160–62 confessional religious instruction in schools, 45 confessional school, 51, 62–64, 70, 74, 140, 141, 196 confession-free, 207–208 confirmation, 150, 221, 264–66, 285 consumer society, 25, 103 Coordinating Council of Muslims, 237 Cornehl, Peter, 194 Corpus Christi processions, 118 Councils of Brethren, 19, 48–50, 64, 73, 86, 88–89, 100, 254 critique of the age, 134 cultural defence, 246 cultural revolution, 21, 98 Cultural Struggle, 22, 28, 44, 148 Damberg, Wilhelm, 177 Darmstadt Statement, 69, 84, 254 David, Jakob, 167–68 Davie, Grace, 8 de-Christianization, 80, 259 dechurching, 6, 106, 150, 192–93, 195–96, 205, 209–210, 215, 220–21, 243, 259, 260, 270–71, 273, 292–93 Defence Ministry, 58 Dehler, Thomas, 58, 69 de-ideologization, 70–71 democratization, 56, 135, 175, 178, 213, 287 demographic change, 104, 209, 280 demythologization, 151, 159, 162 denazification, 23, 81–82, 84–85 Denzler, Georg, 128 detached youth, 90 Diakonisches Werk, 280–82 diaspora Catholic, 269, 271–72 Jewish, 253 Muslim, 235, 239 Protestant, 269 Dibelius, Otto, 87 Dietzfelbinger, Hermann, 146, 148–49

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Dirks, Walter, 10, 66, 70 discrimination, 194, 240, 255, 262, 270 divorce law, 125, 146 Donaueschingen, 176 Donum Vitae, 150, 184 Döpfner, Julius (Cardinal), 57, 143, 148–49 Dortmund, 95, 158–59, 160, 182, 186 Drenkmann, Günther von, 156 Dresden, 273 Drewermann, Eugen, 279 Düsseldorf Declaration, 161 Düsseldorf, 161, 184 Dutch Catholicism, 178 Dutschke, Rudi, 152 Dylan, Bob, 103 Eastern Europe immigrants, 20, 228 anti-Semitic campaigns 247 Eastern memorandum, 160 Ebertz, Michael, 4, 29, 175, 190 economic miracle, 25, 99, 103, 133, 197 ecumenicalism, 128, 162, 306 Edgell, Penny, 129 Ehler, Johanna, 115 Ehlers, Hermann, 65 Eisenach, 88 ekklesia semper reformanda, 88 Ellwein, Thomas, 58 Ellwood, Robert, 215 Elsner, Franz-Maria, 119 emancipation, 31, 141, 148, 187, 277, 296 Emergency Association of Protestant Germans, 160 emigration, 247, 249, 261 enforced conformity, 19, 47, 87–88, 137, 262 Eppelmann, Rainer, 261, 269 Eppler, Erhard, 70 Erfurt, 269, 272 Erhard, Ludwig, 103, 133 Erlangen, 80

erosion of religiosity, 28, 95, 100, 114–15, 177, 187, 196, 209, 259, 287, 299, 303 esoteric practices and discourses 3, 87, 217–18, 220 Espelkamp, 138 Essen, 29, 39, 117, 119–22, 151, 178, 183, 194, 230, 279 Eucharist, 29, 174, 275 Evangelical Lutheran Church, 89 exegesis, 86, 116, 155, 159, 161, 173, 283 Farthmann, Friedhelm, 70 Faulhaber, Michael (Cardinal), 26 Federal Administrative Court, 238 Federal Constitutional Court, 145, 150 Federal Employment Office, 231 Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, 228 Federal Statistic Office, 207 Federal Youth Festival, 95 Federal Youth Plan, 97 Federation of Free Religious Communities, 225 Federation of Welfare Associations, 280 Feiereis, Konrad, 259 ‘Fight Nuclear Death’ campaign, 73 Filbinger, Hans, 250 financial crisis, 54 First Vatican Council, 170 Fischer, Erwin, 136 formierte Gesellschaft, 133–34 Frankfurt am Main, 26, 66, 103, 120, 155–56 Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei, FDP), 62, 68–69, 136–38, 145, 242 Freiburg, 143, 155, 176 Friedeburg, Ludwig von, 34–35 Frings, Joseph (Cardinal), 27, 45, 54, 62–64, 79, 123, 194 Fuchs, Ernst, 160 Fulda, 45 Fürstenberg, Franz von (General Vicar), 275

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Gabriel, Karl, 105, 280, 302 Gagnebet, Rosario, 121 Galen, Clemens August von (Bishop), 18, 20, 61 Galinski, Heinz, 250 Galli, Mario von, 151 Gamillscheg, Felix, 176 Garmisch-Partenkirchen, 248 Gauck, Joachim, 3, 68, 261 Gaudium et Spes, 124, 172, 272 Gaulle, Charles de, 158 gender roles, 25, 30–31, 33, 79, 104, 126–27, 284 generation shift, 97, 158, 253, 257 German Catholic Conference, 39, 72, 117, 119, 120–22, 140, 143, 151, 180–86, 194, 270, 287–88 German Catholic Youth/Catholic Youth League (Bund Deutscher Katholischer Jugend, BDKJ), 37, 93, 154 German Christian movement, 83 German Christians (Deutsche Christen, DC), 18–19, 47, 83, 87–88, 195 German Coming of Age Association, 225 German Empire, 9, 22, 28, 44, 46, 87, 133 German Judaism, 249, 253 German Protestant Church Conference (Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag, DEKT), 146, 162, 180–81, 183–84 German question, 58 German Red Cross, 280 German reunification, 50, 58, 73, 207–9, 223, 259–61, 269, 286, 302 Geschke, Günther, 183 Giddens, Anthony, 295 Godesberg programme, 70–71, 142 ‘God is dead’ theology, 187, 192–93, 195, 196 Goebbels, Joseph, 32 Gogarten, Friedrich, 210 Gogh, Theo van, 241 Gollwitzer, Helmut, 193

Gospel, 48, 54, 69, 72, 80, 97, 153, 158, 160–61, 168, 183, 187, 255, 265, 267, 272, 275, 277 Göttingen sermon meditations, 86 Göttingen, 69, 86, 153–55 Graf, Friedrich Wilhelm, 8, 77, 222 Graham, Billy, 160 grass-roots Church, 50 Graumann, Dieter, 251 Gravissimum educationis, 140 Greeley, Andrew M., 39 Green Party, 136, 299 Greschat, Martin, 105 Gross, Peter, 113 Grossmann, Thomas, 183 Grün, Anselm, 3 Gründel, Johannes, 38, 122 guest workers, 232, 241 Gundlach, Gustav, 18 Habermas, Jürgen, 205, 253 Hahn, Wilhelm, 65 Halsband, Elmar, 153 halting separation of Church and State, 51–52, 55, 99, 136, 239, 303–304 Hamburg, 154–56, 186, 231–32, 234, 305 Hamel, Johannes, 267 Hannig, Nicolai, 211 Hanover, 80, 47, 49 Häring, Bernhard, 32 Harrison, George, 216 Hauschild, Wolf-Dieter, 54, 151, 158 Havemann, Robert, 269 Hegel, Georg Friedrich, 192 Heidelberg, 58, 182–83 Heiligenstadt, 272 Heinemann, Gustav, 56, 59, 66, 70, 73, 142 Hengsbach, Franz (Bishop), 120–21 hereafter, 11–12, 188, 190–91, 214 Hertel, Peter, 117 Hindus, 203, 228, 240 Hitler, Adolf, 19, 44–45, 47, 82, 91, 249, 252 Hobsbawm, Eric, 104 Höffner, Josef (Cardinal), 146

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Holy Spirit, 121, 161 household year, 37 housewife marriage, 33 human rights, 224, 240, 245, 268 Humanae Vitae, 39, 120–21, 123–24, 147, 169, 178 Humanist Association of Germany, 225 Humanist Union (Humanistische Union, HU), 136–37 Hundhammer, Aloys, 137 Hunt, Stephen, 284 immanence, 8, 10, 113, 168, 170, 188, 190–91, 193 immigration, 26, 144, 229, 231–33, 241–42, 244, 250–51, 253–54, 261 individual religiosity, 25, 116, 210–11, 214 individualization, 31, 91, 111–14, 119, 178, 199, 205, 213–14, 245, 271, 287, 295–96 Information Service of the Protestant Alliance, 162 institution of salvation, 48, 88 International League of Nonreligious and Atheists, 225 Isenstedt-Frotheim, 95 Islam/Islamic, 4–5, 55–56, 204, 228, 230–46, 253, 255, 292, 304–6 Islamic Council of the Federal Republic of Germany (Islamrat für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, IR), 237 Israel, 248–49, 252 Iwand, Hans-Joachim, 69, 86 Jedin, Hubert, 176 Jehovah, 2, 238 Jesuit Order, 96 Jewish community, 20, 228, 246, 250–51 Jews, 15, 20, 47, 106, 203, 228, 240, 247–56 Jihadist terror, 236, 245 John XVIII (Pope), 96, 124, 167, 169, 170

Kamphaus, Franz (Bishop), 176 Karl, Heidi, 37 Käsemann, Ernst, 160 Käßmann, Margot, 3 Kath, Hans, 115 Keil, Siegfried, 125 Keleman, Stanley, 217 Keller, Michael (Bishop), 63–64, 70, 275 Khomeini, Ruhollah Musavi (Ayatollah), 239 Kierkegaard, Søren, 192 ‘kingship of Jesus Christ’ model, 48 Klein, Günther, 159–60 Klemperer, Victor, 87 Klens, Hermann, 94 Knell, Elizabeth, 118 Knoblauch, Hubert, 219 Knobloch, Charlotte, 251 Kogon, Eugen, 70 Kohl, Helmut, 144, 158 Kolping Association, 89, 143 Königstein Declaration, 122 Korea boom, 133 Kornatzki, Jürgen von, 212 Kraemer, Konrad W., 110 Kraft-Sullivan, Gloria, 249 Krone, Heinrich, 43 Küng, Hans, 118, 214 Künneth, Walter, 49, 80, 160, 183 Kunst, Hermann, 147 labour movement, 29, 69–70, 138, 224, 263 laicization, 27 Lang, Klaus, 154 Lauda, Andreas Nikolaus (Niki), 282 Law for Liberation from National Socialism and Militarism, 81, 85 Lawetzki, Romanus, 154 lay piety, 191, 222 leading culture, 30, 61 Leber, Georg, 71, 117, 143 Lefebvre, Marcel, 177 Leggewie, Claus, 236, 238 Lehmann, Karl (Cardinal), 255, 276 Leipzig, 180, 269 Lemmer, Ernst, 141

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Lennon, John, 216 liberalization, 73, 125, 135, 143 liberation theology, 195–96, 217 lifestyle revolution, 104, 112, 198, 284 Lilje, Hanns (Bishop), 58 Limburg, 54, 176, 282 Lingen, 186 liturgy, 89, 167, 173, 176–77, 254–55, 288 lived faith, 21, 31, 78, 209–10 lived piety, 26, 171, 182 Liverpool, 215 Lorey, Elmar Maria, 110 Los Angeles, 292 Löwenstein, Karl Fürst zu, 182 Luchtenberg, Paul, 69 Luckmann, Thomas, 284–85 Lüdecke, Norbert, 120 Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 110 Luther, Martin, 46, 152, 174, 301 Lutheran Church, 49, 89, 108, 267 Mainz, 27, 123, 184 Manila, 184 Mannheim, 234 Marburg, 125 marital necessity, 35, 38 Martini, Carlo Maria (Cardinal), 300 Martinsverein, 157 Marx, Karl, 296 Marxist Spartacus League, 156 Marxloh miracle, 230, 235 Marxsen, Willi, 160 Maser, Peter, 269 mass media, 73, 110, 119, 147, 180, 211 Mass, 3, 24, 26, 29, 77, 89, 100, 106, 118, 173–74, 176, 254, 299 materialism, 215, 286 Mayer, Hans, 248 McKinsey, Alfred Charles, 34 McLeod, Hugh, 98 Meckel, Markus, 261 Medina, 234 meditation, 3, 6, 86, 216, 218–21, 285, 287, 302 Meins, Holger, 156

Meiser, Hans (Bishop), 19 Meisner, Joachim (Cardinal), 272 Meißen, 270 Mellies, Wilhelm, 70 membership figures, 90, 95, 220, 266 Memorandum on Issues of Sexual Ethics, 125 Memorial Church, 152 Merkel, Angela, 68 Merten, Hans, 70 Merz, Georg, 19 Metz, Johann Baptist, 193, 255 Metzger, Ludwig, 70 migration, 26, 112, 228, 232–33 minaret, 235, 240 Mitscherlich, Alexander, 136 Mittmann, Thomas, 243–44 mixed marriage, 59, 74, 194 Moltmann, Jürgen, 193, 255 monism, 113 Moon, Sun Myung, 216 Mosebach, Martin, 174 mosque, 1–2, 230–31, 233–36, 240, 243–45, 254 Müller, Eberhard, 185 Müller, Ludwig (Bishop), 19, 47 Müller, Manfred, 94 Munich, 22, 29, 54, 103, 110, 116, 231, 234 Münster, 18, 20, 26, 28, 61, 64, 92, 94–95, 155–57, 167, 176, 186, 229, 240, 275, 279 Münster, Clemens, 26 Muslim, 2, 55–56, 106, 135, 203, 207, 228–46, 254, 256, 302–303, 305 Nachmann, Werner, 250 Nannen, Henri, 212 National Democratic Party (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, NPD), 135 Nell-Breuning, Oswald von, 142 Nellessen, Bernd, 95 New Age, 3, 184, 203, 217, 219, 220, 285, 297 new religious movement, 5, 215, 217–20, 228, 286–87

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Niemöller, Martin, 18–19, 47, 49, 83, 85, 142 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 192 Nipperdey, Thomas, 6, 113 Nolte, Ernst, 253 non-Church religiosity, 111, 224 non-confessionality, 261, 286 ‘No Other Gospel’ Confessional Movement, 158, 161 ‘Not in My Name’ movement, 73 nuclear family, 31, 33–34, 104, 126, 128–29, 284

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occultism, 203, 216 Ochsenfurt Incident, 57 Ochsenfurt, 57 official Church, 35, 89, 95, 147, 175, 184, 187, 271, 278, 298 Ohnesorg, Benno, 152 Opus Dei, 117, 215 Orange Paper, 146–49 Overbeck, Franz-Josef (Bishop), 230 Paderborn, 186, 279 paganism, 113 Pahlavi, Mohammed Reza (Shah), 152, 239, 244 pan-German-Protestant resentment, 59 paragraph 218, 71, 144–46, 148–49, 194 parental rights, 51, 62–63, 70 Paris, 103, 158, 184 Parliamentary Council, 45, 51, 62–63 pastoral care, 27–28, 37, 52, 54, 78, 87, 89, 94, 97, 126, 138–39, 146, 153, 185, 209, 282, 298 Pastors´ Emergency League, 47 Pasture, Patrick, 197 Paul VI (Pope), 71, 120–122, 124, 169, Pax Christi, 72 peaceful revolution, 204, 260–62, 269 Pedagogical University, 156 Penal Code, 144–45 People of God, 172, 189, 278 People’s Church, 5, 28, 54, 86, 88–89, 109, 199, 209–10, 214, 222, 259, 293, 298–99, 301, 303

People’s Guardian Association (VWB), 124 People’s Party, 63, 67, 69–70 Pesch, Otto Hermann, 169, 171 Pforzheim, 234 Picht, Georg, 140 Pius IX (Pope), 170 Pius X (Pope), 176, 255, 275 Pius XII (Pope), 45, 82, 96 pluralization religious, 13, 55, 60, 71, 111, 119, 135, 144, 163, 168, 173, 199, 205, 215–16, 222, 229–30, 245, 271, 287, 300, 303, 306 sexual, 126 social, 12, 205, 284, 287 pluralism, 106, 112, 135, 141, 149, 163, 173, 208, 230, 252, 254, 271, 297, 302, 304–305 Political Night-Prayers, 193–95 political theology, 192–96, 277 politicization of religion, 26, 86, 133, 144, 152, 168, 214 Pollack, Detlef, 220, 240 postmodernity, 103–104, 112, 296 Potsdam, 253 priesthood, 38, 189, 278–80 of all believers, 189, 278 protection of the unborn child, 71, 144 protest movement, 25, 103, 112, 136, 138, 141, 151–52, 160–61, 217, 269, 271 Protestant Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, EKD), 14, 48, 50–51, 58, 64, 73, 83–85, 94, 108, 124–25, 138, 146–150, 166–67, 186, 211, 245, 254, 268, 279, 295 Protestant conservative self-image, 67 Protestant Imperial Church, 19, 47 Protestant Liaison Office for Parliament and Government, 135 Protestant Office on Ideological Issues, 126, 189, 243 Protestant Pastoral Youth, 95

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Protestant People’s Mission, 87 Protestant Press Service, 162 Protestant Relief Organization, 19 Protestant theology, 13, 85, 159, 173 Protestant Working Group, 65, 141–42 Protestant Youth of Germany, 93 purgatory, 190–91 Rahner, Karl, 176, 189 Rau, Johannes, 70 rearmament, 50, 71–73 re-Christianization, 17, 20, 25, 27, 43, 50–51, 78, 87, 91, 98–99, 108, 259, 275, 293 recruitment agreement, 231–32 Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion, RAF), 135, 156 Red Bible, 278 redemption, 77, 86, 178, 189, 192 re-evangelization initiatives, 81 Reformation, 46, 69, 87, 105, 171, 174–75, 177, 300 religious education, 29, 31, 51–52, 62, 80, 90, 119, 153, 238, 245, 262, 286, 298, 303 religious freedom, 52, 136, 170, 173, 224, 235, 238, 244, 256, 305 religious socialization, 30, 98, 109, 119, 120, 129, 263 religious spring, 20–21, 23, 87, 94, 100 Religious Studies Media and Information Service, 228 Reuss, Josef Maria (Bishop), 123 revelation, 161, 167, 173 Rhenish Brotherhood, 86 Riehl-Heyse, Herbert, 114, 116 right of co-decision, 51 right of self-determination (of religious communities), 52, 88, 147, 217, 237 ritual practice, 78 Robinson, John (Bishop), 192 Rölli-Alkemper, Lukas, 36 Rome, 18, 170, 279, 171–72, 176, 210, 218 Romero, Oscar, 195

Roth, Heinrich, 92 Rothenfels Circle, 154 Roy, Olivier, 233 Rushdie, Salman, 239 Sack, Fritz, 136 sacrament, 26, 29, 35, 78, 177, 192, 264, 293 of holy communion, 300 of holy orders or ordination, 274 of marriage, 35, 157, 300 of penance, 190–92 Santo Domingo, 194 Schäfer, Rütger, 139 Scharf, Kurt, 142 Scherffig, Wolfgang, 86 Schily, Otto, 136 Schlink, Edmund, 80 Schmidt, Helmut, 138, 143 Schmidt, Otto, 66 Schmidtchen, Gerhard, 107, 276 Schmitt-Vockenhausen, Hermann, 143 Schmude, Jürgen, 70 Schneider, Romy, 145 Schönstatt University Group, 156 Schreuder, Osmund, 35 Schroer, Hans, 122 Schueler, Hans, 148 Schulze, Gerhard, 113 Schumacher, Kurt, 58 Schüssler Fiorenza, Elizabeth, 255 Schwarzer, Alice, 145 Schwinn, Wilhelm, 57 2. June movement, 156 second modernity, 104, 112, 284 Second Vatican Council, 25–26, 38–39, 71, 91, 96, 98, 117–18, 124, 151, 154, 163, 167–172, 174–75, 177–79, 186, 189, 243, 255, 271– 72, 278, 295, 305 secularization, 7, 80, 114, 119, 196, 203, 205, 210, 215, 224, 232–33, 252, 260, 273, 291–93, 301, 303 Seeber, David, 179 Seehofer, Horst, 300 Seibel, Wolfgang, 140

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separation of State–Church relation and Church, 52, 136, 152, 238, 239, 262 sermon, 18, 26, 61, 79, 82, 86–87, 110, 182, 190–91, 234, 272 sexual abuse, 208, 280, 300 sexual morality, 36, 38–39, 123–24, 126–28, 145, 157, 169, 198, 212, 279 sexual revolution, 123, 148 Shannon, James Patrick, 122 Sigusch, Volkmar, 125 Sinjen, Sabine, 145 Smend, Rudolf, 54 social change, 13, 30, 194, 284 Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD), 64, 68–71, 115–17, 137–38, 142–45, 149, 294–95 Socialist German Student League, 152, 154, 156 Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED), 204, 259– 72, 285–86, 298 sociology of religion, 3, 77, 205, 222–23 Sölle, Dorothee, 159, 189, 192–93, 195 Sonneberg, 264 Soviet Military Administration (SMAD), 262 spiritual practice, 229 spiritualism, 216, 222 Springer, Axel, 214 Spülbeck, Otto (Bishop), 270 Sputnik shock, 139 Stange, Erich, 94 State–Church relation, 43, 51, 237–38, 262, 272 Steltzer, Theodore, 66 Stimpfle, Josef (Bishop), 128 Stöhr, Martin, 187 Strate, Katharina, 116 student congregation, 152–56, 158, 163, 196 of West Berlin, 154

Student Working Group for Critical Catholicism, 154 study of theology, 268, 274 Sturm, Vilma, 194 Stuttgart Document, 83–84 Stuttgart, 83–84, 182–83 synod, 47, 49, 72, 89, 107, 138, 142, 149, 162, 179, 211, 254–55, 267, 276–77 Szczesny, Gerhard, 137 Taylor, Charles, 295 tendency protection, 281 Tenhumberg, Heinrich (Bishop), 177 Teufel, Fritz, 152 Thadden-Trieflaff, Reinold von, 181 Thatcher, Margaret, 158 Thielicke, Helmut, 48, 88 Third World groups and movements, 155, 258, 187, 193, 196 Three Wise Men, 116 ‘throne and altar’, 10, 46, 87, 100 Tillich, Paul, 189, 192 time limit regulation, 145, 150 transcendence, 8, 10, 12, 21, 25, 77–78, 113, 167–68, 170, 185, 188, 190–91, 193, 197, 205, 210, 218, 223–24, 284–85, 291, 297, 301 Trevelyan, George, 218 Treysa, 49, 88 Trier, 186 Trinity, 3, 111 Troeltsch, Ernst, 222 Tübingen, 214 two kingdoms doctrine, 46–50, 72, 83, 152 Ulbricht, Walter, 264 uncle marriage, 35 Union of Turkish-Islamic Cultural Associations in Europe (Türkisch-Islamische Union der Anstalt für Religionen, DITIB), 237 United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany, 108 unity of the Church, 181, 270, 286

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Index • 347

University of Chicago, 261 University of Göttingen, 155 University of Münster, 229, 240

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Vatican Europe, 58 Vietcong, 156 Vietnam War, 103, 194 Virgin Birth, 116, 159 Vogel, Bernhard, 120 Volksschule, 139 Walser, Martin, 253 Waltermann, Reinhold, 157 Wanke, Joachim (Bishop), 272 Warburg, Aby, 235 Washington, D.C., 18 Waterstein, Isaac, 248 Weber, Hermann, 238 Weber, Max, 222, 293 Wehner, Herbert, 70, 116 Weimar constitution, 43, 51–52, 55, 263 Weimar republic, 9, 28, 32, 43, 44, 46, 62–63, 91–93, 124, 133, 181, 198, 231, 263 well-ordered phalanx, 90, 94, 136 Weltsch, Robert, 247 Welty, Eberhard, 70 Wertheim am Main, 235 Wessel, Helene, 70 West German Army, 50, 52, 55, 263 Wilkens, Erwin, 150 Williamson, Richard, 255 Wilm, Ernst, 142 Wittenberg, 301 Wohlrab-Sahr, Monika, 285 Wolf, Notker, 3 Wolfe, Tom, 112, 284 Wolker, Ludwig, 94 Workers Welfare Association, 280 World Youth Day, 4, 180, 184–85, 204, 218 Wuppertal, 66 Wurm, Theophil (Bishop), 49, 51, 84 Würmeling, Franz-Josef, 62 Württemberg Church-Theological Society, 85 Würzburg, 19, 179, 276, 277

Yogi, Maharishi Mahesh, 216 Young Bochum Student Congregation, 155 Young Christian Workers, 90 Young Men’s Association, 94, 96 Youth Aid, 97 Youth Circles, 97 youth pastoral work, 92–93, 95–98 Zahrnt, Heinz, 146, 150, 183 Zeiger, Ivo, 27 Ziemann, Benjamin, 282 Zillessen, Horst, 148 Zollitsch, Robert (Bishop), 304 Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, 110

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