wfn.org | Statistics indicate increased church participation in Germany

[FRANK_IMHOFF.parti@ecunet.org (FRANK IMHOFF)]

Work with children, youth and women at the top

GENEVA, 21 December 1998 (lwi) - One-third of all Protestants in Germany
go to church during Christmas whereas only four to eight percent do so on
ordinary Sundays.

More and more church services are also being celebrated. Christmas Eve
1996 hosted 38,727 services compared to 38,521 in 1995. Altogether,
1,122,896 services were celebrated in 1996 as opposed to 1,099,584 in
1995. These and other figures are contained in the just published
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany (EKD) statistics on church life for
1995 and 1996. Contrary to pessimistic projections that fewer and fewer
people would be willing to do voluntary work, the number of volunteers in
the EKD member churches has in fact risen. Records for 1996 show that
898,843 people did voluntary work in the congregations, compared to the
previous year's 820,522, which indicates that there were, on average, 54
volunteers for every pastor.

In volunteer work, women comprised 70 percent of the total number,
remarkably higher than that of men. However, there are clear gender
differences in the various church and life activities: committee work and
leadership tasks are mostly carried out by men, with 59 percent of them in
parish councils.Women dominate social and welfare work.

Regarding regular groups in congregations, both the groups and the number
of participants have increased in the past years. Children's and youth
work account for just under one-third of the groups. In 1996, about
606,000 children and young people met in 36,000 groups in the west and
another 20,000 groups which included religious instruction classes in the
east of the country. Women's and mothers' groups are also very popular:
416,000 women met in 29,000 groups. Church choirs come third, with 365,000
choristers participating in slightly under 18,000 choirs.

The statistics show there were 282,000 more immigrants than emigrants.
Thus 92,000 Protestant Christians, most of whom came from the states of
the Russian Federation, joined the 24 EKD member churches. The ratio
between deaths and baptisms, however, had a debit balance of 140,000. In
the entire EKD, there were 100 deaths for every 64 baptisms.

There is a big difference in the western and the eastern lander with
regard to the confessional affiliation of parents and the number of
baptized children. In the former Federal Republic, 207,000 children were
born to all-Roman Catholic, 154,000 to all-Protestant and 101,000 to
confessionally mixed parents. About one-quarter of the children have at
least one non-Christian parent.In the lander of the former GDR, only
14,000 or 16 percent of the children have Protestant or Catholic parents,
of which 10,000 are all-Protestant and about three percent are
all-Catholic parents.More than three-quarters of the parents do not belong
to any Christian church, and again just under half of them do not belong
to any religious community, a factor brought about by the anticlerical
climate of the GDR.

By the 31 December 1996 deadline, 27.66 million Protestant Christians
belonged to the 24 EKD member churches, which represents slightly over
one-third of the population of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Regionally, however, there are big differences. In the eastern lander,
where three-quarters of the people do not belong to any Christian church,
just under 20 percent of Protestants constitute the majority of the
Christian population. Bavaria has a strong Roman Catholic presence, with
the Protestants comprising only 22 percent of the population. The 67,000
members of the smallest territorial church Schaumburg-Lippe, constitute 70
percent of the population in the area.

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Lutheran World Information
Assistant Editor, English: Pauline Mumia
E-mail: pmu@lutheranworld.org
http://www.lutheranworld.org/