report
Status: 02.04.2022 6:16 p.m
Hundreds of thousands of people resign from the Church each year. The evangelical church tries to bring back apostates with re-entry positions. Sometimes it even works.
By Christina von Sass, NDR
In no time at all, a small corner in the bookstore opposite the venerable Marktkirche in Hanover becomes the re-entry point. Pastor Stephan Lackner, who runs the site, pushes a mobile wall with brochures to a small table. “Enter!” it says. There is space for two people – himself and the one who is toying with the idea of becoming part of the Christian community again.
This is where Alfred Zimmer recently sat. After he and his wife spontaneously decided to have a church wedding after 24 years of marriage. The 68-year-old brings tears to his eyes as he recounts why he rejoined the Church more than 20 years after leaving.
“The inner core was my wife’s illness,” he says, searching for a handkerchief. “I wanted to be part of a big soul community again and saw church again as a spiritual space that gives strength to both of us.” His wife never left the church, so he felt a kind of duty to “walk this path together with her.”
Exit numbers are dramatic
The work of such re-entry points is successful, emphasizes Pastor Lackner. Recently, eight people have re-entered him weekly. And nationwide, around 40,000 adults would make a conscious decision to join the Evangelical Church every year.
However, there is no doubt that the countermovement is much stronger. The resignations have now reached a dramatic dimension: In 2021, a record number of 280,000 people left the Evangelical Church (2020: 220,000), as the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) recently announced. For the first time, the number of Protestants fell below the 20 million mark – to 19.72 million. Around 221,000 people left the Catholic Church in 2020.
The de-ecclesialization of Germany is thus progressing: soon less than 50 percent of the citizens will probably belong to the Protestant or Catholic Church.
Aversion as a process
Although Catholics in particular also name abuse scandals as a reason for leaving, the turning away often takes place as a process in which religion and church have become increasingly irrelevant in personal life. This is the result of a study by the Social Science Institute of the EKD, which has been examining the reasons and occasions for people leaving the church since 2018.
Pastor Lackner sees this development embedded in a general trend that does not stop at clubs or trade unions. For him it is clear: “We shouldn’t do anything just to raise numbers, but we should live Christianity credibly and authentically.”
With a mobile home at wedding fairs
For him, this also means going to folk festivals in his private mobile home, for example, or talking to people at wedding fairs. He playfully tries to arouse interest in the church. He always has a wheel of fortune with him – and everyone who takes part can win a little something.
At the “Wedding Days” in the Hanover Congress Center today, he gets into conversation with a few young couples and bangs the drum: “If you are a church member and want to get married, then you already have the location, it’s already decorated. You have the speaker, the pastor and the music – tatatata! Normally it costs you 3000 euros. With us it’s all free!”
Baptism Course for Adults: Crash Course in Christianity
The regional church in Hanover alone maintains 13 re-entry points – the largest of the 20 regional churches of the Evangelical Church in Germany. Her duties also include baptism courses for adults: a three-week crash course in Christianity plus subsequent baptism, in this case in Hanover’s oldest church, the Kreuzkirche.
This is where the three-month-old Ella is sleeping blissfully in her pram this Sunday – despite the deafening ringing of the bells. But after all, it is not she who is baptized, but her 33-year-old future godfather. Christian Klein, painter and varnisher, decided to be baptized as an adult in order to be able to sponsor little Ella.
Before that, he attended Lackner’s baptism course. When asked if he believes in God, he reluctantly replies: “Jooaaahh…” It still sounds a bit undecided. Whether adult baptism or re-entry – both are a great joy for Pastor Lackner. It sees it as an opportunity to build a relationship with God.