It takes place every two years for five days: the German Evangelical Church Congress. This year for the 38th time. Sunday there is the closing service in Nuremberg. The most important events of Saturday at a glance.
Chancellor: We need a solidarity system for taking in refugees
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) defended the compromise reached by the EU interior ministers for an EU asylum law reform at the Kirchentag. “It’s about solidarity,” said Scholz on Saturday. The agreement is that a solidarity mechanism will be established in which states like Germany take on refugees from the border states, but all of them are registered there.
This agreed mechanism is a fairer asylum system than today’s, added Scholz. The current system is neither good for those seeking protection who embark on dangerous routes, nor for the countries involved. At the same time, Scholz defended the plans for border procedures, which should lead to people without protection entitlements in the EU being sent back quickly. Rules are needed to protect the asylum system.
He referred to the great solidarity with which the refugees were accepted in Germany. But it must also be clear: “You can only stay if you have good reasons to do so”. Scholz received both applause and displeasure for his statements in the Frankenhalle, which was filled with around 5,000 people.
Scholz also defended arms deliveries to Ukraine. They served to enable Ukraine to defend itself against the Russian attack. “She can and should do that,” he said, to great applause from the audience at the Kirchentag. However, some also shouted “negotiations now” from the stands.
Scholz replied to the protesters that negotiations were “okay”. The only question is, with whom and about what. It is not acceptable that Ukraine should negotiate that part of its territory simply becomes Russia, said Scholz.
Participants adopt resolution against EU asylum reform
The calls of displeasure at Scholz’s appearance on the asylum reform are not surprising: with a resolution, participants in the Evangelical Church Congress protested against the planned tightening of EU asylum law. The whole thing happened at the event in the “Center for Human Rights”. In it they oppose a “sale of human rights” and a “frontal attack on the rule of law and refugee law”. This has nothing to do with a “fair legal process”. Those seeking protection face a “horror scenario” with imprisonment in camps. A large majority of the approximately 500 present voted in favor of the resolution. However, there were also two-digit numbers of dissenting votes and abstentions.
Merz is self-critical when it comes to the AfD
In the debate about the strengthening of the AfD, Union politicians see their party as sharing responsibility. With regard to the emergence of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), CDU leader Friedrich Merz said that in a democracy nothing and nobody is without an alternative. “The name of this party was a direct reaction to this word, and that’s why we have a high degree of responsibility for the fact that something like this happened,” said Merz.
Former Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) coined the word “no alternative”. In 2010, the Society for the German Language voted it the nonsense word of the year.
De Maizière wants to turn the Church Congress inside out
The President of the Evangelical Church Congress, Thomas de Maizière, wants to turn the major event inside out. He announced a new church assembly order, a new structure and possibly downsizing. “The whole committee structure, it doesn’t fit anymore,” he said, emphasizing that the basic structure of the Church Congress dates back to 1949.
In general, one must also ask whether the current 2000 events are “not a bit much”. This is important against the background of the question of whether so many volunteers will still be willing to take part in the Church Congress in the future. “Key points, signposts” are to be worked out by the autumn, he said. Then a new Church Convention should be adopted.
Network activist: conspiracy ideologies endanger coexistence
Katharina Nocun, a network activist and publicist from Berlin, considers conspiracy ideologies to be extremely dangerous. “People eventually believe that science and fact-checkers are also part of the conspiracy,” she said at a panel on Saturday. “That endangers coexistence on many levels in a democracy.” At the same time, black and white thinking can also cause a lot of damage in the immediate social environment.
Svenja Hardecker from the specialist and advice center for questions of worldview in Stuttgart advocated keeping in touch with relatives or friends who adhere to such ideologies, if possible. “The personal close range is the biggest chance to get out of it again,” she said. In doing so, however, one should pay attention to “clarity on the matter and as much openness as possible to the person”, i.e. draw a substantive boundary to conspiracy thinking. The church should act similarly and not withdraw from the relationships.
DBK boss Bätzing quarrels with the Archdiocese of Cologne – and talks about cases of abuse
According to his own statements, the chairman of the Catholic German Bishops’ Conference, Georg Bätzing, sometimes struggles with conditions in the Archdiocese of Cologne. “There was no sign of a cultural change in Cologne,” he said. Bätzing criticized that the Archdiocese had neglected many aspects in dealing with cases of sexual abuse. He also spoke several times with the conservative Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, about how he dealt with allegations against him personally. But: “There are people you can talk to like a dead horse” – without anything happening, said Bätzing.
He can understand that many people get the impression that the abuse cases are not being processed quickly enough. But now it is the turn of each individual diocese. In addition, the Catholic Church has already done a lot to deal with cases of abuse; he also didn’t want to distract from the scandal, emphasized Bätzing. But he also criticized politics: “To this day, they have not taken on the task of accepting the issue of abuse as an issue for society as a whole.”
State Bishop Bedford-Strohm calls for a more hopeful attitude
The Bavarian Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm laments widespread fear of the future in society. Many people felt that “everything is always getting worse and not better,” he said. The question of the coming of the kingdom of God is no longer asked, but rather the apocalypse is expected. He called on the listeners to find a hopeful attitude again and to become “Kingdom of God”.
There are many signs of hope, said Bedford-Strohm, who also chairs the central committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC). He recalled the WCC general assembly in Karlsruhe in September 2022, where a resolution on the Ukraine war was passed unanimously, even with the votes of the Russian Orthodox delegation.