East Germany the "most atheistic" of any region

The University of Chicago recently completed an international  survey on belief - Belief About God Across Time and Countries - and discovered that the eastern states of Germany -which comprised the former DDR - are today  hotbeds of non-belief:

"Atheism is strongest in northwest European countries such as Scandinavia and the former Soviet states (except for Poland). The former East Germany had the highest rate of people who said they never believed in God (59 percent); in comparison, 4 percent of Americans had that response."

Could this be a legacy of communist rule? No, because belief in God is growing in Russia.  The United States - a country that incarcerates and executes more of its citizens than any other developed county - remains a nation of believers.  Americans, furthermore, have a childlike belief in a "personal relationship" with God, while eastern Germans reject that notion:

Support for the concept that God is concerned with people in a personal way ranged from 8 percent in the former East Germany to 82 percent in the Philippines. In the United States, 68 percent of people surveyed held that view.

What could explain this stubborn refusal to believe among Germans in the east?  The ultra-conservative Catholic writer Martin Mosebach sees this as the perniciuos effect of Protestantism in the east Germany:  

Aber tatsächlich ist es so, dass der Protestantismus, so wie er sich im Osten entwickelt hat, mit seinem Hang zur Säkularisierung fast notwendig zur Schwächung des Glaubens geführt hat. Sonst hätte der Kommunismus den Glauben dort nicht so nachhaltig zerstören können.

(But it's a fact that Protestantism - as it developed in the east - with its secularizing tendencies resulted in a weakening of belief in God.  Otherwise communism never could have destroyed faith there so permanently.)

Mosebach is silent about how the child sexual abuse scandal has virtually destroyed the Roman Catholic Church in Germany.  Could it be that east Germans, who lived through the terror of war and more than 50 years of authoritarian rule - first under the Nazis and then under the Stalinists - find the notion of a loving and forgiving God patently ridiculous?

 

Comments

[James]

"...notion of a loving and forgiving God patently ridiculous?"

Do you?

[David]

I consider myself an aspiring Christian, but I've seen enough pain and sorrow to constantly question my faith.

[koogleschreiber]

The answer might be simple: Prussian subservience and German thoroughness. Imagine, Germans never had a problem with a law named 'police reporting obligation'. Germans perfectly blend in any political system, orders from top are always considered the result of superior insight and rarely questioned - at least by 50% of the population, right and left bourgeois, bureaucrats, police, army etc.

The Left Party still is a people's party in East Germany. Nostalgy of the beauty of militarized life...

[michijo]

The most secular states in the USA have a high number of Catholics. While the most religiously fanatic areas like Mississippi are all Protestant. I find the notion that Protestants are more prone to atheism absurd. It is not North versus South either, as the British and Scottish were always Protestant fanatics with the Church of England. The Irish moreover are Catholics, and Ireland is more fanatical than the American South, so in both cases, neither branch seems more prone to Atheism. Vermont is the most secular state in the USA and has plenty of Irish immigrants, moreover. I cannot therefore qualify, being an atheism myself, what makes people Atheists or net in certain areas. I read that Czech Republic was the most secular nation in Europe.

[michijo]

Romania is one of the most extremely religious places in Europe, but it too was under Communism. It is merely inexplicable.

[michijo]

I became an atheist when very young, not even a teenager. I was walking around my apartment building where my family lived, and started thinking that my mother would die if I didnt believe in God, sort of like the rhyme "step on a crack, break your mother's back". Suddenly, I had an epiphany that it was all non-sense! I was only 11 years old or so. Ive never believed in God since that time. It is all just so many threats and "magical-thinking" with religion.

[Joseph]

There is a difference between Protestants. Lutherans for example are rather liberal compared with Baptist. It lies pretty much in the theology. Estonia and East germany were both Lutheran and are now the least religious places in the world. Scandinavian Lutherans survived due to the state church in those countries.

[Thorsten]

Yes, the liberal Lutheran communities of Scandinavia and northern Germany have been more accepting/forgiving/tolerant of friends and neighbors shedding allegiance to dogma. So lapsing does not carry nearly as high a social price. But that does not explain the high rates of irreligiosity in Czechia, where a large majority of remaining Christians are Catholic, or in mainstream (i.e., non-Haredi) Israel.

So what do East German, Czech, and Israeli cultural-religious traditions have in common? Turning religious traditions into movements of social and/or national liberation. Northeastern Germany had Martin Luther, Bohemia had Jan Hus, both of whom would have been impossible without the context of social unrest in their societies at the time. And liberal Judaism, of course, had and continues to have Zionism.

So it is possible to be entirely irreligious, but still feel a strong cultural affiliation with, and even pride in, the positive change brought on (or at least promised) by Lutheranism, the Hussites, and Zionism. You can have an in-group sense of belonging without the need to believe in Luther’s solas or the 613 mitzvot in the Torah. Everyone knows what a secular Jew is. Perhaps we need a similar concept of “secular Lutheran.”

[David]

„secular Lutheran“ - I like the concept. Thanks for your comment.