HONECKER WINS?

Germany still divided - by faith (Uwe Siemon-Netto, 8/18/2003, UPI)

As the German saying goes, there was only one thing the Communists accomplished in their part of the country - driving out God. More than a dozen years after reunification, the Easterners are as godless as before, according to new survey commissioned by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is close to the opposition Christian Democratic Union.

Only 20 percent of the Easterners believe in a personal God and 24 percent in some sort of higher power; in the West, the corresponding figures are 30 and 40 percent, giving the Transcendent a substantial majority. Almost 60 percent of the Easterners - but only 23 percent of the Westerners -- told pollsters they never prayed. [...]

These results show the enduring success of the systematic persecution of Christianity in more than four decades of Communist rule in what until 1990 was called the German Democratic Republic. Christians were rarely allowed to attend university; they were forbidden to attain senior ranks in the civil serve, become military officers or executives in the usually state-owned enterprises.

Many fled, and of those who stayed behind, a majority dropped the faith of their fathers and mothers. As irony will have it, though, churches provided a safe haven for the predominantly secular opposition groups that toppled Communism peacefully in the fall of 1989.

Still, although 39 percent of the Easterners claim that they are "not at all religious" - compared with a mere 13 percent of the Westerners - church officials report that those who remained faithful tend to be more active in their congregations and attend services more diligently than their Western cousins.

In some parts of Eastern Germany, especially Saxony, ministers are observing an increase in the number of regular worshipers, though not members. But for the time being, this seems to have little impact on the attitudes of the general public. Of the Easterners, a whopping 70 percent reject the Christian worldview that man is God's creation. On the other hand, 57 percent of the Westerners believe this. [...]

While a majority of today's Germans still approves of Christian symbols, such as crucifixes, in public places, and the reference to the name of God in the preamble of their country's constitution, the young are drifting away from their ancestral faith.

Sadly, the report remarks, Western and Eastern Germans, aged 16-24, are drawing closer in unbelief. Only 61 percent of young Western and Eastern Germans can recite the Lord's Prayer; only 30 percent consider themselves religious. The standard-bearers of the specifically Christian faith, the report notes, are the middle and older generation in the former West Germany.

Being Godless worked so well in the East... Posted by Orrin Judd at August 21, 2003 6:53 PM