The Evangelical Church in Germany (German: Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, EKD), also known as the Protestant Church in Germany, is a federation of twenty Lutheran, Reformed, and UnitedProtestantregional Churches in Germany, collectively encompassing the vast majority of the country's Protestants.[4] In 2022, the EKD had a membership of 19,153,000 members, or 22.7% of the German population.[5] It constitutes one of the largest Protestant bodies in the world. Church offices managing the federation are located in Herrenhausen, Hanover, Lower Saxony. Many of its members consider themselves Lutherans.
Historically, the first formal attempt to unify German Protestantism occurred during the Weimar Republic era in the form of the German Protestant Church Confederation, which existed from 1922 until 1933. Earlier, there had been successful royal efforts at unity in various German states, beginning with Prussia and several minor German states (e.g. Duchy of Nassau) in 1817. These unions resulted in the first united and uniting churches, a new development within Protestantism which later spread to other parts of the world. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, his administration tried to reorganize the old confederation into a unified German Evangelical Church as Hitler wanted to use a single Protestant church to further his own ambitions. However, a division emerged between the Reichskirche, led by the pro-government German Christians, and the Confessing Church, which opposed state control of the church. Other Protestant churches aligned themselves with one of these groups, or stayed neutral in this church strife. The postwar church council issued the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt on 19 October 1945, confessing guilt and declaring remorse for indifference and inaction of German Protestants in the face of atrocities committed by Hitler's regime. In 1948, the Protestant Church in Germany was organized in the aftermath of World War II to function as a new umbrella organization for German Protestant churches. As a result of tensions between West and East Germany, the regional churches in East Germany broke away from the EKD in 1969. In 1991, following German reunification, the East German churches re-joined the EKD.
The member churches (Gliedkirchen), while being independent and having their own theological and formal organisation, share full altar and pulpit fellowship, and are united in the EKD synod, but they act as individual members of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE). Boundaries of EKD churches within Germany partially resemble those of the states of the Holy Roman Empire and successor forms of German statehood (to the most part 1815 borders), due to the historically close relationship between individual German states and churches. As for church governance, the Lutheran churches typically practise an episcopal polity, while the Reformed and the United ones a mixture of presbyterian and congregationalist polities. Most member churches are led by a (state) bishop. Only one member church, the Evangelical Reformed Church in Germany, is not restricted to a certain territory. In some ways, the other member churches resemble dioceses of the Catholic and Anglican churches, from an organisational point of view.
Name
Etymologically, the German word evangelisch means "of the Gospel", denoting a Reformation emphasis on sola scriptura, "by scripture alone". Martin Luther encouraged the use of this term alongside Christian.
Front page of the Peace of Augsburg, which laid the legal groundwork for two co-existing religious confessions (Catholicism and Lutheranism) in the German-speaking states of the Holy Roman Empire.
This changed somewhat with growing religious freedom in the 19th century, especially in the republican states of Bremen, Frankfurt (1857), Lübeck, and Hamburg (1860). The greatest change came after the German Revolution, with the formation of the Weimar Republic and the abdication of the princes of the German states. The system of state churches disappeared with the Weimar Constitution (1919), which brought about disestablishment by the separation of church and state, and there was a desire for the Protestant churches to merge. In fact, a merger was permanently under discussion but never materialised due to strong regional self-confidence and traditions as well as the denominational fragmentation into Lutheran, Reformed, and United and uniting churches.
During the Revolution, when the old church governments lost power, the People's Church Union (Volkskirchenbund) was formed and advocated unification without respect to theological tradition and also increasing input from laymen. However, the People's Church Union quickly split along territorial lines after the churches' relationship with the new governments improved.[7]
It was realised that one mainstream Protestant church for all of Germany was impossible and that any union would need a federal model. The churches met in Dresden in 1919 and created a plan for federation, and this plan was adopted in 1921 at Stuttgart. Then in 1922 the then 28 territorially defined Protestant churches founded the German Evangelical Church Confederation (Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchenbund, DEK). At the time, the federation was the largest Protestant church federation in Europe with around 40million members.[7] Because it was a federation of independent bodies, the Church Union's work was limited to foreign missions and relations with Protestant churches outside Germany, especially German Protestants in other countries.
In July 1933, the German Evangelical Church (Deutsche Evangelische Kirche, DEK) was formed under the influence of the German Christians, a pro-Nazi religious movement. They had much influence over the decisions of the first National Synod, via their unambiguous partisanship in successfully backing Ludwig Müller for the office of Reich bishop. He did not manage, however, to prevail over the Landeskirchen in the long term. The Confessing Church arose in resistance to the Nazi regime's ideology. After the installation of Hanns Kerrl as minister for church matters in a Führer-directive of 16 July 1935 and the foundation of the – in the end not materialising – Protestant Reich Church, the DEK played more or less no further role.
While the members are no longer state churches, they enjoy constitutional protection as statutory corporations, and they are still called Landeskirchen, and some have this term in their official names. A modern English translation, however, would be regional church. Apart from some minor changes, the territories of the member churches today reflect Germany's political organisation in the year 1848, with regional churches for states or provinces that often no longer exist or whose borders changed since. For example, between 1945 and 1948, the remaining six ecclesiastical provinces (Kirchenprovinzen), each territorially comprising one of the Old Prussia provinces, within the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union assumed independence as a consequence of the estrangement among them during the Nazi struggle of the churches. This turned the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union into a mere umbrella, being itself a member of EKD (and the BEK, 1969–1991) but covering some regional church bodies, which were again themselves members of EKD (and the BEK, 1969–1991).
Since 1973, when many Protestant churches in Europe, including the EKD members, concluded the Leuenberg Agreement, also the then 21 EKD members[9] introduced full communion for their parishioners and ministry among each other.
Since also the regional Protestant churches in East Germany had signed the Leuenberg Agreement, thus the then ten members of the Federation of Protestant Churches in the German Democratic Republic practised full communion with the EKD members too. Ordination of women is practised in all 20 member churches with many women having been ordained in recent years. There are also several women serving as bishops. Margot Käßmann, former bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover and Chairperson of the Council of the EKD from 2009 until February 2010, was the first woman to head the EKD.[10]Blessings of same-sex marriages is practised and allowed in 14 of 20 and Blessing of same-sex unions are allowed in all other member churches.[11][12] The EKD opposes abortion in most situations but believes it should remain legal.[13]
The EKD has undergone a split in the 20th century and lost a bulk of its adherents in East Germany due to state atheist policies of the former East German government. After 1990, membership was counted and amounted to around the same number as the Roman Catholic Church. In the 21st century, membership in both the Evangelical Church and the Roman Catholic Church stagnates as more people are becoming religious nones.
A 2019 study estimated that there were 114,000 unreported victims of sexual abuse in the EKD and the Catholic Church in Germany combined. The 95% confidence interval comprises 28,000 to 280,000 victims.[14][15] According to a study published in 2024, pedophilic members of the EKD have sexually abused at least 9,355 minors since 1946. Putting this figure into context, the coordinator of the study clarified that this number of cases was only the tip of the iceberg.[16] The average age of the victims is 11 years.[17]
Membership
Confessions of EKD parishioners
United (administratively or confessionally, both Lutheran and Reformed; Prussian Union) (57%)
Protestantism is the major religion in Northern, Eastern and Middle Germany, with the Reformed branch predominating in the extreme northwest and Lippe, the Lutheran branch in the north and south, and the United branch in Middle and Western Germany. While the majority of Christians in Southern Germany are Catholic, some areas in Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria are predominantly Protestant, e.g. Middle Franconia and the government region of Stuttgart. The vast majority of German Protestants belong to a member church of the EKD. With 20,236,000 members in 2020, around 24.3 percent of all Germans belong to a member church of the EKD.[18] Average church attendance is lower, however, with only around a million people (1.2% of all Germans) attending a service on Sunday.[19]
The regional Protestant church bodies accept each other as equals, despite denominational differences. No member church runs congregations or churches in the area of another member church, thus preventing competing with each other for parishioners. The only exception is the Evangelical Reformed Church, which combines Reformed congregations within the ambits of usually Lutheran member churches, which themselves do not include the eventual local Reformed congregations. Thus, for example, a Lutheran moving from a place where their parish belongs to a Lutheran member church, would be accepted in their new place of domicile by the locally competent congregation within another member church, even if this church and its local parish are Reformed or of united Protestant confession, with Lutheran being exchangeable with the two other respective Protestant confessions within the EKD. This is due to full altar and pulpit fellowship between all EKD member churches.
In this the ambits of the member churches resemble dioceses of the Anglican or Roman Catholic churches, however, else there is no common hierarchy supervising the member churches, who are legally independent equals with the EKD being their umbrella. Members of congregations within the member churches – like those of parishes within Catholic dioceses and those enrolled in Jewish congregations also enjoying statutory corporation status – are required to pay a church tax, a surcharge on their normal income tax collected by the states of Germany and passed on to the respective religious body.
The structure of the EKD is based on federal principles. Each regional church is responsible for Christian life in its own area while each regional church has its own special characteristics and retains its independence. The EKD carries out joint tasks with which its members have entrusted it. For the execution of these tasks, the Church has the following governing bodies, all organised and elected on democratic lines:
Synod
The Synod is the legislature of the EKD. It has 126 members: 106 elected by Landeskirchen synods and 20 appointed by the council.[21] These 20 are appointed for their importance in the life of the Church and its agencies. Members serve six year terms and the synod meets annually.
Praesides of the Synod
Irmgard Schwaetzer, praeses of the synod till 2021
The EKD Council is the representative and governing body of the Protestant Church in Germany. The Council of the EKD has 15 members jointly elected by the Synod and Church Conference who serve terms of six years.[22]
The Church Conference is where member churches, through the representatives of their governing boards, can directly participate in the work of the EKD.[25]
Church Office of the EKD
The Church Office is the administration of the EKD and shall the business of the Synod, Council and Conference of the EKD.[26]
The EKD Church Office has approximately 200 employees.
International activities
The EKD holds various charities ("Hilfswerke") under its auspices. The Gustav-Adolf-Werk (GAW) (Gustaphus Adolphus Union formerly) was founded 1832 in Leipzig as the first and eldest such organization and is responsible to aid feeble sister churches, especially in Roman Catholic countries and the Protestant diaspora. It has separate branches internationally, the organization in Austria is still called the Gustav-Adolf-Verein.[27]Brot für die Welt is responsible for international development aid.
Member churches (since 2012)
Member churches of the Protestant Church in Germany (after the fusion of the Evangelical churches of Mecklenburg, North Elbia and Pomerania in 2012).
The umbrella of the Protestant Church in Germany comprises 20 regional churches:
These bodies are termed Landeskirchen ("Regional Churches")[28] though in most cases, their territories do not correspond to the current federal states, but rather to former duchies, electorates and provinces or mergers thereof.
The North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church was a Lutheran regional church in Northern Germany which emerged from a merger of four churches in 1977 and merged with two more churches in 2012. The NEK largely covered the area of the states of Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg where it was the most important Christian denomination. It had 2.1 million members in 595 parishes, constituting 46% of the population in its ambit.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia was a Lutheran member church of the umbrella Protestant Church in Germany. The seat of the church was in Eisenach. The church covered those parts of the state of Thuringia that were not part of the former Province of Saxony. It was the largest Protestant denomination in this area.
The Pomeranian Evangelical Church was a Protestant regional church in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, serving the citizens living in Hither Pomerania. The Pomeranian Evangelical Church was based on the teachings brought forward by Martin Luther and other Reformators during the Reformation. It combined Lutheran and Reformed traditions. The seat of the church was Greifswald, the bishop's preaching venue was the former Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas in Greifswald.
The United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany was founded on July 8, 1948, in Eisenach, Germany. Its total membership is 7.5 million people. All its member churches belong to the Protestant Church in Germany, with which it co-operates closely. In 2018 it has been reduced from an independent legal entity to an administrative unit within the larger Protestant Church in Germany.
The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church is a confessional Lutheran church body of Germany. It is a member of the European Lutheran Conference and of the International Lutheran Council (ILC). The SELK has about 33,000 members in 174 congregations. The seat of SELK is in Hanover.
The Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Hanover is a Lutheran church body (Landeskirche) in the northern German state of Lower Saxony and the city of Bremerhaven covering the territory of the former Kingdom of Hanover.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Oldenburg is a Lutheran church in the German state of Lower Saxony.
The Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia is a United Protestant church body in the German states of Brandenburg, Berlin and a part of Saxony.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Brunswick is a Lutheran church in the German states of Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt.
Evangelical Church of the Palatinate is a United Protestant church in parts of the German states of Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, endorsing both Lutheran and Calvinist orientations.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria is a Lutheran member church of the Protestant Church in Germany in the German state of Bavaria.
Lutheran viewpoints concerning homosexuality are diverse because there is no one worldwide body which represents all Lutherans. The Lutheran World Federation, a worldwide 'communion of churches' and the largest global body of Lutherans, contains member churches on both sides of the issue. However, other Lutherans, including the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference and International Lutheran Council, completely reject homosexuality.
The Union of Evangelical Churches is an organisation of 10 United and 2 Reformed evangelical churches in Germany, which are all member churches of the Protestant Church in Germany.
Buß- und Bettag was a public holiday in Germany, and is still a public holiday in Saxony. In Germany, Protestant church bodies of Lutheran, Reformed (Calvinist) and United denominations celebrate a day of repentance and prayer. It is now celebrated on the penultimate Wednesday before the beginning of the Protestant liturgical year on the first Sunday of Advent; in other words, it is the Wednesday that falls between 16 and 22 November. However, it is not a statutory non-working holiday any more, except in the Free State of Saxony. In the Free State of Bavaria, it is a school holiday only.
The Evangelical Church in Central Germany is a United church body covering most of the German states of Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia and some adjacent areas in Brandenburg and Saxony.
Hans Joachim Schliep is a German Lutheran theologian, pastor and author. From 1990 to 1999 he was director of the Amt für Gemeindedienst, and by May 2000 the commissioner for the environment of the Church of Hanover and the Confederation of Protestant Churches in Lower Saxony. From 1999 to 2008 Schliep was the first pastor at the Kronsberg Church Centre and founder of the congregation at the Expo-neighbourhood in Kronsberg, Hanover, Lower Saxony, Germany.
The Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Saxony is one of 20 member Churches of the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD), covering most of the state of Saxony. Its headquarters are in Dresden, and the seat of the bishop is at Meissen Cathedral. Prior to the propagation of state atheism in the German Democratic Republic, it was the largest Evangelical Lutheran church in Germany.
The Protestant Church of Anhalt is a United Protestant member church of the Protestant Church in Germany. Its seat is in Dessau-Roßlau in Saxony-Anhalt, in the former duchy of Anhalt. This church is the smallest regional church in Germany in terms of membership.
The German Protestant Church Confederation was a formal federation of 28 regional Protestant churches (Landeskirchen) of Lutheran, Reformed or United Protestant administration or confession. It existed during the Weimar Republic from 1922 until replaced by the German Evangelical Church in 1933. It was a predecessor body to the Protestant Church in Germany.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Schaumburg-Lippe is a Lutheran member church (Landeskirche) of the Protestant Church in Germany. It covers the former principality of Schaumburg-Lippe and seated in Bückeburg.
↑ Those are legal umbrella bodies which represent their member churches before the national government. They encompass multiple individual autonomous churches of differnet traditions which are themselves members of the CPCE.
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