Que devient l'Église Évangélique d'Allemagne?

Abstract

In West Germany, more than 1.5 million people say that they have left the Evangelical Church over the past 10 years. What is happening with this Church ? Are we witnessing the beginning of a collapse? Or is this more now slowing down? First of all we must look at the facts against the back-ground of the German Aufklärung. We will then see that whereas church membership is pitched at a high level, church tradition attaches greater importance to the demands of a life oriented by Christian morals than to attending services. But this move away from the Church must also be linked to a process at work in many other organizations: members who can no longer identify with the organization distance themselves from it. Where work within the Church is concerned, this implies that greater importance be attached to dialogue between the grass roots and those at the top.