Thursday, March 07, 2013

Religion -superfluous and redundant

Dwindling church attendance and dire financial straits are forcing the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany to sell off church buildings. Churches are being demolished throughout Germany. There are also many church buildings in Germany that have already been used for other purposes, from art classes to sports courses. There are churches that serve as event locations or offer storage space for companies. Take, for example, the city of Frankfurt am Main. In the 1950s there were 430,000 Protestants living in the city. Today, that number is 110,000. These declining numbers have forced the Church's regional authorities to close every fourth place of worship. The publication Spirit estimates that out of about 45,000 churches in Germany, 15,000 soon will no longer be needed.

"Between 1990 and 2010 we closed 340 churches, and of those 46 were demolished," says Thomas Begrich, head of finances for the Evangelical Church of Germany (EKD), Germany's largest federation of Protestant churches. This, Begrich says, is only the beginning. "It may be necessary to give up an additional 1,000 buildings," he said.

In the Diocese of Hildesheim, one out of every two churches is on the endangered list, while in the Diocese of Essen, 83 churches are slated for demolition and another 13 have already been torn down. The situation is the worst in Wilhelmshaven, where six out of nine Catholic churches are slated to be destroyed.

Both the Protestant and Catholic Churches can agree is that sects and other religious groups are generally not acceptable as buyers. A handbook issued by the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau says the sale of church buildings to Muslims or Buddhists, for example, is "not possible."


2 comments:

-blessed b9, Catalyst4Christ said...

That's sad...
yet, there's
One church not
disabled:
Christ's Body.
Wannum?

Matthew Culbert said...

Not much can be done with dust.