[T27542]

If by ‘part of culture’ you mean weekly church attendance, then there is only a minority of people religious in Germany. Statistics indicate only about 20 percent of those subscribing to some denomination officially (Lutheran or Catholic being the main faiths) actually attend services or otherwise practice their religion. Thus an active religious life with prayers, Bible classes and church attendance is a minority thing. You’re bound to raise a few eyebrows if you pray in public, and bound to be considered immensely odd. Additionally, church attendance has been dwindling for decades, though people still pay their church taxes as a means of supporting charity work done by church institutions. With the unification, a large part of the population that is atheist by denomination has been added. However, religious holidays like Christmas or Easter, albeit secularized and commercialized, feature very much in German cultural life. In this respect, German culture is still subliminally Christian. Historically, I think the reason for this development may be that we have seen in Germany centuries of religious persecution and bloodshed and have therefore embraced the separation of church and state very decidedly. Religion is thus a fundamentally private affair, and rigidly kept outside the public realm, which is entirely secular. If I remember correctly, at least four ministers of the current government did not swear their oaths of office upon the Bible, because they are atheist, and omitted the ‘so help me God.’ If you ask around, the court decisions passed a few years ago to keep crosses out of schoolrooms and courtrooms will be very much on people’s minds still. Religious groups blame secularization for the fact that religious life has been declining; the argument runs that what has become publically invisible does not exist anymore in people’s awareness. Personally, I think that the failure of the churches to come to terms with Nazi rule and live up to their own loud-mouthed ethic may have had something to do with the fact that people in Germany tend to ignore religions. Add to this that the religious worldview has been largely superceded by scientific understanding, and people will be aware that metaphysical entities (saints, angels and devils) and an almighty creator are somewhat anachronistic concepts.

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Name : T27542, Gender : F, Religion : Atheist, Age : 32, City : Munich, State : NA, Country : Germany, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, 

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