Eastern Germany and a Lesson in Religion



I don't claim to know much about the social, religious and political life in Germany. The longstanding political success of Angela Merkel across Germany when she grew up in Eastern Germany always interested me. It seems like the society of East Germany would have been so different from West Germany she would have been like a "foreigner." 

That's why it was fascinating to come across an article written by an atheist and native of eastern Germany. The author grew up after the unification of East and West Germany so has no recollection of the government's role in society. 

On Christian sites everywhere and in churches from coast to coast and around the world every week is recited the universal schtick of Christianity, "People have a basic permanent inner need and desire for God." The author tells of attending a Catholic wedding and not kneeling or participating in the rituals. Afterwards at the reception the presiding priest headed for her table and gave her a lecture about the harm she was inflicting on herself by not believing in the faith. The author could not fathom why the priest would think it possible for her to believe such stuff. 

The facts are that after the former East German government stopped both promoting Christianity and criticizing it, young people just moved on. What about the "longing for the sacred" preachers talk about? It hasn't shown up and is nowhere to be found. That it is some universal characteristic is balderdash. 

So far eastern Germany has done well without Christianity. No other faith has moved in to take its place. As the link author writes, eastern Germans know that when they are dead they are dead. They have heard the fanciful story of an afterlife but shrug and ignore it. What keeps them on the straight and narrow and not going crazy with "sin?" I suppose it is human rationality.

It could be eastern Germany has a lesson of a future Germany and the American continent.  


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