Renaissance of the Christian Faith in Germany ? 
Sometimes, good news comes from were you least expect it. In this case, from a German news magazine, Der Spiegel, which is quite secular and traditionally rather hostile towards Christianity.
Short summary:
According to German sociologists, a 30 year trend of secularization and decline in the Christian Churches is expected to come to halt in the next years. This trend, which was popular among the German middle class, and especially among well-educated females, caused a great interest in Buddhism, New Age, transcendental meditation and others. The result was “individualized religion, … personally combined and prepared menus of various religious ingredients and souls-saving promises.” In this trend, people became highly individualized and broke with tradition, religious dogmas and social norms of cultural communities like the institution of marriage.
Yet, nobody thought that people would get tired and stressed out so soon by their level of individual freedom and breaking from all norms and cultural ties. Psychologists saw an increase of stress in people caused by the continuous need for defining and segregating themselves. People needed to find new criteria and norms after they got rid of their traditional world view and faith. Increasingly, this was not only a chance to redefine themselves, but a burden that demanded creativity and original thought 27/7.
Recently, people started to show greater demand for loyalty, belonging and safety given by stable perspectives of defining and interpreting meaning and purpose. As a result, people are becoming more and more open for churches and religious organizations, providing them that safe environment that they voluntarily had given up. It is expected that the generation of young people growing up today will develop a much greater appreciation of Church and the Christian faith than the generation before them in the last decades.
January 4th, 2006 at 5:29 pm
i don’t think that this is the case.
talking to a lot of younger people in germany they are far to occupied mourning the same way as their parents do all day.
however if they come to the point that they realize that it is up to them to do something about it, i believe that “authorities” like the church as they know it has a chance to influence.
the question is - does the church know that?
Oliver
July 23rd, 2006 at 5:30 am
Check out an article on http://www.sueddeutsche.de/,panm4/kultur/artikel/184/81103/ about recent renaissance.
Interesting read, even though the conclusion as well as some other envisaged links might be far fetched.
Cheers
Oliver