Humanist Association rejects “reference to God” in Schleswig-Holstein state constitution

The President of the Humanist Association of Germany, Frieder Otto Wolf, pointed this out in a statement to the Interior and Legal Affairs Committee of the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament last Friday. Wolf explained that “such references regularly lead to an emphasis on religion when defining the values of state action, even in derived contexts. They inevitably marginalize non-religious citizens – who also make up a significant proportion of the population in Schleswig-Holstein – and their normative value horizons.” The Humanist Association would therefore welcome it if the preamble to the constitution were to remain unchanged. The background to the new statement, which was requested by the state parliament’s Committee on Internal Affairs and Legal Affairs in Kiel, is a popular initiative that rejects the preamble adopted when the constitutional amendment was passed in October 2014 without a “reference to God” or any other religious formula. The initiators are representatives of the North Church, the Archdiocese of Hamburg, the Islamic religious community and the state association of Jewish communities. Following on from this initiative, a proposed amendment introduced as a bill on April 19, 2016 (Drs. 18/4107) reads as follows: “Respecting the responsibility arising from faith in God or from other universal sources of common values, the Landtag (…) has adopted this constitution.” Prominent representatives of the CDU and SPD parties had also previously spoken out in favor of including a formula in the preamble to the constitution that refers to religious beliefs. Following the hearing of the Interior and Legal Affairs Committee, the state parliament intends to vote on an amendment to the preamble in a second reading in June. 46 of the 69 members of parliament would have to vote in favor of an amendment. Frieder Otto Wolf went on to explain that he also sees objections to supposedly non-discriminatory solutions that include a variety of religious figures as well as secular-humanist references to values. The reason for the objections lies in the fact “that legal texts are made by people and in a democracy they are also accountable to the people. Their validity stems from their democratic and lawful creation.” Gods or other supernatural entities should not be involved in a secular, democratic constitutional state, says Wolf.