Last Saturday, a widely attended hearing on religious policy issues and problems took place at the federal office of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen in Berlin.
The Greens were represented by Bettina Jarasch, member of the federal executive committee and head of the Religious Policy Commission, as well as Walter Otte and Jürgen Roth from the Secular Greens working group. Representatives of more than two dozen religious and ideological communities attended the hearing to discuss the proposals of the final report presented on 17 March 2016. The hearing was attended by representatives of more than two dozen religious and ideological communities to discuss the proposals in the final report of the Alliance 90/The Greens’ religious policy commission “Worldviews, Religious Communities and the State”, which was presented on March 17, 2016, and to present their perspectives on positive and critical aspects: including representatives of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat Germany, the Alevi community of Berlin, the Bahá’í, two Buddhist associations, the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), the Humanist Association of Germany, represented by Frieder Otto Wolf, as well as the Salvation Army, Sikhism, the Pagans, other Protestant free churches and the Catholic Church People’s Movement. At the hearing, the fact that Bündnis 90/Die Grünen had put the issues and questions relating to the overdue readjustment and further development of German religious and ideological constitutional law on the political agenda was overwhelmingly welcomed. The representatives of the Protestant Church in Germany, on the other hand, were rather dismissive. They made it clear that they could not identify any outdated aspects or privileges for the major Christian churches in the current regulatory structure and the political practice based on it.
Broad interest in cooperative secularism
The concept formulated by Frieder Otto Wolf of cooperative secularism as an attitude of the Humanist Association and cooperative secularism as a suitable framework for the constitutional order of religions and world views in the Federal Republic of Germany to be striven for through reforms of political and legal practice met with broad interest at the hearing. The other statements of the participating religious and ideological communities and associations took up most of the time allotted for the hearing. The two other topics scheduled for the hearing – the promotion of religious and ideological communities and the regulation of public holidays – could therefore no longer be discussed separately on Saturday. The representatives of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen promised to deal with these topics in appropriate forms of further exchange. After the hearing, Frieder Otto Wolf expressed his delight at the broad participation. “The great interest clearly underlines that the pressure to reform religious policy, which is also clearly articulated by the Green report, cannot be dismissed out of hand, as the Protestant Church in Germany and the Catholic Church are still trying to do,” said Wolf. On the Friday before the hearing, the Council of the EKD and the head of the Commissariat of the German Bishops had published a statement confirming the position of the churches benefiting from the status quo, which relativized or denied the many problems in the area of religious policy. The statement stated that Bündnis 90/Die Grünen had “initiated a very remarkable, fundamental and broad-based discourse on the future viability of German religious constitutional law from the point of view of the churches”. At the same time, it was explained why many of the problems raised by the Greens’ report on religious policy and at the hearing on Saturday could not be recognized from a church perspective.
Wolf: Churches must make their own reform proposals
Unfortunately, the vast majority of arguments put forward by the churches against the necessary readjustments in the relationship between the state and religious and ideological communities in view of the current and future plurality are still characterized by a specifically large-church perspective, said Frieder Otto Wolf. “However, a critical revision that produces sustainable solutions for the overdue modernization of religious and ideological policy must also include the task of leaving behind the church-shaped character of law and political practice and not requiring non-Christian worldviews to take on any duties or attitudes that contradict their self-image, such as organizing themselves in the form of a church,” Wolf continued. For government agencies, this is required in any case due to the obligation of ideological neutrality. Furthermore, it is no longer enough to simply criticize the numerous demands and proposals for reform, emphasized the President of the Humanist Association. “In order to really participate seriously in the ongoing discussions, the major churches in particular would have to formulate well-founded reform proposals that openly and respectfully address the problems and needs for recognition and participation outlined by the representatives of the smaller religious and ideological communities. For without such respect for the – quite divergent – views and the problems and needs of others, constructive dialog on meaningful solutions will be very difficult. And the fact that there must be new solutions in the area of German religious policy can no longer be seriously disputed,” concluded Frieder Otto Wolf.
