The role of religion in a secular society - and the significance of Pegida and counter-protests: a contribution to the debate by theologian Ulrike Link-Wieczorek.
People are taking to the streets again. After decades of political lethargy, people are flying the flag again - that is certainly the good side of the current flurry of marches. People are taking to the streets - for and against Pegida and Legida, for a "colourful society" and against the massively perceived trivialisation of threatening aspects of a social transformation process in which national and cultural identities are becoming "hybrid". And in the midst of this, the murder of fellow Jews and an entire editorial team of cartoonists whose drawings of the Prophet Mohammed are perceived as a collective humiliation. In Africa, in Rwanda, Christian extremists are still calling for genocide and invoking the Bible to do so. In doing so, they are abusing their religion no less than the Islamists here, in the Middle and Far East, in Palestine, in India, in Nigeria and elsewhere in the world. A Bremen Protestant pastor embarrasses his church by interpreting the creed of salvation through Jesus Christ in an exclusivist way and considering it God's will not to celebrate religious festivals together with Muslim neighbours. And finally: the religiously motivated Israeli settlers do not murder, but they do not shy away from any provocation, no matter how dangerous, by invoking religion.
In other words, no religion is protected from abuse. Christians in Germany are particularly aware of this, as they have been able to see in their own history how Christianity and anti-Judaism could combine to bring death in millions of cases. Not allowing this knowledge to be forgotten and not suppressing its critical and self-critical impulses remains a perpetual task of cultural and religious education in Germany. In a specific way, this becomes a task in a contemporary society that largely considers itself to be secular and no longer thinks it knows the difference between life-honouring religiosity and its abuse.
There is a lack of awareness of the misuse of religion in a society that sees itself as secular, in which religious insecurity seems to be growing paradoxically, in which a large part of the population is inexperienced in the religious language game per se. A society that is in danger of losing a cultural competence that has long been taken for granted because it is withering on the edge of the bed, where religion has allowed itself to be banished from the public sphere. Anyone who regularly has to read theological books on the train knows from the resulting conversational situations how strongly these are characterised by an emotional mixture of curiosity, genuine existential questions and the feeling of being embarrassingly on the edge of intimacy.
The fact that our society is now suddenly and unexpectedly, almost overnight, once again being shaped by people who cannot even imagine a life without practising religion is at the very least irritating. An insecurity for which Pegida is just one of several and very different forms of expression, especially as the new insecurity towards religion may only resonate subconsciously for some. Of course, it is particularly noticeable when it expresses itself in a xenophobic way, because the unease about religion is possibly exacerbated by the fact that lived religiosity is often found among people from other cultures.
Haven't we fortunately freed ourselves from the normative paternalism of religious traditions, from coercion of faith and indiscreet scrutiny of conscience in laborious processes since the Enlightenment? Aren't we glad that social recognition is no longer tied to a generally prescribed religious commitment? That one can be freely atheist without being suspected of being a socially dodgy character? Will religiously based bans on thought - see the cartoon controversy and creationism in schools - once again have a voice in our society when devout Muslims fill mosques, when African-American Pentecostal congregations dance in ecstatic joy at the presence of the Holy Spirit or when charismatic healing services even attract people from the next neighbourhood? Can we even communicate and understand these people - apart from occasional language problems? Will practising believers again draw us into a web of intellectually incomprehensible peculiarities and social constraints, new generational conflicts and gender battles?
Perhaps cultural memory is more long-lasting and infinitely more relentless than we realise. When irritation caused by religion interacts with fear of losing the freedom of thought we have gained, then irritation quickly turns into fear of religion. The step from here to generalised Islamophobia, which - as with Pegida - no longer sees any difference to life-promoting religiosity, its rites and forms of community, is not far away. Fear of religion is not only found among people in East Germany, who have been living in a state of abstinence and alienation from practised religiosity for decades. First of all, it would be understandable that they do not want to exchange the ideological heteronomy they have shaken off for consideration of religious feelings and the provocative challenge of being expected to recognise and pay attention to them. However, fear of religion as a fear of losing freedom exists throughout Germany, possibly throughout Europe. Signs of this are, for example, the humanist movement and the literature of the "New Atheism", which climbed the bestseller lists a few years ago. Fear of religion as a fear of the loss of freedom is not only evident towards migrants, but here it can obviously find particularly clear expression.
In our Western society, the liberation from ecclesiastical paternalism, insofar as it is perceived as having taken place at all, is not so long ago that it has become part of a collective identity. Some people, certainly also those in the "colourful" anti-Pegida demonstrations, are explicitly searching for this. According to research by Heidelberg-based religious researcher Dr Yukio Matsudo, 80 per cent of the German Buddhist Association, for example, is made up of converted Christians who long for a religion without a prescribed sense of guilt and the threat of punishment. They hope for this from a new Buddhist spirituality without a (patronising) concept of God and with a high socio-ethical potential. Anyone who thinks that the time of the church's offence against conscience is long gone is obviously mistaken.
Anyone who, as a person "with a migration background" (what a strangely abstract word monster!), encounters fears and irritations of this kind may react with irritation, even fear, and at least feel a lack of recognition. In this respect, what Pegida fears is true: Society is definitely faced with the challenge of changing its perspective and practising an active culture of hospitality - developing an interest in others, a desire for encounters and mutual participation in order to defy the adversities of life. Fortunately, professionals working with refugees are currently observing such a change in perspective towards newly arrived migrants in many places, which can be seen in many small and large initiatives. May they go so far that they also lead to the recognition of foreign religiosity or religiosity that has become foreign!
After all, the increasing radicalisation of German Muslims is also creating new problems for fellow Muslims. In addition to the question of how they should live and understand their religion in the "new" environment of a Western society, there is now a new pressure to reflect on the other side: How should we understand our religious perspective in contrast to the Islamist interpretation? After all, it cannot be denied that religious arguments are also used in radicalised abuse. It is also done offensively towards Muslim groups that do not subscribe to their interpretation. It can even be particularly aggressive and threatening towards them, as shown by the example of the head of the Centre for Islamic Theology at the University of Münster, Prof. Dr Mouhanad Khorchide, who had to be placed under police protection.
In general, we people in the culturally Christianised West have not yet really understood how different and how little "ecumenical" the various Muslim movements are in terms of their religious identity. And how they now have to struggle with this in a society in which internal differentiation does not (or no longer) take place along religious lines. Just as non-Muslim people in Europe are instructed not to lump together everything that calls itself Muslim, Muslims themselves suddenly find themselves faced with the challenge of doing "theology" in a new sense, on a broad level, in Muslim communities, in schools and in the media. This is undoubtedly something new.
It will therefore come as no surprise that religious education comes into play at the end of these considerations: it is all the more necessary in this situation as we will increasingly be living with fellow citizens on the path to a migration society, for whom religion as self-positioning is an indispensable form of life guidance and organisation. Our society should actually become "religiously musical" again to such an extent that it is able to overcome the insecurities that have arisen here and which prevent the vital recognition and appreciation of ways of life that are necessary for living together in a pluralistic world from being suffocated by inattentive indifference.
Last but not least, this task falls centrally to religious education in state schools, which we still largely have in Germany. But the so-called "alternative subjects" to religious education - values and standards, ethics or philosophy - will also have to dedicate themselves to this task and can do so with the "tools" that their subjects offer. They can do this in the same way as religious education in the line of a critique of religion that does not throw the baby out with the bathwater, but rather nurtures it within the framework of recognising the life-enhancing intentions of religious perspectives and communities. Learning about religion then also means recognising anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism as inhumane and as religious distortion. Europe needs to do this again.
Prof Dr Ulrike Link-Wieczorek holds the Chair of Systematic Theology and Religious Education at the Institute of Theology and Religious Education.
