On a Saturday morning in September, a large group of Berliners – mostly in their 20s and 30s – file from the open kitchen, where tea and coffee is served, into the light-filled meditation hall at the Buddhistisches Tor Berlin in Kreuzberg. “This is amazing. Have we hired a PR team without knowing it?” asks one of the centre’s senior teachers, scanning the crowd with amusement. A British-born Buddhist in his 70s with a disarming smile, Lalitaratna has a knack for puncturing the assumption that meditation is a solemn, even joyless undertaking.
Founded in the mid-2000s by members of the UK-based Triratna Buddhist Order, the Buddhistisches Tor Berlin opened its doors at the historic Krankenhaus am Urban location, a disused hospital, in 2012 and has since grown into one of the city’s most active Buddhist centres, with a packed calendar of guided meditations, study groups and retreats in the Brandenburg countryside. While weekday-evening sessions draw steady attendance, it’s the English-language Saturday meditation classes that reliably fill the room, at times drawing as many as 150 people. That collective spirit informs the atmosphere: the classes are donation-based, the tea after sessions is free and the emphasis is on accessibility rather than hierarchy. “You can have a lie-in, have breakfast, do your Buddhism, and you’ve still got the weekend,” explains Lalitaratna. Regulars describe it as a kind of reset, a moment of structure in a city defined by constant movement: knowing that, week after week, you might run into a familiar face in the same hall provides a feeling of continuity in an otherwise unreliable and transient city.
After decades of decline in numbers, young people are returning to religion across the globe. In 2019, just 22% of 18-to-24-year-olds in the UK reported believing in God; this year, that figure has nearly doubled to 45%. Catholicism is steadily getting more popular across the globe: baptisms among young people have jumped 160% in the past decade in France, tripled in Belgium and risen in Ireland and England. (Some have credited the buzz of the 2025 conclave, as well as social media influencers and the popularity of the cross necklace as a fashion statement, for the reputational bump.) The Muslim population in Europe has risen in the last 15 years, largely thanks to immigration, and projections from the Pew Research Center suggest that Germany’s Muslim population, which was only 6% in 2016, could reach 20% by 2050. And a 2023 study of 19,000 people in 26 countries carried out by the research institute Ipsos found that Gen Zers reported praying more often than their baby-boomer grandparents – though data sceptics have cautioned that increased interest in faith doesn’t always mean increased interest in religious attendance.
After decades of decline in numbers, young people are returning to religion across the globe.
The appeal is not hard to understand. Since the pandemic, loneliness among young people has become a defining social reality in Germany: one 2023 survey found that almost half of 18-to 29-year-olds reported frequent feelings of isolation. At the same time, surveys show Gen Z facing rising levels of stress and exhaustion, compounded by anxieties about war, climate change and the rising cost of living. In this atmosphere of uncertainty, religion offers a framework of ritual and community that can situate individual fears within a broader story.
In Berlin, this development might seem unexpected. In a city where 72% of residents have no religious affiliation, the Buddhistisches Tor is thriving. So why are Berliners suddenly flocking to spiritual places?
Back to church
Some come back to religion out of a need for community; others are drawn by questions of identity. For Irish-American writer Clár Tillekens, it was the latter. She first encountered Buddhism while living in London, drawn to its emphasis on stillness and detachment. But after relocating to Berlin, she felt compelled to return to the Catholicism of her childhood. What drew her was not dogma but embodiment: the rhythms of prayer, the physicality of ritual, the sense of continuity with her ancestors. “It felt right to embrace the ethno-religious identity that shaped me and my ancestors – not out of nostalgia, but because it aligned with something already rooted in me,” Tillekens says.
At St. Bernard’s, the English-speaking Catholic mission in leafy Dahlem, she found herself among other young expats who had also circled back to Catholicism. The members describe the parish as unexpectedly lively, a place where they’ve met “cool people” their age in a city where the phrase “going to church” is more often shorthand for a Sunday morning at Berghain.
Berlin artist and writer Randon Rosenbohm’s path back to church was similarly circuitous. Born and raised in Louisiana – historically one of the strongholds of Catholicism in America – Rosenbohm grew up what she calls a “cradle Catholic” but refused confirmation at age 14, unsettled by the homophobia she encountered in her early religious education. For years, she kept her distance until returning to Catholicism in 2017, during what she calls a turbulent period in her life. When she moved to Germany a year later, her latent faith deepened – though at first she found the experience of attending church in Berlin intimidating. Feeling out of place among mostly older, conservative-looking German parishioners, she was worried about approaching anyone after church. “They’re going to hate me for being an immigrant,” she thought at the time. “I was just pulling up to church by myself every week, praying for some Catholic friends, and a year later I got blessed with not one but two chicks from Long Island going to church with me.”
As she became more fluent in German, she also found greater access to the city’s Catholic community. In 2023 she was confirmed in Berlin by Archbishop Heiner Koch, at the age of 29. Choosing to do it later in life, she explains, was a matter of conviction: “I grew to understand my own spiritual background a lot better. So instead of doing the very typical millennial witch manifestation thing, I got into something a little bit more serious.” Now, Catholic ritual has become the framework of her life. She prays daily, attends Mass, and sometimes layers multiple devotions at once.
Instead of doing the very typical millennial witch manifestation thing, I got into something a little bit more serious.
At the same time, Rosenbohm is wary of how Catholicism can be aligned with conservative movements. She recalls once joining a group of suited-up teenagers in praying the rosary at a traditional Latin Mass service, only to catch them later demonstrating outside Florentina Holzinger’s shock-opera SANCTA. “I thought [the show] was pretty benign and entertaining,” she notes wryly. “Basically everything we see happening in the world is more blasphemous than that, anyway.”
After years of writing a popular astrology column for VICE, Rosenbohm has grown increasingly sceptical of spirituality when it’s packaged as lifestyle branding. She still dips into astrology, sometimes even offering readings, but describes her relationship to it now as more ambivalent. Over time, she’s watched all kinds of spiritual circles leave their imprint on Berlin, from “New Age, Burning Man-style rituals, sound healing, ecstatic dance to neo-mega churches”. While these practices attempt to provide city dwellers some sense of meaning, those rituals circle back to the individual – self-optimisation, self-expression – rather than the collective. That hunger for something deeper, rooted in continuity and shared tradition, is what she believes draws people to more formal faith communities.
Temple meets tempo
For Samuel Hatchwell, a 32-year-old sound artist and musician who performs under the name hoyah (which in ancient Hebrew means “to exist, become, or come to pass”), returning to religion was less about worship and more about reinterpreting his cultural heritage. He grew up in a Reconstructionist Jewish household – “not Orthodox, but bar mitzvahed, Friday-night Sabbath, all the high holidays and that kind of stuff” – but avoided moving to Israel for Aliyah, the state-sponsored ‘return’ of Jews from the diaspora.
Hatchwell describes feeling drawn back to Judaism after moving to Berlin in 2019 and, soon after, the birth of his daughter. During the pandemic, he plunged into late-night YouTube rabbit holes, rediscovering the “mystic and spiritual” dimensions of the religion and tracing diaspora traditions across the globe, eventually turning his fascination into Can I Get a Hoyah?, a radio show for Refuge Worldwide. “I became obsessed with how Judaism looks at transcendence and themes that we see manifest through psychedelics or sound systems and dance floors,” he explains.
A recent collaboration with performance artist Anna Lublina, The Land Speaks to Me of Something Shared: A Prayer for Ancestral Rhythms, which premiered at Ballhaus Ost in April, invokes diasporic histories of rhythm and repetition as a form of ritual memory. Hatchwell is also working with the Jewish-Arabic hip-hop ensemble System Ali, composed of Israeli musician Neta Weiner and Palestinian rapper Samira Saraya.
The Germans love to tell me what it is to be Jewish, but they don’t ever ask me.
As hoyah, Hatchwell’s music links Jewish mysticism and Berlin’s adventurous club sound. His forthcoming album, named after his radio show, fuses experimental electronics with traditional folk motifs, layering chopped-up samples of hymns and prayers over propulsive beats. But when he wanted to film the music video for one of the songs in a synagogue, Hatchwell found it impossible to receive permission from multiple congregations. “Everyone’s being very careful, because no one wants to be associated in the wrong way. Judaism is having a big moment of internal conflict,” he says.
Being in Germany also motivated him to understand more deeply what it meant to be Jewish.“The Germans love to tell me what it is to be Jewish, but they don’t ever ask me,” he says. That urgency only deepened after October 7. At a recent protest on Pariser Platz, Hatchwell blew the shofar, the ritual ram’s horn traditionally sounded on Jewish holidays. Police rushed to stop him until Saraya intervened: “This is a religious object, this is a religious act! Are you really going to do this to a Jewish person?”
Hatchwell laughs thinking about the experience, but it also crystallised for him the peculiar position of being Jewish in Germany. He describes Jews in Berlin as having a rare ability to “socially circumvent” forms of authority such as police brutality. “It is our responsibility to use that power. There’s a strength in being Jewish, especially when it comes to moments of solidarity.”
Everyone’s being very careful, because no one wants to be associated in the wrong way. Judaism is having a big moment of internal conflict.
This desire for self-definition also resonates with New Jersey-born Akiva Weingarten, who serves as the chief Rabbi of the state of Saxony. “Judaism is more than just a religion,” he says. “Even if someone calls themselves an atheist, they’re still Jewish. What we’ve been trying to encourage is inviting Jewish people, regardless of belief, to be part of Jewish traditions and culture.” Though Weingarten now lives in Dresden, where his liberal, open synagogue draws more than 200 visitors from around the world, he first landed in Berlin after leaving the ultra-Orthodox Satmar community, founding a liberal Hasidic association in 2017. For him, identity has always been shaped in dialogue with the wider world – taking in foods, music, and customs from surrounding societies. “It doesn’t diminish the Jewish aspect of it,” he adds. “It became part of our culture, and we should celebrate that as part of who we are.”
Allah’s gut
For Tugay Saraç, a 28-year old Berlin-born queer activist and educator, his path back to faith also meant breaking with ultra-conservativism. As a teenager he knew he was gay but was afraid to come out, pressured not by religion, he says, but by a Turkish conservative household. After his father’s death, he turned to religion as a way to suppress his sexuality, immersing himself for six years in Salafism, a hardline branch of Sunni Islam.
The break with Salafism came in 2017, when he finished high school and began to slowly distance himself from radical Islam. He rebuilt ties with his aunt, who that year had helped establish the Ibn Rushd-Goethe Mosque in Moabit – the first liberal mosque in Germany. Saraç has been part of it ever since, running the mosque’s LGBTQ+ crisis hotline and organising community events for queer Muslims in Berlin. Saraç describes the mosque’s early years as turbulent, marked by debates over how openly to address queerness. Some members left. “Now people come to us who know exactly what we stand for,” Saraç says. “Many people I’ve met say: yes, I’m Muslim, I don’t have to wear a headscarf, I can be queer, I can dress how I want. And if I drink alcohol sometimes, that’s between me and maybe God. They just want to be, to live their lives.” While members hold a range of views, Saraç’s community is united by core principles: gender equality, recognition of queer believers and opposition to antisemitism and racism.
The cost of this openness is constant threat. The mosque operates under police protection; Salafist preachers attack it online; and the 2021 anthology Liebe ist Halal (“Love is Halal”), co-published by the mosque and co-edited by Saraç, brought both visibility and harassment. Saraç has been recognised and threatened on the street. Yet he insists the risks are outweighed by the impact: creating a space where faith and sexuality need not be at odds, and where young Muslims who once felt excluded find a home.
Ibn Rushd’s presence holds weight in Berlin, where a vast Muslim community intersects with one of Europe’s largest queer populations, but they also cut against the grain of a city that often prides itself on being atheist, progressive and transgressive.
“When I DJ at Tresor, they literally have dark rooms,” says Juba, a DJ and podcaster who regularly attends a Sunday church service in Mitte when her busy touring schedule allows for it. “I know that in the eyes of the church, whether or not they’ll say or not, I live in the dark world as well. But I’m just like ‘Well then, leave it to me on judgment day.’”
Many people I’ve met say: yes, I’m Muslim, I don’t have to wear a headscarf, I can be queer, I can dress how I want.
Growing up in a Nigerian household in London, going to church was always a big part of her life. But as she’s gotten older, she describes becoming more critical towards how Christianity reached her family through colonialism and interested in spiritual traditions that predate that inheritance. Instead of abandoning her faith, Juba chooses to remain in dialogue with it, approaching it with a critical lens. “A lot of the time, if you were to see my facial expression during church, I’m kind of frowning, like, ‘Hmm, not sure about that.’”
Juba is just one of many Berliners wrestling with a growing interest in faith and life in the German capital. Ultimately, the church provides something valuable to her: a community outside of nightlife and a framework for how to live. “I don’t think there’s anything negative from going on Sunday and being told that in life, you’ve got to take responsibility, you’ve got to love people around you and you have to move with integrity. Even if you are not a religious person, to hear these messages can be a really important means of teaching you how to live better.”
That search for stability is something Lalitaratna recognises at the Buddhistisches Tor. “Very often people come for psychological reasons, and end up finding a spiritual motivation,” he says. “And people with a spiritual motivation sort themselves out psychologically.” In his experience, what begins as a need for grounding in a city of constant flux can quietly become something more profound.
“Berlin is a city of misfits and orphans and runaways,” reflects Rosenbohm. “I’ve found a lot of peace and a feeling of home in my faith and my church, regardless of who’s around me. As long as people are able to find something greater than themselves to believe in, it’s a very healthy practice and can provide a lot of healing.”
