Tuesday, March 17
Berlin seems to have a complication relationship to faith. While it sometimes seems on the rise (as we covered in our “Leap in Faith” cover story), membership statistics published by the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) and the Catholic German Bishops’ Conference (DBK) on Monday show that numbers are actually falling.
In Germany on a whole, on December 31 of last year, around 19.2 million people belonged to the Catholic Church and 17.4 million people to the Protestant Church. This is a drop from 19.8 million Catholics and 17.9 million Protestants at the end of 2024.
The decline might not seem that significant, but it is part of a larger downward trend for the churches. And it is a trend equally affecting Berlin. For example, the Protestant Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia now has 745,679 members. Of these, 430,000 live in Berlin. When it was founded in 2004, the EKBO had 1.2 million community members.
State Bishop Christian Stäblein made it clear that the downturn is nothing new. “There is nothing to say about these numbers,” he stated. “They continue the trend that has been observed for a long time.” He also added that it is the role of the church to adapt to these falling membership numbers through change.
“The central thing is the insight that the church must change and has been doing so for years,” said Stäblein. “So, the task remains clear: comfort in difficult times, room for faith and doubt, pastoral care, diaconal action, meaning, encouragement and – where necessary –warning, in the service of people and society, all in all public offers for the care of the soul.”
However, there is hope for the church yet. While the Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin is losing members, the number of church departures went from 9,172 to 8,359 last year, reaching the lowest level since 2022. Plus, the number of adults baptised increased from 113 in 2022 to 240 last year.
