If you want to know what the Evangelical Church in Germany, EKD for short, is dealing with these days, you can get a good idea on its website. Apart from the synod, i.e. the church’s self-government, these are mainly earthly topics: Migration, climate change, sea rescue and the flood of the century in July.
Under the heading of migration, for example, one finds a text by the outgoing EKD Council President Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, in which he explains what an “open and diverse society” must do to “enable the participation of migrants”. The church representative, who sometimes hides his own cross out of religious consideration, writes that it is “about mutual respect and appreciation between the arrivals and the host society”.
And so to the small Thuringian town of Nordhausen, where an Afghan immigrant who arrived in Germany in 2015 expressed his appreciation of the host society by desecrating a church, destroying a medieval crucifix and telling the priest that Jesus was not the Son of God.
The fact that the Muslim had carried furniture out of the house of worship reminds the Protestant churchmen of a “belated spring cleaning”. Rioting, which was mentioned in the police report, was not his concern. “Attentively and patiently, but also pointing out limits”, they want to continue to work on “ways of togetherness”.
Anyone who, like the author of this commentary, not only grew up in the Lutheran faith from an early age, but also within walking distance of the EKD headquarters in Hanover, Lower Saxony, knows this sound well enough. As it says in the song still feared among confirmands today: “Thank you for all good friends, Thank you, O Lord, for everyone, Thank you, if even the greatest enemy I can forgive.”
But the Protestant Church has evidently forgotten that an enemy must first be recognised as an enemy and that repentance comes before forgiveness. It still sees its enemy as a weak person in need of help, even if he has single-handedly emptied and demolished one of its churches. It claims that his motivation remains in the dark, even though he himself has declared that Christianity has no place in his world.
The belittling reaction would be comical if it did not so tragically confirm the cliché of a church that stands up for everything and everyone except itself and its faith. Jesus may have preached non-violence, but when it came to the house of God, he showed a different side. In the Gospel of John, he drives the merchants and money changers out of the temple not with warm words, but with a whip.
Even Luther (“When I am angry, I can write, pray and preach better”) would certainly have found different words for an attack on a Christian church than the pastor and the superintendent from the southern Harz. Their reaction, loosely based on Michel Houellebecq, can only be described as Thuringian submission. Such churchmen do not protect the weakest, they make the weakest impression themselves. Those who compare the desecration of their house of worship to a spring cleaning should best give the perpetrator a hand and also carry out the furniture.
The same applies to the church leadership in Hanover. Once again: Why is the EKD silent? Presumably because what happened in Nordhausen does not fit its migration policy message. In it, the foreigner is without exception a weak person worthy of protection. If an autochthonous German had robbed and damaged a mosque, then it is almost certain that Council President Bedford-Strohm would have long since spoken out in a worried and admonishing manner. He has just declared that he has no problem with Muslim calls to prayer in Cologne.
The latter would be well worth discussing, as would the Church’s earthly commitment to a migration policy that upholds human rights or measures against climate change. But it is empty talk if the core – the commitment to one’s own faith – is missing. And commitment in this case means defence: not against weak people in need of help, but against self-confident young men who despise this society in general and their once culture-shaping Christian faith in particular.