Dhe Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) has recorded more church exits than ever before. In 2022, around 380,000 members declared their resignation, the EKD announced on Tuesday. This is another strong increase, in 2021 the number of resignations was still 280,000, in 2005 it was just under 120,000. The EKD Council President Annette Kurschus called the new numbers “depressing”. Not even in the years after reunification did the EKD record as many resignations as it does now.
In addition to the many departures, more than twice as many church members die as are newly baptized into the evangelical church. The number of deaths in 2022 was around 365,000, the number of baptisms at 165,000. The number of baptisms, which had plummeted in 2020 and 2021, rose again by 37 percent in 2022, returning to pre-pandemic levels. According to the statistics expert Fabian Peters, however, it has not yet been clarified to what extent this is a catch-up effect or a return to the previous baptism quotas.
Overall, the number of EKD members fell by 2.9 percent to 19.15 million last year. This development will also hit the church hard financially in the coming years. The Freiburg study from 2019 still assumed that both large churches would lose around half of their members and income by 2060. Experts now consider this forecast to be far too optimistic.
EKD council chair Kurschus says her church is now facing “particularly far-reaching changes”. It is about “creating tailor-made offers for all generations and phases of life”. The EKD now wants to hold a nationwide baptism day with low-threshold offers on June 24 for the first time. In addition, the value of formal church membership must be made clear, said Kurschus.
Sociologists of religion have also identified the debate about sexualized violence, particularly in the Catholic Church, and the associated loss of trust as an important driver of church exits. As a result, the Catholic Church in Germany recently recorded even more resignations than the EKD.