1 - 2000
Mission in Germany
"Germany is not the Island of the Blessed"
A conversation with Ludwig Grosse
by Bettina Röder
A conversation during the EKD Synod meeting with Ludwig Grosse, retired church official (Oberkirchenrat) in Thuringia.
Mission is the subject of controversial discussion in German churches. In this interview we hear from a EKD Synod member from the churches in the new (eastern) German federal states. He was from 1970 to 1988 Dean of Saalfeld, and thereafter until his retirement senior church official and head of the Department for Training, Education and Schools in Eisenach. Mr. Grosse, you were a member of the Europe Committee of this Synod with its emphasis on mission. Are you satisfied with the result? Certainly not! I was very disturbed that the topic was narrowed down to Germany alone. That is not appropriate, since the current changes are taking place throughout Europe. What do you mean by this? I am convinced that whatever happens in Poland or in the Czech Republic, or in the whole of Europe right up to the Ural Mountains, has immediate consequences for us. We should stop seeing the area which was formerly East Germany as set apart, as if the changes there, with regard to the de-churching of the society, had not long since reached the older (western) federal states of Germany as well. The secularisation of Europe is bringing with it a much more dangerous de-churching of Western Europe, more dangerous because it is hidden by continuing membership in the church. Is Eastern Europe ahead of us in becoming secularised, so that it can be seen more clearly there? No, we are in the middle. But we still act as if West Germany was the Island of the Blessed, and as if we only had to learn to cope with what happened particularly in East Germany. This is wrong. What should be clear, comrades, is that the clock is running faster than you think. The changes are going on all over Europe, and we will be run down unless we finally wake up to the fact that Germany is entirely affected. We do not only have a responsibility for what happened in 1989 Ð we also have a responsibility for the consequences. What are these consequences? Mission means, we must finally have it out with the new gods of the secularised world. There is the resurgence of nationalism; there is the new old faith in the god of Money, but also the new faith in the god of Military Power, or in the infallibility of economic institutions. This interview was published in the journal Publik-Forum, 22/99, and has been abridged and translated for publication in Ecumenical Dialogue 1/2000.