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Every third German knows all Ten Commandments

02-05-2022

Central Europe

CNE.news

Photo AFP, Jim Watson

According to their own assessment, every third German knows all the Biblical Ten Commandments. In eastern Germany, that number is a bit lower; one in four Germans is aware of the contents of the Commandments.

These results come from a survey conducted by the INSA-Consulere institute on behalf of the Christian German news agency IDEA. For the survey, 2,056 adults were interviewed between April 22nd and 25th.

In total, 36 per cent of the respondents claimed to know all Commandments. Thirty-nine per cent of those questioned stated that they did not know every Commandment, and 17 per cent answered that they did not know any Commandment.

According to the survey, knowledge of the Ten Commandments is more widespread among older respondents than among younger people. Geography also plays a role; the Biblical Commandments are more known in western Germany than in the eastern parts of the country.

Among those who are denominationally bound, the members of free churches most frequently (57 per cent) state that they know all the Ten Commandments, followed by regional church Protestants (48 per cent) and Catholics (44 per cent). It is 17 per cent among the Muslim respondents and 27 per cent among the non-denominational.

Minority

As CNE reported earlier, Christians are now a minority in Germany. Research showed that less than 50 per cent of the Germans are members of a Catholic or Protestant church. Carsten Frerk, a researcher in social sciences from Berlin, said to Heute that the process of church abandonment progresses faster than previously assumed in the past six years.

Chain

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