Quarter of Germans wants union of great churches
photo, EPA, Christian Marquardt
Central Europe
One in four Germans would like the Protestant and Catholic Churches to unite. This conclusion results from a survey by the market and social research institute INSA on behalf of the evangelical news agency IDEA.
One in three of the respondents spoke out against it. Younger respondents are less in favour of the unification of the two churches than older ones: While only 19 per cent of the 18 to 29-year-olds were in favour, 33 per cent of those over 60 were in, IDEA reports.
Among the Christian denominations, Catholics most often consider an association of the large churches to be a good idea: 37 per cent of them are in favour, 31 per cent of them are against this idea.
Rejection predominates among Protestants from the regional church, with one in four of the respondents in favour, against 43 per cent who reject it.
The scepticism of the free church respondents is even more significant: Of them, only one in five would like to unify the churches, while almost one in two per cent reject it.
Among the supporters of the political parties, mainly the voters of the Christian democrats CDU/CSU and the liberal FDP sympathize with the church association (32 per cent each), followed by the sympathizers of the social democrats SPD (31 per cent), the left (29 per cent), the Greens (28 per cent) and the populist party AfD (23 per cent).
For the survey, INSA interviewed 2,055 adults between May 7 and May 10.
