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Translation from the German language edition “Wahrnehmungsbasiertes Marketing von Pfarrgemeinden am Beispiel katholischer Akademiker und Studenten” by Tom Peters
Copyright © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, a part of Springer Nature 2019. All Rights Reserved.
Forewords by Bischop Dr. Josef Clemens, Vatican City, and Prof. Mgr. Peter Štarchoň, Ph.D., Bratislava
Production and Publishing: BoD – Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt, Germany
ISBN: 978-3-7481-2416-0
Bishop Dr. Josef Clemens, Vatican City,
Ex- Secretary of the Pontificial Council for the Laity
Globalization has significantly broadened and profoundly transformed our view of the world. The digitalization of media content has enabled previously foreign cultures, values and behavioral patterns to enter directly into our living rooms and into our children’s rooms. As a result, young people, in particular, are confronted with the challenge of dealing with new impressions and influences often without sufficient background knowledge and without a clearly developed value system. Even the experience of elderly people and the Christian faith, which has been instrumental in shaping the western world and the enlightened Europe for over two millennia, can only provide limited guidance in our increasingly pluralistic, technocratic and secularized society. People look around and discover a steadily growing supply of alternative life coaching and orientation guides, more and more of these have no relation to religion or Christianity.
It is against this background that Thomas Peters explores the multitude of perspectives and dimensions based on which, and in accordance with which, respectively, Catholic parishes endeavor to present and popularize their liturgical (Leiturgia), charitable-social (Diakonia) and missionary-proclaming (Martyria) principal features in the most appealing manner. Here, church initiatives and programs increasingly find themselves in competition with secular providers of spiritual guidance, life coaches and ritual managers. Under these circumstances, it is all the more important to ensure that all activities and offers, the implementing and cooperating organizations, the acting persons and any existing and potential multipliers are linked together intensively, and that the goals, resources and communication efforts of all participants are coordinated in an optimal way.
In the course of my work as secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, I was able to experience and support many “marketing campaigns” on the parish level and especially in the Catholic associations and communities. Looking back, I feel a deep respect for the personal dedication and a great joy for the valiant apostolic commitment of many Christian brothers and sisters in the various lay organizations.
In terms of direct church involvement at the local level, Catholic associations and the academic associations among them play a special role because of their extensive spiritual and material resources. In keeping with the spirit of the apostolic exhortation Christifideles Laici, these organizations of believers contribute towards building and strengthening the sense of community among members and provide in qualified training and education in all matters relating to faith. In addition, they motivate their members to resolutely express their faith, which primarily involves caring for and providing services to others.1
In his dissertation, Thomas Peters emphasizes the close relationship between Catholic Academics and their parish communities, as well as their student organizations. Using the Cartel Confederation of the Catholic German Student Associations (Cartellverband der katholischen deutschen Studentenverbindungen, CV), the largest confessional academic association in Europe, as an example, he demonstrates the useful potential of personnel, organizational, financial and communicative support provided by these lay organizations for matters such as the preservation – or reactivation – of parish life and work. In this regard, specific action recommendations for parishes and church (or church-related) institutions are to encourage contact to be established with this particular group of persons.
Especially at a time when local parishes are being forced to reorganize and, in many places, merge together in larger pastoral units, the helping, community-building and identity-forming strength of Catholic lay organizations becomes an increasingly important factor. May this book both inform and motivate its readers to actively shape and support a life led by Christian conviction in their personal environment.
Vatican City, December 2018
+ Bishop Dr. Josef Clemens
Prof. Mgr. Peter Štarchoň, PhD, Bratislava,
Comenius University, Faculty of Management
I was honored to accept Thomas Peters’ request for a short introduction to his brand-new book on parish marketing, given my deep appreciation and respect for his enthusiasm, his willingness, and everything that he has already accomplished through study and research – culminating in this publication. Moreover, Peters’ own skills, expertise, abilities, and qualities are obvious, especially in terms of their direct applicability to practical values.
This book is truly innovative, inspirational, and of the moment; the powerful practical consequences of the resolution of its topic are remarkable. The author seeks to solve the problem of declining membership in religious (Catholic) organizations and find suitable strategies oriented towards encouraging involvement and voluntary engagement from particular target groups. In this context, marketing and communications have an important role to play, and can be used as a potent managerial and human-centric tool. The main results are presented in a review and synthesis of the current state of knowledge, analysis of the primary research results, and identification of potentially successful marketing and communication strategies oriented towards particular target groups. A fascinating discussion emerges from the secondary and primary research results, which can in turn be considered a stimulus for further research and implementation of particular marketing strategies as well.
Peters shows us how church communications should ideally be designed in order to successfully approach specific groups in the population with an affinity to the Catholic Church and with higher levels of education, and to recruit these people for the needs and purposes of the Church. In addition, he presents the elements of a marketing communication mix that are relevant to Catholic parishes, with a view to their student and graduate members on the one hand, and perception of the parish activities and programs specifically by these groups and identifying practical recommendations on the other. With respect to the appeal of the topic in terms of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, particular recommendations and findings could be applied not only in other churches, but also similar (not only religious) organizations and non-profits.
It is my hope that this book will inspire its readers and be welcomed as a relevant source of knowledge.
Yours faithfully,
Peter Štarchoň
1 Cf. POPE JOHN PAUL II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici on the Vocation and the Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and in the World, December 30, 1988, in: Verlautbarungen des Apostolischen Stuhls Nr. 87.
Figure 1-1: Principal features and mission components of the Catholic church (own illustration)
Figure 1-2: Church Tax Revenues of the Catholic and the Protestant Church in Germany 1990–2015 (own graphic)
Figure 1-3: Development of Membership in the Catholic Church 2010 – 2016
Figure 1-4: The German Age Pyramid (own graphic)
Figure 1-5: Decline in Membership and Church Leavings 2001-2016 (own graphic)
Figure 1-6: “Have you ever seriously considered leaving the church? - If so, why?” (open question)
Figure 1-7: Religious Socialization by Age Group
Figure 1-8: Development of Religious Denominations in Germany
Figure 2-1: The Third Sector and the Welfare Triangle
Figure 2-2: ICNPO classes and correlating examples from the Catholic Church
Figure 2-3: Structure Logic of the Fribourg Management Model for NPOs
Figure 2-4: Non-profit Marketing Functions
Figure 3-1: The Mission of God to His Church according to Fischer (2008)
Figure 3-2: Role of the Christian Faith in the Parenting by Denomination
Figure 3-3: Target Groups of the Catholic Church (own graphic)
Figure 3-4: Percentages of Catholics in the SINUS Milieus, Germany 2016
Figure 3-5: Percentages of Catholics in the SIGMA Milieus, Germany 2016
Figure 3-6: Lifestyles of Protestant Church Members in the Social Space (own graphic)
Figure 3-7: Components of the Marketing Mix in the NPO Sector according to Lichtsteiner (2015)
Figure 3-8: The 8 Ps of Parish Marketing (own graphic)
Figure 3-9: Ecclesiastical Product Levels (own graphic)
Figure 3-10: Types, Forms and Distribution Areas of Catholic Media
Figure 3-11: Coverage of Ecclesiastical and Religious Media Related to the Sinus-Milieus (maximum coverages; © 2009 Klenk/ Sinus)
Figure 3-12: Media Usage of Catholic Parishes
Figure 3-13: Catholic New Media Use in the United States 2012
Figure 3-14: Topics of Particular Interest to Catholics: An Overview
Figure 3-15: Preferred Information Sources of German Catholics 2009
Figure 3-16: Interpersonal Communication, Contacts with Parish Workers
Figure 3-17: Interpersonal Communication, Contacts with Parish Workers
Figure 3-18: What’s Working for Churches in the US. CFCC survey 2005
Figure 4-1: Dissertation Structure
Figure 4-2: Research of Literature
Figure 5-1: SINUS Milieus in Different Population Groups of Germany 2016
Figure 5-2: SIGMA Milieus in Different Population Groups of Germany 2016
Figure 5-3: Catholic Male Academics in the Sinus and SIGMA Milieus (own graphic)
Figure 5-4: “In which year you were born?” (Question 31)
Figure 5-5: “Which marital status best applies to you?” (Question 32)
Figure 5-6: “Please enter the postcode of your place of residence” (Question 33)
Figure 5-7: “To which (arch-)diocese belongs your parish” (Question 10)
Figure 5-8: “How would you describe yourself most?” (Question 2)
Figure 5-9: “Apart from weddings, baptisms, funerals and other special occasions: How often do you attend church services?” (Question 3)
Figure 5-10: “Have you ever thought about leaving the church?” (Question 4)
Figure 5-11: “What is your highest educational achievement by now?” (Question 25)
Figure 5-12: “In which field of science have you mainly studied or are you currently studying?” (Question 26)
Figure 5-13: “In which professional field are you currently mainly active?” (Question 27)
Figure 5-14: “Which communication channels/media are systematically used by your parish to inform members?” (Question 5)
Figure 5-15: “If you mainly get information in your own effort/initiative: Which information channels or parish media do you use most often?” (Question 7)
Figure 5-16: “Which communication channels/media are systematically used by your parish to inform members?” (Question 5) in correlation to “How would you like to be informed about appointments, events and offers of your parish?” (Question 8)
Figure 5-17: “Do you inform others about interesting parish events, do you pass on information?” (Question 9)
Figure 5-18: “Please rate the following offers of your parish:” – sorted by “Good/Excellent” (Question 11)
Figure 5-19: “Please rate the following offers of your parish:” – sorted by “Inadequate/Less Good” (Question 11)
Figure 5-20: “On which offer should the parish focus the most?” (Question 12)
Figure 5-21: “Please rate the following offers/programs of your parish:” analyzed by “Not assessable” (Question 11)
Figure 5-22: “Please evaluate the following characteristics of your parish life” (Question 13)
Figure 5-23: “What is the most important topic for improvement?“ (Question 14)
Figure 5-24: “Are you or have you been directly involved in ecclesiastical activities? (Question 16)
Figure 5-25: “Were you particularly engaged in one or more of the above areas, e.g. by taking over specific tasks or honorary offices?” (Question 22 with specification based on predefined answer options from Question 21)
Figure 5-26: “In which of the following areas of life are you or have you been active within the last 12 months?” (Question 21)
Figure 5-27: “What tasks do you primarily undertake in your voluntary commitment?” (Question 23)
Figure 5-28: “Which motives were or are decisive for your particular commitment?” (Question 24)
Figure 5-29: “To what extent do you agree with the following statements?” (Question 20)
Figure 5-30: Structural Comparison of the Sample with the Statistical Population
With about 23.6 million members, the Catholic Church is the largest religious community of faith in Germany and has been enjoying as such high esteem in the German population for its numerous charitable and social activities and institutions as well as for its offers of festive rituals at the occasions of important transitions between different stages of life.2 However, this once powerful and not least politically influential people’s church has been steadily losing members already since the 1970s; in the five year-period between 2011 and 2017 alone, this was more than 2,000,000 people at an average net loss in excess of 400,000 members annually, traceable to both instances of death and church leavings.3
The key causes of this decline in church membership have been an increasingly ageing German population and a loss of weight of not just the Catholic Church in society at large due to advancing secularization and pluralization of religious and church life: the differentiation in German society into increasingly disparate social milieus has been symptomatic of a growing alienation from traditional established structures and lifestyles while individualism and flexible, often non-committal orientations and affiliations that are in permanent flux have been on the increase.4 All the while, this shift has been taking place against the backdrop of a prosperous state that has brought its population – on the basis of Christian values – life in peace and freedom devout of violence, oppression or poverty for over 70 years by now.
The decline in membership also has been complemented in the Catholic Church by a shrinking number of priests, deacons, religious and voluntary staff members. The result has been a profound change in religious and church life and not least in the structures and the performance ability of the Catholic Church as a socio-cultural nonprofit organization that currently consists of more than 10,000 parishes and of thousands of charitable and social facilities with more than a million staff members on a full-time or voluntary basis.5
In this context, the Catholic Church is faced with the challenge to professionalize its religious and social offers, its public, media and interpersonal presentation as well as its communication with members and marketing communication, and to adapt to the changed social and economic framework conditions.
Not out of missionary zest, but rather due to the emergency of the free fall in membership numbers, German dioceses have long began to analyze their structures and systems in order to use available resources more effectively and efficiently than before, to adapt their facilities to the challenges of an increasingly market-shaped religious environment6, and to explore new potentials for the Church to fulfil its fundamental functions for example through milieu-specific activities and offers7.
For that, the focus often is primarily on conservative maintenance and refurbishment measures with the aim of a “qualitative growth”. Quantitative missionary goals in the sense of a new evangelization and recruitment of members in the form of measurable numbers of clients, visitors or members, up to newly founded Christian communities by now mainly have been implemented in Protestant environments.8 On a complementary basis, the Catholic Church has been proceeding in accordance with various best practices and has been verifying for example also the marketing and communication concepts of successfully growing (or grown) parishes in the USA for suitable components and their feasibility for the German environment9.
With a view to the decline in membership, the progressive shortage of priests and the erosion in support by voluntary helpers, it is becoming increasingly more urgent in particular for parishes and their attached communities that operate at the local or regional level to identify and contact in a fitting manner in order to secure their fundamental functions and principal tasks those groups of persons that are able and willing to make available to the Church and for its purposes and the needs of church life on a sustainable basis their individual and professional skills and competences, their leisure time and not least their material and financial resources.
In this context, both the processes of promoting the message of the Church and its activities and offers as well as of designing, providing and delivering the church-specific benefits and services rely on effective internal and external marketing communication. This communication is the more important the more the persons involved in providing and delivering the service are making themselves available on a voluntary and free-of-charge basis, that is, as volunteer helpers.10
This is where the present thesis aims to contribute, with a discussion based on an inventory check of the church marketing mix of the notion of marketing from the church perspective; in doing so, the vital and core significance of communication is highlighted and explored in marketing of non-profit organizations such as parishes and church facilities and establishments.
As marketing and in particular marketing communication that is based on externally reflected perception can substantially contribute to improving the situation of the Church and its parishes, this thesis aims to provide parishes with conceptual and practical insights for a targeted, perception-based marketing communication of their activities and offers; perception-based because this thesis focuses in particular on the perception and judgement of how church communication, activities and programs are communicated mainly by those groups of persons that given their high affinity to the Church and their density of contacts actually are able to effectively evaluate these.
A population group that typically meets the socio-economic prerequisites to provide support that is so urgently needed by the Church is that of Catholic academics. Among these, of particular interest are those students and academics who are organized in Catholic student associations and their local societies in which they receive or have received an additional Catholic socialization during studies.11
The present thesis thus explores the question how church communication ideally must be designed in order to successfully approach groups in the population with affinity to the Church and with higher levels of education, and to recruit these for the needs and purposes of the Church. The general aim in the effort is to analyse and correlate the marketing communication mix of Catholic parishes with a view to their student and graduate members on the one hand, as well as perception of the parish activities and programs specifically by these groups, and to derive from these specific practical recommendations.
The research question and hypotheses herein are empirically explored and discussed on the example of members of the largest German academic association, which is the Cartel Confederation of the Catholic German Student Associations (CV)12, and comprised and summarized with a view to the aspect as to how far the comprehensive Catholicism and affinity to the Church of this particular population group can be practically used towards securing the resources of “time, talent and treasure” needed by the church.
The CV is among the oldest academic association and was constituted over the course of formation of the landscape of the Catholic associations so successfully that already at the outset of the 20th century, it had more than 30 member-organizations. Today, the CV is the largest confessional academic association in Europe and with about 30,000 individual members in 126 member-organizations and about 250 local circles can be deemed representative of the Catholic corporate environment in Germany.13
2 cf. HERMELINK, Jan (Ed.), LATZEL, Thorsten: Kirche empirisch: Ein Werkbuch zur vierten EKD-Erhebung über Kirchenmitgliedschaft und zu anderen empirischen Studien. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlag-Haus, 2008, pp. 101-103.
3 Author’s own calculation based on data for 2012 to 2016 from: SEKRETARIAT DER DEUTSCHEN BISCHOFSKONFERENZ (Ed.): Katholische Kirche in Deutschland: Zahlen und Fakten 2010/2011. Bonn: DBM, 2010 – annual publications until 2017.
4 HILLEBRECHT, Steffen W.: Die Praxis des kirchlichen Marketings: Die Vermittlung religiöser Werte in der modernen Gesellschaft. Hamburg: E.B.-Verlag, 2000, pp. 13-22.
5 cf. SEKRETARIAT DER DEUTSCHEN BISCHOFSKONFERENZ (2017), ibidem, as well as DEUTSCHER CARITASVERBAND: Caritas in Deutschland. [retrieved on 2018-04-30], available at: https://www.caritas.de/diecaritas/wofuerwirstehen/millionenfache-hilfe.
6 Respective examples can be found in Chapter 3.3.4 of this thesis.
7 cf. GIESEN, Rut von: Ökonomie der Kirche? Zum Verhältnis von theologischer und betriebswirtschaftlicher Rationalität in praktisch-theoretischer Perspektive. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2009, pp. 41-48.
8 Compare for example McGAVRAN, Donald Anderson: Effective Evangelism - A Theological Mandate. Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1988 | SCHWARZ, Christian A.: Praxis des Gemeindeaufbaus. Gemeindetraining für wache Christen. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Schriftenmissionsverlag, 1987.
9 cf. REINHOLD, Kai, SELLMANN, Matthias (Ed.): Katholische Kirche und Gemeindeleben in den USA und in Deutschland: Überraschende Ergebnisse einer ländervergleichenden Umfrage. Münster: Aschendorff, 2011.
10 cf. BIEBERSTEIN, Ingo: Dienstleistungs-Marketing. Ludwigshafen: Kiehl, 2006, p. 45 | LICHTSTEINER, Hans et al.: Das Freiburger Management-Modell. Bern: Haupt, 2015, p. 49 f., p. 143 f. | SCHÜRMANN, Mathias: Marketing. In vier Schritten zum eigenen Marketingkonzept. Zurüch: vdf Hochschulverlag, 2011, p. 260.
11 Details on the concept of the surveyed sample can be found in Chapter 5.1.1 of this thesis.
12 cf. CARTELLVERBAND: Webportal "Cartellverband.de" [retrieved on 2018-04-30], available from: https://www.cartellverband.de/.
13 cf. CARTELLVERBAND: Wer wir sind. [retrieved on 2018-04-30] available from: https://www.cartellverband.de/cartellverband/wer-wir-sind/.
The Roman Catholic Church is the largest Christian community of faith, values, culture and solidarity in Germany. According to a publication by the German Bishops’ Conference,14 the association of the currently 68 German bishops, in 2016/2017 there were approximately 23.6 million members of the Catholic Church in Germany, which is around 28.5 percent of the population, thereof 47 percent are male and 53 percent female Catholics respectively.
The Catholic population in Germany is organized in about 10,280 pastoral units, which are the prevalently local parishes. The structure is signified by large regional differences for example due to the Protestant alignment of northern German regions, or given the largely not religious population of eastern Germany (former GDR). Due to the progressive decline in membership, a number of parishes currently are being combined into parish associations or parochial unions, and some merged under one roof of a single newly established parish.15
Every parish belongs to one of the seven archdioceses (archbishoprics) and/or to one of the 20 dioceses (bishoprics), which in turn are assigned each to an archdiocese. At the regional level, always several parishes are combined into a deanery. Contrary to the global “universal church” or the Germany-wide “people’s church”, the dioceses and archdioceses also are referred to as “local churches”. These are church administration districts that are headed by bishops or diocesan bishops. The Pope, who himself in his capacity as the Bishop of Rome is a part of the College of Bishops, is the global head of the Catholic Church and enjoys supreme legal and governing authority. 16
While the dioceses and archdioceses and their parish associations and parishes are in terms of legal forms under German law organized as “corporations under public law” (Körperschaften des öffentlichen Rechts), charitable and social activities of the Church are depending on economic context and funding needs frequently organized as non-profit associations (eingetragener Verein, abbreviated: e.V.) or limited liability companies for charitable purposes (gGmbH), which as such enjoy preferential tax treatment.17
For the sake of completeness, as further organizations of the Catholic Church in Germany also new spiritual communities, monastic orders and secular institutions shall be mentioned as well as the coordinating body of the German layman’s organizations, which is the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK).18
As of primary significance for Catholics in their faith life is the local parish or pastoral unit, the present thesis focuses on marketing and/or communication of parishes because: “For those who identify with the Church as an institution (...), the subject of their identification typically is the local parish – even if due to the more differentiated lifestyles in society, the significance of new pastoral spaces with target-group specific offers has been on the increase.” 19
The Catholic Church is traditionally grounded in and justified on the basis of the three main components of its mission (basic church practice):
The three components of basic church practice are sustained ever since the Second Vatican Council by a fourth principal feature that signifies the Church as an association of believers in which they join each other and God, namely
The four principal features/mission components of the Catholic Church can be illustrated by means of a triangle the corner points of which – liturgy, diaconia and witness/proclamation – signify the church community of Catholics:
Figure 1-1: Principal features and mission components of the Catholic church (own illustration)
The outlined principal features and mission components give rise on the one hand to the large variety of church initiatives, facilities and services, and on the other to the particularity of church marketing that shall be explored and discussed in detail in Chapter 3 – Church Marketing.
As a territorially and episcopally organized corporation under public law, the Roman Catholic Church in Germany enjoys special dedicated status under church law,21 offers labour relations similar to those for civil servants and has the right to levy taxes.22 In this respect the Catholic Church in Germany differs significantly from churches in other countries.
Currently the Catholic Church levies against every baptized member nine percent (eight percent in the federal states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg) of their assessed payroll tax, income tax and capital gains tax as “church tax”. By way of the church tax duty for members of recognized religious communities that has been in place since the German (interwar) Weimar Republic, the Catholic Church received in 2016 in excess of 6.1 billion euros complemented by about half a billion euros in additional state allowances and subsidies (Fig. 1-2).23 Collection and administration of the church tax has been delegated by the Church to tax authorities of the federal states, which is are paid for by a compensation for administrative fees of about 3 percent that goes to the federal states.
Contrary to churches in other countries that are financed through member contributions, donations and foundation funds, collection actions, government funding and commercial and other activities, the Catholic Church in Germany is able to finance the majority of its pastoral and charitable/ social activities, cultural efforts and building maintenance measures from the church tax. This though is added in Germany as well by state allowances and funding and the partly substantial income from church aid and relief organizations, some of which are active worldwide.24
Figure 1-2: Church Tax Revenues of the Catholic and the Protestant Church in Germany 1990–2015 (own graphic)
The church tax as well as other state payments to the Church are legally and from the church internal perspective in Germany not without controversy, as evidenced not least in the debate around the many members leaving the Church (cf. Chap. 1.4.3.6).
Unlike in the USA or France, for example, where churches, with the exception of state subsidies, largely have to sustain and fund themselves, the Catholic Church in Germany can rely on a fairly comprehensive financial backing that has seen a steady growth along with the growth in German incomes since 2005 (office assumption of Angela Merkel, who heads the Christian-conservative, central-right CDU party) and is legally based on tax law. This principal endowment with funds in order to sustain the Church’s mission and the material goals of its organizations is taking place mostly irrespective of alignment of the Church offers to actual needs of its members, or to any changes thereof. Hence it comes as no surprise that not least with a view to the rising numbers of members leaving the Church, there are many and ever louder voices demanding to adapt and adjust the scope of operations of the Church and its offers more consistently and consequently to actual needs of all the members of the Church.25
A proof that a consequent orientation of churches on the needs of their audiences can be a great success has been supplied by the Willow Creek Community Church that was founded only relatively recently in Chicago, USA in 1972: the church has been aligning the entirety of its offers right from the beginning and in a targeted manner with the needs of an audience distant from the church and has been disregarding in the process the wishes of traditional churchgoers.26 The result: today the Willow Creek Community Church counts with 20,000-strong visits to its church services among the three largest parishes in the US. For all its positive appeal, the pronounced marketing orientation of this American mega-parish is subject to a fairly contentious debate. Additionally on the basis of business economic considerations, Meyns (2013) concludes that the sc. “mega-churches” merely signify an organizational trend towards concentration, however not a religious growth trend that would be representative of society as a whole given that a half of such parishes shrink again to size after about 10 to 20 years.27
Eicken et al. (2010) bring membership trends in both the Christian people’s churches in Germany (i.e., Protestant and Catholic) down to the variables of leavings, deaths (funerals), baptisms and joinings, immigration plus other factors such as clearing up registries.28 Figure 1-3 shows the relationship between entries of new members through baptisms, joinings and resumptions of membership, and departures through instances of death and leavings:
Figure 1-3: Development of Membership in the Catholic Church 2010 – 201629
Both leaving the Church and baptism as well as joinings and resumptions of membership are preceded by deliberate decision-making processes. On disregading in this respect natural deaths, the decisions on leaving the Church were effectively compensated for over the past 15 years by decisions of entering the Church via baptisms and joinings/resumptions of membership.
The high proportion of instances of death in departures of members from the Catholic Church can be explained using the sc. age pyramid of Germany. The age pyramid shows how the population structure in Germany has changed due to lower mortality, higher life expectancy and decline in birth rates: 30
Figure 1-4: Age development of the population in Germany (own graphic) 31
From the starting position of the classic pyramid-shaped form that was prevailing around 1910, recently the age pyramid has taken on the form of an onion or urn32 the lower part of which continues thinning – which is strongly indicative of the deficiencies in births initiated with the sudden drop due to the advent of the birth control pill in the 1970s that has been continuing ever since. As a result, the German population consists in the meantime to almost a half of people past their 46th year of age (median age: 46.3), and one in five Germans already is 65 or more. In global comparison, only Japan has an older population.33
On the recurrent public debate around the causes of members leaving the Church, Eicken et al. (2010) conclude that “the demographic change has a substantial influence on membership trends in both the churches and the decline in church membership thus cannot be solely equated with “leavings” and described with a monocausal explanation in the sense of “the church membership are scurrying away”. Church members die without this being at least compensated by baptisms or joinings. Leavings thus only accelerate the demographically conditioned decline in membership”.34
From the dying out of the older Church members prevalently with comprehensive Catholic socialization on the one hand and entries of increasingly ever more differentiated member groups with critical stances towards the Church on the other, long-term consequences ensue for the church offers and social infrastructures carried or sustained by the churches. This consequently implies the question how much the demographic change actually affects the trends in and structure of church membership and consequently the church offers that shall be explored in detail.35
Alongside the demographic change that is responsible for the majority of the decline in membership, the key cause mainly have been the growing numbers of members leaving the church, which both the major Christian churches in Germany have been struggling with already since the 1970s. A representative survey of the Sinus Sociovision Institute of Heidelberg confirmed in 2011 the steady shrinkage of both the major people’s churches due to leavings. Over the period of the study, 3.2 percent of Protestant and 1.6 of Catholic Christians respectively decided to leave the church. The share of those who had been thinking about leaving but were still undecided was at 12.1 (Protestants) and 9.9 percent (Catholics).36 In absolute terms this amounted in 2011 to a “depletion potential” of more than 5.5 million members of both the major churches, of which by the end of 2016 nearly a third actually left.37
Figure 1-5 explores the decline in membership in both the Christian people’s churches and the rise in the numbers of members leaving the churches over a period of 15 years: 38
Figure 1-5: Decline in Membership and Church Leavings 2001-2016 (own graphic)
The growing numbers of leaving members strongly correlate with the church abuse scandals that were a trigger for a number of people particularly in early 2010 and in 2014.39 Generally in considerations about leaving the church, there are frequently several, gradually cumulating motives that play a role. Some stimuli such a church scandal, personal disappointment or the church tax deducted from next gross salary may then precipitate the actual decision.40
According to a representative survey performed by the diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart in 2014,41 the main cause for leaving the Church for over a third of the church members (35%) was identifiable with their alienation from the Church as an institution as well as from its parishes and organizations:
Figure 1-6: “Have you ever seriously considered leaving the church? - If so, why?” (open question)
This alienation mostly is traceable to how the Church communicates with its members, “as its answers often do not relate at all to their questions and the respective worlds of thought and living frequently cannot be reconciled anymore”.42 The church tax (cf. Chapter 1.3) is indicated as a possible cause for leaving the Church by about 15 percent of Catholics. Another 14 percent gave as potential reasons the (obsolescent) teachings of the Catholic Church on ethics and morals and 12 percent of the respondents named abuse scandals.
The finding about alienation of church members has been confirmed also by a more recent study on leavings from the Church carried out by the diocese of Essen. Here in an Internet survey over the period from March to May 2017, the more than 3,000 participants (of which 15 percent already had left the Church) indicated as reasons for leaving the Church in particular alienation and the lack of attachment to the Church as well as its “attitudes being now out of step with time”.43 These study results are a part of a research effort commissioned by the “Initiative zum Verbleib in der Kirche” (initiative to remain in the Church) whose results have been published in early 2018.44
The reasons and determinants of alienation of Christians from their church and/or parishes are multilayered and varied. Of particular significance here are the advancing secularization and progressive differentiation of society into a variety of increasingly different milieus, as well as the lack of religious socialization in families. These factors are explored in the following chapters, and finally also the financial reasons for leaving the church are examined in detail.
Hillebrecht (2000) examines the decline in church membership within the context of changed societal framework conditions that partly are mutually dependent and also affect each other.45 As the principal reason for the decline in Catholic membership numbers, he mainly points out the advancing differentiation in society, as a result of which people no longer “see themselves as mutually interconnected limbs of the nation of God” but as individuals with freedom of choice in their respective social environment. He further lists as the consequences of the societal differentiation