As Germany celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, some Protestants feel the crucial role their church played in shepharding the democracy movement to success is quietly being overlooked. This seems strange to someone like myself who reported on those events back then. Any reporter in Berlin in the tense weeks before Nov. 9, 1989 knew the Protestant (mostly Lutheran) churches sheltered dissidents and was working for reform. But the idea that this was fading from public view came up during my recent visit to Leipzig when, at an organ recital in Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Thomas Church (Thomaskirche), the pastor mentioned the point in a sermon.

(Photo: St. Thomas Church in Leipzig with Bach statue, 17 Oct 2009/Tom Heneghan)

When I later went up to Berlin, I ran the idea past a leading east German Protestant theologian and a pastor and two parish council members from the Gethsemane Church (Gethsemanekirche). That church in eastern Berlin was one of the most active centres of protest in the tense months before demonstrators forced open the Wall on Nov. 9, 1989. They all agreed.

The many anniversary celebrations, documentaries and discussions now underway across Germany seem to focus mostly on how fearless street protesters and astute politicians pulled off the “peaceful revolution” that ended communism. Films and photos of dissidents packed into the Gethsemane Church in East Berlin or Leipzig’s St. Nicholas Church (Nikolaikirche), the leading houses of worship that sheltered them until the Wall opened , are among the trademark images.  But those crowded “peace prayer” evenings were only the tip of the iceberg of behind-the-scenes work by pastors and lay people who considered it their Christian duty to promote civil rights and human dignity in a rigid communist society.

At the organ recital, Rev. Christian Wolff illustrated the point by mentioning a recent commemoration in Leipzig attended by German President Horst Köhler, Chancellor Angela Merkel and other dignitaries.  “At the ceremony, Werner Schulz spoke of the role of the churches — nobody else did,” he noted, referring to a former East German dissident who is now a European Parliament deputy. Köhler didn’t go into it in his speech, the main address of the day. While the Protestant churches didn’t claim all the credit for the success of the protests, Wolff said, “it wasn’t just a quirk of history that Christians took leading roles in the late 1980s.” They acted out of their religious convictions that each person had God-given dignity and rights that the communists were denying them.

(Photo: St. Nicholas Church, 9 Oct 2009/Steffen Schellhorn)

Richard Schröder, the East German theologian who was a Social Democratic politician in the transition period and then headed the theology faculty at Berlin’s Humboldt University, agreed the churches’ role was being overlooked. “In the media reporting now, the Wall seems to have fallen without any pre-history,” he told me during an interview at his home south of the capital. “Western German public opinion doesn’t have a clear perception of the churches’ role.” He thought the dynamics of politics and the media in united Germany played a part in changing the public perception of 1989.  Most politicians and journalists come from western Germany, he said, and had no experience of the underground activity bubbling below East Germany’s calm surface during the 1980s. Because 3/4 of eastern Germans belong to no church, the westerners underestimate the influence the churches had, even among the non-religious. This is the image that is now being repeated in speeches and television documentaries around Germany, Schröder said.

The pre-history to the Wall’s fall goes back at least to the early 1980s, when underground groups opposed to the superpower arms race linked up with activist pastors increasingly critical of the regimentation of life under the communists. In 1982, Leipzig’s St. Nicholas Church launched weekly “peace prayers” mixing Gospel readings with political debates. Police did not break up church services, so these sessions gave dissidents a freedom of speech and assembly they could find nowhere else.

(Photo: Nikolaikirche - offen fuer alle (St. Nicholas Church - open for all), 18 Oct 2009/Tom Heneghan)

Similar alliances emerged in many cities, aided by the large network of parishes maintained by the Protestants, who far outnumbered the cautious Catholic minority. By 1988, the Stasi secret police counted 160 such groups, almost all connected to the churches.  In the debates, pastors sometimes cited models such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran theologian executed for resisting the Nazis, and the non-violent strategy of U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King. In guidelines for participants at his Monday evening “peace prayers,” St. Nicholas Church pastor Rev. Christian Führer laid down the rule that “participants and their contributions to the debate may not contradict the Gospel of the crucified Christ and its message of reconciliation and must be based on the commandments of God insofar as they aim to preserve life.”

Such activist pastors were a minority among the clergy, but became a majority in the political parties that formed in the autumn of 1989. The speaking and organisational skills developed in their church careers, one of the few areas of East German life not controlled by the communists, clearly helped them to take charge.

As Werner Schulz put it in the speech that Pastor Wolff cited, “the peaceful revolution was, at its core, also a Protestant revolution … Its pioneering motto ‘no violence’ was the essence of the Sermon on the Mount, the most revolutionary passage in the Gospel…  Protestant churches were base camps of this revolution… People went from peace prayers to street protests with a serious Protestant manner, disarming reasonableness and discipline.”

(Photo: Werner Schulz, 22 July 2005/Arnd Wiegmann)

The gap in perception of 1989  emerged clearly at a forum I attended in eastern Berlin where the Gethsemane Church showed a film about its role in 1989 and invited comments from audience, which was about 2/3 Ossis (easterners) and 1/3 Wessis (westerners) who’d settled there since the government moved from Bonn in 1999.  One Wessi criticised a section on the “Round Table” — a church-moderated public panel that helped oversee the transition to democracy between December 1989 and March 1990 — as not lively enough to show the real drama of that period.

The Ossis promptly and unanimously disagreed. They found it thrilling to see clips of civil rights activists politely grilling once untouchable communist officials, uncovering their corruption and insisting they take responsibility for their misuse of power. This showed the new democracy in action, they said.

The film, Ende der Eiszeit (End of the Ice Age), also showed the central role of the churches in shielding the dissidents and encouraging them to embrace non-violence and transparency.  “Without the churches, this openness couldn’t have come about,” said Rev. Heinz-Otto Seidenschnur of the Gethsemane Church. A parish council member there, archeologist Ursula Kästner, said the church stepped into a vacuum to ensure a peaceful transition. “This was the church’s synodal principle at work,” she told me. “Otherwise, we would have had violence like in Romania.”

(Photo: St. Nicholas Church, 18 Oct 2009/Tom Heneghan)

Dieter Wendland, a graphic designer and veteran member of the parish council, said the phenomenon of packed churches burst like a balloon when the Wall opened. “On the first Sunday, almost all the pews were empty. About 10 people were sitting there and that was it. It was a bit depressing, but I said we’ve achieved what we were struggling for.  Now we can do the work we’re called to do, that is, organise church life and preach the Gospel.”

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Nigerian author Uwem Akpan, who is a Jesuit priest, said he was "humbled" that his debut collection of short stories was chosen by influential U.S. talk show host Oprah Winfrey for her book club.

Oprah picked "Say You're One Of Them" as her 63rd book club selection, the first time she has chosen a book of short stories, saying these stories "left me stunned and profoundly moved."

The collection, published in 2008, includes five separate stories from the perspective of an African child that were described as capturing the resilience of children growing up in the face of unimaginable devastation.

Uwem Akpan, who runs a parish in Lagos, told Entertainment Weekly that he was "very, very humbled" to be chosen by Oprah.

He said he was not currently working on another book as his parish had been so busy but the church supports his writing with no conflict of interest between writing and being a priest.

"I have permission to write, but I do not need an imprimatur from the church -- that is more for people who are writing about theology and philosophy. They see that I am writing fiction and assume it is made up," he said.

"Don't forget that Jesus was a priest and a poet."

Oprah's book club is the biggest in the world with almost two million online members and books chosen for Oprah's book club invariably  skyrocket to the top of the U.S. bestseller lists. Akpan studied philosophy and English at Creighton and Gonzaga universities then studied theology for three years at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa.

He was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 2003 and received his master's degree in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2006. His story collection was first published last year by Little Brown & Co, which is part of the Hachette Book Group that is owned  by French publishing company Largardere.

Umem Akpan picture: Courtesy of Oprah.com

Another dispatch from the trenches of the U.S. church/state wars, this one from my colleague Jonathan Stempel in New York.

A Connecticut church may operate a postal station without violating the constitutional separation of church and state, as long as it clearly distinguishes it from private space, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday.

You can see his report here.

It will be interesting to see wider reaction to this decision, which found the church in the town of Manchester did violate the U.S. Constitution by including “religious displays” — but that it could easily fix the violations by removing them and making it clear to customers where the postal station ends and church property begins.

Both sides have expressed support for the decision — but it could still upset some religious conservatives who see no “wall of separation” between church and state.

(PHOTO: REUTERS/Chip East)

– Saritha Rai writes for the GlobalPost, where this article first appeared. –

It is dawn in Kerala, a palm frond of a state in India's South West. As the sun's first rays hit the church steeple, a Holy Mass is being conducted in the local Malayalam language.

Only, the prayer is dedicated to a newborn by his Catholic family half a world away in the United States.

Requests for these so-called Mass Intentions, or prayers offered for a specific reason, pour into India from the United States, Canada and Europe, where there is a huge shortage of priests.

This outsourcing to faraway India is a quaint practice that has been called "religious outsourcing."

But now, the severe global economic crisis and bankruptcies in Western churches are hitting even this unusual practice. In Kerala and other parts of India, where the Roman Catholic Church still thrives, outsourced mass intentions are dwindling and striking the income of poorer priests and impoverished churches.

Sebastian Adayanthrath, bishop of Kerala's Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese, one of the oldest in the country, said he is observing a big slowdown in incoming requests for mass intentions from the West.

"There is a 50 percent fall recently in outsourced mass intentions," Adayanthrath told GlobalPost in a telephone interview.

Church bankruptcies, diminishing Sunday collections and falling donations from the faithful in Western parishes are all reasons, Adayanthrath said.

Outsourcing, a practice where tasks are sent to cheaper, more efficient locations, has been a sore point for Westerners especially in these economically depressed times.

For the last decade, India has particularly benefitted from the outsourcing of a multitude of tasks such as writing software code, providing customer service, reading x-rays and filing tax returns.

With religious outsourcing, Westerners request Indian churches to hold Holy Mass in memory of a dead family member, or thanksgiving for a child’s college admission, to celebrate a wedding anniversary or even for unusual causes such as the well-being of their favorite sports stars.

"Each mass is paid a stipend of $5 (250 rupees) upwards, supplementing the income of priests who are otherwise paid 50 rupees for the same service by locals," said Rector Father Augustine Thottakara of Bangalore-based seminary Dharmaram College.

About two percent of India’s 1.2 billion population is Christian, mostly of the Roman Catholic faith. Kerala in Southern India has a big concentration of churches and the faithful.

The requests come to the churches and the local clergy through the Vatican, through clergymen in overseas churches and even through religious bodies. In these days of digital communication, requests have speeded up through email.

Western labor unions have criticized such outsourcing as commoditizing spirituality.

The Indian church stoutly defends the practice. "Offering mass intentions on behalf of Westerners are not a business, it is a custom that benefits both sides," said Father Paul Thelakkat, spokesman for the Syro-Malabar Church in Kerala’s Cochin town.

But the eastward flow of prayers has ebbed somewhat recently, following the graph of the worldwide economic state.

Where thousands of prayers were flooding parishes in Kerala, church leaders say that they are unable to get or route Western prayers and stipend to cash-strapped parishes and needy priests.

The trends in Kerala mirror what is happening in churches elsewhere in India.

The drop in religious outsourcing is hurting those like Father Bosco Puthoor, rector at the St. Joseph’s Pontifical Seminary in Aluva near Cochin.

Father Puthoor earns 2,500 rupees ($50) as a monthly salary and supplements his own income, as well as that of 22 other teaching priests in his seminary, through religious outsourcing.

"It is a pity that this practice of mutual support between the East and the West is declining," Father Bosco said.

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– Sonya Fatah writes for the GlobalPost, where this article first appeared. –

Their voices rang out, echoing in the nearby passageway. "Count your many blessings," they sang. "Name them one by one. Count your many blessings. See what God hath done." And so, the women, some 25 of them, members of the Sisters Committee at one of the six churches of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in New Delhi, closed their Sunday post-service meeting.

"Let us all work together so we can have a temple here,” urged the chair of the meeting, eliciting head nods and verbal assents all round.

There are almost 7,500 Mormons in India, according to the LDS Church, one of the most organized religious bodies in the world. Like all religious groups keen on increasing their numbers, the church is now looking eastward, toward India to share Joseph Smith’s message.

On numbers alone, conversion in India hasn’t happened as quickly as in Latin America, but that isn’t holding back the missionary fervor of those who have already embraced the church’s teachings. Ever since elders from the Quorum of the Twelve, while visiting Bangalore in 1992, announced a "prophecy" that New Delhi would have a temple, serious efforts are underway to get there.

Anuradha Yadav, 24, is one new Mormon who is dedicated to seeing a temple in New Delhi. Born into a traditional Hindu family of the Yadav caste, Anuradha recalls questioning her faith early on, when she was 14 years old.

“I kept asking questions, and I started visiting churches. In all I visited 30 churches.” One year of church shopping later, Anuradha was even more confused. Then in 2006 she bumped into two young elders on the street who shared the Book of Mormon with her.

She read it cover to cover and felt renewed. “I knelt down and prayed. That was such a wonderful moment. I felt as if somebody had just made me calm," she said, tearing up at the memory.

Two of the women in the front row at the Sister’s Committee meeting were from Anuradha’s family: her mother, Saraswati, and her sister-in-law, Hema. Dressed traditionally in a blue sari, her hair tied up in a neat bun with a bindi on her forehead, Saraswati came to the church after she saw a miraculous change in her daughter.

“The church changed Anuradha and taught her so much patience and kindness. I was attracted to Christianity myself as a child because I had a Christian friend and I always wanted to go to church with her but my father never let me.”

Most of the people gathered here were either recent converts or those interested in joining the church. Of the five elders in the room, two were young Americans on the 18-month mission that is part of every young Mormon’s coming of age in the church.

Elder Dyck, 20, from Sacramento, Calif., had just completed the first year of his mission. “We speak a lot to people on the road as we’re walking around our delegated areas. It’s hard here to attract people,” he admitted, “but the positives really outweigh the negatives.”

To Indian converts, one of Mormonism’s greatest attractions is the existence of the living prophet. “We have a living prophet who is leading and guiding us right now,” an Indian elder told the Bible Study group.

Like Elder Dyck, Anuradha, also went on a conversion mission to Andhra Pradesh in the country’s south, where Mormons have had the most success in attracting Indians. “My father was not happy that I was going away for 18 months but I went anyway.” Once dismissive of idol worship and reincarnation, Anuradha employed patience and understanding in reaching out to others instead of mocking her birth religion.

Over the course of that mission, Anuradha converted 30 people. Outside her mission, she’s converted at least 10 other people, including her mother, two brothers, a sister, a sister-in-law and three close friends. For her, as for many of those who attend church at the several New Delhi missions, Mormonism is a no-brainer.

“I learned how to be a good daughter, a good sister, to respect everyone and be kind to everyone," Anuradha said. "I really know that this is the true gospel of Jesus Christ and my life really has changed.”

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My young son and I were heading into Catholic church on Sunday in Tokyo when we noticed something odd: There was no holy water at the entrance.

It felt strange. What could be more Catholic than crossing yourself with a dab of holy water as you race into Mass to find a pew?

At least that's my image from as far back as childhood, along with all the standing-sitting-kneeling action and kids squirming in their seats anxious to grab a pastry in the basement lounge area after the service.

But we were told on Sunday that the Franciscan Chapel Center was emptying and covering the holy water basins to help prevent the spread of swine flu.

The chapel center, which caters mostly to expats in a country where less than half a percent of the population is Catholic, is also requesting that parishioners greet each other by bowing -- not shaking hands -- among other steps.

It was the first time in a while I had thought about the threat of swine flu, which dominated the headlines only three months ago but then faded as most cases turned out to be mild.

But swine flu is back in the news. The Health Ministry said a man in his 50s from Okinawa had died from the H1N1 influenza virus at the weekend, Japan's first fatality from the disease. Media then reported on Tuesday that a man in his 70s had died from the virus.

I guess the chapel center's steps make sense: Physical contact such as shaking hands is meant to be an easy way to transmit the virus, and you can just as easily greet someone by bowing.

But I can't help feeling a bit saddened. I always enjoyed greeting others at church with a friendly handshake -- a nice change in a city where strangers rarely speak to each other and usually avoid eye contact. (In Tokyo, don't expect any small talk from the convenience-store cashier or assistance lugging a heavy suitcase up the stairs in the train station.)

And take all the precautions you want, you'll still pick up germs from all the door knobs, subway straps, escalator handrails and other items that are an unavoidable part of life in a big city.

Photo credits: REUTERS/Kiyoshi Ota (top), Kim Kyung Hoon (bottom)

Philanthropy does not seem to have been hit by the global economic downturn. Contrary to some initial fears after the stock market plunge last year, giving by the rich to charitable causes seems to be rising as younger donors get more active in the field. But the report by Barclays Wealth, the wealth management arm of the British bank, says faith-based charities face falling donations because they’re not in step with this new generation of philanthropists.

(Photo: donation box in London Oxfam shop, 2 Dec 2008/Simon Newman)

The report, entitled Tomorrow’s Philanthropist, is upbeat about charitable giving based on the bank’s survey of 500 “high net worth investors in the UK and US.” As it said in a summary of the report: “Despite the global downturn, three quarters (75 per cent) have not decreased their contributions, whilst more than one in four (26 per cent) have increased their giving in the last 18 months.”

Buried in the report is a sobering angle for churches and religious charities: “The future is less certain for the traditional recipients of charitable donations, such as the arts and religious organisations. On balance, high net worth donors stated that these causes had become less important to them over the past ten years, and that this trend would accelerate over the next decade if the causes in question failed to engage in a meaningful way with the next generation of givers.”

In a report graphic, religious charity seems set for the biggest reduction in donations, -16%, while health and medical charities should see a +58% rise in gifts. The other losers are the arts (-14%) and animal causes (-6%) while the number two and three growth leaders are children (+41%) and environment (+35%).

These results could be skewed by the sample group that Barclays Wealth used. The report did not analyse the expected drop in faith-linked donations any further, so it’s not clear whether a wider survey of donors below the report’s rarified donor group might show better support for religious charities.

Do any readers have recent information about how religious charities are doing in the downturn? (UPDATE: please read the first comment below for more information on this)

Here is the PDF file of the report and Barclay Wealth’s summary of it. Below is a short video on it by Hayley Platt of Reuters Television. Since video clips are short and reports like this long, the report’s main points are copied below the video.

The report’s main points are:

• We are at the beginning of a new age of philanthropy – A new breed of wealthy philanthropists is emerging who are more socially aware and more motivated to give back to the communities they came from, as well as global causes.
• The wealthy are still giving despite the downturn – The recession has failed to dampen philanthropic spirit; the commitment of those who already give will remain resolute, and some wealthy individuals are actually increasing the levels of their funding in order to ensure that their charitable goals are met.
• The wealthy will play an increasingly important role, compared to governments, in funding welfare projects – The recession will potentially increase the role of the wealthy philanthropist on a broad basis, as governments around the world become more constrained in the causes they can fund. High net worth givers will become an invaluable source of innovation and investment for charities.
• The wealthy prefer to fund projects directly – Respondents increasingly feel that they can make a bigger impact and drive change more effectively by giving directly to charities, rather than supporting causes indirectly through taxation.
• High net worth donors are becoming increasingly active philanthropists and now seek to solve rather than simply to support – Historically, high net worth individuals have donated money and time to charities to support their endeavours. Now, however, the wealthy are far more ambitious in their philanthropic aims and are wanting to see visible or measurable change.
• The worlds of charity and business are converging – Smaller, nimbler and more accountable charities are becoming increasingly attractive to donors compared to the large, traditional charities. This will have a knock-on effect and in the future, we will see the emergence of more commercial ventures which have a philanthropic aim at their core.

A Roman Catholic nun who left her convent in India after 33 years of service has penned an unflattering picture of life within the cloistered walls in a book that may further embarrass the Church.

In “Amen: The Autobiography of a Nun”, published in India in English this month, Sister Jesme tells of sexual relations between some priests and nuns, homosexuality in the convent and discrimination and corruption in Catholic institutions…

“Amen” grabbed media headlines in February, when it was first published in Malayalam — the regional language of Kerala. With the new English edition and offers of a film based on the book, Sister Jesme’s plea for a reformation of the Church is now set to reach a wider audience.

Read our feature here.

(Photo: L’Aquila’s Santa Maria of Collemaggio Basilica, 13 April 2009/Daniele La Monaca)

They came, they prayed, they appealed.

Religious leaders from around the world held their own not-so-mini “G8 summit” in Italy on June 16-17. The “Fourth Summit of Religious Leaders on the occasion of the G8,” as the meeting was officially called,   started with a visit to L’Aquila, the central Italian city severely damaged by an earthquake on April 6. That will be the venue in July of the actual summit of the G8 club of industrial nations.

Nearly 130 religious leaders and diplomats then moved to Rome where they held two days of talks under the auspices of the Italian foreign ministry. This was the religious leaders’ fourth annual meeting, following those held in conjunction with earlier G8 summits in Moscow, Cologne and Sapporo.

They were hosted by Bishop Vincenzo Paglia, the bishop of Terni who is one of the founders of the Sant’ Egidio community and a member of the Italian bishops conference commission for ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue.

Apart from the Catholic hosts, the participants including high-level Muslims, Protestants, Orthodox, Hindus, Anglicans, Zoroastrians, Jews, Shintoists and Buddhists.

Their final appeal, which will be published soon on the Italian Catholic Church’s website, was sent to reporters in advance. It is posted on the next page.

(more…)

As companies shed jobs and governments inject funds to stimulate economies, recession-hit believers in once-booming Southeast Asia are flocking to temples, churches and mosques to seek solace in religion — and pray for a quick economic recovery.

Meditation centres have also seen an upswing in attendance and people seek peace and calm amid the economic downturn.

(Photo: Hindus pray in a Singapore temple, 24 May 2009/Vivek Prakash)

Reuters correspondent Nopporn Wong-Anan has a feature here looking at how people seek spiritual solace at a time of material loss in Asia, home to all the major religions and any number of minor ones.

The impulse to return to religion in a crisis may be universal — we’ve looked at various aspects of this on FaithWorld in recent months — but there are some interesting local twists.

In Hong Kong, for example, business has slowed for feng shui masters, or geomancers, because the property sector is suffering a severe contraction. Feng shui masters say they use the laws of heaven and earth to give advice on how to design buildings to bring wealth and luck. They advise architects on how to place doors, windows and even furniture to avoid the bad spirits they say could otherwise infiltrate a building.

“From 1991 until about 1998, when the last big economic crisis happened, a lot of people went to geomancers to get help. But the economy never got better and people didn’t think feng shui helped them,” said Edwin Ma, a feng shui consultant to top property firms. “So a lot of people got disappointed and they would now rather keep their money in their own pockets.”

(Photo: Singapore dollars, 6 Feb 2008/Tim Chong)