Journal Ethelred Unraed's Journal: "Christian" Democrats in Germany 8
I have often been bemused at how the conservative populist party in Germany is called the Christian Democrats (CDU) -- Angela Merkel's party -- when they seem to have precious little actual Christianness about them. I don't mean that in a snarky way as I would with, say, Dubya. I mean they just don't seem to have terribly much to do with Christianity at all, even though their origins were in the old Catholic Centre Party before the war.
Just today I had a classic example: The suburb where our parish is located had a mayoral election recently, and the winner -- who's from the CDU, like most of his post-war predecessors -- invited our priest (along with the other clergy and hoi-polloi in the suburb) over for a "get to know you" reception.
On Sunday. At 10 o'clock in the morning.
Our priest felt obligated to go (mainly to curry favor in hopes of getting the town to get its nose out of our church building project), so we had to make do without him in today's service. Those present at the reception remarked to him that it was the first time any of them remembered that any of the clergy had shown up for such an event, which is traditionally on Sundays at 10 o'clock, and they remarked on how that struck them as odd -- without a hint of irony. (Trust me, Germans are not good at irony. Bronzy and goldy maybe, but not irony.)
What's also funny is that the new mayor is (supposedly a practicing) Roman Catholic and thus duty-bound to attend church every Sunday. Yet it didn't occur to him why a Christian clergyman would possibly have better things to do on a Sunday morning.
What is additionally ironic, and adds to the Bizarro World character of it all, is how prominent members of the (left-liberal environmentalist) Green Party are also avowed Christians (one example is Katrin Göring-Eckardt, vice president of the German Parliament, who was very visible at the recent German Protestant Church's national synod). There is even a special committee for them in the Green Party.
Meanwhile the Social Democrats, as befits a party with roots in Marxism (though it's now rather more centrist, with the Greens and the Left Party occupying the left wing), remains very skeptical of faith in any form.
Could have been worse... (Score:2)
The funny thing... (Score:2)
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Bingo!
Cheers,
Ethelred
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I don't know what St. Norbert's Day is, but Jesus is my groundskeeper. Though, why someone should know my groundskeeper to get a four day weekend, I'm not clear on.
Green Christians? (Score:2)
What should be more odd is seeing Christians who are anti- or un-environmentalist, or who are against any sort of social welfare.
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It's mainly the fact that "religious" in America usually is taken to mean "right-wing fellater of Falwell and his ilk". That group in turn is not normally known for their support of leftish concepts of social justice or environmentalism.
Even in cases where they do espouse welfare (usually in the form of some sort of private charity while explicitly excluding state support), they can be strikingly hard-nosed and ideological about it. Certainly German Christians I know are pretty taken aback by that.
Cheer
Only in Germany (Score:2)
Every so often I forget how much I love the German language, and then little things like this remind me (and no, I'm not being sarcastic about that -- I genuinely do find it to be a beautiful language, certainly far more so than the languages traditionally considered beautiful like French, Italian and Spanish).
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