Germany, Religion, and the Various Versions

This is one of those essays which talks to a issue rarely discussed in a public forum.

For those aren't familiar with Germanic lands from two-thousand years ago....it was basically a tribal region, with various religious groups (none of which were Christian in nature).  Most were related in some fashion to Celtic polytheism (paganism is a good work to use).  Folks were happy, and content with what had developed over tens of thousands of years.  You had some big tree in the local community.  Words would be spoken over marriage union and the passing-on of folks near this tree.  Life was simple

Then, the Romans came.

It's safe to say in the first hundred years of the Roman Empire developing in the Germanic lands...freedom of religion was absolutely NOT a problem with the Romans.  In Rome, there's a minimum of 200-plus religions being used and no one ever argued about control over religion. Yes, that is one of the odd factors of Rome, and the leadership authority that came into being in the Germanic lands as they enveloped Germany in those days.

So years passed, and the Romans eventually arrived in Judah.  It's safe to say that they'd never run into a culture like the Jews, and that just killing off the local King really didn't reset the authority business with the Judah people.  Freedom of religion? No....that really wasn't much of an issue.  Making folks enthusiastic about trading?  No, the Jewish folks were natural-born traders.  So the issue basically came down to two stupid thing.  The Romans wanted to introduce currency (coins) and they had the face of a human on it....which was a big NO with the rules of Jewish affairs and religion.  Then without that currency deal in effect....how would you get them to pay taxes (to pay for Roman roads, authority, etc)?  The Jews would prefer to just hand over a cart of apples or some product, and the Romans wanted this real simple....currency in hand.

You can sense the frustration with the Romans and having to deal with Jews.

A number of decades pass, a second little 'war' occurs, and then out of thin air....Christianity and the Bible are suddenly a competitive religion in Judah.  The fact that most of the quotes out of the New Testament are pro-Rome?  Well....let's not discuss that.  The 'render-unto-Caesar' quote?  Brilliant, but it really goes against Jewish traditional anti-face-on-currency beliefs.

Months pass, and oddly....Christianity moves onto Greece, and then Rome.  In less than one single generation....Rome goes from pure religious freedom (200-plus) land, to one where only one single religion...the Catholic religion....will be allowed and thus sanctioned as a state religion.  Yes, the two-hundred religions are all proclaimed pagan schemes.  This helps to explain how a bunch of statues got 'damned' and more or less dumped into local garbage pits.

When the Romans came north into the Germanic lands with the new rule of one single religion....it just didn't sell that well.  You were telling folks who'd had a religion for thousands of years, to dump it.

In effect, the wave that occurred was a accept-or-else trend in the Germanic lands.  Magnificent cathedrals were built, and folks got hyped up on Catholic domination of land and law.

All of this continued on until 1525.  Then two things occurred in a short amount of time.

First, Martin Luther opened up the door and suggested that the Catholic Church was not exactly a moral group of people.  Letters of Indulgence were introduced and sold openly the Church, and Luther publicly suggested that this was pretty fake.  In roughly a decade, the Catholic Church was stumbling along and in serious trouble.

Second, the printing press had been developed in Mainz.  This opened up the door for mass printing of literature...namely the Bible, and folks suddenly got a chance to read the Bible in their language (not Latin like the Catholic Church preferred).

Over the next hundred years, it's safe to say that religion in Germany got totally revamped and turned into a hot topic across all of Europe.  All of this spread across Europe, and by 1619....you had the Thirty Years War, which was essentially the bitter fight to end religious authority.  In central Europe....between the war, starvation, and the plague...half of the population died by the end of the 30 years.  Things changed.

For Germans, religion became just a personalized topic, and that was the active course of the country up until the 1950s when industrialization required outside help.  So Turks came in.  Turks were naturally.....Islamic in nature.  But in this case....there wasn't much of a Muslim support structure existing in the 1950s, 1960s, or 1970s.  The Turks came....worked....became less dedicated to the religion, and developed into what I'd call....Islam-Lite.

By the 1980s....the Saudis came and financed the building of Muslim centers in Germany, and started to staff the operations.  Most Turk-Germans stayed in their happy-style of minimum religion.

But as the 1990s roll on, the Wall comes down, and more immigration occurs.

So you had Lebanese arrive, along with some Egyptians, Libyans, etc.  Some saw the open lifestyle of Germans and liked the non-religious atmosphere.  Some liked beer and marijuana.  Some felt the need for structure and went back to the Mosque situation and got more into the old religion.

Now you come to this vast landscape.

Different arguments exist over the numbers, but it's generally believed that roughly 20-to-30 percent of German society are atheists.  Even if some guy says that he's a practicing Christian, if you ask the right question....the guy will admit that he only attends church twice a year.  In France, some numbers go and discuss the rate is near 40-percent.

Why the 'dumping'?  I would suggest that as each generation passes....the general society inches back to 1500 years ago in thinking and questioning Christian society.  Remember, this was not exactly a friendly persuasion moment when the Rome folks arrived with the new state religion deal.

The Muslims?  Quietly, some folks are admitting that as they process in and got finally introduced to the Christian religion....they felt an opportunity to leave Islam and progress to a new religion.  No one collects numbers, and I suspect there's a good reason not to make this a public discussion topic.

Germans flocking to Islam?  In the search for 'something else'....yeah, some convert monthly over to Islam.  Again, no one is really collecting these numbers either.

Adding to this whole landscape is the thought that various levels of Islam now exist in Germany, and you could go from the ultra-lite version to the extreme version.

Lets face it...if you were a fairly extreme religious conservative (of ANY group), and you evaluated nations for going into and getting to a new life, while retaining your old conservative religion....then Germany would rate near the absolute bottom.  Toss in beer, wine, beer-gardens, f**ky-f**k songs on the radio, acceptance of marijuana, dress and attire of women being provocative, gay lifestyles, women in leadership roles, high rate of atheism, Christmas in a turbo-package, and an attitude to accept multiculturalism....it would be hard for some guy or gal to hold onto their extreme conservative religion.

Trying to suggest some dynamic of religion keeping people going in one single direction....won't work in Germany any longer. In some ways, we are headed back to two-thousand years ago when the Romans arrived and said religious freedom was the basis of their empire and a right of every citizen.