Religion: Five Days for Laymen

All the 61 German technicians gathered in the long, yellow-walled conference hall were talking about the same thing: Why did I come here? Said a heavy-machinery expert from Hamburg: “I want to know why a Christian of one faith feels like a stranger in the church of another. If there is but one God, why must we worship Him in different ways?” A trade unionist from Essen asked whether “the churches can do anything to help bridge the gap between employer and employee.” A shutter designer from the Rolleiflex factory in Braunschweig asked: “Why must so many community pastors be stuffy and dull? I hope to find here a spark of Christianity that I can carry home with me.”

Modest Approach. Thus last week began the 93rd meeting on Christianity for laymen in the Lower Saxony town (pop. 5,000) of Hermannsburg. There are nine other Evangelische Akademien like it in Germany, and together they constitute one of the most vigorous Christian activities to develop there since the war.

Every week or so the pastors in charge of each “academy” welcome a different occupational group—workers, artists, doctors, newspapermen, etc.—who spend several days & nights discussing the Christian religion in terms of their daily lives.

The day after the technicians arrived at Hermannsburg’s 200-year-old former inn, the lectures began. “Too many Christians,” said Pastor Hans Juergen Baden of nearby Wienhausen, “think about the church as they would a doctor—only to be used in times of distress. Immediately after the war, in those grim days of defeat, the churches were full. Many of us, witnessing this, held high hopes of a rebirth … of Christianity in Germany. But alas, we were wrong.” But Pastor Baden is still hopeful: “The road to God is a long one, but even the most modest approach to God is a beginning.”

Another Dimension. During the days that followed, there were other discussions and other lectures skillfully guided by the Akademie’s directors, bespectacled Adolf Wischmann and husky Johannes Doehring. For their technician “students” they steered the talk again & again to the relation between religion and technology. Deliberately inviting controversy, a Hamburg theology professor suggested that technology was a threat to mankind. Asked a young toolmaker: “How would the professor have come so speedily from Hamburg to address this Christian meeting if technicians hadn’t developed cars and railroad trains?” “The professor is right,” said a shop foreman. “We must not be mere automatons. We must consider our work in a Christian light.”

Among those who spoke was Dr. Paul Koessler, a Roman Catholic professor. Said he: “I am here with the full consent of my Catholic bishop and other high dignitaries of my church. It is our purpose, just as it is that of the Evangelical Church which runs this splendid Akademie, to promote understanding between both denominations. We must all think in terms not of Catholicism or Protestantism, but of Christianity.”

When the five-day conference ended, the students contributed the names of at least 100 others who they thought would be interested in the meetings. “It started us thinking,” said Mining Engineer Karl Nagler, “and that’s what we needed.” Said grey-haired former Marxist Ernst Wolff, as he left: “Christianity doesn’t offer a pat, easily learned formula the way Communism does. It adds another dimension to your life.”

At the door, Pastor Wischmann smiled, “Now that you’ve got the blueprint,” he said, “it’s up to you to fill it in.”