Losing Heaven : : Religion in Germany since 1945 / / Thomas Großbölting.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2016
• VerfasserIn: Großbölting, Thomas,
• Place / Publishing House: New York ;, Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2016]; ©2016
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (356 p.)

As the birthplace of the Reformation, Germany has been the site of some of the most significant moments in the history of European Christianity. Today, however, its religious landscape is one that would scarcely be recognizable to earlier generations. This groundbreaking survey of German postwar religious life depicts a profoundly changed society: congregations shrink, private piety is on the wane, and public life has almost entirely shed its Christian character, yet there remains a booming market for syncretistic and individualistic forms of “popular religion.” Losing Heaven insightfully recounts these dramatic shifts and explains their consequences for German religious communities and the polity as a whole.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Losing Heaven -- PART 1 A Christian Germany? Religious Self-positioning and Illusions after 1945 -- 1 Faith in People’s Lives – Lives Lived in Faith? The Religious Field between Re-Christianization and Erosion -- 2 Organize, Standardize, Romanticize: The Churches in Politics and Society -- 3 Proclamation of Faith and Pastoral Work from 1945 to the Early 1960s -- PART 2 The New Dawn and the Plunge into Postmodernity: The Religious Field in the 1960s and 1970s -- 4 The Christian Religious Communities in the 1960s and 1970s -- 5 Politicization and Pluralization: Religion, Politics and Society in the 1960s and 1970s -- 6 From ‘Hellfire’ to ‘All-Embracing Love’ Transformation in the Social Forms of Religion and in the Meaning of Transcendence -- PART 3 Church becomes Religion: Ruptures and Changes in the Religious Sphere to the Present Day -- Introduction -- 7 Faith within Life: The Diffusion and Differentiation of the Religious Field -- 8 On the Way to a Multireligious Society? Pluralism as Challenge -- 9 Towards a De-Christianized Society? -- Conclusion: God in Germany – Looking Back and Looking Forward -- Bibliography -- Index