In 2024, both the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches lost about 580,000 members each. The 47% of the German population identify themselves as religiously unaffiliated.
A church in Germany. / Photo: [link]Ingmar Nolte[/link], Unsplash CC0.
For the first time in Germany, there are more people who identify as ‘nones’ than those who say they are Roman Catholics and Protestants.
According to the annual survey by the Weltanschauungen (Fowid) research group, published this April, 39 million Germans declare themselves to be nones (47% of the population), while the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches combined have 38 million followers (45%).
The data show that, at the end of 2024, Roman Catholics make up 24%, Protestants 21%, Muslims 3.9%, and other religious communities 4.1%, of the German religious population.
“While the EKD Protestants recorded a greater decline in membership in the years prior to 2020, in 2023, as in 2021 and 2022, it was the Roman Catholics due to the higher number of leavers”, explains the research group.
[photo_footer]Fowid [/photo_footer]
In 2024, “both churches are on a par with around 580,000 member losses each. This is the fourth time, for both churches combined, that they have lost more than one million members”.
Furthermore, the number of Muslims increased by 80,000 in 2024, according to the data taken from religious affiliations in the asylum applications in the Annual Report of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees for 2024.
In adtition to the religious affiliation, the survey also analyses the church attendance of German population, considering how many people attend a church service at least once a month.
The survey finds that “6.6% of Roman Catholics attended church services at least once a month in 2024, in the Protestant regional churches, the proportion of people attending church services was 2.3%”, and “around 25% of Muslims attend mosques (e.g. for Friday prayers)”.
Moreover, “as attending religious services is more important among the smaller religious communities than among members of the official church, a higher level of religious practice (50%) can be assumed”, they add.
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