Local ‘formulas of peace’: Religious diversity and state-interfaith governance in Germany

Abstract

French

Religious pluralization in line with participatory policy approaches has led to a new field of cooperative governance of religious diversity. This article explores the collaboration between state and (inter-) religious actors in two metropolitan regions in Germany, namely Hamburg and Rhine-Ruhr. Drawing upon qualitative fieldwork, this article provides a systematic analysis of discursive and structural measures of state-interfaith governance in the two regions. It clearly shows that state-interfaith governance gains in importance and is practiced in various forms depending on the contextual setting. Based on this, comparative case analysis shows that state-interfaith governance in Germany is characterized by (1) a prominent role of the established churches; (2) a potential of accommodating religious diversity which is, however, restricted by a narrow orientation of the world-religion model and the predominant focus on Islam; and (3) takes place in a complex multi level setting which calls for further investigation.

Keywords

Germany inclusion/exclusion interfaith governance multilevel governance religious diversity state-religion relation

Introduction

According to the global diagnosis of Peter L. Berger, religious pluralism produces two distinct political problems:

how the state defines its own relation to religion, and how the state sets out to regulate the relations of different religions with each other. In practical terms, this leads to a search for what I propose to call formulas of peace. (Berger, 2014: 79)

Among the state-church systems of Europe, Germany takes a middle position: Its Basic Law establishes a system of separation between state and church, while there is a constitutionally secured cooperation between the state, churches and other societal associations structured around the three basic principles of neutrality, tolerance, and parity (Robbers, 2005: 80).

If we, however, want to better understand the relations between state, religious actors, and the governance of religious diversity in Germany, two structural aspects must be taken into account. Firstly, the German system of positive neutrality with diverse co-operations between the state and organized religion has emerged in co-evolution with the two mainline Christian denominations. Consequently, the Protestant and Catholic churches (and a number of smaller Christian communities) as well as the Jewish community have achieved the status of a public corporation (‘Körperschaft öffentlichen Rechts’), that is, the state accepts them as being part of the polity and grants them rights, such as levying taxes or an independent labor law. As a matter of fact, religious pluralization has put this model of structural accommodation under substantial pressure and in particular inspired political efforts to include Muslim organizations into state church law.

Secondly, such processes do not only take place at a national level. In fact, in the Federal Republic of Germany, large parts of state-religion relations are within the competence of the 16 federal states (‘Bundesländer’). As a result, the governance of religious diversity is highly diversified, in particular when it comes to the level of freedom for municipalities and cities (Körs, 2017). The significance of the local level also reflects the absence of a comprehensive political strategy toward immigration: Despite substantial immigration since the 1950s, the federal government did not consider Germany an immigrant country until the 1990s and therefore has not put much effort into measures of social and structural integration (Bommes and Kolb, 2012). Likewise, religious and cultural diversity have only recently come up as important policy issues (Liedhegener and Pickel, 2016). Thus, ‘local formulas of peace’ have become necessary and cities are privileged sites in which religious or spiritual claims for participation are brought up. Vice versa, such claims are typically negotiated with respect to certain urban micro-spaces where ‘post secular’ alliances between the state and religious groups are often forged (Cloke and Beaumont, 2013: 28).

These general observations on the urban governance of religious diversity in Germany can be translated into a number of research questions: (1) Which forms of state-interfaith governance have developed between state, religious communities, and interfaith actors in the course of religious pluralization and secularization? (2) Which role do the established churches play in these constellations, be it as active participants or as implicit institutional role models? (3) Does state-interfaith governance help to accommodate religious diversity or foster mechanisms of exclusion? (4) How are processes of urban state-interfaith governance linked to the regional and national level of governing religious diversity?

While empirical research on interreligious practice in Germany is still limited (see Kalender and Ohrt, 2018; Klinkhammer et al., 2011; Körs, 2018; Nagel, 2012), the issue of governance through and by state-interfaith initiatives has hardly been explored at all. In a quantitative survey of Christian–Muslim dialogue initiatives, Klinkhammer et al. (2011: 58) found that in almost half of the initiatives, administrative or political decision makers are somehow involved. Likewise, Gesemann et al. (2012) have pointed out that nearly half of the local communities in Germany (and even more so in larger cities) use ‘interfaith initiatives’ to foster diversity and tolerance and to prevent xenophobia. In a recent paper, Dick and Nagel (2017: 40) examined different modes of involvement of urban authorities in interreligious activities ranging from attendance over technical assistance and moderation or mediation to the initiation of new dialogue circles in neighborhoods which are considered ‘problematic’. From a normative stance, the entanglement of urban authorities and local interfaith initiatives has been discussed both as a means of cooperative problem-solving, potentially benefiting the wider community (Klinkhammer et al., 2011: 24), or as an undue appropriation of interreligious dialogue by integration politics (Tezcan, 2006: 26).

Against this background, this article seeks to contribute to research on state-interfaith governance which refers to all forms of collaboration between state actors and interreligious initiatives as well as multilateral cooperation of the state with religious communities from more than one faith tradition which are set up to work on specific policy issues or to promote overarching goals of a given polity. For this, we assemble case studies from two multi-faith metropolitan areas in Germany, namely the Hamburg and the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region. Both regions are marked by a high level of religious and cultural diversity as a result of recent and historical immigration: The region around Hamburg in the central Northern part of Germany can look back on a long history of Hanseatic sea trade, whereas the Rhine-Ruhr area in the Western part of the country was a stronghold of the German coal and steel industry and is still in the process of postindustrial transformation. At the same time, both cases exhibit a number of structural differences: With a population of almost 10 million people, the Rhine-Ruhr region (on a territory of only 7000 square kilometers) is almost twice as big as the Hamburg metropolitan region (5.3 million on a territory of 28,000 square kilometers). Settlement in the Rhine-Ruhr area is polycentric in the sense that it is comprised of 20 urban municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, whereas the Hamburg metropolitan region is clearly centered around the city state of Hamburg.

In the following second section, we will provide a systematic description of the forms of state-interfaith governance in each metropolitan region and their embeddedness in local discourses of religious and cultural pluralism and social cohesion. In a third section, we will then put an explicitly comparative perspective on the role of established churches, the inclusive and exclusive effects of urban state-interfaith governance, and its locus within a larger multilevel system of governing religious diversity.

State-interfaith governance in two metropolitan areas in Germany: a case study approach

In this section, we draw from two case studies on multi-faith metropolitan areas in Germany which were conducted in the course of two different research projects (see ‘funding’), but have a lot in common regarding their scope and methodology (document analysis, expert interviews, and participating observations). In order to facilitate comparative reading, we organized the case studies along the basic distinction between discursive and structural aspects of state-interfaith governance. The discursive level refers to self-description of the regions in terms of religious and cultural pluralism and includes – what we call – ‘myths of conviviality’, that is, affirmative narratives of social cohesion across religious boundaries, as well as programmatic notions of religious conviviality as part of official documents such as integration concepts or coalition agreements. The structural level, on the other hand, refers to concrete measures of state-interfaith governance, for example, various kinds of state supported interreligious activism.

State-interfaith governance in Hamburg between ‘Interreligious Dialogue’ and ‘Contract Governance’

Hamburg, the second largest city in Germany as well as a city state in Germany’s federal system, is characterized by its self-claimed and attributed ‘pioneering role’ in dealing with religious diversity (Foroutan et al., 2014; Spielhaus and Herzog, 2015). This is due in particular to the so-called ‘State Contracts’, which the city government has concluded with the Muslim and Alevi umbrella organizations in 2012. While the ‘State Contracts’ are regarded as the central instrument of bilateral ‘governance with religions’ (Schuppert, 2016) in Hamburg, the forms of state-interfaith governance focused here are also to be considered in relation to this legal-contractual regulation.

Discursive level

On the level of urban myths of conviviality, we first of all find a strikingly strong advocacy of religious diversity in Hamburg. This is expressed above all in the labeling of Hamburg as the ‘Capital of the Interreligious Dialogue’, an attribution supported especially by those engaged in the endeavor and readily promoted by the media. This label can be traced back to 2009 when the former bishop of the Protestant church referred to Hamburg as the ‘Capital of Interreligious Dialogue’ when visiting the Centrum-Mosque on the occasion of the Shura Council’s 10th anniversary (Ulrich, 2009) which was then taken up by the representatives of other religious communities. Interestingly, this label has also increasingly been adopted by politics, as in mayor’s speeches and even in the government’s coalition agreement (see below). The enforcing power of this narrative of the ‘Capital of Interreligious Dialogue’ may also be due to the fact that, on the one hand, it is in line with already long existing narratives such as Hamburg as the ‘Gateway to the World’ referring to its Hanseatic tradition and important role as a trade and port city. On the other hand, Hamburg was the city where the 9/11 attacks in New York in 2001 were planned and became known in the media for the ‘Hamburg terror cell’. Though Islamist terrorism and extremist political Salafism are still considered the greatest challenges currently facing Hamburg (Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, 2016), such seemingly opposing forces have contributed to the strengthening (rather than hindering) of the interreligious movement in Hamburg, as was the case in many other places especially after the attacks of 9/11 (Halafoff, 2013: 2).

The importance and positive connotation of religious diversity on the narrative level is, to a certain extent, also reflected at the programmatic level and expressed in the current coalition agreement, Together we create modern Hamburg, of the governing parties SPD (Social Democrats) and Grüne (Green Party). For the first time, we find in this document a special paragraph on ‘Dialogue with the Religious Communities’ (SPD Hamburg, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, 2015: 99) which is laid out in seven points. It starts with a self-understanding of the coalition partners of ‘Hamburg as an open city of interreligious dialogue’ and the declaration: ‘We intend to continue supporting it and to develop it in a dialogue with the religious communities’. This is followed by the intention to hold on to the Hamburg model of shared ‘Religious Education for All’ which is to be taught, in the future, in equal responsibility shared by all included religious communities, the Academy of World Religions at the University of Hamburg having an important role in this development. Third, the 500-year anniversary of the Reformation in 2017 is mentioned as an important occasion for remembering this ‘event that shaped our Hamburg history’. The coalition partners then declare, fourth, that they are going to support the Muslim and Alevi organizations on the way to their recognition as corporate bodies and highlight, fifth, that they will support them in building their houses of worship (both as well as the agreement on religious education (RE) are also contained in the ‘State Contracts’). Sixth, it is intended to financially promote the Jewish community even in the future despite the neutrality required of the state. Remarkably, the longest final paragraph refers to hostility against Islam and radicalization as threats for peaceful coexistence in the city and emphasizes the role of the Muslim and Alevi communities as partners of the city against radicalization: ‘They can oppose the process of radicalization on the theological level and demonstrate an alternative community life, therefore being an important partner in the shared preventive work but also when retrieving radicalized people for a pluralist democratic society’ (SPD Hamburg, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, 2015: 99).

This largely corresponds with the contents of a city parliament session which the Green parliamentary group suggested on the topic Dialogue between the religions: Shaping Hamburg together on which the representatives of the parties in parliament commented (Bürgerschaft der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, 2016b: 2213–2220). On the whole, the pioneering role of Hamburg in interreligious dialogue is presented positively and basically equated with the four building blocks: the Hamburg model of ‘Religious Education for All’, the Academy of World Religions of Hamburg University, the Interreligious Forum, and the ‘State Contracts’.

The way in which such declarations are planned to be implemented can be measured by the integration plan. In the former Integration Concept of Hamburg with the subtitle Participation, Intercultural Opening, and Cohesion, the ‘State Contracts’ with the Muslim and Alevi communities were mentioned in a prominent position in the introduction and ‘Interreligious dialogue’ was identified as a subtopic of the point ‘Strengthening Cohesion’ (Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, Behörde für Arbeit, Soziales, Familie und Integration (BASFI), 2013: 11). However, (inter) religious aspects were not explicitly included in the following but were seemingly subsumed under cultural considerations (Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, BASFI, 2013: 36–47). In contrast to this, the new and revised Integration Concept of 2017 contains a separate section on the question: ‘Inter-religious dialogue as part of the integration concept?’ It recognizes the individual and social significance of religion as well as the integrative effect of interreligious dialogue, but argues that state and religion are separate in Germany, which is supposed to explain why ‘interreligious dialogue cannot be subject to the control mechanisms of a state-formulated concept of integration, but is rather in the responsibility of the religious and civic actors of our society’ (Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, BASFI, 2017: 14).

Structural level

This is reflected on the structural level, when the Unit for the ‘Integration of Immigrants’, which is responsible for the design and implementation of the Integration Concept, provides a wide range of measures, offers and information for immigrants, explicitly dealing with the handling of religious holidays, but religious questions are otherwise included under intercultural perspectives. On the other hand, religion is very prominent in the Unit ‘Strengthening civil society’, which is responsible for measures to combat right-wing as well as religiously based extremism in Hamburg, through various programs, counseling networks and (prevention) projects such as ‘Hamburg bekennt Farbe’ as an alliance of politics, churches, Jewish, Muslim, Alevi religious communities and other societal actors (Bürgerschaft der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg: 2016a).

Besides these rather recent forms of co-operation concerning security and civil society issues which have been established increasingly since 9/11, there has been another long-standing domain of state interfaith governance, namely the implementation of a city-state specific form of religious education (RE), called ‘Religious Education for all’. RE in Germany has, according to the Basic Law Article 7 Paragraph 3, a special constitutional status and is to be taught ‘in accordance with the principles of the religious communities’. The special feature of the Hamburg model is that the students are not segregated according to denominations and religions but taught together in classes of mixed religious affiliations as well as non-religious worldviews. This goes back to the 1990s when the Protestant Church who was solely responsible for RE in public schools, opened it up for other religions like the Muslim, Alevi, and Buddhist communities (later the Hindu and Bahai communities). This early and unusual instance of including non-Christian religions in designing RE in public schools forms an important basis for the relations between religious communities, the government and authorities. Nevertheless, since the involved non-Christian communities had not been formally recognized as religious communities at that time, RE could only be taught by Protestant teachers, a fact which was one of the main motives for the Muslim and Alevi communities to achieve legal recognition and to conclude contracts with the city state of Hamburg.

In 2012, the ‘State Contracts’ were concluded bilaterally between the Senate and the Muslim and Alevi communities and have been discussed in various constellations so that Events on the ‘State Contracts’ are a central occasion for state-interfaith encounters. In 2013, the State Councilor of the Senate Chancellery gave a talk at Hamburg University on ‘State Contracts with Religious Communities’, followed by a discussion with representatives of the respective public authorities and of different religious communities on ‘Hamburg Religious Education’. A central actor in this process is also the Academy of World Religions at Hamburg University that is responsible for the training of RE teachers and co-initiated the event. In 2015, it was invited to a public speech by the mayor on ‘Institutionalized Religions in the Secular State’, drawing up an interim balance on a panel with representatives of the religious communities who have a ‘State Contract’ – that is, the Protestant Church, the Catholic Church, the Jewish Community and the Muslim and Alevi Communities. Representatives of the Buddhists, Hindus, and the Secular Forum, on the other hand, remained in the audience while declaring their interest in ‘State Contracts’ of their own. In early 2017, the espionage affair of DITIB (Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs) as a branch of the Presidency of Religious Affairs of the Turkish state and one of the largest Islamic organizations in Germany happened, in which imams were allegedly urged to spy on members of the Gülen movement in Germany. As DITIB is one of the contract partners, the ‘State Contracts’ were increasingly questioned, and numerous non-public discussions took place between the contract partners but were also initiated by actors like, for example, the Catholic Academy who invited political party representatives, religious communities, and others to a round table discussion. The party political climax of the crisis was reached when the opposition parties FDP (Free Democratic Party), CDU (Christian Democratic Party), and AfD (Alternative for Germany) demanded the termination of the ‘State Contracts’ while the governing parties SPD and Green adhered to the contracts.

In this situation, the Interreligious Forum Hamburg (IFHH) as a collective interfaith actor also appealed, in a press statement in late January, to the political decision-makers in the city to adhere to the contracts. In February 2017, the mayor visited the IFHH in the premises of the Nordkirche (Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany) whose bishop is currently its chairperson. Bilateral cooperation and contacts with the religious communities organized here (and especially with those who have a ‘State Contract’) do exist, and the mayor had already invited the IFHH in 2016 for a non-public event in the city hall. Nevertheless, the visit by the mayor in early 2017 is remarkable because, while the IFHH is considered a central actor in dialogue with the religious communities by the political representatives (see above ‘city parliament session’), it was the first visit to the IFHH (existing since 2000) initiated from the political side. The symbolic significance of the visit was accordingly high, and the visit was publicized in a press statement headlined ‘Mayor Scholz visits Interreligious Forum Hamburg’.

Official receptions of the religious communities for holidays are further fields of state-interfaith encounters, where representatives of politics and of different religious communities are frequently invited for a welcoming address, and during which the relationship of state and religion is explicitly made a subject of discussion. This applies especially to Muslim receptions which are noted in the public media, having a strongly symbolic value.

Paternalist post-secularism vs precarious neutrality: varieties of state-interfaith governance in the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region

As outlined above, the Rhine-Ruhr area consists of 20 urban municipalities with more than 100,000 citizens. In order to reflect the variety of approaches to state-interfaith governance, this case study will focus on two exemplary cities, namely Hamm and Duisburg. While both cities are marked by a high degree of religious diversity (Hero et al., 2008: 212) and similar socioeconomic conditions (severe postindustrial transformation, high unemployment rates), they differ in size (Hamm: 176,000; Duisburg: 487,000), overall party-political profile (Hamm: Christian Democrat; Duisburg Social Democrat) and official stance toward religion (Hamm: benevolent neutrality; Duisburg: restrictive neutrality).

Discursive level

As far as official concepts are concerned, both cities have come up with a thorough revision of their integration strategies in recent years. For example, Hamm adopted a municipal integration concept (‘kommunales Integrationskonzept’) in 2016, which was based on a resolution of the city council in 2014. Likewise, Duisburg published a brochure on its integration agenda in 2010. Both concepts highlight the salience of integration as a policy domain as well as a cross-cutting theme of urban governance. In both cities, integration is envisaged as a matter of participation (‘Teilhabe’) rather than a one-sided cultural accommodation of immigrants. An important argument for this shift is based on demographic observations that in some neighborhoods, people with an immigrant background are no longer a minority (Duisburg, 2010: 11–12; Hamm, 2014: 3–5). Along with this notion of participation, both concepts take a positive, ‘resource-oriented’ stance on diversity and seek to establish a ‘dialogue’ with societal stakeholders.

Apart from these commonalities in the overall agenda, the cities of Hamm and Duisburg exhibit some crucial differences. First of all, and most relevant for an analysis of state-interfaith governance, different approaches are taken in terms of interculturality and religious neutrality: Drawing from previous positive experiences in the collaboration with mainline churches and a pilot project on ‘Muslim communities as municipal actors’, the city of Hamm embraces the establishment of a multifaith chaplaincy structure as an important policy goal and explicitly draws on the collaboration with religious communities and measures of ‘interreligious dialogue’ (Hamm, 2014: 9–11). In contrast, Duisburg acknowledges religion as one among many dimensions of diversity and underlines that ‘in the public space, a secular culture should be the framework for all, including religious, activities’ (Duisburg, 2010: 33).

These programmatic differences also resonate with the actual administrative practice. In a nutshell, Hamm represents a postsecular administrative culture as it actively pursues partnerships with religious communities and interfaith initiatives. As emphasized by several of our interview partners, administrative and religious stakeholders alike, this religious ‘musicality’ used to be closely connected to the person of the mayor, who had for many years actively cultivated relationships with a variety of religious migrant communities. The fact that many religious representatives refer to their good personal relationship with the mayor as a means to solve administrative problems alludes to the paternalist style of interfaith governance in Hamm, which rests on an exchange of input legitimacy for assistance.

In Duisburg, the situation is more complicated. While the integration officer operates on a restrictive notion of religious neutrality, which is based on the diagnosis that ‘the climax of religion in urban society has, in principle, already passed’, other leading administrators insist on the ‘cooperative relationship between religious communities and the state’ as a crucial part of German religious corporatism. In the same vein, a representative of the mayor’s office would nostalgically refer to the previous mayor as ‘an old-school Rhenish Catholic with a strong religious affiliation’ and complain that the city’s annual interreligious reception had lately lost its ‘nutritional value’ and become a mere ‘meet and greet’.

Apart from their different approaches to religion, both cities employ myths of conviviality to relate their history of immigration and accommodation to actual political challenges. The integration concept of Hamm, for example, claims that ‘immigration is a matter of tradition in Hamm’ (Hamm, 2016: 4), referring mainly to the ‘successful integration’ of German refugees after World War II and labor migrants who arrived in the 1950s and 1960s. Likewise, Duisburg portrays itself as ‘colorful port city’ (‘bunte Hafenstadt’), thus associating its river port with an urban tradition of cosmopolitanism. Moreover, our interview partners in both cities would purport what might be called ‘the pitman’s myth’ of conviviality: As soon as you are belowground you have to rely blindly on your fellow pitmen, regardless of their religion or nationality. Last but not least, it is common in Duisburg to refer to the so-called ‘Wunder von Marxloh’ (Marxloh Miracle), that is, the establishment of the biggest representative mosque of Germany in Duisburg-Marxloh, as a result of a long participatory process. While some of our interview partners embraced the emphatic narrative of ‘our Marxloh mosque’ having become part of the collective ‘soul’ of the city, others were more skeptical, pointing to the inherent exoticism of the project: ‘Marxloh is like a zoo. “I’ll have a look at the gorilla and look how he scratches himself.”’.

Structural level

Even though the city of Hamm is considerably smaller than Duisburg, it exhibits a greater number and variety of interreligious activities. Among these activities, the annual inter-religious peace prayer appears to be most established as it looks back on a history of more than a decade. It unites representatives from different religious traditions such as Muslims, Alevis, Jews, Bahá’í, Hindus, Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Protestants, and takes place in a church. The municipal Department of Social Integration is involved in the preparation meetings, but does not play an active role in the interreligious performance itself.

Discussion groups are another important type of event (‘Gesprächskreise’). In contrast to peace prayers, these groups take place on the level of neighborhoods rather than on the city level. Therefore, they admit a much higher degree of intrareligious diversity than other interreligious activities and create a forum for marginal groups such as Christian or Muslim minorities. Due to their local scope, discussion groups tend to focus on practical matters of everyday life rather than abstract theological topics. A drastic example for the utilization of interreligious discussion groups as an instrument of urban diversity governance was the initiation of a new discussion group by the Integration Office in Bockum-Hövel, an alleged ‘problem district’. Since the launch of the group, the office has provided translation services and supported the group in acquiring public funding for its activities.

Apart from the annual peace prayer and local discussion groups, the city of Hamm has come up with other, more unusual interreligious formats. A good example is a multireligious installation called ‘Gates of World Religions’ (‘Tore der Weltreligionen’), which was publicly inaugurated in 2012 in the Lippe-Park, a former mining area that has been extensively recultivated. The installation is a good example for the prominence of the ‘world religious model’ of state-interfaith governance as it assigns a gate to each of the so called big five (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism), although there is hardly any visible Buddhist or Jewish life in the city. The original proposal goes back to a Christian–Muslim discussion group and was developed in close collaboration with the Department of Urban Planning. In addition, the Cultural Office has organized a guided tour to visit different ‘spiritual spaces’ in Hamm. The day trip includes stops at three Protestant and two Catholic churches, a mosque and the representative Hindu temple in Hamm-Uentrop.

In line with its restrictive notion of religious neutrality, official interreligious activities seem to play a minor role in Duisburg. The city itself neither initiates nor organizes interreligious events apart from occasional receptions which are administered by the mayor’s office. In addition, we see a number of local initiatives taking part in interreligious events on the ground, such as a Christian–Muslim dialogue circle, interreligious school services and neighborhood festivals as well as panel discussions on issues of social integration.

The official interreligious reception is held in the town hall and formally hosted by the mayor of Duisburg. In recent years, invitations have been extended to more than one hundred religious communities. According to a member of the mayor’s office, the reception goes back to a Christian–Muslim round table in the town hall some 15 years ago. He indicates that the change in format and the extension of participation has significantly altered the character and impact of the event, leading to a hollowing out of its spiritual dimension.

Besides these annual receptions and occasional Iftar invitations, political and administrative leaders have been involved in interreligious meetings which take place annually on the premises of different religious communities. Here, the mayor or one of his deputies used to give a welcome address and actively took part in the event. At the same time, the advisory board of the Islamic civic center (‘Begegnungsstätte’) in Duisburg-Marxloh has become an institutionalized contact zone between different religious and urban stakeholders. The board involves representatives of the neighborhood, political parties, churches and the urban development agency and has proved crucial for the smooth realization of the representative Merkez Mosque, which came to be known as ‘Marxloh Miracle’ (see above).

Apart from the above mentioned interreligious activities, which are orchestrated on the city level and supported by public administration and local policy makers, we have found a variety of interreligious events at the grassroots level of civil society with no or only indirect connections to public authorities. These bottom-up initiatives comprise a Christian–Muslim discussion group which has been started by Christian theologians and, unlike similar groups in Hamm, is explicitly dedicated to theological exchange addressing topics such as creation, sin or salvation. Moreover, schools appear to be an important hub of interreligious activities in Duisburg. Our respondents hinted at a number of interreligious school services, most of which had grown out of ecumenical celebrations and included an Imam or Hodscha as well as a Catholic and a Protestant priest.

Comparative conclusions

The analysis of our two metropolitan regions of Hamburg and Rhine-Ruhr in the previous section clearly showed that state-interfaith governance takes place in a variety of forms, reflecting its growing importance as an empirical phenomenon. In this section, we set out to compare our case studies with respect to the role of established churches, the inclusive and exclusive effects of urban-state interfaith governance, and its locus within a multilevel system of governing religious diversity.

Role of established Churches

In both cases, the established churches turned out as prominent hubs and agents of interfaith governance. Local parishes played a major role in launching and sustaining interfaith initiatives. Without doubt, an important condition for the crucial position of established churches was their privileged access to resources, be it monetary, human and infrastructural. The structural asymmetry between Christian and non-Christian actors in interfaith settings has been identified as a major challenge to interreligious practice before (Klinkhammer and Satilmis, 2008) as it purports a hegemonic role division between a Christian host and their Muslim (Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Bahai or other) guest.

At the same time, the established churches also pursue strategic goals through state-interfaith-governance, for example, when the Protestant Church in Hamburg at an early stage facilitated the participation of non-Christian religious communities in RE. While for the Protestant Church and urban authorities this can be seen as ‘an intelligent way of protecting the power over the drawing of religious policies’ (Tietze, 2007: 145), the non-Christian communities gained access to the field of education as an important sphere of public influence so that the structural asymmetry turned into a strategic partnership.

Apart from the operative prominence of the established churches in interreligious practice and their strategic advocacy for religious minorities they also have a more subtle and yet highly influential role to play as implicit benchmark and role model for ‘appropriate religion’. Counter-intuitive as it may seem, this can be illustrated by the Rhine-Ruhr example of the Islamic civic center in Duisburg-Marxloh. Given that its advisory board comprises representatives of administrative departments, political parties and churches, the center itself has turned into an institutional measure of state-interfaith governance. The example underlines the strong path-dependency and inclusive potential of religious corporatism in Germany. Mainline churches can become important agents of state-interfaith encounters and governance since their status as corporations of public law not only grants them the necessary resources, but also puts them in the position of a quasi-state agency. The case of Duisburg–Marxloh supports this idea and suggests that religious communities can acquire a significant role in state-interfaith governance if they accept structural transformations such as including urban stakeholders into their organizational profile.

Inclusion/exclusion

While the above mentioned examples point to the inclusive capacity of the corporatist system in general and mainline churches in particular, both case studies show that state-interfaith governance can result in the exclusion of religious communities or traditions. A central observation in both metropolitan areas is that the entanglement of interfaith initiatives and urban authorities reinforces existing mechanisms of exclusion. For example, many modes of state-interfaith governance rest on notions of clear-cut religious traditions and a strong paradigm of representation (Morgan, 1995). As a consequence, models of ‘Abrahamic’ or ‘World Religious’ pluralism have become prevalent, whereas intrareligious diversity does hardly come to the fore. The exclusive potential of these models becomes obvious when being compared to the impressive numbers of 110 distinguishable religious streams in Hamburg (Grünberg et al., 1994) and more than 200 in the Rhine-Ruhr region (Hero et al., 2008). These models carry strong implications for what constitutes a ‘legitimate’ religion for interfaith purposes, such as seniority (in contrast to new religious movements), a global spread and institutional coherence (in contrast to religious phenomena which are localized or encultured), and the possession of some kind of ‘sacred scripture’ (in contrast to oral traditions).

In both metropolitan areas, state-interfaith governance is based on a world religious model. The imperative and exclusive character of that model takes visible form in two public installations, namely the ‘Gates of World Religions’ in the city of Hamm (Rhine-Ruhr) with five copper gates to represent Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism and, the ‘Garden of World Religions’ in Hamburg with a fountain in the middle as a connecting element and around it five gardens with symbols of the same five world religions. As pointed out earlier, the prevalence of the world religious model is remarkable given the lack of numbers and visibility of Buddhists, Hindus, and Jews in both regions as compared to the Muslim minority. As a result of these proportions and due to the instrumental focus of state-interfaith governance on Muslim communities further exclusion may occur within that model. This happened in Hamburg where the ‘State Contracts’ with Muslims and Alevis have led to the exclusion of Buddhists, Hindus and Baha’i who used to be involved in the Hamburg model ‘Religious Education for all’ since the 1990s, but have been excluded from its further development for lacking a ‘State Contract’. So, if state-interfaith governance is mainly about Muslims, why do urban authorities stick to the world religious model at all? Perhaps because it provides a feasible solution to maneuver religious diversity under conditions of benevolent neutrality and offers a ‘legitimate’ way to cater the practicalities of pluralism.

The aforementioned examples illustrate mechanisms of exclusion which are typical for organized interreligious encounters in general. Moreover, our case studies suggest that the involvement of urban authorities may lead to a more restrictive stance to religious diversity as it puts interreligious practice on a new public stage. For instance, a Jewish representative holds that ‘particularly within the Muslim community there are groups with which we would not sit at one table. […] Which does not mean that there is no informal conversation, but I cannot officially sit at one table with people who are anti-Semites’. The statement illustrates that interfaith encounters have a frontstage as well as a backstage. Religious communities are aware of that and consider it as part of their impression management in the urban public. Likewise, urban authorities are very careful about being associated with communities that are ‘doubtful’, because they have been under observation by public intelligence (e.g. Millî Görüş) or because they have been scandalized as ‘sects’ (e.g. Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses).

Interfaith governance in a multilevel contextual perspective

Despite a number of national (e.g. the German Islam Conference) and regional initiatives (e.g. the Round Table of Religions in Baden-Württemberg), the local level still stands out as the primary locus of state-interfaith governance in Germany: The corporatist doctrine of a benevolent neutrality of the state vis-à-vis religious communities has created an urban habitat which is favorable to different measures of interreligious activism and hence state-interfaith governance. At the same time, our case studies point to a remarkable variation across metropolitan areas as well as single cities.

The case of the Rhine-Ruhr area indicates that two cities in similar structural conditions may follow fundamentally different trajectories of state-interfaith governance: The city of Hamm was marked by a pervasive postsecular administration culture which resulted in an explicit reference to interreligious matters in the urban integration concept and a number of interfaith measures initiated by the administrative department. As an embodiment of this postsecular constellation the mayor was reported to cultivate strong paternalist ties to a variety of religious (immigrant) communities and to play an active role in dialogue events. In contrast, the city of Duisburg (officially) employed a much more restrictive notion of religious neutrality which appears to be rooted in a party political (Social Democratic) trajectory. At the same time, it became evident that some urban authorities sought to undergo this doctrine by taking a ‘subversive’ approach of faith-based communication, particularly vis-à-vis Muslim clients. In Hamburg, despite a strong interreligious impetus on the narrative and programmatic level, state-interfaith governance is practiced at the structural level in a rather selective way primarily privileging the Muslim communities as state partners for the prevention of extremism and the promotion of democracy. This corresponds with the predominant bilateral contract governance which allows for including Muslim and Alevi communities at the federal level but might also have a vicarious role for other ways of governance religious diversity.

Conclusion and outlook

To conclude, we summarize the results with regard to the four introductory research questions concerning the forms of governance, the role of the established churches, the effects of state-interfaith governance, and the levels of governance: First, in the course of the growing importance of negotiation processes between state and religions, our analysis indicates that measures of state-interfaith collaboration are on the rise. More than that, they might become even more significant as a new form of governance as recent processes of refugee immigration accelerate the religious and cultural pluralization of urban spaces. Second, the established churches are likely to remain essential actors and gate keepers in state-interfaith governance even though ‘State Contracts’ have enabled the participation of non-Christian communities to some extent. Hence, state-interfaith governance supports the bi-confessional model of German religious corporatism and may create incentives for non-Christian minorities to adapt the stratified model of the two established Christian churches.

Third, both the impacts and the effects of state-interfaith governance are yet to be explored. Our analysis suggests that on the upside, state collaboration with interfaith initiatives holds the promise to enhance participation and thus to expand the input-legitimacy of urban decision making. Moreover, it may serve to activate and empower religious and cultural minority groups and to allocate disadvantaged populations. On the downside, state-interfaith governance may reinforce existing mechanisms of exclusion and erode civic activism as it confronts interfaith initiatives with an external policy driven agenda. Fourth, our case studies show that cities are crucial instances for the governance of religious diversity in Germany not only because they provide a densified space for religious and cultural pluralization to crystallize, but also because a comprehensive regional and national strategy toward immigration and integration is still lacking.

It has become obvious that the variation of modes and measures of state-interfaith governance across cities as well as the degrees of freedom of the local level of diversity governance vis-à-vis regional and national approaches are quite high. Aside from the specific trajectories of interfaith governance in different cities, however, an important rationale of urban authorities to collaborate with local interfaith initiatives seems to be to reach out to populations who are otherwise not easy to access and to foster community cohesion through interreligious and intercultural capacity building.

Footnotes

Funding

This article is based on two research projects, namely the collaborative project ‘Religion and Dialogue in Modern Societies’ funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and a project on ‘Interreligious activities and urban governance in the Rhine-Ruhr area’, funded by the Mercator Research Center Ruhr.

Author biographies

Anna KÖRS is scientific manager and vice director of the Academy of World Religions at University of Hamburg and deputy leader of the international research project ‘Religion and Dialogue in Modern Societies’. Her current research focuses on religious pluralization, interreligious relations, politics, and practice of religious diversity.

Address: Academy of World Religions, University of Hamburg, Gorch-Fock-Wall 7, 20354 Hamburg, Germany.

Email: anna.koers@uni-hamburg.de

Alexander-Kenneth NAGEL is professor for the social scientific study of religion at the Institute for Sociology of the Georg-August-University Göttingen. His research interests include organized interfaith encounters, religious migrant communities in Germany, and their contribution to local welfare production.

Address: Institut für Soziologie, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 3, 37073 Göttingen, Germany.

Email: Alexander-Kenneth.Nagel@sowi.uni-goettingen.de

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