Abstract
This article is based on the European project on confirmation work. It provides a brief description of the theological and ecclesiological background of this project as well as of the empirical studies carried out in this project in nine European countries and summarizes some of the main results. The example of Germany is used for presenting more detailed insights into the practice of confirmation work there as well as the religious attitudes of the confirmands. Given the high participation rates (more than 90% of Protestant youth in the respective age group in Europe versus 59% in the United States), the emphasis on reaching as many young people as possible is seen as a core characteristic of confirmation work in Germany and Europe. In a second step, the author considers confirmation in Europe and in the United States comparatively by identifying and discussing commonalities and differences on the basis of the empirical results from the research on confirmation work in the European and in the American project. One main difference is identified in the emphasis on mentorship (United States) and young volunteers (Europe). The final part of the article has its focus on the question of what confirmation work in the United States and in Europe could possibly learn from each other.
It has been a rare occasion in the history of Christian education and ecumenical cooperation that a direct exchange of perspectives on a major field of practical work was possible, especially in the manner which has been realized with the conference on confirmation work at Princeton Theological Seminary in October 2018. 1 The completion of the major empirical studies on confirmation work in Europe on the one hand and in the United States on the other, brings with it the opportunity for such an exchange, which is why I consider the Princeton conference a true historical moment. 2 I my view, this kind of international exchange and cooperation can be called an expression of practical ecumene—a kind of ecumenical cooperation which is not primarily focused on doctrinal questions but on the ways in which practical work is carried out in different churches and how different theological understandings find expression in such work. It has been my experience that practical ecumene holds special promises and potentials which deserve more attention, especially in times when many in the churches appear to have lost interest in doctrine-oriented forms of ecumene.
The ultimate intention of practical ecumene should not only be mutual information but should aim for learning from each other. At least within the European project, the experience of learning from each other by actually working together has been very vivid and valuable, on a personal level as well as concerning empirical research and theological interpretations. Since the European project started in 2006 (and currently there are attempts of continuing this project into the future) this experience has also been quite prolonged, covering more than a decade by now and therefore considerable parts of a person’s lifetime as a researcher. It is a great opportunity to carry this kind of cooperation even further, by bringing European and American research results into conversation with each other.
Learning from each other, however, seems to presuppose commonalities which cannot be taken for granted across the Atlantic, at least not automatically. This is why it seems important to be aware of the common starting points of confirmation work in Europe and in the United States. Three such commonalities appear to be of special importance in the present context:
Confirmation goes back to the early church and to its baptismal rites. In this perspective, confirmation refers to the one rite which is part of the very basis of all Christian churches throughout the world. Confirmation can remind us of the Christian unity which arises from the sacrament of baptism. The Reformation has given decisive new impulses to confirmation in terms of teaching young people the understanding of the Christian faith. All churches which view themselves as part of Protestantism have shared roots in Reformation time, and the theological as well as educational emphasis on the need that all believers must really understand what they believe in is part of this shared starting point. In its relationship to baptism, confirmation is part of the shared ecumenical heritage of all Christian churches while the reference to teaching and learning applies especially (although not exclusively) to the Protestant churches. International cooperation concerning confirmation work takes up this heritage to make use of it for the future, especially concerning new generations of young people in the church.
Yet in spite of such commonalities concerning the origin and theological development of confirmation, the question may be asked if an observer today could really recognize confirmation in the United States and in Europe as one and the same program and rite. I will pursue this question in the following in more detail. In a first step, however, it will be helpful to introduce readers to the European project on confirmation work.
The European Project on Confirmation Work
First it should be clear that the term Europe can have many different meanings, geographically, culturally, politically, and religiously. Not all European countries or churches participated in the research project on confirmation work. For example, the mainly Catholic countries of southern and western Europe did not participate. Instead, the emphasis was on central and northern Europe, that is in most cases on those European countries with a long and strong Protestant tradition which have preserved this ritual and also follow the practice of preparing young people for confirmation in programs which typically last one to two years. The nine countries or churches participating in the European project were: Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland. Most of the churches in these countries are Lutheran, some are Reformed. In addition, the Methodist Church in Germany took part in the study.
The European project has produced 12 volumes published in a special series by the Guetersloher Verlagshaus (3 volumes in English, the others in German) which are listed at the end of this article. In addition to these books, there are publications in a number of other languages as well as in a number of different countries.
From the beginning, the project followed a twofold rationale. On the one hand, the study was designed such that it would live up to the standards of social scientific research and be taken seriously by colleagues from that field. This aim seemed important because religion in adolescence has often been neglected in social scientific studies. Moreover, the aim was to obtain a realistic understanding of confirmation work which is based on the most reliable methods of inquiry. On the other hand, the study had a clearly theological rationale—which is one aspect in which the critical presentation of the European project in the book on the American study was lacking, 3 and this needs correcting. In fact, the German project devoted a whole book to the theological interpretation of the project results. The claim is that both are possible and needed: clear social scientific procedures and theological interpretations.
The theological reasons for researching confirmation work in Europe can be described in a number of respects. Most of all, the need for doing this kind of research is due to the conviction that all human work—including education—is fallible and therefore in need of improvement. Doing research is one way of supporting such improvements in that it allows for critical evaluation of the current situation, in this case of confirmation work with its strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, there is the motive that confirmation work must effectively support young people in their understanding of the Christian faith as well as their own faith. It is not enough that this should be the aim or the intention of ministers and other workers. Just like in general education today, the question must be raised if such aims are really achieved and what are the best ways to achieve them. Another theological reason has to do with a particular ecclesiology—the idea of a public church—and consequently with the visibility that a Christian church should strive for in society. In terms of confirmation work, this translates into the demand to make non-formal education more visible. This demand has become more and more important in the contemporary situation which is often dominated by the achievement-oriented goals of the school, even to the degree that the educational importance of other experiences outside of school is often forgotten and widely neglected. Finally, but not of lesser importance, I once more want to mention the potentials of practical ecumene. Doing joint research on confirmation work and cooperating in the effort of developing new and more effective models for doing this work has proven to be a solid basis for bringing different churches together into dialogue. This can also be seen from the group of researchers who were responsible for the project. The group members were delegated by the participating churches and theological institutions, and they represented both universities or faculties of theology and church-related research units.
Design and Samples
The European project on confirmation work has produced two major studies so far. The first study collected its data in 2007/2008, the second in 2012/2013 and 2015. The different years indicate that the studies were based on a longitudinal approach. The confirmands were asked to complete questionnaires at the beginning and at the end of their confirmation time as well as, in the case of the second study, two years after confirmation. The aim of the studies was to gain a multi-perspective empirical description of confirmation work. This is why representative data were crucial for the project which, naturally, required a large sample. More than 28,000 confirmands took part in the second study. In addition, the workers—ministers as well as volunteers—were included in the samples. In some countries, there also was a questionnaire for parents.
It proved important that the study also included qualitative approaches. These approaches can give the confirmands themselves a chance to express their experiences and wishes. Here are some examples of what they said: “Christian faith doesn’t seem too bad to me, but the older I am, the stronger my doubts become.” (f) “I come from a not very religious family, so my confirmation time was important for coming in contact with faith for the first time and for getting interested in it. I only hope that I am not the only one whose confirmation time was influential.” (f) “Today, the origin of the earth for example can be explained by the theory of evolution and a lot of dubious phenomena by logical and scientific facts.” (f)
Participation Rates
Participation rates measured in relationship to the whole population of the age of 13 or 14 years vary from country to country, in line with the general percentage of Protestants in a country. In Finland, for example, which has a Protestant majority, the participation rate is above 80%, while it is as low as 2% in Austria where the Protestants only make up a very small part of the population. Moreover, participation rates may vary over time. In Sweden, for example, the participation rate went down from more than 80% in 1970 to just above 30% in 2012, the last year for which data were available. But there are also countries, like Germany, where the participation rate has remained rather stable over time.
It is important to note that low participation rates can not be explained by dissatisfaction of the confirmands. The Swedish confirmands are among the most satisfied confirmands in all of the participating countries.
Selected Results
In the following, I will focus mainly on Germany since this is the country where I live and work and with which I am most familiar.
In Germany, more than 90% of Protestant youth of the age of 13 or 14 years participate in confirmation work. This is quite remarkable because there is no other church-sponsored educational program which reaches such a high participation rate. Moreover, 76% of the confirmands said that they were satisfied with their “whole confirmation time,” which is a very positive rating. More satisfaction goes along with better learning results, which indicates that the good response to the program has strong positive implications in terms of content as well. Confirmation work gets strong approval also from the other groups involved, from ministers, volunteers, and parents. Yet only very general statements like “I believe in God,” “God loves all humans and cares about each one of us,” or “There is life after death” find approval from a clear majority of the confirmands. More specifically Christian views such as “Jesus has risen from the dead” receive much less approval. Approval of the Christian faith increased during confirmation time. Ministers and voluntary workers are highly appreciated by the confirmands.
Most of the effects of confirmation work go into the direction wished for by the churches. For example, many of the confirmands felt strengthened in their faith. Yet it also has to be said that the increases during confirmation time had disappeared again two years after confirmation. Longitudinal data can have a sobering effect, which is why they are so important. They can help to identify challenges which would be overlooked as long as one only takes confirmation time itself into view. This is another example of how sound social science procedures prove to be helpful theologically as well.
Not all of the results were disappointing two years after confirmation. At this point in time, for example, 55% of the former confirmands still felt that the day of confirmation was one of the most important days of their life. This seems to be a remarkable result, given that adolescents often have many things going on in their lives.
Yet again, not all retrospective evaluations were positive. Some 45% of the interviewees two years after confirmation agreed to the statement “What I learnt in confirmation training has little to do with my everyday life.” Such impressions make it clear that more work needs be done in terms of finding connections between the Christian tradition and the lives of young people today.
In the background of the critical statements, however, one has to also see the very positive view of the church, which is characteristic of the German confirmands. Most of them are convinced that “the church does a lot of good things for the people.” At the same time, they appear to have very little sense of belonging to the church.
Similar tensions could be observed concerning the Christian faith. Again, the adolescents had a very positive view of the Christian faith. Yet many also say that “the church does not have answers to the questions that are important for me.” Some 32% of the confirmands agreed to this at the end of confirmation time. To add some more substance to such numbers I quote two of the interviewees themselves: “The Church was always too conservative and its history is also not very good. Even more, the stories are stupid rubbish.” (m) “With the help of my confirmation time I got involved in the life of my congregation, and now I am glad to be active in the congregation and in youth work. I got to know a lot of people and made some of my most important friends. I really learnt to appreciate my faith and myself.” (f)
Negative experiences with worship services remain a challenge. Yet there were also confirmands who reported that they encountered worship services adequate for youth. These confirmands had much more positive views of worship services which indicates what could and should be done in the future during confirmation time.
Some of the most important findings of the project refer to the importance of young volunteers. First of all, the number of volunteers in confirmation work is very impressive. There are about 62,000 volunteers in this field per year in Germany alone, most of them adolescents themselves. With 220,000 confirmands in Germany per year, this means a ratio of more than 1:4. The interviews conducted with volunteers and the questionnaires completed by them show that becoming a volunteer after confirmation is at least one important answer to the question of how young people can stay close to the church and how they can be strengthened in their commitment to the Christian faith. In other words, the involvement of young volunteers improves confirmation work in decisive ways for the confirmands and, at the same time, it offers meaningful opportunities for the post-confirmands. For the future development of confirmation work in Germany and Europe, inviting young volunteers and allowing them to have some responsibility of their own can not be overestimated in terms of its positive impact.
Similar positive results can be quoted concerning the importance of camps. Camps receive very good ratings from the confirmands. The experience of community among the adolescents is of core importance and camps foster this experience very much. Yet camps also strongly contribute to the effectiveness of confirmation work, in terms of learning about the faith as well as in terms of faith development.
Confirmation in Europe and in the United States: Commonalities and Differences
Looking at the results from the study in the United States and the studies in Europe, there are both commonalities and differences. To start with, here are some of the commonalities:
The general situation of confirmation work in both locations can be described as in transition from traditional rote-learning catechetics to more open and creative forms of learning. This process has been effective in many ways but, at the same time, it still seems to be underway in others, again in Germany as well as in the United States. The similarities in theological background, that is the roots in Reformation theology, are still clearly visible. The decisive motive for doing confirmation work and confirmation is to make a personal understanding of the Christian faith accessible to all Christians. There may be some differences of emphasis between Lutherans and the Reformed but the Protestant view common to both seems to be more important. One hallmark of this Protestantism is the focus on the individual person rather than on isolated content or institutional affiliation. Personal faith is considered decisive. Moreover, the likeness of God which, according to Gen 1:26–27, is given by God to all human beings as God’s creatures is seen as a basis for person-oriented education. Confirmation work today takes place within churches in transformation, again in both places. Protestant mainstream churches are losing members and they are suffering from low birth rates. Moreover, they encounter cultures and societies which are no longer Christian, at least not in the traditional sense. This is why there is the attempt to find new designs for confirmation work which are in line with contemporary challenges. It remains striking to see, however, that the family has remained a decisive influence on young people’s faith and their relationship to the church in both locations. This influence continues into adolescence and early adulthood, even in spite of the changes in society. In some ways, this is encouraging—a Christian upbringing still matters. Yet it could also be discouraging for those who are committed to confirmation work. This is why it must also be clearly stated that confirmation work matters as well. The influence of the family cannot explain all positive effects—good confirmation work can add to the influences from childhood and it can also add new experiences and insights.
So far, my focus has been on commonalities. Yet there are important differences between confirmation work in the United States and Europe or Germany (on which I mainly want to focus here):
The participation rates in Germany show that most of the Protestant adolescents (more than 90% of the pertinent age group) take part in confirmation work. This is considerably more than the 59% in the United States. A natural consequence of this broad participation is that the confirmands in Germany are a much more mixed group in terms of their expectations and prior religious socialization. The difference in terms of the participation rates implies that confirmation work in Germany does reach more young people distant from the church than in the United States. In other words, German confirmation work has a wider outreach in terms of youth than confirmation work in the United States. One core finding of the American study refers to the high importance of mentors in confirmation work. This finding has no parallel in the German or European studies. It seems that there have been some attempts at introducing mentorships but these have not been successful. While the German and the European studies show the high importance of young volunteers in confirmation work, the same does not seem to apply to confirmation work in the United States. This is surprising because the involvement of young volunteers is one of the most promising and hopeful developments in confirmation work in Europe. The involvement of volunteers improves the quality of the program for the confirmands while also adding a meaningful perspective for the time after confirmation.
Conclusions: Learning from Each Other?
Learning from each other does not mean copying each other. It is important to be aware of the fact that it is not possible from the beginning to take elements of successful confirmation work from one country and use them in another country. This is an insight which has been established by many studies in general education in the past. It also applies to confirmation work.
Different models of confirmation work are premised on different contexts, ecclesiologically but also culturally and religiously. What works best in one context, may therefore not work at all in another context.
The question of learning from each other must be understood, then, not in the sense of imitating each other but of receiving new impulses from looking at the experiences of others—for example, the different results on confirmation work from the countries and churches involved. The practices which are related but not identical can serve, as it were, as a mirror in which one can see one’s own work in new ways. This kind of being stimulated by being in conversation with others also was an important part of the European project with the many churches and countries involved in it. I am hopeful that this experience will also apply to the American and the European project as they come into conversation with each other.
In this sense, this whole article is part of a dialogical exchange between the research projects in the United States and in Europe (in fact, the conversation between the two projects started much earlier, between Richard Osmer and myself early on as well as at special meetings of the American and the European project teams at Helsinki in 2014 and in Erfurt, Germany in 2017). In addition to this general exchange, I want to address a number of more specific questions which seem of special importance for learning from each other:
How far should confirmation work reach out to young people who are only loosely connected to the church? The present shape of confirmation work in Europe goes back, at least in many countries, to a situation in which church membership and society were close to identical. This observation does not only apply to the former state churches but also to the churches’ attempts to be churches for all people (so-called Volkskirche). Today, confirmation work in Europe seems to have a much larger outreach than confirmation work in the United States. Some observers consider this extended outreach an expression of the mission of the church. Others point to the need to offer some kind of Christian teaching or education to those who have not been able to benefit from a religious upbringing in their families. At least in certain ways, the difference in outreach between confirmation work in the two locations could be a challenge for confirmation work in the United States, which seems to be more limited to those already socialized religiously. In terms of its origins in Reformation theology, catechetical instruction and confirmation work were meant to reach as many (young) people as possible. Should confirmation work entail elements for youth who are especially interested in the Christian faith? From the results of the American study on confirmation work, it seems that confirmation work in the United States is more focused on youth with strong religious convictions. Adolescents to whom this description applies also exist in Europe, although they are rarely addressed in the discussion on confirmation work there. For Europeans the encounter with the American results could be a starting point for giving more thought to such often promising young people as well, for example, by adding special elements to the programs which might be in line with their interests. Should working with adult members as mentors (United States) and working with young volunteers (Europe) be treated as alternatives? The studies in the United States and in Europe show a different emphasis following their respective results. The American study puts the accent on mentorships between adolescent confirmands and adult members of the congregation as their mentors. The European study finds the increasing involvement of young confirmed volunteers a most promising development from which the confirmands as well as the volunteers can benefit in many ways. It may well be the case that these different developments once more mirror the different structural presuppositions of confirmation work in the two locations—it is, for example, much more difficult to find suitable and motivated mentors if you are working with large groups of confirmands. Yet it could also pose the question whether the two approaches could not be combined with each other, thus having an even more varied program with different elements and dimensions. In any case, both seem important: the encounter with convincing adult role models as well as seeing older adolescents who are actively committed to Christian youth work.
Such questions once more indicate the potentials of international and ecumenical encounters and cooperation in the sense of what I called practical ecumene above. They can also remind us of the universal nature of the Christian church which cannot be limited to any particular national context. Learning from each other does not only follow practical motives but it embodies a deep theological and ecclesiological insight. In the one church of Jesus Christ it should be taken for granted that we are all learning together and with one another, as members of this church and as God’s children.
Footnotes
Author biography
1
This article is based on a lecture delivered at The Confirmation Conference, 4th-5th October, 2018. The style of the presentation has been maintained for the printed version. In line with this, references have been limited to a minimum.
2
Cf. Richard R. Osmer and Katherine M. Douglass (eds.), Cultivating Teen Faith: Insights from the Confirmation Project (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018); for the European project see the publications listed at the end of this article.
3
Cf. Osmer and Douglass (eds.), Cultivating Teen Faith, 151–52.