Germany’s Lutheran Church will now exclude members of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party from any leadership positions due to the party’s politics.
The Evangelical Church of Central Germany, which serves most of the provinces of Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, and smaller parts of the provinces of Brandenburg and Saxony, will no longer allow AfD members to serve in any church leadership positions, including on parish councils.
“Anti-human, xenophobic and anti-Church positions are incompatible with holding office either in a parish council or in other leadership positions of our church,” county bishop Friedrich Kramer announced at the beginning of the church’s autumn synod, adding that membership in “extremist parties” is against the church constitution.
The local constitutional protection office in both Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia have declared the AfD a far-right organization, reports Die Welt.
At the same time, Bishop Kramer claims that “the church doors are still open to all people.”
At the start of the year, the same church initiated proceedings against one of its pastors, Martin Michaels, serving in Quedlinburg in the Harz Mountains, who won a mandate in the city council as a non-party member, but with the support of the AfD. He has since been removed as a pastor. And over the summer, the Magdeburg Catholic bishopric made it clear that AfD members cannot work in church bodies.
In the midst of all this, Germany has also inched closer to instituting an all-out ban on the party itself.
