The Marketing of the Protestant Church? Consumer-orientation and low threshold supplies in German urban churches

Abstract

This article examines religious and social changes in relation to economic demands. The Protestant Church in Germany faces a financial crisis since the early 1990s due to shrinking church taxes. Attracting new members in a secular environment has thus become a key imperative. In order to meet this goal, new sites such as so-called city churches have evolved, which, by conducting so called ‘low threshold offers’, address a religously relatively indifferent audience. The article argues that these city churches represent a de-dogmatized, de-Christinanzized religious phenomenon within the wider context of the Protestant Church.