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The Protestant churches in Germany had a similar net loss of membership of about 220,000 members. While the total of Catholic and Protestant church membership as of 2019 stands at 45 million or 53%, demographers predict that based on current trends it will fall to 23 million by 2060. [41]
The Protestant church has influenced changes in wider culture in Germany, contributing to the debate around bioethics and stem cell research. [25] The Protestant leadership in Germany is divided on the issue of stem cell research; however, those opposing liberalising laws have characterised it as a threat to the sanctity of human life. [26]
However, from the Catholics' point of view (especially where Catholics were the majority as in the Rhineland Province, the Saar, Alsace and Loraine, and Silesia), Catholics often felt intimidated by self-consciously Protestant rulers, especially when an anti-Catholic campaign was carried on at many levels and would involve "the banishing of ...
Most of Germany's chancellors have been either Protestants or Catholics. A significant portion of Protestant chancellors belonged to the Prussian Union of Churches, which united the Reformed and Lutheran confessions throughout the Kingdom of Prussia and was in force since 1817.
Central and northeastern Germany were by this time almost wholly Protestant, whereas western and southern Germany remained predominantly Catholic. In 1547, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V defeated the Schmalkaldic League, an alliance of Protestant rulers.
At the time, the federation was the largest Protestant church federation in Europe with around 40 million members. [7] Because it was a federation of independent bodies, the Church Union's work was limited to foreign missions and relations with Protestant churches outside Germany, especially German Protestants in other countries.
Southern and western Germany remained mostly Catholic, and the north and east became mainly Protestant. [ 42 ] Otto von Bismarck 's 1871–1878 Kulturkampf tried to impose Protestant nationalism on the new German Empire, fusing anti-clericalism and suspicion of Catholics (whose loyalty presumably lay with Austria and France).
On 28 June Jäger appointed Müller as new Reich's Bishop and on 6 July as leader of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union, then with 18 million parishioners by far the biggest Protestant church body within Germany, with 41 million Protestants altogether (total population: 62 millions). [47]