Places of faith – The G+L in October 2024 !

In 2022, the number of people leaving the Catholic and Protestant churches in Germany reached its absolute peak. Since then, the number of active Christians has been falling continuously. The importance of Christian places in our cities and communities is not diminishing as a result, but it is changing. At the same time, other faiths – including Islam, Judaism and Hinduism – are gaining new public presences. In the October issue of G+L, we look at the latest outdoor space projects of different faiths and want to know what significance cemeteries, churches and their forecourts, mosques and synagogues still have today and what this means for landscape architects and urban planners.

1,670 clerics of the Catholic Church abused a total of over 3,677 children and young people in a total of 27 German dioceses. These were the findings of an abuse study presented by the German Bishops’ Conference in March 2024. The data is based on more than 38,000 personnel and files from the years 1946 to 2014. 51.6 percent of those affected were 13 years old or younger when they were first sexually abused, 25.8 percent were 14 years old or older and the average age was 12. In these 68 years, 34 percent of those accused were prosecuted under canon law for sexual abuse of minors, 53 percent were not, and around a quarter of all canon law proceedings initiated were not followed by any consequences. A large number of unreported cases remain.

The figures for the Protestant Church are no less shocking. A study commissioned by the Protestant Church in Germany in January 2024 assumes that more than 9,000 minors have been sexually abused in the Protestant Church and Diaconia since 1946.

According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the “Islamism/Islamist terrorism” potential will again comprise 27,200 people in 2023. A figure that has remained at roughly the same level since 2019. The threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany and for German interests and institutions worldwide continues to exist and has increased further since the terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023 and the subsequent military clashes in the Gaza Strip, according to the Federal Office. The fatal knife attack in Solingen on 23 August this year by a Syrian refugee who is currently under urgent suspicion, resulting in three deaths and eight injuries, confirms the threat level. The so-called “Islamic State” claimed responsibility for the attack.

12,677 children and young people sexually abused by church representatives, 27,200 potential Islamist threats in Germany and an 83% increase in anti-Semitic incidents in 2023 according to the Research and Information Centers on Anti-Semitism – and we are now really making a booklet on “Places of Faith”? Yes, because faith – despite all the crises and acts of violence associated with it – does not and must not stand for fundamentalism, violence and power.

Rather, places of faith such as cathedral squares, cemeteries, monasteries, mosques and synagogues continue to be social centers of social life. It is precisely here that we as people, but also we as planners, can make a strong statement for a peaceful community that seeks dialog with one another. Despite all the conflicts. That is why we are presenting seven projects in this booklet that exemplify how places of faith – both those that still have a religious function today and spaces that were once associated with a faith – can be designed for the future and what role landscape architecture can and must play in this.