CHURCH leaders in Germany have urged political compromises after the parliamentary election on Sunday, which was won by the centrist Christian Democratic Union (CDU) after a surge in support for the far-Right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).
“The weeks before the election were characterised by highly emotional debates which heated and polarised the social mood — parties of the democratic centre now face the challenging task of dealing constructively and responsibly with the result,” the acting council chair of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), the Rt Revd Kirsten Fehrs, said in a statement.
“Nationalistic slogans and inhumane attitudes are incompatible with the Christian faith. . . As a Church serving social welfare, we now see it as our duty to help ensure peaceful coexistence in solidarity.”
The Bishop spoke as election results placed the CDU first, with 28.6 per cent, and 208 places in the 630-seat Bundestag. The AfD finished second, with 20.8 percent and 152 seats, after doubling its vote in four years.
Bishop Fehrs voiced concern at the rise in support for “extremist positions”, but said that she hoped that a new coalition government would “strengthen the political framework for social cohesion in a cosmopolitan Germany”.
The Bishop of Limburg, Dr Georg Bätzing, who chairs the Roman Catholic German Bishops’ Conference, welcomed the record 82.5-per-cent turnout as a sign of “democracy being taken seriously”. The results suggested that most Germans favoured “a strengthening of the democratic centre”, he said.
“I hope we’ll quickly get a stable government that tackles the problems — listening, understanding, and constructively striving for fair solutions and compromises,” Bishop Bätzing told the German Catholic news agency KNA.
“As part of a democratic Europe, Germany must be a constitutional state based on freedom, cosmopolitanism, and solidarity. . . Given the international situation, I very much hope Europe will be strengthened by this election.”
Speaking this week, the leader of the CDU, Friedrich Merz, pledged to maintain the “firewall”, or Brandmauer, which bars mainstream parties from co-operation with extremist formations; but he said that he was alarmed that the AfD, which backs the mass deportation of migrants, had scored well in conservative Bavaria, Westphalia, and the Rhineland.
He said that he counted on the outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party, which was beaten into third place with 16.4 per cent and 120 seats, to hold back the far-Right challenge by moving towards the political centre.
Prominent Christians were returned to the Bundestag by all main parties, including the Greens and the Left party, which gained 85 and 64 seats respectively.
In a radio interview, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, of Cologne, said that “social justice and integration” should retain a “firm place on the political agenda”, along with efforts to counteract “all tendencies towards division and polarisation”.
The Regional Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany, the Rt Revd Kristina Kühnbaum-Schmidt, urged a “united commitment to democracy and charity”; but she said that she was also “very concerned” at the electoral success of “divisive politicians”.