Panel discussion with Maren Freudenberg on free church and evangelical communities

Dr. Maren Freudenberg, sociologist of religion at CERES with a focus on US evangelicalism and global Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity, took part in a panel discussion on April 9, 2024, in which the reasons for the success of free church and evangelical congregations in North and South America were debated. While the Catholic and Protestant churches in Europe are struggling with continuously declining membership figures and their importance as social institutions is decreasing, evangelical and free church communities are experiencing a veritable boom. 

In the 17th edition of the "Berliner Religionsgespräche" format, which is jointly organized by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Verlag der Weltreligionen and the Udo Keller Stiftung Forum Humanum, the panelists discussed the recipe for success of these communities. The focus was particularly on the question of what offers and perspectives free-church and evangelical communities provide to potential members and how they differ from the mainstream churches. The alliances of evangelicalism and the free church with secular actors were also discussed and the potential for social conflict arising from this was highlighted.

The panel discussion was recorded by rbb24 Inforadio. A summary is now available online: https://www.inforadio.de/rubriken/debatte/das-forum/2024/04/religion-glaubensgemeinschaft-mitglieder-kirche-mitgliederschwund.html

Program of the panel discussion: ERFOLG. Was einige Glaubensgemeinschaften so unwiderstehlich macht – Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (bbaw.de)