page_title: Religion in Germany
section_title: Baha'i Faith
hierarchical_section_title: Religion in Germany / Other religions / Baha'i Faith
caption_attribution_description: English: Baha’i House of Worship Frankfurt, in Hofheim-Langenhain, Germany Deutsch: Baha’i-Tempel Frankfurt in Hofheim-Langenhain
context_page_description: Christianity is the largest religion in Germany, and was introduced to the area of modern Germany with the conversion of the first Germanic tribes in the 4th century. The area became fully Christianized by the time of Charlemagne in the 8th and 9th centuries. After the reformation started by Martin Luther during the 16th century, a significant part of the population had a schism with the Catholic Church and became Protestant, mainly Lutherans and Calvinists.
  Nowadays around 55% of the population identifies as Christian, however only 10% of German people say they believe in God as absolutely certain, and 50% say they believe in God as less certain, with about half of those being Catholic, most of them Roman Catholics, stronger in the southern and the western part of the country, half belonging to the Evangelical Church of Germany predominant in the northern regions, and the rest to several small Christian denominations such as the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church or the Jehovah's Witnesses. Between 5 and 6% are Muslims, while much smaller religions include Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism and Yazidis.
context_section_description: A 1997–8 estimate is of 4000 Bahá'ís in Germany (40 in Hannover). In 2002 there were 106 Local Spiritual Assemblies. The 2007-8 German Census using sampling estimated 5–6,000 Bahá'ís in Germany. The Association of Religion Data Archives (relying on World Christian Encyclopedia) estimated some 11,743 Bahá'ís.Following the German reunification in 1989–91 the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany handed down a judgment affirming the status of the Bahá'í Faith as a religion in Germany. Continued development of youth oriented programs included the Diversity Dance Theater (see Oscar DeGruy) which traveled to Albania in February 1997. Udo Schaefer et al.'s 2001 Making the Crooked Straight was written to refute a polemic supported by the Evangelical Church in Germany written in 1981. Since its publication the Evangelical Church in Germany has revised its own relationship to the German Bahá'í Community. Former member of the federal parliament Ernst Ulrich von Weizsaecker commended the ideas of the German Bahá'í community on social integration, which were published in a statement in 1998, and Chancellor Helmut Kohl sent a congratulatory message to the 1992 ceremony marking the 100th Anniversary of the Ascension of Bahá'u'lláh.
caption: Bahá'í House of Worship in Langenhain near Frankfurt
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