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ST. LOUIS (ANS) -- Martin Luther's homeland has turned into a pre-Christian mission field, according to the Lutheran theologian and journalist Uwe Siemon-Netto.

He is director of the Institute on Lay Vocation at the Concordia Seminary of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod in St. Louis (Missouri). As a journalist Siemon-Netto has worked for renowned German papers such as Die Welt and Die Zeit.

At age 50, Siemon-Netto enrolled at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, earning an M.A. degree in theology in 1988. In 1992, he received the Ph.D. degree in theology and sociology of religion from Boston University.

At Concordia Seminary he organizes German Days with scholars from Germany and the United States reflecting on issues of faith and society, around the "Reformation Day ", October 31.

At the recent event Siemon-Netto - born in Leipzig in 1936 - gave a lecture on the religious situation in East Germany. Less than a quarter of the population in Luther's homeland is still Christian.

Luther's town, Wittenberg, counts about 15 percent church members, Protestant or Catholic. The same is true for Eisleben, wher! e Luther was born in 1483 and where he died in 1546.

Siemon-Netto holds the former communist regime in East Germany responsible for the demise of Christianity. Following in the footsteps of the Nazis, the regime had systematically tried to wipe out Christianity in its realm.

As Siemon-Netto pointed out, this turned out to be the only enterprise in which the East German communists succeeded remarkably and lastingly.

Christianity experienced only a short-lived renaissance during the time of the peaceful revolution in East Germany. Before the Berlin wall as well as the regime fell in 1989, Christians regularly held prayer vigils and organized peaceful demonstrations.

During the process of re-unification many East German Protestants and Catholics took public office and shaped the political future.

But the hope that people in Saxony and Thuringia would return to the faith of their fathers was not to be. Siemon-Netto: "In the Land of Luther, Christianity seemed to collapse like nowhere else in Europe."

The form! er East Germany is the only European territory with an ove rwhelming majority of atheists - 65 percent of the population. In 1950, the Protestant churches in the Soviet occupied German Democratic Republic had 16 million members. Today, there are 3.4 million left.

In Siemon-Netto's opinion this decline is mainly due to a Christian brain drain. The swiftest and most competent East Germans - including disproportionately many Christians - have left the East for the more prosperous West. Among the core of the Protestant establishment used to be the educated and wealthy, the landowners, industrialists and craftsmen.

According to Siemon-Netto the East German churches still have not found the proper response to the decline: "Short of money, they are closing down or merging parishes left right and center, especially in the countryside." Church administrations seemed to be stuck by paralysis.

But, says Siemon-Netto, there is a ray of hope: "While it is true that the Eastern German society is the most atheistic in Europe, it is also true that the tiny and courageous Christian minority in Eastern Germany also tends to be the most faithful in the nation."

In some Eastern parts, more than twice as many Protestant church members attend services regularly - in Saxony the figure is 25 percent as opposed to the national average of 12 percent.

Wolfgang Polzer (57), is senior news editor of the Evangelical News Agency idea, Wetzlar (Germany), which he joined in 1981. In all, he has spent 30 years in Christian media.

Used by permission Assist News Service: www.assistnews.net