The Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (German: Evangelische Kirche Berlin-Brandenburg-schlesische Oberlausitz - EKBO) is a Protestant church body in the German states of Brandenburg, Berlin and a part of Saxony. The seat of the church is in Berlin. It is the most important Protestant denomination in the area.
It is a full member of the Evangelical Church in Germany (German: Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland - EKD), and is a church of the Prussian Union. The leader of the church is bishop Dr. Markus Dröge (2010).
The EKBO is one of 22 Lutheran, Reformed, and United churches of the EKD and is itself a United church. The church has around 1,200,000 members (December 2005) in 1,770 parishes.
The church is a member of the Union of Evangelical Churches (German: Union Evangelischer Kirchen - UEK) and the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe. In Berlin and Görlitz the church runs two academies.
St. Mary's Church, Berlin, is the church of the bishop of the EKBO with the Berlin Cathedral being under joint supervision of all the member churches of the UEK.
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The theology of the church goes back to Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. The ordination of women is allowed, and the blessing of same-sex unions has been allowed by the synod but depends on the local presbytery (German: Gemeindekirchenrat).
After the Second World War the integrated Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union (under this name 1922–1953, then renamed into Evangelical Church of the Union) was transformed into an umbrella organization. In 1947 its ecclesiastical provinces (German: Kirchenprovinzen), as far as their territories were not annexed by Poland or the Soviet Union, became independent church bodies of their own.
The March of Brandenburg ecclesiastical province (including Berlin, but after 1945 without the territory east the Oder-Neiße line), which until 1933 was headed in rotation by the general superintendents of Kurmark, Neumark-Lower Lusatia, and Berlin, became the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg. After 1945, the church covered only the territory still in Germany.
From 1972 on this church body ran double administrative structures in West Berlin and East Berlin - also competent for Brandenburg - because the communist government of East Germany did not allow pastors and church functionaries to travel freely between East and West. The two church bodies reunited in 1991.
In 1946 the Silesian ecclesiastical province, presided over by Ernst Hornig, held its first post-war provincial synod in then already Polish Świdnica. But on 4 December 1946 Poland deported Hornig from Wrocław beyond the Lusatian Neiße, where he took his new seat in the German part of the divided city of Görlitz of the former Prussian province of Lower Silesia. In 1947 the Polish government also expelled the remaining members of the Silesian consistory, which temporarily could continue to officiate in Wrocław. Görlitz became the seat of the tiny territorial rest of the Silesian ecclesiastical province, constituting on May 1, 1947 as the independent Evangelical Church of Silesia (German: Evangelische Kirche von Schlesien) - comprising the small parts of Silesia remaining with Germany after 1945.
All of the church property east of the Oder-Neiße Line, parochial and provincial alike, was expropriated without compensation, and the church buildings were mostly taken over by the Roman Catholic Church in Poland. A small number of Silesian churches are owned today by Protestant congregations of the Evangelical-Augsburg Church in Poland (see e.g. Churches of Peace).
On April 9, 1968 East Germany adopted its second constitution, accounting for the de facto transformation into a communist dictatorship. Thus the East German government deprived the church bodies of their status as statutory bodies (German: Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts) and abolished the church tax, by which parishioners' contributions had been automatically collected as a surcharge on the income tax. Now parishioners would have to fix the level of their contributions and to transfer them again and again on their own. This together with ongoing discrimination of church members, which resulted in many people leaving the church, effectively eroded the financial situation of the church bodies in the East.
In 1968, churches were reclassified as civic associations, and the East German government required the Evangelical Church of Silesia to remove the term "Silesia" from its name. The church body then chose the new name Evangelical Church of the Görlitz Ecclesiastical Region.
With the end of the East German dictatorship in 1989, the things changed decisively. In 1992 the Evangelical Church of the Görlitz Ecclesiastical Region dropped its unwanted name and chose the new name of Evangelical Church of Silesian Upper Lusatia.
Due to increasing irreligion, the low birth rates in Germany since the 1970s, and low numbers of Protestant immigrants, the Protestant church bodies in Germany are undergoing a severe shrinking of parishioners and thus of parishioners' contributions. So church bodies are forced to reorganise their efforts also with respect to the financial situation.
In 2004 the Evangelical Church of the Silesian Upper Lusatia merged with the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg to become the present church body.
The leading bishop is elected for ten years from the synod and can be reelected for a second term. Before 1934 the leader of the church was called "Generalsuperintendent". After the merger of the independent churches Berlin-Brandenburg and Silesian Upper Lusatia in 2004 Wolfgang Huber has been the bishop of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia.
In 1933 the Prussian government imposed new leaders, who reshaped the structures. The evangelical church (then named Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union) underwent a schism into a schismatic streamlined Nazi-obedient branch and a steadfast, truly Protestant branch, clinging to the Confessing Church.
In 1945 the pre-1933 structures were provisionally restituted:
In 1949 the General Superintendencies were renamed in Cottbus (formerly New March-Lower Lusatia) and Neuruppin (formerly Kurmark) and territorially somewhat redeployed.
In 1948 the first post-war elected provincial synod of the March of Brandenburg ecclesiastical province of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union constituted as an independent church body named Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg. The new constitution provided for a chairperson to bear the title bishop.
West 1972-1991 (competent for West Berlin):
East 1972- 1991 (competent for East Berlin and Brandenburg):
Reunited church body since 1991:
On January 1, 2004 the church body merged with the Evangelical Church of Silesian Upper Lusatia.
The election of the synod (Landessynode) is for six years. The synod meets each year in Berlin. The leader of the synod is called "Präses" (English: praeses).
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