How the media covered religion during the german election 2009

In the following post I'm going to deal with the media and how it covered religion during the elections 2009 in Germany.

Since you have read my example about Angela Merkel and religion you will certainly assume that religion does not play a signifikant role in Germany, not even during the elections in 2009. During my research I found out that religion does not play a huge role in Germany in politics but it is asked in interviews. (as you have read in my example as well)

Germans do not necessarily see politics and religion belonging together and most believe that religion is separated from politics without seeing that in Germany we have many parties based on Christian values and other religions. Even Merkel's party is based on Christian values (CDU) and in interviews she is often asked about it.

This could be explained by analysing the religious history of Germany. During the last couple years the two biggest religions Catholic and Protestant have lost many members and the number of people who do not believe in anything has risen. This could be a reason why religion does not play a big part in the elections 2009, because it does not play a big part in the people's lives anymore so they do not car about it during the religion and do not tend to think about it as far as politics is concerned.

How the media covered religion in the U.S.

The following post will deal with the topic how the news media covered religion in the general elections.
During my research I found out that in the U.S. religion plays a significant role during elections but it was even more important during the election in 2008. But that was only that important because of Barack Obama who was the first black candidate. So religion got as much important as race during their election campaigns. This is one result of a new study of thecoverage of religion in the campaign coducted by the Pew Research Center’s project for
Excellence in Journalism and Pew Forum on Religion and Life.
Furthermore it got obvious that religion campaign coverage focused more on Obama’s campaign than on any other candidate. But it was also very striking that religion-focused campaign stories were far more often used in a very negative way by the mainstream press. For example there was the rumor that Obama is a Muslim. This topic will be covered later on in an extra post because it was a very big topic in the U.S. Another example of that media coverage of religion is that there was a huge debate about Obama’s relationship with his former pastor. But it was not only Obama who had to face these kinds of religion focused campaign stories.Although Obama’s campaign was the most religion-focused campaign.
But the problem with all these stories was that the media did not take a closer look to these words and what the candidates really believe in.

In the following post I'm going to deal with an example about Religion during the elections 2009 in Germany. As far as this example was concerned it was hard to find anything about the chancellor Angela Merkel and her religion and beliefs.

I did a little survey among my friends and family members to find out what they know about the religion our chancellor is part of and if they are even interested in it. Not surprisingly NOBODY knew what religion Merkel is part of. Most guessed it would be catholic or protestant because she belongs to the CDU, a christian party. I need to admit that this did not surprise me, because I do not know myself and I cannot remeber anything written in the newspaper in 2009 during the elections.

But what really surprised me was that I could not find anything about that topic on the internet anywhere. I looked it up on several different websites, but what religion she is part of could nowhere be found even though I was sure to find it when I first started my research.
I did find an interview where she talked about religion in general and that she would not be able to deal with the responsibility she has without her trust in god.

All in all I concluded that Germans do not seem to be as much interested in religion as they used to. Appearently it is an issue not dealt with in the newpapers especially as far as politics is concerned.

So there is one questions left:

Is this going to be Angela Merkels secret forever or will anybody be brave enough to find out?

Changes between 2008 and 2009

In the following text I will deal with the topic Changes betwee 2008 and 2009. After noticing that there are nearly no information on religious voters in Germny I will only concentrate on the U.S.. That means that I will take a look at some religious groups and minorities and how their votes have changed.
During my readings it became obvious that the biggest changest were in the Democratic vote among the religious minorities. Namely, these minorities are the Hispanic Catholics, Hispanic Protestants and other minority Catholics and Prostestants. Furthermore, Obama made also gains among the Jews.
In contrast to that there was no essential change in the vote of regular worship-attending white evangelical Protestants, which is one of the strongest voting groups. To sum it up, most of the religious groups stayed with their votes or moved only further in their direction by a few percentage points. So the shaoe between the voters got clearer but there were not very big changes.
These small changes could be explained with partisanship. It does not change very fast. So it is not very suprising that it changes during the election not very much. But I learned during my research that some people see this little changes as an important beginning of important changes in the future.

A look at religious voters during the election 2009 Germany

When I first started researching for my blogpost I was sure to find something aout religious voters in Germany during the elections 2009, but now I need to say that I couldn't find anything about religious voters or religious groups voting for certain parties in Germany on any official website that I looked at.

To me this shows that in Germany religion is certainly not as important as in the USA, because it is not considered at all in the graphics that show the voters for the parties. I will give you a graphic later on.

Even though Germany has many parties like the CDu which is supposed to be based on Christian values, it does not seem to be as important to Germans as it used to be. People all the street will most likely not say that they voted for the party, beacuse they believe in the Christian values they represent.

Here now the results of the parties in Germany during the election 2009.

A look at religious voters in the 2008 elections

First it has to be mentioned that Obama and the democrats made their largest gains with during this elections among religious minorities. So I will look at some of these groups now.
(Source: Analysis of aggregated election weekend and post-election callback surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.)

The figure shows which groups voted for Obama and which groups voted for McCain. This figure shows how important religion was during the presidential election in 2008. The blue bars are describing Obama´s voters and the red bars are describing McCain`s voters. It is very striking that the black protestants voted nearly 100% for Obama and at the bottom it is the other way round. So it gets obvious that religion played a huge role in the American elections.
You can also see that there is a sharp distinction between democratic voters and republicans. Therefore you can see that racial and ethnis minortities voted most for the democrates and whites voted more for the republicans. Furthermore I think that these numbers show clearly the growing immigration in the United States. Today there are many more different ethnical groups than oin former times. So it it is understandable that these people need someone who knows what they need. Obama is a person who has drawn parallels between his life and their lives. So this is why this sharp distinction between the voters appears. Nowadays there are many more opinions and cultures so it is a natural behaviour that the minorities want to come together with a president who cares about them.
During the next few days there will be another post which takes a look at the changes of religion in politics.

General Information about Religion in Germany

This text deals with religion in Germany that is to say how people live with religion and furthermore if they live with religion.
It is obvious that religiousness is not as present as years ago. If one speaks to older people you can get easily to know that for those people religiousness is far more important than for most of the younger generations. And even if younger people believe in God most of them do not go to church regularly.
In the following there is a statistic which shows how many people would consider themselves as religious people (source: statista.org)


From my own experience I know many people who believe in God and got to church. But nobody can deny that for most people of the younger generations it is not important to visit church every week. In most cases it is limited to the first communion or the confirmation. These are days where most of the baptized children still go to church.
In Germany it is obvious that most of the families do not hold on religious traditions so that children could not learn from their parents anything about religious life. Although relious education is still anchored in the fundamental law many pupils decide that they do not want to take part in it. All in all one can say that the religiousness goes down in Germany.

General information about religion in the U.S

In the following post I'm going to give general information about religion in the United States and my personal experience on that matter.

There are two major religions in the U.S: protestant and catholic. During the 19th century liberal American Protestanism occured in the U.S..(about the same time as in Europe)
The movement started to interpret the Bible in a completely new way and questioned the validity of biblical miracles and traditional beliefs about authorship of biblical books. On the other hand the conservatives believed that there was no reason to question the literal truth of the Bible. They argue that it is not necessary to teach evolution at school, because it elevates human reason above revealed truth and is therefore antireligious. Because of that many parents send their children to religious schools or teach them be themselves at home.

In a majority protestant country the Irish Catholics, who had come to the USA during the Civil War, were subjected to prejudice. Even though they were allowed to attend public school and universities, they soon build institutions of their own to match their standards. But since the Catholic church does not require its members to attend one of their church-run institutions, most catholics today attend public institutions.

America has always been a fertile ground for new religions which is due to the lack of religious prejudice in most parts of the USA.

Today religion plays a huge role in politics. There is a powerful political movement which is called the Christian Right. Their aim is to overturn decisions allowing abortion and banning prayer in public schools.

For most Americans religion is a personal matter which is not talked about in everyday life. However Americans are, compared to other nations, spiritual people. Over 70% consider themselves as being religious.

As far as my own experience is concerned I can only say that I have observed the same things while being in America. Most people I have met were very religious and most of them wen to religious schools or were homeschooled. Most people at my high school were catholics which was due to the huge number of immigrants, because all the people I have met who were Americans were protestant and not catholics.

If you are interested in looking up further information about religion in the U.S. see:

http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/factover/ch8.htm

On this webside you can also find more chapters concerning general information about the USA and its history and everyday life.

For our proseminar in American studies we ( two English students from Germany) are doing a blog project. In our blog project we are going to discuss religious narratives and the importance of religin in the presidential election in the U.S. 2008 and the federal elections 2009 in Germany. First we are going to to give general information about religion in the U.S. and Germany. After that we are going to look at how the media covered religion in both countries during the elections. Furthermore we consider the look at religious voters as important and point out the changes over the years.
Later on we give an example to proove our theses. In the end we compare how both countries dealt with a rumour about Barack Obama. We are also going to to give a conclusion to summarize our results.