My childhood was heavily informed by the Catholic faith. Every morning before school, my sister and I had to attend the seven o’clock service at our church. I spent many mornings very cold and rubbing the sleep from my eyes. At Christmastime, we had to be in church at five A.M.
These daily services were definitely not my cup of tea, and neither was our household’s daily mealtime prayer, where all the children took turns saying grace. When it was my turn, I kept things short: “For this food and drink I give thanks. Amen.” These identical, repetitive rituals bored me. However, I was fascinated by the Catholic Church’s religious festivals, with their lush pageantry and their tremendous spirit of community. These traditions gave me a feeling of security and great joy. Whenever I was lucky enough to be a flower girl for the Eucharist procession, it meant spring had begun. Around Christmas, I experienced feelings of joyful expectation along with peaceful, familiar comfort. This warmth had nothing to do with presents. During wartime, sometimes the only thing on the gift table was a head of cabbage—we had nothing else. But my mother didn’t need much to fill our house with love. Even in our darkest hours, she sang Christmas carols with us and told us about the meaning of Christmas.
Without doubt, a faith-based community and a connection to tradition can give us a valuable moral framework. This is how we learn the meaning of humanity and being part of a society. These communal rituals are part of our living history. They are cultural treasures that have been passed down over hundreds of years from generation to generation; they give us our social and personal identities. But the cataclysms of the twentieth century, two devastating world wars and their consequences, have permanently unsettled the image of Christian man throughout Europe.
The older I became, the more my own doubts grew. I often felt abandoned by my youthful Catholic beliefs, for they could not provide answers to the challenges I faced in my young adult life. When my daughter, Brigitte, was so severely ill with asthma that it almost cost her life, I was desperate. Like millions of other people in such straits, I asked myself: Why does God allow such suffering? The ancient question of Job is a despair over God’s will that overcomes us in our most difficult times. There is no easy answer to this question; it is one that every person must answer for themselves, using their faith and conviction.
I am critical of some of the things that the Catholic Church stands for today. The current debates around its failings demonstrate that the church could benefit from some development and renewal. But for all the criticism aimed at the institution of the church, it has become more and more apparent to me over the years that a society cannot exist without spiritual guidance and a life-affirming foundation of moral values. Every religion in the world conveys this type of moral code, each in its own way.
My first trip to Israel made me acutely aware of how much my Catholic upbringing narrowed my horizons. Jerusalem is the only city in the world that is the birthplace of three world religions. What would have become of me had I been born here? Nobody can choose where they were born and raised. We are cast into our world and must live with its religious, political, and social order. Shouldn’t this fact alone be our impetus for absolute religious tolerance?
Jerusalem’s former mayor Teddy Kollek was tireless in his efforts to help the people of his city attain greater social stability, cultural acceptance, and personal pride, no matter what their religion. I saw in him an important role model. My later travels through Asia also deeply impressed me and gave me much to think about. My husband and I had numerous conversations about our experiences and encounters in Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu communities.57
Due to the globalization of the last decades, different cultures and religions are interacting with one another more frequently than ever. People from the most diverse backgrounds, from different classes, and with various religious orientations live and work together. More than ever the questions remain: What values are intrinsic to our future intertwined lives? What gives our lives meaning? What values can help us deal with conflicts? All around the world, politicians, scientists, writers, and business-people are discussing the possibility of communicating across national, ethnic, cultural, and religious divides. I am convinced that such international communication is possible only when it fully respects the historic, cultural, and religious roots of a society.
In my experience, religious beliefs and customs play an especially large role in the formation of people’s values. This led me to ask myself whether a society’s religion wasn’t the key to understanding its values, as well as its concept of God and other aspects of its way of life. Wouldn’t examining a society’s religion lay bare its elemental building blocks, ones that all cultures share, making them understandable to everyone? And doesn’t this type of view into a culture offer up the chance to understand what connects people all over the world and what they have in common?
My husband and I had many lively discussions about these possibilities. Over the decades, in his books and in his articles, he consistently criticized people in politics and finance for their failure to communicate, and he insisted on a radical rethinking to prepare our society for the future. We agreed that a closer look at the religious lifeways among the world’s many faiths could offer a greater understanding of today’s global society. Beyond addressing the immediate issue of creating an understanding among different nations and people, my husband felt that combining democracy with a religious orientation could create a system powerful enough to stand up to threats from the world’s authoritarian governments.
I agree with him wholeheartedly, for I am convinced that in the future a democracy has a chance only if it wins the hearts of its people—if its main priority is to take into account its citizens’ needs. The current climate of political apathy in our country, however, and in much of Europe is testimony to how difficult it is to achieve this goal.
How can we resolve this dilemma? How do we find out what people’s greatest needs are? In 2007 a survey done by the Bertelsmann Foundation gave us a first overview of the current state of religious beliefs in different countries. The survey was developed with an interdisciplinary tool that I initiated, the Religion Monitor.58 With the help of experts from sociology, psychology, theology, and religion, we compared the level of a country’s religious belief with the impact this belief had on people’s daily life. What does religion mean to an individual? To what extent do people practice their personal religious beliefs? What impact does religion have on society? These and other questions were answered by the Religion Monitor of the Bertelsmann Foundation.
The study interviewed over 21,000 people in twenty-one countries. Actual persons talked very specifically about their lives and their worldviews and what gave their personal lives meaning. They stood in for millions of people around the globe. The Religion Monitor gives us great insight into the religions of the world and enables us to be a part of its many different cultures.
In 2009 the Bertelsmann Foundation published the results of the Religion Monitor survey, with commentary, as What Does the World Believe In?59 The results had surprised us. The cultures and religions that we surveyed offered up many similar concepts of religious belief, most of which were structured around the commitment to leading a responsible life. Thus, someone with a strong religious belief was less likely to act only according to his or her personal motivation and always took into consideration the goals of the community. No matter what their culture or their language, the respondents used terms like tolerance, truthfulness, responsibility, and personal honesty when describing the concepts that they felt made a religion a success.
These findings truly moved me and gave me much hope and encouragement for my work. It seemed to me that the attitudes reflected in this survey laid bare a code of humanity that we all carry within us. It is a code that we can appeal to when we, as an international community, face the challenges of our future. Perhaps this continuing search for our common values, hopes, and dreams is all we really need to help us stay on the difficult road toward global understanding.