c. 2006 Religion News Service

BERLIN _ Ethics courses will begin competing with religion courses for space in Berlin students’ schedules this autumn, and already, many faith-based organizations are concerned religion will lose the contest.

Religion courses have been a mainstay of the curriculum in German schools for generations. The German constitution singles them out as a standard part of the school day. Atheist or agnostic students can opt for philosophy or humanism classes.

But Berlin officials have long worried that these courses aren’t doing an adequate job of laying a moral foundation for Berlin’s youths.

So starting with the 2006 academic year, school administrators are set to institute a mandatory ethics course for all Berlin students. It will begin at the seventh grade level and eventually expand into other levels. Classes will focus on world religions, ethical situations and programs to help students learn better social and empathy skills.

However, instead of embracing the ethics class, Berlin religious officials have argued against them. Under current law, Berlin schools open their doors to religious instructors sent from local churches, synagogues or mosques. But the ethics classes will be taught by current faculty, robbing the religious organizations of their right to represent their beliefs themselves.

“It will be unconstitutional if the churches and religious organization do not have the opportunity to present their views themselves,” says Martin Richter, who is in charge of church rights and church-state law for Protestant churches in the Berlin region.

Only in Berlin are students allowed to opt out of the religion classes entirely, thus gaining two free hours a week. Yet even with that temptation, nearly half of students take some kind of philosophy or religion class.

Concerns over the students’ moral fiber increased last year when an immigrant father convinced his sons to kill their sister because, according to the father, she had adopted a Western lifestyle and shamed the family. If children from the Berlin school system could be talked into such a crime, officials asked, were the existing religion classes instilling the proper qualities?

“The murder of a Turkish woman definitely opened the eyes of a lot of people in this city,” said Kenneth Frisse, spokesman for the Berlin Office for Education, Youth and Sports. “A woman murdered because she acts like a German? No one wants that.”

Offering an ethics course had the additional benefit of creating a choice for many Muslim students since so few schools offered any kind of Islamic instruction. Faced with no classes on Islam, many Muslim students had opted for free time, sometimes receiving religious instruction privately at their mosque.

Frisse said teens are exactly the group that needs to be reached. While nearly 75 percent of elementary school students take some form of religious or philosophical class, only about a quarter of students in higher grades do so.

Although the ethics courses will include a component on world religions, calling the ethics courses a suitable substitute for religion courses is “false advertising,” according to Rupert von Stulpnagel, head of the religious education department at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin.

He noted that when religious educators protested that they would be cut out of instruction, city officials encouraged them to take the certifying classes to teach ethics so that they could continue to work in the ethics courses.

But von Stulpnagel says he finds that deceitful at best. If non-Catholics were to enter their children in an ethics course, they would not expect the class to morph into a Catholic primer. “If you want Roman Catholic instruction, you’ll take a Roman Catholic course,” he said.

City officials say the religious groups are overreacting. Religion classes will still be offered in city schools as electives. And since students could already opt out of religion class, there is very little change. “We are not trying to marginalize the churches,” Frisse said.

But religious groups argue that a mandatory ethics course takes up a large part of a student’s week. After fitting in the ethics course, students who might have normally taken a religion class might opt instead for some extra free time.

“If you offer ethics courses,” said Borhan Kesice, vice president of the Islamic Federation of Berlin, which offers Sunni Islam courses in some Berlin elementary schools, “the children will not want to come to religion class.”

School-based religion courses are vital to spiritual growth because they provide an academic setting where students can learn about their faith, von Stulpnagel said. Students learn the history of their religion and discuss ethical questions of the day. In a society in which religion occupies less of a central role than ever before, such a course might be the only way for a student to look at his faith and decide if it is something he wants to pursue.

“It’s there to provide orientation,” said von Stulpnagel, who himself instructs a group of 11 ninth graders once a week, only one of whom is Catholic. “It’s about deciding for yourself if you want to follow a faith.”

He notes that students might take the classes and still have concerns about another religion or decide not to join a religious group. At least the classes give them facts to help them make their decision, in contrast with classes offered by religious groups without school supervision. “I prefer that kind of decision,” he said.

Along with the concerns about religion class being marginalized in Berlin, there are worries that the decision _ which is almost certain to be finalized by the Berlin House of Representatives _ could cause other states to review their religious education curriculums. “It could be a pilot case,” said Richter.

Berlin religious organizations are not sure what to do. After mounting multiple protests and submitting their own plan that would have allowed ethics courses to continue _ but only in close coordination with religious organizations _ they say they were largely ignored by city officials. Richter says there is little to do now but wait and see how the new ethics courses work.

The first step will be to try to cooperate with the ethics instructors. Should that fail _ and if a case can be made that the courses rob the religious groups of their right to represent their own religions _ he said a case contesting the new law’s constitutionality is likely.

Editors: To obtain a photo of protesters demonstrating against the ethics classes, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.