
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, June 11, 1990                   TAG: 9006130607
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Frances Stebbins/Correspondent
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GERMAN CHURCHES CHALLENGED

Now that East Germans can go to church like Americans, they face some problems they had been spared under 40 years of communist religious oppression.

The Rev. Dr. Johannes Richter, a Liepzig Lutheran leader, said Sunday that secularism, materialism, New Age philosophies and the non-Christian practices of gurus and "Moonies" are already becoming a challenge to Orthodox Christianity in his country.

At a forum at Christ Lutheran Church, the pastor said that eight months after the communist regime was toppled in East Germany, citizens are no longer flocking to churches as they did over the past two years. Under religious repression people enjoyed the security of friends' views and the social life possible only in church, "but that was not in the kairos - the desire to live for Christ and to make him known to others."

Now a smaller number of Christian believers are settling down to strengthening their churches as "real friends of Christ." And, Richter predicted, they will need their churches and will support them despite the business failures and layoffs he sees as inevitable in coming months.

He sees unification as essential to avoid wrecking West Germany's economy, which is threatened by the recent influx of East German immigrants. And the united nation must be part of any cooperative military or economic agency of Western Europe "because a separated Germany has always been a danger."

Richter will speak today at 10:15 a.m. in the Business/Science Building at Virginia Community College. The program is free.

In Liepzig, Richter is pastor of the church at which the famed composer Johann Sebastian Bach was organist. For many years the minister served as a liason between churches and the communist-dominated government of his city. Richter visited Roanoke five years ago as the guest of Christ Lutheran friends who had met him on Bach tours.

In 10-minute sermons at two morning services, Richter said the influence of church groups was a major factor in keeping the Liepzig demonstrations non-violent. When thousands took to the streets in early October to ask for more freedom from their government, Lutheran and Roman Catholic leaders "prayed for God's pity," the pastor said.

As 17,000 began to walk, marchers called for no violence, and the police remained in their places. "That was the beginning of the downfall of the government."

Richter said his countrymen were as amazed as Americans when freedom came.

"I saw [the demonstrations] on TV. I couldn't handle it. I thought I was mad in my mind," said Richter.

"It was only when I got into West Berlin that I knew it was all true."

by CNB