In his model of religiosity, Huber postulates a “qualitative leap” between the groups of the “religious” and the “highly religious”. Correspondingly, the data from the Empirica Youth Survey 2018 underline that the topic of guilt and forgiveness is in itself only really present in the “highly religious”. Thus, this article aims to provide a detailed analysis of the relation between emotions towards God and the centrality of religiosity. One of the results of the exploratory factor analysis concludes that emotions towards God comprise three aspects within Protestant “highly religious” adolescents and young adults: a factor for positive emotions, one for negative emotions, and a third for emotions of guilt, release and fear. In this article, we focus on the factor that drives the experience of guilt (and release and fear) and conclude that it is a phenomenon only found within the “highly religious” and not the “religious” Protestant adolescents and young adults. We explicitly incorporate the journal’s main foci in two regards: First, we focus on the particularities of the group of “highly religious” people as identified by the Centrality of Religiosity Scale (CRS) along with the interactions between the theoretical concept of centrality of religiosity and the content of religiosity. Secondly, we briefly compare “highly religious” with “religious” adolescents and young adults.

In recent years, the relationship between spirituality and youth has become a defining concept in religious discourse, and yet has also become so confused and vague that clarity is still required. Over the last two decades, any number of vast empirical surveys on the spirituality of adolescents has been undertaken in German-speaking Europe. These surveys were mostly quantitative, resulting in what Elmhorst calls: “God as semantic blank space”, demonstrating that young people are unable to talk about their spirituality. The most recent survey (2010 to 2012), commissioned by the Protestant Church of Westphalia, was conducted in the opposite fashion: Adolescents were first asked about their faith (using a qualitative survey, incorporating methods such as symbols, collages, interviews, etc.) and the young people’s concepts were then utilized for a subsequent quantitative survey. Following a short introduction outlining the problem, this article will then be subdivided into four more points: (1) The theoretical background of the research, (2) the methodology and the design of analysis and a summary of the central results, (3) a presentation of the consequences of the results for the current scholarly debate and (4) a reflection on the methodology and the conceptual approach.

How does theology take shape in the lives of young people? This is an interesting and challenging topic. Over the last few years, this has been discussed on two levels and in different theological disciplines - on one hand within the context of a theology of young people and on the other hand in empirical studies. This paper will combine these levels together and by doing so, lend an insight into the current status of research. Therefore, this investigation focuses on the question of how theology is displayed in the lives of young people as defined by themselves, and is structured as follows: (1) A theoretical framework is set by an introduction into youth theology considered as a subjective setting for young people’s faith. (2) A description of the empirical survey of the study “Spirituality of Young People“ and a commentary on the most important results. (3) Finally, a discussion on the position of the results within a wider context of mission research and the results’ significance for youth theology.

Disaffiliation indicates a major future challenge to the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in Germany, particularly regarding the church tax. This article addresses that issue by first describing the particular German context of disaffiliation. It then summarises previous research, which indicates that the church tax is the trigger to leave the church. An analysis of recent data reveals that the portion of church members is lowest in those income classes that have to pay an above average amount of church tax. Moreover, the likelihood to resign from church membership is highest when the individual begins his or her first paid job. Both findings ascribe church tax a more powerful role in the process of disaffiliation than previous research.

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