Religious, nonreligious, and faith-based activism in the rebuilding of the Garrison Church in Potsdam

Abstract

ABSTRACT The aim of this contribution is to further understanding of how religious materiality becomes a focus of activism. Religion is present in a variety of ways in a secularised public space, and various people focus their activism around this presence – there are those who identify themselves as believers, those for whom religion is a part of cultural heritage, as well as those for whom religious materiality is mostly about aesthetics and cultural pleasures. In order to show a range of possible argumentations and motivations, I analyse just one event in a very complex story of the reconstruction of the tower of the Garrison Church in Potsdam, looking at various activist groups that took part in it. All these groups focus their activism around the rebuilding of a church – an ostensibly religious building – which is among the most prominent, but also the most controversial projects of this kind in contemporary Germany. This contribution brings into focus those elements of this long-term and unfinished debate that shed light on our understanding of religion-centred activism and proposes a differentiation between nonreligious and faith-based activism, as forms of religious activism.