Körs, Citykirchen aus soziologischer Perspektive: zwischen Profilierung, Selbstsäkularisierung und Stabilisierung

The article deals with city churches as a relatively new and growing urban social form of religion, which, however, has hardly been analyzed empirically to date. As a counter-reaction to advancing secularization and dwindling membership numbers, city churches present themselves as public spaces by programmatically aiming to make the boundaries of the church organization relatively permeable through low-threshold access and offers, thereby also addressing those as potential visitors who are otherwise rather distant from church (community). But to what extent do city churches function as a form of self-regulation through profiling beyond the parochial congregation or, on the contrary, to what extent do they tend to make the profile of the church unrecognizable and promote self-secularization? This article provides empirical evidence and explores the question of which groups of visitors are actually reached by city churches and how they are perceived by them. Based on the results of a survey of 6,449 visitors to 12 city churches in Germany and Switzerland, it is argued that city churches, with their largely church (space) related visitors, can only be interpreted to a limited extent as a form of church profiling or self-secularization. Rather, they assume an important function in stabilizing individual ties to the church and at the same time are addressed as church-institutional representatives. City churches are thus a growing social form in the religious field and at the same time an expression of progressive secularization. In doing so, they generally point to the importance of religious buildings, architectures and spaces as media for church or religious self-regulation in secular and multi-religious societies.