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Well, it is an "outrageous" belief for a reason, but as for the communist nations, there are significant differences in both how much they tried to suppress it, and how much it worked. Poland is the main outlier I know of, the USSR switched back to cooperating with the orthodox church as part of the means to organise support against the nazi invasion. Most of the other eastern block nations are still quite a lot less religious today. Even West vs East Germany is still clearly visible. I think most people are by their nature mildly agnostic. A lot of christians in western Germany don't go to church, don't follow most rules, or even know about them. It is mostly inertia of tradition. That is even more true of the celebrations. It's not like they are actually christian, that's because most people didn't care about why the celebration exists. They switched to christianity, if they had to, once they still got to celebrate their traditional celebrations mostly in the same way. That's why christianity differs quite a bit from country to country or areas in general, as well. Non of this screams true believer. A lot of celebrations today, at least here, are completely worldly, with not even a veneer of christian reasons. Easter & Christmas still exist, but predate christianity anyway. No other christian events have survived into modern time with more than a fringe crowd. Most other celebrations are without any involvement of church or Jesus/God. Day of Work/1. May, Carnival, and an endless stream of local culture festivals, none of which are christian, or even really heaven. It's just a reason to party, dance and celebrate, not to worship anything. That's also why the actual forbidding of religion becomes unnecessary, at least here. The last few decades have seen a decrease of at least 2% per year in both major churches in Germany. At some point at least locally they loose enough traction to be relevant at all, but when is very different depending on region. |