German churches unite against far-right AfD ahead of Saxony-Anhalt election

Outside Magdeburg's Catholic cathedral, flags snap in the wind bearing a simple message: "Love thy neighbor, dialogue, human dignity, solidarity. VOTE CONSCIOUSLY!" A short walk away, the Protestant Cathedral Congregation has hung its own banner: "DIVERSITY IS DIVINE." Across Saxony-Anhalt, other Protestant churches display variations on the same theme—"Heart Instead of Hate"—part of an unprecedented mobilization by Germany's Christian churches against a political force they have come to see as a fundamental threat to democratic life.

The target of this campaign is the Alternative for Germany, the AfD, which has built commanding poll leads ahead of the state election scheduled for September 6. Germany's domestic intelligence agency has classified the AfD's Saxony-Anhalt branch as a "confirmed right-wing extremist" organization. The prospect of a government led by the party alone has moved from theoretical to plausible. For the churches, this shift has transformed what was once a distant worry into an urgent moral reckoning.

The AfD's April platform made clear why the churches feel threatened. The party calls for an end to all state payments to both the Protestant and Catholic churches and the abolition of the church tax system—a mechanism through which public authorities collect contributions on behalf of the churches themselves. The platform goes further: it demands that churches be held financially liable for cases of "church asylum," where refugees seek shelter on church grounds. The Protestant Academy of Saxony-Anhalt, which receives state funding, should lose it entirely, the AfD argues, because the academy promotes what the party labels "climate dogma, gender ideology, and the rainbow cult" alongside "unchecked mass immigration." The irony is sharp: Saxony-Anhalt has one of the lowest proportions of foreign nationals of any German state.

This confrontation represents a dramatic escalation from the party's earlier years. When the AfD first emerged, its representatives complained mainly about being excluded from church events and conferences. Now the party has moved to direct assault on the institutional foundations of organized Christianity in the state. The sharpness of the Saxony-Anhalt platform exceeds anything heard from other regional AfD branches or the national party leadership. In February 2024, the German Catholic Bishops' Conference had unanimously adopted a declaration titled "Ethnic Nationalism and Christianity are Incompatible," identifying ethnonationalism within the AfD as "genuine right-wing extremism." But what is happening in Saxony-Anhalt now is more pointed, more local, and more personal.

Bishop Gerhard Feige, 74, has become the public face of church resistance. During a pilgrimage sermon in September 2025, he made a pointed remark about voters casting ballots "into the blue"—a reference to the AfD's party color that drew prolonged applause. When asked about the AfD's direction, he was unequivocal: it represents ethnonationalism without question. He pointed to the party's campaign posters—"Save your country," "Take your country back," "Deport from day one!"—as evidence of a worldview fundamentally at odds with Christian teaching. He also highlighted the AfD's proposal to reintroduce flag assemblies in schools, with the raising of the flag and singing of the national anthem. "This existed during the Nazi era and was later adopted by the GDR," Feige said. "And now it is supposed to return? I find that inconceivable."

Feige expressed bewilderment at the AfD's appeal. "I could never have imagined that so many people today could once again be so easily led astray, or that arsonists, pied pipers and respectable-looking agitators could emerge, and that so many would fall for them." The lead AfD candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, presents himself as polished and enthusiastic, which some voters interpret as reassuring. But Feige warned that behind this public face "stand forces that give cause for concern." If an AfD single-party government takes power in Saxony-Anhalt, he said, it will function as a "pilot project" with implications for national politics.

Friedrich Kramer, bishop of the Protestant Church in central Germany, has echoed these warnings. "A government involving the AfD would have devastating consequences," he said, adding that cultural institutions and civil society organizations are joining forces to alert voters. Both major churches have been careful to frame their opposition not as political endorsement of any particular party but as a defense of Christian anthropology—a view of human dignity rooted in faith. Whether the issue is climate protection, the treatment of strangers, or religious freedom itself, the churches argue they are speaking as Christians, not as partisan actors.

The religious landscape of Saxony-Anhalt makes this stance particularly striking. Only 10 percent of the state's population is Protestant, 3 percent Catholic. More than 85 percent of the 2.1 million residents have no religious affiliation—compared with a national average of 47 percent. The churches are a minority voice in a largely secular state, yet they have positioned themselves as defenders of democracy itself. The AfD's platform notably omits any mention of Jews or Jewish life, though it repeatedly invokes Islam as "a religion alien to our culture" and promises to "restore religious freedom to appropriate limits." Representatives of the state's Jewish association and the largest mosque congregation declined to comment. The AfD's framing of religious freedom as something to be constrained rather than protected echoes rhetoric heard from conservative Christian movements in the United States, though comparable religious milieus barely exist in Saxony-Anhalt.