Regarding this course purpose is to introduce about major issues of cross-cultural counseling and the impact of diversity (within and between group differences) and discusses the influence of ethnicity and cultural diversity on the helping relationship, with special reference to the Malaysian context.
Hence, this blog is create to introduce to outside world of cross-cultural counseling. I decide to choose China as the major country on which to be explore and introduce in this page.
Journey Counseling
This blog created for educational purpose under the subject EDG 4008 (CROSS-CULTURAL COUNSELLING). Let's explore together!!
Religion in Germany
As
one may expect from a country with 1300 years of Christian tradition,
Christianity is still the predominant religion in Germany. Although the number
of practicing Christians is on the decline, the Christian religion in Germany
is present in the country’s cultural heritage.
RELIGION IN GERMANY – CHRISTIANITY
About
65% to 70% of the population are followers of the Christian religion in
Germany. They are more or less evenly split between the mainstream
denominations of Lutheran-Protestantism and Calvinism united in the EKD (Evangelical
Church in Germany) and the Roman Catholic Church. Due to the historical
development of religion in Germany, these denominations are concentrated in
specific regions.
In
the course of the Protestant Reformation and the ensuing Thirty Years’ War in
the 15th and 16thcenturies, religion in Germany ended up being distributed
according to the preferences of local rulers: Therefore, most areas in the
South or West (especially Bavaria and Northrhine-Westphalia) are Catholic while
the North and East are mainly Protestant. However, the Communist regime of the
former DDR (German Democratic Republic) frowned upon religion in
Germany’s eastern parts until the reunification in 1990. This explains why the
percentage of self-confessed atheists is particularly high in these federal
states.
Other
strands of Christian religion in Germany are the so-called Free Evangelical
Churches, a loose union of congregations adhering to Baptism, Methodism and
related faiths such as the Mennonites, as well as the two Orthodox churches.
Christian evangelism in Germany goes back to U.S. American missionary efforts
in the 19th century. Both the Greek-Orthodox and the Russian-Orthodox
religion in Germany became established here with the Greek and Serbian
immigrant population in the 1960s and 1970s.
RELIGION IN GERMANY – MINORITY RELIGIONS
Apart
from these smaller Christian congregations, important minority religions in
Germany are Islam (about 4 % of the German population), Judaism, and Buddhism
(both of which represent less than 1% of Germany’s inhabitants).
Judaism
The atrocities
of the Holocaust are overshadowing the history of Judaism in Germany.
According to sources from late Antiquity, Jews have been living in Germany
since 321 AD. For more than one and a half millennia, the relationship between
the Jewish Diaspora and Germany’s majority population vacillated between quiet
coexistence and religiously motivated persecution, between the Jews’ status as
social outcasts and their slow assimilation into mainstream society. Before
1933, there were more than 600,000 Jews in Germany. During the following twelve
years, the viciously anti-Semitic Nazi regime killed most of those who didn’t
emigrate.
Today,
more than 65 years after the end of World War Two, the Jewish community in
Germany counts over 100,000 members. The increase in numbers is also due to
Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union. The majority of German Jews
(the more observant and conservative ones) feel represented by the Central
Council of Jews in Germany, while about 3,000 liberal Jews belong to the much
smaller Union of Progressive Jews in Germany.
Islam
In
direct comparison with Judaism, Islam is a far more recent religion in Germany.
It goes back to the post-World War Two immigration of so-called Gastarbeiter (foreign
workers) and refugees. Most Muslims in Germany have a Turkish, Kurdish,
Iranian, Palestinian, or Bosnian background, and they have organized themselves
in a diverse range of decentralized organizations. These include, for example,
the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs, supported by the Turkish
government and representative of Sunnite Islam in Turkey; the AABF, an umbrella
organization for Alevites from Kurdish regions; the association of Bosnian
Muslims, and many others.
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