Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Religion in Germany" in English language version.
[...] it was not primarily a religious war. [...] Religion certainly provided a powerful focus for identity, but it had to compete with political, social, linguistic, gender and other distinctions. most contemporary observers spoke of imperial, Bavarian, Swedish, or Bohemian troops, not Catholic or Protestant, which are anachronistic labels used for convenience since the nineteenth century to simplify accounts. The war was religious only to the extent that faith guided all early modern public policy and private behaviour.
[...] the SED's basic outlook towards the churches remained constant, even though the New Course had forced a premature end to the first phase of the party's efforts to restrict religious influence over youth.
According to the German Bishops' Conference, the Catholic Church in the country declined by 216,078 members last year. Protestant churches saw a similar drop, with 220,000 members leaving during that time period. [...] Some 53% of the country's population remains either Catholic or Protestant, according to DW. Both churches currently have more than 20 million members.
However, the University of Freiburg predicted that membership in both churches will be cut in half by 2060, dropping from a combined total of 45 million currently to below 23 million in the next 40 years.
