Drove through most of East Germany, there doesn,t appear to be a shortage of churches. Want to see many more go through rural Poland and the Ukraine. And yes there were people going in and out of them. I,m in that area of Europe at the moment. We stopped at several to admire their interior decor. Christianity is alive and well in the eastern part of Europe and we have photos to prove it. We were also impressed with the neat appearence of the youths, who were reminicent of those of the USA in the mid 50,s. (Not the Greasers.)
Since you have visited Germany, can you confirm something I read a while back about the automatic deduction of church tithes from paychecks?
IIRC, the article said that if you declared yourself a member of a state-recognized church, your employer automatically deducted your tithe (10% I presume) and sent it to the church. This practice, which I assume also applied to synagoges and mosques, was said to lead to a flourishing religious establishment that is detached from congregations they have little accountability to and, outside major holidays, very poorly attended services.
If this is the case, the high atheism rate might, in part, be an economic reaction to the poor post-unification job environment in eastern Germany: declare yourself an atheist and avoid having tithes deducted from your pay.
I concur. I few years ago, I happened to talk with a missionary from USA who was stationed in Eastern Europe. In a nutshell, that was his take.