However, critics accuse Mixa of rewriting history. The bishop’s claim that humanity automatically arises from religious faith is “totally untenable,” Rudolf Ladwig, president of the Germany-based International League of Non-Religious and Atheists (IBKA), told SPIEGEL ONLINE. Mixa’s words are part of a “long-term strategy by the Church to exculpate, in a historically inaccurate way, the history of its own institution as relates to fascism.”…

The philosopher Michael Schmidt-Salomon, head of the humanist non-profit group the Giordano Bruno Foundation, also sharply criticized Mixa. “If you bear in mind that during the Nazi era it was precisely the Jews who were accused of being godless, then one sees how perfidious Mixa’s reasoning is,” he told SPIEGEL ONLINE. He points out that freethinker associations were disbanded by the Nazis and avowed atheists were persecuted…

According to the Federal Statistical Office, approximately one-third of all Germans do not belong to an organized religion.