Faith informs my policies, says Merkel

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has said she views her Christian faith as “fundamentally important” in a range of policy areas, adding that it also led her to oppose practices such as embryo research and euthanasia, writes Jonathan Luxmoore.

“On issues of health and family, justice, soli­darity, war or peace, my Christian values and beliefs are important”, the 60-year-old Christian Democrat politician said. “I use prayer as a time for my own reflection; and although I don’t demonstrate my faith like a monstrance, the Creed, Our Father and personal prayers all play a role in my life.”

Mrs Merkel was speaking on the 31 October Reformation Day in her home town of Templin, near Brandenburg, at the Evangelical church where she was confirmed in 1970. She said her Christian convictions had also led her to conclude that military action could never “guarantee a lasting peace”, while her belief that “God gave us life from beginning to end” had shaped her support for the “strict protection” of embryos and made her wary of a new cross-party bill in the Bundestag to legalise assisted suicide.

“I fear the boundaries in these areas will be pushed ever further,” added Mrs Merkel, whose father, Horst Kasner, a convert from Catholicism, served as Lutheran pastor at Perlebeg and Templin, north of East Berlin in the Communist-ruled German Democratic Republic.