Berlin pastor highlights plight of Christian converts from Islam in Germany

GERMANY – In late 2019, Rev. Dr. Gottfried Martens, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Berlin, released his annual circular, highlighting systemic discrimination in Germany when deciding the refugee claims of Iranian and Afghan converts to Christianity. “The acceptance rate for Christian refugees is being further and further reduced for political reasons,” Dr. Martens writes in his letter.

Converting to Christianity is a punishable offense in Iran and Afghanistan: with Iranian converts facing imprisonment and Afghan converts threatened with execution. And yet, despite these very real dangers, German courts are increasingly rejecting the refugee claims of Christian converts from these countries and sending them back to face persecution.

“The state has tried with all its might to deport these parishioners from our country to their Muslim homeland, where death awaits them,” writes Dr. Martens in his annual letter. “Persons within the state are simply trying to force as many Christians as possible to be deported.”

“The state has tried with all its might to deport these parishioners from our country to their Muslim homeland, where death awaits them,” writes Dr. Martens in his annual letter. “Persons within the state are simply trying to force as many Christians as possible to be deported.”

Dr. Martens’ work with Iranian and Afghan refugees in Germany has drawn headlines around the world over the past number of years, and led to an invitation in 2019 by the United States Department of State to speak on religious persecution in Germany. His work among Iranian and Afghan converts has also seen his congregation experience dramatic growth; today the congregation counts more than 1,700 members—the vast majority converts to Christianity from Islam.

It’s the sincerity of those conversions that German courts are more and more frequently questioning—but in many cases, the verdict has been decided before the hearing. “This is what our alleged ‘rule of law’ really looks like,” Dr. Martens laments. “Judges openly admit that their judgments have already been decided before the trial.” Some judges, he notes, are openly anti-asylum and so it is not surprisingly they consistently rule against Christian converts.

He recounts one refugee who movingly testified that he could not live without receiving the body and blood of Christ; the judge declared this as irrelevant to Christian faith. “In her judgment,” Dr. Martens writes, “the judge stated that it was ‘not understandable’ why the reception of the Sacrament should be so important” and that the Christian faith was instead merely about “values and rules.”

In these hearings, judges—many non-religious themselves—set their own personal standards for what constitutes Christian belief when ruling on the sincerity of a convert’s faith. The testimony of the refugee applicant’s pastor is routinely ignored. “State officials determine what the ‘right’ Christian belief is, against which is then measured whether someone is a serious Christian or not,” Dr. Martens writes. He recounts one refugee who movingly testified that he could not live without receiving the body and blood of Christ; the judge declared this as irrelevant to Christian faith. “In her judgment,” Dr. Martens writes, “the judge stated that it was ‘not understandable’ why the reception of the Sacrament should be so important” and that the Christian faith was instead merely about “values and rules.” The same judge, Dr. Martens notes, was also quick to declare that “she is not dependent on the instruction of a pastor as to what constitutes a serious Christian.”

“Of course, there are also courts that, thank God,… make their decision largely dependent on the pastor’s deposition,” Dr. Martens writes. But too often the question of whether one gets a reasonable judge is one of luck. “The granting of refugee status for Christian converts here in Germany,” Dr. Martens says, “is a pure lottery that has little to do with the rule of law.”

Further information on the crisis facing Iranian and Afghan converts in Germany is available in Dr. Martens’ full letter.

Dr. Martens is a pastor of Germany’s Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church (Selbständige Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche – SELK), a partner church of Lutheran Church–Canada.

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