Copies of a climate change petition along with photos of the signatories lay at the foot of the altar. Metres away, a dozen activists were undergoing street protest training.
Other members of the Letzte Generation (Last Generation) group were having a vegan brunch buffet in the pews, minutes before they were to march out through the imposing doors of Berlin’s St. Thomas Church for their latest demonstration to press the government to do more for the climate. The Protestant church has become the unlikely staging point for the climate activists in their latest two-week campaign to bring Berlin’s traffic to a standstill by glueing themselves onto the asphalt.
In northeastern Berlin, Gethsemane Church — a key site in the peaceful revolution that brought down the Berlin Wall — is hosting an open discussion on climate change every evening this week, before handing the baton to another church next week. Although politicians including leading members of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government have blasted Letzte Generation’s road blockade protests, the churches have thrown open their doors to the activists. “We want to contribute to allowing the participants to remain in peace,” said the St. Thomas Church’s council in a statement. “The radicalisation of the climate movement is the expression of the despair that too little is being done for the protection of the climate and thereby for the preservation of Creation. We’re taking this despair seriously and confronting it,” they added. The churches’ action is not without controversy, as surveys suggest a majority of the public frown on Letzte Generation’s protests. In a recent poll by national broadcaster ZDF, 82 percent of respondents felt the street blockades went too far.