About Christ in der Gegenwart

Christ in der Gegenwart

Christ in der Gegenwart (short: CiG) is an independent, reform-oriented, supra-regional Catholic weekly with an ecumenical outlook, published by Verlag Herder in Freiburg im Breisgau. Founded in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War by Karl Färber, it has appeared under its current title since 1967, shaped by the renewal of the Second Vatican Council. It finances itself through subscriptions and advertising, and addresses a religiously interested, education-oriented readership with news and analysis from a Christian perspective. Its sold circulation was reported at 29,215 copies (IVW, second quarter of 2016).

Overview

CiG is the journal of Germany's reform-minded Catholic intelligentsia — a weekly for readers who want their faith to engage with the modern world rather than retreat from it. Its self-description is programmatic: news and reports on current events from a Christian perspective, analyses of intellectual, political and religious developments, and inspiration for a modern Christian life. "Believing through reading, ecumenical, cosmopolitan" is how the publisher characterizes its audience — readers with theologically demanding tastes who expect their church paper to illuminate the horizons behind the headlines.

History

The magazine was born from the rubble of 1945. Immediately after the war, Karl Färber founded the Freiburger Katholisches Kirchenblatt in southwestern Germany as a regional church publication. In 1948 it became a zone edition — initially still titled Freiburger Katholisches Kirchenblatt (Zonenausgabe) — permitted by the French occupation authorities to circulate throughout their entire occupation zone, a significant expansion that already signalled the paper's ambition. It spoke above all to readers with religiously and theologically demanding tastes, and in 1949 it was renamed Der christliche Sonntag and distributed supra-regionally.

The decisive turning point came with the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Under the impression of the Council's renewal, the paper received its current title in 1967: Christ in der Gegenwart — Christ in the present day, a name that is itself a theological programme. The founder's first editor, Karl Färber, had described the central challenge after the war in words the magazine still claims as its own: "It was a matter of starting anew, from the beginning... It must be the prelude to an examination of conscience for us." That radical will to reform, rooted in the faith itself, remains the magazine's declared commitment.

Since January 2008 — the beginning of its sixtieth year — CiG has appeared in a full-colour layout, and once a month it carries a twelve-page special section, Bilder der Gegenwart (Images of the Present). The magazine celebrated its seventieth anniversary on 8 September 2018 in Dresden with a readers' conference titled Gott? – Mut zur Religion in moderner Gesellschaft (God? — Courage for religion in modern society) featuring prominent speakers, and marked its 75th jubilee in 2023 with a series of events across Germany under the shared motto "Von Gott..." (Of God...), designed to bring readers together with the editors and authors.

Content and concept

Each weekly issue offers a compact eight pages — more when the monthly picture section is included — of news, commentary and analysis. The spectrum runs from Vatican and church politics through theology and interreligious dialogue to culture, science and society, always with the question of what Christian faith means in the present. Recognized authors write for the independent weekly, and its analyses aim to look behind the headlines rather than merely repeating them.

The magazine's reform orientation is not a marketing label but its editorial DNA: born from the post-war determination to begin again, renamed in the spirit of the Council, it has consistently given space to voices calling for the church's renewal — on the role of women, on ecumenism, on the church's relationship with modernity. That stance has made it both influential and, at times, controversial within German Catholicism: it is read in bishops' offices and rectories, but also by the engaged laity who drive the church's reform debates. The editorial chair has been held by figures who shaped the magazine's profile — Johannes Röser led it before the current editor-in-chief, Volker Resing — and the continuity of that reform-minded editorship is part of why readers trust CiG as an independent voice rather than an official organ.

The magazine's format reinforces its character: a compact weekly of eight pages, designed to be read in full rather than skimmed, with the monthly twelve-page Bilder der Gegenwart picture section adding visual depth. In an age of infinite digital content, CiG's brevity is a statement — the belief that a few well-chosen pages, read carefully, can do more for understanding than an endless feed.

Coverage and audience

CiG addresses a religiously interested, education-oriented public — readers who want depth rather than devotionals. Its circulation of around 29,000–32,000 sold copies (IVW figures from the 2010s) makes it a medium-sized specialist title, but its influence extends beyond its numbers: as one of the few independent Catholic weeklies in Germany, it is a forum where the church's intellectual debates are conducted in public. The readership spans the reform-minded spectrum of German Catholicism — theologians, teachers, pastoral workers, and laypeople for whom faith is a matter of reflection as much as of practice.

The ecumenical orientation is genuine: Protestant readers and authors have always been part of the magazine's world, and its interest in other religions and in the secular world reflects a Catholicism that sees itself as a conversation partner rather than a fortress.

Ownership

Christ in der Gegenwart is published by Verlag Herder GmbH in Freiburg im Breisgau, one of Germany's oldest and most respected Catholic publishing houses. Herder — founded in 1801 — is a major theological and religious publisher whose programme spans academic theology, religious education, and general-interest Catholic books; CiG is its journalistic flagship. The editor-in-chief is Volker Resing (predecessor Johannes Röser). The magazine's financing through subscriptions and advertising, without direct church funding, underwrites the editorial independence its self-description claims.

Digital presence

CiG maintains an online archive of its issues at christ-in-der-gegenwart.de, with an annual index available as PDF, and offers digital subscriptions alongside print. The publisher promotes trial subscriptions — four weeks free — to introduce new readers to the weekly, and the annual index of articles, published as a PDF, makes eight decades of Catholic commentary searchable for researchers and readers alike. The digital offering extends the magazine's core promise: compact, reflective Catholic journalism for readers who want to understand the present in the light of faith. Its ISSN is 0170-5148, and its archive stretches back through every name the magazine has carried since 1945.

From a regional church paper in the French occupation zone to the journal of Germany's reform Catholicism — Christ in der Gegenwart has accompanied the German Catholic Church through eight decades of upheaval, always with the same question its founder posed in 1945: how to begin anew, from the roots of the faith, in the present day. As the church debates its future — from the Synodal Path's reform proposals to the question of what Catholic journalism is for in a secular age — CiG remains what it has been since Karl Färber's first editorials: a small, independent weekly insisting that faith and critical thinking belong together, and that the present, however difficult, is exactly where Christ is to be found. The weekly's compact format and reflective tone continue to distinguish it in a Catholic press landscape where few titles have survived as long.