As the Protestant told the Protestant news agency IDEA, in his eyes, the Protestant Church presents itself like a “red-green oriented institution”. It deals with and expresses itself above all on topics such as climate protection and the “fight against the right”. Red and Green are the colours for the party-political competitors of the Christian-Democratic CDU, of which Vaatz is a member.

In addition, it conforms to the majority opinion in society, for example, on sexual morality. Foundational contents of faith (such as justification by grace, guilt before God or eternal life) are pushed into the background.

At the end of the day, the church is mainly used to support left-wing or green political convictions. For him, this is a “considerable reduction” of the message of the Gospel.

Theological stupidity

The 65-year-old is also critical of the church formula “preservation of creation”. It is a “theological stupidity” if people believe they can preserve creation, since it goes far beyond the areas of man, earth and climate. It encompasses the entire cosmos, its biological, psychological and cognitive construction man cannot change. Man is only one part of creation.

According to Vaatz, this topic reveals a “hubris of man” who thinks he can do everything and thus assumes omnipotence. This has nothing to do with ethics based on the Bible. Vaatz: "The opinion that we can save creation from destruction is ascribing to us a divine quality that we do not have. Nevertheless, he said, the church puts this issue at the centre. In his view, it has thus become an “institution that can be instrumentalised politically almost at will and allows itself to be instrumentalised”.

Inquisition

Vaatz also criticised the handling of the former regional bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony, Carsten Rentzing (Dresden). Rentzing had resigned from his post after it became known that he had written texts for the right-wing conservative magazine “Fragmente” during his student days.

He had always thought, Vaatz said, that the churches endeavoured to unite. In his view, this also included that everyone should be allowed to present his or her points of view within the church.

But in the church, differentiation is often no longer possible. More and more people are classified under the term “right-wing”. He himself now feels “subsumed” under this term: “The tools of the Inquisition are slowly returning to the Church and society. The new devil’s bargain is called “contact guilt”, the new ban on blasphemy is called ‘Cancel Culture’, the new mark of Cain is the characteristic of being an old white man. One can be curious to see what the media beadles of the new religion will rise to when the eco-dictatorship really goes to people’s existence and can only be enforced by draconian means.”

Vaatz has been re-elected eight times since 2002, making him the longest-serving deputy leader of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag. The former GDR civil rights activist has been in the Bundestag since 1998.

He will not run again in the coming Bundestag elections.