Studies about the demise of socialism in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) generally acknowledge the significant role played by the Protestant Church. Wendy R. Tyndale's study sheds light on the lesser known aspects of the history of the Protestant Church in the GDR before and after 1989. Bernd Schaefer's monograph, The East German State and the Catholic Church, translated and shortened from the original 1998 German version, makes it clear that the Catholic Church must also be included in any discussion of how the single-party SED state understood, tried to control, and reacted to domestic and international religious discussions. These two books are intriguing studies of the many roles played by the Protestant and Catholic Churches in everyday life and in political negotiations between individual East Germans and the regime.

Tyndale approaches the subject in large part from the churchgoers' perspective; as she insists, Protestants in the GDR did not act uniformly against the SED, nor did Protestants in the GDR all view their church as a means of bringing down the state. The Protestant Church comprised a variety of people who, for almost a half century, had differing beliefs, motivations, and backgrounds; but, as Tyndale points out, historians have not adequately addressed these differences. She suggests several reasons for the limited and one-sided scholarship on the church in the GDR (and the even more limited knowledge of that scholarship). The post-1989 interpretation of the Protestant Church as an impartial agent in a revolutionary movement from below provides an overly convenient narrative to account for the end of the GDR. With the peace demonstrations organized in the churches during the regime's last years, the church has been coded as an important voice in the call for democracy. As a result, it has been impossible for subsequent historians to criticize the myth of the Protestant Church's role as a positive force that helped rebuild postwar Germany.

Indeed, Tyndale reminds readers that the development of the church occurred in a historical context crowded with multiple contingencies. The book begins with a look at religion from the Allied and German perspectives at the end of World War II. Christian institutions—Catholic and Protestant—had not provided a united front against Nazism. The churches had nevertheless successfully maintained their role as key institutions in the political and social fabric of German society. The Allies assigned to the churches responsibility for their own denazification, in part to maintain some stability in an otherwise unstable society. Tyndale argues that the Soviet authorities granted Protestant churches located in their occupation zone considerable independence in this process because of the overwhelming preponderance of Protestants in that part of Central and Eastern Europe—a region otherwise dominated by the Catholic Church. According to Tyndale, Protestant theologians helped unite an otherwise fractured congregation that comprised both a minority of Protestants who had stood against Nazism, as well as ones who had been fellow travelers.

As the GDR became increasingly secularized and antireligious, the Protestant Church fought for a legitimate space in society. More serious challenges to the survival of the church arose from bitter theological debates about the unlawful nature of the regime. At the same time, other religious leaders found it expedient to work with, rather than against, a regime that was gaining power internationally and domestically. These debates resulted in an ongoing dialogue with the SED about issues such as the prohibition of religious instruction in the school curriculum, the absence of conscientious objection as an alternative to mandatory military service, and the Church's right to maintain its theological seminaries.

It was this level of debate, Tyndale concludes, that kept Protestant theology alive and well in the GDR. It also helped the Protestant Church develop into a place for intellectual conversations: Protestant theologians argued with social reformers, both religious and secular. The church independently published works dealing with religious ideology, the responsibility of churches toward their congregations, and questions about where Protestants fit in a Marxist-Leninist society. Tyndale notes repeatedly that these sorts of debate figured heavily into the composition of those who demonstrated in the fall of 1989.

Unlike Tyndale, who relies (perhaps too) heavily on information gleaned from interviews with twenty-one theologians and church leaders, Schaefer provides a more institutional history of the Catholic Church in the GDR. Part of this difference stems from the hierarchical structures that define the Catholic Church, beginning with the authority of the Vatican. Catholicism played a much smaller role in East Germany's religious history than Protestantism did; still, the author draws a picture of Catholic Church leaders forced to band together in order to counter the SED's postwar attacks on religion in general. By the 1970s and the beginning of Ostpolitik, the SED's view of the Catholic Church was marked by a conviction that the Vatican was engaged in an international program to destroy socialism. Any depiction of the Catholic Church in the GDR must be understood as one of an institution with ties that extended far beyond East Germany's borders.

A recurring theme in Schaefer's narrative is the schizophrenic attitude of the SED toward the Catholic Church. The SED persisted in its belief that churches would fade away for lack of purpose or need, yet spent considerable resources watching the Catholic Church's every movement in order to undermine it. The exhaustive archival work in this study demonstrates that the SED shied away from almost no fight, no matter how small, against the Catholic Church. Movement on either side remained minimal in the end: the Catholic Church ultimately found a way to survive in the GDR, and the SED was never able to control the church entirely.

This standoff, Schaefer argues, came about when the Catholic Church found itself in a moment of crisis. Shortly before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, it assumed a policy of political abstinence, i.e., absolute political neutrality in the public sphere. This move gave the church a degree of internal freedom that kept it central in the lives of its members. Yet, political abstinence also meant that, unlike the Protestant Church, the Catholic Church did not develop into an institution where church members could organize politically. Schaefer notes only three occasions when the Catholic Church took a stance against the SED: against the introduction of a secular Jugendweihe in the 1950s, and against abortion laws and antichurch educational reforms in the early 1970s. After decades of attempting to remain apolitical, by the late 1980s, Catholics began to follow the Protestant model, i.e., the church as a potential instrument of fundamental societal change.

There is a clear need for further research on the history of religion in the GDR. As Tyndale shows, facile explanations of how the Protestant Church came to dominate reform debates in the 1980s do not adequately capture a much more complex picture. Likewise, Schaefer reveals the Catholic Church as an intriguingly apolitical player in East Germany. These studies point the way for future scholarship, above all the need for monographs that compare both of East Germany's main religious institutions.