A Lutheran bishop in Germany, Ilse Junkermann, has called on Muslims in Germany to organize themselves the way the major, i.e. Catholic and Lutheran, churches in Germany are organized, namely top-down in a single organization, or at least in denominational organizations.
The presumption that the structures of the major Christian churches should be accepted as normative and demanded of other religions in Germany deserves rigorous, critical questioning. For one thing, not even all the Christians in Germany accept these structures (Evangelical and other Christians tend to opt out of the state-recognized churches). Plus, significantly, when Germany became a nation-state, these structures for the Catholic and Lutheran churches were already in place. These already-existing church structures shaped the way the state structured its relations with these two church groups, not vice versa.
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