Hope at the turn of the year: Bishops call for confidence for 2026!

Hope at the turn of the year: Bishops call for confidence for 2026!

The last day of 2025 is here and expectations for 2026 are high. In their New Year's Eve speeches, Bishop Kirsten Fehrs and Archbishop Stefan Heße call for people to start the new year with hope and confidence. Fehrs, the council chairwoman of the Evangelical Church in Germany, calls on people to sharpen the perspective of confidence and encourages everyone to welcome the New Year with open arms. “Behold, I make everything new,” is the biblical motto for 2026, which Fehrs sees as an invitation to newfound hope. She emphasizes that all life is caught between a good beginning and a good ending, and reminds us that God created the world to be a peaceful place. Despite the global crises and individual concerns that plague us, there are also rays of hope and compassion. That's what he writes NDR.

Archbishop Heße, who is also responsible for Schleswig-Holstein, would like to encourage people. He calls on us to enter the new year as a bearer of hope, even if society confronts us with tensions and conflicts. In many Christmas services, messages of community development were conveyed, which were intended to give space to the desire for more responsibility for one another. The desire to break down the boundaries of isolation and to build mutual respect was repeatedly expressed in the sermons. These values ​​are also the core of the demands of Kirsten Fehrs, who will preach on New Year's Day at 10:15 a.m. in the ZDF-broadcast festive service from Dresden's Frauenkirche.

Hope as an answer to pessimism

Looking into the future, Fehrs formulates a direct appeal to everyone to meet the challenges with level-headed composure. Hope arises particularly where people take responsibility and resist badmouthing. Karl Bätzing, Chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, also emphasized the importance of hope in his New Year's Eve sermon. He describes hope as the force that encourages us and makes our lives meaningful. At a time when more and more people feel pessimism and fear, hope becomes an indispensable counter-image to fear and despair, says Bätzing.

The ideas around mutual respect and confidence are also very important for the plans for the new year. Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki points out that solidarity and an orientation towards the common good lead to more justice, while Christian Kopp from the Bavarian Evangelical Church calls for tolerance for different ways of life. These voices contribute to shaping respectful coexistence in society and are important building blocks for the coming year. In his New Year's address, Chancellor Olaf Scholz also emphasized that Germany should be a country of togetherness and not against one another. He praises the solidarity of people, especially after the attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg, and describes the challenges that lie ahead as opportunities to strengthen the community.

Looking ahead to 2026 therefore promises not only challenges, but also opportunities. Let us be inspired by the bishops' promises, which encourage us and encourage us to live together in a new, solidarity-based way. May we carry the messages of respect and hope in our hearts and approach the new beginnings of the coming year with confidence. To put it in the words of Fehrs: “Let’s give space to the good and let the good end have a chance.”