Theological faculties in Germany are State institutions, guaranteed by agreements between the autonomous Protestant regional churches (Landeskirchen) or the Roman Catholic Church and the State. Theology is one of the disciplines taught at the German State, or public, universities, which the State provides for the education and professional training of its citizens; in this context of the university, mutual exchange between theology and other disciplines is promoted.
At the same time the theological faculties in Germany also have a function for the Church. On the one hand through their academic research and teaching, they contribute to the development and growth of Christian knowledge. On the other hand they provide the academic training for the future clergy and teachers of religious instruction at German schools.
Thus, theological faculties in Germany hold a dual legal status. This dual status reflects the interest of both the State and the Church. In conformity with German and European academic tradition the theological faculties at State universities are established according to and protected by the constitutional right of freedom of religion. Their State status protects them from patronising by the Church, their Church status from encroachments by the State. The dual status guarantees the unrestricted freedom of teaching and research at the theological faculties and for all their members, as long as they keep to the laws and the Constitution-a fact that applies to all State institutions.
As a consequence of the dual status of theological faculties their professors have a special standing in regard to their regulations of employment. They are appointed (as a rule) into a tenured position, which demands loyalty towards the State and its laws, in particular those that regulate the relationship of State and Church. At the same time through their research in the field of theology and Christian knowledge and through their training of the future clergy and teachers of religion, they are required to serve Church interests, with a corresponding demand for loyalty within, the rights and duties resulting from the State-Church contract.
Because of this express duty to the Church, the position which a professor at a theological faculty holds is called a 'konfessionsgebundenes Staatsamt', i.e., his or her appointment depends, in addition to the ordinary prerequisites for a professorship, on his or her belonging to the very church to which the faculty is affiliated. This requirement has its foundation in the right of religious freedom which is guaranteed by the Constitution; it is the Constitution which grants that the teaching and training of the future clergy at the State University is only the Church's concern, thus protecting the religious autonomy of the Church. Academic theology as taught at theological faculties at State universities, including biblical and dogmatic criticism, is understood by the churches to belong to what concerns them. Therefore the denominational prerequisite is not in contradiction to, but in agreement with, the freedom of teaching and research.
At the theological faculties in Germany, the professors who are teaching and researching there and the students who are studying there, generally belong to the denomination of their faculty. The degrees (Diplom, Magister, Promotion, Habilitation), insofar as they are theological degrees, are linked to the confessional status of the faculty, either Protestant (including all member churches in the Ecumenical Council of