with East Berlin being subsumed under the GDR. The councils of the western and the eastern region met monthly in East Berlin. The GDR government was not after terminating this cooperation. The subsidies from the West continued and were still allowed for the aforementioned reasons. The situation changed decisively with the end of the GDR dictatorship in 1989. In 1990 the Evangelical Church in Greifswald readopted its original name of Pomeranian Evangelical Church. In 1991 the two Evangelical Churches of the Union reunited. With effect of 1 January 1992 the two regions were administratively reunited. The EKU then comprised 6,119 congregations in spread over seven member churches. In 1992 the Evangelical Church of the Görlitz Ecclesiastical Region dropped its unwanted name and chose the new name of Evangelical Church of Silesian Upper Lusatia. Due to the increasing irreligionism, lower birth rates since the 1970s, and few Protestant immigrants, the Protestant churches in Germany are undergoing a severe decline in parishioners and thus of parishioners' contributions, forcing member Churches to reorganise in order to spend less. For this reason, the Synod of the Evangelical Church of the Union decided in June 2002 to merge their organisation with the Union of Evangelical Churches, which took effect 1 July 2003. This is an umbrella organisation combining all independent Protestant regional united and uniting churches in Germany. Doctrinal sources Belief and teaching were based on a number of confessions accepted by the church. These were the Augsburg Confession, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, the Smalcaldic Articles, Luther's Large Catechism as well as his Small Catechism and the Heidelberg Catechism. Some Lutheran congregations within the Church also accepted the Formula of Concord. Whereas congregations of French Reformed tradition agreed to teach in harmony with the Gallic Confession and the Church discipline. Through the Polish annexation and expulsion of parishioners the Pomeranian Evangelical Church had lost all its united Protestant and Reformed congregations, thus having become purely Lutheran. Among its accepted confessions of faith were only Lutheran ones. After the ecclesiastical provinces had assumed independence between 1945 and 1950 they characterised themselves differently. Berlin-Brandenburg, Saxony and Silesia conceived themselves as churches of the Lutheran Reformation, with the Saxon provincial church comprising core places of Luther's life and work (Wittenberg, Eisleben). The churches of Berlin-Brandenburg, Saxony and Silesia comprised mostly Lutheran congregations, some Reformed congregations (Silesia after the Polish annexation and expulsion of parishioners a single