The Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (German: Evangelische Kirche Berlin-Brandenburg-schlesische Oberlausitz, EKBO) is a United Protestant church body in the German states of Brandenburg, Berlin and a part of Saxony (historical region of Silesian Upper Lusatia).
In 1947 its ecclesiastical provinces (German: Kirchenprovinzen), as far as their territories were not annexed by Poland or the Soviet Union, became independent church bodies of their own.
In 1946 the Silesian ecclesiastical province, presided over by Ernst Hornig, held its first post-war provincial synod in then already Polish Świdnica (formerly Schweidnitz).
But on 4 December 1946 Poland deported Hornig from Wrocław (formerly Breslau) beyond the Lusatian Neiße, where he took his new seat in the German part of the now divided city of Görlitz of the former Prussian province of Lower Silesia.
In 1947 the Polish government also expelled the remaining members of the Silesian consistory, which temporarily could continue to officiate in Wrocław.
Görlitz became the seat of the tiny territorial rest of the Silesian ecclesiastical province, constituting on May 1, 1947 as the independent Evangelical Church of Silesia (German: Evangelische Kirche von Schlesien) - comprising the small parts of Silesia remaining with Germany after 1945.
On April 9, 1968 East Germany adopted its second constitution, accounting for the de facto transformation into a communist dictatorship.
Thus the East German government deprived the church bodies of their status as statutory bodies (German: Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts) and abolished the church tax, by which parishioners' contributions had been automatically collected as a surcharge on the income tax.
Due to increasing irreligion, the low birth rates in Germany since the 1970s, and low numbers of Protestant immigrants, the Protestant church bodies in Germany are undergoing a severe shrinking of parishioners and thus of parishioners' contributions.
Since 1817, when the Lutheran, Calvinist and newly founded united congregations formed a common administrative umbrella, later called Evangelical Church in Prussia's older Provinces, the area comprised by today's church body formed part of the two old-Prussian ecclesiastical provinces of Silesia (German: Kirchenprovinz Schlesien) and of the March of Brandenburg (German: Kirchenprovinz Mark Brandenburg).
Until 1933/1934 the spiritual leaders of the Evangelical church were called general superintendents (German: Generalsuperintendent[en]) with regional competences.
The general superintendents for the different areas were rotating in the spiritual leadership within the provincial consistory, seated in Berlin.
While the Nazi-streamlined provost was subordinate to the Bishopric of Berlin, the general superintendent ignored his illegitimate furlough and continued to serve, however, accepted only by the non-schismatic Confessing Church congregations.
The provisionally leading advisory council (German: Beirat) reconfirmed Dibelius as general superintendent of the Kurmark (i.e.
The Beirat also commissioned Dibelius to serve per pro the vacant general superintendencies of Berlin and the New March-Lower Lusatia.
In 2003, with the merger of the Evangelical Church in Silesian Upper Lusatia, its region became a subdivision of the EKBO.