The Religious Affairs Branch was finally formed, as a separate entity within the Control Commission's British Element, on 5 January 1946. It was then no longer a section of an organisation whose primary focus was elsewhere. It could take its place alongside the Education Branch. The change was essentially one of status. It did, though, indicate a victory for those such as Bishop Bell who had argued that the work of the religious affairs staff was of enough importance that it needed to be recognised officially as a separate entity. The letter detailing the new status did, however, contain an indication of the confusion that existed within the Commission, and undoubtedly more widely, about its function. The head of the new branch was to have the following responsibility to the head of the Division:

Although the letter did not acknowledge it, the remit was wider than the Christian churches. The creation of a separate Branch to handle Religious Affairs was the final development of planning that had begun, as has already been shown, in the autumn of 1943.

There had been a debate about how to approach ‘religion’ among British and American planners from the start of thinking about the control that would be needed in Germany after the end of the fighting. That debate would continue in subsequent discussions about both the title and the responsibilities of the part of the Control Commission to be concerned with religion. One founding block of the Religious Affairs Branch of the British Element of the Control Commission Germany lay in the Education and Religious Affairs subsection of the German Section of the Special Staff for Civil Affairs in SHAEF. Although most of that organisation was eventually to form the basis of the Education and Religious Affairs Section in the United States Zone, it was still, in the spring of 1944, a joint US and British body. The American attitude to Germany, and the work of the Education and Religious Affairs Section in its formative period, have been charted by Marshall Knappen.