2 - 1997
Solidarity and Justice
A pledge to solidarity
Church statement strengthens ecumenical ties
by Götz Planer-Friedrich
Following the old adage "the Quest is the Grail," the three-year consultation process in which the joint church statement was prepared brought a sense of renewal to the churches themselves. Gïtz Planer-Friedrich is Chief Editor of the monthly journal Evangelische Kommentare.
The churches had brooded over their Statement on the Economic and Social Situation in Germany for three whole years. Attentive observers had more than once believed its birth to be imminent. The happy event was finally announced on 28 February this year, at a press conference held in Bonn by Bishop Klaus Engelhard, Chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), and Bishop Karl Lehmann, Chairman of the German Bishop´s Conference.
It all began with plans for an episcopal message from the Catholic church. The first draft met with much criticism within the church. This aroused the attention of the Evangelical church, which announced its interest in the project. A joint discussion paper was drawn up. This appeared in November 1994 and triggered wide-ranging talks.
Innumerable parish events and thematic discussion rounds in parties, associations and interest groups made the church statement a hot topic. The written submissions alone came to 25,000 pages. Not much worth mentioning was left of the draft when the churches proceeded to their public inquiry in February 1996. A new text was drawn up, which in much backstage haggling was then whittled down to the now-published end product.
Anyone who knows the various drafts and compares them will soon see how many different interest groups had a hand in its creation. Yet the result is not a lukewarm tract seeking to compromise on the lowest common denominator. Grassroots social movements in the church find their mark in it just as well as the economists.
The technique of involving as many people as possible in drafting and shaping a publication in a multistage discussion process was first adopted by the German churches for the Dresden and Stuttgart Declarations in the Conciliar Process of Mutual Commitment to Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation (separate statements were drawn up at the time for East and West Germany respectively). This methodical approach had proved its worth in the USA, where two remarkable "pastoral letters" appeared in the 1980s: The Challenge of Peace in 1983 and Economic Justice for All in 1986. On both occasions, the consultative process proved an important part of the result, arousing interest in its message among both church and political audiences.
Seeking basic consensus
This experience has been confirmed in the case of the ecumenical statement on the social and economic situation by the two German churches. The result is neither a Protestant memorandum nor a Catholic pastoral letter, but a call to reflect upon the ethical foundations of the Federal Republic and to reach "basic consensus on a sustainable society."
The EKD Council had already published an affirmation of social market economics and attested it a promising future in its 1991 memorandum Common Good and Personal Gain. Now it pleads jointly with the Catholic church "For a Future Founded on Solidarity and Justice" (the title of the new statement) - and this future is no longer a matter of course by any means: on the contrary, its attainment requires "structural and moral renewal." The churches declare that they have a responsibility, indeed a duty, to take a stand. Their "preferential option for the poor" is just a moral appeal; it is systematically derived from the Gospel. As to specific proposals for crisis management, the church statement on the social and economic situation takes up almost every idea that is currently doing the rounds. "The church leaders want to focus the social forces of reform," Friedhelm Hengsbach, the Catholic social ethicist, notes with approval. "This is why many of the passages on unemployment, social welfare and a socially and ecologically sustainable market economy are primarily situated in the political context of a grand coalition, here and there bordering on a red-green alliance." In the two main conservative parties, the statement strengthens the hand of the parliamentary select committees on welfare.
It is no wonder that the initial stance taken by all party and union representatives was positive about the church statement. Only Guido Westerwelle, Secretary General of the FDP liberal party, was visibly hard put not to discern at least a lack of criticism of current liberal thinking. On piecing together the church options on social, economic and legal policy that are scattered throughout the statement, it is indeed easy to detect calls to put an end to the ruling conservative-liberal coalition. For, in this regard, the principles of catholic social doctrine - and of ecumenical social ethics - that are doubtless still present in the conservative parties seem to have fallen foul of neoliberalism.
But it is highly significant in sociopolitical terms that the representatives of what is after all some eighty per cent of the population have now come together for the first time to speak their minds with such decisiveness. Seen like this, the ecumenical idea is no longer ecclesiastical cloud-cuckoo land, but a reality of church politics. This came through in the genesis of the statement, where interdenominational solidarity ruled the day.
This may also positively influence the German delegates´ contribution to the Second European Ecumenical Assembly to be held in Graz, Austria, in June. The main topic at this event will be reconciliations within the strife-ridden European continent. The ability to contribute will, of course, be all the greater the further advanced ecumenical consensus is at home.
Reprinted from Evangelische Kommentare, No. 4, 1997,
slightly abridged, and translated for publication in this magazine.