2 - 1997

Solidarity and Justice

Taking the churches by their word

The Statement on the Economic and Social Situation

by Friedhelm Hengsbach

According to the author, the two main churches have worked an ecumenical miracle in their joint statement on the economic and social situation in Germany. Friedhelm Hengsbach picks out the key points and pays tribute to the corridors for reform that the churches propose. Hengsbach, a Jesuit, is a professor at the Catholic University of St. George in Frankfurt am Main, and directs the Oswald Nell-Breuning Institute there. Hengsbach is seen as the intellectual heir to Nell-Breuning, who founded modern Catholic social doctrine.

1. The joint statement published by the two churches is a triple "miracle": an ecumenical miracle, a miracle of participation by church congregations, groups and associations such that few large organizations have ever accomplished, and a miracle in terms of lessons learned in the churches´ conversion from quasi-state entities to socioreligious movements and civic actors. Three drafts and successive rounds of consultation make clear that the church statement would have been very different had it not been for the consultation process.

2. A good key to reading the statement is the well-known maxim, "look, think, act." The Summary (pages 1-34 of the statement) is far from being a digest of the whole. As a summary it is variously inaccurate and wrong: some claims are unsupported, others even refuted in what follows. It is nonetheless tempting to reduce the statement to a ten-point preàcis.

3. The churches label the situation in Germany acutely and solemnly as that of "a divided country." One of the world´s strongest economies, a nation rich without comparison, is marked by three deep divisions: between employed and unemployed, between rich and poor, and between eastern and western Germans (2). The poor are growing in number, especially among the unemployed, single mothers, children and young adults, and households with children.

4. It is said of the church statement that its conclusions are sound and reflect the current state of public discussion, for example regarding the definition of poverty or causes of unemployment. That the resulting points of emphasis call forth misgivings comes as no surprise. For example, the statement comes alarmingly close to global market and supply-based explanations of unemployment. The hypothesis of alleged globalizing pressures is adopted without question. Nor is there any reflection on the capitalist market economy and the roles of money, the banking system, and in particular the Bundesbank as employment factors.

5. The church leaders are at pains to demarcate their ground on three fronts: Firstly, they exclude all those who expect undiluted market economics to solve economic and social challenges (146). Strong competition and social policy curbs on market outcomes are the two equal-ranking pillars of the social market economy (143). Secondly, the church leaders defend the welfare state and redistributive welfare systems against creeping exposure to market forces. These systems, based on earnings, accrued entitlements and contributions, must be freed of financial burdens alien to them: the link between contributions and entitlements must be restored (190). Thirdly, fighting persistent mass unemployment is the most urgent common task facing all levels of government, enterprise, chambers of commerce, unions, and the powers that be - including the Bundesbank.

6. The statement opens up three channels of reform: First and most urgent is structural change towards a socially and ecologically sustainable market economy that is embedded in the lifecycles of nature (80, 231). Second, welfare systems must be rendered "poverty-proof" by relating income-replacement benefits to an equitable minimum subsistence level. To counter the unproductive choice between "more state or more market", innovative partnerships are proposed between key companies, welfare agencies and grassroots initiatives (26f, 221-223). Third, new concepts of work are put forward (51, 55, 152, 176). In addition to conventional jobs, other forms of socially useful work should be adopted, paid, and given welfare insurance credits (176, 193-195). All socially useful work, conventional jobs and family duties must be redistributed among men and women (193, 201), and welfare provision decoupled from conventional paid work. True equality for women will not be achieved until paid work is made compatible with family life for men and women alike (202).

7. According to the church statement, the market economy is embedded in a democratic society. Firstly, market mechanisms are pre-empted by fundamental societal choices such as basic social rights and liberties, social democracy, collective bargaining and codetermination in industry, and increased environmental awareness. Secondly, the church leaders call for income and wealth distribution policies that enforce an equitable sharing of opportunities and risks, and link burdens to the ability to pay, to a far greater extent than prevailing public opinion or, indeed, than the recent decisions and reform plans of the political majority. For example, income support benefits should be index-linked rather than frozen (181). The structural discrimination of households with children in favour of those without must be eliminated (71). Industry should focus more on reconciling paid work with family life (193). Instead of relieving their tax burden, higher-income earners and owners of capital should be obliged to finance redistribution according to their ability to pay. The principle of maintaining real asset-values should not be declared inviolable (23, 220). Because the concentration of capital in the hands of the high-income and propertied classes and the gap between rich households and those with little or no property has increased (216), employees should be apportioned a large share in the newly formed productive capital (217 et seq.). "Wealth, not just poverty, must become a theme of political debate." Hence what is needed is not just a regular poverty report, but also a report on wealth (219).

8. The church statement experiments with a moral philosophy drawn from two paths of understanding. First, applying a highly personalistic anthropology, it outlines the Biblical role model of the compassionate figure: one who takes victims in, frees them from poverty and oppression, sides with them and procures them justice. Second, the church leaders remind us of the model human rights, including a right to work, to social democracy, and to a socially and ecologically sustainable market economy, all of which are feasible given a reform-friendly political majority in Germany. Regrettably, the Biblical, theological and ethical deliberations go unmentioned in public. Is this due to a religious inarticulacy, or to an imperfect rendering of what the church leaders had in mind?

9. The church leaders have written a statement that fits in with both public debate and current subjects of dispute among the political class, and hence one that is in several senses politically situated. Its rejection of a market economy stripped of qualifying adjectives, for example, mirrors discussions in the ruling conservative-liberal coalition. Its defence of the welfare state and the gathering of reform-friendly political forces could pave the way for a grand coalition of the two popular parties. The reform corridors tend towards a red-green alliance. Despite this, the statement reads in parts as if the church leaders had opted rather to declaim from the upper windows of churchdom than to descend too far into the political meçleàe.

10. The statement is not the churches´ last word. What we now need is not more statements and summings-up, but radical political reforms and course changes. These will not come of their own accord. As the church statement has grown out of the consultative process, so it will now be placed in the hands of the congregations, initiatives, groups, associations and institutions in both churches, as a call to political action and, above all, to forge political alliances. It must act local.

Lecture at the Kolping-Haus, Frankfurt Main, 15 March 1997; organized by the Rabanus-Maurus-Academy in Wiesbaden, KAB, Ökumenisches Konsultationsnetz and Kolping Verband Limburg.