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ABSTRACT
This paper investigates the contemporary relationship between politics and Diakonie in German-speaking countries. The Diakonie here functions as a pillar of the welfare state, bound by its quality standards, administrative mechanisms, but also tied to its fate. First, a brief historical overview will revisit the emergence of the Diakonie in the context of counter-revolutionary evangelization in the mid-nineteenth century. Second, it will be explored how contemporary practical theology/diaconic science addresses three challenges: economization, cultural and religious pluralization, and the distinction between state and diaconia in the context of large-scale migration. Examining recent works by T. Zippert, H. Rüegger, U. Körtner and others, the paper will show that a shift from the early Diakonie’s counterrevolutionary orientation to a liberal-humanist outlook has amalgamated the Christian-social and the political. The proprium of Christian help, an alternative economy, and political imperatives around security are increasingly lacking conceptualization. This development may be fruitfully reversed.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Therese Feiler is a Post-Doctoral Researcher in Systematics and Ethics at the Evangelical-Theological Faculty, LMU Munich.
Notes
1 Diakonie Deutschland, “Die Diakonie in Zahlen”. In the following, I use diaconia for the biblical and theological term, Diakonie for the institutionalised welfare provider.
2 Collins, Diakonia: Re-Interpreting the Ancient Sources; Hentschel, Diakonia im Neuen Testament. Any Christological reading of diakonía will have to take these into account, potentially shifting diakonía (further) away from the welfare-statist consensus; determining the relationship between historical semantics and hermeneutics would be part of that.
3 Coakley, “Can Systematic Theology become ‘Pastoral’ Again, and Pastoral Theology ‘Theological’?”.
4 See Maaser and Schäfer, Geschichte der Diakonie in Quellen; Coffey, Heart Religion; Hindmarsh, George Whitefield and the Emergence of Evangelical Devotion.
5 Letter dated 6th October 1861 to an unnamed addressee, in Florence Nightingale: The Nightingale School, 708.
6 Wichern, “Rede,” Sämtliche Werke I, 165, 155.
7 Wichern, “Denkschrift,” 183.
8 Wichern, “Die Revolution und die innere Mission,” 130. Oliver O’Donovan describes something similar in temporal terms as “a moment of transcendent criticism, a moment of obedience to God’s word”. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 13.
9 Wichern, Sämtliche Werke I, 139.
10 Gutmann, “Das harmonisierte Gemeinwesen,” 64.
11 Wichern cit. in Kramer, Nation und Theologie, 160.
12 On the historiographical “discourse-setting” between “national fixation” and a permanent “getting-closer” across “nation-borders” [Nationengrenzen], see Stieghorst, “Diakoniegeschichtsschreibung ‘transnational’,” 46 n. 9, 49; somewhat different to Strohm on Wichern’s thought as “ecumenical and European”, in “Theologie der Diakonie”.
13 Sturm, Sozialstaat und christlich-sozialer Gedanke, 90.
14 Ibid., 115; see also Wichern, Sämtliche Werke I, 101.
15 Wichern cit. in Kramer, Nation und Theologie, 122; critically: Reidegeld, Staatliche Sozialpolitik, 82.
16 Olaf Meyer, Politische und gesellschaftliche Diakonie, 50.
17 See Braune-Krickau, Religion und Anerkennung; Albrecht, ed., Wieviel Pluralität verträgt die Diakonie?; Henkelmann et al., eds., Abschied von der konfessionellen Identität?.
18 Kohl, Christi Wesen, 23; Heinrichs, “Rezension: Abschied von der konfessionellen Identität?” 9; critically on functionalism and its affinity with neo-orthodoxy in Niklas Luhmann: Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, 132–6.
19 Zippert, “Pluralitätsoffen, diversitätsfreundlich,” 263.
20 Judgment of the Court (Grand Chamber).
21 Cp. Rannenberg, Diakonische Unternehmen.
22 Zippert, “Pluralitätsoffen, diversitätsfreundlich,” see below.
23 NB: Gerhard Uhlhorn notes that the Inner Mission is the “continuation and intensification of the Enlightenment’s idea of humanity”, cit. in Albrecht, Wozu ist die Diakonie fähig?, 22. Kramer emphasises Wichern’s national-monarchist patriotism.
24 Cp. e.g., Di Fabio, Migrationskrise als föderales Verfassungsproblem.
25 “Diakonie: Schärferes Asylrecht gefährdet Motivation von Ehrenamtlern,” EKD News, 27 March 2017. https://www.ekd.de/news_2017_03_27_04_diakonie_asylrecht_ehrenamt.htm, cf. also Babo, “Schutzansprüche.”
26 Starnitzke, Diakonie in biblischer Orientierung, 107–8.
27 Zippert, “Pluralitätsoffen, diversitätsfreundlich,” 264.
28 Ibid., 267.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid., 268.
31 Ibid., 269.
32 Ibid., 270.
33 In early 2019, the Islamist ties of a “Kita-Imam” at a Diakonie-run kindergarten were criticised by the MP Sylvia Pantel.
34 Thomas Zippert, “Pluralitätsoffen, diversitätsfreundlich.” NB: Beyond entrepreneurial management models, the interaction between diaconic science and economics is underdeveloped, not least because the latter developed from a social to a natural-mathematical science. See Körtner, Diakonie und Öffentliche Theologie, 31.
35 Zippert, “Pluralitätsoffen, diversitätsfreundlich,” 274.
36 Ibid., 281.
37 Cp. ibid., 268.
38 Ibid., 282.
39 Ibid., cp. Haas and Starnitzke, “Entfaltung der Thesen,” 62.
40 Zippert, “Pluralitätsoffen, diversitätsfreundlich,” 288.
41 Ibid., 267.
42 Dierk Starnitzke has taken this view a step further and adapted Mt 25 to a sociological term of “world society”: Diakonie in biblischer Orientierung, 106.
43 Koval, Dieckbreder, and Zippert, Migration und Teilhabe, 148–50.
44 Rüegger and Sigrist, Diakonie—Eine Einführung, 36.
45 Ibid., 122.
46 Ibid., 122–3.
47 Ibid., 125.
48 cit. Gerd Otto, Rüegger, and Sigrist, Diakonie—Eine Einführung, 135.
49 Ibid.
50 Cp. e.g., the debate on extremely low wages in Diakonic organisations.
51 Ibid., 135.
52 Ibid., 138.
53 Ibid., 203.
54 Rüegger and Sigrist, Diakonie—Eine Einführung, 180.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid., 237 (my italics).
57 Ibid., 239.
58 Wegner, “Einleitung,” 18–9.
59 Rüegger and Sigrist, Diakonie—Eine Einführung, 253.
60 The church space may then become a neutral forum for all kinds of charitable activities that actively reject any religious affinities.
61 Less so by Rüegger and Sigrist, for whom the body politic (a term they do not use) are the givens of state, city and town. See Amstutz, “Die Stadt als Diakonin.”
62 Heinz Schmidt, cit. in Eurich, “Profillose Diakonie?,” 37.
63 Albrecht, Wozu ist die Diakonie fähig?, 91.
64 Körtner, Diakonie und öffentliche Theologie, 81.
65 Ibid., 82; on the “tyranny of values”, with Eberhard Jüngel and Carl Schmitt, see ibid., 22.
66 Ibid., 84.
67 Körtner especially mentions Luther: “Faith must write new decalogues” (WA 39 I, 47.), Diakonie und öffentliche Theologie, 87.
68 Ibid., 86.
69 Ibid., 87 (my italics).
70 Ibid. 64. Also in contrast to Bedford-Strohm: ecumenical social teaching through a conciliar process, “bottom-up” searching for peace, justice and stewardship of creation. Diakonie und öffentliche Theologie, 11. Cp. also Zippert above.
71 Ibid., 69.
72 Ibid., 92.
73 Ibid., 93.
74 Körtner, Diakonie und Öffentliche Theologie, 116.
75 Ibid., 129.
76 Ibid., 95.
77 Ibid., 96.
78 “Zuviel Moralismus?”; Bedford-Strohn is Chair of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) and a member of the Social Democratic Party.
79 See also Theodor Strohm, a leading theologian of diaconia and the “Wichern III” program of social-political transformation, who reads e.g., Wichern as “European and ecumenical”. Strohm, “Theologie der Diakonie.”
80 “Zuviel Moralismus?” (my italics).
81 Körtner, “Gesinnungs- und Verantwortungsethik,” 74.
82 Johannes Eurich, “Profillose Diakonie?” 35; Eurich and Maaser, eds, Diakonie in der Sozialökonomie.
83 Albrecht, Wozu ist die Diakonie fähig?, 47.
84 Faber, Political Demonology; cp. Lienhard and Bölle, Zur Sprache befreit, 20–53.
85 Besides public media discussions and Körtner, see also Ott, Zuwanderung und Moral.