Beyond the Good-Tempered Attitude toward Life
By Simone Sinn[This article published in 2019 in the journal Junge Kirche is translated from the German on the Internet.]
The self-image that the church is a community offering room for many different people is part of the church’s attitude toward life. The church proclaims that everyone has a place at the great table – whatever their social strata, their vocational position, generation or life design. This attitude toward life cultivated by the national church in Germany in the second half of the 20th century is not as banal as it sounds. Rather it is full of conditions and not easy to realize. Therefore, church communities wrestle that this high claim of the engaged community of the different becomes reality.
One body with many members is the central biblical metaphor for this basic ecclesiological conviction. The integrating effect of this self-image is emphasized again and again to remind oneself and others: no one should be excluded. To many, this inclusivism mediates a good-tempered attitude toward life because the openness and magnanimity is felt to be soothing. This attitude toward life allows us to experience our own humanity and the humanity of others and strengthens the connections without repressing the differences. When many people turned to fleeing persons in the fall of 2015, the attitude toward life of the engaged community of the different was publically visible in an impressive way.
However, the phase of the good-tempered attitude toward life in the national church is quickly coming to its end. One reason is that this feeling does not automatically result from the basic biblical conviction of the community of the different. Rather the ecclesiological attitude toward life was nourished from a churchly consensus that the misanthropy that once occurred in Germany should never happen again.
A radical change of the social discourse and the attitude toward life began with the debate over New Year’s Eve in Koln from January 2016. Since then, hatred and fear have become the great catchwords and no longer openness, love and affection. Many incredibly violent attacks on fleeing persons and their housing as well as real and verbal screening mark the social debate. The question is raised whether and how the social middle still exists. The sociologist Heinz Buede speaks of the “power of moods” and identifies a general mood of irritability. German society has lost its good-temperedness.
Engaged Community of the Different
As a question for the church: can it cultivate the attitude toward life of the engaged community of the different if people feel radically tested and not good-tempered anymore in the changed social situation? A radical attitude toward life resists the temptation of riding in the wave of homogenization and screening to champion or support a plural and open society. People are tested because forming community amid diversity is a struggle.
The greatest challenge for the church today is to be what it is: a community in Christ placed in the world.
What does it mean when the church decides to remain with this biblical attitude toward life and accepts that there is now an attitude toward life that can no longer be safe in the protection of a mainstream? First of all, language and the courage for public debate must be found. . In the spring of 2018, the conflict over the cross-edict in Bavaria was another illustration of the crisis of the good-tempered attitude toward life. When the Bavarian riots in the refugee debate became increasingly unbearable, the council chairperson of the Evangelical Church in Germany urged empathy and humanliness with great clarity and urgency.
The term “refugee-open church” announced a compassionate attitude to fleeing persons. In June 2016, a Europe-oriented ecumenical meeting took place n Lunteren (Netherlands) where a final document “Have No Fear” was passed. Fear paralyzes action and weakens engagement for fundamental human rights. Treating the so-called refugee crisis as a security problem rather than a humanitarian task should be criticized. Referring to the concrete engagement, the final document stressed: “Churches and church groups can and should contribute so the debate turns around individual persons, their faces, their histories and the sorrow that forced them to leave their home and set out on dangerous journeys. They can and must help narrate these stories.”
In addition, churches began actively developing a theology of migration where migration was a deeply theological and ecclesiological theme and not only a social-ethical theme… Migration is a test for theology and not only a theological practice field.
Ecumenical Language
We are called to a deeper understanding of the meaning of migration and home and to grapple with populist currents. At the international meeting on “Churches as Agents for Justice and Against Populism” in May 2019, 65 persons from 25 different countries came together to analyze current developments and develop common theological perspectives. A final document summarized insights of the meeting: “Many of our discussions revealed how hard it can be to act in frameworks set by injustice where political persecution, the influence of the media and religious fundamentalism hinder the church in its possibilities of spreading this integrative message including everyone. (…) The church understands diversity as a gift and complexity as beauty. The church is a people consisting of a multitude and great variety of genders, races, languages, ethnicities and cultures in majority- and minority contexts all over the world.” This pretentious and contested attitude toward life is explained in the document.
Referring to this document, the Lutheran World Alliance at the beginning of July shared a message to the member churches “Be a church of hope – Resist the forces of political exclusion.” The negative effects of populist agitation for public life are named and the instrumentalization of the Christian tradition for populist interests condemned. The churches are encouraged to be active in three ways: first, observing developments
attentively and critically in prayer and theological judgment, secondly, being socially engaged for justice and diversity and resisting oppressive and excluding systems.
“As the Lutheran World Council, we urge dialogue and exchange within and between the churches – to break out of the vicious circle of fear, hatred and hostility, to overcome the forces of ethno-nationalist populism. We call upon the churches to test the spirits, be engaged in society and resist on the foundation of faith, hope and love to which Christ calls us…
The attitude toward life of the engaged community of the different is not simply selfevident in society… A radical and contested attitude toward life is living and radiates when it can be actively and openly made visible in the world.
Simone Sinn is a lecturer for ecumenical theology at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossy, Switzerland and co-worker at the World Council of Churches Commission for Faith and Church Order.