Religion and Social Transformations

Volume 2

David Herbert

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351751490
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This title was first published in 2002: Religion and Social Transformations examines the reciprocal relationship between religion, modernity and social change. The book focuses on the world's three major missionary religions - Buddhism, Christianity and Islam.

It explores how these three traditions are responding to some of the most challenging issues associated with globalization, including the role of religion in the fall of Communism; the tension between religion and feminism; the compatibility of religion and human rights; and whether ancient religions can accommodate new challenges such as environmentalism.

The five textbooks and Reader that make up the Religion Today Open University/Ashgate series are: From Sacred Text to Internet; Religion and Social Transformations; Perspectives on Civil Religion; Global Religious Movements in Regional Context; Belief Beyond Boundaries; Religion Today: A Reader

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

Religion and the ‘Great Transformation’ in Poland and East Germany

DAVID HERBERT

Introduction

It is not important whether there will be capitalism in Poland. It is not important whether there will be welfare – the most important thing is that Poland should be Catholic.

(Deputy Polish Prime Minister Henryk Goryszewski, 1993, quoted in Brzezinski, 2000, p. 197)

As East Germans and East German Christians adjusted to a new way of life, many of them fell silent, unable to say exactly who they were and where they fit in a new Germany.

(Burgess, 1997, p. 140)

These quotations suggest something of the contrast between the roles that religion has played in the cases of Poland and East Germany since the ‘Great Transformation’: the collapse of communist regimes across the region in the autumn and winter of 1989–90, and in their place the emergence, in most cases, of fledgling democracies and market economies (Ramet, 1995). While Catholicism, as the first quotation suggests, has been supported by some of Poland’s post-communist governments as central to the identity of the Polish nation at the highest level, the second quotation reflects the German churches’ experience of disorientation. Furthermore, Poland has the highest rate of church attendance in post-communist Europe, East Germany amongst the lowest.¹

However, in spite of these differences there are also parallels and similarities both in the history and contemporary situation of the Christian churches in each country. First, for both, World War II marked a change from a relatively plural religious situation to one in which a single church became dominant. Thus, although historically Poland had a large Jewish population and straddled the border between Eastern Christianity (Orthodoxy) and Western Christianity (Catholicism and Protestantism), after World War II border changes and the destruction of Poland’s Jews, Poland was left with a 95 per cent Roman Catholic population, with only small Greek Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim minorities. Germany, the home of the European Reformation, also straddles a division between mostly Catholic southern Europe and predominantly Protestant northern Europe. However, the division of Germany following World War II created an East German state (German Democratic Republic, GDR) in which approximately 90 per cent of the population was nominally Protestant, with most belonging to the Lutheran dominated Evangelical Church (Evangelische Kirche Deutsche, EKD), leaving a Catholic minority of fewer than ten per cent. Second, in both countries Christian institutions (Catholic and Protestant respectively) share a similar legacy from the communist period, including communist hostility to and attempts to exclude religion from public life. Third, in both societies religion played a significant role in the transition from communist to democratic regimes, which we shall examine in further detail below. Fourth, in the post-communist period, the major church institutions have struggled to face up to the challenge of a dramatically altered role, from being the principal institutional channel of opposition to communist regimes, and hence a focus for national unity, to becoming one group among many competing for this role in the more open civil and political societies of a democracy. Symptomatically, in both cases coalitions of interest groups united through the churches fell apart almost as soon as the communist regimes collapsed. Complexities for religion’s role in post-communist society in each case also arise from the fact that adjustment is occurring not just on a national level, but as part of the increasing integration of these societies, economies, and polities into regional (e.g. European) and global systems. Reunification has made eastern Germany part of the German federal system and the European Community (EC), while Poland has joined NATO and also seeks EC membership.

As a result of these different yet related histories, religious traditions in Poland and eastern Germany face complex challenges for traditional Christian models of the relationship between church, state and society. The Polish Catholic Church (PCC) and the EKD in eastern Germany illustrate two such models.

The PCC illustrates the ‘national church’ model in which the church assumes an identity between church and nation. Thus it seeks to influence society by playing a major, indeed dominant, role in the mainstream of society. Since 1989, it has sought to shape attitudes and behaviour and to exercise power through the state (e.g. in law and the constitution, and public education in schools), political society (some direct involvement in political campaigning), and civil society (through charities, publishing, radio, and local and national voluntary organizations). The pluralism of contemporary societies challenges this model both at a practical and ideological level. Practically, increased movement of people across national boundaries and the diversity this brings makes any monopolistic identification between church and nation difficult to sustain, even in Poland. Ideologically, the concept of pluralism, which underlies modern constitutional democracy favours the separation of powers (state, judiciary and party political) and of church and state, which sit uneasily with a concept of a national community united by religion. As we shall see, this has led to conflict between the church and those favouring a more secular model of democracy.

In contrast, the EKD in East Germany made a virtue of its enforced separation from the state under communism, favouring a second traditional model of church/state/society relations which might be called the ‘prophetic minority model’. As a powerless minority, the church saw itself as able to exercise an independent voice, at one level at least, unencumbered by the compromises that wielding political power brings. The growth of opposition groups on church premises (the only public space available) contributed to this self image, and the church was able to identify itself with the early Christian church as a powerless, persecuted minority. However, the new relationship to the state and western churches in a reunited Germany has proved intensely problematic, compromising an understanding of church as an independent ‘prophetic’ witness on the margins of a largely secularized society. In particular, the church has been confronted with the extent of its compromises with the state under communism (collaboration with the secret police, the Stasi or Staatssicherheitdienst), and the extent of its financial dependence on the western churches.

Thus the opening of their national frontiers to wider regional and global forces has not proved an entirely comfortable experience for Christians in either Poland or the former East Germany, raising questions about the traditional models of church-state-society relations they had adopted and adapted for their own contexts.

In this chapter we are concerned to find out what these two cases can tell us about the relationship between religion and social change in the contemporary world. Two strands will run through our account of Poland and Germany: first, the relationships between religion, state and society, and second, Christian understanding of these relationships (because Christianity is the major religious tradition in these societies). We begin with a brief examination of the relationships between religion, state and society in the formative period of Christianity, because this informs and provides models for later Christian thinking and action. We then outline the role of religion in the history of Poland and East Germany leading up to the ‘Great Transformation’ of 1989–90, and finally examine in more detail the challenges of the post-communist period.

Church and state in early Christianity

You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles [non-Jews] lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first must be slave of all.

(Mark 10:42–4, RSV, 1973)

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

(Romans 13:1, RSV, 1973)

These two passages suggest tensions within the New Testament concerning attitudes to ruling authorities. The first, attributed to Jesus in Mark’s gospel, implies some criticism of the Roman style of rule, and reflects the experience of living in an occupied territory. The second, from the highly influential early convert to Christianity Paul, attributes divine legitimacy to the ruling authorities, and encourages obedience to them.

However, both need to put into context: both men were, according to Christian tradition, executed by the Roman authorities, and Paul in particular was continually harassed by them, as both his letters and the record of his journeys in the Acts of the Apostles indicate. Admonition to obedience then, does not imply approval, any more than criticism of style implies rebellion. None the less, the fact remains that Romans 13:1 has become a pretext through history to provide legitimacy for theories of the state to permit anything that a ruling authority does or commands its subjects to do, an understanding which was to prove particularly influential in mainstream German Protestant theology, at least until controversies leading up to and during World War II (Krusche, 1994, p.324). In reaction, later German theologians have turned to the counter-tradition associated with Jesus’ statement: ‘it shall not be so among you’, and this second tradition proved influential in the peace movement in both parts of the divided Germany (see for example Wengst, 1987).

Jesus’ words can be related to the context of the early Christian movement. Christianity began in Judea, a province of the Roman Empire. Jesus and his first followers were Jewish, and Christianity first emerged as a movement within Judaism, but had become a clearly separate group by the end of the first century ce. One reason for this was the failed Jewish rebellion against Rome (66–70 ce), which led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jewish people. Another reason for the split with Judaism was that as Christianity spread along the trade routes of the Roman Empire, it made converts from other religious groups, so that these soon began to outnumber Jewish followers. Tensions over the Jewish identity of early followers are already found in Paul’s letters (e.g. Corinthians 1:8–9; Galatians 5), probably written between 45 and 60 ce, the earliest documents in the New Testament. None the less, the split with Judaism did not improve the early Christian movement’s standing with the authorities, and Christians experienced intermittent persecution over the next two hundred and fifty years.

Thus emerging from a minority religion (Judaism) within the Roman Empire has made Christianity’s relationship to state power problematic from the beginning. As the German New Testament scholar Klaus Wengst comments – as a supporter of the West German peace movement during the ‘Cold War’ – with regard to Mark 10:42–4:

Both a sober and critical view is taken of the central feature of the Pax Romana [‘Peace of Rome’], the way in which rule is exercised... Here there is no mincing of words, but it is clearly stated that the existing ‘order of peace’ is based on the oppressive rule of force... The alternative which Jesus puts forward shows that he is not resigned... peace based on an oppressive force is not what Jesus wants.

(Wengst, 1987, pp.56–7)

None the less, private criticism shared with his disciples does not imply public confrontation, and Jesus appears to have tried to avoid confrontation with the Roman authorities (Matthew 22:21). However, a central theme in Jesus’ teaching, the concept of the kingdom of God/heaven (in Mark and Luke/Matthew respectively) may also be seen as presenting an implicit challenge to the ruling authorities. Scholars have argued extensively about the meaning of the phrase, but the most widely shared view at present is that it refers to some kind of alternative order – God’s rule – and is thus at least implicitly threatening to political authorities. Furthermore, while the present dimension of this alternative order is present in ways which may not directly confront the Roman authorities – in changed relationships, in healings, etc. – Jesus also envisaged a future in which the kingdom would break into the present order in a more forceful way.

Thus the idea of ‘the kingdom’ presented, at least at an implicit level, a two-fold challenge to the Roman authorities – as an alternative system of values and social practices in the present, against which secular authorities could be judged lacking, and as a threat for the future. In this way the question mark over the loyalty of Christian subjects which later led to Christian persecution can be seen as having its origins in the teaching of Jesus. Certainly the crucifixion of Jesus suggests he was perceived as a threat by the Roman authorities (Sanders, 1985). However, as we shall see below, on the basis of Jesus’ sayings such as ‘my kingdom is not of this world’ (John 18: 36), Luther constructed a doctrine of ‘two kingdoms’ that made a clear distinction between spiritual and temporal spheres, strongly legitimizing secular authorities in the latter sphere.

The Romans passage has, as already stated, been used to legitimate governing authorities regardless of their behaviour. The context is one in which Paul is admonishing Christians to non-retaliatory behaviour, much in the style of Jesus: ‘Bless those who persecute you... never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God... if your enemy is hungry, feed him’ (Romans 12:14–21; parallels in Matthew 5:44 and Luke 6:27–8). The main intention then is not to expound a theory of the state. Rather, obedience to the ruling authorities may be a way to avoid persecution as far as possible, as may the other recommendations Paul makes. Furthermore, such behaviour clearly places limits on responses to the authorities by Christians. Thus, some commentators argue, the justification of state power should always be considered in the context of th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART ONE
• PART TWO
• Acknowledgements
• Index