EXC 212 A07 - Religion, Values, and the Welfare State: The Significance of Religious Communities to the Normative Background of European Welfare States

Basic data for this project

Description

The debates on the self-understanding and the foundational values of the “European social model” play an elemental role in the European Union’s processes of identity construction. The modern European welfare states arose from complex constellations of cooperation, struggle, and transformation between state and religious communities. However, the study of those constellations and their impact on the different models has just begun. It is obvious that the normative “substructure” of the modern welfare state has been – and is still today – shaped to a great degree, if in highly diffuse ways, by religiously conveyed welfare and poverty relief impulses and patterns of values, although the spectrum of participating confessions and religions has considerably expanded through the migration of workers and the individualisation of modern religion. The rise of the “religious substructure" of modern welfare state arrangements has to do with a complex situation. Since it is necessary to take into account the nationally and regionally differing influence of specific religions and confessions or currents, the specific type of the respective welfare models, as well as the differences and various mechanisms within the religious communities, a two-stage approach suggests itself. First, the study will focus on the relatively familiar situation in Germany, where sources are easily available; in a second phase the view will be directed at other types of European welfare states. Whereas the relatively small segment of newer studies on welfare that are interested in religious influences pursue a political, scientific, or religious studies approach and are limited to western Europe, this study will expand this view both geographically and in terms of its perspective. On the one hand, the previous research will be expanded with a view to eastern and south-eastern Europe, on the other hand the project pursues the goal of integrating a theological perspective, i. e. a view from within the religious communities, into the whole tableau, which can build upon preliminary findings by the proposal’s applicants. The project pursues three intentions on each of the stages. While the first aims at establishing an internet-based, international, interdisciplinary, inter-confessional and inter-religious research network, the second is oriented towards the organisation of an internationally composed academic conference and the third towards regional events and publications for elucidating the relevance of the subject matter in the political community.