Processus confessionis in German and ecumenical experience

Ulrich Duchrow

Thesis 1	Thesis 4	Thesis 7
Thesis 2	Thesis 5	Thesis 8
Thesis 3	Thesis 6	Thesis 9

The German experience dates back to the Confessing Church in the context of the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945, to the debates on status confessionis related to weapons of mass destruction (presented by Ulrich Möller in this consultation), and to the responses to the decisions by the LWF in 1977 and Warc in 1982, declaring apartheid a case of unequivocal confession, and to the call for a conciliar process of mutual commitment to justice, peace and the integrity of creation (JPIC) issued by the sixth sssembly of the WCC in Vancouver 1983. Although all this happened in the 20th century it has deep roots in history.

The cases of Nazi totalitarianism, atomic bombs and apartheid all concerned church state relationships - at least primarily. They were also relatively focused and clear, even brutally clear. JPIC is much more complex, as is the global economy. Here the church encounters a mix of politics and economics, and civil society in all its variety. In raising the question of processus confessionis or even status confessionis here we enter new territory. What can we learn from the previous experiences for our orientation?

Thesis 1

Opposing global economic injustice and the destruction of nature for the sake of God-given life has to start with the confession of sin. As Christians and churches, particularly in Western Europe, we have for more than 500 years been deeply involved in the development of the imperial capitalist global economy threatening the inhabited earth today. Only a confession of our personal and corporate denial of God's love revealed in Jesus Christ can open the way for justification and renewal.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his Ethics confronts us with a profound reflection on the "apostasis" (Abfall) of the West (Abendland) caused by the guilt of the church. Repentance is only possible in admitting not just one thing or another but that we have fallen away from Christ. The place where this can happen is the church as the community of people who are ready to confess their own sin and the West's falling away from Christ as the guilt of the church, personally and corporately. Bonhoeffer expresses this by commenting on the ten commandments.

With regard to the first commandment he writes: "She has often been untrue to her office of guardianship and to her office of comfort. And through this she has often denied to the outcast and to the despised the compassion which she owes them. She was silent when she should have cried out because the blood of the innocent was crying aloud to heaven." In relation to the third commandment concerning the Sabbath he writes: "She has incurred the guilt of restlessness and disquiet, and also of the exploitation of labour even beyond the working weekday"; and to the seventh against stealing: "The church confesses that she has witnessed in silence the spoliation and exploitation of the poor and the enrichment and corruption of the strong."

And summarizing: "The church confesses herself guilty of breaking all ten commandments, and in this she confesses her defection from Christ. She has not borne witness to the truth of God in such a manner that all pursuit of truth, all science, can percieve that it has its origin in this truth. She has not proclaimed the justice of God in such a manner that all true justice must see in it the origin of its own essential nature. She has not succeeded in making the providence of God a matter of such certain belief that all human economy must regard it as the source from which it receives its task."¹

Only in accepting all this as her own sin and having Christ forgive and sanctify her can the church call others to join in this confession. Only in this way might there be a chance of the West repenting as a shadow of the Church's repentance.

This is not a pious formula. Everybody is affected personally by the global capitalist economy penetrating every aspect of life, rich and poor. Jesus, when speaking about Mammon in his times, challenged not only the rich in their greed but also the poor, affected by the economy of Mammon in the form of the worry it causes them.

But corporately too, the church is deeply involved, historically and at present. Historically we have not yet seen a corporate apology for the complicity and sometimes even active support of the church and her missions for the conquista, slave trade, exploitation of workers etc. - neither in 1992 nor in 1997 at the second European ecumenical assembly. The confession of the Pope in 2000 only referred to church members who had sinned. There is also a more subtle allegiance of the churches to the capitalist system. Bonhoeffer, according to a report on one of his lectures in Berlin in 1932, follows Paul Schutz (and Max Weber) in seeing the West as following two secular religions:

"1. Imperiale Religion. Der Mensch ist Gott. Es ist Mission des Westens im Osten, Mission der Machtidee

2. Kapitalistische Religion. Kapitalismus und Heilsgewißheit sind Milchbrüder. Beide sind a) Zugriffe auf Besitz b) Zugriffe auf Gott. Von daher Protest des Bolschewismus gegen den kapitalistischen Christus begründet."²

This historical reflection is important because it shows that the present imperial capitalist system is deeply rooted and is not just a political and economic question. The question is: Who is God? Is God the one who guarantees success for the few elect or is God the giver of life to all people and creatures? Is Christ, the Messiah, hidden in the hungry or in the rich? Here the question of confessing sin leads directly to the analysis of our theologies as well as of what is called the present "economization of the church" - we will return to that later.

Thesis 2

The biblical starting point of repentance and change is Christ's inclusive grace. By hiding in the hungry, the thirsty and all those whose basic needs are not satisfied by the prevailing economic system, yes, by hiding in the suffering creatures he touches us thus leading us to confession of our sin, to justification and sanctification. The "human one" in Mt 25.31ff is identical with the justifying Christ in Paul's letter to the Romans. So the point of departure of confessing is the cry of the poor and the earth not as an ethical challenge but as the beginning of saving community with Christ.

The most devastating aberration of traditional Protestantism is the individualization of faith and salvation, disconnecting the saving Christ from the Messiah in the poor. The universal sin calling forth the wrath of God - from which we are saved through faith in Christ, according to Paul's letter to the Romans - is godlessness manifesting itself as injustice, particularly as greed towards death (Rom 1.18ff). The result of forgiveness is the new community of love in Christ, love in the form of creating inclusive justice (shalom) towards life (Rom 8.6) - even including all creatures still crying in birth pain (Rom 8.18ff.). It is the joyful participation in God's kingdom which is "justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Rom 14.17).

It is no accident that in First Corinthians Paul characterizes the majority of the members of the congregation as foolish, weak, low and despised (1 Cor 1.27f.). It is essential for the God of the poor not to choose the wise and the powerful (1 Cor 1.26). So it is not only the classical passage of Mt 25.31ff that identifies the Messiah with the poor and deprived; it is also a matter of course for St Paul, who has been the main witness for (against?) the individualistic Protestant heresy.

Look also at the First Testament, the Hebrew Bible. God's first self-revelation by name is connected with listening to the cries of the exploited and oppressed slaves in Egypt (Exodus 3). The prophet Jeremiah - like all the other prophets - identifies the knowledge of God with bringing justice to the poor (Jer 22.16). In all legal reforms of Israel, God wants to overcome the crying of the people (eg Ex 22.26). The people of God have to create alternatives to the contemporary systems of injustice. Precisely that is their mission among the peoples (cf Isaiah 2).

All this seems nothing new now that the slogan of God's preferential option for the poor has been adopted even by World Bank rhetoric. However, what I see hardly anywhere is the consistent identification of Christ in the poor and the saving Christ. The normal picture still is: Here we have individual faith and salvation, which has nothing to do with our economic context; and, as a consequence of our individual faith, we are active in love and do some good for the poor.

This is also behind the fact that people question the whole status confessionis approach in relation to apartheid or weapons of mass destruction or the global economy. They argue that this is a political issue and not a matter for the church proper, which has to do with (individual) salvation. And even those who defend it speak about a "status confessionis in ethical matters".

My hunch is that our processus confessionis will lead nowhere - at least in Protestant churches - if we do not tackle this most basic question. One of the most contested words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer was his statement: "Whoever separates himself knowingly from the Confessing Church in Germany separates himself from salvation".³ From Bonhoeffer's text "Zur Frage nach der Kirchengemeinschaft", it is clear that confessing does not ask questions about the "borders (??) of the church", it calls for a positive proclamation of the Gospel. Gollwitzer clarified this in distinguishing between the people gathered in the Confessing Church and the word of God and sacraments gathering the Confessing Church. Only in the second sense is Bonhoeffer's statement to be understood.

If what I have indicated is correct, concerning the identity of Christ in the hungry etc. and Christ the saviour, the consequence of Bonhoeffer's statement for the processus confessionis would mean: "Whoever separates themselves knowingly from the church of the poor, separates themselves from salvation". Again this does not mean legalistically determining the borders of the church but the joyful gospel where we can enter into community with Christ.

We should spend a lot of time meditating on this most basic question. If we fail here we fail in everything else. If we decide to follow Bonhoeffer in this way it will have crucial consequences not only for our normal theologizing, but particularly for the necessary revision of our catechism work and our liturgies and hymns.

Thesis 3

Comparing the issue of the processus confessionis in the context of global economic injustice and ecological destruction with previous experiences of confessing churches the starting point is not the state imposing a foreign law on the church like in Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa. The state is only indirectly involved in letting economic and financial mechanisms produce systemic injustice and destruction of nature, or actively promoting this. However, this neoliberal reality is as totalitarian as the previous instances, only in more subtle ways.

Bonhoeffer analysed the causes of the confessing struggle in relation to the state with the categories "too much law and order" (Recht und Ordnung) and "too little law and order".⁴ Too much law and order happens when the state robs the church its own right of proclamation and faith. Too little law and order happens when one group of citizens is deprived from their rights. Then the church has three options: 1. to remind the state of its responsibilities within the borders of its mandate; 2. to serve the victims of the state in solidarity; 3. when the state ruthlessly violates its borders, when "the coach-driver is drunk", the church has to take direct political action and "put a spoke in the wheel". This is the case when the Nazi state deprives the Jews of their civil rights and when it forces the church to exclude baptized Jews from membership. Here the church is in statu confessionis (p.354).

It has to be underlined that Bonhoeffer links the status confessionis not only to the interference of the state in the church but also to its victimizing the Jews, thus overstepping its mandate within borders in two directions and threatening its own existence. It then finds itself in the state of self-denial. In this case Bonhoeffer sees the necessity of a conciliar event, an "evangelical council" in order to make a decision in this exceptional situation. The Confessing Church only acted on the church-related aspect. There is no allusion to the Jews in the Barmen Declaration of the first confessing conciliar, synodical meeting. After the war Karl Barth, its main author, confessed this as sin. The German church leaders even left it out of their Stuttgart confession of sin in 1945. The Dar es Salaam statement of the LWF in 1977 was the first expressly to see a status confessionis: when "political and social systems become as perverted and oppressive" as the apartheid regime has, they call for public and unequivocal rejection.

But what about the economy - our new issue or at least newly discovered challenge to confession? Dar-es-Salaam already speaks not only of political systems but also of social systems that may become completely perverted. In the Lutheran context this relates back to the doctrine of the three orders, estates or - as Bonhoeffer puts it mandates: state, economy and church. According to this teaching, going back even to the Middle Ages, God provides humanity with the capacity to organize itself as a community in order to survive in human ways in the midst of creation. So economic, political and faith community structures as such are seen as gracious gifts of God. They have specific functions.

Economic activity has the function of sustaining life in its different dimensions. The economy produces and distributes the means of life for consumption. God is not only seen as the giver of all the wonderful gifts of creation, the elements of life, but also as the one who sees to it that economic structures are organized for everyone's benefit. So the First Testament lays down laws against impoverishment enabling everyone to live (eg Lev 25.35f.). And even eschatological hope is pictured in this context:

"For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;...
"No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a life time;...
"They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit;
They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat;...
My chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labour in vain...(Is 65.17ff.)

The first conclusion concerning the new issue of economy as a question of confession is that the punctum saliens, the focal point is life - and death. Eberhard Bethge maintains that every status confessionis has such a focal point.⁵ For the confessing church in Nazi Germany he identifies the "solus". Against the claim of the Nazis, "One people, one empire, one leader", Barmen says "solus Christus", "sola scriptura". Against apartheid, which means fundamentally separation, the LWF and Warc say "unum", stressing the oneness of the church and the oneness of humanity. So, against an economy producing death, for people and nature, the church has to confess life. If this is true the confessing struggle for an economy of life would be related to the struggle against the weapons of mass destruction the focus of which is also life. It was a providential coincidence that the theme of the Vancouver Assembly calling for the conciliar process of mutual commitment to justice, peace and the integrity of creation at the beginning of the neoliberal phase in our recent history was "Jesus Christ, the Life of the World".

But before we look at this context let us have a look at biblical history to see whether it provides us with any clues for solving our problem.⁶ There I distinguish four models of economic organization.

• The first model, operating from about 1250 to 1000 BC, is characterized by a household economy and clan structures. Politically there is no "state" but a self-organized assembly of the representatives of the clans.
• About 1000 BC Israel adopts the king system from its Ancient Near East environment against the resistance of at least a minority of the free farmers, thereby opening a period of struggle to tame this system which develops "feudal" class structures.
• In the eighth century, coming most probably from Greece, a new economy spreads in the region building on property-interest-money mechanisms which lead to competition between the free farmers splitting them more and more on, the one hand, into a group of people getting in debt, losing their land that had been pawned, and losing their freedom in debt slavery and, on the other, into those who become rich land and slave owners. Here the prophets and legal reformers try to counteract this development in Judah after the breakdown of the northern kingdom.
• Another feature is the development of empires concerning the smaller nations like Israel and the obligation to pay tribute. With the Hellenistic and Roman empires these become totalitarian, so that the people have to suffer from all negative features of the different economic models, the feudal, the property interest-money economy and tribute (cf. Neh 5.1-5).

In relation to all these models the God of the Bible shows care for the victims of the system, sends prophets, enables legal reforms and gives strength for resistance. This last response is particularly unfolded in apocalyptic literature (eg Daniel 3). Jesus lives in solidarity with the victims enabling them to build alternatives and directly confronts the temple as a centre of an economic system that victimizes people - the main cause of his cross. But his resurrection empowers people to build a new community sharing property, thus having no poor among them and witnessing to Jesus' resurrection life (Acts 4.32ff.).

What are the mechanisms of death in the present global economy challenging the church to confess the God of life?

In order to identify the cutting edge we have to compare the preceding period of "social market economy" with the currently dominating neoliberal model. When the classical liberal era ended in the disaster of the great depression in 1929 and two world wars, the western industrial nations tried to tame the capitalist mechanisms. In the USA this started even in the thirties with the New Deal. West Germany introduced the social market economy. Briefly, this meant that the national governments regulated the market economy in various ways. They gave the market a political framework, eg anti-monopoly laws; they introduced progressive tax in order to redistribute the unequal income; they balanced money stability, full employment and trade etc. The effect was that the blue-collar workers and more vulnerable sections of society were strengthened by political measures. The result was that, percentage-wise, the income of the poorer people in society grew more than that of the richer ones.

There were several reasons for this move: the competition with socialism, the strength of the labour movement, and the "Fordist" model which was based on mass production and, therefore, needed buying power of the masses for mass consumption. The one problem which makes this model unrepeatable was that it was build on unlimited growth which turned out to be ecologically unsustainable.

What led to the change towards the neoliberal model of economy? In the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 Keynes, the famous economist and leader of the British delegation, had tried to design structures and institutions for a socially regulated market economy at a global level. The USA under the leadership of White refused. Their interest was as much liberalization as possible in the interest of their overwhelmingly strong companies and their strong dollar. The compromise achieved in Bretton Woods broke piece by piece and gave way step by step to neoliberal policies.

First broke the monetary system of fixed exchange rates between the gold-based dollar and the other major currencies in 1971 and finally in 1973. There were several concrete reasons. The European banks, after getting strong again, had outplayed national currency regulations by starting to operate directly on the dollar markets creating regulation free bank zones ("eurodollars"). The result was increased competition and growing speculation on the currency markets. Today only about 2% of the daily transactions (1.5 trillion dollars) are related to the real economy, the rest is speculation.

In the same year 1973 the US plotted with the Chilean military in order to murder President Allende and destabilize the country to avoid giving socialism a chance to win a country democratically. The dictator Pinochet gave the Chicago school in the person of Milton Friedmann the first chance to introduce pure neoliberalism. This, however, is only the tip of the iceberg. The implantation of dictators by the United States can be seen all over the world: in Persia, Brazil, Indonesia (Suharto), Philippines (Marcos), South Korea (Park), the Congo (Mobutu), Central America, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, etc., etc. In all these countries industry moved into the hands of transnational corporations with some profit for the corrupt ruling classes, particularly the military. It was also at this time that these countries contracted the original debt with western banks.

When in a second step of deregulation in 1979 the Federal Reserve Bank of the USA introduced monetarist money policies giving the transnational capital markets a chance to determine interest rates they immediately went up, stimulated even more by the arms race on credit introduced by Reagan in 1981. The result is well-known. In 1982 the first country, Mexico, went bankrupt because of unpayable debts. This over indebtedness of many countries of the South in turn was used by the rich countries and banks to blackmail the governments by introducing enforced structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), reorganizing the economy of these countries towards export goods in order to get hard currency to pay interest, at the same time cutting public expenditure for social, cultural and health purposes and thus splitting their societies more and more into impoverished majorities and winning minorities.

Another mechanism is tax avoidance and tax flight of capital through deregulated transnational market structures. There are several ways to withdraw capital property from its social obligation, which in Germany is even against our constitution (Art.14.2). TNCs, for example, press weak governments in the South to give them tax freedom or low taxes. So they write high bills there and low ones in the countries of the North (transfer price manipulation). The most obvious case is that financial capital goes to tax havens There are many ways to rob the public of participating in economic gains.⁷ The general rule is: privatizing the profits and socializing the losses,

The underlying interest of deregulation and liberalization is privatization. Privatizing means turning as much as possible of creation into private property for gainful use

The main goal of property in a capitalist system is to increase property, not to satisfy personal or public needs The main means of doing so are the money mechanisms. So gigantic sums of capital circle the globe to be invested in order to accumulate more As the highest profits are collected by speculative financial investments this outcome is the yardstick for the whole economy At the present time the profit expectation is 15% plus This destroys long-range economic planning in the interest of people.

We cannot go through all the devastating aspects of privatization. Burning issues are the patenting of the seeds and the genes. The most drastic example is happening in Bolivia these days. The government has privatized the water and promised the buying company 16% profit. This has increased the price for water by 20-21% When tile people protested the government promised to renegotiate the contract with the company - without success When the people protested again, the government started shooting them And the company is taking the government to court on WTO rules.

Altogether the sketch of the dimensions of neoliberal capitalist mechanisms show how they lead to death. It is well documented that 30 to 40 million people die every year from these mechanisms, half of them children under the age of five. God has given plenty to feed them all. However, the present imperial capitalist system is using the gifts of creation to put everything into capital accumulation for fewer and fewer property owners.

It is important to realize that the global deregulation of capital mechanisms by neoliberal governments and their undemocratic multilateral agencies like the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, is creating an economy with autonomous laws, the laws of circular capital accumulation by investing for profits only in order to reinvest for profits, sacrificing people and the earth. The Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) was to be the climax of this mechanism. Hence

Thesis 4

The political deregulation of the maximization of capital economy leads to the imperial totalitarian rule of money which is a law unto itself and devouring life. This is by analogy with what Article 2 of the Barmen Theological Declaration rejected.

Back in 1980 Bertram Gross wrote the book Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America.⁸ He links fascism with western colonial history and states, "The Nazi war crimes consisted largely of inflicting on white Europeans levels of brutality that had previously been reserved only for Asians, Africans and the native population of North, central and South America." (p.2). He goes on to say, "Sheer brutality, however... does not qualify a regime as fascist; its regime must also be interlocked with concentrated capital."

He calls this the coalition between big business and big government which takes different forms in dependent states in the periphery and centre states.

Johan Galtung confirms this analysis by saying: "Nazism is occidental civilization in extremis".⁹ Later he states: "All of this can be operated softly like in Northern Europe or very heavily like in South America on the extreme end of that dimension the Nazi operation of capitalism, is located And this, of course, is consonant with the key hypothesis that Nazism in particular and Fascism in general is a phenomenon that comes into being when capitalism is in crisis and is no longer capable of operating (meaning giving adequate returns for investment) smoothly or softly" (p.9),

This means that because of the present overweight of the western empire under the hegemony of the USA it can afford to propagate democracy -with the understanding that the elected governments are of minor importance.¹⁰ The real decisions are made by those who own and control capital. This is why the former president of the German Central Bank, Hans Tietmeyer, openly called the financial markets the "fifth power" controlling the governments. This means, in final analysis, we have a totalitarian rule of money. But money not in a vague sense. The key components we have to analyse in the processus confessionis is the combination of global empire and totalitarian capital mechanisms.

In Bonhoeffer's categories our situation is at the same time characterized by too little and too much law and order exercised by the state. Too little, because the state is more and more giving up its mandate to provide for the public good, meaning that more and more people can be excluded from decent living or even a livelihood at all by economic mechanisms. Too much, because the governments of the rich countries make the rules and regulations for capital exerting totalitarian rule. The real power is in the hands of those who own and control capital for the sake of capital accummulation as the highest value. But the governments of the rich countries are co responsible because they allow this to happen.

The communication system is largely owned and controlled by the same capital power. So the prevailing system can dominate without the additional brutal methods of fascism. It rules by ruling the hearts and minds of the people. And also the imperial big government(s) can use these means for making people agree if necessary to the more brutal military interventions, as we saw in the cases of the wars against Iraq and Yugoslavia. As we know the whole western military set-up is primarily geared not to self-defence but to protecting the Western economic interests worldwide. Barmen rejected the heresy which says that there are realms with autonomous laws which are not subjected to God's loving will and which do not need justification and sanctification by Christ. The present system, deliberately built on the deregulation of market mechanisms privatizing the gains and socializing the losses (including the ecological losses), is tending towards this autonomy, as a matter of fact. Of course, there are remnants of social and ecological regulations on national levels. But as the national governments cannot cope with global capital and as the cooperation of the rich countries in the most powerful international institutions support the absolute priority of capital interest the system as a whole structurally operates as an autonomous mechanism for the sake of capital accumulation in the hands of the few at the cost of the life of the many and the Earth.

This means that, on the basis of Barmen, Art. 2, we have to challenge theologies who either actively or passively support this global system of rule by capital. In Europe we have only a few active supporters of the neoliberal ideology on the formal theological scene. However, in Germany we have a party which calls itself Christian, the CDU, which links neoliberalism with Christ's precious name. The more important problem lies with a traditional neo-Lutheran position, a dualistic two kingdoms doctrine. This has various facets. One version claims that political and economic things have their own laws governed by reason, operated by experts. This position is also widely spread in the congregations. It wrongly identifies worldly matters with "adiaphora", middle things which can be handled this or the other way around without putting them to the test by faith and love. The other, more sophisticated one, says: we live in a democracy. Here the church can express basic values, which then the experts have to implement in details which the church cannot assess. Or, the church can even put its finger on certain wrong developments but in a democracy it cannot go further. This position has not realized that global capital has increasingly eroded democracy and become totalitarian so that Bonhoeffer's third option comes into play: putting a spoke in the wheel, resist and work for alternatives, inspired by the biblical traditions. But how?

Thesis 5

Realizing the pervertedness and the totalitarian, life-destroying character of the present imperial, neoliberal, capitalist economy, churches in the processus confessionis have to first look at their own proclamation, teaching, liturgy, order and practice, making sure that in al/ these dimensions they confess the life-giving and life-sustaining loving God, Father and Mother, and Jesus Christ, who lives the good news to the poor and confronts the powers of death giving his own life for the people of God, and the Holy Spirit empowering us to resist, to endure and to struggle for alternatives.

In the past the German Protestant churches were quite assimilated to the government. Barmen and the Confessing Church were the first break through to an independent church. But after the war the forces in the tradition of the state church won over the forces of the Confessing Church. The new concept was "folk church" keeping certain links to government, especially through state-collected church taxes, public money for diaconal work, state-paid theological education, Christian education in public schools, military chaplaincy etc. This gave a certain freedom to the church which has been also used to some extent by critical memoranda and statements. However, systemic critique and intervention in controversial issues like e.g. the recent tax reform is practically absent. On this occasion the government, giving a lot of privileges to big capital, exempted the church from certain effects of the reform which would have cost the church about 15% of its tax income. The church in turn kept quiet about the tax-breaks given to big capital -just as one example. The German churches started late to realize there is a problem with the economy. As late as 1993 the EKD published a memorandum claiming we still live in a social market economy and expressly rejecting the possibility and necessity of regarding economic matters a matter of confession. In 1997 a joint statement of both Protestant and Roman Catholic churches went further in warning against reverting to a "pure market economy" and even asking the government to write a wealth report. But there was no follow-up in concrete terms as mentioned above.

What is more alarming, however, is the "economization" of the churches. Priorities are developed basically according to money considerations. My church in Baden ran a priority-setting process, organized by a PR firm according to criteria like "What is in?", without any theological criteria. The result is that Mission and Ecumenism, Urban Industrial Mission and university chaplaincies, those branches which raised the question of economy more than others, got the lowest rating and consequently will receive disproportionately high cuts in their staff and budget. The finance officer constantly blocks any transparency in his investment policies and some years ago, when the synod was finally motivated to have a special meeting on justice in the framework of the conciliar process, it decided to "talk about the justice of God, not about global economic justice".

I am not saying this happens in all churches. Ulrich Möller, for example, can tell better stories. And in Bavaria a new initiative of pastors and congregational members has been formed on "The church in a competitive society" trying to struggle against the economization of the church under the title "Listen to the Gospel". This listening has to be done in relation to reviewing proclamation, teaching, liturgy, order and (financial) practices of the churches. But what could be the decision process to do so?

Thesis 6

The processus confessionis is not an adult education programme. It has to lead to a corporate decision (status confessionis or not). This requires a conciliar, synodical process of decision making.

The decision of Warc in Debrecen to call for a processus confessionis regarding global economic injustice and ecological destruction uses the concepts of "recognition, education and confession" in order to describe the process. This terminology is a variation of the Confessing Church triad "recognition (Erkennen), declaration (Feststellen) and response (Antworten)" of a status confessionis as systematized with Ernst Wolf and Eberhard Bethge, similar to the liberation theology dimensions of "seeing, judging, acting". However, the Debrecen terminology enlarges recognition into recognition and education, on the one hand, and draws together declaration and response into the one concept of confession, on the other. The first variation is understandable as underlining the complexity of the object of recognition and the necessity of an intensive learning as the churches in general have neglected economic issues for such a long time. The second change is more problematic. Is it obvious that confession means both declaration and action? Or is confession in connection with processus to be seen as going on endlessly? This has to be clarified.

When I proposed the concept "processus confessionis" in 1982, which was then also picked up by W. Huber and others, It was in the midst of a heated debate on how to prepare the 1983 Kirchentag in view of the Reformed Moderamen declaring the matter of atomic mass destruction a status confessionis. Ulrich Möller will talk about this. Those objecting to this declaration accused the concept of status confessionis to mean exclusion of other Christians. In this way they misinterpreted it although many of us had stressed Bonhoeffer's clarifications that status confessionis means the Gospel of confessing Christ in a particular situation and not legalistically determining the borders of the true church. However, if churches exclude themselves from the corporate conciliar decisions the true church has to accept this -always in hope of new communion. The term processus confessionis was another attempt to underline the communicative character of the three dimensions of status confessionis, not to eliminate the aspect of declaration and response.

This was also the reason why I proposed the term "conciliar process" in Vancouver in 1983 although the delegation of the former GDR had asked for a "Council". In retrospect, however, I realize that in both contexts, mass destruction and JPIC, the process did not lead to clear conciliar decisions as intended. We have to watch that the same does not happen to the present processus regarding economic injustice and ecological destruction. In a personal letter to me (February 18 1983), Eberhard Bethge warned :

"Der processus-Begriff hat eine gute Hilfsfunktion, aber kann und wird den des status confessionis nicht ersetzen. Nur mit letzterem (der auch kaum vergessen gemacht werden kann und wird) bringt er zum Ausdruck, daß er eine notwendige Vorgeschichte mit unumgänglichen Stadien hat und dann auch ein Nachgeschichte mit Rezeption und Folgen - auch finanziellen -; und im Zentrum dann aber doch das Element einer Entscheidung steht, die das unverbindliche Argumantieren beendet. Die Einführung des "processus" Begriffs darf und soll eine gewisse Erleichterung getrost bewirken - warum nicht, um sich nicht zu überschätzen! - aber die eines Tages erforderliche Entscheidung, daß in diesem Prozeß ein links oder rechts von Gabelwegen zu rechter oder falscher Kirche (wo es nicht mehr nur um 'irrende' Kirche geht), darf nicht weg-begrifflicht werden (Verzeihung, Sie wissen das schon lange und besser!) Wer dürfte sich außerhalb der Gefärdung von jeweils Versuchung zu falscher Kirche wähnen! Vielleicht hilft die Unterscheidung von falscher und irrender Kirche auch bei dem tätsächlich schwierigen Problem der so verschiedenen Sozialgestalten mit temporär so verschiedenen Reaktionen weiter?"¹¹

So how can we hope to lead the process towards decision and action? Here we have to pick up the last sentence of Bethge's letter referring to the different social forms of the church. I distinguish five of them: the church universal, the local church, the regional church, the discipleship groups, and the hidden followers of Jesus, responding to the human one in those who are in need (cf. Mt 25.31ff.). The main difficulty lies with the local and regional churches. As indicated above, particularly western tradition (also spread through their world mission) has split personal salvation from the holistic response to God's loving action for all creation in Jesus Christ. Through the voices of the victims in the whole ecumenical movement the organizational expressions of the church universal in the forms of eg the WCC and Warc have more chances to respond to God's holistic gifts and challenges. The discipleship groups may go in both directions, western or holistic, but in both cases they are more decided and ready for action. The last group, which is mainly found in social movements, is even defined by responding to God's hidden presence in the poor.

So far the WCC/Warc approach has concentrated on inviting and challenging the western churches and congregations by the voices of the victims in the south (and in the future from the east). But we have not yet outlined concrete ways to undertake the process in western local and regional churches. It is high time to do so because we are just starting this attempt in western Europe. Within the present approach the ideal would be if one or more churches in the south would for themselves declare the status confessionis regarding the injustice and ecological destruction brought about by the capitalist global economic system, and ask their northern/western partner churches to join them by formal decision and clear actions. This in turn could be complemented by a second approach the best example of which to my knowledge is the process organized by the Lutheran Coalition on Southern Africa in the USA after the LWF decision in Dar-es-Salaam in 1977 to declare apartheid a status confessionis. What did they do? They formed a coalition of groups, congregations, schools, seminaries, etc.. asking for: "Formal recognition by Lutheran Churches in the United States that a situation of statusconfessionis exists in southern Africa, and the disinvestment from corporations and withdrawal from banks involved in South Africa as concrete signs of taking such a stand of faith."¹²

So the three elements were there: recognition as joining the LWF declaration of status confessionis and one concrete action (response). The disinvestment of their money from corporations and banks supporting apartheid in South Africa was characterized as "first step". They produced educational materials, organized meetings, often together with anti-apartheid social movements, and they issued a master resolution with which they went into as many as possible of the district synods who send their delegates to the national conventions of the Lutheran churches. In this way they won over about two thirds of the district synods, one national convention (ALC) and a continuous debate in the other (LCA) to join the declaration by formal recognition and one concrete action.

If we do not achieve a decision-making process of this or a similar kind I wonder whether our processus confessionis can reach the intended result. Too, the significance of the US "processus confessionis from below" was that a church within the context of a denominational church system which did not have the historical experience of a church struggle learnt to become a confessing church. This leads us to the question of different ecumenical expressions of status confessionis.

Thesis 7

As the concept of status confessionis originated in the Reformation churches we have to discover which other ecclesiological ways are available in the oikoumene to express the same, e.g. conciliar decision, eucharistic communion, covenant, radical discipleship.

Bonhoeffer was of the opinion that in the third ecclesial option, when the coach-driver is drunk and the church has to put a spoke in the wheel by declaring status confessionis, an "evangelical council" would have to be called and take the decision. The classical example of deciding a controversial issue in the early church is the council of the apostles in Jerusalem referred to in Acts 15 and Galatians 2. The conciliar process leading to the ecumenical world convocation on JPIC in Seoul 1990 probably showed that a universal ecumenical council is not yet possible. The Roman Catholic Church turned down the invitation to take co-responsibility and the Orthodox churches, theologically correctly, bind a genuine council to eucharistic fellowship. So the sin and scandal of a divided church up to this day is co-responsible for the failure of an unequivocal and fully committed witness of the churches for justice, peace and life. Bonhoeffer, by the way, had a similar disappointment with the ecumenical movement not clearly joining the Confessing Church in Germany. However, my answer to this dilemma would be: let every church or church community in all their social forms find the access to the common challenge in their own ecclesiological form and responsibility. Let the Orthodox deal with it in their process towards a pan-Orthodox council, let the Roman Catholics introduce it into their bishops' conferences (and a Vatican Council?), let the Baptists remember the Abolitionist Covenant against slavery and the New Abolitionist Covenant against the weapons of mass destruction and enter a New Covenant for Life against economic injustice and ecological destruction, let the historical peace churches find ways to exercise their radical discipleship in resistance to the deregulated capitalist system and for economic alternatives, and let Minjung churches ferment their denominations towards clear decisions.

The key for all is to recognize that not only the practice but the being of the church is at stake in the struggle for life against the dominant economic and financial system producing systemic injustice and death. There is also one common reference point which is the eucharist. According to St Paul, 1 Corinthians 11, we do not participate in the body of Christ if and as long as poor people are excluded. Being the church of the poor and in solidarity with the poor is the focal point of Christ's gospel which no church of whatever tradition should miss.

Thesis 8

A first action within the process of recognition, education and confession could be withdrawing the money from companies, banks, pension funds etc. which participate in speculation and tax flight.

Mammonism in the prevailing system has thousands of dimensions because it penetrates nearly all aspects of life. But if it is true that the driving force of the system is financial capital detaching itself from the economy of the people and its commitment to the public good this has to be the entry point. Disinvesting their money from corporations, banks etc. which participate in speculation and tax avoidance could therefore be the first common step of Christians, congregations and churches, thereby showing their commitment to the processus confessionis. That raises the question of where to put the money. Although alternative banks also have to put one third of their money into normal circulation they do have another commitment to justice and ecological care. There are 35 alternative banks in Europe and certainly more in other parts of the world. Otherwise the churches should engage in creating alternative banks.

They can also build alliances with social movements campaigning for relative alternatives including compromises. While the churches should detach themselves from the capital mechanisms as radically as possible and also work with local people in establishing non-capitalist alternatives,¹³ keeping up the vision of the kingdom of God, they can also participate in civil society struggles to achieve relative changes in macro-economic and political structures. The simple reason is that each concrete betterment of living conditions for people and the Earth should be supported by the church. There is hardly any chance of completely changing around the present system into a people-centred, people-driven alternative from below. But even taming the system by more participation of the people and more public regulation of the economy according to social, ecological and democratic criteria can be a step forward.

In Europe we are, for example, campaigning for taxes on capital transactions (Tobin tax) and for the closure of tax havens. Besides the political significance of these instruments they also have conscientizing potential concerning the financial mechanisms impoverishing the poor and the public. They also reveal some of the root causes for the unpayable debt, the cancellation of which has been the focus of the Jubilee 2000 campaign, and in this sense they pick up on the dynamics of this movement in which many churches have already got involved. Another entry point would be unemployment which is offending God's gift to humans to care for their own lives and which also is created by the dictates of financial capital and its only goal to accumulate. Another entry point could be overcoming consumerism since it keeps the accumulation mechanism going instead of using the God-given resources for a decent life for people and future generations. Jesus responded to the Mammonism of his time by working out alternatives with the poor people and, at the same time, confronting the powers creating poverty. This is exactly what we can do.

Thesis 9

The price of confronting Mammonism for Jesus was the cross. The price for many Christians in the South has been martyrdom. What are we in the Western churches ready to pay?

After Barmen and the subsequent confessing synod in Dahlem the pastors and young theologians like Bonhoeffer and Bethge found themselves on the street, cut off the payroll of their churches. Confronting capital today as the total power will not be free of charge. Of course, as Bertram Gross formulates it, in the West we have friendly fascism. So the clamping down will not be done openly as in Nazi and apartheid times. There will be no bomb put under the house of a western church council like the one put under the building of the SACC. Capital will answer with its own means: withdrawing capital and media power as well as blackmailing protesters in the media and other subtleties.

The most sensitive point for churches certainly is the withdrawal of funds. This was the reason why e.g. the EKD did not allow church tax money go to the special fund of the Programme to Combat Racism. After my speech in Vancouver a formal motion was put to my synod by a bank director asking the church not to pay my salary with church tax money any more because allegedly I was driving rich people out of the church by criticizing our economy. And in many cases the treasurers of the churches are eager to keep the churches from talking business with business.

But on the other hand there is the joy of solidarity, of sharing, of community with the poor hearing the good news of the gospel. There are the Nicodemuses coming by night and telling you: the reality is worse than you are saying. There are the rich people like Zacchaeus joining the struggle -sometimes only after retirement. There is the tastiness of local food. There are the beginnings of people-centred, people driven economic alternatives. There are the celebrations worshipping the God of justice and life full of joy, comfort and endurance and, above all, with credibility and the genuineness which is so often missing in the worship of undecided churches. So let us decide: God or mammon. "But strive first for the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Mt 6:33).

Notes