Beyond the Good-Tempered Attitude towards Life

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.