[Oe List ...] 11/03/11, Spong: The European Economy and Germany’s Role in Re-Shaping it in the 21st Century

[Ellie Stock]

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The European Economy and Germany’s Role in Re-Shaping it in the 21st Century
One of the signs of our radically interdependent world is that the economic problems of Europe have become the primary catalyst in the American stock market fluctuations over the past few months.  We have thus become quite familiar with talk of Greece’s default, with downgrades on Italian banks and with constant rumors of the collapse of the economies of Spain, Italy and Portugal.  The stronger nations of Europe are now being called upon to guarantee those debts and to capitalize the banks of weaker states that are on the economic cusp.  As a prerequisite to being bailed out the troubled states have been required to raise taxes, to cut government services and to adopt what are called “austerity measures.”  In turn, public riots and street demonstrations have resulted in the affected countries as retiree pensions are trimmed and the costs of such essentials as health care and public transportation have gone up spectacularly.  There is also an obvious political resentment present among the stronger nations of Europe when they are expected to rescue the weaker members.
The focus of Europe’s financial crisis is located on the southern tier of that continent from Portugal to Greece, nations that are known for a relaxed life style of eating, drinking and leisure.  In Italy, for example, dinner is an experience that frequently lasts for two or three hours.  Most restaurants do not open for dinner before 7:30 p.m., the tables are normally used for only one sitting each evening and the water glasses are half the size of the wine glasses!  The life style of Southern Europe is not one in which either haste or efficiency is a recognized virtue.
I went to Europe recently, eager to get a first hand view of the economic crisis that threatens to drive the American economy into a double digit recession.  I came away not particularly hopeful about the near term, but amazingly impressed with the task that the nations of Europe have set for themselves in developing a common currency, a sense of mutual responsibility and the formation of what will inevitably be a United States of Europe.  No group of nations can forge a common economy and not develop a political unity.  The tensions in Europe based as they are on the necessity of economic bailouts, the requirement of austerity measures in return, and the resistance to lowering the standard of living in the north to help the nations in the south, are the inevitable growing pains of that eventual unity.  A United States of Europe would be a remarkable accomplishment, but I am convinced that without that unity, the economy of all of Europe will collapse and that will bring about the collapse of all economies from the United States to China.  The stakes are thus high for us all and the pain will be felt across the globe.  Tribal identity must be sacrificed and with it most of the vestiges of nation- state independence.  No nation in Europe, including Great Britain, will be spared, but a unified Europe must ultimately replace its ancient tribal past.
As I flew over France and Germany on my way first to Switzerland and later to Italy, I could see the boundaries of that tribal past.  Europe’s landscape is divided by rivers and mountains, valleys and large bodies of water from the North Sea to the Mediterranean.  In these naturally demarcated regions, fiercely independent tribal units once roamed.  When one goes back about 2,000 years in Western Europe, one sees not nations, but a map of competing tribes and fluctuating boundaries.  In that region once roamed people who identified themselves as Franks, Goths, Visigoths, Walloons,  Poles, Prussians, Saxons, Bavarians, Vikings, Angles, Picts, Normans, Iceni, Jutes, Welsh, Finns, Bulgars, Slavs, Serbs, Croats and Danes, just to name a few.  In addition, each tribe had its own language or dialect, its own political structures, its own values, and its own religion, all of which served to keep them quite distinct from each other.
Each tribe also claimed a specific territory, defended it and even expanded it by conquest.  The competition to survive was enormous.  In that struggle, there were inevitably winners and losers.  The Prussians emerged as the dominant tribe in Central Europe; the Franks in Western Europe, and the Anglo-Saxons in England.  In Italy and Greece, powerful city states emerged with natural rivalries: Athens against Sparta, Florence against Siena, Lucca against Pisa, Genoa against Naples.  Out of these tribal groups and city states, nations only very slowly began to form, first with loose coalitions.  The Swedish kingdom in the far north once was a dominant power in Europe.  Poland has seen its boundaries move both east and west and at times has even disappeared from the maps of Europe.  Nations that represented multi-tribal coalitions were never stable.  The Netherlands and Belgium split apart in the 19th century and Belgium threatens today to split between its Flemish and Walloon halves.  The Czechs and the Slovaks, bound together after World War I, split into two states in the 1990s.  Yugoslavia, another amalgam, fell apart in bloody violence between Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo among others.  Great Britain did not bring together England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland into one kingdom until the “Act of Union” in 1800, leaving the rest of Ireland isolated and angry with endless bloodshed to mark that nation’s history of resistance.  Russia led a coalition of republics into something called the U.S.S.R. after World War I, only to see it split apart at the end of the 20th century into its original tribal units recovering their ancient names like Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Uzbekistan.
The last two European regions to evolve into nationhood were Germany and Italy.  Led by the Prussians, the Germanic tribes of Central Europe came together in the later years of the 19th century to form modern Germany.  The City States of Italy finally coalesced into nationhood in 1871, though most Italians still think of themselves as Florentines or Sicilians first and Italian second. Given that history, the drive today to bring about European unity is not only remarkable but impressive.
Strangely enough, it is the German economy that is the driving force in bringing Europe together and Germany will undoubtedly become the strongest power in whatever political form emerges in Europe.  There is a certain irony in this fact.  If Europe as a whole achieves economic viability and unity, it will be because of the strength of the German economy.  Germany will thus succeed in dominating Europe economically in a way it could never achieve militarily in the last three major European wars, the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870’s, World War I, 1914-1918, and World War II, 1939-1945.  This amazing nation and its very industrious people have risen from the ashes of defeat in the last two of those wars to occupy the central position of economic power in Europe, a feat that took just 60 years.
There was one unique experience that prepared Germany for its present European power role and that came with the re-unification of Germany in 1990 after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of sovereignty for a nation once called East Germany.  When that re-unification occurred, it was not a union of equals.  West Germany was prosperous and thriving while East Germany was economically depressed and backward.  For the two parts of Germany to come together, the “haves” of West Germany had to lift up the “have-nots” of East Germany.  A surtax, called “the re-unification tax,” was imposed on every citizen of West Germany for the purpose of rebuilding East Germany.  This tax was accepted by the West Germans willingly and was paid until near equality was achieved and a single Germany was born anew.  It should be noted that Angela Merkel, Germany’s present Chancellor, is a native of East Germany.
In a similar manner, Germany today is being asked to do for all of Europe what it once did for East Germany, namely to elevate its weaker nations into a solid economic union.  Inevitably this will depress the economy of Germany in the short run.  In the long run, however, it will create a European economy that will be a leader in the world, competing on an equal basis with the United States to the west and China to the east.
The German people seem better than most to understand that the well being of their nation is tied to the well being of all of Europe.  To sacrifice today is to reap the benefits of tomorrow.  A nation, a region or even a continent that reflects a sharp division between wealth and poverty is never healthy.  When the middle class of a nation declines or disappears, that nation is always in danger of revolution.  In such a society no security is ever secure enough to keep despair at bay and with despair comes increasing crime and the destruction of the social fabric needed to ensure a nation’s health.  The people and the leadership of Germany embrace those realities and, in that embrace, lies the hope of Europe and ultimately of the world.  I do not mean to ignore Great Britain in this analysis, but that nation has always stood aloof from Europe and its ultimate destiny has never been linked with the continent.  So the role of European economic leadership will inevitably fall on Germany alone.
Of course, this is not going to be easy politically.  The self-centeredness of both individuals and nations will always resist and resent the demands to be responsible for those who are regarded as weaker, less industrious or even profligate.  There will always be those who cannot see beyond the immediate needs of today or the next election.  Those concerns, however, are never the mark of a great nation.  Germany will rise to the challenge and this nation that once all but destroyed Europe will now be seen as its savior.
There is much in this scenario for the political leaders of the United States to note and even to emulate.  For those who have eyes to see, let them now see.
~John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here. 



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Question & Answer
Rev. Susan of Edgemont, Arkansas, writes:
Question:
Your writing has been an answer to a lifetime of doctrinal searching...and that is not hyperbole!  Raised by a traditional, but very liberal Lutheran pastor father and mother, I was eventually ordained and am recently retired.  I thank you for the three books, which I highly recommend that people read sequentially...This Hebrew Lord, Liberating the Gospels and Jesus for the Non-Religious.  These books have finally let me "land" my Christology after all these years!  My question:  Though I am very comfortable with the whole concept of the panentheistic being "in whom I live and move and have my being,” I find myself continually wanting to worship and praise and live in THANKSGIVING and GRATITUDE for all that I have and all that I experience.  Is it not strange not to direct this "thank you" to an anthropomorphic being (this shows my traditional influences)?  Sometimes I feel like I am sending out “thank you” notes with no addresses.  As we approach Thanksgiving, I am encouraged to ask you how you handle this personally, if I might.  I would so appreciate your thoughts on this.  Thank you again for your immensely helpful work.
Answer:
Dear Susan,
Thank you for your gracious letter.  Your question is one that many people have.  It rises out of your own self-understanding.  You are a person.  You view life from the perspective of a person.  Inevitably you will view God in personal terms.  The problem is not that - it is that so many people literalize their own definition of God.  Gratitude needs to be expressed so do so.  More importantly, however, gratitude needs to be lived.  That is when it becomes real so say your thanks verbally and then act it out with your life of giving and caring.  God is not separate from our lives, our love and our being.
Enjoy your retirement and thank you for your life and faithful ministry.
~John Shelby Spong



New Book On-Sale 11/8/11 !
RE-CLAIMING THE BIBLE FOR A NON-RELIGIOUS WORLD 

John Shelby Spong presents Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World, a book designed to take readers into the contemporary academic debate about the Bible. 

A definitive voice for progressive Christianity, Spong frees readers from a literal view of the Bible. He demonstrates that it is possible to be both a deeply committed Christian and an informed twenty-first-century citizen.

Spong’s journey into the heart of the Bible is his attempt to call his readers into their own journeys into the mystery of God.


Order your copy now on amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com!


  





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