Wirklichkeit der Familie und protestantischer Diskurs

What are the societal conditions of modern family life and how do protestant ethics correspond to it? Sabine Plonz shows how both questions are intertwined: She develops a concept of the family as a caring institution, including normative dimensions. She reconstructs the discourse history of German Protestantism in the welfare state as having patriarchal and anti-democratic tendencies; she thus shows how the moral order and the orders of gender, work and welfare have influenced each other. Her narrative benefits from numerous references to historical sources, and in her conclusion she reflects on both political and theological ethics of private life. This book confronts theology with the implications of its discourses, employing critical theories on hegemony, gender and religion. And it adds the dimension of morality to current research on the family, family policies, gender and the welfare state. This is a concise, intellectually committed study, which opens up new perspectives on ethics and political praxis.