Martti
Muukkonen, ThD, MSS
ABSTRACT
In the
process of European unification it is inevitable that different
‘self-evidences’ of European people will clash to some extent. Therefore it is
important to understand why people in different parts of
Theoretically
the paper utilises theories of Turner&Killian and Berger&Luckman as
well as Geertz. All they emphasise the role of value-systems in decision-making
processes. Esping-Andersen created his thesis of three welfare-regimes, which
is utilised in the second part of the paper. Finally, Polanyi’s thesis of
double-movement is useful in analysing the possible future trends that
globalisation might cause.
The first
part of this paper will shortly examine how the European social thought was
born from its Oriental roots and how this Oriental co-operative thinking was
combined with Hellene competitive thinking. It is argued that a tension between
these models of thinking can be seen through European history and how they
exist still in today’s political thought. Further, it is examined how
The second
part analyses European welfare-regimes from religious point of view. It shows
how social doctrines of various churches were implemented in Continental
(Catholic), Nordic (Lutheran) and Anglo-Saxon (Anglican-Calvinist) welfare
models.
The third
part focuses on the present-day re-unification of