Faith Based Welfare Providers and Discrimination: a Novel Methodological Approach to Study Religious-Secular Conflicts

The care providers of the Catholic and Protestant church in Germany have become the country’s largest employers. Since the 1990s, Caritas and Diakonie, the two largest faithbased care providers are facing a double-pressure. On the one side, Europeanization and liberalization of the care sector pressure them to be economically professionalized; on the other side, their exceptional status as church-based employers has increasingly become the target of critique in a pluralizing German society. In this paper we analyze lawsuits between employers and employees of faith-based welfare organizations in German courts. Our data shows that conflicts between church-based employers and their employees are increasing. However, Caritas and Diakonie still manage to protect their legal prerogatives – by discriminating their employees. The study sheds not only new light on the role of Churches in pluralizing society but presnets also a new methodology on how to study the conflictualities that arise through the analysis of legal labor law disputes.