Abstract
This chapter explores how German elites molded a bare majority to support a “Christian” policy to respond to the dire economic situation still facing the country, under the leadership of the first post-Nazi chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. The first advocates of the “social market economy” argued that the policies underpinning it reflected “our Christian way of thinking”: principles ultimately rooted in Christian scripture. Their party affiliation was either the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) or the Christian Social Union (CSU), whose leaderships ran their campaigns in conjunction with each other and together formed a bloc (CDU/CSU) in national legislative bodies. The last time German politicians had attempted to forge an interconfessional “Christian” economic policy, Protestant liberals and Catholics had infamously failed in their charge. Twenty years later, however, the attempts met with more success.
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