Michael Schluter (economist)

The work in South Africa led on to a peace initiative in Rwanda after the genocide there, followed by a peace process between North and South Sudan. These initiatives were followed by the establishment in 2005 of Concordis International, for regional peace initiatives working primarily in Africa.  In 2016, Schluter helped to establish Relational Peacebuilding Initiatives (RPI) based in Geneva to heal relationships in situations of national conflict; RPI is currently involved with a peacebuilding initiative in the Korean Peninsula, and is publishing in 2022 a major book on how to bring together a Capitalist and Socialist society to bring about peace in Korea and reunification of the Korean peninsula.

Schluter’s approach to public policy was first articulated at book length in The R Factor(1993), co-authored with the writer, David Lee.

In 1987 Schluter with colleagues initiated a peace process under the name Newick Park Initiative (NPI) in South Africa, which held deliberately low-profile conferences between 1987 and 1997, bringing together the leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) and the White political leadership to discuss key issues so as to ease the path to a political settlement. NPI’s director facilitated Inkatha joining the South African election just three weeks before the first free elections in 1994.

In 1985, the Jubilee Centre brought together a coalition of retailers, trade unions and church-related organizations to fight Prime Minister Thatcher’s bill to deregulate Sunday trading. This was in recognition that the Sabbath in the Torah in one simple law protected community and family relationships because time is an essential precondition to build and maintain any relationship. The “Keep Sunday Special Campaign” overturned a large government majority. In 1994, the government passed a bill which allows large shops to open for six hours on Sunday while small shops can open when they like; this remains the law to this day. Schluter has continued to speak out against Sunday Trading, arguing that a new law needs to be brought in to give everyone a shared day off and to ensure parents are able to spend time with their children. Dr. Schluter argued that Sunday shopping in the United States was ''a fairly major contributing factor damaging to family life and stability there,'' and said he was fighting the battle against it here ''on grounds of Christian principle.''

In 1983 Schluter helped to establish the Jubilee Centre to explore the shared heritage of Jewish and Christian understanding of the Torah as a part of the Hebrew/Old Testament Scriptures. Ten years later, this led to the publication of The 'R' Factor in 1993. The intellectual work initiated by The ‘R’ Factor continues in research undertaken by the Jubilee Centre, and through the Cambridge Papers, over 120 of which have now been published. The Jubilee Centre connects what is now referred to as Relational Thinking to the life of churches; it can also be connected to synagogues, mosques, gurudwaras and temples, but that awaits initiative from concerned individuals and groups.

Dr Michael Schluter CBE (born 1947), is "a social thinker, social entrepreneur and founder of Britain's Relationships Foundation." After his Ph.D. from Cornell University (USA), he worked as an applied economist with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and in assignments for the World Bank. With colleagues, he has founded many different organisations in different fields of endeavour. He is currently President and CEO of Relational Peacebuilding Initiatives. In recognition of his public service, he was appointed CBE by the Queen in the New Year Honours List 2009.