POINT OF VIEW
Prosperity as a Dead End in Itself
October 1, 2010 - Graham Scharf
The U.S. Census Bureau poverty statistics released in mid-September paint a painful picture of the nation's reality: The official poverty rate in 2009 was 14.3 percent, up from 13.2 percent in 2008. According to the statistics, 43.6 million people live in poverty in the United States, the largest number in the 51 years for which poverty estimates are available.
Quite naturally, government officials in the United States are frantically asking, "What is the path to economic recovery?" One promising answer comes from a coalition of economists, policy experts, and business leaders called Partnership for America's Economic Success (PAES). Recognizing that economic vitality depends significantly on the quality of the workforce, PAES lobbies for policy investment in young children to develop human capital in the United States. They stand on the shoulders of Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman, who has done considerable research in the "technology of skill formation." Heckman has demonstrated that money spent on promoting early nurture has a rate of return of 6-10% per annum—returning up to $10 per $1 invested in children aged 0-3—by reducing social costs (educational remediation, welfare, Medicaid, incarceration, public housing, and so on) and by cultivating an individual's capacity to participate productively and positively in society.
This is Heckman's pithy expression: Skills beget skills; motivation begets motivation. Early advantages accumulate; so do early disadvantages. Lifelong cognitive and non-cognitive skills (such as perseverance, attentiveness, and motivation) are profoundly influenced by early experiences. It would be difficult to overstate how much a young child's experiences impact their future social and economic situation. The existing achievement gaps (which could aptly be called the parenting gap) are considerable by age 3, and "impose the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession—one substantially larger than the deep recession the country is currently experiencing," according to a 2009 McKinsey & Company report.
There is no question that the earliest years of life are critical to human development, and that intervention in the most disadvantaged children yields returns on investment that exceed the average post-war equity rate of return of 5.8%. But the pressing question is this: To what end are we to make this investment and intervention? Is prosperity a worthy end in itself? Is it, for example, a more worthy aim than a just society? Could pursuing prosperity for its own sake undermine justice? Or could the pursuit of justice for its own sake be the most solid foundation of social and economic vitality?
Early education is critical not primarily because of the "technology of skill formation," but because of the dynamics of character formation. Discipline, perseverance, and integrity, for example, are critical catalysts for learning. In C.S. Lewis's words, "Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil." Indeed, early education, if not in the service of human virtue and public justice, will only make us more adept in devising our own personal and societal undoing. It will, for example, influence a child's future decision to become a consumer of the sex trafficking industry through pornography, or to have not only the honour to abstain from consumption, but also the courage, creativity, and tenacity to dismantle its evil networks.
Here I have implicitly assumed that there are such realities as virtue and vice, justice and injustice, and that these are something more than the creation of my mind or the constructs of other human beings. Indeed, every ethical claim is rooted in assumptions about the way things really are, whether or not we are aware of these assumptions. Lesslie Newbigin expresses it thus:
No state [or individual or organization] can be completely secular in the sense that those who exercise power have no beliefs about what is true and no commitment to what they believe to be right. It is the duty of the church to ask what those beliefs and commitments are and to expose them in the light of the gospel.
To make ethical claims and abjure assumptions is to stand on a dock without legs in the Florida Keys while alligators swim hungrily beneath you. It simply can't be done—or, more accurately, to do so is to invite one's own imminent demise.
We who believe in the saving and defining work of Jesus Christ are commanded to seek first His Kingdom and righteousness in the public life of our communities and nations—that is to say, to announce and pursue His reign and justice in human affairs, which can have no meaning except in reference to the One who is just, and the justifier of the wicked through faith in Christ. It is tempting to seek a "least common denominator" with those who hold radically different assumptions about the nature and destiny of humanity in order to seek the common good. However, if we abjure our gospel assumptions about what is good, we join those who stand, for a very short time, inches above alligators.
Christians ought to be on the leading edge of early nurture for the sake of virtue and justice in our own homes as well as our churches, communities and schools, and to support prudent advocacy and wise public policy. The most powerful levers are not big, but small (the family); and not fast, but slow (as children grow). They produce returns more valuable than any reflected on a balance sheets. It is our duty and calling to testify that the pursuit of prosperity is a dead end in itself, and to humbly and boldly set forth the good news which imputes virtue to the vicious and transforms individuals and communities. To treat this good news as merely the religious story of Christians, and not the foundation of human virtue and public justice, is a denial of the central Biblical claim that "Jesus is Lord of all."
Copyright © 1974-2010 Cardus. All Rights Reserved.
Cardus - Prosperity as a Dead End in Itself
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Communism's Nuremberg by Guy Sorman, City Journal 26 September 2010
GUY SORMAN
Communism’s Nuremberg
The crimes of the Khmer Rouge are inextricable from Marxist/Leninist ideology.
26 September 2010
The four surviving leaders of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime, including the former head of state, Khieu Samphan, have been imprisoned in Phnom Penh since 2007 and will be brought to justice in their own country. On September 16, a United Nations-backed Cambodian tribunal indicted them for genocide, crimes against humanity, and other crimes. The tribunal has already established its credibility with its first trial: this past July 26, it sentenced Kaing Guek Eav (better known as Duch), a cog in the Khmer Rouge’s extermination machine, to 35 years in prison. Duch ran a torture center from 1975 to 1979 that produced 15,000 victims. Unlike the Nuremberg tribunal that judged Nazi leaders in 1945, the Phnom Penh tribunal is not run by the victorious powers; it functions within the Cambodian justice system, sustained by Cambodian public opinion, though the U.N. provides financing. The tribunal’s legitimacy and objectivity are beyond reproach. Still, the Cambodian public did not see Duch’s sentence as sufficient in view of his crimes. The defendant apparently persuaded the court that he was obeying his superior’s orders—the same excuse Nazi leaders made at Nuremberg.
In the Western and Asian press, as well as in statements by various governments, a distinct effort has been made to reduce the crimes of Duch and of Khieu Samphan to matters of local circumstance. It is as if an unfortunate catastrophe had fallen on Cambodia in 1975 called the “Khmer Rouge,” killing 1.5 million Khmers. But who or what was behind what the tribunal has called the genocide of Khmers by other Khmers? Might this be the fault of the United States? Was it not the Americans who, by setting up a regime in Cambodia to their liking, brought about a nationalist reaction? Or, might this genocide not be a cultural legacy, distinctive of Khmer civilization? Archeologists are digging through the past in vain to find a historical precedent. The true explanation, the meaning of the crime, can be found in the declarations of the Khmer Rouge themselves: just as Hitler described his crimes in advance, Pol Pot (who died in 1998) had explained early on that he would destroy his people, so as to create a new one. Pol Pot called himself a Communist; he became one in the 1960s as a student in Paris, then a cradle of Marxism. Since Pol Pot and leaders of the regime that he forced on his people referred to themselves as Communists—and in no way claimed to be heirs of some Cambodian dynasty—we must acknowledge that they were, in fact, Communists.
What the Khmer Rouge brought to Cambodia was in fact real Communism. There was no radical distinction, either conceptually or concretely, between the rule of the Khmer Rouge and that of Stalinism, Maoism, Castroism, or the North Korean regime. All Communist regimes follow strangely similar trajectories, barely colored by local traditions. In every case, these regimes seek to make a blank slate of the past and to forge a new humanity. In every case, the “rich,” intellectuals, and skeptics wind up exterminated. The Khmer Rouge rounded up urban and rural populations in agricultural communities based on precedents both Russian (the Kolkhozy) and Chinese (the popular communes), and they acted for the same ideological reasons and with the same result: famine. There is no such thing as real Communism without massacre, torture, concentration camps, gulags, or laogai. And if there has never been any such thing, then we must conclude that there could be no other outcome: Communist ideology leads necessarily to mass violence, because the masses do not want real Communism. This is as true in the rice fields of Cambodia as in the plains of Ukraine or under Cuban palms.
The trial of Duch and the eventual trial of the Band of Four are thus the first trials, on human rights grounds, of responsible Marxist officials from an officially Marxist, Leninist, or Maoist regime. Nazism’s trial took place in Nuremberg beginning in late 1945, and Japanese fascism’s in Tokyo the following year. But until now, we have had no trial for Communism, though real Communism killed or mutilated more victims than Nazism and Fascism combined. Communism’s trial has never taken place, outside the intellectual sphere, for two reasons. First, Communism enjoys a kind of ideological immunity because it claims to be on the side of progress. Second, Communists remain in power in Beijing, Pyongyang, Hanoi, and Havana. And in areas where they’ve lost power—as in the former Soviet Union—the Communists arranged their own immunity by converting themselves into social democrats, businessmen, or nationalist leaders.
The only currently possible and effective trial of Communism must therefore take place in Cambodia. But make no mistake: this is no mere trial of Cambodians by other Cambodians. In the Phnom Penh trial, real Communism is confronted with its victims. The trial reveals not only how useful Marxism is for claiming, seizing, and exercising power in absolute fashion, but also a strange characteristic of real Communism. No one seems willing to claim the mantle of Marxism, not even former leaders. The Khmer Rouge killed in Marx’s, Lenin’s, and Mao’s names, but they prefer to die as traitors to their own cause or to run away. This cowardice shows Marxism in a new light: Marxism is real, but it isn’t true, since no one believes in it.
Guy Sorman, a City Journal contributing editor, is the author of Empire of Lies: The Truth about China in the Twenty-First Century and other books. This article was translated by Alexis Cornel.
Communism's Nuremberg by Guy Sorman, City Journal 26 September 2010
Communism’s Nuremberg
The crimes of the Khmer Rouge are inextricable from Marxist/Leninist ideology.
26 September 2010
The four surviving leaders of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime, including the former head of state, Khieu Samphan, have been imprisoned in Phnom Penh since 2007 and will be brought to justice in their own country. On September 16, a United Nations-backed Cambodian tribunal indicted them for genocide, crimes against humanity, and other crimes. The tribunal has already established its credibility with its first trial: this past July 26, it sentenced Kaing Guek Eav (better known as Duch), a cog in the Khmer Rouge’s extermination machine, to 35 years in prison. Duch ran a torture center from 1975 to 1979 that produced 15,000 victims. Unlike the Nuremberg tribunal that judged Nazi leaders in 1945, the Phnom Penh tribunal is not run by the victorious powers; it functions within the Cambodian justice system, sustained by Cambodian public opinion, though the U.N. provides financing. The tribunal’s legitimacy and objectivity are beyond reproach. Still, the Cambodian public did not see Duch’s sentence as sufficient in view of his crimes. The defendant apparently persuaded the court that he was obeying his superior’s orders—the same excuse Nazi leaders made at Nuremberg.
In the Western and Asian press, as well as in statements by various governments, a distinct effort has been made to reduce the crimes of Duch and of Khieu Samphan to matters of local circumstance. It is as if an unfortunate catastrophe had fallen on Cambodia in 1975 called the “Khmer Rouge,” killing 1.5 million Khmers. But who or what was behind what the tribunal has called the genocide of Khmers by other Khmers? Might this be the fault of the United States? Was it not the Americans who, by setting up a regime in Cambodia to their liking, brought about a nationalist reaction? Or, might this genocide not be a cultural legacy, distinctive of Khmer civilization? Archeologists are digging through the past in vain to find a historical precedent. The true explanation, the meaning of the crime, can be found in the declarations of the Khmer Rouge themselves: just as Hitler described his crimes in advance, Pol Pot (who died in 1998) had explained early on that he would destroy his people, so as to create a new one. Pol Pot called himself a Communist; he became one in the 1960s as a student in Paris, then a cradle of Marxism. Since Pol Pot and leaders of the regime that he forced on his people referred to themselves as Communists—and in no way claimed to be heirs of some Cambodian dynasty—we must acknowledge that they were, in fact, Communists.
What the Khmer Rouge brought to Cambodia was in fact real Communism. There was no radical distinction, either conceptually or concretely, between the rule of the Khmer Rouge and that of Stalinism, Maoism, Castroism, or the North Korean regime. All Communist regimes follow strangely similar trajectories, barely colored by local traditions. In every case, these regimes seek to make a blank slate of the past and to forge a new humanity. In every case, the “rich,” intellectuals, and skeptics wind up exterminated. The Khmer Rouge rounded up urban and rural populations in agricultural communities based on precedents both Russian (the Kolkhozy) and Chinese (the popular communes), and they acted for the same ideological reasons and with the same result: famine. There is no such thing as real Communism without massacre, torture, concentration camps, gulags, or laogai. And if there has never been any such thing, then we must conclude that there could be no other outcome: Communist ideology leads necessarily to mass violence, because the masses do not want real Communism. This is as true in the rice fields of Cambodia as in the plains of Ukraine or under Cuban palms.
The trial of Duch and the eventual trial of the Band of Four are thus the first trials, on human rights grounds, of responsible Marxist officials from an officially Marxist, Leninist, or Maoist regime. Nazism’s trial took place in Nuremberg beginning in late 1945, and Japanese fascism’s in Tokyo the following year. But until now, we have had no trial for Communism, though real Communism killed or mutilated more victims than Nazism and Fascism combined. Communism’s trial has never taken place, outside the intellectual sphere, for two reasons. First, Communism enjoys a kind of ideological immunity because it claims to be on the side of progress. Second, Communists remain in power in Beijing, Pyongyang, Hanoi, and Havana. And in areas where they’ve lost power—as in the former Soviet Union—the Communists arranged their own immunity by converting themselves into social democrats, businessmen, or nationalist leaders.
The only currently possible and effective trial of Communism must therefore take place in Cambodia. But make no mistake: this is no mere trial of Cambodians by other Cambodians. In the Phnom Penh trial, real Communism is confronted with its victims. The trial reveals not only how useful Marxism is for claiming, seizing, and exercising power in absolute fashion, but also a strange characteristic of real Communism. No one seems willing to claim the mantle of Marxism, not even former leaders. The Khmer Rouge killed in Marx’s, Lenin’s, and Mao’s names, but they prefer to die as traitors to their own cause or to run away. This cowardice shows Marxism in a new light: Marxism is real, but it isn’t true, since no one believes in it.
Guy Sorman, a City Journal contributing editor, is the author of Empire of Lies: The Truth about China in the Twenty-First Century and other books. This article was translated by Alexis Cornel.
Communism's Nuremberg by Guy Sorman, City Journal 26 September 2010
Friday, September 24, 2010
Cardus - The Ecumenical Social Justice Ship: Full Steam Ahead or Teetering Titanic?
POINT OF VIEW
The Ecumenical Social Justice Ship: Full Steam Ahead or Teetering Titanic?
September 24, 2010 - Robert Joustra
Review: Ecumenical Babel: Confusing Economic Ideology and the Church's Social Witness by Jordan Ballor (Christian's Library Press, 2010). ISBN 978-1880595701.
Saying that Christ claims every square inch is not the same as saying that your church tradition has authority to pronounce on all those inches. Protestant social thought, James Gustafson has famously said, is "only a little short of chaos," and if Jordan Ballor is to be believed in Ecumenical Babel, its ecclesiology is probably in worse shape. According to Ballor, our attempt to shore up Protestant social thought with ecumenical pronouncements on social justice is mucking up an already swampy terrain, putting the ecumenical movement in danger of compromising its prophetic role in relation to secular economic and political ideology.
This accusation is very serious. Ballor's argument has at least two key components. His first and most original argument is against what he calls the ecumenical industrial complex. Ballor dedicates chapters specifically to the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC), and the World Council of Churches (WCC). In these associations, he finds a "fundamental flaw endemic to ecumenical activism," arguing that "ineffectual ethical pronouncements by the ecumenical movement are grounded in faulty economic assumptions" (4).
This suggests Ballor's second criticism, which is about the nature of the economic and political assumptions made by the ecumenical movement. Whether or not these are correct is a debate for the wonks. The first order debate on ecclesiology is where Ballor's most innovative work is done: are churches competent, technically and ontologically, to make policy prescriptions?
But first, pause and consider why churches and their ecumenical superstructures feel compelled to make otherwise technical prescriptions. Global events have saturated the public imagination for decades now, with the advent of ever-globalizing relationships and instant information. Christians in churches have also experienced this expansion. The conscious awareness of social justice issues must surely be greater now than at any moment in history.
So we can certainly sympathetically see Christians latch onto the first institution they know and trust to speak into the apocalyptic captions on the evening news. For most of us, the church is the most immediate, accessible, and organized institution we know. With Ballor, we might agree the church as institution is not the best platform—but it is at least an understandable one.
I might argue that this recognition should inspire us to ecclesial charity, because while globalization raises awareness broadly, it does not educate deeply. Simplistic call and response on complex economic and political issues may be inadequate, but at least it's a conversation on justice. And I can get into that.
For these reasons, in the midst of Ballor's critique, we must simply state that the ecumenical industrial complex, for all its murky and controversial pronouncements, is not out to get anyone. When well-intentioned church leaders say they're out for justice, I believe them. That's not an insignificant starting point. In fact, I take great encouragement from it, even while I may agree with Ballor's critique of their falsely presumed authority in the midst of it. There are far worse dangers in this world than the shadow of neo-marxism in the hearts and minds of social justice-minded ecumenical activists.
On the other hand, Ballor's challenge is still very serious. When controversial social science infiltrates ecclesial confessions, twin dangers emerge: compromising the integrity of the Gospel, and splitting the church on political and economic issues. Ecumenical superstructures claiming to speak with ecclesial authority on technical matters worry me, even when technical experts are enlisted. The point is not just that expertise can be limited in these cases—it's that different institutions have differing spheres of authority and competency.
How, then, should the church speak? Ballor provides good signposts by talking about churches preaching justice, rather than prescribing policy. The environment, for example, must be stewarded and protected, certainly. But does that specifically mean cap and trade or renewable energy investment? Should the church as denomination really have an opinion on these particularly issues? Wouldn't such an opinion violate its own sphere of authority and uncomfortably blur lines with the task of government and public policy? Accountability on principles is one thing; policy advocacy is quite another.
The church is not just another activist NGO for socially-minded Millennials. True: It does mission. It has a concern for justice, absolutely. But the church is not a think tank, a policy shop, or a political party. Where critical advocacy should be done, Christian citizens are called together for the common good to present their arguments in the public square—not as denominational representatives, but as Christian citizens formed in the liturgies and practices of the church.
Ballor is right that ecumenical political and economic activism clambering for theological license properly belongs in the public square. But I do not mean by this to delegitimize it. In fact, ecumenical activists may well have trenchant critiques, precisely for the times in which we live. But those critiques, insofar as they are economically and politically technical, would be far better if brought to newspaper op-eds and parliamentary committee hearings, rather Sunday pulpits and denominational magazines.
This does not mean that churches have no place in the political process. They can be critical institutions that provide a principled ballast in the fast and easy world of politics. And policy prescription is certainly not outside Christian competence! Christians, as citizens, should and must be doing the range of economic and political work.
We must simply be cautious that when we take to the streets, or to our congressmen and parliamentarians, on specific issues, we do not do so naively—as though the Scripture has uncomplicatedly compelled us on this or that matter. The Gospel, it seems, can clearly compel a great deal. There is necessary room here for ambiguity, disagreement, and principled pluralism, even among well-intentioned justice-minded Christians. A tyrannizing ecumenical agenda fashioned from all-too-controversial political and economic assumptions stands to do more harm than good. As Ballor writes, "economic and political opinions should not be turned into articles of faith" (119).
I can resonate with his final recommendations. First, Ballor recommends that the ecumenical movement abandon its claims to institutional church authority on matters that are not specifically ecclesial; second, he says they ought therefore to refrain from making specific policy prescriptions, so to safe guard legitimate Christian disagreement in the public domain. Even papal encyclicals do not bear the mark of infallibility.
Third—and on this Ballor and I can agree to disagree—he insists that these economic and political assumptions ought themselves be abandoned as untenable. That is debate for another day and another set of experts. But I simply add that while Ballor might be passionately convicted that left-of-centre activism has at its root idolatrous assumptions, it is too simple and controversial to label ecumenical social justice advocates as marxist idolaters and call them to repentance. Ballor's normally careful analysis is simply too broad and dismissive here, especially for someone who so roundly indicts ecumenical activists for their simple-minded caricature of neo-liberalism. A similarly reductive tit-for-tat on neo-marxism may prove cathartic, but it's not particularly illuminating. The neo-marxists are hardly more prone to uncritical idolatry than the free marketers.
Ballor is spot-on when worrying that narrowly framing the debate this way can obscure the fact that globalization is about a great deal more than economics or politics. Isn't it ironic that the ecclesial conversation is essentially a thinly-baptized version of exactly the same disagreements in the secular world, but with less technical capacity and more theological abstraction? This is Ballor's most important point.
Conclusively, then, I think we can resonate most with Ballor's final remarks:
Let our confession be not "I follow Marx," or "I follow Hayek," "I follow Rand," or "I follow Keynes," but rather, together, "We follow Christ."
Copyright © 1974-2010 Cardus. All Rights Reserved.
Cardus - The Ecumenical Social Justice Ship: Full Steam Ahead or Teetering Titanic?
The Ecumenical Social Justice Ship: Full Steam Ahead or Teetering Titanic?
September 24, 2010 - Robert Joustra
Review: Ecumenical Babel: Confusing Economic Ideology and the Church's Social Witness by Jordan Ballor (Christian's Library Press, 2010). ISBN 978-1880595701.
Saying that Christ claims every square inch is not the same as saying that your church tradition has authority to pronounce on all those inches. Protestant social thought, James Gustafson has famously said, is "only a little short of chaos," and if Jordan Ballor is to be believed in Ecumenical Babel, its ecclesiology is probably in worse shape. According to Ballor, our attempt to shore up Protestant social thought with ecumenical pronouncements on social justice is mucking up an already swampy terrain, putting the ecumenical movement in danger of compromising its prophetic role in relation to secular economic and political ideology.
This accusation is very serious. Ballor's argument has at least two key components. His first and most original argument is against what he calls the ecumenical industrial complex. Ballor dedicates chapters specifically to the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC), and the World Council of Churches (WCC). In these associations, he finds a "fundamental flaw endemic to ecumenical activism," arguing that "ineffectual ethical pronouncements by the ecumenical movement are grounded in faulty economic assumptions" (4).
This suggests Ballor's second criticism, which is about the nature of the economic and political assumptions made by the ecumenical movement. Whether or not these are correct is a debate for the wonks. The first order debate on ecclesiology is where Ballor's most innovative work is done: are churches competent, technically and ontologically, to make policy prescriptions?
But first, pause and consider why churches and their ecumenical superstructures feel compelled to make otherwise technical prescriptions. Global events have saturated the public imagination for decades now, with the advent of ever-globalizing relationships and instant information. Christians in churches have also experienced this expansion. The conscious awareness of social justice issues must surely be greater now than at any moment in history.
So we can certainly sympathetically see Christians latch onto the first institution they know and trust to speak into the apocalyptic captions on the evening news. For most of us, the church is the most immediate, accessible, and organized institution we know. With Ballor, we might agree the church as institution is not the best platform—but it is at least an understandable one.
I might argue that this recognition should inspire us to ecclesial charity, because while globalization raises awareness broadly, it does not educate deeply. Simplistic call and response on complex economic and political issues may be inadequate, but at least it's a conversation on justice. And I can get into that.
For these reasons, in the midst of Ballor's critique, we must simply state that the ecumenical industrial complex, for all its murky and controversial pronouncements, is not out to get anyone. When well-intentioned church leaders say they're out for justice, I believe them. That's not an insignificant starting point. In fact, I take great encouragement from it, even while I may agree with Ballor's critique of their falsely presumed authority in the midst of it. There are far worse dangers in this world than the shadow of neo-marxism in the hearts and minds of social justice-minded ecumenical activists.
On the other hand, Ballor's challenge is still very serious. When controversial social science infiltrates ecclesial confessions, twin dangers emerge: compromising the integrity of the Gospel, and splitting the church on political and economic issues. Ecumenical superstructures claiming to speak with ecclesial authority on technical matters worry me, even when technical experts are enlisted. The point is not just that expertise can be limited in these cases—it's that different institutions have differing spheres of authority and competency.
How, then, should the church speak? Ballor provides good signposts by talking about churches preaching justice, rather than prescribing policy. The environment, for example, must be stewarded and protected, certainly. But does that specifically mean cap and trade or renewable energy investment? Should the church as denomination really have an opinion on these particularly issues? Wouldn't such an opinion violate its own sphere of authority and uncomfortably blur lines with the task of government and public policy? Accountability on principles is one thing; policy advocacy is quite another.
The church is not just another activist NGO for socially-minded Millennials. True: It does mission. It has a concern for justice, absolutely. But the church is not a think tank, a policy shop, or a political party. Where critical advocacy should be done, Christian citizens are called together for the common good to present their arguments in the public square—not as denominational representatives, but as Christian citizens formed in the liturgies and practices of the church.
Ballor is right that ecumenical political and economic activism clambering for theological license properly belongs in the public square. But I do not mean by this to delegitimize it. In fact, ecumenical activists may well have trenchant critiques, precisely for the times in which we live. But those critiques, insofar as they are economically and politically technical, would be far better if brought to newspaper op-eds and parliamentary committee hearings, rather Sunday pulpits and denominational magazines.
This does not mean that churches have no place in the political process. They can be critical institutions that provide a principled ballast in the fast and easy world of politics. And policy prescription is certainly not outside Christian competence! Christians, as citizens, should and must be doing the range of economic and political work.
We must simply be cautious that when we take to the streets, or to our congressmen and parliamentarians, on specific issues, we do not do so naively—as though the Scripture has uncomplicatedly compelled us on this or that matter. The Gospel, it seems, can clearly compel a great deal. There is necessary room here for ambiguity, disagreement, and principled pluralism, even among well-intentioned justice-minded Christians. A tyrannizing ecumenical agenda fashioned from all-too-controversial political and economic assumptions stands to do more harm than good. As Ballor writes, "economic and political opinions should not be turned into articles of faith" (119).
I can resonate with his final recommendations. First, Ballor recommends that the ecumenical movement abandon its claims to institutional church authority on matters that are not specifically ecclesial; second, he says they ought therefore to refrain from making specific policy prescriptions, so to safe guard legitimate Christian disagreement in the public domain. Even papal encyclicals do not bear the mark of infallibility.
Third—and on this Ballor and I can agree to disagree—he insists that these economic and political assumptions ought themselves be abandoned as untenable. That is debate for another day and another set of experts. But I simply add that while Ballor might be passionately convicted that left-of-centre activism has at its root idolatrous assumptions, it is too simple and controversial to label ecumenical social justice advocates as marxist idolaters and call them to repentance. Ballor's normally careful analysis is simply too broad and dismissive here, especially for someone who so roundly indicts ecumenical activists for their simple-minded caricature of neo-liberalism. A similarly reductive tit-for-tat on neo-marxism may prove cathartic, but it's not particularly illuminating. The neo-marxists are hardly more prone to uncritical idolatry than the free marketers.
Ballor is spot-on when worrying that narrowly framing the debate this way can obscure the fact that globalization is about a great deal more than economics or politics. Isn't it ironic that the ecclesial conversation is essentially a thinly-baptized version of exactly the same disagreements in the secular world, but with less technical capacity and more theological abstraction? This is Ballor's most important point.
Conclusively, then, I think we can resonate most with Ballor's final remarks:
Let our confession be not "I follow Marx," or "I follow Hayek," "I follow Rand," or "I follow Keynes," but rather, together, "We follow Christ."
Copyright © 1974-2010 Cardus. All Rights Reserved.
Cardus - The Ecumenical Social Justice Ship: Full Steam Ahead or Teetering Titanic?
Monday, September 20, 2010
Get Low and the Gospel
“Get Low” and the Gospel, by Russell Moore
— MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13TH, 2010 —
On Sunday afternoons, typically, the adrenaline of the morning’s activity crashes in, and I’m left with the stillness of a week’s worth of exhaustion. This past Sunday the house was especially quiet, with everyone else napping (something I can’t do well). Without the energy to read or write, I slipped off to my neighborhood movie theater to, like Walker Percy’s Binx Bolling, just to “be” for a while. As the closing credits of Get Low filed by, I realized I hadn’t expected a near encounter with the gospel.
Get Low is the story of a mysterious hermit (played with brilliance by Robert Duvall) who hires a funeral director (Bill Murray) and his associate to carry out a “funeral party” for him. The catch is that this memorial service is to be held before the hermit is actually dead, in order that he would be there to hear all the stories folks would tell about him.
I was first struck by the fact that this was one of the very few contemporary films I’ve seen that portrays positively either the clergy (two of them, in this movie) or funeral directors (well, at least one of the two). But that was not the most impressive part of the movie. I was jarred by the guilt that throbbed through the whole of it.
I’ll try not to spoil the plot for you, except to say that the hermit turns out to be a hermit for a reason. There is something wicked back there in his past. And that’s what the funeral party is about. He wants to hear the stories others have of him (knowing they’ll be awful) because he is fearful of telling the story that only he knows about himself.
Get Low is not a “Christian movie.” The point of view is decidedly non-Christian, as is most of the mode of discourse. And that’s just the point. The film portrays something the Christian Scriptures insist to be true. Guilt isn’t something society foists upon us. There’s something primal, something real, in the guilty conscience.
The apostolic preaching confirms what human experience already affirms, a moral law is embedded in the human conscience. The conscience is not simply a kind of internal prompt for good behavior. It is instead a foretaste of judgment, of the Day when every secret is unearthed.
“For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law,” the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Rome. “They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on the day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus” (Rom. 2:14-16).
Get Low portrays where we all are, apart from Christ. Our conscience shows us who we really are, cut off from our only source of life and unable to get back to it past the watching angel’s fiery sword. That kind of guilt is enslaving. Like the protagonist in the film, we want somehow to explain our actions, or to assemble a cloud of witnesses who can explain it for us, without admitting our culpability. We want to live through judgment (which is, after all, what a living funeral is) so that we can reassure ourselves that the end result of our choices isn’t quite the horror we fear it to be.
Get Low ought to prompt us to sympathy for those around us, in our neighborhoods and sometimes in our own homes. They are in captivity, the gospel tells us, to “lifelong slavery” to the one who by his accusation has the power of death, the devil (Heb. 2:14-15).
In the movie, the hermit exiles himself. In his forty year (forty years? Was this accidental?) isolation, he sought to make up for his past. He sacrificed family and friends; he did thankless good deeds, even constructing a church. But, through it all, he denies himself what the Christian preachers tell him he needs: confession of sin before God. In fact, in a chilling scene, the hermit denies that he has wronged God at all.
That’s where Get Low leaves us just this side of Golgotha. The hermit confesses his sin, but his confession is, it seems, just short of repentance. His sin is unveiled. The context is explained. Through forgiveness, human relationships are restored. And then, finally, there’s what the film portrays as the (atoning?) release of death.
But the conscience won’t leave us alone that easily. We know that our death can’t wipe away our sin. Our exile doesn’t end there. It’s only just begun. Without the shedding of blood, of a blood we cannot draw from our own guilty veins, there is no remission of sin. We need more than explanation, confession, restoration. We need crucifixion, burial, resurrection. We need to be born all over again.
Get Low isn’t Christian, but it’s Christ-haunted. In an often animalistic culture, it reminds us that even the Gentiles know that guilt is real, and that it burns. It also reminds us that, no matter how deep the exile, where there is still a conscience there is still the God who put it there.
That’s not the good news, but its a step toward acknowledging the bad. It’s not the whole truth, but it’s the truth, the (almost) gospel truth.
(Russell Moore)
— MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13TH, 2010 —
On Sunday afternoons, typically, the adrenaline of the morning’s activity crashes in, and I’m left with the stillness of a week’s worth of exhaustion. This past Sunday the house was especially quiet, with everyone else napping (something I can’t do well). Without the energy to read or write, I slipped off to my neighborhood movie theater to, like Walker Percy’s Binx Bolling, just to “be” for a while. As the closing credits of Get Low filed by, I realized I hadn’t expected a near encounter with the gospel.
Get Low is the story of a mysterious hermit (played with brilliance by Robert Duvall) who hires a funeral director (Bill Murray) and his associate to carry out a “funeral party” for him. The catch is that this memorial service is to be held before the hermit is actually dead, in order that he would be there to hear all the stories folks would tell about him.
I was first struck by the fact that this was one of the very few contemporary films I’ve seen that portrays positively either the clergy (two of them, in this movie) or funeral directors (well, at least one of the two). But that was not the most impressive part of the movie. I was jarred by the guilt that throbbed through the whole of it.
I’ll try not to spoil the plot for you, except to say that the hermit turns out to be a hermit for a reason. There is something wicked back there in his past. And that’s what the funeral party is about. He wants to hear the stories others have of him (knowing they’ll be awful) because he is fearful of telling the story that only he knows about himself.
Get Low is not a “Christian movie.” The point of view is decidedly non-Christian, as is most of the mode of discourse. And that’s just the point. The film portrays something the Christian Scriptures insist to be true. Guilt isn’t something society foists upon us. There’s something primal, something real, in the guilty conscience.
The apostolic preaching confirms what human experience already affirms, a moral law is embedded in the human conscience. The conscience is not simply a kind of internal prompt for good behavior. It is instead a foretaste of judgment, of the Day when every secret is unearthed.
“For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law,” the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Rome. “They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on the day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus” (Rom. 2:14-16).
Get Low portrays where we all are, apart from Christ. Our conscience shows us who we really are, cut off from our only source of life and unable to get back to it past the watching angel’s fiery sword. That kind of guilt is enslaving. Like the protagonist in the film, we want somehow to explain our actions, or to assemble a cloud of witnesses who can explain it for us, without admitting our culpability. We want to live through judgment (which is, after all, what a living funeral is) so that we can reassure ourselves that the end result of our choices isn’t quite the horror we fear it to be.
Get Low ought to prompt us to sympathy for those around us, in our neighborhoods and sometimes in our own homes. They are in captivity, the gospel tells us, to “lifelong slavery” to the one who by his accusation has the power of death, the devil (Heb. 2:14-15).
In the movie, the hermit exiles himself. In his forty year (forty years? Was this accidental?) isolation, he sought to make up for his past. He sacrificed family and friends; he did thankless good deeds, even constructing a church. But, through it all, he denies himself what the Christian preachers tell him he needs: confession of sin before God. In fact, in a chilling scene, the hermit denies that he has wronged God at all.
That’s where Get Low leaves us just this side of Golgotha. The hermit confesses his sin, but his confession is, it seems, just short of repentance. His sin is unveiled. The context is explained. Through forgiveness, human relationships are restored. And then, finally, there’s what the film portrays as the (atoning?) release of death.
But the conscience won’t leave us alone that easily. We know that our death can’t wipe away our sin. Our exile doesn’t end there. It’s only just begun. Without the shedding of blood, of a blood we cannot draw from our own guilty veins, there is no remission of sin. We need more than explanation, confession, restoration. We need crucifixion, burial, resurrection. We need to be born all over again.
Get Low isn’t Christian, but it’s Christ-haunted. In an often animalistic culture, it reminds us that even the Gentiles know that guilt is real, and that it burns. It also reminds us that, no matter how deep the exile, where there is still a conscience there is still the God who put it there.
That’s not the good news, but its a step toward acknowledging the bad. It’s not the whole truth, but it’s the truth, the (almost) gospel truth.
(Russell Moore)
Friday, September 17, 2010
Cardus - Civil Religion: Caution is Advised
Cardus - Civil Religion: Caution is Advised
POINT OF VIEW
Civil Religion: Caution is Advised
September 17, 2010 - John Seel with Ray Pennings
Henry Van Til observes that "culture is religion externalized." By this, he meant that the culture of a people reflects their true religious priorities. So the existence of civil religion is not ultimately surprising. Like so many things, it's a mixed bag, so discernment is needed.
But understanding the proper role of civil religion is complex. It is a normal symptom of national stress. It is about finding national meaning and purpose grounded in the transcendent. Philip Rieff argues in his provocative book, Sacred Order/Social Order: My Life Among the Deathworks (University of Virginia Press, 2006), that "cultures give readings of sacred order and ourselves somewhere in it . . . Culture and sacred order are inseparable, the former the registration of the latter as a systemic expression of the practical relation between humans and the shadow aspects of reality as it is lived."
"No culture has ever preserved itself," he concludes, "where it is not a registration of sacred order." Our age is unprecedented because unlike all societies in the past, we do not publicly ground our social order in the sacred. As a result, for many, today's appeals to civil religion sound odd or even alarming. What was once common is no longer as widely accepted in public discourse.
Some have suggested other alternatives. In Nations Matter: Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream (Routledge, 2007), New York University sociologist Craig Calhoun proposes cosmopolitanism, liberalism's proposed universalistic alternative, as a substitute. But even as he offers cosmopolitanism as a viable alternative to civil religion, he acknowledges that it does not ultimately satisfy—it "does not provide the proximate solidarities on the basis of which better institutions and greater democracy can be built." So for better or worse, we're going to be left with some form of civil religion.
This is why those who hold religion in high regard and are most inclined to appeal to civil religion in public discourse need clear-eyed discernment.
At times of national stress, civil religion resurfaces. It did after September 11 and it has again today in the midst of our current economic struggles and growing frustration with the direction of the Obama White House. It was evidenced this summer at Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally held at the Lincoln Memorial on the U.S. National Mall. Timothy Dalrymple asked whether Americans have squandered their cultural inheritance. Many feel that the current financial woes are connected to a longstanding moral decline, as Dr. Alveda King posited at the rally: "Our material gains seem to be going the way of our moral losses."
Societies need myths, stories, and images. Few would deny the role religion has played in America's past or its continuing relevance to vast numbers of its population. Even as modernity squeezes religion to the margins in most areas of public life, it continues to have great resonance as our social cement. Even in the midst of fragmenting pluralism, God-talk and notions that America has a distinct divine destiny are the natural recourse when Americans somehow feel attacked—physically, economically, or psychologically. Civil religion is understandable, and in many cases, it serves a valuable civic purpose.
But civil religion also has its dangers, and these dangers are best kept in mind, particularly when we feel under stress. For civil religion can dilute genuine religious belief and eventually lead to idolatry. Idolatry is not a term common to civic discourse, but it's appropriate here.
Civil religion insists on providing a faith that is inclusive of all religious views and all citizens. It eschews exclusivity. So the civil religion's pattern is to water down religious doctrine by deemphasizing belief over symbolic practices that usually cost one nothing. It reinforces the tendency to accommodate one's faith to fits one's social surroundings. It is an ecumenism of the lowest common denominator, where the citizenship in the City of Man is blurred with that in the City of God. And while we are to give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's, in the final analysis, a Christian believer's "citizenship is in heaven" (Philippians 3:20). This fact trumps all other commitments and loyalties. And herein is the fundamental danger of civil religion.
Civil religion changes religion from being an end to being a means. It uses religion as social glue, thereby making social solidarity the final end. Variants of this tendency were in Germany's national socialism and Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. To confuse an end with a means is to change one's relationship to the thing itself. When one gets married in order to gain the inherited wealth of one's future spouse, so-called marital love has become merely a means to an end. So too with civil religion: When religion is used to support the state, the state become the end, and not religion. God is not mocked, and those who would post the Ten Commandments on courthouse walls should well remember the first of those commandments: He tolerates no other God before Him. He is to be worshipped on his own terms—no God but God.
Civil religion also tends to emphasize the symbolic over the substantive. It is difficult to see how allowing vocalized prayer in public schools would substantively improve education or fundamentally change the direction of American culture. But simplistic pyrrhic victories, particularly if mediagenic and populist in nature, are to be sought at all cost. The amount of dust and rhetoric over matters that don't really matter is astounding. We major on minors—and then wonder why nothing changes.
And finally, because it is socially accepted and religiously justified, civil religion can easily turn into idolatry, with all the consequences of pride and self-deception associated with it, when good things—like patriotism—are loved too much. When the cross is conflated with the flag and patriotic appreciation becomes over-attachment and reliance, civil religion crosses a line. But good things often become the worse things, because their inherent goodness blinds us to the danger of loving it too much. Parochialism, nationalism, and jingoism are the inevitable results of idolatrous civic religion. Civic self-righteousness is more dangerous than its purely religious cousin, because the state has the power of the military to back up its sense of being aggrieved. As Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural Address, we should be careful in assuming that God is uniquely on our side.
Separation of church and state will not stop civil religion. The separation is a legal institutional arrangement, while civil religion is a public search for meaning in times of stress. So civil religion's head will rise again and again, even in the midst of increasing secularity. And though it may be a balm to those who chafe against the godlessness of civil society, it demands increasing discernment, particularly by those most inclined to its appeal.
Ironically, political conservatives, who most frequently use civil religion to bolster their desire to return America to its founding values, are not only putting a sacred patina on government, but they are diluting faith. The state is given a religious sanction and the church a secular justification—and yet, when all the rhetoric ends and the TV cameras stop rolling, nothing fundamental has been done or changed. Some may feel better about themselves, but it is at the expense of the body politic and theological integrity. It's a bad bargain that is easily made—which is why caution is advised.
Corruptio optimi pessima: "The corruption of the best things are the worst things."
NB: What follows is a piece of reflection on the same topic with specific focus on Canadian context
Resisting melting-pot
Ray Pennings
The substance of John Seel's four-fold caution regarding civil religion is equally applicable north of the forty-ninth parallel, although a bit of translation into Canadianese seems apt. Unlike our American friends—for whom debating exactly what the principle of separation of church and state means seems foundational in these debates—Canadian history does not include any such principle. (Even our Supreme Court declared in a 1985 decision that "recourse to categories from American jurisprudence is not particularly helpful" in relation to these matters.)
While we have our own historical contentions, our founding involved a "pact" between French Catholics and English Protestants, in which various commitments that look very much like "establishment" clauses were constitutionally guaranteed. The public role of religion was so deeply embedded that as recently as the patriation of the constitution and passage of the Canadian Rights and Freedoms in 1982, religious language was preserved. "Whereas Canada is founded on principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law . . . " is the Canadian counterpart to "life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness."
In practice, however, the cosmopolitan alternative to civil religion has been more aggressively propagated in Canada than the United States. Our official policies of bilingualism and multiculturalism have combined to resist melting-pot strategies, so the Canadian public square is one in which theistic language are not welcomed. Combined with our self-image of being "nice" and "tolerant," this means that where public religious engagement can be framed as welcoming particular ethnic or minority interests, such activity is tolerated, whereas majority religious expressions of civil religion are frowned upon. In very practical terms, this meant that Canada's post-9/11 service was multi-faith in character, although it did not include a Christian prayer.
That this is unsustainable is increasingly self-evident and civil religionists—of both the cosmopolitan and Christian persuasion—are increasingly engaging in public discussion on these matters. I suspect both sides of the border need to recognize that if we are to live together in peace, we must have some conception of what constitutes the "public good" that transcends the simple majority opinion of the day. At the same time, we need to recognize that the public square is not equipped to sort through competing truth claims of various faith perspectives, be they religious or secular truth claims: A new sort of civil discourse is required.
Copyright © 1974-2010 Cardus. All Rights Reserved.
POINT OF VIEW
Civil Religion: Caution is Advised
September 17, 2010 - John Seel with Ray Pennings
Henry Van Til observes that "culture is religion externalized." By this, he meant that the culture of a people reflects their true religious priorities. So the existence of civil religion is not ultimately surprising. Like so many things, it's a mixed bag, so discernment is needed.
But understanding the proper role of civil religion is complex. It is a normal symptom of national stress. It is about finding national meaning and purpose grounded in the transcendent. Philip Rieff argues in his provocative book, Sacred Order/Social Order: My Life Among the Deathworks (University of Virginia Press, 2006), that "cultures give readings of sacred order and ourselves somewhere in it . . . Culture and sacred order are inseparable, the former the registration of the latter as a systemic expression of the practical relation between humans and the shadow aspects of reality as it is lived."
"No culture has ever preserved itself," he concludes, "where it is not a registration of sacred order." Our age is unprecedented because unlike all societies in the past, we do not publicly ground our social order in the sacred. As a result, for many, today's appeals to civil religion sound odd or even alarming. What was once common is no longer as widely accepted in public discourse.
Some have suggested other alternatives. In Nations Matter: Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream (Routledge, 2007), New York University sociologist Craig Calhoun proposes cosmopolitanism, liberalism's proposed universalistic alternative, as a substitute. But even as he offers cosmopolitanism as a viable alternative to civil religion, he acknowledges that it does not ultimately satisfy—it "does not provide the proximate solidarities on the basis of which better institutions and greater democracy can be built." So for better or worse, we're going to be left with some form of civil religion.
This is why those who hold religion in high regard and are most inclined to appeal to civil religion in public discourse need clear-eyed discernment.
At times of national stress, civil religion resurfaces. It did after September 11 and it has again today in the midst of our current economic struggles and growing frustration with the direction of the Obama White House. It was evidenced this summer at Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally held at the Lincoln Memorial on the U.S. National Mall. Timothy Dalrymple asked whether Americans have squandered their cultural inheritance. Many feel that the current financial woes are connected to a longstanding moral decline, as Dr. Alveda King posited at the rally: "Our material gains seem to be going the way of our moral losses."
Societies need myths, stories, and images. Few would deny the role religion has played in America's past or its continuing relevance to vast numbers of its population. Even as modernity squeezes religion to the margins in most areas of public life, it continues to have great resonance as our social cement. Even in the midst of fragmenting pluralism, God-talk and notions that America has a distinct divine destiny are the natural recourse when Americans somehow feel attacked—physically, economically, or psychologically. Civil religion is understandable, and in many cases, it serves a valuable civic purpose.
But civil religion also has its dangers, and these dangers are best kept in mind, particularly when we feel under stress. For civil religion can dilute genuine religious belief and eventually lead to idolatry. Idolatry is not a term common to civic discourse, but it's appropriate here.
Civil religion insists on providing a faith that is inclusive of all religious views and all citizens. It eschews exclusivity. So the civil religion's pattern is to water down religious doctrine by deemphasizing belief over symbolic practices that usually cost one nothing. It reinforces the tendency to accommodate one's faith to fits one's social surroundings. It is an ecumenism of the lowest common denominator, where the citizenship in the City of Man is blurred with that in the City of God. And while we are to give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's, in the final analysis, a Christian believer's "citizenship is in heaven" (Philippians 3:20). This fact trumps all other commitments and loyalties. And herein is the fundamental danger of civil religion.
Civil religion changes religion from being an end to being a means. It uses religion as social glue, thereby making social solidarity the final end. Variants of this tendency were in Germany's national socialism and Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. To confuse an end with a means is to change one's relationship to the thing itself. When one gets married in order to gain the inherited wealth of one's future spouse, so-called marital love has become merely a means to an end. So too with civil religion: When religion is used to support the state, the state become the end, and not religion. God is not mocked, and those who would post the Ten Commandments on courthouse walls should well remember the first of those commandments: He tolerates no other God before Him. He is to be worshipped on his own terms—no God but God.
Civil religion also tends to emphasize the symbolic over the substantive. It is difficult to see how allowing vocalized prayer in public schools would substantively improve education or fundamentally change the direction of American culture. But simplistic pyrrhic victories, particularly if mediagenic and populist in nature, are to be sought at all cost. The amount of dust and rhetoric over matters that don't really matter is astounding. We major on minors—and then wonder why nothing changes.
And finally, because it is socially accepted and religiously justified, civil religion can easily turn into idolatry, with all the consequences of pride and self-deception associated with it, when good things—like patriotism—are loved too much. When the cross is conflated with the flag and patriotic appreciation becomes over-attachment and reliance, civil religion crosses a line. But good things often become the worse things, because their inherent goodness blinds us to the danger of loving it too much. Parochialism, nationalism, and jingoism are the inevitable results of idolatrous civic religion. Civic self-righteousness is more dangerous than its purely religious cousin, because the state has the power of the military to back up its sense of being aggrieved. As Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural Address, we should be careful in assuming that God is uniquely on our side.
Separation of church and state will not stop civil religion. The separation is a legal institutional arrangement, while civil religion is a public search for meaning in times of stress. So civil religion's head will rise again and again, even in the midst of increasing secularity. And though it may be a balm to those who chafe against the godlessness of civil society, it demands increasing discernment, particularly by those most inclined to its appeal.
Ironically, political conservatives, who most frequently use civil religion to bolster their desire to return America to its founding values, are not only putting a sacred patina on government, but they are diluting faith. The state is given a religious sanction and the church a secular justification—and yet, when all the rhetoric ends and the TV cameras stop rolling, nothing fundamental has been done or changed. Some may feel better about themselves, but it is at the expense of the body politic and theological integrity. It's a bad bargain that is easily made—which is why caution is advised.
Corruptio optimi pessima: "The corruption of the best things are the worst things."
NB: What follows is a piece of reflection on the same topic with specific focus on Canadian context
Resisting melting-pot
Ray Pennings
The substance of John Seel's four-fold caution regarding civil religion is equally applicable north of the forty-ninth parallel, although a bit of translation into Canadianese seems apt. Unlike our American friends—for whom debating exactly what the principle of separation of church and state means seems foundational in these debates—Canadian history does not include any such principle. (Even our Supreme Court declared in a 1985 decision that "recourse to categories from American jurisprudence is not particularly helpful" in relation to these matters.)
While we have our own historical contentions, our founding involved a "pact" between French Catholics and English Protestants, in which various commitments that look very much like "establishment" clauses were constitutionally guaranteed. The public role of religion was so deeply embedded that as recently as the patriation of the constitution and passage of the Canadian Rights and Freedoms in 1982, religious language was preserved. "Whereas Canada is founded on principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law . . . " is the Canadian counterpart to "life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness."
In practice, however, the cosmopolitan alternative to civil religion has been more aggressively propagated in Canada than the United States. Our official policies of bilingualism and multiculturalism have combined to resist melting-pot strategies, so the Canadian public square is one in which theistic language are not welcomed. Combined with our self-image of being "nice" and "tolerant," this means that where public religious engagement can be framed as welcoming particular ethnic or minority interests, such activity is tolerated, whereas majority religious expressions of civil religion are frowned upon. In very practical terms, this meant that Canada's post-9/11 service was multi-faith in character, although it did not include a Christian prayer.
That this is unsustainable is increasingly self-evident and civil religionists—of both the cosmopolitan and Christian persuasion—are increasingly engaging in public discussion on these matters. I suspect both sides of the border need to recognize that if we are to live together in peace, we must have some conception of what constitutes the "public good" that transcends the simple majority opinion of the day. At the same time, we need to recognize that the public square is not equipped to sort through competing truth claims of various faith perspectives, be they religious or secular truth claims: A new sort of civil discourse is required.
Copyright © 1974-2010 Cardus. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
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