Confucianism - Freedom and democracy 2.0
Is Confucianism a Religion?
V. Another sidebar – Augustine, Garry Wills, MacIntyre, rights and the Church today There is rather a lot to cover in this sidebar – government and religion, rights, failure of rights, an Augustinian view of living faithfully in difficult times. I suppose this is all done neither wisely nor too well. There are many learned volumes about any one of the topics here. Suffice it to say these are notes to myself.
Sections to follow –
What we share
How Kantian and utilitarian morality fail
Alternate views – Aristotle and MacIntyre
MacIntyreian practice as a virtue ethics solution
Aristotle and MacIntyre have a problem …
The free will problem
The sovereign individual problem - Rights as the crux of failures
Sandel’s talking solution
Can we use virtuous methods?
Government and religion have a rights problem now
Government failure
Religious failure
Another problem - government needs religion … and vice versa
Why liberals need the church … or a moral equivalent
Which liberalism? Rights?
The other missing element, what we never talk about – virtues and self-cultivation
Heaven in Erehwon … or at least, not here
An idea for liberal and conservatives - Pride and humility and tolerance
Augustinian uncertainty before tolerance
Christianity today – missing in action
Answering Gandhi - Christianity
Answering Gandhi - Confucianism?
Why not Daoism or Buddhism?
The Christian – and Confucian – morality that we need
Serving the City of God and the City of Man - Hypocrisy cornered by Augustine
Morality - more than fairness and avoidance of harm
So now what?
What are progressives and believers (evangelicals) to do?
An evangelical renewal of Augustine and liberalism
Why bother?
A sidebar in this sidebar
What we share
American liberals and conservatives share some fundamental classical liberal beliefs – belief in democracy, in freedoms of religion and speech and press and association, belief in some version of individual autonomy. These are goods, as cars and baseball tickets are goods, but with a difference. The classical liberal beliefs are moral goods, rather than personal or consumption goods. They are priceless and affect each of us directly in our sense of who we are.
These moral goods are a lot to share, but we become increasingly aware of what we share only in troubled times at home and in the world. Most of the world does not have these goods. But we don’t credit that with which we are so familiar and we are more polarized now than any time in living memory. Jonathan Haidt gave us some excellent perspective on moral polarization with his moral modules (see post IV - A sidebar – Margaret Anscombe, Jonathan Haidt, and Sam Harris).
In our current polarization there is a more fundamental flaw at the heart of liberalism that we all ignore even as we share it. For too much of our daily lives, political lives, social lives, we are unwilling to be together.
For many things, we do celebrate our togetherness and work hard to preserve it. In sports, we celebrate teamwork – you remember, “there is no I in team.” Craig Ihara makes the point in Are Individual Rights Necessary? (In Kwong-loi Shun & David B. Wong (eds.), Confucian Ethics: A Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and Community, 2004). Our most cherished memories are made jointly, not individually – team and performance triumphs, flag raisings and protests. These memories never involve invocations of rights. Ihara makes a strong argument that - contra much western political thought - a notion of individual rights is not necessary to a virtuous and properly functioning society. We can make claims on each other as long as we have agreement, formal or informal, on operating rules and practices – in short, as long as we have community.
In theater and movie making, the cast and crew on stage and off must work closely together to produce the best work. Individualism destroys the community creation. In teaching, students learn best when the algebra and geometry can be handed off seamlessly from teacher to teacher to trigonometry and calculus. Every business requires close coordination across individual work, whether making hamburgers or cars or mortgage loans.
As a side note, all of these activities share one feature – they can be considered projects of a relatively short duration, an hour or a day or a month. High coordination is needed. At the end of some short defined time span, the coordination among individuals can end, at least for a while. We can do that. Goals are apparent and rewards are visible.
High coordination over long periods of time looks like programs. Socially, we have a harder time with that. Coordination over time requires relationship and understanding of others and some tolerance for others, putting up with quirks and idiosyncracies, and we don’t like doing that. Businesses spend time and money trying to encourage or foster relationships – make us work like a team, is the jargon. What fails is the ability to sustain belief in the overarching goal. For businesses, that is usually making money. In the military, constant training and repetition of mission focus is critical. For a society, that is faith in some supranational belief – nationalism is a current international favorite, but religion – particularly Christian religion in the west – was the go-to theme for hundreds of years, and that is now confused. But socially, we do need some agreement on some Way, some path forward.
How Kantian and utilitarian morality fail
In the US we mostly share another aspect of modern life, and that is the moral neutrality of government. The idea is that in a plural society with strong emphasis on individualism and democracy, government should not point too forcefully in the direction of the Good. The Good is individual, not collective or community or even family based, and we will each find it for ourselves. The original Kantian idea – that we still use politically in the US - was for each individual to find a universal morality not tied to religion and based on human reason. But there is no universal morality based on reason, as Kant would have it. In our hyperconnected, global and plural world, it can be hard to find sound moral footing. Our plethora of viewpoints on any issue can paralyze thoughtful morality in any case. What is fair, what is moral begs for grounding in society, and to no avail.
A small example. Laws necessarily reflect local morality, but a plural society needs laws that are absolutely not needed elsewhere. My favorite example is the American law on distribution of assets after the death of a wealthy Muslim man, who had several legal wives in his home country. All those marriages had to be considered legal in the US when he immigrated. It’s a bit more complicated than most of us ever imagine.
And Benthamite “greatest good for the greatest number” fails when we are talking about social justice. In the US right now we seem to have great social justice concerns for those whose absolute physical numbers in the population are very small. A strict utilitarian might ask, why bother?
Kantian and Benthamite moralities are products of the Enlightenment and both are aspects of liberalism. They celebrate the individual and helped to create the notion of human rights, as absolute power of kings and government and church waned.
Liberalism and the rights that followed are good things. But remembering Aristotle (golden mean), the Buddha (middle way), Confucius (zhong yong, the doctrine of the mean), Ecclesiastes 7:15-16, and Aquinas’ The Mean of Virtue (Summa Theologiae, Prima Secundæ Partis, Question 64), balance is key. I argue we have now excesses of individual rights to the detriment of community. We have deficiencies of virtue language in our politics and morality. Benevolence and tolerance are too much missing.
Alternate views of morality – Aristotle and MacIntyre
Alasdair MacIntyre makes the best modern case for a morality distinct from Kantian individualism or utilitarianism. MacIntyre is a formidable critic of liberalism in After Virtue.
His point is that every human is situated in some family, some group, some clan, some town or city, some era. As these institutions differ, so will local moralities. Natural law does seems universal. But actual moralities beyond some natural law vary in time and place; how then would one promote universal standards? A community standard is the best we can hope for.
MacIntyre follows Aristotle in seeking a community teleology – a government sponsored notion of the good life. If government cannot provide, then an intentional community may do so for itself. This is the thinking of some conservative Christians. Rod Dreher suggests a partial retreat from the world to “Benedict-Option Communities/” in which members can lead more intentional lives in support of each other.
That is not going to work at scale in a large and diverse society. The government cannot, will not, promote a universal good beyond some minimal exhortations to go to school and vote occasionally. Civil society - non-profit institutions - are no substitute for government. They can provide some services, but they cannot legislate and - other than through religion - they cannot effectively provide moral guidance.
But Aristotle and MacIntyre have a problem ...
MacIntyre claims that liberalism lacks any substantive truths, goods, or values of its own. There is no positive social program, even as it stakes claim to a mythical set of basic values and facts for which it takes credit. A social system based solely on rights quickly becomes mired in questions of whose rights are greater. We have no good way to adjudicate those conflicts – see abortion, if one wants the obvious modern example. Isaiah Berlin pointed out the incommensurability of rights and our modern need to live with that conundrum. Our modern pluralism necessarily requires ‘receptivity, generosity, and skepticism’ if liberalism is to function well within a plural society. As I will point out, that is Augustinian in character.
MacIntyre acknowledges that Aristotle’s teleology cannot come to a pluralist liberal democracy. There is no one community. The government is not going to produce a teleology for all. As an alternative to the utilitarianism and relativism of liberal moral theory, he proposes a virtue ethic and “tradition-constituted rationality.” As an alternative to the individualism and bureaucratization of liberal moral practice, he has proposed the practices and politics of local community. Essentially, this means let local practices thrive. That creates a problem for religion and for government, though. Religion and government would both be happy with a single morality. Neither can provide that in a large plural democracy.
The importance of tradition, respect for authority and sanctity – as Jonathan Haidt describes some elements of a more conservative morality – creates a problem for MacIntyre as it does for conservative Christians. Government can promote traditions, respect for authority and sanctity only so far until such proposals run afoul of other perspectives – other rights. MacIntyre understands that morality is not universal, it is locally constituted - Government can point in the direction of the good life in only a very limited way – hence our political difficulties over abortion, immigration, and public health. We find ourselves in a situation of not being able to define a common morality, one way or the other. Morality must necessarily be local. As Macintyre says, “Morality which is no particular society’s morality is to be found nowhere.” (After Virtue, p. 265). Pointedly, reason is of little value in debates over such moral issues. Politics, MacIntyre says, then becomes “civil war carried on by other means.”
MacIntyre retreats – I think wisely and for the better – to a notion of an individual “practice,” a personal expertise or excellence that will teach internal virtue of excellence in its own way. Sports involve a practice – informal rules about teamwork and what is appropriate when and how one prepares for the next challenge. A carpenter must learn patience, respect for the wood, respect for the limits of tools, thoughtfulness about possibilities, and care for materials, tools, and honesty in dealing with suppliers and customers. One is reminded of the investigation of quality in Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – that one must learn to be at peace with one’s work.
But this has limited usefulness across an entire population. There are too many lures for attention now.
MacIntyreian practice as a virtue ethics solution
MacIntyre sees a sort of second best solution to a teleology, a solution to modern rootlessness, anomie, and immorality in an individual development of a “practice” – a personal expertise that by its nature will demand attention to detail, learning, respect for authority, and honing of goals in both work and life. Where MacIntyre sees value in ordered traditions, including rites, liberals tend to see obstacles to freedom and flourishing.
Some liberals hear the words tradition and “traditional values” and interpret “tradition” as allegiance to a “lost cause” or religious oppression. The proposed liberal antidote is more democracy, more rights – and more law.
What is not realized is that democracy and liberalism are traditions in their own way, with local gradations and interpretations. We can't get to a universal morality except at the cost of respect for government. A result now is lack of deference to political leadership or authority or science (in some places). State neutrality is really not neutral.
“Democracy, I shall argue, is a tradition. It inculcates certain habits of reasoning, certain attitudes toward deference and authority in political discussion, and love for certain goods and virtues, . . . This tradition is anything but empty. . . The notion of state neutrality and the reason-tradition dichotomy should not be seen as its defining marks.”
Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition. Princeton University Press, 2004.
There is much to be gained by abandoning the image of democracy as essentially opposed to tradition, as a negative force that tends by its nature to undermine culture and the cultivation of virtue. Democracy is a culture, a tradition, in its own right. It has an ethical life of its own, which philosophers would do well to articulate. Pragmatism is best viewed as an attempt to bring the notions of democratic deliberation and tradition together in a single philosophical vision. To put the point aphoristically and paradoxically, pragmatism is democratic traditionalism.
Stout maintains that democracy is itself sufficiently a tradition to bind a nation like the US. In 2022, we are all doubting that view. Stout is correct that we share democratic habits and views – as long as the democracy under discussion is sufficiently local. Whether from the left or the right, we have learned to negatively objectify those with different perspectives. I think MacIntyre and Berlin are not wrong. Some values are incommensurable, and we do not have a good way to reconcile that. The US may be too big a polity to function as a democracy now, without substantial change in our national thinking about the common good.
Jeffrey Stout. Cited in Thaddeus Kozinski, Alasdair MacIntyre Vs. Pragmatic Liberalism. 2008, Telos. Available at https://www.academia.edu/20546093/Alasdair_MacIntyre_Vs._Pragmatic_Liberalism?email_work_card=thumbnail
The free will problem
At some level, the only thing any of us can do is decide what we are going to look at next. Theft of that attention is a modern problem. We have too many choices and too little ability to restrain ourselves. We define free will as the ability to do whatever we want whenever we want. That is definitely a problem for religion and for democracy now.
Free will and its definition can simultaneously go a ways toward illustrating distinctions among ethical theories and similarities between Confucianism and Christianity.
Briefly – our Kantian notion of free will suggests that universal rationality is all that is needed for one to make moral choices. A person exercising free will will use reason in control of the emotions. Initial conditions, local culture, tradition and history do not sufficiently intrude on rationality to guide exercise of free will.
The Christian and Confucian ideas are different.
Christian morality is not defined by the Kantian logic. An exercise of free will by a Christian will take into account more than a universal rationality and will be guided by faith and by social and cultural conditions. Confucianism requires conscientious self-reflection and self-study, a commitment to attempt the junzi status, even if quite unlikely. Both require a commitment to do the right thing even if it will be to one’s own disadvantage, because it is the right thing to do.
Li describes free will as “simply the capacity to consciously act according to one’s conceptions of good and evil” through “self-coercion.”
Li Zehou. A Response to Michael Sandel and Other Matters, trans. Paul J. D’Ambrosio and Robert A. Carleo III. Philosophy East and West 66.4, 2016.
Essentially, Confucians and Christians expand the notion of free will defined by Kantian rationality to include emotion – benevolence, loving one another for Confucians, loving one another and turning the other cheek for Christians. “‘Free will’ lies not in heavenly principle, but rather in the human heart-mind” (2011, 5).
Robert Carleo. Is Free Will Confucian? Li Zehou’s Confucian Revision of the Kantian Will. Philosophy East and West (forthcoming in 2022). Available at https://www.academia.edu/38565511/Is_Free_Will_Confucian_Early_Release?email_work_card=abstract-read-more
Free will in this sense is a trained free will, trained to do the right thing. It is not license to do as one pleases, as if there were infinite choices for action. It does not approve of this. The choice space is constrained by the practiced virtues. The individual is most free when he can make good choices easily because he knows good choices from those less so. Joseph Chan makes this argument in his Confucian Perfectionism -
It is important to note that for Confucians, the moral will is not the free expression of an individual’s arbitrary will, but rather the expression of a determination to will what is demanded by the kind of morality the individual reflectively endorses.
This is not easy. Confucius himself said that at age 70 he could start to relax, because he would conduct himself naturally – free will – in doing the right thing. Li Zehou is by no means alone among modern Confucians in promoting a Confucian xin, heart-mind, as the base of morality. Tu Weiming, Joseph Chan, Stephen Angle and Mary Bockover see the value of an expanded definition of rationality. Alasdair MacIntyre, himself no Confucian, proposes a “tradition-constituted rationality.”
The redefinition of free will helps us with our current social media free speech problems. Linking heart and mind will lead us all toward some respect and tolerance - "just because you can doesn't mean you should."
Free speech is not hate speech. Freedom does not mean the right to hurt other people. The biblical reference would be from Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:23 - “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything"—but not everything is constructive.
The sovereign individual problem - rights as the crux of failures
We could call this the rights problem.
Rights are a great modern invention, hands down. They basically created the modern world, with separation of church and state, rule of law, ability to sue and be sued. There are at least some human rights, derivable from natural law.
As with any good, rights have limits, and in the 21st century we may be testing some. The critical issue is that proliferation of rights, well beyond natural law into human rights and then social and collective rights, says nothing about how to address conflicting or incompatible rights, and as rights have proliferated, such conflicts become common.
For liberals, particularly for progressives, inability to use religion as a basis for rights or morality leaves them adrift, as MacIntyre told us.
It might be possible to excuse liberals for their dependence on rights for their morality. After all, many liberals know no other source. But for evangelicals, rights are a fundamental flaw. As I noted in one of the related posts in this series, rights are a relatively recent development in human relations. They are an Enlightenment creation. Rights were suspect in the Church until the end of the 19th century. Liberal societies don’t really have a basis upon which to justify ever-expanding notions of rights. It is not possible to find all of our current notions of rights in extensions of natural law, and Americans in particular are fond of claiming rights in almost every circumstance.
Some conservatives and evangelicals do the same thing – use rights as a trump card, and are surprised to find their trump card is met with an equivalent on the other side. So now what?
Christianity says nothing about rights –
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
No rights here at all. “Love one another” contains no rights prescription.
MacIntyre sees moralities based in rights as devoid of meaning. Thaddeus Kozinski explains in a 2008 article in the journal Telos - Honest to God: Alasdair MacIntyre vs. Pragmatic Liberalism
What we possess today … are nothing more than fragments of an older tradition. As a result, our moral discourse, which uses terms like good, and justice, and duty, has been robbed of the context that makes it intelligible. To complicate matters, … no ethics curriculum predates this catastrophe. Therefore, for anyone who has taken ethics courses, and especially for those who have studied ethics diligently, disarray of modern moral discourse is not only invisible, it is considered normal. This conclusion has been lent apparent credibility by a theory called emotivism.
Emotivism, explains Macintyre, "is the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling.... On this account, the person who remarks, "Kindness is good," is not making a truth claim but simply expressing a positive feeling, "Hurrah for kindness!" Similarly, the person who exclaims, "Murder is wrong," can be understood to be actually saying, "I disapprove of murder," or "Murder, yuck!"
Another reason MacIntyre gives for the doomed nature of the Enlightenment is that it ascribed moral agency to the individual. He claims this made morality no more than one man's opinion and, thus, philosophy became a forum of inexplicably subjective rules and principles. The failure of the Enlightenment Project, because of the abandonment of a teleological structure, is shown by the inadequacy of moral emotivism, which MacIntyre believes accurately reflects the state of modern morality. We now see rights at every turn, and with such proliferation rights can get in the way of solutions – my right to have traditional governance v your right to vote. Abortion and capital punishment are two of our most pressing conflicting rights issues.
Our extreme view of negative liberty – a right to be left alone – then impinges on our positive liberty – a freedom to accomplish one’s goals (which requires relations with other people).
Positive liberty in Isaiah Berlin’s view does not lead to majoritarian oppression. This is not the government deciding what is good for you. His support for value pluralism eliminates feasibility of government as sole decider of the good. Positive liberty is the autonomous individual using rationality to decide what is the best course of action for oneself – rightly considered. This is not the individual subjugating oneself to the wishes of the government, or a majority. It is self-cultivation -to learn what is the best path, just as we learn the best way to cover third base on a throw from the outfield, or the best way to change lanes driving in traffic. No one is “forced to be free” in Rosseau’s chilling phrase. It is not obedience to the general will. Value pluralism will always mean that people can differ as to the good. But one’s decision should be informed and thoughtful, not purely rational (per Kant) or purely emotional (per MacIntyre’s emotivism.) It is the learning to follow the Dao.
Sandel’s talking solution
Separation of church and state is an important fundamental element of liberal government. We work hard to enforce that separation organizationally, but we can hardly do so intellectually. Political philosopher Michael Sandel’s solution to our social crisis lies not in walling off religious ideas from government policy, if that were ever possible. We should be able to separate organized religion from organized government and keep one from issuing orders to the other. But Sandel’s point is that we cannot keep morality out of government – that per Aristotle, government has a duty to provide guidance for its citizens. In any case, to pretend that our policy decisions are morally neutral is a fallacy. He wants us to use moral language in our policy debates – to bring out the distinctions by way of possibly getting to some understanding, if not consensus.
Michael Sandel, citing Aristotle, sees the necessity for a teleology in defining justice. How else to determine what justice means in a particular situation? Justice is in allocating resources per their best use and giving people their due. A teleology provides a basis for judging justice and provides a guide in troubled times. Our local institutions once did embody some sort of teleology, a faith in a path to a decent life – churches, unions, governments, long standing businesses. Loss of faith in institutions is then disastrous for a society. Where can one turn for guidance?
Sandel also realizes that no teleology is possible in liberal society. Sandel’s own retreat from teleology seems to be to the realm of public discussion and debate, from which some sort of consensus might emerge. Government and courts engage in moral reasoning whether they like it or not. Instead of the public and politicians retreating from discussion of morality in public life, Sandel argues that we should embrace such discussion. He says that will allow for a more democratic and pluralistic moral vision, sometimes including religious tradition. As an example, a public convocation of religious leaders of all stripes to debate the moral issues in abortion. Sandel cites Lincoln’s position on slavery, in which he was making an explicitly moral choice in the Lincoln-Douglas debates. William Douglas took the opposite position, to let states decide on the legality of slavery in their territories.
We are certainly engaged in such public discussion of morality right now in 2022, but I don’t see more nuance emerging from the fray. There may be more democratic and local moral responses, in terms of state control of abortion, but that is hardly a unifying outcome. And to the point here, rights talk does little to advance a unifying position on abortion.
Sandel’s solution seems academic and weak, and not much improved on what we sometimes do now, in public participation programs and speeches and podcasts and discussion forums. We need more, an overriding principle or goal, if not a teleology. We need better working definitions of democracy and free will and individualism. Other democracies – those with a Confucian heritage like Singapore – are able to do that.
What Sandel and MacIntyre seem to want is a Confucian or Christian notion of free will – a guided, informed, educated and thoughtful free will. This is a more sophisticated notion of what free will means. That we are not morally free to do whatever we wish, but by our training and experience and consideration of the virtues, we are free to attempt to do the right thing.
But Sandel’s “more communication” solution has its own problem. There is no need to talk when you know you have the truth, and too many of us – left and right - suffer from that conceit. We are then unable to get to any notion of the common good, which is critical to democratic survival. Why bother trying to talk to Them?
Some remembrance of what values we do share is important. That is what Garry Wills promoted in Citizen Believers, and - broadly understood – what Augustine was promoting in the Peace of Babylon. Morality is not absolute, but (per Sam Harris) provides for “increases in the well-being of conscious creatures." Sandel is not arguing against localism or religious views of morality. He is arguing for localism that is negotiated in the wider public domain - a localism that is informed and acknowledges its own peculiarity. Nevertheless, his idea requires communication among all the parties.
Garry Wills. Citizen Believers. Inaugural speech at Voices Series, recorded at University of California Television, 2003. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COdUygUHFAM&t=2755s
In my mind, neither MacIntyre's practice nor Sandel's talking about morality are sufficient for the basis we need for coming together as a society.
Can we use virtuous methods?
How to persuade … or even discuss in a contentious environment? Advice from many fields - communications, human relations, sales and marketing and negotiation and psychology suggest attempting to reach the other side by speaking their language – make it easy to say yes to … something that both sides can tolerate. (N.B. – tolerate is the word to use here. Perfect solutions are only available in the realm of totalitarianism – and only as long as your view is that of the government.)
Some liberals don’t want to go there. They tell us that Enlightenment values are all that matter, Kantian individuality and moral independence, and the arc of history leads away from tradition, loyalty, sanctity and toward a pluralism that denigrates the people who cling – that is the word – to a different interpretation of moral correctness. We remember the “deplorables.”
Its more than disagreement on morality. It’s a fundamental certainty that destroys ability to listen. Pointedly, most progressives and liberals can be relatively unconcerned about threats to personal and family and economic security in their daily lives. That is less true for many other Americans. And liberals too easily forget that security is job number one for any government, and security not just against foreign invasion.
But liberal words alone do not convince. Liberals and conservatives both preach American individuality and universal values. Liberals want conservatives to join in community. Conservatives want liberals to stay out of their community. Everyone preaches rights and morality. But as Lucian Pye told us, civility determines social capital, and social capital – general trust and honesty – is a critical component of a civil society.
Tom Bridges summarizes the project: “If liberalism is to survive the collapse of Enlightenment culture, liberals must now attempt to de-universalize or contextualize their political language, to learn to explain and advocate liberal democratic moral ideals in a vocabulary that can express the particularism of liberal political norms without thereby invalidating them.”
Thomas Bridges, Culture of Citizenship: Inventing Postmodern Civic Culture (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994), 15.
In any case, our education systems have been severely constrained with regard to civic and civil education, for fear of introducing morality into public life. We are not taught how to discuss and argue in a civil manner; we are not taught respect for people or institutions; we are not taught community. In their place we have rights. Virtue is conspicuous by its absence.
Government and religion have a rights problem now
Part of the communication problems lie in our rights problems. Our liberal governments cannot provide a teleology – nor can businesses or unions or religion or secular social institutions. All are relatively hamstrung in promoting a concept of the good for all, and default to use of rights to secure benefits for the individual. But there are then only very weak notions of the common good and rights can and do conflict. What to do?
Worse, our pluralism tells us to denigrate rites in favor of rights. The function of rites – of customs, of microbeneficences, of rituals – is to smooth the path of relationships and tell us what is appropriate in the circumstance. It requires relations to others. Rights do no such thing. They operate without regard for the other, and that is a problem for us all now.
The upshot of the free will and sovereignty and neutrality problems is that both liberal and conservative solutions to social problems use language of rights. MacIntyre is right about the emotivism aspect – focus on rights goes nowhere. We end up with policy failure in both government and religion.
Government failure
A liberalism that preaches neutrality toward morality does not serve us any better.
Christopher Lasch told us what to expect in 1995 in The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy. Faith in government and faith in religion can each fail in their attempts at perfectionism. This is a crisis of elites on the left and the right. Civic virtue is more and more absent from our discussion.
From a review by Scott London - In a final section titled "The Dark Night of the Soul," Lasch examines what he considers a spiritual crisis at the heart of Western culture. This crisis is the product of an over-attachment to the secular worldview, he maintains, which has left the knowledge elite with little room for doubt and insecurity. Traditionally, institutional religion provided a home for spiritual uncertainties as well as a source of higher meaning and a repository of practical moral wisdom. The new elites, however, in their embrace of science and secularism, look upon religion with a disdain bordering on hostility. "The culture of criticism is understood to rule out religious commitments," Lasch observes. Today, religion is "something useful for weddings and funerals but otherwise dispensable." Bereft of a higher ethic, the knowledge classes have taken refuge in a culture of cynicism, inoculating themselves with irreverence. "The collapse of religion," he writes, "its replacement by the remorselessly critical sensibility exemplified by psychoanalysis, and the degeneration of the 'analytic attitude' into an all-out assault on ideals of every kind have left our culture in a sorry state."
Joseph Chan makes the point explicit in discussing Confucian civility. There are four components to civility generally – a notion of the common good, willingness to yield to the common good, a duty to promote the common good, and respect for people and institutions. Chan says that these precepts may sound idealistic, but the extent to which these precepts are thought too idealistic is inversely proportional to the health of that society.
It would be useful now and then to remember for whom the bell tolls.
Religious failure
Some parts of Christian religion have failed us too, in perverted attempts to promote militarism, wars on poor people rather than poverty, and caveats on love thy neighbor and the Beatitudes. Christopher Hedges lays out the problem in American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. Rod Dreher, no bleeding heart himself, in an interview in The American Conservative magazine, on failures of the Christian project in the US - … we are going to see increasing instability and impoverishment of community life in the future. And people crave community. That is where the church, with a definite creed, code, and cult, can truly make a difference to people. We can be the community that people want, not on their terms, of course, but nonetheless in a manner that will give dignity and meaning to their humanity in a way that other alternatives cannot, however hard they may try.
Then Dreher – I think inadvertently – provides an answer, in the same paragraph - After all, Jesus himself said that by this will all men know that you are my disciples: by the love you have for each other. In other words, community, informed by Christian doctrine, worship, and love, is the best evangelistic tool there is. One has only to concede that one does not know the mind of god to see community, informed by love, as the best recipe for living in community. If only Dreher and community could see past their own ideology ….
Christian environmentalist Bill McKibben’s assessment in 2005 –
“What if we chose some simple criterion—say, giving aid to the poorest people—as a reasonable proxy for Christian behavior? After all, in the days before his crucifixion, when Jesus summed up his message for his disciples, he said the way you could tell the righteous from the damned was by whether they’d fed the hungry, slaked the thirsty, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, and visited the prisoner. What would we find then?
“In 2004, as a share of our economy, we ranked second to last, after Italy, among developed countries in government foreign aid. Per capita we each provide fifteen cents a day in official development assistance to poor countries. And it’s not because we were giving to private charities for relief work instead. Such funding increases our average daily donation by just six pennies, to twenty-one cents. It’s also not because Americans were too busy taking care of their own; nearly 18 percent of American children lived in poverty (compared with, say, 8 percent in Sweden). In fact, by pretty much any measure of caring for the least among us you want to propose—childhood nutrition, infant mortality, access to preschool—we come in nearly last among the rich nations, and often by a wide margin.
“Despite the Sixth Commandment, we are, of course, the most violent rich nation on earth, with a murder rate four or five times that of our European peers. We have prison populations greater by a factor of six or seven than other rich nations (which at least should give us plenty of opportunity for visiting the prisoners). Having been told to turn the other cheek, we’re the only Western democracy left that executes its citizens, mostly in those states where Christianity is theoretically strongest.”
Bill McKibben. The Christian Paradox - How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong. Harper’s Magazine. Available at https://harpers.org/archive/2005/08/the-christian-paradox/
McKibben might be seen by some conservatives or evangelicals as too close to the “Other Side” of secularism. That is harder to say about arch-conservative Peter Wehner, who observes that much evangelical faith has become politicized, and weaponized in support of clearly unchristian and immoral politics.
Wehner quoting Mark Labberton, president of Fuller Theological Seminary- “The church is in one of its deepest moments of crisis — not because of some election result or not, but because of what has been exposed to be the poverty of the American church in its capacity to be able to see and love and serve and engage in ways in which we simply fail to do. And that vocation is the vocation that must be recovered and must be made real in tangible action.”
There are countless examples of how such tangible action can be manifest. But as a starting point, evangelical Christians should acknowledge the profound damage that’s being done to their movement by its sordid political relationship — its love affair with a president who is an ethical and moral wreck. Until that is undone — until followers of Jesus are once again willing to speak truth to power rather than act like court pastors — the crisis in American Christianity will only deepen, its public testimony only dim, its effort to be a healing agent in a broken world only weaken.
Wehner makes the point in another Atlantic article - Teaching people how to think biblically would help … as well as teaching people how to disagree with one another biblically. “There is a lot of disagreement in the New Testament, and it gives us a template for how to listen to each other to understand rather than to argue,”…. How many people look at churches in America these days and see the face of Jesus? …. Many Christians, though, are disinclined to heed calls for civility.
Peter Wehner. The Deepening Crisis in Evangelical Christianity. Atlantic Magazine, July 5, 2019. Available at https://medium.com/the-atlantic/the-deepening-crisis-in-evangelical-christianity-2b2a0ef42520
David Brooks, on the long concealed list of sexual predators among clergy in the Southern Baptist Convention –
The fact is, moral behavior doesn’t start with having the right beliefs. Moral behavior starts with an act — the act of seeing the full humanity of other people. Moral behavior is not about having the right intellectual concepts in your head. It’s about seeing other people with the eyes of the heart, seeing them in their full experience, suffering with their full suffering, walking with them on their path. Morality starts with the quality of attention we cast upon another.
This observation is probably more pertinent when directed at progressives. But all of us should recognize ourselves in this description.
Character is not measured by a person’s beliefs but by the ability to see the full humanity of others. It is not automatic. It’s a skill acquired slowly. It’s about being able to focus on what’s going on in your own mind and simultaneously focus on what’s going on in another mind. It’s about learning how to minutely observe, absorb and resonate with other people’s emotions.
It comes about through years of shared experiences, decades of other-centered attention, engagement with the kind of literature that educates you in what can go on in other people’s heads. It’s spiritual training to get out of your own egotistic self-referential thinking and into the habit of asking what’s this moment like for that other person.
This is Confucian to the core. Other-directedness, the “silver rule,” the spiritual element in humanism, the life-long learning to become human.
Another problem - government needs religion … and vice versa
One hopes that government can help monitor public expression of religion, and vice versa. We need religion to restrain perfectionist tendencies in government. Both are needed for a pluralist society – a bit of, one hand washes the other. In our times, both have failed at producing virtue, tolerance, and understanding. Too often now religion and government are posed as enemies rather than accepted countervailing winds on the sea of democratic process.
This conflict is another take on the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, which Leo Strauss described as the conflict between “Athens” – representing reason, and “Jerusalem” – representing faith. The Kantian view is to build a morality without reference to an overriding Absolute, without values written into the universe a la City of God. In such a case, society needs monitors for human behavior, like a legal system and an alternate source of morality outside government to address human excess on either side. remember the biblical admonition for people to respect leaders – Romans 13:1-7.
The problem for Kantian universalism is that it forgets about Augustine and libido dominandi – the urge to dominate that exists within us all. Augustine’s youthful urge to steal pears too easily becomes domineering intentions from government or religion, good intentions or not.
Why liberals need the church … or a moral equivalent
When their favored political party is in power, liberals and conservatives may tend to relax. “Ok. We are in control. Now we can have the government enact truly moral and lasting policies.” Of course that attitude cannot last for too long. There comes a time … perhaps in the south of the US – when government is not the promoter of liberal values.
Liberals have had a difficult time imposing constraints on language or action when terrorism is salient, and conservatives much less. After 9-11, we had years of discussion about restrictions on speech, on online threats against Muslims, foreigners, anyone who looked different or proposed an alternative view of the world. Can a mosque get a building permit?
Do citizens have the right to impose non-liberal values on themselves or others? If liberalism is understood as a universalizing phenomenon, an arc of history thing not dependent on any tradition or emotional content, then it becomes difficult to say no to individual choice. On what basis?
The Confucian view is expressed succinctly by Jana Rosker –
However, for most modern Confucians, the solution to the present global crisis is to be found in placing morality at the center of human concerns. The main problems of human existence cannot be resolved by exclusively ethical, organizational, or contractual methods and approaches; instead, humanity must also find solutions that are rooted in a deep individual awareness of the importance of the ethical conditionality of human life.
Jana Rosker. Modern Confucianism and Chinese Theories of Modernization. Philosophy Compass (2015). Available at https://www.academia.edu/12061016/Modern_Confucianism_and_Chinese_Theories_of_Modernization?email_work_card=view-paper
Which liberalism? Rights?
Conservatives now have a different concept of liberalism, one in which right to be left alone – individual sovereignty – sometimes replaces traditional liberalism, which permits or even requires individual involvement in community and government.
Both liberals and conservatives have a religion problem – one side wants to separate government from religion and the other side wants to put religion into government policy. Both sides base arguments on rights. For both sides, rights fail as a dispositive direction for policy.
Liberals who cannot acknowledge the positive role of religion in society have a fundamental problem in talking with religious conservatives. This is a problem already experienced in other liberal societies, 1930s Germany being the obvious example. Liberalism has no philosophical grounds for any system of belief; what is the good, what is the right, is only determined locally and immediately. In the wrong political hands, that can change dramatically for the worse. Any modern liberal understanding of morality can change (witness slavery and women as chattel) and there is no reason to suppose the change is always in the direction of more freedom. But good will and wise leadership should not be presumed to always obtain. This is where the new atheists have a problem. They have no backup, no Plan B, nowhere else to turn when the fascist hammer comes down. This is a problem for Confucianism as sole source of morality as well. Whatever the rulers define as the good, as the right, becomes the good and the right. This was a problem for Confucianism under any Legalist system of governance (strict adherence to the letter of the law) and remains a problem under CCP.
Religion and government overlap in priorities and programs, but differ in one fundamental respect – religion aims to explain the universe and understand our role and purpose in it. Liberal government aims only to manage the here and now, and foreseeable future.
There is another problem with liberalism, and that is the lack of concern for some alternative voice in morality. The new atheists such as Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett push for eradication of religion, on the strength of two historical facts – first, that modernism and liberalism seem sufficiently entrenched in the west that we should rejoice, rather than worry, about religious identification and church attendance swooning in the last thirty years. Second, Hitchens in particular pointed out that the last two thousand years of Church existence did not seem to impair the flow of blood and violence in wars, civil strife, religious wars, and wars of conquest or everyday life. Moreover, civilizations without a single dominant religious tradition – China, for one – seemed to get through thousands of years without the text of the Ten Commandments but still honored the values. Murder, theft, lying and imperial overstretch seem no more prevalent in non-Christian societies. So what value does religion, particularly the Abrahamic religions of the Book, bring to the table?
The other missing element, what we never talk about – virtues and self-cultivation
We have very little discussion of civil society or civic values in our schools. That is a fundamental error. Every society has understood the critical importance of passing on values and culture. From the Great Learning (Da Xue 2) - ‘‘all take the foundation of their being in self-cultivation” or "From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides. It cannot be, when the root is neglected, that what should spring from it will be well ordered."
In the mutual failure of government and religion to adequately provide for democratic discussion, what to do? We need some wholesale society reconsideration. We need to be able to talk about virtue, and virtues. And we need to be able to talk about self-cultivation. We need what I refer to as a secular religious revival. Secular because it must be able to include all of us.
And of course both sides will find policy discussion easier with a morality that doesn’t also preach.
In the Kantian view morality has to be based on the rational self-interest of the individual. In a nutshell, that is modern morality. One joins in a political movement not because man is a social being, but because it is in the rational self-interest of the joiner to do so. Strauss thought this modern rationality and value neutrality was a mistake, because the political systems has no values to use in decision-making about plans, policies, or programs. At length, society is left with no values and begins to consume itself. Sound familiar? Strauss defined several -isms toward which modern value neutral society would tend – scientism, economism, historicism, relativism, or nihilism. Meaning would be derived in one or more of these ways – the last, of course, being no general meaning whatsoever, and we derive meaning only from exercise of power. Enlightenment-era liberalism is no salve for lack of universal values. Its relativism, Strauss argues, leads to its downfall. What is needed is a return to an acceptance of values, a la ancient Athens. This would be a larger or greater understanding of rationality than we currently allow in the west. I have to add, of course, that it is the view of modern Confucians generally, including Li Zehou, Tu Weiming, and I surmise, that of communitarian-leaning thinkers generally, including MacIntyre, Sandel, Charles Taylor and Michael Walzer. (by the way, Strauss saw the proliferation of -isms as priming the world for nationalisms. ((See US now. Or China, or Russia.))
Heaven in Erehwon … or at least, not here
A good part of the personal salvation mission, at the expense of social action, is in the belief in a personal heaven awaiting the saved. Struckmeyer, among others, puts holes in the belief in such a heaven.
The widespread belief in heaven is more an expression of human wish-fulfillment than it is a clearly defined biblical concept. There is little in the Bible that confirms this concept. The heavenly afterlife is actually more of a popular folk religion than it is a sound Christian doctrine. There is little valid scriptural basis to support it. In fact, I would make the case that the idea of an afterlife in heaven has no biblical basis whatsoever…. [I]n spite of nearly universal Christian belief about heaven, Jesus never proclaimed a message about life after death. Heaven was not part of his mission, message, or ministry. Jesus was focused on a transformed life before we encounter death. His proclamation of the kingdom of God was about life in a transformed human society on this side of the grave.
Strangely, it was Garner Ted Armstrong, a conservative TV evangelist, who challenged Christians to find biblical support for the idea of heaven. Before his death in 2003, he wrote:
“For over twenty-eight years, I have offered a certified cashier’s check for $10,000 to anyone who can come up with the words “immortal soul,” “When we get to heaven,” “I will see you in heaven,” and “we go to heaven when we die” [in the Bible]. Not in all those twenty-eight years, with millions hearing my words, has a single person been able to claim the check. Why not? Simply because such words are not in the Bible!”
The entire post is of interest for those seeking a morality that pays attention to the here and now of others, rather than just personal salvation in heaven.
Kurt Struckmeyer. Popular Christianity - A folk religion. Following Jesus website, October 15, 2020. Available at https://followingjesus.org/popular-christianity/
An idea for liberal and conservatives - Pride and humility and tolerance
We all know Proverbs 16-18 about pride going before destruction. Christians and non- should be able to agree on the need to hold pride in check because of its adverse political consequences. (That is another reason for government and religion to mark each other). For the Christian, it would be good to remember that pride offends god.
Augustinian uncertainty before tolerance
Augustine told us about tolerance – that we should take a tolerant view of those with different perspectives, at least in part on the theory that we don’t know what is in their hearts and in what direction they may be moving toward God, or what God has planned for that person. To assume that one knows the mind of God, or to attempt the City of God on earth, is blasphemy.
Uncertainty about the mind of others is fundamental to democratic debate. Lots of Americans seem to be failing at this Christian virtue – a part of charity.
Tolerance is a problem for progressives too. Liberalism in the abstract is committed to just that tolerance. So how tolerant should one be of different, or intolerant, views? The problem lies in the incessant use of rights to the exclusion of language of benevolence and tolerance – for all sides.
Karl Popper addressed the tolerance of intolerance problem in 1945 –
If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them…. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
Christianity today – missing in action
Jennifer A. Marshall of the Heritage Foundation describes an Augustinian appraisal of American liberalism.
It is far easier to believe certain theological ideas about Jesus that were created by male clergy in ecumenical councils—that Jesus was the (only) son of God, that he was sinless, that he died for our sins, that he will come again, that he awaits us in heaven—than it is to follow him in a life of radical love, lavish generosity, extravagant forgiveness, inclusive hospitality, compassionate action, selfless service, a passion for justice, creative nonviolence, and simple living.
Jesus is missing as some Christians seek to shape government to their particular religious beliefs. “America is a Christian nation” is about as dangerous a phrase as one can find in a large pluralist country, not so much for the policies it would promote but for the confounding of social boundaries, the failure of an alternative morality necessary to balance. Too easily does religion take on a posture of l’etat c’est moi.
Gandhi wrote “Jesus gave humanity the magnificent purpose and the single objective toward which we all ought to aspire. I believe that he belongs not solely to Christianity, but to the entire world, to all lands and races.” He also reportedly said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Kurt Struckmeyer writing about Church cultural conformity at the Following Jesus website -
– There’s always a danger when Christian gospel is shaped to appeal to the dominant forms in a culture. When this happens, Jesus is frequently found missing. That is the ultimate problem with popular Christianity in America—Jesus is missing.
Struckmeyer points out that a religion focused too heavily on personal salvation is not going to challenge cultural conformity. What happens “out there” to other people is of little consequence. But, he says, if personal salvation is the only goal, then Jesus’ goal of individual and social transformation may be lost forever. We cannot create the City of God, nor should we try. But we must do better taking care of each other in the here and now.
Struckmeyer sees conservative evangelical Christians—the Religious Right—as the power behind right wing politics in America. They are the church of free enterprise, chauvinistic nationalism, uncontrolled gun ownership, and patriotic militarism. They seem to be pro-rich, pro-war, and pro-hate. This is the damage from too much mingling of church and state. It is difficult to determine whether the religious beliefs of evangelicals shape the mainstream culture or the American Empire of the twenty-first century shapes evangelical religion. Neither is desirable.
Kurt Struckmeyer. Cultural Conformity, October 1, 2020. Available at https://followingjesus.org/cultural-conformity/
Religiously-inspired political advocacy should be dangerous waters for Christians. Political and moral philosopher Paul Weithman in Faith And Philosophy -
Vol. 8 No.4 October 1991 Available at https://www.pdcnet.org/faithphil/content/faithphil_1991_0008_0004_0461_0480
I have argued that acts of religiously inspired political advocacy-of the use of political power to coerce belief, to purify society or make it more Christian-are often acts of pride…. Liberalism requires limiting the range of values and principles to which political advocacy appeals; compliance with at least some liberal principles of political advocacy would preclude political arguments premised on the purposes God has for America or on His use of some people as instruments in doing His will…. A properly Christian concern with checking the vice of pride, I argue, gives Christians reason to embrace political liberalism. More specifically, I argue that observing liberal constraints on political advocacy ameliorates some of the political problems to which pride gives rise. The liberalism that results has some claim to be called "Augustinian," for Augustine thought pride the worst of the vices and thought its restraint the primary function of political authority.
That is, liberalism can foster the restraint and humility that is necessary to curb pride. True for Christians and all.
The bible is certainly not anti-government. Romans 13:1-7 contains the basic Church attitude to secular authority –
Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.
This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.
The Church became a partner with the state following Constantine. It became the official religion of Rome, and essentially the only accepted religion in most of Europe for 1500 years.
For centuries, the church dominated secular authority, but in the last hundred years or so, the advancement of human rights democracy and pluralism has some Christians asking how to live in our decayed society. Examples are the People of Praise in South Bend, Indiana and the Reba Place Fellowship in Evanston, Illinois. PoP is a nondenominational Christian community. It is not a dorm or an enclosed group. Its members live in the world, but do their best to honor the commitment to “love one another.” Reba Place Fellowship is an intentional Christian community. Members are followers of Jesus Christ, freely sharing life and resources with one another and with our neighbors to demonstrate God’s peace and justice in the world. Rod Dreher suggests a need for withdrawl from the world via The Benedict Option, intentional communities in which “civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages."
Answering Gandhi - Christianity 2.0
German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer thought about Christian hypocrisy as he awaited execution by the Nazis. Awaiting execution by the Nazis, he began to imaging a future form of Christianity without all the rites and rituals, without church buildings and choirs and clergy. He believed that the essence of following Jesus lies in just two things: contemplative prayer and righteous action in the secular world. As the secular world abandons the church in the Global North, and as younger generations are no longer attracted to Sunday worship, this may become the only viable path forward for those who seek to follow Jesus. He called this path a “religionless Christianity.”
Garry Wills is not a leading Church figure, but he is a thoughtful Catholic. He often speaks and writes on What Jesus Meant. Wills suggests the only real criterion for entering heaven, according to Jesus, is following the Beatitudes (“I was hungry and you gave me to eat …”) The way to heaven is not defined by “churchiness” – how often one attends church, how often one prays. Pointedly, the American god who has blessed every war cannot be the Jesus of the gospels. Wills knows that morality and politics are always intertwined, and we cannot park our personal religious ideas when we enter politics. But separation of church and state is important for religion as well as for government. It is idolatrous to call America a Christian nation, or put the ten commandments in the courthouse. Someone who claims their own views are God’s views is blaspheming, to claim to know the mind of God. Jesus most certainly cannot be identified with the Church, else Jesus must be identified with crusades, the inquisition, pogroms, wars, slavery and condemnations of all kinds.
Douthat opines that faith in the US is no less prevalent, but it has been channeled into three broad faiths that he terms secular, spiritual, and biblical. Public policy is broadly determined by the manner in which spiritual faith allies with either of the other two. In the long term, Douthat sees these three faiths either blending or congealing, with hope or hopelessness as a result. He also finds another possibility, a transform of big parts of all three faiths to something a bit less materialistic than most mainline religions today, less mysterious and anti-science than biblical faith, and at the same time a bit more grounded in in metaphysics than godless secularism. Douthat termed it Buddhist.
Harvey Cox, prominent theologian at Harvard Divinity School, has spent his career looking at world Christianities and their relation to other world religions.
Cox became widely known with the publication of The Secular City in 1965. He developed the thesis that the church is primarily a people of faith and action, rather than an institution. He argued that "God is just as present in the secular as the religious realms of life.” Far from being a protective religious community, the church should be in the forefront of change in society, celebrating the new ways religiosity is finding expression in the world.
The Secular City provides people with “a soft landing in modernity.” He seeks a “theology of secularization.” He asks how such an enterprise might begin.
The fundamental question is the same: How is God present in the events of our time? But now this question must be parsed somewhat differently: How can the religious and the secular,
as well as the novel admixtures of the two, all live together productively in one small household? Can the proponents of the secular understand themselves as only one among many worldviews? Can religious people, including Christians, after many years of intra-and interfaith ecumenism, also engage in constructive dialogue with the various secularities, as well as with the newly mutated shapes in which the sacred is now appearing? thought to the global and political context in which a new theology must be worked out.
As a new theology of the secular—and therefore unavoidably of religion—develops, there is an important point that needs to be kept in mind. Theology, at least Christian theology, should have as its major theme neither the church nor religion; rather, its task is to nurture and demonstrate what Jesus called the “Kingdom of God,” which he asked his followers to pray would come “on earth as it is in heaven.” In that sense, it must be a “worldly” theology. I base this claim on Bonhoeffer’s conviction that the church exists not for itself but for the world.
By 2017, Cox foresaw not a secular rejection of religion, but an expansion beyond the main stream to include other forms of spirituality. His view is that Christianity itself will not be so Euro- or western-centric within a couple of decades, when the Church in Africa – perhaps even China – becomes larger and more powerful. Confucians have no problem with any of these developments.
Answering Gandhi - Confucianism?
Some observers are hard pressed to find such Christian-like motivation in Confucianism. Many understand Confucianism solely as advice for aspiring government officials and therefore overly concerned with ritual behavior and respect for appointed roles.
This limited role can be an interpretation of Confucian ideas, one that supported Legalist governance in the dynastic era and CCP governance today. But the message as found in the neo-Confucian writings and now the new Confucian writings is far closer to that of Christianity in its message of tolerance and benevolence. It doesn’t provide hope for the individual in an afterlife, but it does provide hope for humanity in its mutual obligations, insistence on self-cultivation, and care for each other and the world. Both Christianity and Confucianism defeat the obsession with technical measurement, money, and power as dispositive indicators of what is right and what is morally correct. It is worthwhile to note that one can support democracy and at the same time be critical of liberal individualism.
Both are, in the wise term, wisdom traditions, not intelligence traditions or success traditions or power traditions. Confucianism for one, does not tell us to go to college if we want success, however defined. It tells us to self-cultivate.
Why not Daoism or Buddhism?
Both are religions by most any definition, and caught up in their own intricacies of observation and performance and rituals. They are too … foreign. The benefit of Confucianism is that it is not a religion – no priests, no bible, no sin, no salvation, no getting caught in intricacies of interpretation. It is a public philosophy, certainly with religious overtones, but most of all it is available. One can read a little and begin practicing. It mirrors early Christianity, abhors self-aggrandizement and individual sovereignty, and promotes the greater good in the here and now. Confucianism differs from Buddhism in not seeing the world as fundamentally suffering and our reaction to it; it differs from Daoism because the Confucian is required to act in the world, not simply accept fate.
In Turning East (1977), Cox describes his teaching at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, where his mind and soul were challenged by the Buddhist "dharma", and he enjoyed doing research in Asian religious movements.
Cox was notably concerned with the encounter of Christianity with religious pluralism, especially as the Center for the Study of World Religions at HDS offered opportunities for engagement with scholars of different faiths, which he wrote about in Many Mansions: A Christian's Encounter with Other Faiths (1988), his book that advocated speaking in interfaith dialogue from your own Christian identity as part of the discussion
Nearly fifty years after The Secular City, he still advocates for a “theology of secularization” which is similar to my proposition in section XX earlier.
… we need a new theology that takes into consideration the tidal changes that have swept over the planet in the past half century. The unfortunate fact is that the liberating potential of secularization, which I once lauded, is now hoist on its own petard. It has been undermined by the relentless promotion of the ideology of secularism with its myopic vision of unending progress under the tutelage of modern (read “Western”) civilization.
We now need a theology that appreciates the vigorous pas de deux of religion and secularity, and one that takes an inclusive, global view.
The Christian – and Confucian – morality that we need
How to construct a morality that respects both Christian religion and secular rule? Religious thinker Karen Armstrong reminds us that religion of any stripe is meaningless until its doctrines are translated into action. For Americans, we need liberalism. We haven’t a choice in our multicultural open society. but we need a liberalism that can impose some limits and do so without so much invocation of rights.
There are a few ideas. Garry Wills suggested an approach referencing Augustine, following below.
Serving the City of God and the City of Man - Hypocrisy cornered by Augustine
Augustine wrote in a confused and threatening time not unlike our own. The Roman empire had fallen and the barbarians were threatening western Europe and north Africa. His advice then provides a critical message now for all American liberals and conservatives - to honor the Peace of Babylon. Citing Jeremiah 29:7 - And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the Lord for it; for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.
Augustine, City of God, Book 19 Chapter 26 -
And the prophet Jeremiah, when predicting the captivity that was to befall the ancient people of God, and giving them the divine command to go obediently to Babylonia, and thus serve their God, counselled them also to pray for Babylonia, saying, “In the peace thereof shall ye have peace,”—the temporal peace which the good and the wicked together enjoy.
This is a call for tolerance, moderation in expectations, and humility.
From City of God, Book 19 Chapter 14 -
But, owing to the liability of the human mind to fall into mistakes, this very pursuit of knowledge may be a snare to him unless he has a divine Master, whom he may obey without misgiving, and who may at the same time give him such help as to preserve his own freedom. And because, so long as he is in this mortal body, he is a stranger to God, he walks by faith, not by sight; and he therefore refers all peace, bodily or spiritual or both, to that peace which mortal man has with the immortal God, so that he exhibits the well-ordered obedience of faith to eternal law.
Garry Wills summarizes the inconsistencies in much current religious orthodoxy in his expert skewering of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in his lecture Citizen Believers. Scalia expressed his opposition to abortion by invoking the position of the Church; but he also expressed his support for capital punishment, defying the position of the Church. The intellectual knot and moral dilemma into which Scalia bound himself seemed not to bother him, although obviously others noticed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IIT_Research_Institute#Research_history
Garry Wills. Citizen Believers. Inaugural speech at Voices Series, recorded at University of California Television, 2003. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COdUygUHFAM&t=2755s
Morality - more than fairness and avoidance of harm
Wills on constructing a morality that respects tolerance and benevolence moral virtues such as sanctity, loyalty, and tradition –
Not that those are without dangerous interpretation. A political and moral theory fashioned from allegiance to those things we do share. Starting 2740 what government can and ought to do we all live, he said, in a temporal dispensation tainted by original sin.
The Christian empire was not the City of God and no one should be sorting people into good and bad. That is God’s work. Here and now, we must have an agnosticism about the morality of anyone else’s soul. Earthly governments cannot be founded on a concept of justice (NB, contra Rawls). We do not share a common view of justice, as seen over and over in politics today. But we do share families, friends, interests in sports and culture, even values of free speech and assembly. Both left and right are concerned about a creeping authoritarianism in the US. These things unite us, even when we differ seriously on other things. We want to preserve the peace that preserves those things – a peace of Babylon. Such a peace is achievable, and can be shared by all, Christian and non- elite and non- . we have no choice but to support each other even as we disagree, else community fails.
Wills says there are five benefits to such a program of tolerance – that it is realistic; concrete; positive; inclusive; and love centered.
Realistic because it makes no absolute claims on the state that it be perfectly just – the City of God remains beyond our reach, and we should ask whether the state does protect us more if it does this or that. Wills warns progressives as well, in their zest to achieve fairness and avoidance of harm. The goal for justice, he says, should not be fiat - 3500 in video “do justice, though the heavens fall,” but rather, “do the kind of justice that keeps the heavens from falling.”
Concrete because it asks the economic question – with what would you replace the evil you see?
Positive because it promotes compromise, not as bargaining away of the good but that it can preserve the good things we share. We seek justice, but we seek peace as well. Rather than the extremist bumper sticker, “No justice, no peace,” one might well write, “No peace, no justice.” One is reminded of the admonition from Confucian scholar Li Zehou – “sometimes peace is a greater value than justice.” Who would have thought Augustine and Li Zehou would share such a perspective?
Inclusive because it seeks not loyalty tests or isolation, but spreading the good things of creation and our Peace of Babylon to as many as can be reached. Augustine’s sense of justice is of a moderate nature. Extremes only isolate, create barriers and fail to appreciate how flawed all of us are.
Love centered because it is based on social amity, not rights. the social aim should be not to vindicate one’s own individualistic claims but to see how we can be as protective of shared goods. Wills noted that John Ruskin said societies are built on social affections 3841 not on the iron demands of right.
Neither a Christian nor a Confucian view of freedom or autonomy conflicts with our generally accepted notions, with one exception – that of a definition of rationality, as I discussed above.
Essentially, DeTocqueville makes a similar point in his “self-interest, rightly understood.” Self-interest is not individual sovereignty to the exclusion of others. It is not negative liberty, a la Berlin. It is positive liberty, a right to achieve a common good with others. That requires virtues such as compassion, understanding, and a longer term view of the possible.
So now what?
How to put such ideas into practice? Take up abortion, probably our era’s greatest moral debate. We do put up with many other things we consider immoral – war, racism, capital punishment, theft and violence of all kinds.
In abortion, we cannot kill practitioners or publicly shame women except at the cost of blasphemy – making ourselves the judge of others in the most highly personal of choices. And we certainly do not preserve the Peace of Babylon, which Augustine considered a legitimate duty even in “morally compromised situations.” Aquinas agreed, saying that the goods we share – the Peace - cannot be sacrificed even at the cost of saving souls. Tearing the social fabric is no solution to perceived injustice. (this is, of course, Gandhi and King as well). Wills argues that the forcible control of abortion via violence or religious dogma sacrifices the good of community consensus over a woman’s control of her own body. To save the fetus is then at the cost of many other shared goods, including privacy, autonomy, family consensus, community peace.
Peaceful protest against abortion and its prohibition is certainly permitted, to persuade the population that their former consensus was wrong. Wills also reminds us that prohibition on abortion is not a matter of revelation or scripture but of natural law, and therefore natural reason should be able to reach a conclusion on this matter. Natural reason working on both sides hasn’t brought us to a conclusion yet. There are other political virtues in addition to justice – temperance, integrity, caution – but the greatest of these even in politics, Wills reminds us, is love – not mushy sentiment, but common sense. Our love of country is not love of separation of church and state or the four freedoms, but of the goods closer to us – family and relationships and home and neighborhood. We must remember the definition of community as Augustine provided for us. Contra Cicero, his intellectual forebear, who defined community as a group of people defined by their love of justice, Augustine went broader. A community is defined by shared interest in whatever things they love. We should remember those goods we do share and we do love, and have some tolerance for those with whom we disagree.
Wills sees an Augustinian tolerance, Augustinian uncertainty as a foundation for religious freedom for tolerance, for concord for individual rights and for moral authority. With what, one might ask, would one replace it and preserve the Peace of Babylon? One sees in Augustine the constraint not to judge others, the walking of a mile in another’s shoes, that characterizes the spirit of benevolence and reciprocity one sees in Confucianism as well. This Augustinian uncertainty makes no absolute claims on the state to be perfectly just; that is not possible in the City of Man.
Confucian scholar Stephen Angle has some advice in Growing Moral - A Confucian Guide to Life. In chapter two, he tells us How to Be a Confucian-
- Be Filial
- Follow Rituals
- Cultivate Your Sprouts
- Read in the Right Way
- Listen to the Right Music
- Reflect Regularly
- Pay Attention
- Be Engaged
The "right music" exhortation is a reference to advice from Confucius. Who could quarrel with the other advice?
What are progressives and believers (evangelicals) to do?
Wills goes to Augustine for a way to counsel citizens who are also believers. Religious ideas were also in ferment in Augustine’s time, post-Constantine but before church doctrine was well established (see Donatists). My own term for an Augustinian approach is Augustinian uncertainty – that we never know what is in other men’s hearts or minds, and what path they are taking to God. Some profound tolerance is necessary, lest we take on a role of judge and jury for others. For American progressives and conservatives, Augustine reminds us to put limits on individual sovereignty.
Wills meant to take on Antonin Scalia and conservative Christians but his message should be heard by liberals as well. Among other virtues, we can share humility. It would be useful for all to remember the tax collector and Pharisee parable in Luke 18:9-14 –
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
In particular, some progressives would benefit from consideration of this passage.
For Confucians, a counterpart to an Augustinian uncertainty lies in humility.
The reluctance of Mencius and other early Confucian thinkers to submit themselves to a system of eternal and universal moral norms and principles reflects their constant awareness of the inscrutability of the way of heaven. (Huaiyu Wang, The Way of Heart: Mencius' Understanding of Justice. Philosophy East and West, 59:3 July, 2009. p 332)
And Mencius 4.2.39 (Li Lou 2.39) - Mencius said, 'The great man does not think beforehand of his words that they may be sincere, nor of his actions that they may be resolute - he simply speaks and does what is right.'
Another translation - A great man, Mencius says, ‘‘will not act in accord with rules of decorum that go against the spirit of decorum, nor rules of justice that go against the spirit of justice.’’
When you come to a moral answer quickly, particularly one that doesn’t cause you to stop and think, then its pretty certain that you don’t have an answer that speaks to benevolence, tolerance, and an Augustinian uncertainty.
For many on the right, answers do come easily. Thoughtful evangelicals disagree.
Many on the right decry what they see as moral decay in liberalism – support for women’s rights, abortion, a permissive popular culture focused on only commercial values. Evangelical churches have been at the forefront of a retreat from liberalism, and some thoughtful evangelicals have considered how to live now in a plural liberal, permissive world. Some have thought to reconsider Augustine.
An evangelical renewal of Augustine in liberalism
A 2018 panel discussion sponsored by Providence Magazine considered the question - Is Christianity Compatible with Liberal Democracy?
Jennifer Marshall, one of the panel members, described five ideas we can use to resurrect liberalism from the dark places found today.
So what would be characteristic of an Augustinian disposition towards liberalism? Well, I want to glean a number of things from the authors that wrote in Providence about this, and reading in The City of God. First of all, we would have sober judgment and realistic assessment about people made in the image of God and prone to sin. Second, we would have sober judgment about a society made up of such people, which would result in humility about our political expectations. (N.B. – this echoes Garry Wills in his 2003 talk on Citizen Believers )
We would third deal with the reality—the fact that the city of God and city of man that Augustine describes are two non-overlapping cities defined by their loves. This means we’re always in the midst of a competing vision of the good.
Fourth, Augustine’s critique of Scipio’s understanding of the just society should temper overly idealistic notions. His proposal of a more realistic definition of the political community joined by common objects of affection and defined by better and worse loves should keep us from a sort of idealistic perfectionism that could—might make us quickly disenchanted and disengaged. We have no choice but to be engaged with the reality that is presented to us and do our best to bring this conversation to reflect the principles that we know to be true about the way that God has created the world for its flourishing. We must avoid any cynicism that would lurk at the edges of this debate. (N.B. - true of course for liberals as well as conservatives now)
Fifth, politics is about rightly pursuing a proximate good. This is something we take from Augustine’s City of God. He is putting forward for us a political vision that is directed towards the right objects of our love, rightly pursuing that, with a rightly ordered love. Augustine praised the Romans for their civic virtues, their heroic martial virtues, but he said they neglected others, and they did not know a serious sense of peace because of the neglect of other virtues. Humility was a neglected virtue. So there was a disordered love in the Roman society that Augustine critiques. So having the right objects of love, pursuing them with the right-ordered love, and directing that love towards the right truths—that is, we cannot achieve true justice and peace this side of the eschaton. Therefore, we must have tempered expectations for the political sphere.
This last is the theme of the 2010 City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era by Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner, both evangelicals and high-level Republican appointees.
Former Senator and professor John P. East, writing in the Imaginative Conservative in 2016 - The Political Relevance of St. Augustine -
Yet, I am arguing that it is Augustine’s perspective which, when set against the modern political mind, affords us an incisive and genuinely critical political science not afforded by the behavioral and ideological approaches.
Why bother?
“Democracy dies in darkness” is the Washington Post brand meme. Darkness is lack of information and lack of communication and resulting lack of community. If our democracy – such as it is – and way of life is to flourish, we need to be able to come to agreement like senators and congressmen did in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s – essentially, up to the time of Reagan. Of course there were problems that went unaddressed, or addressed poorly. But we were able to accomplish things jointly that seem impossible now. We believed in science, or at least didn’t oppose it. We believed in the value of letting leaders lead – at least until the next election. We didn’t get so many different uninformed and unverified opinions on the issues of the day, and were thus able to form opinions ourselves. Now, we can only live in constant uncertainty and doubt.
Liberals and conservatives need a way to talk with each other. We need a sound fundamental set of tools – a commitment to benevolence, tolerance, loving one another, self-cultivation, personal humility and an uncertainty about the evil intentions of those on the other side of the aisle. How How MacIntyrian! How Aristotelian! How Christian! How Confucian!
Therein lies a benefit particularly for evangelicals. In the current spate of aggressively misogynistic, militaristic, petty, ignorant and prosperity-driven protestant churches, Christians of all stripes are leaving the organized church if not the faith entirely. Can they be persuaded to return to organized religion? Perhaps not. But there is a path to attempt such reconciliation, starting with a focus on the virtues we have too long ignored – temperance, practical wisdom, charity, tolerance, even the value of education in a modern society. With a focus on those things, one can gradually reassert human and humane values.
We say we need guidance from both government and religion in a plural society. For some evangelicals, there can be no dispute in a choice between preserving democracy and doing God’s will. The sin is in presuming to know what God wishes and in presuming that one is empowered to enforce that will. That, thoughtful leaders – and Augustine – would say, is blasphemy. Some rethinking of one’s own self-anointed role is called for.
It is time for greater thinking about community and fundamental values that are not melding of church and state. This is when the church - devoid of politics - returns to value. It is a bit of a long shot, but Christians and the Church have all the time in the world.
A sidebar in this sidebar –
First contact
The first recorded evidence of Christians in China were monks from India in 635. (These were apparently the same monks who stole silkworms from China, bringing the secret of silk to the west.) The emperor Taizong of the Tang dynasty reviewed the theories of the monks and wholeheartedly approved of their content. The Nestorian Church or Church of the East, thrived for more than 200 years.
The first enduring contact of Christianity with China and Confucianism was by Matteo Ricci. Beginning in 1582 Ricci brought Catholicism to China, where it had limited success. Pointedly, though, Ricci thought there was great compatibility between the two wisdom traditions of Christianity and Confucianism.
Ricci encountered a society with high moral values for which he expressed his admiration. He thought that the natural law ethics and social doctrines of Confucianism could be complemented with the salvationist ideas of Christianity. His tianzhu shiyi (compatibility with God, or heaven) claimed a monotheistic compatibility between Catholicism and Confucianism – a tianren heyi, a unity of heaven and man.
In philosophic terms, Aquinas has been preferred to Augustine as a model for Catholic theology since the late 19th century. Augustine has been linked to Plato and a virtue ethic and pursuit of the One, or the Good; Aquinas to Aristotle and reason.
Today there is not only renewed interest in Augustine, but renewed interest in the compatibilities between Confucianism and Christianity. A good example is the 2020 compilation Confucianism and Catholicism: Reinvigorating the Dialogue, edited by Michael R. Slater, Erin M. Cline, and Philip J. Ivanhoe.
Particularly recommended are Natural Law in Mencius and Aquinas by Richard Kim, “Exemplar Reasoning” as a Tool for Constructive Conversation between Confucians and Catholics by Victoria S. Harrison, and Confucian and Catholic Conceptions of the Virtues by Philip Ivanhoe.
Ivanhoe sees the compatibility with Mencius - “Those who understand their nature understand Heaven; to preserve one’s heart-mind and nourish one’s nature—this is the way to serve Heaven” (Mencius 7A.1 (Jin Xin 1) and the motto of the Jesuits, composed by Saint Ignatius – "For the greater glory of God and the salvation of humanity."
My own contention is that American society and government will necessarily move closer to some Confucian ideas, if not explicitly to Confucianism, in the next few decades. There will be no choice. In 1971 Philip Slater told us (The Pursuit of Lonliness) that American individualism had gone about as far as was possible without social decay. More than fifty years later, we are realizing the truth in his fear. As a society, we must reform or self-destruct. Slater also had great faith in the power of democracy to adapt and respond to a complex world. With that encouragement, I suggest a social move toward greater individual responsibility, greater sense of family and community, greater willingness to find a greater good, what I call a secular religious revival.
Next: VI. What is a virtue ethic? http://chinareflections.com/index.php/81-sections-from-book-comments-encouraged/491-confucianism-freed om-and-democracy-2-0-is-confucianism-a-religion-vi-what-is-a-virtue-ethic
