"Religion and the Common Good"
By Alexham Posted in Culture — Comments (27) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
If you don't read anything else today, be sure to check out Archbishop Charles J. Chaput's latest piece, which is featued over at First Things's "On the Square" blog. Here's a taste:
Only one question really matters. Does God exist or not? If he does, that has implications for every aspect of our personal and public behavior: all of our actions, all of our choices, all of our decisions. If God exists, denying him in our public life . . . cannot serve the common good, because it amounts to worshiping the unreal in the place of the real.
Read on . . .
Religious believers built this country. Christians played a leading role in that work. This is a fact, not an opinion. Our entire framework of human rights is based on a religious understanding of the dignity of the human person as a child of his or her Creator. Nietzsche once said that “convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”
In fact, the opposite is often true. Convictions can be the seeds of truth incarnated in a person’s individual will. The right kinds of convictions guide us forward. They give us meaning. Not acting on our convictions is cowardice. As Christians we need to live our convictions in the public square with charity and respect for others, but also firmly, with courage and without apology. Anything less is a form of theft from the moral witness we owe to the public discussion of issues. We can never serve the common good by betraying who we are as believers or compromising away what we hold to be true.
. . . .
At every moment of our lives, we’re asked to choose for good or for evil. Therefore, time has weight. It has meaning. The present is vitally important as the instant that will never come again; the moment where we are not determined by outside forces but self-determined by our free will. Our past actions make us who we are today. But each “today” also offers us another chance to change our developing history. The future is the fruit of our past and present choices, but it’s always unknown, because each successive moment presents us with a new possibility.
. . . .
That revolution, the same revolution that “occurred 2,000 years ago,” is already underway in every believer who confesses passionately and unapologetically—in his private life and in her public witness—that Jesus Christ is Lord, the Son of God, the messiah of Israel, and the only savior of the world. Every other lens we use for understanding the human story, whether we choose economics or gender or Darwin or race or something else, will ultimately lie to us about who we are. And, of course, we also lie to ourselves.
. . . .
The common good is what best serves human happiness in the light of what is real and true. That’s the heart of the matter: What is real and true? If God exists, then the more man flees from God, the less true and real man becomes. If God exists, then a society that refuses to acknowledge or publicly talk about God is suffering from a peculiar kind of insanity.
. . . .
Humility is the beginning of sanity. We can’t love anyone else until we can see past ourselves. And man can’t even be man without God. The humility to recognize who we are as creatures, who God is as our Father, what God asks from each of us, and the reality of God’s love for other human persons as well as ourselves—this is the necessary foundation that religion brings to every discussion of free will, justice, and truth, and to every conversation about “the common good.”
. . . .
We most truly serve the common good by having the courage to be disciples of Jesus Christ. God gave us a free will, but we need to use it. Discipleship has a cost. Jesus never said that we didn’t need a spine. The world doesn’t need affirmation. It needs conversion. It doesn’t need the approval of Christians. It needs their witness. And that work needs to begin with us . . . . The only thing that matters is to be a saint. At least we can try. And if we do, God will take care of the rest.
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...will we follow? Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Judean? All, and may more, have differing interpretations of God, and God's will.
As a Catholic, I find certain aspects of Protestantism troubling. I am sure that the reverse is true as well. As a Catholic, I find the anti-Catholicism of the early Republic very troubling. How would we resolve these issues?
I think everyone should vote and act based upon their beliefs about God. If you're a Christian, vote based upon a Christian view of reality.
The result will be a representative government that basically mirrors the electorate, and that body can then make law based upon consensus values. The difference between Protestants and Catholics is really not that much when it comes to big public policy issues. In fact, there will be wide agreement between various religions on a lot of issues. The big differences are between athiests/agnostics and theists.
For some reason there seems to be this belief in our culture that we should separate religious values and morality from our law. But ALL laws are based on some set of values, and if we refuse to base our law on some type theistic values, we will by default base them on secular values.
who should I vote for?
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." -Mark Twain
The larger point of the article linked above is that we should conduct our whole life, including civic activity, in a manner that pleases God. If he exists this makes perfect since. If he doesn't exist than this makes no sense. So if you don't believe in God than really you should vote as it pleases you.
What motivates the person that does not believe in God to vote for the common good? And if God does not exist, why does that make sense? As the archbishop points out, often times doing something for the common good requires self-sacrifice. Why sacrifice yourself if this is all there is and there is no eternity or god to please?
you're still striving for long-term progress and survival. You don't need to believe in a god to be unselfish, considerate and/or forward-looking.
As a non-Catholic (Independent Baptist), I agree 100% with Archbishop Chaput. Interesting, and kind of nice, since it isn't all that often that I can say that in response to a Catholic. Since religion is the foundation of one's worldview, there is no possible way to separate God from our public or private life, and there is no good reason to do so.
...will we follow? Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Judean? All, and may more, have differing interpretations of God, and God's will.
Certainly, there are many differences in the groups you have mentioned, and not being a relativist, I don't believe that they are all equally correct. However, for those groups that you have mentioned, all believe in the holiness of God, and that He has told us to be holy. That is going to guide our lives in certain ways, whether you believe in the necessity of the sacraments, believe in salvation by grace through faith alone, or whatever. You don't have to agree in all aspects of the different theologies in order to realize that.
To every one of those bold passages ask the question why, and then look for the answer in the essay. He never gives reasons for his statements, he just makes assertions. This is great 'preaching to the choir' material, but offers nothing to those who are seriously considering the question "Does God Exist". Not to mention the fear-mongering: Bringing up Nazi Germany? Nice one. And he's misleading in other places. Using the term 'religious' in the context of Christianity to describe our forefathers is a bit of a stretch. Most were deists. History being ignored by the big ideological systems of today? C'mon! It's a focal point - most importantly - its the root of human rights system here in the US - not religion as the author suggests. Just take a look at the development of our constitution and bill of rights. It was all about using other governments as a model to prevent abuses by the one they were setting up. They didn't sit down and ask god, and/or the bible what should be in the bill of rights. This essay isn't good. It's extremely light on facts, reason and clarity and it's not even written that well.
I don't think the purpose of the essay was to convince people of God's existence. It was to encourage Christians to let their beliefs overflow into public life and policy.
No, most weren't Deists. A number were, including some of the best known, but the great majority were Christians.
some might have been Deists, but then one has to explain why Washington and Jefferson were vestrymen of their parishes throughout their adult life and why Jefferson specifically asked for a Episcopalian minister to be present when he was on his death bed.
The answer is obvious.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
Ha! Jefferson a Christian!
To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise
I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.
I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard Price, Jan. 8, 1789 (Richard Price had written to TJ on Oct. 26. about the harm done by religion and wrote "Would not Society be better without Such religions? Is Atheism less pernicious than Demonism?")
The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." -Mark Twain
presented sans context and from a fairly easily discredited website. It still doesn't answer the mail. Jefferson was a life long active member of his Anglican parish and when disestablishment took place continued to participate. He didn't just sit in the pews he was a vestryman. He did request his minister be present at his deathbed. I say his 70 or so years of documented participation in the Christian faith trumps your quotes.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
read any of Jefferson's works? He was, in every sense, anti- traditional religion and had great contempt for the evil things done in the name of religion and in particular, Jesus. He had great respect for Jesus' moral teachings and found them the most perfect set of beliefs:
"[Jesus'] principles of a pure deism, and juster notions of the attributes of God, to reform [prior Jewish] moral doctrines to the standard of reason, justice & philanthropy, and to inculcate the belief of a future state."
Jefferson believed himself to be a true Christian, not the cookie cutter version pushed by traditional religions. Hell, he even edited his own Bible:
[The Jefferson Bible] is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw.
This is not open to debate. He may have been a deist, but he certainly didn't subscribe to traditional religion even if he did attend services. I'll take his own writing on religion over your claims he was a "vestryman" any day (and you fail to mention that him being a vestryman was a lay position that was part of his political office under the Anglican-funded Virginia).
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." -Mark Twain
vestrymen were not part of a political office. They were church officials who had religious as well as civic duties.
Your use of a silly little website is really not much use here as you obviously don't have a copy of his "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth" and you certainly don't have a clue about the role of the Anglican church in colonial Virginia.
And I'm confused here you realize you are using Jefferson's assertion that he was Christian as proof that he wasn't Christian. A bit Orwellian don't you think.
So I'll take any of several biographies of Jefferson over the juvenile array of proof texts you toss about.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
in the sense that he followed the teachings of Christ, not the Christian Church. But please do enlighten me. How would you classify Jefferson's religious views?
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." -Mark Twain
Here.
Seems to be a reliable source; not entirely conclusive although it seems reasonable to assert (based on the cited article) that he was neither atheist nor Christian - can you be the latter and still reject the divinity of Christ?
very anticlerical one.
The expansive movement in colonial America was Calvinism - the full boar, predestination/fire and brimstone type, the kind where a leading thinker of the day opposed small pox vaccination as a "cheat" against the divine plan of using illness in the affairs of men. This appalled a man of Jefferson's intellectual and humanitarian tendencies (the latter strongly influenced by his understanding of the Gospels.)
Virginia had an easygoing Anglican establishment, so it's not surprising that Jefferson participated in its community life. It would have been expected of him in any case as a leading landowner of Albemarle County, and Jefferson always tried to get on with the neighbors.
Jefferson's anticlericalism hardened in his middle years, first in France where he saw how closely the French church was aligned with the oppressive monarchy, and in the 1790's when the Federalist party became identified with staunchly Calvinist New England.
As President, he had to be conscious that some of his most fervent supporters were Southern evangelicals, and his political energies had to be focused more on dealing with Lousiana, impressment and, above all, steering the ship of state clear of both Napoleon and His Majesty's Government.
In any case, the great Declaration that started our national enterprise is unimaginable without its emphasis on the Creator. Which is very different than the religious agendas pushed by the various divines of his day- or ours.
C.L.- You are confused about the origins of the U.S. social system. It's not history, as you state, but Western philosophy, law, and religion, which has only been influenced by history. The basis for our Constitution and Bill of Rights can be traced back to Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, the Magna Carta, etc. There wouldn't be any Bill of Rights without the Christian
concept of Natural Law.
Whether or not, the Founders were deists or Christians, they recognized Christianity had a profound influence on the development of Western Civilization. Even the concept of "secular" was developed in Christian philosophy, and did not exist in the non-Christian world until Christians introduced it. All of the concepts and ideas that you take for granted, were products of a thousand years of Christian philosophy. The idea that we are mere products of historical events is very Marxist-Leninist (hardly compatible with libertarianism).
"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists,but by Christians,not upon religions,but upon the Gospel of Jesus Christ.".............Patrick Henry
Article VI, clause 3 includes:
"no religious Test shall be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
Several of the colonies tried blending church and state, and several of the pre-Constitution states did it. The Framers -- virtually all of them men of faith, most of them Christians -- learned from those experiences and intentionally created an explicitly secular government.
I think they did the right thing, and created a system which is better for both church and state. I also think it's better for people of faith in a pluralist society such as ours.
The views of Democrats on issues involving faith often bother me, I think because my own views on this are conservative with a small "c." Chaput's views may be traditionalist after a fashion, but it's not a tradition we all share. I don't think his views are constructively conservative.
The views of Democrats on issues involving faith often bother me, I think because my own views on this are conservative with a small "c." Chaput's views may be traditionalist after a fashion, but it's not a tradition we all share. I don't think his views are constructively conservative.
You are going to have to explain this a little bit. What does "constructively conservative" mean?
By constructively conservative, I mean looking to tradition and experience to establish lasting and universal principles for action and especially governance. Really hard to do in a society with a lot more pluribus than unum.
I thought the writer was calling on tradition, but being particularistic rather than pragmatic -- saying what he thought _he_ should do, and what he thought people who share his views should do. That's fine if he's just asking us each to remember our own grounding in faith. I think it's even fine if he's asking us to do that as congregations, etc.
But I parted company with him because I thought his particularism would pull people away from public engagement with those who do not share our faith. I I interpreted him as encouraging us to seek public policy that explicitly expresses our faith. I don't think that's constructive.
The Framers drew on their own experience and shied away from that kind of thing. They recognized that we live in a nation of many faiths (in those days, the divisions between Catholics and Protestants and among Protestant denominations were often deep and acrimonious) and they tried to get away from religious particularism.
As usual, I could be wrong.
DFLer-Chaput is not trying to convert you. He is telling Christians that they have an obligation to live their beliefs. Chaput never said he was against Separation of Church and State, or that he was a Conservative Republican. Every time a Catholic bishop says anything, non-believers want to mix apples, oranges, and bananas.
Belief in God’s existence has, as its reasoned consequence, acknowledgement of the conclusion that the universe (including man and his political actions) conducts itself according to the dictates of a Divine plan (notwithstanding varied understandings of the impact of free choice by individual persons).
Between the human and Divine, however, there lies a gap – immeasureable – the gap between us humans, who know the world through its material manifestations – and the Deity, who knows it by some higher power of Intellect, unattainable by men.
The ultimate human endeavor lies in ferreting out the forms of this Divine plan – as it applies to each and all of us – both in morality and in political belief. Principles of natural law guide us, but they, must also (usually) be discovered rather than simply learned from precepts ...
except within revealed religion. Revealed religions differ in the principles which guide their flocks. “Thou shalt not kill”, though clearly part of basic human moral understanding, is a revealed religious precept. In spite of its near-univerally acknowledged consonance with natural law, most of the world learns this precept by human intuition of the natural moral order, and not by reading Exodus. In our democratic State, governed by a Congress that shall “make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” the government may not propose religious precepts as the major premises upon which social order is to be founded. And this strict limitation makes the search for natural moral and political truth more urgent, because it compels consideration of disparate acts – with often-distant consequences – far more challenging than simply making application of a written holy text.
Theism in itself does not answer such practical questions such as Which form of government is best? or Which act of mine is better moral choice? And politics, which constitutes the human form of these practical inquiries, does not turn to theology to make those sorts of choices. Though a belief in God can underpin and gird one’s philosophic views of good and evil, government must go further than practicing metaphysics – it must establish concrete law and justice – basic, written, human, moral truths – and educate its citizens about those truths that are achieveable by light of human reason.
One need not spurn the Word of revelation to hold this view.
Is human dignity discernible by light of reason? I’m not yet sure. I think it may be, but that’s another line of thought that goes elsewhere.
For many, the democratic government is "the government" when you don't want it involved in something, and "the public" or "the people" when you do want it involved.
It pays to make the distinction. In fact, there is plenty of public recognition of God. There are several cable television channels and radio stations devoted to religion. I see street-corner preachers just about every weekend. My workplace normally has Chick-style tracts littering every available surface.
What I don't see is how the existence of God compels the state to take on a theological role of any sort whatsoever. I'm not sure what the logic is behind that notion. It's conceivable that a God might exist for whom it was important that governments pay allegiance to him, rather than individuals. But what's the evidence that this is the case?
In fact, what is the evidence that Chaput's ubiquitous conditional is true at all? If God exists... but know one can state with objective certainty that this is the case anyway. We might as well say "if the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin is greater than 500, then..." When you can't establish the conditional with objective certainty, then you can't rely on the conclusions drawn from it, either.
"The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions." - Plato
...that God exists is: Nearly everyone's ability to appreciate, and long for perfect love, perfect joy, and divine perfection in all things, without the remotest ability to achieve it here on Earth. If it never existed on this planet, if no human can ever achieve it on this planet, then how do we all know what it is? Because we do all know what it is.