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Vertigo times
FAITH IN ACTION
By Katherine Marshall
The hot spots this week are Kyrgyzstan and Bangkok, but every day brings new reports of riots and unrest somewhere in the world. America has rarely seemed as unsettled as it is today. Angry "tea parties" inspire similarly angry "coffee parties". I was invited recently to a "green tea party" to protest inaction on climate change. Some Catholic Church leaders seem like deer caught in the headlights as they stare into the public furor inspired by their reaction to the abuse scandals. There's turbulence everywhere you look.
A new book by the insightful and eclectic writer Ian Buruma delves into the complicated part that religions play both in the turbulence and in reactions to it. "Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents," compares the United States, Europe, and China and Japan, in a quest for common themes and ways to understand our dynamic times. It's a fun book that skips from Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry to Tocqueville, from Spinoza to Matteo Ricci, an early Jesuit missionary to China, and from Thomas Jefferson to Salman Rushdie.
Buruma's diagnosis is that the malaise we see today is the way people cope with the confusions of a fast-changing world that unsettles their very foundations. They grasp for something fixed and sure, and often that is religion. "What is feared ... is a loss of identity, of something to believe in, of common bonds, ethical, cultural, or religious, without which people are afraid of being cast out, alone, into the state of nature."
This mounting fear and reactions to it, Buruma argues, need to be understood and addressed because they challenge the very foundations of democracy, and democracy offers the only real way forward. His "bottom line" is a strong call for separation of church and state. By concentrating on rules of the democratic game, and "leaving theology to the believers," diverse societies can cope with the turmoil of change, albeit in different ways. They can, through a form of civic religion that includes both shared values and laws, find the sense of belonging that all humans need.
The book winds up with some ancient wisdom from Confucius: when asked how to serve the spirits and gods, Confucius responded: "Let us leave the spirits aside until we know best how to serve men."
"Serving men" calls to mind the recent turbulence around the term social justice. Glenn Beck leveled a frankly bewildering blast against "social justice churches." It drew indignant responses: religious people across a wide spectrum retorted that social justice is indeed the very purpose of churches and of religion. The exchange illustrates graphically a core piece of the challenges Buruma describes: when religion gets injected into a debate the emotions mount. But it also drives home how hard it is in practice to keep the theology quite separate from democratic practice. And is that really the answer?
Beck, his spokesman explained, is devoted to "good Christian charity." He seems to have in mind a traditional notion of alms for widows and orphans, the honorable ideal that harks back to ancient religious values of compassion and community. But Beck's framing suggests that he does not see that "Christian charity" means he has some obligation to address the plight of a street child in Malawi, an abused woman in Manila, or an unemployed man with no insurance in Arlington who just found out he has cancer. Far less does the notion of traditional charity acknowledge that these people have rights that go with modern notions of equality among all people, that they are truly entitled to be treated with dignity.
The call for a social justice grounded in rights that extend to everyone in the large and growing human family, wherever they may be, is profoundly revolutionary. That can be frightening. It upsets the notion of the ordered societies of old, where only the few dared aspire to power, where women and children knew their place, and charity was a choice. It is a vertiginous challenge to the inequalities within and between nations that many take for granted.
Religious communities today are wrestling with the practical implications of the real tensions that Beck points to in his angry and fearful rejection of social justice. What kind of society do we want to build and what will it take to get there? Millions of people, their lives and missions imbued with a religiously grounded fervor, work to "serve men." Their passionate quest for a more socially just world is easy to forget when the headlines focus on religious tensions and violence.
Buruma is right to highlight civic faith: we need it to contend with the vertigo of social change. But some of the wisest voices, the richest experience of what it takes to navigate change, and, most important, the essential passion for social justice, are to be found in faith communities. Never, with the turbulence that lies ahead, have we needed them more.
Katherine Marshall is a senior fellow at Georgetown's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, a Visiting Professor, and a senior advisor for the World Bank.
By Katherine Marshall |
April 12, 2010; 1:28 AM ET
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Faith in Action
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Posted by: YEAL9 | April 12, 2010 3:40 PM
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My problem with "social justice" is who decides what social justice is? Who decides who needs the help and how we go about it...
I want to help people, don't get me wrong, but when government starts deciding that they should set the moral code (deciding who needs the help, who doesn't, how to go about it...what is right and what is wrong), I have a problem with it. They are not exactly what I would consider moral role models -- just remember all of the scandels. I have never seen so many "behind closed doors" deals...etc. I am saddened by the fact that unfortunately, their desire for power makes me reluctant to agree to this "social justice" idea...it sounds good, just a little dangerous for the government to decide what my moral code should be and what I support.
Posted by: cassie123 | April 12, 2010 1:13 PM
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The hot spots this week are Kenya and California, but every day brings new reports of more child abuse by your clergy being covered up by your Church somewhere in the world
Posted by: areyousaying | April 12, 2010 12:15 PM
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The call for social justice by the RCC first came after the loss of the papal states. Social jutice is need in different countries but charity is a band-aid approch that holds back social justice. Thoes that preach charity ought to put their money where their mouth is and bear in mind that they are slowing social justice. As time goes by with many big changes coming by weather and uncontroled population, this will become a dog eat dog world more so.
Posted by: usapdx | April 12, 2010 10:34 AM
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"The hot spots this week are Kyrgyzstan and Bangkok, but every day brings new reports of riots and unrest somewhere in the world."
Such events pale with respect to WWs I and II!!
Posted by: YEAL9 | April 12, 2010 9:25 AM
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The comments to this entry are closed.
"Love thy neighbor as thyself" trumps this discussion.
Origins: from Wikipedia
The golden rule has its roots in a wide range of world cultures, and is a standard which different cultures use to resolve conflicts;[3] it was present in the philosophies of ancient India, Greece, Judea and China.
Principal philosophers and religious figures have stated it in different ways, but its most common English phrasing is attributed to Jesus of Nazareth in the Biblical book of Matthew: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (s:Bible (King James)/Matthew#7:12, s:Bible (King James)/Matthew#22:39), s:Bible (King James)/Luke#6:31) The "Do unto others" wording first appeared in English in a Catholic Catechism around 1567, but certainly in the reprint of 1583.[4]"
An early example of the Golden Rule that reflects the Ancient Egyptian concept of Maat appears in the story of The Eloquent Peasant which is dated to the Middle Kingdom (c. 2040 - 1650 BCE): "Now this is the command: Do to the doer to cause that he do".[5] An example from a Late Period (c. 1080 - 332 BCE) papyrus: "That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another".[6]
The Golden Rule was a common principle in ancient Greek philosophy. Examples of the general concept include:
"Do not to your neighbor what you would take ill from him." – Pittacus[7]
"Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing." – Thales[8]
"What you do not want to happen to you, do not do it yourself either. " – Sextus the Pythagorean[9] The oldest extant reference to Sextus is by Origin in the third century of the common era.[10]
"Do not do to others what would anger you if done to you by others." – Isocrates[11]
"What thou avoidest suffering thyself seek not to impose on others." – Epictetus[12]
"It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly (agreeing 'neither to harm nor be harmed'[13]),
and it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life." – Epicurus[14]
"One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him." - Plato's Socrates (Crito, 49c)."