A response to Mark Lilla.
Mark Lilla’s New York Times Magazine article has garnered some attention on this blog and elsewhere. I recently received the following helpful response to the piece from Dean Brackley, SJ, of the Universidad Centroamericana in San Salvador. Have a look:
Mark Lilla’s essay “The Politics of God” in the New York Times Magazine (Aug. 19) left me with mixed feelings–and major reservations.
Lilla is scared of “political theology,” which slides for him into messianic fanaticism, especially of the Islamist sort. I can understand that, but let’s make some distinctions. Lilla celebrates the Great Separation of religion and politics that followed the seventeenth-century religious wars in Europe. This helped give us the modern democracies and lay states. Good. But is separating church and state the same as separating religion and politics? Is it the same as privatizing religion? Is a public role for religion always intolerant and destructive?
Lilla seems to see only negative consequences to mixing religion and politics and, to my mind, simplifies history. One crucial example is the way he presents “political theology” (Christian and Jewish) in the twentieth century. Although the liberal-theology movement of the nineteenth century had many virtues, I agree with Lilla that its proponents were generally naive and superficial about the human weakness and egoism that later blossomed with a vengeance in two world wars and fascist and communist tyranny. What Lilla overlooks is the twentieth-century reaction to liberal theology by another very significant theological movement usually called neo-orthodoxy. It was not just one theologian of this current, the democratic socialist Karl Barth, who “acquitted himself well” in the face of Nazism. Barth had plenty of company, including some of the greatest theologians of the century, people like Paul Tillich (another democratic socialist) and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who led the Confessing Evangelical Church in resisting Hitler, and paid the ultimate price. Their political theology was sophisticated and anything but theocratic. One of their number, Reinhold Niebuhr, remains the most influential political theologian in U.S. history. They were Lutherans and Calvinists.
Because of antimodern resistance in the Catholic hierarchy, this “style” of political theology did not emerge in Roman Catholicism until a little later, although Jacques Maritain’s interpretation of Catholic social thought in the 1930s was indeed social-democratic (Integral Humanism). The Second Vatican Council represents a real break, not just theoretical but also practical, with Constantinian aspirations and heralds a new kind of presence of the church in society–although such a momentous change will take time, especially in Catholicism. Even so, Catholic social teaching has matured greatly since World War II, with the church turning into an important defender of human rights. That teaching inspired the social democracy of Konrad Adenauer and others who helped rebuild Western Europe after the war.
One of my pet peeves is the frequent abuse of principles of Catholic social teaching to justify inequality and free-market capitalism. For a better reading, consider what then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said in his 2004 speech to the Italian Senate: “In many respects, democratic socialism was and is close to Catholic social doctrine and has in any case made a remarkable contribution to the formation of a social consciousness.”
During the same postwar period, the World Council of Churches was an important advocate of decolonization and human rights and a signal opponent of apartheid in South Africa.
In recent decades, and especially poor countries, church leaders rediscovered the prophetic vocation of the church in defense of the poor. Think of Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, Oscar Romero and Christian base communities. Think of how liberation theology has developed the social meaning and political implications of Christian faith from the standpoint of the victims. (If you suppose that liberation theology is a form of theocratic fanaticism, you’ve been taken in by its more irresponsible critics.)
Pardon me if I do not regret the public role of the Quakers and other peace churches and the Catholic Worker movement, with their radical critique of war-making and capitalism. As Jim Wallis has pointed out, the churches have been crucial players in reform movements in the United States, from the abolition of slavery to the civil-rights movement.
A public role for religion is not itself the problem. The challenge is to discover the proper public role. Of course, if you believe that all religious faith is simply irrational–as many intellectuals do today–I can see why you would fear such a role. But genuine faith is not simply irrational. Although it leaps beyond the immediate evidence, it leaps toward where that evidence points, and it does so because not leaping has become less rational and less human. (By evidence here, I mean not just the data of the empirical sciences but also beauty and meaning and moral and religious experience.) Genuine faith is a pathway through life that leads into greater light and produces fruit.
The political problem is not theology and religion in themselves, but misguided religion and bad theology. Christianity, Judaism and Islam, too, cannot be reduced to privatized commodities with no public role without betraying themselves. Historically, privatized religion is not really religion at all.
Reasonable religion and good theology defend the weak and the innocent and nurture commitment to the common good. We have nothing to fear from that. Reasonable religion also points out our moral weaknesses and the limitations of self-serving reason. We have to suspect that without a public role for reasonable religion and good theology, our “enlightened” democracies will descend further into Hobbes’s war of all against all, with lives that are even nastier, more brutish and even shorter.
–Dean Brackley, SJ
Mr. Gallicho, thank you for posting this. It might be worthwhile to solicit a response from Lilla. Heck, you could just pop over to Lilla’s office. He teaches right around the corner from the Commonweal offices!
Lilla also seems to have missed the fact that “separating church and state” has been the condition of sacralizing the state. With its array of symbols, holidays, demands for allegiance and sacrifice of self, what else is the modern nation-state but a surrogate church? (Think of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, or the Eternal Flame, or the blood sacrifices demanded of young men to preserve the mystical body of the state.)
Moreover, I don’t see how separating church and state or religion and politics has given us a more peaceful and less fanatical world. Lilla points to Islam; I’ll point to fascism, or Communism, or the many varieties of liberal democratic imperialism. (The war in Iraq, partly undertaken in the worst crusading spirit, is a war inspired by our own “civil religion.”) The corpses piled up by the “secular” nation-state are just as dead as those piled up by pre-modern states that fused religion and politics.
None of this is an argument for re-instating the pre-modern order. It is an argument that the separation of church and state, or of religion and politics, has not had all the felicitous consequences that Lilla and others seem to think it’s had.
Dean Brackley’s comments are well taken, as far as they go. But let me propose a further distinction. The official Church, speaking through the hierarchy, has every reason to stand ready to criticize public policies that are unfair to any segment of the people. But the official Church ought not to attempt to formulate political policies. Lay Catholics, on the other hand, with or without clerical advice, are, just as any citizens, entitled to propose and argue for policies that promise to be of positive worth for the entire body politic. They can also argue for public policies that would aid the Church but not harm other segments of the populace. For example, some school voucher plans might be defensible.
The basic reason for adopting this position is that every public policy is, by its nature, not only fallible but also intrinsically tied to the prevailing circumstances and therefore mutable in the light of changes in the relevant circumstances.
Consider, for example, the present problems we have in dealing responsibly with immigration. It is surely proper for Church officials to denounce policies that are unjust to immigrants, whether legal or otherwise. But it would be improper for those same officials to try to carve out the policies appropriate to the present situation. But for Catholic lay people to work for policies that are consistent with the requirements of justice is of course proper. Note, though, that two competing policy proposals might both be consistent with the demands of justice. It is not for the Church officials to choose between them. In short, the official Church has no business trying to make political policy, but has every right to evaluate any policy in terms of its consonance with the demands of justice.
Thanks for posting Dean Brackley’s incisive response to Lilla.
After hearing Lilla on WNYC, though, I would question whether he conceives of religion’s “private” role in the same way that Brackley is thinking. It seems that what Lilla is trying to say is that in the West we certainly allow religion to condition the causes and concerns that motivate our involvement in the political realm, but that no one can use their particular religious claims as evidence or a source for authority in legal arguments and such. We do not appeal to Torah, Shariah, or the Sermon on the Mount to derive our policies. Benedict makes much the same point in his Jesus of Nazareth. This differentiates our system from that of others, he argues, and we should not think that our system occurs as a natural evolution of universal human desires. This assumption is what led the current administration to believe that once Saddam was ousted, a new epoch of Western style democratic institutions would flourish in the soil of free market economics. Francis Fukuyama’s “political theology” helped fan that flame. True, Lilla personally seems anxious about any role for religion, but in terms of his political philosophy he understands that this is perfectly legitimate.
The best point of Brackley’s response, I thought, was that the concern should not be to rid public discourse of all theology, but only to think through what sort of theological discourse is the best. Of course this would require a much deeper engagement with theological work than is desired by most. This is where Lilla is at his weakest. He fails to make the kinds of distinctions that Brackley makes so well, or, as a friend puts it, he has too expansive a definition of “political theology.” All theology has political ramifications, but not all theology is “political theology” in Lilla’s sense. Likewise, political theories that pilfer theological tropes or narratives (messiah and messianism, for instance) do so by throwing overboard the ballast of a transcendent God or a doctrine of the Incarnation and a standard for human behavior in view of an inner-worldly utopia of the indefinite future. But these cannot be said to be “theology” in any normal sense, only in an analogous and atheistic sense. Indeed, they are anthropocentric idolatries rather than theologies in any Christian understanding. Without this distinction in place, Lilly can be interpreted in Christopher Hitchens’ sense as justifying the claim that all religion is bad. Of course Hitchens’ judgment on the current war almost begs for ridicule. Both Hitchens and Fukuyama, as far as I can see, make exactly the mistake that Eugene McCarraher’s points out: they sacralize the political order and, quite contrary to Fukuyama’s intentions at least, help justify violence.
Perhaps I am mistaken but after taking about a half hour or so reading Lilly’s article (a year’s course work I would guess) I wonder whether the commentators or even Brackley read the whole of the article by Lilly. His main point was that we had to be aware of political messianism. We all agree to that.
He also points out how we have avoided the mistakes of Europe in not having religious wars. A miracle indeed.
Of course W, and his neocons are the biggest threat to democracy since the founding of this country. Lilly is saying they are the culprits not religion itself which, as Rousseau noted, is important for the human individual.
Lilly does give graphic examples of downright stupidity in religion. (we are living through a few)For example he writes:”In August 1914, Adolf von Harnack, the most respected liberal Protestant scholar of the age, helped Kaiser Wilhelm II draft an address to the nation laying out German military aims. Others signed an infamous pro-war petition defending the sacredness of German militarism.” These were/are dangerous people posing as disciples of Christ.
Overall the article by Lilly is instructive. The burden of proof is us to disprove him. He never said we should glorify the state. Should we not refer to what he writes specifically while we criticize?
I just don’t see where Lilly is the same as Hitchens and Fukuyama.
I agree that Lilla’s article is instructive and worth discussion. Sorry if I confused issues by bringing in Hitchens and Fukuyama.
In Slate magazine, Christopher Hitchens wanted to argue that Lilla’s article supports his own view that religion is bad. My argument is that the only way that Hitchens can make his case is by collapsing various atheistic worldviews that have led to catastrophe in the 20th century (such as Marxism and fascism) into the category of “religion.” I think at times in his article, Lilla does not adequately distinguish traditional Christian teaching from these other forms of “religion,” so that Hitchens is able to manipulate the argument for his purposes. In other words, Lilla needs to make further distinctions within Christianity and between Christianity and its aping by atheistic humanisms such as we find in Marxism. Here, Brackley seems right to observe that given, as you say, Lilla’s understanding that religion is inextricable from human life, the question is going to be not whether religion will have a public role, but what sort of religion is good religion and what kind of public role it should have. Lilla allows too many things the general term of “religion,” rather than distinguishing between atheistic, this-worldly political messianisms, Christian neo-orthodoxy (he does mention Barth, however), and a Catholic view that faith broadens and deepens reason rather than destroying it.
Lilla’s article rightly points out that liberal theology, with its tendency to emphasize divine immanence and human goodness to the neglect of transcendence and sin (instead of keeping all of this in paradoxical relation), is unable to resist, and to some extent aids, utopian political messianisms (though Robert Krieg has shown that some anti-modern tendencies also ended up supporting Fascism). This is a crucial point. Fukuyama, I believe, in a book he now regrets having written, made precisely this mistake, that is, he reduced a transcendent eschatology/kingdom of God to an inner-historical law that human beings can realize through force. He thought that there is in history a natural development towards our system of government that all people want. Lilla was insightful to argue that our system of government came about through a series of historical contingencies, and not through a necessary developmental process that we can control by force.
What I understand Brackley to be pointing out, however, is that for Lilla, while religion is an important element of people’s lives, it is at some fundamental level irrational and always a threat to political order. For Brackley, and for Catholicism generally, faith is the broadening and perfection of reason, not its elimination. Indeed, Brackley shows that various forms of faith have often corrected what seemed to many a “rational” political order. We should also remember that Marxism, and the Hegelianism that stands behind it, believe themselves to be scientifically rational ideologies (can we add Plato’s Republic?), not systems rooted in faith. Of course Lilla is right to point out that religion can be irrational and dangerous. But then so can the French Revolution’s brand of Reason.
Ronald Reagan, perhaps with his famous nod to the Christian right, “I know you cannot endorse me but I endorse you’, put in motion the march to political religious messianism in this country. This brought in a sad turn of events whereby religious institutions were employed to help get elected. (Truthfully, they had nothing to do with it and Reagan would have never been elected if the Republicans didn’t convince the Iranians to hold the hostages until after the election.) Even with W the American people resist political messianism. The miracle continues.
None of Brackley’s descriptions of religious activity necessarily contradicts what Lilla states. As long as religions does not dominate the state.
Since Constantine the Christian religion has always been a threat to the political order. This is the time when Christians started killing Christians for the first time. It is true that a revolution can be excessive but never so devastating as when one posits a divine command. And Jesus and Paul always preached persuasion and example. Never domination.
As for Hitchens, he is becoming so loud that one thinks he protests too much. Hans Kung wrote a marvelous book: “Does God Exist?” In it he showed that even by reason the assumption is always that God exists rather than not.
And as most of us profess and witness to a relationship with God we know that reason buttressed by faith brings an abundant life.
The worst thing about Lilla’s article is its distortion of religion’s public record. Viewing it as almost entirely negative, he has fired off a cheap shot. One could write an equally distorted article about “humanism” or “secularism,” claiming them to be disastrous when they get involved in politics. The principal cases in point would be the terrors committed by the French and the Russian revolutions, but there could also be many more examples.
Like many people today, Lilla supposes that there is some form of human life that is NOT political. But you cannot escape politics unless you remove yourself from society. Yes, you can become a passive rather than an active player, but play you must. As James Cone and others have put it: “Not to choose is to choose.”
So Lilla’s advice to religion amounts to this: “Shut up and be conservative.” Too much religion already follows that advice, with the result that reactionary and theocratic religionists, anything but passive, are having a field day. The cure for BAD religion is not NO religion. It is religion aspiring to its better, not its lower, mandates. In this regard humanism has an important role to play in helping to critique religious superstition and fanaticism, but it cannot do this if it sets out to confine religion to the closet.
Lilla should ponder the life and example of people like William Sloane Coffin, who once put matters this way when interviewed on PBS: “… my understanding of Christianity is that it underlies all progressive moves to implement more justice. Get a higher degree of peace in the world, you know? And although people don’t see it, that’s what I mean by politically-committed spirituality.”
Here is what Lilla wrote”
“The new political thinking would no longer concern itself with God’s politics; it would concentrate on men as believers in God and try to keep them from harming one another. It would set its sights lower than Christian political theology had, but secure what mattered most, which was peace. ”
I suppose we can admit that organized religion has not done a good job in securing peace. So the above holds unless one can show a better idea. Jesus did say “I did not come to bring peace but the sword.” But what is meant by this is one does not conform to what everyone else states about treatment of one’s neighbor. The Levite and the Priest may not agree but one will not accept their opinion and will follow the command of Jesus.
But that does not mean one should employ armies to force everyone to be a Good Samaritan. That is done by example, education and martyrdom. The Iraq war is an example of a theological war in that W and his theocon encouragers felt that they are divinely called.
This has too oftened happened in history. Lilla, as far as I can see, in no way opposes what Sloane Coffin did. It is when people kill each other in the name of God that one draws the line.
A few responses to the Lilla article, which seems a serious and interesting, if ultimately flawed, effort to deal with the questions raised by religion and public life.
First, if there are any cheap shots, probably the worst is his dismissal of the German liberal Protestant theologians who, one might think from Lilla’s piece, defected in droves to the Nazi cause. Of course he singles out Barth as an exception, without mentioning the fact that he was Swiss, not German. And the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is conspicuous by its absence.
Second, one might hope that people pontificating on the subject of religion and politics would take the trouble to read a few history books — almost any would do! — before making enormous generalizations of the sort claiming that it is religion that drives people to war (I know Lilla doesn’t quite say this, as some others do, but the implication is there). It would be far more accurate to say that religion has far too often been used as a way of lending support to wars that are fought primarily for secular causes.
But what were the Crusades about? Recovery of the Holy Land for Christianity? Or control of the Mediterranean with all its wealth and trade routes? Or both? Was the Thirty Years War (1618-48) really a religious war? Then how explain France’s Cardinal Richilieu making common cause with Gustavus Adolphus, warlike champion of Lutheranism? One answer, of course, lies in the tensions between (Catholic) Bourbon and (Catholic) Hapsburg dynastic ambitions. Was the almost contemporary English Civil War simply a battle between Anglicans and Puritans over their theological differences, or were Anglicanism and Puritanism in large part masks in a bloody battle for for contending social and economic ascendancy? In what sense were Napoleon’s huge wars “religious?” Or the Crimean War, Franco-Prussian war, or for that matter, the two greatest wars of the twentieth century? Only if one takes the cheap and misleading way out — as some do these days — by arguing that Naziism and Communism must be seen as religions (thereby trying to get secularism off the hook), is it possible to even begin to see WWII in this light.
What should be appalling to believers is not that these wars have religious roots, but that they allowed themselves so easily to be suckered into thinking that going into battle was fighting for God’s cause. And how many secularists, incidentally, including intellectuals who should have known better, were suckered into defending and supporting the activities of, say, the secular Stalin and Mao, whose human tolls were even greater than those of Hitler?
Finally, might it not help not only to read a history book or two, but to raise one’s eyes above the West from time to time and consider other important parts of the human experience? Lilla and, as far as I can make out, Hitchens and others appear to ignore this (their concern with Islam being largely a concern for its effects on the West). Yet if religion causes war, then surely that must be true in Asia, pre-Columbian America, and so forth. What, for example, were the religious roots of the Mongol conquest of China under Genghis Khan and his successors in the early xiii century? and if you’re looking for cruelty, rapine, plunder, and all the rest of it, that’s not a bad place to start. Or the other Mongol conquests and incursions into Russia, today’s India, and so forth? Does it make any sense at all to see the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 simply as Shintoism vs. Orthodoxy? Was the Japanese invasion of China in the thirties, which helped get WWII off the ground, Confucianism vs. emperor worship? The question, as they say, answers itself.
The late great China scholar, Arthur Wright of Yale, once argued that the spread of Buddhism into China in the first millenium actually helped to serve Chinese militarism. Unlike Confucians, who believed in honoring their ancestors, and staying close to home to perform the expected rituals, Buddhism taught that such things were unimportant, and hence soldiers could more easily be sent on imperial (and imperialist) campaigns into distant places like Turkestan. Does that argument mean that Buddhism is a warlike religion? Or does it simply mean that Buddhists, like others, can see their their beliefs perverted for Great Power ends?