A terrible question stalks our land, even at this moment of promise and hope: Is there any principle left by which the United States can transcend the present bitterness and divisions over religion in public life and live up to the promise of the American experiment? Race was the older and, many thought, deeper of America’s problems, but today’s celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as well as Barack Obama’s election shows how far we have come. Religion in public life is the next challenge.
James Madison called America’s original settlement of this contentious issue the “true remedy,” and for a long time it was certainly the most nearly perfect solution the world has seen.
Today, however, controversies over religion in public life have become the holy war front of the wider culture wars, and the American settlement is going awry. Whether it’s the posting of the Ten Commandments in public places, faith-draped monuments to our war dead or even a government-church partnership ”” as with the faith-based initiatives ”” controversy invariably rears its head at the intersection of religion and public life.
Like everything by Dr. Guinness, this is an insightful essay. I do think that America is in this situation because the government has greatly expanded its reach. We no longer have “a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801. In truth we have evolved into a government that “helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.” Obama, Inaugural Address, 2009.
This is not meant as a criticism, merely an observation. In full disclosure, I have long been in favor of this evolution, but over the past year or more, I have been rethinking this.
As the scope of government expands, it forces each of us to do things we find to be morally questionable or objectionable. If we move to national healthcare, I will be forced to pay for the extermination of babies. This is something I find so repugnant, I may be forced to resist and be jailed. Similarly, others may object to tax dollars supporting education delivered through a religious school and so on.
One of the key issues with respect to redefining marriage is that the federal government affords so many benefits and duties for those who are married that making these adjustments have huge policy implications.
Accordingly, we need to decide whether we want an expansive government realizing that each of us is going to need to make moral compromises or a very limited “small footprint” government which will allow more room for persons of starkly different faiths and beliefs.
“… helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.†That sounds very nice. But it is not what government is for and if government is used in that way, it usurps our dignity as human beings. We need to find and to do our own work, care for our own, and retire when we can within our own dignity. This is not for the government to decide, or be a part of (unless one chooses to work for the government – and then one still retains the choice of choosing that work, caring for his/her own, and retiring at the time of one’s own choosing, within reason). In the name of social engineering, the government has entered every facit of our lives and now we are hooked on it to provide for us. We have become, in many ways, like the story of the wild boars, who came to the same place very day to eat the corn that was put on the ground by those trying to catch them. Slowly over time, the hunters enclosed the area where the corn was put on the ground with fences, until at last the wild boar came in to eat the corn through a narrow gate which was then closed. At first, the wild boar ran around in confusion and rebellion, looking for a place to escape. But after a while they settled down and began eating the corn again and quit trying to escape their fencing. Our fencing is just about complete. Are we going to continue to eat the corn and ignore it?
September 10, 1782, the United States Congress authorized the printing of an American Bible in English.
Evidently, the founders did not find this intersection of religion and public life to be a problem.
[i]We need to find and to do our own work, care for our own, and retire when we can within our own dignity.[/i]
Billy,
That’s an equally nice sentiment, but it makes bold assumptions about the world around us. Regardless of what government does, plenty of non-governmental organizations seem to have gone down the road of impersonal treatment of those whom they purport to “serve”.
Not so long ago, I re-read Bell’s [i]Out of This Furnace[/i], a telling account – written by someone who grew up in that environment – of three generations of a Central European family who worked the mills in Braddock, PA. Not much evidence of a government presence there (except in terms of police breaking up strikes) and they certainly cared for their own, but the dignity they manifested was very much despite their conditions, over which they had little control.
None of this proves that the way President Obama chooses to address the problem will be the right way, but it does put “self-reliance” in perspective.
[url=http://catholicandreformed.blogspot.com]Catholic and Reformed[/url]
billy, i don’t look at the issue that way. i have a friend who in his 30’s had a stroke a few years ago and is now unable to work for more than 4 hours at a time. he told me he doesn’t worry about survival because his society takes care of him; he lives in the netherlands. i fear that i could not say the same if it happened to me here. not all of us live in big families and have other people to care for us. i hope to draw medicare and social security when i retire and i don’t mind paying the same for other legal citizens.
“… but the dignity they manifested was very much despite their conditions, over which they had little control.” Is that really true? Really, little control? In the United States of America? No public schools to give education for 3 generations, to move out of the mill work? No means of transportation for 3 generations to move somewhere else? No choices for them except to work in the Braddock, PA mills for 3 generations? Self- reliance is a lost basis of our civilization in this country I am afraid. At one time it was the basis. Sad that even intelligent people have lost the idea of it, in favor of victimization. I fear our country has reached its zenith and is on its way down. And to get back on subject, the loss of teaching from our church about our individual relationships with the Lord, in favor of a “required” politically correct ‘inclusive’ relationship with everyone in the world, is at the heart of much of this. (There, now I’ve gone and really vented quite enough.)
#5, that is not what I’m talking about. Some people, because of disabilities, need help, like your friend – but even he works 4 hours a day- that is self reliance to the extent he is able. What I’m talking about is the idea of our taking care of ourselves, when we are able, not being dependent on the government to find us a job, provide us with care, provide us with retirement. If you paid into Social Security and Medicare, you are providing that for yourself, through your payment of those taxes over the life of your career. (Question is, could you have done better with all of that money you paid in those taxes and provided yourself with a better retirement than the government – I say you could have. But that is the safety net, supposedly set up for the less fortunate during the Great Depression – it was not supposed to be for our total retirement – but government has expanded it so that for some it now is – corn for wild boar.) In our country, the government might provide your friend with SSI or a charitable agency might provide him help beyond his 4 hours of work. There will always be exceptions in which the government and charitable agencies can provide solutions and help. What I disagree with is the government providing able-bodied and able-minded people with income, medical care, and other aid that they can provide for themselves. But that is the way of liberal politics – its just vote buying with taxpayer money and it will continue until no one is left to work and pay the taxes, which of necessity will get higher and higher, as the workers get fewer and fewer – until everyone really is the same in income, like many European socialistic countries.
Well Billy, I’ll happily confess my own lack of self-reliance. My writing – despite scholarly approval – earns nothing of substance; one temp agency in Pittsburgh has had my details on file for over a year without finding anything suitable; and my adjunct teaching wouldn’t sustain our household without my wife’s income.
There has been no time in my life when I have been entirely self-supporting, though not through choice, at least not conscious choice. Irritating though. And this despite all the advantages with which I grew up. I wonder what that says about me?
But, Jeremy, your household is self-reliant. You are not (I’m assuming from your comment) using food stamps or any of the other government “safety-net” services. I don’t think anyone thinks each individual is necessarily self-reliant, but when government takes the place of spouses, families, churches, etc., we only become more beholden to the government and less able to be self-reliant. What it says about you is that you married well and wisely.
True (at least, I believe my wife thinks so) and yet we still feel locked into our present situation by circumstances. More to the point, I was graced with a family that had the means to support the “unprofitable” work that I do. Most people are not so fortunate (as is clear from asides dropped by others on this list).
So what I’ve “achieved” is entirely by the grace of others (a good thing theologically but not in other ways, unless I misunderstood the comments above). The very American notion of being in control of one’s destiny to me misses the mark (and not just theologically).
How government chooses to remedy some of the broader problems is still a matter for debate. As a New Deal historian, I’ve always been struck by the fact that it was the work programs – CCC and WPA – that had greatest public appeal. They may not have ended the Depression but they gave hope at a time of hopelessness and compensated work not idleness.
So, Jeremy, government is there to change your “circumstances”? As for the Depression-era programs, while they may have done some good, there is a growing consensus, as I’m sure you’re aware, that they were “feel-good” and may have prolonged the Depression, so the “time of hopelessness” may have lasted longer than it needed to.
I’m an artist, but since that won’t pay the bills, I went to school for something I could earn real money doing. That’s a tough choice for some, but I don’t like relying on others.
Branford,
They may not have ended the Depression in a macroeconomic sense (I’m ambivalent on that score), but in terms of preserving communities in meltdown they achieved something incalculable. I don’t think one can simply dismiss that as economically unsound and therefore valueless.
And one only has to take note of the architectural landmarks in most American cities (many post offices, for example) to see that the “make-work” (if that was what it was) created something tangible and of benefit. Nothing comes without a cost, of course, as the farmers relocated to permit the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority could attest,
If there is a problem today, it’s the one alluded to at the beginning of this discussion. What constituted communitarian values eighty years ago is not what constitutes communitarian values now. The New Deal set aside certain cultural markers – like Prohibition – but it didn’t fundamentally tamper with the grassroots ethos. Indeed, that was precisely the complaint of liberal New Dealers – that there was too much deference to local community mores. Nothing analogous to the Freedom of Choice Act was ever on the cards.