Politics and Policy Archive
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For God and Country: Transcendence and Public Life
By Michael Gottsegen
In an era in which most Americans are rightly cynical about a politics that seems to be
dominated by money and narrow self-interest, there is a danger that we shall be cut off
entirely from the animating power of the idea that the political life is in its essence a
noble, and even a religiously inspired, calling. The visionaries who created this country
were inspired by this idea, and so too have been the patriots in every generation who have
labored long and hard to create “a more perfect” union. While it may be that
such heroes are relatively rare in every age, America still depends upon them, both for
their service to the common good and for their being a catalyst on behalf of the triumph
of goodness and nobility. It would be a great calamity if these patriots, and the civic
ideal they represent, were to disappear from the scene. Lest this happen, we must recall
this ideal and we must endeavor to restore it to its former glory. We must also assess
whether the American religions have a role to play in this rejuvenation of American
political and civic life.
What then was the ideal of citizenship that inspired earlier generations of patriots?
According to the civic republican ideal, the ideal citizen was one who possessed
“civic virtue,” that is, a dedication to the common weal that transcended narrow
concern for oneself and one’s own. The ideal citizen was understood not as one who
negated his own good, but as one who regarded the well being of his city as his own good
and who could not imagine himself apart from it. This patriot also cared for his own honor
and desired to win immortal fame, but he sought his honor and glory through service to the
republic and the common weal. The men who made the American and French revolutions
believed in this ideal and believed they were heirs to a tradition of politics that
extended back to republican Rome and Periclean Athens. Inspired by the words of Virgil,
they sought to institute a novus ordo seclorum, a new ordering of periods, a new beginning
which would be a return to the republican beginning that was made in Greece and Rome. In
the new republican order that they sought to create, they hoped that a new political ethos
would come to prevail, one that valued impartiality and disinterestedness and was based
upon a commitment to, and indeed a passion for, the general welfare or the common good. It
is obvious that this aspiration was only imperfectly realized and that many of the men who
endeavored on its behalf were propertied patriarchs who saw no contradiction between their
commitment to the common good and their acceptance of slavery and the continued
subordination of women, but this does not invalidate the ideal for which they strove, an
ideal which will continue to inspire us so long as its realization remains incomplete.
The common good is an elusive concept, and more elusive still in practice. One does not
come to an awareness of, or a concern for, the common good naturally or automatically.
Both human instinct and our socialization for life in a competitive market economy tell us
that it is natural to place our own interests and the interests of our family and of our
little tribe ahead of the interests of other families and other tribes with whom we are
less closely identified. It is natural – in our society, at least – to regard
the others as competitors, and as beyond the circle of one’s own concern. One may
come to terms with them for prudential reasons, or may make common cause with them to
establish fair rules of the game in order to regulate the competition for scarce social
goods, but this is not really to include them within the circle of one’s
self-concern.
And yet, we also know from our own experience that the circle of self-concern can be
expanded, that the good of others can become almost as important to me as my own good,
that their good can even come to be understood by me as an element of my own good. Another
way to think about this is in terms of the concept of solidarity. The circle of solidarity
can be narrowly drawn, but it can also be wide open and broadly inclusive. The common
good, then, is that good which is common to all who are encompassed within the circle of
our solidarity. Indeed, the proof of my solidarity with others is that I pursue their good
as well as my own.
There are two ways of understanding how the common good is to be produced. One regards the
common good as the sum, or common denominator, that emerges when every person pursues his
own or her own private good. Deal-making and logrolling are the legislative and political
norm according to this conception. The arts of negotiation and the virtues of moderation
and of a willingness to compromise are important here, but only as means for maximizing
one’s advantage. Knowing how to take the other’s point of view is also
important, but again as a means for maximizing one’s gains at the bargaining table.
The alternative understanding of the common good regards it as an end in itself for which
citizens strive, rather than as the unintended outcome of a process of self-interested
endeavor. From this perspective, the common good is achieved only because there are
citizens who love it more than their own private good – just as one might prefer the
good of one’s beloved to one’s own. From this perspective, the common good is
the good that citizens seek and not the coincidental outcome of their pursuit of their own
private good in the public square. It is the common good in which citizens ideally seek
their pleasure. It is a good whose pursuit arises organically from a feeling of organic
interconnection, of solidarity and identification with the other members of the polity,
and from a principled refusal to exclude anyone from the circle of civic concern. Taking
the other’s point of view and being willing to compromise are both important as a
means, but not as a means to maximize one’s own utility so much as a means to
discerning the common good which is the good citizen’s chief joy and desire.
The definition of the common good is distinct from the question of how love of, or passion
for, the common good is to be cultivated. As John Dewey pointed out, we must vividly
conceive a good, and feel a strong desire for its realization in the world, if we are to
make it an object of our vigorous endeavor. In our world today, however, the former
preconditions are largely lacking. Most of us do not have a clear conception of the common
good, nor are we skilled in the political arts of its discernment. Moreover, there are
very few of us who are deeply animated by, or passionate about, the discernment and
achievement of the common good. Few discern it, fewer care to, and almost none are
inspired to make its realization their foremost goal. For most of us, it is off the radar
screen except on the rarest of occasions. And the quality of our public life and of our
politics is the worse for it.
But are we as individuals the worse for it? Are we diminished as human beings by the lack
of a sensibility that instinctively places the public good ahead of our own private good,
and by our preference for the marketplace and the tennis court over a long-winded
discussions of social security reform, global warming or missile defense? We might ask who
is more fully realized as a human being: Is it the person who transcends the narrow circle
of his own private affairs or the one who does not? Is it the person who is moved to act
on behalf of her neighbors and fellow citizens or the one who is not and endeavors only on
her own (or on her family’s) behalf? Is it the person who transcends his mortality
and finitude by investing himself in a cause that transcends him or the one who does not?
But, of course, the answer given by Judaism, Christianity and Islam is fundamentally the
same. Each of these traditions has harsh words for the man or woman who strives only on
his or her own behalf or only on behalf of one’s family. Each understands the process
of human realization as a matter of transcending self-love and each espouses an ethic of
compassionate service to the neighbor that serves as the vehicle of this self-overcoming
or self-transcendence. For each of the three monotheistic traditions, the neighbor who is
the proper object of my concern includes the nearest neighbor and the farthest, the one
who is so like me as to be flesh of my flesh and the one who is a stranger to me, a
foreigner, an alien. While the religions have all failed (and continue to fail) to varying
degrees to practice fully what they preach in this regard, ultimately each espouses an
ideal of righteousness before God that holds that the most perfect human being is the one
whose circle of concern and active care encompasses the whole of humanity. Thus religion
can be a wellspring of zeal for the common weal and for a commitment to the common good
that is in its inspiration religious. This is what religion might contribute to our
politics, and if it did this it would be a very good thing.
Can the religions in today’s America play this role? Have they any chance of having
any impact? Obviously, a dogmatic (or rhetorical or theoretical) commitment to the common
good or a dogmatic affirmation of the unity of mankind as children of the one God –
which all the great monotheistic religions assert – does not automatically translate
into a genuine passion for, and active commitment to, the practical endeavor that should
follow from these concepts. As Dewey observed, we only act to realize ends if we have a
vivid conception of the end and experience a strong attraction that impels us to make the
realization of this end our business. Without this vivid conception of the object and a
strong attraction to it, we may pay the object lip service but nothing of serious
magnitude should be expected from our efforts on its behalf. The question of whether the
religions can play the role of rekindling a deep and vivid and widespread commitment to
the common good, and to political life as the means of its realization, comes down, then,
to the question of whether within the synagogues, churches and mosques a form of life can
be cultivated that will turn pious phrases into deep and powerful and action-animating
sentiments. DeToqueville spoke of the New England town meetings as schoolhouses where
Americans learned the arts and habits of self-government. For us the question is whether
at the dawn of the 21st century the synagogues, churches and mosques can serve as
schoolhouses for the cultivation of the love of, and dedication to, the common good.
The challenges in the way of the churches, synagogues and mosques becoming catalysts of a
fundamental shift in the tenor of American politics are significant. Contemporary religion
largely accepts the status quo and practically accedes to the separation of religion and
politics. Lip service may be paid from the pulpit to national and local political issues,
but the tone is usually homiletic and the reference to political issues oftentimes serves
no purpose beyond letting the congregants know that the rabbi or pastor is well read and
on top of the news. Moreover, given the equation that most Americans make between religion
and personal morals, when current events are spoken of from the pulpit, it is typically
those items that suggest a question of personal morality (such as Clinton’s lying and
infidelity or Bush’s drinking and lying about his DUI conviction) and not general
questions of public policy (such as NAFTA) that receive attention.
The focus of most congregations seems to be more inward than outward, and increasingly so,
if Robert Wuthnow, the dean of American sociologists of religion, is correct. The social
suffering that matters most to the members of the congregation is that of their fellow
congregants. The norm that matters most is to provide mutual aid and support to members
who are in need. Thus we see the proliferation of self-help and support groups for all
manner of social ills, in addition to the more familiar support that congregations provide
to the ill and the grieving and to the victims of fire and flood. The free loan societies
that exist within many synagogues, the bikkur holim groups, and the chevra kadisha are all
examples of the typical way in which religious congregations respond to social needs and
social suffering.
This is not to suggest, however, that most congregations show no interest in the fate of
those who are not counted among their members or among the members of their brother or
sister congregations. Indeed, many congregations do see themselves as having an obligation
to the wider human community, and with this in view act to establish, or to staff, soup
kitchens, homeless shelters, communal clothes closets and food pantries to meet the needs
of those who are down on their luck. Of course, these programs are typically small and
hardly make a dent in the larger problems, even as they make a real difference in the
lives of those lucky few who are the recipients of their generosity. Vis-à-vis the larger
social and economic issues that make for poverty and homelessness, these programs are in
effect agnostic. They are concerned not with attacking the causes, but with
compassionately responding to the consequences.
The response to the underlying problems that these soup kitchens and shelters represent is
intimate, local, and personal. It is also apolitical. The members of the congregations who
are moved by the plight of their neighbors, and who want to do something -- and want to
feel as if they are doing something, are given a hands-on opportunity to make a concrete
difference in the life of an individual who is in need. At the same time, it needs to be
underscored that the minister or rabbi who summons his congregants to create and staff a
homeless shelter or a food pantry is not summoning them to engage in political action of a
kind that would address the systemic social and economic causes that have produced the
misery to which the congregants are ministering. The question for us is whether we can
imagine the ministers and rabbis and imams of America calling their congregants not to
small-scale social service delivery, but to political engagement on behalf of a wider
class of persons than those individuals whom their soup kitchens and shelters are intended
to serve.
If you talk to ministers or rabbis about the need to take this political step, they will
acknowledge that their own programs are no more than a band-aid. But they will also tell
you that while they agree in principle, it is not realistic to expect that their
congregants could be enlisted as soldiers in a political campaign. It is not that their
congregants are unmoved by social solidarity, but that they do not have the time for such
things. They are too busy with their own lives, their careers and their families. A night
in the shelter or an occasional Sunday manning the food pantry they might be able to
manage, but to imagine they can give any more time or energy is wishful thinking. Besides,
their congregants are not interested in politics, but in doing something concrete. They
work in the soup kitchen because they want to make a palpable difference.
Both of these sentiments – that congregants do not have enough time and that they
want to do something concrete and personally meaningful -- need to be countered from the
pulpits if the congregations of America are to become a real basis of national renewal. To
consider the second point first. From the pulpit it must be stressed that the desire to do
something concrete, to bind up a wound and help a neighbor in dire need, is meritorious.
It is an expression of basic human solidarity in a stratified society in which life
chances and opportunities are not fairly distributed. At the gut level, it expresses the
intuition that this distribution of life chances is unfair and that the human face in
abject distress commands us to open our hands and our hearts in response.
Not to act to alleviate the distress that claims us through the face of the other, and
demands our response, is to incur guilt. To open our hand is to alleviate this guilt. This
action may even give us a feel-good moment. But though our distress may be momentarily
alleviated, we also know that the underlying social and economic realities that afflict so
many others who are in the same situation as the one person whom we have chanced to help
remain unchanged. We also know that if it can be changed, it can only be changed through
political effort. Our rabbis, pastors and priests need to bring home this fact to their
congregants.
In emphasizing that the appropriate response to human suffering is often (at least in
part) political, it is important to acknowledge that not all suffering is socially
produced or socially remediable. But much suffering is entirely man-made. Much suffering
is produced as the intended or unintended consequence of human action, a fact that we
obfuscate when we speak of suffering as the product of economic or social forces – as
if these were forces of nature like volcanoes or floods. When the causes of social
suffering are systemic, the response to them must be systemic and the proper lever of
systemic change in a democratic society is political action.
It also needs to be pointed out that the tradition’s codification of gamilut hasadim
(the “ways of the merciful”) occurred centuries before political rights were
extended to the masses. The “ways of merciful” were also defined centuries
before we came to understand that our social and economic systems are neither natural nor
eternal, but are the contingent and changeable inventions of human beings. Understanding
that the systems that define our social existence are modifiable, and possessing the
political right to act in concert with our fellow citizens to modify these systems, our
situation is fundamentally different from that of our ancestors whose wherewithal to
respond to human tragedy and suffering was extraordinarily limited. For them, sharing
their meager bread with the hungry was the apt and, indeed, the only possible way of
rendering their compassion practical. We, however, who are blessed with much greater power
of action, can render our compassion practical in ways that our ancestors could not have
imagined.
Moral logic tells us that we cannot be commanded to do that which is not within our power.
But as our power is much greater than our ancestors, so too is our obligation to do all
that is within our power. Thus it is incumbent upon us to transform our immediate feelings
of compassion into political advocacy on behalf of the common good. Having the power to
act and the duty to use our power for good, we are indeed culpable if we fail to use the
power that we possess. Homeless shelters and soup kitchens in our churches and synagogues?
By all means! But, in good conscience, we cannot stop there.
“Oh the weight of this burden that I have placed upon us! Who has the time or the
energy?” We come back to the rabbi who said to us: “You’ve got to be
kidding. You want me to ask my congregants to do even more than they’re doing
already? They can barely manage to staff the soup kitchen and the shelter as it is.
They’re too busy to make time for that and you want me to ask for more? They’ll
think I’ve completely lost touch with reality.”
Our rabbi makes a good point. What then is the answer? It is certainly true that his
congregants are too busy with their lives, careers and families. But this source of
resistance must be attacked directly. Our religious leaders must have the courage of their
convictions and dare to become counter-cultural. They must be willing to call their
congregants’ priorities into question. If their congregants are too busy for serious
and sustained political engagement on behalf of the common good, if they are too busy
getting and spending and trying to build a private (gated) heaven for themselves and their
families, if they are too busy with their golf and tennis and vacations -- if they are too
busy, in sum, doing what they regard as being really important – then it is the
rabbi’s responsibility to critique his congregants’ scale of values, not to
accommodate it. From the pulpit, they must put the critical existential question to their
congregants: What kind of person do you want to be? What really matters? What do you want
to do with your life?
Can sermons that press congregants to reevaluate the contours of how they have chosen to
live their lives really make a difference? Can congregants be persuaded to break with the
authoritative consensus that places work and family ahead of everything? Only if the
effort is made from the pulpit can we find out. The fate of our republic may hang in the
balance. If we are not inspired as citizens to act on behalf of the common good, who will
do it for us? There is no one else.
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