Religion and politics: a different approach
10:30 am - December 24th 2008
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It’s perhaps a comonplace on a basically secular site like this that religion and politics should be kept as far apart as possible – except, perhaps, when religious leaders say things about poverty or discrimination that we happen to agree with.
And it’s undeniably true that the track record of religions when they intervene in political life has, over the centuries, been remarkably poor. It’s as though there’s something about the exercise of power which is hostile to the central message of religion, that you should love your neighbour as yourself.
And yet this message is so obviously true, and so obviously represents a thing both perennial and urgent, that there will always be a yearning to unlock the puzzle and find a way in which at least those religious people who do hold that message to be central to what they do can engage fruitfully in the political arena.
One current such attempt at unlocking is the Charter for Compassion whose sponsors include Desmond Tutu, Baroness Julia Neuberger and Tariq Ramadan. It seeks to unite people of all faiths in the promotion of compassion and the Golden Rule, one version of which I quoted in the previous paragraph.
One man whose support I’m sure they’d’ve been canvassing, were he still alive, would have been Reinhold Niebuhr – a 20th century American Protestant minister and labour organiser who is said to be Barack Obama’s favourite theologian.
Today Niebuhr is best remembered as the supposed author (he disclaimed the honour) of the “Serenity Prayer” – God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
His main interest, however, lay in social action and why religious people were so lousy at it. His answer is striking, and will be of little comfort to Archbishop Tutu and friends. He claimed that “the sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world”. Why would such a duty be “sad”? And why does he think the world “sinful”?
It’s important to notice that by “sin” he does not mean people’s failure to follow religious “laws” of some kind, whether of scriptural or customary authority. Indeed, he thinks that the very existence of such laws is part of the sinfulness, because religious law confuses the things of God with the things of Man (a very Augustinian distinction).
By “sin” he simply means each and every failure of compassion, whether large or small. And the duty of politics is sad because all that politics can even try to do is to establish justice – and justice can never substitute for compassion.
This is truly radical theology – so much so that it is hard to get across its full import: the idea of Divine Justice is a deeply embedded meme in so many cultures from Christianity to China. Yet the whole point of what Nieburhr has to say is that there is no such thing.
Humanity invented God not so that kings and later parliaments could make and enforce laws (though the idea has been perverted to that end with all too much success) but so that women and men could better understand their own impulse to compassion, as a way of making sense of that other-directedness which lies deep within us all.
And political action, even at its best, can only ever be about the provision of justice. For Niebuhr’s other great insight is that compassion is a by-product of intimacy. We can only experience it in respect of, at most, a small number at a time. That’s just the way human beings are.
When we seek to project it onto a wider canvas, perhaps the whole people of Zimbabwe or Zaire, or some interest defined by class or gender, what we finish up with is an intellectual counterfeit which collapses all too readily into shame and anger.
The world community may – or it may not – be able to restore justice to those countries in the form of a functioning civil society, but it cannot replenish the store of compassion, the loss of which is at the root of their misery. And so Niebuhr calls political duty “sad”: it is always necessary, but never enough.
So I suspect that if he were alive he would be saying to the promoters of the Charter: do you realise what you are suggesting? What you want is nothing more nor less than the old anarchist dream of replacing justice and politics itself with a utopia based solely on human love. Tell me why that will work now, when it never has before, and then – and only then – will I join you.
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Mike is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. He does not yet blog anywhere.
· Other posts by Mike Killingworth
Story Filed Under: Blog ,Our democracy ,Religion
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Reader comments
Who’d have thought that 2008 would include a revival of both Niebuhr and Keynes?
Am I reading this right ? Are you claiming that Oboring`s favourite ’ jew hater ’ ,( He beloved all Jews should convert to Christianity ) “Theologian” was a main stream humanist along the lines of Feuerbach “Humanity invented God …..” ? Wrong !
George Elliot who was a humanist saw God as man imagining the best of his potential but located the new moral force as rebelling against authority . Polly Toynbee is humanist and it allows scope for personal vanity that would appeal to her ,of course. It can be a good staging post on the way ….
You are right to locate God in acts of compassion . These are unnecessary in the socialist utopia of which you dream and this is why the attempt is dehumanising and encourages almost immediate moral decay as we saw with Karen Mathews and as Orwell predicted with his beetle bureaucrats who thrived under English Socialism .
It is true that Jesus elevated love to a new position of importance and this love was prior to its medieval association with romance . It might be compassion but it might also be the loyalty you feel for your people family and friends . Furthermore it was in within the Jewish tradition of justice however without which love is an evil and while allowance for mercy is made wrongly directed love is not . All in all love is a complex and paradoxical thing which has no place in the rationalist world of the Liberal.
Jesus has much to teach us all and I am pleased to see both his holiness and the Queen united in defending the family from all those who hate it many of whom comment here .I am in the happy position of having a bat-phone directly to god and he specifically mentioned that I was right . My dopey Liberal vicar does not agree with me but I feel god will eventually grant him the strength of mind to come round
New troll “Jesus has much to teach us all and I am pleased to see both his holiness and the Queen united in defending the family from all those who hate it many of whom comment here .I am in the happy position of having a bat-phone directly to god and he specifically mentioned that I was right . ”
In other words, God told me to do it. There by Exonerating me from any blame or responsibility.
The defence of every rightwing nut case.
The bat phone to god was not entirely serious .Sally you poor poor thing .(I wonder if the shadowy male hegemony brutally tore Sally from her sense of humour in an artic experiment of diabolical ambition involving armoured Polar bears and witches and adventures of all sorts . How exciting that would be.)
Don’t worry Newmania, Sally just looks for whatever scrap of material she can use to be entirely a hypocritical oaf on this site. God forbid we allow people their different beliefs, eh?
Not sure Newmania has quite grasped this “Christianity” concept if he thinks Niebuhr was a ‘jew hater’ (what an odd use of quotes) because he wanted all Jews to become Christians. Most evangelical Christians would want *everyone* to become Christians, Jews, Buddhists, atheists and all.
WBG- Yes I was wrong about that
Lee Griffin “Don’t worry Newmania, Sally just looks for whatever scrap of material she can use to be entirely a hypocritical oaf on this site. God forbid we allow people their different beliefs, eh?”
Ah yes, our favourate Ivory tower liberal and tory troll lover. There is not a tory troll that Lee won’t defend. He would rather defend sex attackers than someone from the liberal left.
Poor old Lee has not heard that people like Bush and many Right wing nuts often claim that they talk to Jesus, or claim that God told them to do it. (whatever atrocity they are doing at the time)
But for Lee it all about process. Has the debate been carried out in an acceptable way? Has the standard of debate lived up to his beloved university student union level?
And at what point Newmania did Jesus actually defend an individualist and cruel society all the better to highlight “acts of compassion”?
“A certain ruler asked him, ‘Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’
‘Why do you call me good?’ Jesus answered. ‘No one is good—except God alone.You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.”
‘All these I have kept since I was a boy’ he said.
When Jesus heard this, he said to him, ‘You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’
When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth. Jesus looked at him and said, ‘How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’
Luke 23:25
Alan – that is still pure individualism. If Jesus was a real collectivist, he would have told this rich man to extort and steal as much money as possi(hastily renamed the state) and only then start doling it out to people. But he didn’t, perhaps because he didn’t hold very much with violent coercion and thought that everyone had a personal moral responsibility to do what is right, not an elite to decide what is right to force everyone to do. It doesn’t get much more individualist than that.
Hmm, sorry – lost some text there.
Newmania : Good, thanks.
Now to deal with sally. “Poor old Lee has not heard that people like Bush and many Right wing nuts often claim that they talk to Jesus, or claim that God told them to do it. (whatever atrocity they are doing at the time)”
so your reasoning seems to be… – 1) Bush claims to talk to God (he never has actually, except in the sense that any religious person claims to talk to God in prayer, i.e. metaphorically) . 2) You don’t like Bush. Fair enough. 3) Therefore claiming to talk to God is bad. 4) Newmania claimed to talk to God – of course this was sarcasm but never mind shall we? 5) Therefore Newmania is bad 6) Lee defended Newmania 7) Cogito Ergo Sum, as David Brent would say, Lee is bad
“But for Lee it all about process. Has the debate been carried out in an acceptable way? Has the standard of debate lived up to his beloved university student union level?”
But for sally it is all about rubbish. Are you talking it? If not – she’s going to be having words!
If Jesus was a real collectivist, he would have told this rich man to extort and steal as much money as possi(hastily renamed the state) and only then start doling it out to people.
Err, no.
I think you will find, yes, as that is the modus operandi of collectivists.
According to Libertarian ideologues. 
Well, that’s an accurate definition of collectivist, if you’re going by Ayn Rand’s rather idiosyncratic use of the word.
Then again she used many words in odd ways. “Novel”, for example.
No, honestly its true. Thats what all the guns and the prisons and the people in different uniforms are about! It is not for decoration!
Really? I thought they were a demonstration of state authority and hierarchy not “collectivism”. At least that’s what them anarchist fellows seem to reckon.
Well they are more than demonstrations of abstract ideas. Guns and prisons can be ways of getting things done (and uniforms are ways of not picking on the wrong people). Collectivists are in favour of using these things to obtain people’s resources and labour to achieve various ends (social justice, equality, “sustainability”, whatever). Of course, nothing wrong with any community, collective, or even government instituting itself on the basis of the individual consent of those involved, which is why anarchist organisations are consistent with individual rights.
And this mutualist fact is rather the fly in the ointment that gives the lie to libertarianism.
Not really, Alan, anything that accepts the priority of individual rights is fine by me and fine by the libertarians I know. We are not social atomists. We just think that the foundation for any relationship, whether a one-off exchange or a long term co-operative undertaking, must be based on consent.
I have only just realised recently how little I am interested in ‘religion’ or ‘humanity’ in any way whatever
Now Earth, Fire, Air and Water, on the other hand….
Oh, BTW: You can’t start a synagogue in the London Borough of Jerusalem without twenty married men, with their own (blood) children
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