Cahill TheologicalEthicsChurches 2007
Cahill TheologicalEthicsChurches 2007
Cahill TheologicalEthicsChurches 2007
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Religious Ethics
ABSTRACT
Several discourses about theology, church, and politics are occurring amon
Christian theologians in the United States. One influential strand centers
on the communitarian theology of Stanley Hauerwas, who calls on Chris-
tians to witness faithfully against liberalism in general and war in particu
lar. Jeffrey Stout, in his widely discussed Democracy and Tradition (2004)
responds that religious people ought precisely to endorse those democrat
and liberal American traditions that join religious and secular counter-
parts to battle injustice. Hauerwas, Stout, and many of their interlocutor
envision liberal U.S. culture as the context of Christian social ethics. The
ensuing debate rarely incorporates Catholic scholars, feminist scholars,
scholars of color, or international and liberationist voices. Their inclusion
could enhance an understanding of the role of the church in society, and
support a common morality in the face of global pluralism. More impor-
tantly, it could broaden the scope of discourse on religion and politics to
envision global Christian social ethics.
key WORDS: church and politics, Christian social ethics, common morality,
globalization, global politics, Hauerwas, religion and politics, Stout
Unless citizens wake up, and take responsibility for the condition of their
society, democracy will be completely eviscerated and the economically pow-
erful will no longer be answerable to anyone else.
-^Jeffrey Stout (2007, 6)
structural sin; Christian symbols such as the "reign of God" and the
"resurrection" are invoked to explain and give life to transformative
practices and nourish confidence that change is possible.
and should be prohibited in all "the world's moral systems" on the basis
of its demonstrably destructive and violent effects on individual victims
and on social practices. Societies and moralities base such prohibitions
on "strands of moral intuitionism, natural-law-like thinking and conse-
quentialism," but common to all is the practical recognition that torture
violates human persons and the common good (Twiss 2007, 364).
Basic aspects of human "existence and development," and derivative
claims about human goods and violations of goods, are really not very
difficult to uncover. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum, among others, has
proposed various lists of shared experiences related to the human body,
human consciousness, and human sociality, such as the need for food, wa-
ter, shelter, freedom of movement, and freedom from pain; the capacity
for sexual pleasure and reproduction; intelligence and practical reason;
affiliation with other human beings; and the desire and capacity to for-
mulate desires, goals, and life plans (for example, Nussbaum 1992; for
a discussion, see Cahill 1996, 46-61). On the basis of such experiences,
human beings and societies everywhere value nutrition and health care,
education and employment, sexual self-determination and the ability to
choose a sexual partner and raise children, the opportunity to live in
local and larger societies and participate in their institutions, and the
ability to change the place and geographic region of residence to improve
one's condition of life. The particular embodiments of these goods and
their social organization will vary culturally.
Despite this variation, the basic and essential nature of goods is al-
ready tacitly acknowledged by anyone who strives to secure them for
themselves, family members, and associates. But simple recognition of
goods does not solve the most difficult moral problem: creating agree-
ment on equitable access. Two aspects of morality must be distinguished.
One aspect is the identification of basic goods; another is the recogni-
tion of the basic equality of persons as deserving of those goods. David
Hollenbach has referred to these two dimensions as the "Aristotelian" mo-
ment and the "Kantian" moment in ethics (Hollenbach n.d.). In dealing
with cultural pluralism about ethics and politics, the second "moment" -
recognition of basic human equality - is considerably more troublesome
than the first. To this, human rights discourse and similar manifesta-
tions of common morality are primarily addressed. They aim at agree-
ment that all persons and societies are guaranteed access to material,
social, and political goods at some basic level. The UDHR targets, for
example, slavery and torture, to which could be added rape, deprivation
of health care and nutrition, and exclusion from basic goods on the basis
of gender, ethnicity, or race.
Programmatic moral statements such as the UDHR represent a call
for respect, dignity, and equality, and constitute a mandate for societies
to rein in self-interest and invest in the common good. "The insistence on
and not only to self-interest, and that the humanity of other stakehold-
ers compels empathy, equal respect, and equal practical consideration,
and even special consideration for those currently most excluded. The
necessary practical agreement on human rights, or on other forms and
norms of a just social relationship, requires a process that Twiss de-
scribes well. The process must push diverse cultural representatives or
groups to engage in dialogues or even shared practices and projects that
can uncover "the operation of analogous moral principles or rules, shared
understandings of key human moral capacities (for example, sympathy,
compassion), and shared human vulnerabilities to suffering and oppres-
sion," as well as increase the realization that "all cultures are open to
change and accommodation" (Twiss 2004, 62).
the risen Christ, that is solid enough to sustain our lives and overcome
skepticism and doubt
must, for example, excommunicate known torturers and those who abet
them, as has been done by Latin American Roman Catholic bishops.
A further dimension of Cavanaugh's work is that it shares with
Catholic social thought the idea that Christian formation can and should
have a positive effect on society and in politics, through direct engage-
ment in and commitment to the social order. Cavanaugh identifies the
Catholic Action movement of the 1930s as preparing the church in Chile
to resist the privatization of religion and disentangle itself from cor-
rupting temporal relationships. Catholic Action training also produced
lay people with "properly formed consciences for action in the world"
(Cavanaugh 1998, 140). In Latin America, "an entire generation of
Catholic leaders, both lay and clerical, was trained in a style of address-
ing social issues from a Catholic perspective," and came to regard social
change as "an imperative for Catholics," who saw themselves as "the
vanguard of constructing a more just society" (Cavanaugh 1998, 141).
Under Pinochet's military regime, the church created an alternate
social reality in collaboration with other agencies in civil society, both
Christian and Marxist. The church instituted "a wide range of programs
covering legal and medical assistance, job training, soup kitchens, buy-
ing cooperatives, assistance to unions and more" (Cavanaugh 1998, 264).
Women's groups were particularly effective. The Catholic Church's Com-
mittee of Cooperation for Peace in Chile and its Vicariate of Solidarity
combated the individualization and social fragmentation that stifled re-
sistance. The church provided legal aid to victims of repression and dis-
seminated information on Pinochet's abuses. According to Cavanaugh,
the Catholic church was the most important force resisting state repres-
sion and violence, and its transforming networks had pervasive effects
throughout the society.
Another example is Ugandan Emmanuel Katongole, a Catholic priest
who sees Hauerwas as validating the importance of particular identities
and communities so vital to African culture (Katongole 2000). Katongole
also appreciates Hauerwas's insights that no moral point of view is possi-
ble without formation in the realities of a concrete tradition, and that no
moral action is possible without an imagination informed by a specific
vision of the world (Katongole 2005, 134). Like Hauerwas, Katongole
rejects liberal political definitions of justice, democracy, and peace, and
calls for concrete communal patterns of life that can resist "nation-state
politics" (Katongole 2005, 139). Yet, he insists, for African Christians
the kingdom of God can be neither a spiritualized gospel nor a closed
community. Christianity must help form "transnational identities, as-
sociation, and communities," with an influence that is "reflected in the
social, political, and economic spheres of life" (Katongle 2005, 140, 144).
To abandon a commitment to any moral objectivity about the common
good, based on shared human needs and values, would also be to abandon
any confidence in or commitment to global social change that counteracts
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