Apostolic Practice, Social Ethics & Liberal Democracy

There are two areas of parish development that have my attention these days. I have ways of addressing the one but am at a loss in regard to the second. The first is apostolic practice. The second is social ethics. My hunch is that if there is a way of effectively addressing the decline of the church’s influence in the culture it has to do with these two concerns.

By apostolic practice I mean the habits and systems of our tradition that place us in the pathways of grace. They don’t make us saints. They do make us more receptive to the work of the Holy Spirit. And that work is about making us saints. The need is to help more parishioners learn how to do, and be supported in, the daily and weekly routines of prayer and oscillation, i.e., Sunday Eucharist, the daily prayers of the church, and personal devotions that nurture a contemplative and reflective inner life. All of which offer the person, and the parish, renewal in our baptismal identity and purpose. A renewal which is needed to faithfully engage life with friends and family, in workplace and civic life. At the moment four members of the Order of the Ascension are working on projects around apostolic practice. Each somewhat different in its approach. I hope we will learn something more about how to advance this need of the Body of Christ.

The social ethics concern is more difficult to address. The political and cultural noise we work within press approaches that are in large part the “solutions” of an activist class. Now dressed in a bit of faith language to make it go down more easily.

There was a recent article in Politico on how the polarization of the nation has crept into local politics. I believe the same can be said of how it has shaped the churches. We have been trained to think about our social ethics in the language and issues of the political and cultural debate. This, of course, is connected with the first concern about apostolic practice. So many of us lack that grounding in the methods and habits of spiritual life that we are ill equipped to engage our civic life as proficient Christians. Even those with a disciplined spiritual life rooted in our tradition are challenged to get our head above water and see what is in front of us. The drum beat of correct answers coming from the edges dominates.

Our ability to effectively engage this requires that we refuse to continue operating as though the necessary conversation is between the political right and left. The activists of those orientations keep presenting the church with a series of political choices that cloud our vision and incapacitate our action. The evangelical churches are more challenged from the right and the Episcopal Church from the left. Each find themselves with prescriptions for urgent action that offer a theological justification for some political goal of the activist groups. The Evangelicals are pressed to act on immigration and gender/sexuality issues in a manner that ends up supporting laws that in practice will cause much suffering. While the Episcopalians will find themselves reacting to the wrongness of it all by tilting toward open borders and conversations about the use of pronouns.  General Convention will face a series of resolutions impacting Israel’s right to exist. In an upside down way, we know that’s what they are about because they assure us they are not about Israel’s right to exist. But in fact, collectively, they undermine the rationale of that right to exist. The Evangelicals on the other hand will have little to say about the suffering of the Palestinian people.

How might we regain our balance and grounding?

First, more training and coaching of our parish communities in apostolic practices.

Second, a way of understanding and acting in regard to the polarization and hate in our civic life. A way that is deeply rooted in apostolic practice and sound thinking about social ethics.

Here’s my very tentative attempt at that.

I’d begin with two assumptions. One that the Body of Christ has existed within many different forms of civic life and governance. And that is what we will continue to do. The faithfulness of the Church is not dependent on whether the society conforms to some template coming from the Church (which in itself is often a dangerous pathway). Second, that the traditions of liberal democracy are the arrangement closest to the faith’s call to justice, peace, and mercy. It ain’t perfect but is the best of what we humans have come up with. Maybe you have a different answer to what is the best. A real, not utopian, answer. If so, you might follow that to see where it leaves you.

I read a newsletter called The Liberal Patriot. This is from today's posting in which the writer explorers Francis Fukuyama's book. 

He quotes Fukuyama -

The most fundamental principle enshrined in liberalism is one of tolerance: you do not have to agree with your fellow citizens about the most important things, but only that each individual should get to decide what they are without interference from you or from the state. Liberalism lowers the temperature of politics by taking questions of final ends off the table: you can believe what you want, but you must do so in private life and not seek to impose your views on your fellow citizens.

 The newsletter continues -
Liberalism may be guided by norms of tolerance and reason, but it is enforced by constitutions, laws, regulations, and court rulings that maintain the political and economic rights of individuals to do as they please, provided that they don’t interfere with other people’s similar rights to self-determination. Liberalism in modern times requires free and fair elections, representative legislatures, a fair and impartial judicial system, neutral bureaucracies, an independent press and media, and a commitment to free speech.

Unfortunately, as Fukuyama correctly argues, classical liberalism is under sustained attack from both the populist right and the identity-based left.

Here's the whole article.

I have to work hard to not simply fall back upon my years of looking at these matters from the perspective of being a left-wing Democrat. It’s not easy. But “new occasions teach new duties.” You probably have your own similar struggle. I can’t point to a current book on social ethics that provides adequate guidance. Maybe you know one. I looked on my bookshelf and found three that served our society during the last great crisis: Temple’s Christianity and Social Order, Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society, and Bonhoeffer’s Ethics. Maybe a reread of each will help. I was struck that in recent years people like President Obama and David Brooks talked about Niebuhr’s work as important in their own thinking.

Here’s what I’ll do.

1. Stay with the apostolic practice and so ground myself in prayer, scripture, and reflection.

2. Read people, who are not on the fringes, trying to understand what’s happening in our politics and culture 

3. Reread a few basic books in Christian social ethics.

4. Engage the current situation by pressing political and church leaders to protect and advance “free and fair elections, representative legislatures, a fair and impartial judicial system, neutral bureaucracies, an independent press and media, and a commitment to free speech.”

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 Resources

One way to think about apostolic practice is to draw on two ascetical models: The Threefold Rule of Prayer and the Renewal-Apostolate Cycle. You can find more detail in Fill All Things: The Dynamics of Spirituality in the Parish Church and A Wonderful and Sacred Mystery: A Practical Theology of the Parish Church.