The Kindness that Kills: the Churches' Simplistic Response to Complex Social Issues
Digby Anderson (ed.)
London, SPCK, 1984.
Socialist thinking has had a pronounced effect on sections of the modern churches, particularly the social justice commissions. Many of the publications of these commissions demonstrate the unmistakable influence of "liberation theology" which combines misplaced Christian theology with Marxist sociology. The book, The Kindness that Kills, brings together telling criticisms of the economic, sociological and theological foundations of Church "social justice" programmes and the doctrine of liberation theology, criticisms as relevant to the Australian situation as to England.
These essays by English writers on church social issues' documents leave no doubt about who is doing the killing. Socially active churchmen are known for their words. But there remains some doubt about who, or what, is the real victim of current trends within official Christendom.
The book's stated purpose, is to show that those most at risk from church justice pronouncements are the intended beneficiaries of a new ideology of social care. "Careless care", the message goes, "may hurt the very people its well-meaning exponents claim to help" (p.10). That is clear enough. But there is an underlying argument. Church leaderships (those groups, committees and parties, rather than individiduals themselves, which shape the perceived image of churches in the modern world) have reached the point of moral and intellectual exhaustion.
Each essay in this collection supports this dismal conclusion. The result, if the authors can be believed, is not simply the diminishing influence of rites and liturgies; it is more than that, and it affects more than the religious dimension. The major churches have embraced a political bias not only against their own past, but against the cultural traditions in which they are formed and which, indeed, they helped to form. The kindness that kills, then, rebounds on the churches no less than on the objects of their compassion. And on society too.
David Martin's discussion of the Church of England's transition "from established church to secular lobby" may refer to only one denomination among many. But it should cause even the most ardent nonconformist to recognise the relative insignificance of merely private religious associations (which the Church of England is in danger of becoming) and to weigh the consequences of repudiating the historic "relation between church and Christian commonwealth" (p.142).
The question, of course, applies far beyond the Church of England. This is what makes these essays important for Australian readers, who might be excused for thinking that arguments between English bishops and their critics must be of purely parochial interest. On the contrary, no one will fail to hear echoes of recent Australian controversies in these pages. We have our own clerical champions against multi-nationals and our own socio-theological theorists on poverty, unemployment, racism, declining standards in schools and the creation of wealth.
Part I of The Kindness That Kills examines church statements on all these issues. There is, for example, nothing specifically English about Lord Bauer's examination of two papal encyclicals in "Ecclesiastical Economics of the Third World: Envy Legitimised". The same can be said of Robert Miller's appraisal of statements on unemployment, in which he finds that leap "from assertion of the evils of unemployment ... to an interventionist cure" which is so well-known to readers of Changing Australia, the 1983 document prepared by four Australian church agencies. Miller might have them in mind when he concludes that "despite claims that a specifically Christian 'input' or 'leavening' is necessary, the values and prescriptions in most statements on unemployment by churchmen are almost identical to those of socialist politicians" (p.75).
However, it is in Part II that the book escapes all geographical limitations. While it may be said that the arguments in Part I have been heard before, in one form or another, in Part II (Fundamental Issues) the emphasis shifts from critique to construction. Six essays in this section open avenues for creative debate. The unstated point is that churches need to rediscover their freedom from ideological constraints, and these chapters show how this is possible.
Brian Griffiths in "Christianity and Capitalism" exemplifies the broad and rigorous scholarship which informs this book. While denying, against much contemporary theology, that it is possible to deduce socialism from Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God, he refuses to give blanket approval to the market economy and finds the libertarian defence of inequality (on the basis of exclusive property rights) to be unacceptable. Egalitarianism is not "Christian" enough. And, since the major historic advocacies of capitalism as an economic system all depend on "a thoroughly secular philosophy" he states that the market economy must be rescued from "its narrow secular ideology" (p.114).
It remains for William Oddie to tackle Christian socialism on its own ground of the biblical texts which, it is claimed, establish "God's preference for the (economically) poor". If there is a single chapter of The Kindness That Kills which Christians of all persuasions should read, this is it. Oddie links the Magnificat 1 ("the most frequently misused text of all" p.125) to its Old Testament source in the Song of Hannah 2. This simple piece of exegesis shows that the mother of Jesus has no intention of sanctifying economic revolution. Nor does Luke's text transform the Old Testament view that wealth is spiritually dangerous for whoever possesses it, but may also be a sign of divine favour.
Oddie traces modern Christian socialism to its roots in Pelagius, the 5th century British heretic, who still wields his influence wherever Christians grow forgetful of the innate imperfection of mankind, and romanticise the possibilities of the collective will to justice. For these reasons, says Oddie, church leadership today has permitted theology to be absorbed by politics and economics and Christian hope to be located "entirely within the possibilities (real or imagined) for human society" (p.131).
The two final essays offer the beginnings of methodological wisdom for those who regard partisan rhetoric as a fair substitute for knowledge of one's subject. Rachel Steare urges churchmen to discover the sources which might lend some balance to their opinions. It is left to Digby Anderson to describe church reports as "hotchpotches, stews and pies" and then to ask why this is so.
His answer recalls a theme that lies just below the surface throughout the book. Nowhere is it explicit, but everywhere it is implied, that church leaders have lost their confidence in "the more obviously central aspects of our faith" (John Greenwood, p.51). In another early essay Robert Miller wonders "that the Churches deploy their carefully husbanded resources in areas where they seem to say nothing very different from other interested people rather than where they are qualified to make a distinctive contribution" (p.75). What might such a contribution be? Ralph Harris' reply may seem at once too irrelevant and too hard for modern activist clergy. He writes:
"If the Church had been more successful in elevating human nature, the market in which people work, spend, save and invest would reflect those higher standards of behaviour, the absence of which the more politicised bishops constantly lament and conveniently blame on 'the market'!
Yet their secular gospel for socialism strains after an approach to heaven-on-earth that would make far higher demands on unselfish sharing and self-sacrifice. The dilemma they dodge is that, in the absence of a transformation of human nature, sharing and sacrifice would have to be ruthlessly imposed by state power that must rob such qualities of any vestige of virtue" (p.97).
The agenda for churches outlined in this book may be only a by-product of its critical purpose, but that only shows how important these essays really are. Taken as a whole they are a striking demonstration of the latent resourcefulness of the Christian tradition. That such a book should be written, indeed, may be a small sign that the decline of the churches is neither complete nor inevitable. We can hope so, in which case society as a whole, including the poorest and weakest, might have cause to be thankful.
SEPARATING CHRISTIANITY FROM SOCIALISM
The following passages from Digby Anderson (ed), The Kindness That Kills, provide an idea of the range of topics addressed in the book as well as indicating the direction of a reasoned, ethically-based case against con Hating Christianity with socialism. All are responses to British Church documents on social and economic issues.
1) Equality and Social Justice
"Redistribution is advocated on the grounds that wealth has been unequally and therefore unjustly acquired. There are at least two confusions in this argument. First inequality is not the same as injustice. if some people make better use than others of their skills, and do so for the general wellbeing, it would be unjust if everyone were to receive the same rewards. Just deserts are not the same as equal shares. The Parable of the Talents is of course an illustration of this point (Matthew 25: 14-30). The second confusion is the assumption that wealth is simply acquired. In fact it has to be created, a process which often involves breathtaking imagination and ingenuity ... There can be no moral objection to rewarding the conspicuously able and energetic with a proportionally larger share of the wealth they have helped to create".
Graham Dawson,
"God's Creation, Wealth Creation and the Ideal Redistributors".
2) Compulsory Unionism
"All these attempts to claim support for the morality of closed shops from the standpoint of trade union history, industrial sociology, or the analogy with industrial or political democracy, are entirely spurious. Instead the matter should be debated on straightforward moral grounds ... Closed shops impose a condition of employment that all employees must be members of a trade union. The plain objection is that such unnecessary private coercion is a fundamental infringement on the rights of individuals who are compelled to join organisations to which they may not wish to belong, through the fear of losing a job or not obtaining employment".
John Greenwood,
"The Closed Shop and the Closed Conscience".
3) Racism
"The tired old work-horse of cultural relativism has been dragged out of his retirement stable once more. What, for example, is the origin of the view that racial prejudice is immoral and unjustifiable? The answer is: precisely those modern "western" values which the report is questioning. Interestingly enough, the report nowhere mentions that anti-racism is a product of liberalism".
Dennis O'Keefe,
"Racism: Neither a Sin Apart nor an Excuse for Hysteria".
4) Unemployment
"From the assertions of the evils of unemployment, the leap to an interventionist cure is frequently made without more ado. In many cases, this seems less an attempt to connect incarnational theology with collectivist means than a very limited view of economic theory. The writers have not appreciated the possibility that (government) intervention may actually have helped cause unemployment, tends to perpetuate it, and that the most successful way to reduce it may be to diminish the extensive intervention already imposed by government".
Robert Miller,
"Unemployment: Putting Faith in the New Princes".
5) Education
"... the Churches have allowed the case for religious education to go largely by default in the (government) maintained schools attended by most of the population. And they have capitulated despite evidence that such religious education is wholly in accordance with the wishes of the vast majority of parents. The moral vacuum thus left by the Churches in many schools is now being tilled in some places by other ideologies".
Caroline Cox and John Marks,
"Complaining about Education Cuts: Materialist Diversions from Proper Concerns".
6) Welfare
"... my plea is to get away from discussing the welfare state as a battleground between 'goodies' who always want to spend more on it and 'baddies' who believe there are better ways to help those who cannot help themselves".
Ralph Harris,
"The Folly of Politicised Welfare".
7) Free Enterprise
"The basic argument for a market economy is that for all its imperfections, it is a system that pays respect to human dignity because it allows human freedom. It permits individuals the freedom to buy and sell, save and invest, choose their preferred form of employment and develop the skills they feel appropriate. It allows minorities the same rights too. Socialism does not".
Brian Griffiths,
"Chrisitianity and Capitalism".
8) Social Utopianism
"The acceptance of the imperfect world where the individual seeks to better himself through the love of God and of his neighbour is a fundamental principle implicit in all Christian tradition. It is by departing from this principle to a vision of a perfect social system in which any sort of personal betterment is irrelevant that the progressive Christian begins to secularise himself by undermining the very fundamentals of his own beliefs".
Maciej Pomian-Srednicki and Alexander Tomsky,
"Marxism: The Compulsion to Neighbourly Love".
9) From Established Church to Secular Lobby
"The term 'the Church' as deployed by the bureaucracy, and also as appropriated by the General Synod (of the Church of England), continues to carry a traditional meaning, as denoting the corpus Christianorum or 'the body of all faithful people. But this traditional usage only conceals a non-traditional intention, which is to attach the label 'the Church' to the opinions of a bureaucratically organised pressure group, especially as embodied in its specialist agencies".
David Martin,
"The Church of England: From Established Church to Secular lobby".
10) From Individual Responsibilily to Collective Guilt
"(There is) a shift from an emphasis on the individual in his particular situation to an analysis in terms of social structural defects ... Guilt no longer inheres in the responsible person, but in blameworthy collectivities".
David Marlin,
Ibid
FOOTNOTES
- He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts,
he has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and exalted those of low degree,
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away (Luke 1: 51-3). - The Lord kills and brings to life;
he brings down to Sheol and raises up.
The Lord makes poor and makes rich;
he brings low, he also exalts.
He raises up the poor from the dust;
he lifts the needy from the ash heap,
to make them sit with princes
and inherit a seat of honour (1 Sam 2: 1-10)
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