What Does the Lord Require?
Jameson, Kenneth P.
A BIAS FOR HOPE WHAT DOES THE LORD REQUIRE? How American Christians Think About Economic Justice Stephen Hart Oxford University Press, $24.95, 240 pp. Kenneth P. Jameson opular culture...
...During Ronald Reagan's short era politics dominated, and presidential politics was based upon wealth, manipulation of public opinion, and the Democrats' sense of malaise...
...Could that be a factor in the continued growth of Catholicism (and Mormonism) while mainline Protestant churches decline...
...the conservative social/moral agenda of the "moral majority" was joined with an individualistic or voluntaristic justification for economic inequality...
...But the songs are sung by persons living in particular historical situations, and these provide the framework within which they perceive God's presence and also God's absence....[The current state of affairs] represents a "favorable time"(2 Cor...
...Christianity seems to accommodate virtually any set of views on these issues...
...how should individuals act in the political sphere to attain their economic values...
...As Gustavo Gutierrez wrote in We Drink from Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People: There is no Christian life without "songs" to the Lord, without thanksgiving for God's love, and without prayer...
...The interviews were designed to explore elements of religiosity as well as attitudes toward social justice...
...The first synthesizes the depth interviews by focusing on the attitudes toward economic life of seven individuals whose views cover a wide spectrum...
...Although its critics would have us believe that liberation theology is simply Marxism in a religious skin, it has evolved into a profound concern with individual and communal spirituality...
...The book is divided into five sections...
...Section two links faith to economic issues using five themes or tendencies in religion: voluntarism (individualism), universalism, love, this-worldliness, and otherworldliness...
...PATRICK J. DENEEN, a graduate student of political theory at Rutgers University, is currently writing a dissertation about the influence of Homer's Odyssey on Western political thought...
...Kenneth P. Jameson opular culture always gives a mixed rendition of the values of a society, and perhaps only in retrospect can we sort things out...
...Hart may finally realize this, for he ends the book with the work of Stanley Hauerwas, a Protestant theologian...
...The magisterium does lead the Catholics in Hart's sample, both conservatives and liberals, to a commitment to the ideals of social justice...
...Historically, the "religious Right" clearly played an important, if subservient, role in the political program that became Reaganism...
...however, as the pendulum swings, attitudes toward social justice in 1992 may be very similar to those in 1976, and they may be moving in the direction Hart hopes...
...ELIZABETH BEVERLY is a writer and ethnographer who teaches at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon...
...In the end, the Right was served far better than religion, which should dampen Christians' enthusiasm for Hart's vision of a new revolution of social justice led by the religious Left...
...Third, Catholicism and Catholic social teaching are advantaged in this fray...
...Obviously, the intervening sixteen years would seem to reduce the relevance of the interviews...
...how does integrating religion and politics affect one's stance on the distribution of income and on private enterprise...
...Again the answer is that religion gives little coherence in and of itself, that attitudes and views of Christians vary across virtually the entire spectrum...
...Hauerwas is a "postliberal" who rejects Hart's hopes that Christianity can energize the Left, claiming there is no core of religious commitments common to all traditions, that Christians must be transformed personally and socially by their convictions...
...That program was accepted, validated, and justified by religious fundamentalists, mainline pastors, and religious opinion-makers...
...He reaches a position of social commitment, though not as a necessary outcome of postliberal theology Commonweal which remains secondary to the personal transformation of the individual...
...First, it is clear that a Christian religious commitment of itself will provide no impetus for policies and efforts to attain greater social justice in our society...
...Also the effort to link religious views with secular policies is now more plausible...
...He is currently serving as associate vice-president for academic affairs...
...Economics followed, the clearest example being "supply-side economics" which was not economics and which actually relied on demand, in the form of budget deficits, for its few positive accomplishments...
...There is one notable exception to this pattern: Catholics...
...Only overt racism and classism appear inconsistent with religious commitment...
...Religion and morality suffered by being in the service of politics...
...My own conclusions about the meaning of the materials in the book are somewhat different...
...Religion provides no more coherence on issues of social justice than does popular culture...
...So commitment to a religion does not imply any particular stance on issues of social justice...
...what attitudes toward equality and individualism grow out of Christianity...
...28:19 June 1992 The raw material for the book is a set of "depth-interviews" carried out in 1976 with forty-seven self-declared Christians...
...Shades of the 1960s...
...I don't share his enthusiasm for Christians, as Christians, leading that change, for religion to begin shaping politics and economics...
...Since "almost nine out of ten Americans consider themselves Christians—and in most cases either belong to a church or in some other way manifest a significant connection to Christian faith," Hart feels that the Left program, or concern with social justice and its embodiment in social policy, must ultimately draw upon and collaborate with religious impulses toward social justice...
...He hopes his results help the Left work more effectively with Christian allies, clarify the values that leftists believe should inform economic life, and refine thinking about ethical and cultural subjects...
...But for those of us with a "bias for hope," there is evidence from some recent movies that a slow but sure transformation of the values our culture supports and esteems is underway...
...And Mississippi Masala suggests the hope that the younger generation can actually make a go of multiculturalism and interracial harmony...
...Hart writes: "It also helps that the Catholic church itself, much more than most Protestant churches, articulates a rationale for being socially active as an organization, and uses its teaching powers to suggest to members that they should link their own faith to their visions of a just society...
...Building the kingdom of God on earth must begin with building that kingdom in the soul of each of us...
...Second, this may not be bad, especially for Christianity, if I read the lesson of Reaganism correctly...
...His book attempts to isolate and categorize those impulses among American Christians and to assess their possible role in the movement toward social justice...
...The implication of this result is unclear, though it suggests at a minimum that the Left should not simply discount religious conservatives...
...The success of Beauty and the Beast may be largely artistic, but its morality tale must have played a role as well...
...Section four treats methodological issues and in the last section Hart suggests "what one might want to do to advance the purposes of the Left, or (sic) of Christian faith and churches...
...I share many of Hart's hopes for the future and my bias is to find evidence in popular culture and in religious teaching and practice to encourage that hope...
...At the same time, he finds a mixture of most of these thematic orientations in all of his main respondent types...
...Morality or religion also followed...
...6:2), a kairos, a moment of heightened revelation both of God and of new paths on the journey of fidelity to the word of God...
...Perhaps the 1990s do offer a kairos, but it must be based on "a transformation, personally as well as socially...
...This information leads to one of Hart's main claims, that conservative theology does not lead to conservative economics...
...Commonweal finds elements that could contribute to the social justice movement...
...The four chapters of section three ask questions which constitute the analytical core of the book: Do Christians integrate or compartmentalize their religion and their economic/political actions...
...Grand Canyon's central message is the revolutionary view that "we are our brothers' and our sisters' keepers," even if we may make mistakes in the effort to reach out to others...
...In each theme Hart MARGARET O'BRIEN STEINFELS is editor of Commonweal...
...They don't lead to political programs or to universal positions on political and social issues, but they do give a consistent impetus in the direction of social justice...
...Hauerwas's position is not far from the contemporary position of another theological strain he admires, liberation theology...
...For they provide a religiously grounded moral context and a set of teachings which challenge self-interest and self-deception...
...Stephen Hart would like to contribute to such a change in society's direction, for he is a "socialist-feminist and a pacifist...[with] a special concern with why the work of the American Left has not met with more success, and how it could...
...KENNETH P. JAMESON is professor of economics at the University of Utah...
Vol. 119 • June 1992 • No. 12
