The Missionary Position

[I thought that the following item, by Martin Marty, would interest readers of this blog.]

Sightings 8/16/04

The Missionary Position
-- Martin E. Marty

"Strange bedfellows: Paul Wolfowitz and Hillary Clinton, Donald Rumsfeld
and Michael Ignatieff, Thomas Friedman and William Safire" applauded the
last State of the Union Address (2002) with its claim (paraphrased
accurately here by anthropologist Richard A. Schweder) "that there are
non-negotiable demands for the design of any decent society;"
non-negotiable "because they are grounded in matters of fact concerning
universal moral truths" and that they can be defined "in ways that are
(a) substantial enough to allow the United States to lead the world ...
in the direction of reform, and also (b) objective enough to avoid the
hazards of cultural parochialism and ethnocentrism -- for, as [the
President stated] We have no intention of imposing our culture."

Schweder, a former colleague and lively skeptical questioner, calls this
triad "the missionary position." Advice: haste ye to the library and
read his "George W. Bush and the Missionary Position" in Daedalus
(Summer, 2004), as it would make an excellent charter for discussion in
church, state, school, town hall, or Great Books Club. I'm serious.
Reaction to the State of the Union's claims suggest a notable divide,
"not between Left and Right, liberal and conservative, Democrat and
Republican" but "between those who embrace universalizing missionary
efforts of either a religious (Christian, Islamic) or secular (human
rights, international liberationist) sort -- and those who react to such
missions with diffidence, doubt, distrust, indignation, and even fear."

Schweder, of course, is in the second group. For what it's worth, with
Isaiah Berlin, I would be ready to say that there are absolutes, but
that no one can be sufficiently sure of one's own grasp of any to impose
them on societies. Schweder's analysis is so tightly packed that I
cannot reproduce it here; he is not interested in promoting mere
relativism. But he does show that past attempts -- I'd say every past
attempt -- to live out, always by force (for states need force of arms
or capital or clout), this "missionary position" has been shown in later
times or by others to have been parochial, provincial, and
culture-bound. Exhibit A: when the British took the missionary position
in the 19th century, accepting "the white man's burden" to impose its
civilization on a savage world. Schweder illustrates by referencing the
different ways freedom of speech, freedom of religion, family privacy,
and respect for women have been lived with, often creatively, beyond the
scope of any missionary position and imposition.

My question, using his four illustrations: we "Bible believers" would be
hard pressed, would we not, to find Old or New Testament or Christendom
era (313-1776?) discoveries, claims, or supports for what the President
called defenses of liberty and justice "because they are right and true
and unchanging for all people everywhere." All people? Ancient Israel?
Early, medieval, or most "Reformation" Christianity? We had to borrow
from the Enlightenment (1776, 1789) to find the right and true things
that we have come to support.

One Christian "right and true and unchanging" virtue professed in the
biblical tradition is humility. Even with Bob Dylan's phrase, "with God
on our side," the "missionary position" always lacks that central motif.

Reference: Daedalus:
Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Volume 153, No. 2,
pp. 26-36. Schweder's essay is one of eight on "Progress."

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center
at the University of Chicago
Divinity School.