In his essay “Religious Humanism: A Manifesto,” Wolfe argues that “religious humanism offers the best antidote to the ravages of the ‘culture wars.’” He says that “the term ‘religious humanism’” suggests “a tension between two opposed terms – between heaven and earth. But it is a creative, rather than deconstructive, tension. Perhaps the best analogy for understanding religious humanism comes from the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, which holds that Jesus was both human and divine. This paradoxical meeting of these two natures is the pattern by which we can begin to understand the many dualities we experience in life: flesh and spirit, nature and grace, God and Caesar, faith and reason, justice and mercy.”
When I read “it is a creative, rather than deconstructive, tension,” a light suddenly went on and I realized that Wolfe was what he claimed, a conscientious objector to the culture wars. My mind went to Gandhi and MLK, Jr. Both fought vigorously for cultural, legal, and political transformation. But, they refused the role of combatant, embracing instead the role of creative sufferer. Creative rather than deconstructive or destructive!
Anticipating the objection that religious humanism, with its ambiguities and paradoxes, is really a masked form of the liberal position, Wolfe reminds the reader that “the majority of religious humanists through the centuries have been deeply orthodox, though that does not mean they don’t struggle with doubt or possess highly skeptical minds.” Wolfe is not surprised by this orthodoxy. Religious dogma restates the mysteries of faith. Wolfe quotes Flannery O’Connor: “dogma [are] an instrument for penetrating reality. Christian dogma is about the only thing left in the world that surely guards and respects mystery.”
Wolfe says: “So we arrive at yet another paradox: that the religious humanist combines an intense (if occasionally anguished) attachment to orthodoxy with a profound spirit of openness to the world.”
In America, Wolfe sees “imaginative writers” as the leading religious humanists. “Nathaniel Hawthorne’s insistence on the reality of evil, the inexorable presence of the past, and a tragic sense of life stood in stark contrast to Emerson’s optimism and utopianism. Throughout his career, Hawthorne struggled to achieve a more sacramental perspective, which placed self in relation to the transcendent, and which encompassed a vision of redemptive suffering. It is possible to draw a direct line from Hawthorneto such modern American writers as T.S. Eliot, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Richard Rodriguez, and Annie Dillard.”
The next post will more directly draw a link between Wolfe’s ideas and our MOJ project.
See Beyond Politics and Beyond Politics II.
In my last post, I encouraged us to look beyond politics as we creatively engage the task of developing Catholic Legal Theory. Gregory Wolfe has helped clarify my thinking, giving voice to my intuitions. He describes himself as a “conscientious objector” in the culture wars, and although I was skeptical of his claim at first, I have now come to see it.
His objection is different than many other Catholics who find it difficult to take sides in the culture wars because they think that the right (Republicans) is correct on some issues and the left (Democrats) is correct on other issues. His objection, as I understand it, is more fundamental. He objects to the primacy given to politics in our culture. I will address this in posts entitled Beyond Politics III and Beyond Politcs IV. But, first his view of religious conservatives and liberals.
In an essay with the “half-serious, half-ironic” title, “Religious Humanism: A Manifesto,” Wolfe argues that conservatives err by emphasizing the divinity of Christ at the expense of his humanity with a tendency to “hold such a negative view of human nature that the products of culture are seen as inevitably corrupt and worthless.” He sees the liberal error as emphasizing the humanity of Christ at the expense of his divinity, making him “nothing more than a superior social worker or popular guru.” Liberals, he posits, have the tendency “to accommodate themselves to the dominant trends of the time baptiz[ing] nearly everything, even things that may not be compatible with the dictates of faith.”
He suggests that it is difficult to maintain “the incarnational balance of the human and the divine” because “human beings find it difficult to live with paradox. It is far easier to seek resolution in one direction of the other; indeed, making such a choice often seems to be the most principled option.” I can relate to this in my own life, but that is for another day.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Now that the election is past, I’d like to encourage us to move beyond politics (at least for two years but maybe longer) and to think more creatively about how MOJ and the development of Catholic Legal Theory can contribute its small part to the transformation of our culture. And, yes, I believe we have been given only a small but important portion of this vineyard to till.
As most of you know, I intentionally do not blog directly (at least not very often) on partisan politics, and I did not publicly endorse a candidate, although there was probably little doubt about who I thought was disqualified. As I have mentioned before, I don’t like to blog directly on partisan and especially electoral politics because of an intuition that we are engaged in a much more important, longer-term, and deeper project than the partisan bickering (no matter how important) of the moment.
Thanks to my children directing me to Gregory Wolfe, his collection of essays, Intruding Upon the Timeless, and his journal Image, I now have some words to express this intuition. In an essay entitled “Why I am a Conscientious Objector in the Culture War,” Wolfe states that he has strong opinions on most of the current hot button issues and will give voice to those opinions where appropriate. He is not bothered by the conflict but by the means used to wage the culture wars. “[T]he urgent need at the moment is to recognize that we cannot reduce culture and its various modes of discourse to nothing more than a political battleground. The political institutions of a society grow up out of a rich cultural life, and not the other way around. As it etymology indicates, the word culture is a metaphor for organic growth. Reducing culture to politics is like constantly spraying insecticide and never watering or fertilizing the soil.”
His words resonated with me. But, after reading this essay, I argued with my daughter that far from being a conscientious objector, Wolfe was fighting the culture war on another perhaps nobler front. Another of his essays showed me I was wrong, but that is for another post...
My thoughts are further developed in Beyond Politics II, BP III, and BP IV.
