Political Justice and Religious Values

Charles Andrain

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780415989640
• eBook ISBN: 9781135857448
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Why do individuals and groups hold distinctive theological views? Why do these beliefs change? In what ways do theological interpretations influence concepts of spiritual and political justice? How and why do these concepts of justice affect policy preferences held by religious liberals and conservatives?

Much has recently been written about the relationship between power, conservative politics, and evangelical religious groups, but very little attention has been paid to so-called "progressive" religious groups among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews and their relationship to political thought and action.

This wide-ranging and interdisciplinary work, ideal for use in college courses on religion and social issues, explores the impact of theological interpretations about God, the individual, society, church, and government on attitudes toward procedural and distributive justice. Major issues revolve around civil liberties, sexual choice, gender equality, world peace, prison reform, and income distribution

1
INTERPRETATIONS OF POLITICS AND RELIGION

I … spent years in looking for men wise enough to solve the problems that puzzled me, not in religion or politics so much as along the wavy line between the two.

(Lord John Acton)

During the mid-nineteenth century, Herman Melville portrayed the ties that linked political and religious values. For him, many Americans infused the nation with spiritual values. As he commented in White-Jacket or The World in a Man-of-War: “We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people—the Israel of our time…. The political Messiah … has come in us, if we would but give utterance to his promptings…. To be efficacious, Virtue must come down from aloft, even as our blessed Redeemer came down to redeem our whole man-of-war world; to that end, mixing with its sailors and sinners as equals” (Melville 2002:151, 229). In his later novel, Moby Dick, Melville held that the individual owed a higher loyalty than to the national ship of state engaged in warfare, injustice, and oppression. Preaching to congregants in the New Bedford, Massachusetts chapel, Father Mapple concluded his sermon about the sailor Jonah with this hosanna: “Delight,—top gallant delight is to him who acknowledges no law or lord but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven” (Melville 1961:64). Horrified by the injustices reflected in the “bloody massacres” and national wars, Melville recognized the gap between the “wisdom of heaven” taught by Jesus and the “practical wisdom of earth” implemented by government officials (Melville 2002:324). Echoing Jesus’ teachings, he asserted that citizens’ identity rested mainly on ultimate spiritual values that assumed a universal perspective, not loyalty to the nation-state.

POLITICAL ATTITUDES AND RELIGIOUS VALUES

Just as during the nineteenth century, so today the impact of religious values has attracted extensive attention in the United States. Issues of justice linked to war, nationalism, and legal rights stimulate divergent interpretations. Disputes arise about the meaning of procedural and distributive justice. Threats to national security jeopardize support for civil liberties. Legalization of rights to abortion and homosexual relationships provokes controversies among churches and political parties. Procedures for expanding gender equality arouse disagreements about women’s rights. On matters of distributive justice, ideological differences split those who favor government policies for greater income equality from groups that prefer more promarket programs.

This book explores the diverse ways that religious values influence political attitudes toward procedural and distributive justice. Whereas procedural justice emphasizes the means to achieve goals, distributive justice pays greater attention to the results, especially to the actual allocation of income and wealth. Both religion and politics place high importance on the laws, rules, and norms that regulate human interactions. Distributive justice involves the link between individual interests and the common good. Equitable treatment of the poor, marginals, and outcasts forms a major issue considered by religious and political texts.

Three related questions become crucial to the analysis of justice. First, why do individuals and groups hold distinctive theological views about spiritual justice, and why do these beliefs change? Second, in what ways do theological interpretations influence concepts of political justice? Third, how and why do these perceptions of justice shape political preferences held by religious liberals and conservatives, both among the elite as well as the mass public? Despite a few differences elaborated in Chapters 3, 4, and 5, the Social Gospel and New Thought best represent liberal positions toward politics and theology. Table 1.1 illustrates the crucial variables explaining political attitudes. These explanations include the historical context, theological assumptions about spiritual justice, and orientations toward political justice.

How do theological interpretations of God, the individual, and society shape beliefs about spiritual justice? Hierarchy, individualism, egalitarianism, and fatalism represent four types of justice. To what degree do persons stress deference to authority versus opposition to hierarchy? Do they give priority to individual autonomy or to personal interdependence with the community? When interacting with others, some people prefer inclusive, egalitarian relationships, whereas others lean toward more elitist, exclusive connections. How fatalistic or efficacious do individuals feel about changing the status quo? If efficacious feelings dominate, faith, righteous beliefs, good works, obedience to law, prayer, and education comprise possible ways to achieve personal salvation and societal redemption (see Andrain and Smith 2006:94–103; Douglas and Ney 1998:96–185; Lockart 2003; Thompson et al. 2006; Wildavsky 1998).

What explanations lie behind the links between theological interpretations and concepts of political justice? A functional theory of attitudes at the micro (individual) level, a meso approach to church organizations and their ties to political parties, and a macro concern for the historical context—cultural values, political and economic structures—provide some tentative explanations. Interacting with the structural situation, religious beliefs can fulfill several needs: the search for meaning, the establishment of community solidarity, and defense against threats (Smith et al. 1956). These beliefs then influence interpretations of political justice about the interactions among the church, government, and individual.

How do interpretations of political justice influence specific attitudes toward procedural and distributive justice, particularly preferences for civil liberties, legal abortion, gender equality, and economic equality? Particularly when religious values become closely aligned with ideological identifications, prospects rise for the political importance of religious issues. Liberals and conservatives articulate different concepts of justice. Conservatives who affirm hierarchy, individual freedom for property-owners, unequal economic outcomes, and resignation to established traditions will probably give lower support to civil liberties, sexual choice, gender equality, and activist government programs intended to promote greater income equality. By contrast, most liberals express opposite beliefs about justice. They reject hierarchical authority, prefer more equal distribution of resources, feel high personal efficacy, and uphold individual liberty from domination by government, corporate, and ecclesiastical bureaucracies. According to liberals, public policy officials should support civil liberties, legal abortion, gender equality, and egalitarian government programs that provide comprehensive, generous social services. Under these polarizing ideological conditions, liberal and conservative activists in churches, business firms, unions, political parties, and social movements link their theological beliefs to public attitudes. Activists who can mobilize the most cohesive networks and form alliances with powerful government officials attain the greatest influence over the public policy agenda.

Table 1.1 Explanations for political attitudes

These questions about religious values and political justice pose important issues that pertain to everyone’s life. Despite the “wavy line” separating religious values from political ideologies, both discourses highlight similar issues, feature a similar structure of thought, and fulfill the same functions. Even if specific interpretations differ, major topics of communication revolve around justice, equality, liberty, civic virtue, the public good, and ethical behavior. However divergent their orientations, theologians and political leaders stress hierarchy, individualism, egalitarianism, and fatalism as key perspectives toward justice. Politics and religion also focus on power. Whereas government officials accumulate and use power to make public decisions, many New Thought adherents view God as Omnipotence, infinite power, and creative, ultimate energy (Cady 1995:29–31).

The structure of thoughts elaborated by political and religious adherents show similar structural dimensions: coherence, consistency, and interdependence of ideas. These vary according to the degree of an individual’s active involvement. Political leaders and activists express a greater coherence than do more passive party supporters and voters among the general public. Similarly, whereas theologians and ministers often articulate coherent beliefs, the laity, especially inactive members who rarely attend religious services, hold more fragmented, ad hoc, inconsistent interpretations (see Bennett 2006; Converse 1964, 2006; Friedman 2006).

Interpretations of religious and political communications fulfill similar functions. They provide meaning, social solidarity, and defense against threats (Jervis 2006). In the political arena, ideologies specify one’s place in the political system, the meaning of citizenship, and the degree of activism. Theologies concentrate on the search for meaning through issues of faith that involve the individual’s relation to God, the nature of reality, the role of spiritual values in human affairs, and ethical behavior toward others.

Faced with a complex situation filled with contradictions, puzzling dilemmas, injustice, and uncertainty, religious values may offer meaning. Especially to those suffering injustice, evil, misfortune, and hopelessness, belief in transcendental, ultimate values can give a plausible interpretation of events, reasons for living, hope for eventual justice, and the causes of suffering. The Hebrews perceived liberation from Egyptian oppression by the pharaoh and conquest of the “promised land” as hope of victory over initial tragedy. Early Christians viewed the Roman crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection as divine signs of their triumph over political oppression, economic exploitation by the wealthy elites, and cultural humiliation. For both Jews and Christians, justice brought not only redemption to the individual but also to the whole society. Nineteenth-century Christians in the United States struggled for temperance, women’s suffrage, and the abolition of slavery. During the twentieth century African Americans, liberal white Christians, and Jews campaigned for an integrated society that expanded voting rights, civil liberties, economic equality, educational opportunities, and access to public accommodations. Supporting world peace, liberal Christian churches and Jews protested against the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. They also led movements to secure public policies that would reduce poverty, enhance immigrants’ rights, protect sexual choice, and secure a healthy environment. For them, a clear separation of state from church control would enable the individuals to realize their full potentialities through reason, education, and an enlightened conscience.

Cultural interpretations scarcely remain constant or uniform. They change over time and space. Their meaning depends on the historical context that shapes both the communicator and the audience. Hence, analysts cannot uncover a single, original meaning to a specific scriptural passage or ideological phrase. Because meanings represent transactions among individuals—the formulator of a text and the user of that text—they become pluralist and complex, not unified or simple. Depending on the historical context and the specific audience, the same religious or political text will attribute divergent meanings to the same symbolic “truths” about justice, salvation, virtue, liberation, and equality (Berryman 2005; Meeks 2005).

Since meanings largely depend on social interactions, the degree of solidarity provided by theological or political beliefs functions as a key benefit to individuals. Local political networks—clubs, political parties, interest groups, popular movements—as well as more inclusive ties to the national community represent contemporary forms of social cohesion. Similarly, in the religious sphere solidarity may emerge from local religious networks (churches, temples, synagogues, mosques) and from more universal ties to a denomination and an ideal spiritual community, whether Christian, Jewish, Islamic, or Buddhist. For many persons, the benefits of belonging to a local religious community that provides fellowship and social services outweigh the costs of participation, such as contributing finances, attending services, meeting in Bible circles, and serving as church officers. Sharing the dominant beliefs of the congregation merges one’s personal identity with the collective identity. Particularly when a religious association supplies not only meaningful values but also tangible social services, solidarity increases. Since the mid-nineteenth century, U.S. Catholic charities have provided social benefits such as job interviews, housing, health care, education, child care, and neighborhood assistance to immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Spain, Poland, and Latin America. Prayers, rituals, and other ceremonies strengthen this solidarity.

Interpersonal ties can stem from cooperative or adversarial interactions with other groups. If individuals belong to a heterogeneous religious or political association with members of diverse social backgrounds, they develop an inclusive stance that reflects a commitment to civil values: tolerance, mutual respect, compromise, and dialogue with others who hold divergent interests. Interaction with other groups embodies the same accommodating spirit that brings solidarity within each separate group. Reconciliation strengthens transactions with diverse groups. Minimal hostility emerges between “pure” ingroups and “decadent” outgroups. Civic solidarity promotes support for democratic principles. Yet often religious solidarity rests on adversarial relations with different groups. Dominant loyalty attaches to a monolithic, homogeneous religious institution. Instead of building bridges, the religious group remains a separate island with hostile attitudes toward other groups that fail to support their dominant beliefs. Even if conflict with outgroups intensifies intragroup solidarity, it lessens enthusiasm for such notions of procedural justice linked to civil liberties, individual rights for all citizens, and political equality (Andrain and Smith 2006:76–84).

Particularly when conflictual interactions strengthen solidarity, defense against threats becomes a crucial function of both political and religious beliefs. All over the world, individuals face many threats to their security. Some arise from their own fear of death or the actual deaths of loved ones. Threats from marginal groups—homosexuals, AIDS victims, drug addicts, people of a minority ethnic or religious association—often pose dangers to those feeling insecure. National unemployment, declining wages, growing poverty, and high inflation cause widespread worries about economic well-being. The dysfunctional aspects of modernization, globalization, and neoliberalism—rising joblessness, increased poverty, heightened income inequality, rapid changes in economic growth—often produce the threats that lead to membership in a religious community promising reassurance against all these perceived dangers. When domestic violence, wars, famines, hurricanes, and earthquakes strike a nation, the defensive urge rises. If defense against threats becomes a dominant motive, religious polarization may combine with political polarization to exacerbate conflict (Cesari 2005; Leustean 2005; Yamane 2007).

However important the resemblances between political and religious beliefs, they reveal crucial differences. A key dissimilarity stems from political leaders’ greater concern for mundane, incremental, pragmatic issues that yield to compromise and accommodation. By contrast, religion stresses more transcendental, ultimate ends that provide meaning to human experiences, strengthen solidarity, and offer reassurance against threats. Particularly if these transcendental standards apply to all aspects of life, “true believers” cannot easily make compromises for fear of contaminating the purity of their spiritual interpretations. Regardless of these differences, the major focus of this book highlights the interaction—the reciprocal influence—that politics exerts on religion. How do religious values shape concepts of political justice? In what ways do political developments affect general interpretations of justice and their links to specific policy preferences?

POLITICAL AND SPIRITUAL JUSTICE

Interpretations of religious and political justice focus on three dimensions: the content (meaning) of justice, the methods for gaining knowledge about justice, and the application of this general knowledge to specific attitudes, such as civil liberties, gender equality, sexual freedom, and economic equality. In each of these dimensions, we can distinguish divergent liberal and conservative views most often assumed by well-educated activists, academicians, and theologians.

Meaning of Justice

Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky formulated four types of justice that shape theological perspectives and political outlooks. They include hierarchy, individualism, egalitarianism, and fatalism (Douglas and Ney 1998:96–153; Wildavsky 1998). These four worldviews depend on the strength of group ties over the individual as well as the acceptance of role differentiation and externally-imposed rules. Hierarchy gives precedence to strong group ties, deference to rules imposed by elites, and norms that accord high-status persons the greatest privileges. Individualism ranks lower on group cohesion and rules imposed by external authorities. Rather than deferring to hierarchs’ interpretation of rules, individualists in small groups negotiate the specific implications of general rules, so that they adjust to changing, ad hoc conditions. Competition becomes important as a way to motivate incentives for productive achievement and to allocate unequal rewards based on the degree of performance. Unlike individualists, egalitarians affirm the need for more equal rights to participation and resources. They want individuals to participate in communal networks where widespread, inclusive participation prevails among people who conduct discourse about rules for reconciling conflicts. Fatalism takes an atomized outlook on the world. Cynicism, social distrust, and alienation toward others deter individuals from group cooperation. Perceiving change as futile, fatalists resign themselves to accepting rules imposed by hierarchical institutions. Apathy and minimal participation in either a political or religious association result. In general, whereas liberals place priority on egalitarian, individualist concepts of justice, conservatives give greater emphasis to hierarchy and the need to obey the dictates of the collective ethos upheld by family and church heads.

Examining the main goals of justice, the sources of injustice, and ways for attaining greater justice, we can better comprehend the meaning of these four worldviews. The conservative hierarchs uphold order, loyalty, and harmony as primary goals. Injustice derives from deviations from the rules imposed by established institutions. Disobedience toward traditional ethical standards produces decadence, disorder, impurity, and moral anarchy. To strengthen justice, society must strengthen the traditional established institutions: the church, family, military, police, and courts. Besides educating the masses in ethical, spiritual standards, these institutions impose sanctions on individuals who deviate from customary rules. Society operates as an organic community based on loyalty to the established traditional order. Government assistance to church and patriarchal families strengthens social harmony.

Unlike hierarchs, who value order, libertarian individualists equate justice with the innovative freedom to compete and achieve success. For them, the main goals focus on performance, efficiency, and productivity: entrepreneurial values. This utilitarian view assumes that a just society grants higher rewards—income, promotion, status—to individuals who have made the greatest contribution to beneficial outcomes. The causes of injustice stem from both structural inequities and personal failings. An oppressive bureaucratic government may wield extensive control over business enterprises, so that individuals retain few choices. Social groups can discriminate against persons with high talents, abilities, and skills. Laziness, drug addiction, alcoholism, and irresponsibility may deter individuals from taking advantage of existing opportunities or creating new opportunities for achievement. Rather than egalitarian public policies administered by a bureaucratic government, voluntary associations and personal effort become the major strategies for attaining a more just society where benefits depend on individual contributions. Stable contracts, secure property rights, privatization, deregulation, flexible wages, and education in productive skills and attitudes that promote personal responsibility become crucial programs for securing procedural fairness. Under these policies, equal opportunities, however extensive, usually lead to unequal economic rewards.

By contrast, leftist egalitarians seek to enhance all dimensions of equality: cultural, economic, and political. Cultural equality focuses on treating all persons, whatever their social status, with respect and dignity. Economic equality connotes not only enhanced opportunities for everyone but a narrower gap separating rich from poor. Political equality encompasses equal treatment before the law, access to the government decision process, and equal influence over the policy agenda. Injustice emerges from structural domination: political repression, economic exploitation, and cultural humiliation by authoritarian churches, oppressive governments, and gigantic corporations. For egalitarians, the most effective strategies for obtaining justice involve more inclusive popular participation in decentralized governments, small-scale councils, consumer groups, nonbureaucratic unions, mass political parties, populist movements, and religious associations such as comunidades eclesiales de base (Christian local communities teaching liberation theology). Upholding the need for equality between men and women, young and old, rich and poor, saints and sinners, these populist organizations campaign for universalist, inclusive public policies that grant social services to all persons, regardless of income, social status, political power, ethnicity, or religion. By implementing policies in a fair, nonarbitrary, nondiscretionary way, government administrators secure procedural justice. Distributive justice thrives when policies produce egalitarian consequences in a caring, sharing society.

Unlike the egalitarians, fatalists place little faith in ever securing either procedural or distributive justice. For them, justice seems futile, however desirable. Survival becomes a major goal. Injustice arises from conditions beyond one’s personal control—luck, chance, accidents, karma, maybe even God or Satan. Life appears unfair, random, unpredictable, uncontrollable, and chaotic. Perceiving life as a lottery, fatalists have low personal and political efficacy. They rely on cleverness and manipulation, key strategies for survival. Although their sense of political impotence discourages active public participation, fatalists may support powerful patrons and charismatic leaders who promise immediate but dictatorial solutions to their personal fru...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Tables
• Foreword by the Series Editors
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Interpretations of Politics and Religion
• Chapter 2 Perspectives on Biblical Justice
• Chapter 3 Walter Rauschenbusch: Prophet of the Social Gospel
• Chapter 4 The Social Gospel and Political Action
• Chapter 5 New Thought and the Power of the Individual Mind
• Chapter 6 The Policy Influence of Religious Liberalism
• Chapter 7 Liberal and Conservative Attitudes toward Justice
• Appendix: Measurement of Variables
• Bibliography