I got into
Miroslav Volf’s short book A
Public
Faith: How Followers of Christ
Should Serve the Common Good (Brazos
Press,
2011) because I had found Volf’s Exclusion
and
Embrace useful (see article
January 2014).
Volf says the
role of religion in public life is
relevant for three reasons. Many of
the
major religions are growing globally.
Their members do not keep their faiths
to
themselves “in the private sphere.”
These religions find themselves side
by
side trying to influence public
affairs in the same countries. The
challenge is
to avoid imposition of views by any
one faith or by any secular worldview.
Volf says
religious people should be free to
bring their views into politics and
public
life like everyone else – but without
religious totalitarianism. Volf then
uses
the militant Islam views of Sayyid
Qutb to show religious
totalitarianism, with
which he contrasts religious political
pluralism. There is no one way for the
Christian faith to relate to
“culture.” Subsequent chapters
elaborate some ways
– but in generalities.
For me it is
interesting to reflect how Christian
and Muslim roles have reversed. The
early
Muslims faced the challenge of dealing
with pre-existing populations of Jews
or
Christians in the countries where they
took over the ruling in the 7th
and 8th centuries. They
adopted a solution quite similar to
Volf’s
religious political pluralism. At the
time Christopher Columbus sailed for
the
Americas, Jewish and Moorish refugees
from Spain were sailing away from a
Spanish
form of Christian religious
totalitarianism to the safety of the
religious
pluralism of Muslim North Africa. Now
roles have reversed. A fuller
inter-faith
exploration of Volf’s thoughts could
be intriguing.
Volf says
that the Christian faith (like the
Muslim faith) is a prophetic faith
that
seeks to mend the world. It is active
in all spheres of life, education,
arts,
business, politics, communications,
and more. The model of Christ is not
coercive
but actively helps others and seeks
their “flourishing”. I would add that
the model
of Christ seeks to include the
outsider. And I would prefer a little
specificity like “visit the sick and
prisoners.” Volf says there is no
Christian
blueprint for a society but the
Christian needs a subtler approach
than
unmitigated opposition to a society,
or seeking its wholesale
transformation.
He suggests a blend of accepting,
rejecting, transforming, learning
from,
subverting, putting to better use –
and more. He says all types of
Christians ought
to embrace pluralism at least as a
“political project.” I agree.
Volf’s following
chapters explore countering the
“malfunctioning” of faith and then
explore an “engaged
faith” before returning to religious
totalitarianism or religious pluralism
in
a short conclusion and recapitulation.
I found
Volf’s “malfunctioning” of faith
unsatisfying. After all, he has told
us the model
of Christ is gracious and non-coercive
- one of accepting, including,
healing,
teaching. What can go wrong, like
being coercive, is implicit in this.
Volf
claims prophetic religions like Islam
and Christianity include both “ascent”
to
receive insight in some personal
encounter with the divine and then
“return” to
interchange with the world. He cites
ascent malfunctions like staying on to
enjoy the divine. But I’m not sure
that I would call the occasional
mystic a
faith malfunction. And then there are
return malfunctions. He suggests not
taking the divine encounter seriously
is one, the idolatry of substituting
one’s own views for the divine,
idleness, drawing on God in prayer for
health
and family problems only, being
coercive in advancing one’s own faith
insights.
While this is interesting, I find it
somewhat mannered, abstract and not
too
helpful. He
ends: “… today’s most
fundamental challenge … [is] to really
mean
that … the God of love … is our
hope and the hope of the world – that
this God is the secret of our
flourishing …”. I don’t agree with
that, but I
don’t have a zippy alternative to
promoting a God of love.
For me it
would help more to have a bit of
concrete experience. People working
together
in faith groups and having insights
may not need the encounter experience
like
Moses or Mohammed that Volf speaks of.
I suggest that keeping a big humility
and
openness in religious matters is a
key. If you encounter the divine,
that’s
fine. Some may make the hypothesis
that there is a God and live as if
that were
true. That’s fine too. For me God is a
mystery -- something that may blow
around in a human community and may
inspire, resulting in changes in the
community
or the world. All of that is to be
explored as the living goes on. If God
is
mystery, any certainty and any formula
for coercion or imposition are out of
the question. So for me pluralism -
exploring things humbly together – is
the
way to go.
I found Part
II, Engaged Faith, more helpful but
still abstract. Volf brings some
insights as
to how religions can be active in a
society in a multi-faith world. For
the
various different faiths Volf suggests
that “treating others as you would
have
them treat you” may transcend the
particularities to enable the public
project
of religious pluralism that he
proposes. Yet this seems to be
pre-supposing a
problem to be solved that may not be
there. Again, a bit of concrete
experience
might help. When the United Church of
Canada and the Serbian Orthodox Church
in
Canada were meeting with the Muslim
Council of Canada to provide aid in
the
Balkan wars, things were tense given
deep-seated suspicions. But meetings
were
very pragmatic. Faith statements were
not on our minds at all and were not
necessary. Aid was delivered.
Volf begins his
Part II by telling Christians dismayed
by their shrinking church adherent
numbers
and diminished influence in society to
get over it and get on with the job of
mending
the world and serving the common good.
(He is addressing a Western Northern
audience.) This can still be done from
the social margins where Christians in
the West now find themselves rather
than from the centres of power where
they
used to be.
Western
societies are no longer
mono-religious. No longer does a
Western king decide
the religion of his subjects – the
diplomatic solution to the religious
wars in
Western Europe. Christians must now
live and work alongside those of many
other
faiths within the country where they
live. Volf wants churches to be
confortable working as they now are in
their present diminished context. Of
course the churches globally are not
shrinking. They are growing – but not
in
the established churches in Western
countries. I might note that the shift
of weight
by numbers of members is changing the
old dominance of Western members in
some
of the global Christian communities
like the Anglican one. Volf suggests
the
social context is voluntarism and
difference, more like choosing a sect
than
belonging to a faith, a pluralism of
cultural worlds coexist with which
faiths
react and a social context where bits
of society like a faith group are
relatively self-sufficient rather than
a part of a mainstream. That’s
helpful.
Volf explores
options for faith in a society: a
Liberal Program Accommodation adapting
one’s
faith values; the converse, re-writing
society’s values in a faith
tradition’s
terms; retreat from the world; and
Volf’s favored concept of Internal
Difference, asserting one’s difference
while remaining in a society. He gives
a
No to efforts at a transformation of
the whole of a society and another No
to
Accommodation. He ends with a Yes to
engagement in all dimensions of
culture,
in the social relations of people’s
rights and obligations, and in what he
calls
“the vision of the good” of the
society.
There is a
chapter on Sharing Wisdom that begins
suggesting that we are meant to live
for
something bigger than our personal
satisfaction and that religions are
challenged “to help people grow out of
their petty hopes so as to live
meaningful lives and to help them
resolve their grand conflicts and live
in
communion with others.” Wisdom is a
way of life that enables flourishing,
it
can also mean some proverbs and the
like in scripture and it is
personified for
Christians. Sharing wisdom is a faith
obligation in scripture, it follows
from
loving a neighbor and wisdom impels us
towards sharing. Their follows some
fancy footwork in which faith insights
are to be shared in a witness sense
but are
not to be “sold.” This verges on
evangelism and I don’t find it
helpful. The
quest for the common human flourishing
can too easily be undermined by
attempts
to “witness” to one’s particular faith
tradition. Volk agrees that sharing
wisdom is best seen as an act of
neighborly love but I would have to
add that
in my experience what faiths did
together around issues of public
policy was
not “sharing wisdom” but was something
more reciprocal that is better
described
as discovering together.
The last
substantive chapter on Flourishing
Religions repeats the fact that Islam
and
Christianity are growing and that
Western societies are becoming
pluralistic.
He points out that Liberal Democracies
are pluralistic, but that inevitably
things that run counter to the Liberal
pluralistic society cannot be
included.
Volf thinks that “each person should
have his or her own religious voice”
not
pretending commonality and not
focusing on differences, The chapter
tells a
story to promote the notion of
generosity of faiths towards each
other and ends
In Praise of Disagreement - so long as
arguments are no substitute for
action.
The
Conclusion begins with Obama’s 2009
speech at the University of Cairo that
uses
Obama’s own background to illustrate
the links – he is Christian but was
exposed to Islam as a child and is
respectful of it. Internationally,
relations
are defined not just by cultural and
religious differences, but by overlaps
and
common principles too. The chapter
moves on to end with a repeat of
Volf’s call
for pluralism followed by a point by
point critique of the Sayyid Qutb
statements that he called religious
totalitarianism in the first chapter
of his
book.
I should add a
positive and concrete conclusion to
Volf’s abstractions and his notions of
mending the world and promoting human
flourishing within a political
pluralism.
It is being done! I was part of
religious faiths working together
nationally
and internationally on refugee and
human population affairs from 1983 to
2001.
Faiths worked to share their
coordinated views on the public
policies around
these matters both in their various
countries and at the UN. Public laws
on
refugees, citizenship and population
were changed and cities debated
policies
and programs. Religious voices were
and are heard. They are heard
nationally
and in forums like the World
Population Conference or the UN Human
Rights
Council. Faith
voices addressed Canadian
parliamentary committees and the
Canadian press, and they often
presented quite
similar views in the same hearing or
press conference.
I think it is
important to reflect beyond Volf how
various faiths affect public policy
together. There needs to be discussion
among the faiths together as faiths so
they can be most effective in their
interventions. Preparing joint
multi-faith statements
on public policy issues is a good
basis for inter-faith talking about
public
policies. However, as Volt notes,
joint statements reinforce the
commonalities
but take away the importance of the
particularity of a faith voice. So
parliamentarians should hear both - a
common statement and also the
particular
voices on a topic under consideration
– in my case things like a new
citizenship law. Most of the faith
beliefs and doctrines are very much
secondary to public policy matters
and, if used at all, can serve to
allow the vicarious
participation and understanding of the
wider membership of the particular
faith
community.
Towards the
end of my paid work days, for joint
faith meetings, I encouraged faith
counterparts to all speak from their
own faith tradition rather than
attempting
to speak to some imagined middle
ground. In this way, different faiths
could
show how the political moment
connected to their particular faith
tradition and
we could share these insights with
each other.
So,
yes, Volf is right. Moreover,
his Christian faith which is active in
mending the world and promoting human
flourishing will often find itself
alongside friends from other faiths
seeking
to do the same in a society allowing
religious pluralism. And the mystery
that
is God will blow among the people
despite the particularities of the faith
traditions and despite human foibles.
