I've been reading Mark Noll's The Old Religion in a New World recently, and he cites the following quotation by a 19th century American Catholic, Orestes Brownson, which I found interesting:

"Catholicity is theoretically compatible with democracy..., but practically, there is, in my judgment, no compatibility between them. According to Catholicity all power comes from above and descends from high to low; according to democracy all power is infernal, is from below, and ascends from low to high."

I can certainly see how this issue would be a problem for Catholic Christians, most of whom would agree with Brownson's assertion that power descends from high to low, even if they don't necessarily make the connection that this thereby validates a hierarchical political order (from God to Pope to King to the People) as much as a hierarchical spiritual one. However, I think there are probably many other Christians besides just Catholics that would likewise agree with the basic premise that power and authority descends from high to low, from God to human authorities, and thus might recognize a conflict between their faith and the basic premise of democracy. On the surface it seems a persuasive argument. After all, most Christians, I think, would affirm that all power ultimately comes from God.

However, it occurs to me that affirming God as the source of power and authority does not necessarily imply anything about its direction, whether ascending or descending. Indeed, if what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 about God choosing the lowly, the foolish, and the weak things of this world, and what he says in Philippians 2 about Christ giving up his power and condescending to the weakness of humanity is true, then one could argue that God-given power does not filter down from high to low among human beings, but rather that it begins with the lowest, the least, and the common. In that sense, God's power is very compatible with the essence of democracy: the idea that legitimate power derives from the will of the governed - those on the bottom of the social pyramid - not from the will-to-power of those on top. God empowers the weak, not the strong - those on the bottom, not on top. Power, in God's kingdom, descends all the way down, so that only then can it begin to filter back up.

Not being Catholic, I can't say whether this conception of power is compatible with "Catholicity", though I would think that it would have much in common with the kenotic theology of Saint Francis for instance. However, I do think it is a legitimate and profoundly Christian conception.

Labels: politics, theology

I've gotten into a number of debates on Facebook recently, usually revolving around either healthcare reform, Obama's economic recovery policies, or some combination of the two. (BTW, Facebook debates are exceedingly annoying since they tend to take place in the comments of someone's status update, are limited in the number of characters you can type, and have no text editing capabilities... but I digress.) Anyhow, I don't intend to rehash the finer points of either of these issues here, but I did want to comment on an insight I had in the course of these debates - I think I finally figured out what being a "progressive" means to me.

(As a caveat - I should clarify that in this post I will be giving my own personal definition of "progressive, along with my personal definitions of "conservative" and "liberal". These may or may not line up with 1) historic, technical, or "official" definitions of any of these terms, or 2) your own personal definitions of them. I really don't care. I'm not talking about your definitions or the official definitions, so please don't overwhelm my blog with comments like: "That's not real conservativism" or "That's not how I define progressive" or whatever. This post is only about how I tend to understand the terms.)

I've been calling myself a "progressive" (politically speaking) for a while, but up till now I mainly meant it as a sort of vague contrast with "liberal", since 1) I don't necessarily line up perfectly with what is usually thought of as "liberal", and since 2) these days it's more often used as an epithet or an insult than as a meaningful description. Progressive seemed like a better alternative, both because it has less baggage, and because it connotes something forward looking, action-oriented, and optimistic.

It's that forward looking spirit that I realized really gives progressive politics their defining character. It is a reformist approach, one that sees the brokeness in the way things are now, both in the public (e.g. government) and private (e.g. corporate) sector, but is optimistic and proactive about fixing them and working towards a better world. Progressives don't see either one of these, public or private, as the sole cause of our problems, nor as the whole of the solution, but are interested in reforming both and using both as tools towards the goal of a more harmonious and just society.

This, according to my definitions, is the difference between progressives and both conservatives and liberals. Conservatives, to greatly oversimplify (and to focus primarily on the economically "libertarian" type conservatives who seem to have taken over the movement in the past couple of decades), are those who generally see the government as the "problem" and favor laissez-faire, "free market" solutions. Liberals, on the other hand, generally see the government as the solution to most of the problems created by the "free market" and corporate rapaciousness. Progressives, by contrast, see both the government and corporations as part of the problem, but also see them both as part of the solution. Progressives don't just want to scrap one in favor of the other, we want to overhaul the whole system, in all of its parts, from top to bottom. We don't just want more government or less government, we want better government (and better industry).

So, for instance, a liberal looks at our health care industry and says "Private industry really made a mess of things, the government should fix it," and a conservative looks at the same mess and says "The government can't fix anything, it'll just make things worse. Let's just do nothing and trust private industry to fix itself." A progressive, however, says, "you're both right, the industry is a mess, and so is government, so let's fix both!" In other words, a progressive approach owns the mess, and the responsibility for cleaning it up, instead of trying to pass the buck onto whichever side they like least. A progressive tries to change the system instead of just complaining about the parts we don't like, since we realize that "the government" and "those capitalists" aren't some evil opponents out there somewhere. They are "us" (see, for instance, the first line of the Constituion, "We the people..."). We are all part of the system, and thus we all have a responsibility to try and change it for the better.

And it's an optimistic approach: it believes that we actually can change the system and make things better over the long term - that "progress" is possible - and thus encourages us to actually get involved both in the public/political sphere, as well as in our individual lives to produce change. It doesn't fall into the kind of fatalism I see all around me these days - the kind that says "nothing will ever really change, and you're too insignificant to make a difference, so don't even bother." Progressives were chanting Obama's slogan "Yes We Can!" before he ever came up with it, and we were quoting Gandhi's exhortation to "be the change you wish to see in the world", long before it became ubiquitous.

This optimism is not based on some blind faith or wishful thinking, nor even (for us progressive Christians) on some retrograde, post-millenial theology that says human effort is capable of ushering in the Kingdom of God all on its own. Instead it is based on the very simple and rather obvious fact that sweeping social change has happened many, many, many times before, and there's absolutely no reason we shouldn't expect it to happen again, and therefore no reason we shouldn't seek to play a part in shaping and directing that change. After all, just look how much has changed since the Revolutionary War, for instance, or since the original "Progressive Era" in America, or since the Civil Rights era, or since the Fall of the Soviet Union, etc... None of these changes happened magically. Real people fought and struggled and worked towards their visions of a better world, and they achieved some, if not all, of their dreams. There's no reason why we shouldn't do the same.

That's why I call myself a "progressive".

Labels: politics

If I could indulge in some random history geek stuff for a moment, I've just been reflecting on the terms historians currently use to replace the old Christian dating system. Of course most people are familiar with the designations BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, i.e. "in the year of our Lord"). However, in academic writing one is generally expected to use the alternate terms BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era).

On the whole I'm in favor of these alternatives. As a Christian it seems disrespectful and unloving towards other, non-Christian folks to simply expect them to adopt our way of looking at things. If one does not accept Jesus as Lord, then it is a falsehood for them to refer to this as the year of "our" Lord, and expecting them to do so feels rather imperialistic and arrogant. However, the irony, in my opinion, is that the designation "Common Era" doesn't actually solve the problem. It's still imperialistic to refer to the past 2000 years as a "common era" for anyone who is not actually a Christian. It's not shared in common by Muslims, for instance, or Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, animists, etc.

Personally I think it would be more accurate and least offensive for CE and BCE to simply refer to "the Christian Era" and "Before the Christian Era". After all, everyone already knows what is being referred to, regardless of what you call it. And the term "Christian Era" simply names it for what it is without implying that non-Christians have to necessarily identify themselves within it if they don't want to (after all, many other cultures and religions - Islam, Hinduism, China, Judaism - have their own way of counting the years). It wouldn't require a confession of faith like AD does, nor would it mean falsely claiming that all people hold this system in "common", when in fact many have been forced to adopt it as a result of Western imperialism, or simply out of convenience/necessity.

As an interesting counterpoint to the country song I mentioned in my previous post, I heard this newer one on the radio today:

"Welcome To The Future" by Brad Paisley

When I was ten years old,
I remember thinkin' how cool it would be,
when we were goin' on an eight hour drive,
if I could just watch T.V.

And I'd have given anything
to have my own PacMan game at home.
I used to have to get a ride down to the arcade;
Now I've got it on my phone.

He-e-ey...
Glory glory hallelujah.
Welcome to the future.

My grandpa was in World War II,
he fought against the Japanese.
He wrote a hundred letters to my grandma;
mailed em from his base in the Philippines.

I wish they could see this now,
where they say this change can go.
Cause I was on a video chat this morning
with a company in Tokyo.

He-e-ey...
Everyday is a revolution.
Welcome to the future.

He-e-ey...
Look around it's all so clear.
He-e-ey...
Wherever we would go and well we...
He-e-ey...
So many things I never thought I'd see...
happening right in front of me.

I had a friend in school,
running-back on a football team,
they burned a cross in his front yard
for asking out the home-coming queen.

I thought about him today,
everybody who's seen what he's seen,
from a woman on a bus
to a man with a dream.

He-e-ey...
Wake up Martin Luther.
Welcome to the future.
He-e-ey...
Glory glory hallelujah.
Welcome to the future.

One the one hand, it's good to know that not all country singers see our contemporary society as completely awful. On the other hand, the thrust of most of the song seems to be "hey, ain't all this newfangled technology cool?" Though I do appreciate the last verse, which, without directly referring to Obama (I doubt you could get away with that with a country/western audience) still points to how far we've come in race relations over the past couple of generations. And I suppose the middle verse, besides celebrating improved communication technologies, could also be seen as celebrating the fact that old enemies can now be friends and business partners in such a relatively short amount of time.

I'm not sure how I feel about how he uses religious language to celebrate these innovations and developments, however. On the one hand you can say that he's referencing the Christian eschatological vision of a world of peace and reconciliation. On the other hand, the technology references in conjunction with "Glory glory hallelujah" make it seem too much like he's worshipping human cleverness or looking towards some kind of techno-topia. But maybe I'm overthinking it too much.

Anyhow, I just thought it was an interesting contrast with the other song.

I was flipping through the radio stations the other day and heard this song by the Judds on the country station. I remembered it from my high school days when I used to listen to country music all the time. Back then I really liked the lyrics and agreed with their message:

Grandpa, tell me 'bout the good old days
Sometimes it feels like this worlds gone crazy
Grandpa, take me back to yesterday
When the line between right and wrong
Didn't seem so hazy

Did lovers really fall in love to stay
And stand beside each other, come what may
Was a promise really something people kept
Not just something they would say
Did families really bow their heads to pray
Did daddies really never go away
Woah oh, grandpa, tell me 'bout the good old days

Grandpa, everything is changing fast
We call it progress, but I just don't know
And grandpa, Let's wander back into the past
And paint me the picture of long ago

This time, however, the song just got me thinking about all the misleading assumptions it was making. Don't get me wrong - while I generally think it's a good thing when families stay together and when they practice their faith together, there are still a number of problems with this song:

1) The "good old days" weren't actually that good. The idea that people in the past were less sinful than they are now is simply false, as anyone familiar with history or literature or social science (or Christian doctrine?) can attest. Nonetheless, this remains a common belief, and one that seems to occur in greater frequency the older one gets. This however, I believe, is an illusion created by the fact that, before the era of the 24-news cycle, our sins were more hidden and less public. But they were still there. Families still broke up. Husbands were abusive. Spouses cheated on each other. People were hateful and violent towards each other. There were murderers and rapists and pedophiles and drug abusers and all of that back in the "good old days" too, you just didn't hear about them everyday, all day on the news like we do now.

2) Even the things that actually were "better" back in the "good old days" often had a dark side to them. For instance, maybe there was less divorce, but that also meant that there were a lot more people (especially women) stuck in abusive relationships. And back in the "good old days" these women typically had no other choice since they were financially dependent on their husbands and literally could not survive on their own.

Likewise, perhaps there was a greater sense of religious unity back in the "good old days" (though in fact the long history of religious tensions in America say otherwise), but this also meant that minority groups (e.g. Jews, atheists, Catholics, Mormons, etc.) often faced serious persecution and discrimination. Those aren't the kind of "good old days" I want to return to.

Not to mention all the other evils of the past that actually have gotten a lot better in recent years. The Judds are skeptical about whether our society is actually progressing, but I wonder if they would really want to go back to the days of Jim Crow laws, of patriarchy and unequal rights for women, or when people were shunned by their communities, churches, and families for getting divorced or having a baby out of wedlock, or when it was a crime to be gay (okay, I guess there are still a lot of Christians would would like to reinstate that last one)? Yes, many things in our society have gotten worse, but a whole lot of things have gotten better too. And some of the improvements probably necessarily come at the expense of other good things - for instance, we can't show more love and grace towards divorcees or unwed mothers without also thereby making it "easier" (i.e. less stigmatizing, less traumatic) for people to get divorced or get pregnant out of wedlock.

At any rate, before we blindly accept the assumptions of a song like this, or the next time we're inclined to rant about the immorality of "kids these days", maybe we should think a little more carefully and ask ourselves whether our assumptions are really accurate. IMHO, the "good old days" weren't necessarily that good, and these days aren't necessarily quite as bad as a lot of people make them out to be either.