THE RABBI WRITES
In a recent conversation with a rabbinic friend he deplored the increasing involvement of organized religious groups in programs of social action. While he clearly affirmed the traditional religious concern with social justice, he believed that the mixing of religion and political action to be a serious mistake. On pragmatic grounds he denied that church and temple programs to promote the passage of liberal legislation enhanced the prestige and significance of religious organizations. And on ethical grounds he rejected the idea that religion best fulfilled its moral idealism by direct assaults on government and public opinion.
He supported his assertion by citing five arguments. Firstly, he pointed out, religious social action is as old as history. Almost every classical priesthood has sought to use existing political power to achieve its moral goals. The Spanish Inquisition and American prohibition are perfect examples of organized church attempts to influence the course of government. They are expressions of the requirements for social stability as conceived by those who proposed them. In fact, the record of religious political activity has been both considerable and reactionary. The traditional American reluctance to allow church interference with state procedures and legislation arises out of this dismal achievement. Therefore, to invite liberal groups to organize the prestige pressure of religion to secure special laws in the area of civil rights and curb civil liberties is to invite all groups to do so. What is fair for religious liberals is also fair for religious conservatives. And, given the past record of church interference, it would be better to sacrifice the small amount of liberal action in order to justify conservative abstinence.
Secondly, social justice is a derivative of the general principle of justice. An appropriate division of labor must exist in our society. While political groups and political parties work out the specifics of implementing the general ethical precept, religious groups should be concerned with articulating and teaching the overarching moral principle. Without a clear understanding of the basic philosophic foundation of appropriate ethical behavior, social action is impulsive. Therefore, let churches and synagogues concentrate on what they can do uniquely and well. Thirdly, religious prestige depends on the public notion that what is taught is eternal and changeless truth. Since any particular social legislation is a testable procedure that may be proved either inadequate or harmful, to identify the decision of religion with what may possibly prove to be false is to squander its power and diminish its influence.
Fourthly, the key to a perfected society is a perfected individual.
Unless the individual citizen through extensive self-discipline is willing to adjust his personal behavior to the stated ideal, appropriate social change is impossible. The function of a religious society is not to influence people in general but to mold persons in particular. If it dissipates its energies in broad programs of social action, it will be distracted form its primary goal of improving the ethical discipline of its individual members. Personal guidance, not collective action, is its special forte; for too often religious social action is premature, a cover-up for unresolved hostilities and self-righteousness. And fifthly, it is more than obvious that dozens of political and social pressure groups are already in existence. From the NAACP to Planned Parenthood, they are clammering for membership and support. Why then should religious congregations duplicate and “deefficientize” the present institutional framework? Would it not be preferable to encourage individual members to join the existing secular action groups of their choice?
When my rabbinic friend finished his reasoned argument, I acknowledged that his criticism was perceptive, but disagreed. I offered the following counter-arguments.
(1) Undoubtedly, most organized religious social action during the past three thousand years has restricted human liberty and supported class distinction. And, undoubtedly, the abstinence of conservative religious groups from political action is conducive to social progress as liberals view it. But the stark reality is often missed. The defender of the status quo does not need to act in order to “act”. Since the existing restrictions and inequalities conform to the desire of the conservative, non-activity is his best defense. Bigots in the South can deplore church pressure for civil liberties because the entire social structure supports their ethical view. And segregationists in the suburban North can applaud the discretion of non-political pastors because the pervading prejudice requires no further confirmation. If liberal religious groups abstain from social action, they do not then deprive the opposition of the justification for political pressuring; they just leave the field wide open to the powerful inertia of the status quo.
(2) To equate religion with general moral principles alone is to turn it into a verbal wasteland. For no person who seeks to rationalize his behavior or to influence public opinion will ever admit to opposing “love, honor, mercy, justice, goodness, truth, beauty – you name it!” Even Prime Minister Vorster of South Africa recently quoted Amos when he exhorted his segregated citizenry to “seek good and not evil.” On the level of general ethical precepts he is in total verbal agreement with Martin Luther King. It’s the “non-religious” specifics that are the rub.
Moral advice that nobody can conceivably disagree with is the equivalent of no advice at all. It has achieved the elevated plateau of the cliche where neither any particular evidence nor any particular action are relevant. The prophets in Biblical times may have spouted the same ethical formulas about loving good and hating evil their enemies were fond of using; but that verbal convention made them neither useful nor controversial. They entered into the realm of a morality that counts when they made specific proposals for political, economic, and ritual reform. If the problem with modern theology is its nebulous character, the problem with much contemporary religious morality is a similar chronic vagueness.
(3) If one is a traditional theist then the question of eternal truth is a real problem and a burdensome one to boot. How one discovers meaningful statements that no possible future experiential evidence can refute is a struggle that no humanist has to confront. Because, for a humanist, the only “eternal” truths are definitions; and, from the informational point of view, they are trivial. All significant assertions about what procedures are conducive to human happiness are “risks”; they must continually face the test of social experience.
If clergymen and religious societies imagine that their prestige depends on always being right, they will never say anything worth listening to. While decisions which are irresponsible to evidence must be deplored, decisions to act which are based on a careful study of the relevant facts must be applauded. For the influence and status of religion in our scientific culture will not be maintained by a pose of infallibility; it will only be confirmed by the courage to be wrong when a social decision is required. To rationalize a desire for safety by pushing “everlasting truth” is a cheap out.
(4) There exists in the revolutionary mythology of America a false notion that the moral reformation of society must begin with the voluntary decision of individuals themselves; and that the most effective procedure for social progress is the personal persuasion and education of individual citizens. The best kind of church or temple, according to this view, devotes it’s energies to helping its members achieve self-respect and proper sensitivity to human need.
While it is certainly true that without a sense of personal worth and the absence of self-righteousness, individual participation in social acti may prove harmful; and while it is also true that a temple must, first and above all, help the individual improve himself through insight and self- discipline, it is not the case that the conditions which will make him a free and creative individual are totally within his personal control. Man is not only the molder of the society in which he lives; he is also the product and prisoner of it. What he is willing to say and do depends on how he views the distribution of power in his society. The collective decisions of the government, big business, big labor, and the military determine his social behavior much more significantly than the preaching of any priest or rabbi. If a religious congregation is genuinely interested in promoting the happiness and integrity of its individual members, it must trascend itself and directly seek to influence the power groups that set the pattern of social acceptance and conformity. Morality without social power remains the fantasy of the Sunday School classroom.
(5) That secular action groups already exist to influence the power structure is obvious; and that individual members of a congregation ought to be encouraged to join the political parties and political pressure groups of their choice is clearly valid. But that does not preclude the collective action of a total congregation or a part of a congregation where the appropriateness of a particular social action is fairly certain.
It is almost a psychological truism that cooperative effort will be more effective where the people involved have more than a peripheral relationship to each other. The problem with many secular action groups is that the individual members are only incidentally connected with one another; while in the small congregation in particular, there is a long history of involved social relationships that precede any group effort. Churches and temples provide the common personal and friendship bonds that hold a group together and flavor work with the pleasure of social intimacy. Many people who would never choose to join an independent action group will involve themselves in social justice if they are provided with the security and continuity of the temple family.
Moreover, the immense residual-prestige of religion in our culture makes organized religion a significant power factor. If social justice is promoted by church institutions, authority which few other groups can confer is given to the support of action. Now it may be true that this authority is presently unearned and unjustified. But that issue is irrelevant; the point is that religious institutions have it.