Over the past week, James Hutchins at UCCTruths and PastorDan at Street Prophets had planned to have a debate about the role of religion in politics, which was in part stymied by PastorDan not feeling well, and partly by difference between them about what the debate was actually about. James had wanted to talk particularly about the role of the UCC in political discussions, whereas Dan wanted to talk more generally about Christians in politics.
I had hoped to follow the ongoing conversation and offer color commentary here, but my own business combined with my own laziness to prevent that. However, since there are some issues still outstanding from the James/Dan "blogologue," I'll jump in to give my two cents.
Although James refrained from taking a "victory lap" in the issue, he did drop a small gloat into his final post on the topic, noting that PastorDan's reluctance to talk about the UCC's political involvement in particular was understandable, since it was "not defensible."
Now, I'm not particularly interested in defending the particulars of the UCC's public stance either, not because I don't think it's defensible (fairly few things are truly "not defensible," if you care enough to try to defend them), but because I don't think we can begin to look at the particulars of how denominational offices take on political positions until we have a better sense of what principles ought to govern the positions they take.
In theory, of course, the UCC's national offices are given direction by the General Synod, though in actuality particular policy stands are often taken independently of Synod resolutions (this has to do with a, well, unique, understanding of what "local church autonomy" means when applied to some denominational agencies).
Part of the larger problem has to do with the "non-creedal" nature of the UCC. As a denomination, we don't have a set of overarching "principles" that govern our discourse. Rather, since each individual, church, association, conference, and agency can develop very different theological and social understandings of Christian responsibility, no one viewpoint can be said to be normative for the whole denomination.
<shill>On the subject of pluralism in the UCC, see my book Who Do You Say That I Am: Christology and Identity in the United Church of Christ, particularly Deirdre Hainsworth's excellent essay on this topic</shill>
What this means is that often we are a denomination of politics without principles. Now, I don't mean that in a purely negative sense. Rather, lacking widely acknowledged theological foundations, we have a great deal of flexibility in how we respond to social issues (there was the story that got repeated several times in my UCC polity class at Andover Newton about the Synod where we sent a delegation to participate in a United Farm Workers strike), but it also means that why we should choose to take this particular stand rather than that one is often far from clear. James and others like to point to our support for Puerto Rican idependance activists who were convicted of terrorism as an example of a stand that doesn't make sense, others point to the Synod resolution boycotting companies that do business with the Israeli army. The issue in both cases is not only whether we should take those stands (though there are certainly many in the UCC who think we shouldn't), but on what grounds we choose to make those stands. The closest we tend to get are generalities about the centrality of justice to our mission (which I affirm), but lacking any particulars about the content of justice.
This has been on my mind for the last few days, because on Thursday I had a meeting with the Peace and Justice guy for the Archdiocese of Chicago. At the end of our meeting, I brought up the effort at Resurrection Health Care to organize a union. Some of the organizers had been trying for some time to get the Archdiocese to take a stand on behalf of their right to organize, and I was curious as to what he would say. His response, which I think was perfectly reasonable, was that it is not the job of the archdiocese or of the Cardinal to take particular stands on particular issues in the way the organizers wanted them to. Instead, the job of the diocese was to articulate general principles of Catholic teaching and encourage individuals to engage in the process of discernment themselves.
Now, as I say, I think this is a perfectly reasonable stand to take, and I appreciated the candor with which he spoke to me. But it also occurred to me that the issue was not nearly that simple. If, instead of labor organizing, the issue was instead whether RHC should offer abortion services, I strongly suspect that the Cardinal would not limit himself to articulate general principles and then keeping his distance. Rather, given the Catholic Churches emphatic stand on the topic of abortion, I'd bet that the Archdiocese would push the hospital very hard not to do so.* So, given the Church's affirmative stance on unions, why the difference?
I suspect that the answer to this has to do with what the Church sees as the gravity of the topic. Abortion is immoral in Catholic teaching in a way that being anti-union is, apparently, not. And if the church is going to take a public stand on an issue, it wants to be sure to keep its powder dry for the really big issues.
Now, I think this would be a worthwhile stance for the UCC to adopt. As a denomination, we should speak in terms of general principle most of the time, and only get specific rarely and in the gravest of situations (Civil Rights, Apartheid, genocide in Darfur). The problem, of course, is twofold: First, every situation that we could possibly speak on is grave to someone, and second, in the absence of agreement on a set of general principles, what kind of guidance could we give?
So, we find ourselves in an upside down situation: Lacking principles, we only speak to specific cases, but without any sense of what guides our choices in any given case. Often, in my estimation, we make the right choices. Often, of course, we don't. James in several of his posts on this topic referred to the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, who was rightly suspicious of the ability of institutions to act in a reliably moral way. Since all institutions are affected by collective egoism and self-interest, none can transcend themselves to take the larger good into account. We are all flawed and fallible creatures, and our fallibility is multiplied, not divided, by collective action.
So we should always proceed with a large dose of humility when we venture into the the political complexities of the world as a denomination. Rather than speak self-righteously from within our own finite sphere of certainty, we should be clear on the limits of our own understanding, and seek to become a forum for the discussion of general principles of social action, choosing those of most pressing concern, and that fit most clearly without our self-understanding as a denomination.
How do we do that? Good question. It's worth some further reflection, and I'll try to come back to the issue at a later time. Meanwhile, I'm going to let James know about this post and see what he has to say. Comments welcome.
*A complicating factor here is that the Archdiocese has no direct authority over the hospital, any more than it has direct authority over DePaul University. In fact, when the faculty of DePaul decided to inaugurate a Queer Studies major, I'm sure that didn't go down well at the Archdiocese, but they really didn't have any power to stop it. So in the end, if the hospital were determined to do so, the Archdiocese probably couldn't stop them. But of course, they wouldn't, since it would be contrary to their Catholic identity, thus leading to the question: If that's the case with abortion, why not with labor unions?
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