LAW AND RELIGION FORUM

When it comes to religion and politics, the arrow of influence is thought generally to move from the former to the latter. It may be part of the distinctively American sense of separation of church and state to believe that religious belief precedes, and is somehow entirely distinct from, political allegiance. But a new book argues that one’s politics just as often can influence one’s religious views, and that the process of “identity” formation in this respect is quite complicated. The book is From Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity (University of Chicago Press) by Michele F. Margolis.

One of the most substantial divides in American politics is the “God gap.” Religious voters tend to identify with and support the Republican Party, while secular voters generally support the Democratic Party. Conventional wisdom suggests that religious differences between Republicans and Democrats have produced this gap, with voters sorting themselves into the party that best represents their religious views.

Michele F. Margolis offers a bold challenge to the conventional wisdom, arguing that the relationship between religion and politics is far from a one-way street that starts in the church and ends at the ballot box. Margolis contends that political identity has a profound effect on social identity, including religion. Whether a person chooses to identify as religious and the extent of their involvement in a religious community are, in part, a response to political surroundings. In today’s climate of political polarization, partisan actors also help reinforce the relationship between religion and politics, as Democratic and Republican elites stake out divergent positions on moral issues and use religious faith to varying degrees when reaching out to voters.

In our colloquium in law and religion seminar this semester, Mark and I are lucky to have a few historians of religion coming to speak to our students. And it has struck me that it would be helpful, especially for their presentations, but more generally, too, to have some broad background in medieval thought about the political and moral good in preparation for them. Here, for example, is a very useful looking new tour of the horizon of medieval ethics: The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Ethics (CUP), edited by Thomas Williams. With chapters on the thought of Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Islamic ethics, Jewish ethics, and more particular chapters on concepts like virtue, law, and the emotions.

Ethics was a central preoccupation of medieval philosophers, and medieval ethical thought is rich, diverse, and inventive. Yet standard histories of ethics often skip quickly over the medievals, and histories of medieval philosophy often fail to do justice to the centrality of ethical concerns in medieval thought. This volume presents the full range of medieval ethics in Christian, Islamic, and Jewish philosophy in a way that is accessible to a non-specialist and reveals the liveliness and sophistication of medieval ethical thought. In Part I there is a series of historical chapters presenting developmental and contextual accounts of Christian, Islamic, and Jewish ethics. Part II offers topical chapters on such central themes as happiness, virtue, law, and freedom, as well as on less-studied aspects of medieval ethics such as economic ethics, the ethical dimensions of mysticism, and sin and grace. This will be an important volume for students of ethics and medieval philosophy.

Around the world, the role of nationalism and populism in political life has become a subject of relevance and study. In one of our upcoming conferences for the Tradition Project, we consider the relationship between traditionalism, nationalism, and populism in Europe and the United States. Here is a new book that studies these phenomena in historical perspective, English Nationalism: A Short History (OUP) by Jeremy Black.

Englishness is an idea, a consciousness and a proto-nationalism. There is no English state within the United Kingdom, no English passport, Parliament or currency, nor any immediate prospect of any. That does not mean that England lacks an identity, although English nationalism, or at least a distinctive nationalism, has been partly forced upon the English by the development in the British Isles of strident nationalisms that have contested Britishness, and with much success.

So what is happening to the United Kingdom, and, within that, to England? Jeremy Black looks to the past in order to understand the historical identity of England, and what it means for English nationalism today, in a post-Brexit world. The extent to which English nationalism has a “deep history” is a matter of controversy, although he seeks to demonstrate that it exists, from ‘the Old English State’ onwards, predating the Norman invasion.

He also questions whether the standard modern critique of politically partisan, or un-British, Englishness as “extreme” is merited? Indeed, is hostility to “England,” whatever that is supposed to mean, the principal driver of resurgent English nationalism?

The Brexit referendum of 2016 appeared to have cancelled out Scottish and other nationalisms as an issue, but, in practice, it made Englishness a topic of particular interest and urgency, as set out in this short history of its origins and evolution.

One of the many things for which John Stuart Mill is famous is the development (in his Utilitarianism primarily, but also in Three Essays on Religion and in other work) of the concept of the “religion of humanity.” There is little doubt that Mill intended this religion eventually to supplant Christianity as the dominant socio-cultural force, though it is far less clear whether he thought that this entailed an immediate rejection of the teachings of Christianity. And it is helpful to read his other perhaps more famous work (especially On Liberty) in light of his commitment to the religion of humanity.

What was Mill’s religion of humanity? One thing that it wasn’t was supernaturally grounded. Mill believed that so long as a doctrine was taught, and taught uniformly, it could achieve the necessary power and influence (“Vast efficacy belongs naturally to any doctrine received with tolerable unanimity as true…” Three Essays on Religion). Nor did it depend upon acceptance as part of a long-standing tradition: rational people were always actively re-rationalizing it. Here is something of his description of the religion of humanity in Utilitarianism (Chapter 3):

Not only does all strengthening of all social ties, and all healthy growth of society, give to each individual a stronger personal interest in practically consulting the welfare of others: it also leads him to identify his feelings more and more with their good….This mode of conceiving ourselves and human life, as civilisation goes on, is felt to be more and more natural. Every step in political improvement renders it more so, by removing the sources of opposition of interest, and leveling those inequalities of legal privilege between individuals or classes, owing to which there are large portions of mankind whose happiness it is still practicable to disregard. In an improving state of the human mind, the influences are constantly on the increase, which tend to generate in each individual a feeling of unity with the rest; which, if perfect, would make him never think of, or desire, any beneficial condition for himself, in the benefits of which they are not included.

If we now suppose this feeling of unity to be taught as a religion, and the whole force of education, of institutions, and of opinion, directed, as it once was in the case of religion, to make every person grow up from infancy surrounded on all sides both by the profession and the practice of it, I think that no one who can realise this conception, will feel any misgivings about the sufficiency of the ultimate sanction for the Happiness morality.

Though Mill is not specifically mentioned in the blurb, surely Mill’s view will be discussed–critically, I suppose–in this new book: The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity (Encounter Books) by Daniel J. Mahoney.

This book is a learned essay at the intersection of politics, philosophy, and religion. It is first and foremost a diagnosis and critique of the secular religion of our time, humanitarianism, or the “religion of humanity.” It argues that the humanitarian impulse to regard modern man as the measure of all things has begun to corrupt Christianity itself, reducing it to an inordinate concern for “social justice,” radical political change, and an increasingly fanatical egalitarianism. Christianity thus loses its transcendental reference points at the same time that it undermines balanced political judgment. Humanitarians, secular or religious, confuse peace with pacifism, equitable social arrangements with socialism, and moral judgment with utopianism and sentimentality.

With a foreword by the distinguished political philosopher Pierre Manent, Mahoney’s book follows Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in affirming that Christianity is in no way reducible to a “humanitarian moral message.” In a pungent if respectful analysis, it demonstrates that Pope Francis has increasingly confused the Gospel with left-wing humanitarianism and egalitarianism that owes little to classical or Christian wisdom. It takes its bearings from a series of thinkers (Orestes Brownson, Aurel Kolnai, Vladimir Soloviev, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) who have been instructive critics of the “religion of humanity.” These thinkers were men of peace who rejected ideological pacifism and never confused Christianity with unthinking sentimentality. The book ends by affirming the power of reason, informed by revealed faith, to provide a humanizing alternative to utopian illusions and nihilistic despair.

Happy Labor Day! In honor of the holiday, I am picking up where Mark left off last week in noticing this very interesting looking collection of essays exploring the morality of the market and its discontents. The book is Are Markets Moral? (U. Penn. Press), edited by Arthur M. Melzer (the author of this book on esotericism that has been highly recommended to me) and Steven J. Kautz, with an exceptionally broad array of perspectives in the individual contributions (from Richard Epstein to Robert George to John Tomasi all the way to Steven Lukes, and everywhere in between!). In the meanwhile, ora et labora!!

Despite the remarkable achievements of free markets—their rapid spread around the world and success at generating economic growth—they tend to elicit anxiety. Creative destruction and destabilizing change provoke feelings of powerlessness in the face of circumstances that portend inevitable catastrophe. Thus, from the beginning, capitalism has been particularly stimulative for the growth of critics and doomsayers. While early analysts such as Karl Marx primarily emphasized an impending economic disaster, in recent years the economic critique of capitalism has receded in favor of moral and environmental concerns.

At the heart of this collection of original essays lies the question: does morality demand that we adopt a primarily supportive or critical stance toward capitalism? Some contributors suggest that the foundational principles of the capitalist system may be at odds with the central requirements of morality, while others wonder whether the practical workings of markets slowly erode moral character or hinder the just distribution of goods. Still others consider whether morality itself does not demand the economic freedom constitutive of the capitalist system. The essays in Are Markets Moral? represent a broad array of disciplines, from economics to philosophy to law, and place particular emphasis on the experiences of non-Western countries where the latest chapters in capitalism’s history are now being written.