A Comforting Confirmation (Yesterday's Blog Continued)

The Headliner

The Festival Fireworks Finale

So often, God seems to give us the encouragement we need- and after spending so much time thinking about my trip to the Municipal Court recounted in my last post, I needed encouragement.  Tonight was the last night of the Lancaster Festival (our 25th!)  It was a great show, preceeded by a great meal.  The Festival is and was after a fashon a celebration of those values and institutions which seemed so ignored and undervalued in the municipal court.  It was good to look around and realize that there are many who believe in our Republic and the economic and political system which supports it.  It is good to know that I am not alone.

But the issue remains that many people do not believe that they have a stake in the system.  They lack what President Obama calls "skin in the game."   What can the church do to change the situation of those who feel alienation from this magnificent experiment which has worked so well for so many?  Perhaps a better way to phrase the question is to ask, "What can our culture do to give people a genuine stake in preserving an expansive status quo which will grow with the realities of the present without jettisoning the values of the past?"  Could it be a good first step is to acknowledge that it may not be the job of the church at all?  In the past, religious people of many faiths seem to have approached the question in several ways.  One was to worship the state.  Another was to take the Erastian path and subordinate religion to the state.  A third was to drop out of the state.  A fourth, very popular today,  was to adopt a rather hypocritical call for justice which employs all of the vocabulary of revolution while relying on the status quo for financial support and enjoying all of the solcial and economic benefits of the system the religious claim to decry.  Undoubtedly there have been others.  Perhaps religious folks ought to be encouraged to apply their faith to their public and social ethics as they enter into the political process according to the dictates of their individual consciences,  and stop pretending that a particular political fix is God's will for all people.  When  a denomination or a faith group endorses a party or the agenda of a party, they become so aligned with the same that they are bound to be discredited when that party or agenda fades from popular view or falls from popular acclaim, which it most certainly will.  A better way might be an individual approach which calls on people of faith to apply their beliefs individually within differing political parties, recognizing that good people will often differ in their outlook.

A necessary correllary of this option must acknowledge that in political discourse there must be winners and losers.  Everyone cannot feel good all of the time, and everyone does not get a trophy.  I am a capitalist, and the economic system I support cannot reasonably coexist with a communist system.  Either the government controls the means of production or it does not.  There is no middle ground.  I am a libertarian.  Either there is a significant effort to protect personal liberty, even at great risk to security, or there is uniformity in the name of security at the risk of liberty.  You can't have it both ways.  I am a supporter of a constitutional bicameral republic which limits government and shys away from direct and instantly responsive democracy while giving the populace some voice through the lower house of the legislature.  I would add to that description that I am a constitutional monarchist because of the stability a continuing executive brings to foreign and economic policy.  The policy instability inherent in direct democracy, which I would characterize as "mob rule," is incompatible with my system of choice.  I would acknowledge that Christian people, even good and right thinking Christian people, might well disagree with me.  Thus the struggle to determine what type of society is best ought to occur in the political realm among individuals of good will and strong faith in their particular system of belief, whatever it might be.  Religion ought to inform the struggle, but not take sides, unless a particular contending system denies the basic tenents of religion as does pure philosophical Marxism. (I would note that socialism as it is generally practiced does not share this rejection of the basic idea of religion.)

It is late, and so I won't attenpt to complete what remains for me a partial argument.  Suffice to say that I am leaning toward a conclusion that the Church, or the Mosque, or the Temple, or the Synagogue, is neither designed nor equipped to instill a love for and appreciation of any particular political or economic system in any group of people.  That is a job better left to conpeting and contending political parties.  It is enough for institutions of faith to instill in their adherents an understanding of the principles of their own particular ethical system, and give them a consistent moral basis for developing and implementing their own political goals in a non-homogenoeous society.  It might also be a good idea to realistically acknowledge that there are opposites in the world, and that accomodation and compromise are not always possible.

In any event, I am thankful for the Lancaster Festival, because it reminds me that perhaps revolution is not as imminent as it might have seemed to me twenty four hours ago.