Religion At Christmas 2007

by Donald Devine
Published: 12-18-07
 
“U.S. Stands Alone in Its Embrace of Religion Among Wealthy Nations.” That is the title of a Pew Research Center report on the status of worldwide religion—and no other rich country comes close. While 59 percent of Americans say religion plays an important role in their lives (mostly Christianity which is adhered to by 80) only about half that percent say religion is important in the second-most religiously-wealthy nation Great Britain. As the nearby chart shows religion is important in many countries in South America Asia and Africa but only the U.S. is both religious and prosperous.

Rather than fading away as Voltaire and the secular left predicted this Christmas finds religion vital in the most advanced nation the U.S. Even the left has partially succumbed. A string of electoral losses led Democratic campaign leaders Rahm Emanuel and Charles Schumer to be more positive towards religion which revised view at least partially explained their Congressional victory in 2006.

Whereas Christmas themes almost disappeared after the left began dominating entertainment in the 1970s now it is impossible to avoid “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Miracle on 34th Street” much less avowedly religious programs on Jesus religious services and all-pervasive carols and even favorable treatment on the role of evangelical religion on National Public Radio! Atheism still sells as several new books prove but it is difficult with only a few percent supporting it in the U.S. today.

Interestingly it is on the right where Christmas is less merry this year. The once-dominant thinking of William F. Buckley Frank Meyer and Ronald Reagan that “fused” limited government libertarianism and religious value traditionalism to create modern conservatism is getting hit on both sides. While Pew reports 59 percent of Americans think liberals are too secular 49 percent also think conservatives are too assertive on religion--so the more libertarian argue that political survival now requires muting or eliminating religion from the right’s appeal.

Former George Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson in his new book “Heroic Conservatism” and his Washington Post column argues the opposite. He says that modern “anti-government conservatism”/libertarianism must become “morally driven” and is in fact immoral for not supporting programs to help the poor. In the future conservatism must be based wholly on “the social teachings of the Jewish and Christian traditions” especially Catholic social thought (although Gerson himself is proudly evangelical) fighting for “economic and social justice.” The Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow insists:

The difference between these visions is considerable. Various forms of libertarianism and anti-government conservatism share a belief that justice is defined by the imposition of impartial rules--free markets and the rule of law. If everyone is treated fairly and equally the state has done its job.

But Catholic social thought takes a large step beyond that view. While it affirms the principle of limited government--asserting the existence of a world of families congregations and community institutions where government should rarely tread-- it also asserts that the justice of society is measured by its treatment of the helpless and poor. And this creates a positive obligation to order society in a way that protects and benefits the powerless and suffering.

America’s Christian tradition demands compassion for the poor and disadvantaged but “anti-government conservatives” like Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater will not allow government to do this. What must a “compassionate conservatism” do according to Gerson? “Bold effective public policy” requires:

welfare reform with time limits and work requirements; zero-tolerance approaches to crime; education reform that tests and requires basic skills; and comprehensive anti-drug efforts including enforcement treatment and education. In all these cases good government and rational incentives have made a tremendous difference.

How does fusionist conservatism respond? It is easy for the pure libertarians. With Americans so religious even the Democrats understand that being purely secular is suicidal. The Gerson moralist position is more difficult because it is more confused. Even libertarian conservatives have supported most of the reforms Gerson listed certainly at the state or local level. He apparently means the national government when he says conservatives will not help the poor especially the “massive” interventions during the Bush Administration.

Yet “national greatness” in education is under fire from both left and right and the “No Child Left Behind” law may not even be reauthorized. The “comprehensive” anti-drug program has hardly been effective. On the other hand zero-tolerance for violent crime could be accepted by the most extreme libertarians since not being anarchists they support government control of coercion. Indeed welfare reform with time limits and work requirements (letting the states decide) have been the cry of limited government types since the New Deal so are hardly bold and progressives deny the requirements are even compassionate.

Gerson’s new “creative proposals” are for national health-care system reform “affordable” college education encouragement of “savings ownership and financial literacy” and for “the recovery of economic mobility.” But do these consider Gerson’s other requirement to rely on “families congregations and community institutions where government should rarely tread”? Most of the examples he offers of national government successes merely repealed earlier national government intrusions on the family private associations and local government especially welfare replacing diversity and choice with a single bureaucratic solution.

Gerson calls the Medicare prescription drug bill a “good example” of a “contribution to the justice and fairness of American society.” He does not consider the inequity that seniors are the wealthiest class in the U.S. and that poorer younger citizens are forced to subsidize them to say nothing about the fact that the program added an unfunded liability 150 percent the size of already troubled Social Security’s to be paid for by far fewer of these same less wealthy future generations.

While giving lip service to “families congregations and community institutions”--the institutions real limited government conservatives say solve social problems better than government does--the essence of the Gerson “compassionate conservatism” program is to use national government to solve all of society’s problems.

He does not credit that his “bold use of government to serve human rights and dignity” can lead to overriding the rights of private institutions to support the bureaucratic goals he simply claims will be avoided. He does not consider that his “millennial goal” for foreign policy can lead to stretched resources and abuses of power. He does not consider that becoming “the party of idealism action and risk” and “eager purity” is precisely the error that led to the decline of the welfare state in stagflation in the seventies and its inability to pay for its entitlement promises today.

While Gerson recognizes the law of unintended consequences that makes traditional conservatives reluctant to give too much power to national government at the end he merely considers this an excuse not to act. At the end only national laws and regulations count as moral. In other words Gerson is a modern welfare state progressive not a conservative at all in its modern usage. The only difference from a Gunnar Myrdal is his religious rationale and Woodrow Wilson even used similar religious symbolism. Gerson’s description of compassionate conservatism as “restless reform and idealism and moral conviction” could come right from Wilson the father of American progressivism whom Gerson even cites favorably.

It is fine if Gerson wants to promote progressivism but why bring conservatism and Catholic theory into it? His “national greatness conservatism” not only differs from all earlier conceptions of conservatism it does not take seriously the very Catholic social thought Gerson uses as justification for his neo-conservatism. Back in 1931 Pope Pius XI put actual Catholic social thought on this matter quite clearly:

It is wrong to withdraw from the individual and commit to the community at large what private enterprise and industry can accomplish; so too it is an injustice a grave evil and a disturbance of right order for a larger and higher organization to arrogate to itself functions which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower bodies. This is a fundamental principle of social philosophy unshaken and unchangeable. (Quadragessimo Anno sec 79 Paulist Press translation 1939)

In 1991 this doctrine of “subsidiarity” was even strengthened with a direct condemnation of the abuses of the bureaucratic national welfare state by Pope John Paul II (in Centesimus Annus) tracing his logic back to Pope Leo XIII in 1891.

True compassion recognizes the individual comes first morally (under God) and he and the family are most in need of protection from potential abuse by powerful national government. America’s Federalist founders taught that “first object of government” is to protect “the diversity in the facilities of men.” From this natural freedom “the rights of property originate” and so the private sector with its independent companies and associations logically comes next. Only if these cannot do the job does one go to local community and then government then to regional state governments and finally to the national government when all else has failed.

Gerson’s “compassionate conservatism” looks to the national government first. Big government conservatism however undermines a “fundamental principle of social philosophy” and thus is not moral at all. What is moral is protecting the innocent from the Herods of the world supporting the warmth of the family and encouraging the voluntary moral strength of poor shepherds and rich Magi and the whole community that create truly compassionate societies as they did for the Christmas family until the Son was able to go forth to redeem the world.

What America needs is neither half-baked bureaucratic compassion nor abandoning religion but a return to true morality by restoring the balance between libertarian subsidarity means and traditional Judeo-Christian ends that created modern conservatism and indeed all of Western civilization that has emanated from the Incarnation we celebrate today. That would be a wonderful Christmas gift for us all.