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Incarnation and Institution

Just prior to my arrival as pastor, the governing board of the church I serve voted to "differentiate spiritual responsibilities from administrative responsibilities." On the positive side, this decision shows a welcome awareness that congregational leadership has to do with more than deciding which brand of paper towels to use in the rest rooms; it aims at developing Christian discipleship in the community. But there is, I suspect, a negative side to this action. Behind it one senses a frustration with the institutional reality of the church.

Anyone who has participated in the life of the church has struggled with this problem. There is a Grand Canyon-size gap, it appears, between our spiritual aspirations and the time-consuming chores necessary to keep the organization functioning. Meetings are opened and closed with prayer, but these relatively few minutes seem a paltry offering compared to the hours sacrificed on the altar of institutional needs. Budgets must be adopted; something must be done about the leaky toilet next to the Fellowship Hall; and a way must be found to translate to the music director Mrs. Jones’s complaint that "the Cherub Choir has been acting like little demons and sounding like hell."

What has all this to do with the Kingdom of God? We understand the place of preaching and prayer, and certainly of Bible study and evangelism. But what about the endless committee meetings which, at their conclusion, would more appropriately be closed with a round of Alka-Seltzer than a round of prayer? It is not surprising that in many sectors of the church there exists an intense anti-institutionalism, a desire "to differentiate spiritual responsibilities from administrative responsibilities."

I suggest that frustrations with the institutional church are part of the scandal of the incarnation.

The miracle of Christmas means more for the church than Sunday school programs and choir cantatas; it points to the essence of how we are the church in the world. What things, specifically, frustrate us about the institutional aspect of our communal life in Christ?

Recently the chairman of our buildings and grounds committee approached me with an upset look on his face. "We’ve got problems," he said. "It’s the new dishwasher. Seems we forgot to order the faucets." (Can you order a car without wheels?) "And the faucets are only half the problem," he continued. "The company already installed the dishwasher, and now it’ll have to be ripped out of the wall before the faucets can be put on." How, I wondered, can you install a dishwasher with no faucets? And what does this have to do with my seminary labors at parsing Greek verbs and mastering hermeneutics, prolegomena and homiletics? Not a thing, of course.

But it has everything to do with life in an institution called the body of Christ. We should not be surprised. Bodies are earthy and earthly. They sweat, get sick, and require routine maintenance -- earthy things; and while they have some choice of pasture and speed of movement, they are confined to this terrestrial ball -- earthly things. The church is the body of Christ.

And it is the body of Christ. It is the community of the Incarnate One. The miracle and mystery of Christmas is that "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). Flesh in the New Testament means more than simply "flesh and bones." It includes that, to be sure, yet it is more extensive: it signifies this concrete human nature in which we find ourselves, with its weaknesses, limitation, brokenness. The text does not say that the Word became a superman, a figure towering above us in absolute perfection; rather, the Word entered into our world, meeting us where we are. In Calvin’s words: "Christ of his boundless grace joins himself to base and ignoble men." The Word became mundane.

Had we been in the stable that night in Bethlehem, I doubt we would have witnessed the scene in the way that many artists have since pictured it. No smiling baby crowned with golden halo there; no aura of otherworldliness; no angelic cantatas descending from the rafters. Just a red and wrinkled baby who cried when he wanted milk and messed his pants after he got it. Mark Twain candidly observed in Answers to Correspondents that "a soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty." Quite true. The Word became not a thing of beauty, but flesh -- as we know it and live it.

For some, this "mundanity" has been cause for stumbling. Early in the church’s life there were those who revolted at the thought of such a union of the spiritual and the physical. Christ’s body only appeared to be real, they said. Thus docetism (from the Greek verb dokéo, "to seem") emerged to relieve the embarrassment of the Christmas scandal. Though occasionally reappearing in various forms (even now), this view has been rejected as heresy by the church. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" is the gospel witness.

The point is this: the spiritual entered fully the physical world as we experience it. As the presence of Christ in this world, then, can the church -- his body -- strive for an existence alien to the way of its incarnate Lord? Paying the light bills and repaving the parking lot do not seem all that spiritual. How much better, we think, to flee to the purer realms of prayer and Bible study! But such desires are not from the mind of Christ. They are docetic dreams that have little to do with the way of Christ in this world.

Where two or three are gathered in his name, Christ is present, we are told. And where two or three are gathered in this world, there is likely to be a committee, complete with docket, budget and conflicts. This sociological datum is part of our humanity. Christmas disallows separation of these two facts into mutually exclusive, antagonistic spheres of reality. The spiritual is found in the institutional nature of human communal existence; the Word becomes flesh.

In his Ethics Dietrich Honhoeffer put it this way: "In Christ we are offered the possibility of partaking in the reality of God and in the reality of the world, but not in the one without the other." This is a tremendous source of liberation, because

so long as Christ and the world are conceived as two opposing and mutually repellent spheres, man will be left in the following dilemma: he abandons reality as a whole, and places himself in one or the other of they two spheres. He seeks Christ without the world, or he seeks the world without Christ. In either case he is deceiving himself. Or else he tries to stand in both spheres at once and thereby becomes the man of eternal conflict.

In other words, the ruling board of my church is freed from the anxiety about whether they are doing spiritual or administrative work, for in Christ the conflict has been overcome.

There is another reason why the institutional character of the church frustrates us. It involves limitation. That which is mundane is circumscribed by the limits of space and time. Though I sometimes wish I could be in two places at once, I cannot; my body is either here or there, but not both. Furthermore, my time for existence is now, not a hundred years ago or a hundred years hence. Finitude limits.

This element of the mundane exacerbates our restlessness with the institutional. An institution can neither be all things nor do all things. Those involved in leading it must decide what it will be or do, which includes deciding what it will not be and do. Institutions are as finite as persons -- perhaps more so. For, while an individual has a certain (though limited) freedom of autonomy, an institution is composed of different persons with differing ideas about its nature and goals. Thus out of conflicts arise compromises, limits on everyone’s ideal.

Elder A comes to the board meeting full of enthusiasm. He can hardly contain himself until the moderator asks, "Is there any other new business?" He has just heard afresh Christ’s call to make disciples of all nations, and has been seized by a new conviction that the church must be an evangelistic fellowship. So he moves that a minister of evangelism be hired to train members for this necessary work. The motion is seconded, but before discussion ends, Elder B unloads a very different vision of what ought to be done with the $20,000 per year Elder A wants to give the new pastor. He, too, has been eagerly waiting for a chance to make a proposal. In his recent reading of the New Testament he has come to a vivid awareness of the social dimensions of the gospel. Reports of African famine have goaded him to the view that the church must make a considerable gift to the denomination’s hunger and development fund. The other elders recognize the biblical validity of both proposals. What is to be done? Chances are, a compromise will be reached: a part-time minister of evangelism will be hired and $10,000 given to alleviate hunger. Each will need to relinquish his notion of the best, and each will likely go home and grumble to his wife that their church is too limited in vision and perhaps they ought to think about finding a more biblical one. The limitations inherent in the institutional are what frustrates them.

It may be tempting to cast our gaze heavenward, for the stable can get pretty messy. We might long for a stable full of championship thoroughbreds, instead of the unruly bunch stepping on our toes whenever our eyes rest on the purer heights. But we live in this stable -- the institutional church. To serve the Holy Child best we must live with the frustrations of limited results: getting the oxen straw, giving the donkeys a rubdown.

But this is so mundane! Are we not called to a spiritual life and ministry? Indeed we are. Our problem, however, is an idolatrous notion of the spiritual. The word connotes the otherworldly, the exalted, the transcendent; it has to do with outer space, not earth. To be spiritual, we think, is to be other than: other than this institution, other than this committee hassle, other than this budget formation, other than this building maintenance above it all. If we affirm, however, the apostolic confession about Christ, that "in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell" (Col. 1:19), then we can neither look for God in the heights nor construct well-reasoned images of the spiritual; rather, our focus must be wholly directed to the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. There we see the divine.

What does Christmas teach us about God? In Karl Barth’s words: "The mystery reveals to us that for God it is just as natural to be lowly as it is to be high, to be near as it is to be far, to be little as it is to be great, to be abroad as it is to be home" (Church Dogmatics IV, 1). What Barth is saying is that the transcendent reveals its true power in the free act of humble accommodation to worldly reality. God’s unlimited freedom actualizes and reveals itself in voluntary limitation. The genuinely spiritual is not a supramundane reality located somewhere in an exalted Above and Beyond. It is grounded on our earth, in our mundane, limited existence.

And because the church is the body of Christ, the communal event of his presence in the world, the church also exists in that heavenly-worldly intersection. In practice, this means release from hand-wringing when we are faced with the limitations of a mundane church. We may confidently follow Christ out of that bifurcated tension where, with one foot in heaven and one foot on earth, we are torn apart like the wishbone after a Thanksgiving dinner. We may be the church as it is, in other words, at peace with the institutional consequences of life in the Incarnate One.

Reinhold Niebuhr: A Reverberating Voice

Book Review: Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography by Richard Wightman (Pantheon, 340 pp. $19.95)

It is easy to imagine Reinhold Niebuhr reading Richard Wightman Fox’s Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography (Pantheon, 340 Pp., $19.95) -- delighted at some of its insights, embarrassed at its appreciation of his achievements, snapping back at some of its criticisms, responding to others with a laugh and his familiar words, "That’s one of the many foolish things I’ve done."

Fox has done his job well. He has written both a personal and an intellectual biography. Fascinated by Niebuhr since his undergraduate days at Stanford, where Robert McAfee Brown and Michael Novak -- that now unlikely pair -- introduced him to Niebuhr’s work, he has employed the research methods of an American historian to dig out and interpret the data. He has drawn on June Bingham’s Courage to Change (Scribners, 1961) , a biography that can never be replaced because of its wealth of personal memories and anecdotal materials. He has used also the works of Ronald Stone, Paul Merkley, Gordon Harland, Hans Hofmann and Dennis McCann, as well as several collections of essays about Niebuhr.

But more important, Fox has gone beyond all his predecessors in travel in far and wide for interviews, correspondence, fragments of writings, tape recordings and records of oral history -- and yes, FBI and CIA reports. He has located more than 30 photographs that enrich the printed record. Anybody interested in Niebuhr’s career will henceforth have to rely on this book.

Fox tells the story from beginning to end: childhood in the German-American parsonage; nine grades of school followed by three years in a denominational "college" that was not yet a college and three year’s in Eden Seminary, with graduation at 21; a five-month pastorate due to his father’s death; Yale Divinity School, where despite academic probation because he had no accredited degree, he earned the B.D. and M.A.; the Detroit pastorate (1915-1918) in which he encountered industrial America and the race problem; his growing reputation as lecturer and writer (especially for The Christian Century) ; the teaching career at Union Theological Seminary (1928-1960) ; marriage and family; the landmark books Moral Man and Immoral Society and The Nature and Destiny of Man; the founding of the Fellowship of Socialist Christians and its journal Radical Religion; the gradual move from Socialist to liberal Democratic politics, and from leader of the Fellowship of Reconciliation to critic of pacifism; the break with Charles Clayton Morrison’s Christian Century and the inauguration of Christianity and Crisis; the founding of the Union for Democratic Action, then later of Americans for Democratic Action; participation in the ecumenical movement, especially the Oxford Conference and the Amsterdam Assembly; increasing friendship with government officials and service with George Kennan’s policy-planning group in the State Department; the first stroke in 1952 and the subsequent struggles with ill health; retirement from Union in 1960, followed by short appointments at Harvard, at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, and at Columbia’s Institute of War and Peace Studies; intense suffering from ill health; and death in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1971.

Fox drops no bombs. While Niebuhr did not parade his personal life, it was remarkably consistent with his public life. What Fox does is discover an immense amount of detail, putting it in perspective and using it to accent rather than obscure the main themes.

I have never understood the phrase "a definitive biography." People exist -- in fact, they become persons -- in personal relationships or in "dialogues," to use a favorite word of Niebuhr’s. Even the most integral persons mean many things to many people, and nobody can define the mystery of a self -- to use another of Niebuhr’s favorite themes. Fox wisely and modestly says that inquiries from several perspectives are needed to evaluate Niebuhr and that "each generation will have to confront him anew." With that understanding, I doubt that any biographer will do better than Fox has done in writing about Niebuhr. What a reviewer can do is record a few insights that add to and possibly modify Fox’s. If I do that, I should say candidly that I am writing about the person who, more than anybody else outside my immediate family, has influenced my life and work. He taught me to look for human frailty, including his frailties. He taught me to argue with many people, including himself. For these and many other reasons I am overwhelmingly grateful for his friendship.

Fox reports well Niebuhr’s style and effect as a preacher and speaker. What he and nobody else now can do is evoke the dazzling power of the man. Alan Paton in his autobiography Towards the Mountain, said of Niebuhr in 1946, "He was the most enthralling speaker I had ever heard, and now, more than thirty years later. I have not heard his equal." No speech teacher would use him as a model; his sentences could be awkward, his diction crude, his manner erratic. But the torrent of ideas, the mingling of wit and reverence and polemic and compassion were overwhelming.

The style came out of a boundless energy. Niebuhr, before his ordeals of health, was constantly on the move, physically and intellectually. In retrospect, we can easily say that he should have spared himself and protected his health. He had trouble saying No to requests, partly because he wanted to help people, partly because his zest for life and action was so great.

Paul Tillich used to say of Niebuhr, "He reads three books in an afternoon, while I read three in a year." Actually Niebuhr read not quite that many, Tillich not that few. But Niebuhr had the ability to digest a book with great speed and usually get the point of it. Once in a while he missed. Margaret Mead complained that he entirely misunderstood a book of hers that he reviewed. He agreed and published a contrite apology. When he read, he was always actively looking for something. That meant that often he found things that others missed; he did so at the risk of appropriating other writers for his purpose rather than listening to them on their terms. But his active engagement with the thought of others made him constantly exciting.

Niebuhr’s power meant that he could be intimidating. Yet his friendliness was legendary. Students, who often called him Reinie, thronged to his apartment on those evenings when he and his wife were "at home" to friends. Sometimes there was a distinguished guest -- it was there that I first met W. H. Auden -- and sometimes there were just the Niebuhrs and students. The evening started with small talk, usually moved to politics, then to theology. Everybody was welcome. More rare was a treasured invitation to a student for Christmas dinner or an unexpected phone call on a July afternoon with a summons to go to Yankee Stadium for a ball game.

I have a recollection that I cannot now confirm that his great friend Sherwood Eddy once wrote of Niebuhr at mid-career that one of his limitations was that he had never really suffered. That changed. The latter years were a time of intense pain. I used to say that of all the people I knew, Niebuhr was the least equipped temperamentally to be an invalid. I have revised that opinion. Niebuhr, for all his vitality and power, loved Pascal’s doctrine of "the grandeur and misery" of the human being. In his sickness he had to internalize that doctrine as he had never done before.

It was not easy. His feelings were close to the surface. If he felt bad, he did not say that he felt good. Once, when I visited him in Stockbridge, he told me of his pain and weakness, adding: "If it were not for my loyalty to God and my friends, I’d wish to die." He did, in fact, wish for death. In one writing, never published until recently in The Christian Century ("A View of Life from the Sidelines," December 19-26, 1984, pp. 1195-98) , he told movingly of what he learned from suffering and weakness.

This was a time when Niebuhr had to rethink the meaning of his own "serenity prayer," the most widely quoted words he ever wrote:

God, give us the serenity to accept what

cannot be changed;

Give us the courage to change what should

be changed;

Give us the wisdom to distinguish one

from the other.

Fox’s energetic research has resolved one of the perplexities about that prayer. For years a German version of it, attributed to 18th-century theologian Friedrich Oetinger, has been circulating. Niebuhr himself began to wonder whether he had pulled it out of his subconscious memory, put it in English, and wrongly thought it was his own. Fox has discovered that a contemporary German writer translated Niebuhr’s prayer into German, then published it under the pen name of the earlier Oetinger.

Fox’s biography emphasizes the frequency with which Niebuhr changed his mind on issues of the day. I do not question Fox’s evidence, but my interpretation is a little different. Niebuhr’s theology moved through a sequence of changes, but there was nothing capricious about the patterns of change. Each new stage showed both continuation and transformation of past stages. The ad hoc judgments on political events showed many more changes and reversals of past judgments. The reason is that such judgments always depend, in part, on empirical data; new information, means revised opinions. Niebuhr, who commented regularly on public affairs, showed a mixture of wisdom and error characteristic of the better journalists and editorialists of his time -- say, a Walter Lippmann. To maintain a higher consistency would be to allow dogma to triumph over new evidence. The style of analysis, though not rigidly fixed throughout his career, showed greater continuities.

At Union Seminary. where Niebuhr so often talked of "the irony of history," we remember him as an example of it. We occasionally recall that invitations to give the Gifford Lectures in Scotland have been conferred on three Union faculty members. All three -- Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich and Richard Kroner -- were, in a sense, "accidents." None passed the scrutiny of a normal search committee; none was called to fill a vacancy. Niebuhr came because Sherwood Eddy wanted him in New York to edit the World Tomorrow and to teach part-time at Union. Eddy found the money for the appointment, and President Henry Sloane Coffin eagerly grasped the opportunity. (Tillich and Kroner were hired as gestures of help to scholars threatened by Nazism.) I have used the crude word "accidents." A more ornate word is "serendipity." Some of us see in those events a working of grace.

Reading Fox’s biography and thinking about it, I found myself recalling Wordsworth’s sonnet on Milton and paraphrasing it:

Niebuhr! thou shouldst be living at this

hour:

The world hath need of thee

Partly because of Niebuhr’s influence the churches are more likely today than in some American pasts to produce voices protesting the idolatries of nation, class, race and greed. Would that those voices had the eloquence and power to reverberate through society as did Niebuhr’s.

The Old Question: Politics and Religion



"I feel strongly that it is wrong to mix political opinions with personal Christianity."

"Am I wrong in thinking that Jesus never took a political stand?"

"¼ The church’s responsibility is to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to induce people to . . . lead Christian lives."



These three statements from one week’s mail raise once again an old, old question. It seems strange that such statements should need an answer in the year in which Rolf Hochhuth’s stinging play, The Deputy, has made painfully clear the moral failure of churches in Germany that neglected political issues and concentrated on spiritual and institutional questions.

Actually, almost all Christians believe that their faith relates to politics at some points. Some see the issue in communism, some in devotional exercises in public schools, some in concern over pornography, some in issues of social justice. Although many people accused pre-Civil War churches of "interfering" in politics when they opposed slavery, today we wonder how any churches were able to avoid the issue. Future Christians will probably wonder why the churches of our time did not do more about the ethical problems that are the stuff of politics.

Let us admit that Christians and churches can make dangerous mistakes in the political arena. Churches have used pressure to gain special privileges; hierarchies have dictated to church members. Christians have made foolish ethical judgments because they lacked technical competence in economics and politics. They have introduced religious prejudice into electoral campaigns and have so tied themselves to political factions as to neglect their ministry to men of diverse views. Sometimes churches have written into public law their specific moral standards.

When so many mistakes are possible, the temptation is strong to divorce "personal Christianity" from "political opinions." Yet because politics deals constantly with human welfare and ethical issues, the Christian Church cannot neglect it.

The most celebrated economist of our time, John Maynard Keynes, once wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury that economics had its origin, at least partially, in ethics. He continued, "There are practically no issues of policy as distinct from technique which do not involve ethical considerations. If this is emphasized, the right of the Church to interfere in what is essentially a branch of ethics becomes even more obvious." The same statement can be applied with equal force to politics.

To evade major issues of social ethics is cowardice. Surely any reading of the Old Testament makes that point clear. The New Testament puts less emphasis on direct political judgments, both because of its eschatological setting and because Jesus and his disciples were not even citizens of the political empire in which they lived. Nevertheless the New Testament indicates that Jesus took his stand against one political group, the Zealots, and did not hesitate to call King Herod "that fox." His followers, when they are voting citizens, deny his lordship if they neglect to serve him in politics.

There are good reasons for Christian restraint in political judgments. Politics involves questions of fact, of probability, and assessment of leaders on which men of ethical sensitivity often differ. In a world of sinners, purity is rarely set against corruption in the way campaign oratory makes it appear. Furthermore, the loyalty of faith must always live in some tension with the tentative opinions and bargaining methods that politics appropriately cultivates. These factors should keep the Church from becoming a community of the politically like-minded.

Christians should readily recognize that they may be mistaken in political judgments. This is no excuse for evasion: the fact of fallibility does not reduce men to silence in theology, ethics or politics. But there is need for three kinds of restraint. (1) Churches should be more cautious than individuals or groups of Christians in taking political stands. (2) Christians, especially churches, should be more ready to make pronouncements on issues than on candidates—always recognizing that times come when issues and men are inseparable. (3) Christian judgments should never stem solely from the clergy but should involve lay specialists with skill in public affairs.

After all this is said, the Christian must always remember that the cardinal article of his faith is that the Holy God has entered fully into the life of mankind. The Church cannot claim holiness by escaping the common life.

Christian Faith and Economic Practice

In 1984 James Gustafson, in his eminent Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective, jolted religious professionals with a blast against "ecclesiastical moralizing" and "intellectual flabbiness": in church "pronouncements." The usually gentle Gustafson accused churches of failure to recognize the complexities of social issues, neglect of "sound theological and ethical arguments" and dogmatic refusal to recognize "the probability of reasonable dissent."

How were we, his colleagues in the churches, to respond? Should we fight back, championing what we had said and done? Or should we thank him for verbalizing misgivings we had felt but not uttered? To me, Gustafson's challenge was like a punch to the jaw. Over some 30 years I had helped draft documents in my denomination, the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. I liked to believe that I so often landed on drafting committees because of an ability to listen to diverse views and help shape a consensus. But I suspected that my skill was in finding words to cover over differences. I half wanted to give Gustafson a counterpunch, half wanted to applaud him for exposing my own feelings.

What Gustafson did in general, Widick Schroeder, professor of religion and society at Chicago Theological Seminary, now does in a specific case. He puts his sharp mind to work on the economic ethic coming out of his (and my) denomination, the United Church of Christ. Apart from details his book may be paradigmatic for other churches and ecumenical groups. He assaults first the process and then the substance of the effort.

Schroeder and I both had limited roles in the process of creating the UCC pronouncement on economic life, but at different stages. If we had interacted, we would frequently have argued, frequently agreed. In any cooperative project, I expect to win some and lose some. In this case I lost quite a few, but never planned to go public with my discontents. Now, however, I find an unexpected invitation from the CHRISTIAN CENTURY to be an irresistible temptation to say a few things. I hope I can be honest without being grouchy.

The study was nine years in gestation. It began-appropriately, given UCC polity-with a few people forming a Theology and Economics Covenant Group in 1980. I was glad to join, because I suspected that the convergence of new ecological issues and old issues of social justice called for fresh ideas, more radical than those of the traditional left or right.

In 1983 the group got endorsement from the General Synod to prepare a study paper, leading toward a pronouncement to be submitted to the Synod. Enlarging our membership, we sought diversity of race, gender and professional competencies. But the group, Schroeder points out, was mostly religious professionals (mainly from denominational staffs, specialized ministries and seminary faculties), leavened by three university economists. A suggestion that there be some practitioners from business, industry, labor unions and government-people engaged in production, collective bargaining, payment of wages, and legislation-was dismissed. That, I think, became a fatal flaw.

The meetings led to lively interchanges, including some clashes that were moderated by friendliness and desire for consensus. Various members wrote position papers on a variety of issues. At one stage I was delegated to prepare a preliminary draft of a full document, incorporating elements from individuals' prior drafts and notes from our discussion. I did so and added a detailed criticism of my own work. I had found it impossible at that stage to do a coherent paper that would be faithful to the diversity of the group.

I thought our task, though not hopeless, would require far deeper exploration of issues than we had done. But then we ran into barriers of time and money. Yes, group work on economic ethics requires economic resources. Our budget did not permit many meetings because of the travel expenses they entailed. Repeatedly we came up to an issue, discussed it too briefly, then contrived a formula that concealed differences. For example, the document criticizes the U. S. economy "not because we prefer an alternative form of economic organization, but because this is our household." It would have been more truthful to say that some of our group did prefer alternative forms of organization and some did not.

At that stage I almost gave up on the process. Instead, in appreciation for colleagues whom I respect and cherish, I identified myself as the "loyal opposition," who would raise questions in the hope of improving a document that I probably could not endorse. At one stage somebody suggested that the study paper include criticisms from members; I welcomed that opportunity, both for myself and for others who felt that their opinions were lost in the search for consensus. But that opportunity did not come, probably because of both calendar and costs.

With the completion of the study paper, I withdrew from the process. I could not honestly defend the document-with all its incoherences and internal contradictions-before proposed regional meetings, and I thought it did not provide an adequate basis for the pronouncement that was to follow.

The study paper. "Christian Faith and Economic Life," evoked a shorter counter-paper from the Pension Boards. "The Market System and American Democratic Policy: Reflections in the Light of Covenantal Tradition." Both went to the churches. The latter document was friendlier than the original to "the market system, combined with democratic polity." Schroeder had a hand in developing this paper. His own view he describes as preferring "democratic capitalism to democratic socialism." However, his book is not a contention for this position; it is an argument that the General Synod, rather than advocating an orthopraxis, should recognize that Christians may reasonably hold diverse opinions on such issues.

The original study paper led to a proposed pronouncement. It evoked a counterproposal from the Commission for Racial Justice and the Council for Racial and Ethnic Ministries, with heightened denunciations of racism, militarism and materialism. Both went to all churches with a request for discussion and reports back. Schroeder says that fewer than one percent of churches responded, and that neither proposal won majority support. The procedure agreed with the UCC constitution but, contends Schroeder, it showed weak local support in a denomination that so strongly emphasizes congregational polity.

Shortly before the General Synod, denominational staff combined elements of the two proposals. The compromise went to the General Synod of 1989 where, after limited discussion and amendment, it was adopted, with the title "A Pronouncement on Christian Faith: Economic Life and Justice."

After a biting criticism of the process, Schroeder examines the content of the study paper and the pronouncement. He finds them "neither internally consistent nor systematically coherent." They are "narrowly conceived." "doctrinaire" and "limited in scope." They are "indoctrination pieces" showing "little tolerance" for the diversity of opinion in the UCC. They represent a "sectarian" position with a utopian cast. They are wistfully trusting of government, except on militarism, where government is pernicious.

Rather than analyze Schroeder's carefully argued position. I shall here make some observations that partly agree with and partly differ from his. I detect in the document three theological-ethical strands, uneasily joined. The first is a Christian perfectionism. which aspires to a communal sharing sometimes practiced in utopian sects but never remotely approached in a large-scale economy. We shrink from our economic responsibility, says the pronouncement, "because we are afraid to bear the suffering love of Christ in our own lives. We are unwilling to depend upon God alone for our security." Such statements are understandable in, say, an Anabaptist "church of the martyrs." They are a puzzling basis for a public economic ethic. Are they, taken literally, an argument against a Social Security system, since God alone gives security? If not, what do they mean?

The second strand is informed by liberation theologies, with their emphasis on class conflict and the need to overthrow present systems. Here the document appeals to the example of the biblical Exodus and God's disruption of "the productive but deadly economy of Pharaoh." But the sophistication of liberation theologies is missing-a point to which I shall return.

The third strand is an economic meliorism represented by a careful listing of the strengths and weaknesses of market economics. This was the position of the economists, who were moderately left of center in the American spectrum but who advocated a market economy modified by government regulation. This position tends to dominate the documents, jarred now and then by the other two strands.

All these strands have found expression in Christian history. I can respect all, when they are truly held. I can learn from all. But they are not easily merged into a coherent ethic. The documents show signs of the tacit bargaining that often goes on in drafting groups: we'll let you get your point in if you'll let us get ours in--even if the two don't agree. Why is it so hard for churches to develop an economic ethic? It is easy to raise a cry of pain and outrage against the destructiveness of the American economy on our own poor people, on other societies and on the ecosystem. I share the anger that informs the UCC pronouncement. It is much harder to move to corrective policies. I see four problems in the journey.

The first and most general is the relation between faith and political action. Gustavo Gutiérrez, in his famed Theology of Liberation, states well the dialectical relation. We cannot separate the two, as though they were unrelated. A faith that refuses to express itself in action is unreal. But to seek "a direct, immediate relationship between faith and political action" is to encourage a "dangerous politico-religious messianism" that does not "respect either the autonomy [I prefer semiautonomy] of the political arena or that which belongs to an authentic faith." For Gutiérrez, the gospel requires the church to strive for justice, to be an advocate for the poor and oppressed. But the gospel does not dictate the "rational analyses of reality" that inform a policy. That distinction, often neglected in religious ethics, makes possible authentic discussion.

The second problem is clarification of the ethical base for policy. A church can properly challenge members to act according to their Christian faith. How does it challenge wider publics? Think of the U.S. Congress, labor unions, multinational corporations, the world's ten largest banks (seven of them Japanese, two French and one American), the United Nations Economic and Social Council. These are not likely to base policy on "the suffering love of Christ." (Neither, in fact, is the church, but that is a different problem.) Schroeder argues persuasively that when churches address public policy, they must relate their biblical faith to a wide range of moral insight.

The third problem is that, even for the church, the path from Scripture to contemporary economic policy is arduous. The Bible's insistent attention to economic justice and its concern for the poor are striking. But biblical remedies are more tentative. To take a familiar example, the Year of Jubilee (Lev. 25) is a ringing declaration for economic equality; but the Levitical law includes canny compromises on sale prices, on differentiation between urban and rural properties, and on clerical privileges. Some of these are irrelevant, some ethically offensive in a modern society.

The New Testament heightens the problem. What does Jesus' injunction against laying up treasure on earth say to church programs funded by income from corporate stocks? Should church agencies sell all their investments and distribute the proceeds to the poor? Why, after rhetorical gestures in that direction, does the General Synod draw back from any such proposal? In the absence of a thoughtful hermeneutic, we on the committee found ourselves ornamenting our drafts with biblical quotations, never saying why we chose them as we did. When somebody commented that we were engaged in sophisticated proof-texting, I had to reply that it was unsophisticated proof-texting.

The fourth problem is the understanding of the functions of an economy--or a political economy, to use the accurate traditional term. In 1926 John Maynard Keynes, not yet the most celebrated economist of this century, said: "The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice, and individual liberty." Today we might add a fourth: ecological viability, in the double sense of reducing consumption of nonrenewable resources and protecting the ecosystem against disastrous pollution. It is easy to become an enthusiast for any one of these four functions. Religious groups usually neglect efficiency, partly because some other interests accent it alone. An adequate ethic takes account of all four, bringing them into a synergistic relation where possible, moderating the various demands where they compete. But that nuanced task does not lend itself to dramatic statements.

To take a contemporary example, how shall we remedy the painful lack of affordable housing? What combination of new construction techniques, market incentives, compulsory taxation, credit structures, voluntary organizations and self-help will be effective? No one of these alone can do the job. To discover an answer and then implement it among competing interests requires moral imagination, technical ingenuity and political skill.

No church pronouncements advocate coerced equality at the surrender of all freedom and all rewards for achievement. None advocates ecological restraint to the extent of intense poverty. None endorses sheer economic efficiency at immense human costs. But few enter into the complex issues that confront every economic and governmental enterprise that seeks to relate the various values that infuse any political economy.

These four problems confront all projects in economic ethics. They do not make efforts impossible. I think of such diverse writers of a past generation as Walter Rauschenbusch, William Temple, R. H. Tawney, Harry Ward, Denys Munby and E. F. Schumacher. I think of such contemporaries as Ronald Preston, John Bennett, Hazel Henderson, Philip Wogaman, Robert Stivers, Michael Novak, Robert Benne, Max Stackhouse, Douglas Meeks, John Cobb and Herman Daly. (I intend to make my own try one of these days, if I live long enough.) I do not commend any of these many writers as the voice of the church. Rather, I find in them, in all their contrariety, coherent arguments. You and I can get our teeth into them, knowing where we want to agree and where we want to fight back.

It is much harder, of course, to weave together a consensus, to harmonize warp and woof, to fit various patterns into a many-seamed garment. Schroeder objects that the UCC process and pronouncement designedly excluded much of the diversity within the denomination. I can concur with that, even as I make the opposite objection: the participants were too diverse to agree on a cogent position without much, much more intensive work.

Must churches then be silent? Not at all. They might-as Schroeder and I agree-show how a community with a shared faith and ethical passion can legitimately produce some agreement and some diversity in practical judgments. That would put on people the burden of coming to judgments of their own. For the churches it could mean more selective, more effective advocacy.

But the pressure in committees to come to consensus is tremendous. Any open confession of divided opinions is regarded as waffling. I suggest that the real waffling is finding clichés that cover up the differences.

Strangely, I must say-as I cannot imagine myself saying 20 years ago-that Roman Catholics often do better. Gustafson, in the blast that I cited at the beginning, exempted from his polemic the pastoral letter of the U.S. Catholic bishops on war and peace. At that time the bishops had not yet produced their pastoral letter on the economy, and I cannot speak for Gustafson on that. But I found I could use the latter in coteaching a course for theological students (Protestant and Jewish) and students in a graduate school of business administration. I could not so use the UCC pronouncement. The Catholic document had a clarity that led to lively controversy and educational excitement. Readers knew what it meant.

Why did the Catholic bishops do better? One reason is that they are a continuing body, who meet regularly and learn to talk to one another. Also, they have an expert secretariat that works between meetings, not making the decisions but shaping up the issues on which the bishops decide. However, there are three other virtues of their process.

First, although the teaching authority is located exclusively in the hierarchy-a polity I think mistaken-the Catholic bishops surprisingly take more account of lay opinion than do most Protestant bodies. They listen at length to specialists from many walks of life and interest groups. And they distinguish between beliefs that they urge on all Christians and beliefs that they offer for consideration in the public arena.

Second, they look for Catholic Christian insights (biblical and ecclesiastical) that are also validated by wider moral experience. Adapting their tradition of natural law without its past rigidities, they look for opportunities to address the body politic in terms of its values as well as their own.

Third, they are more aware of the hermeneutical path from biblical and historical teaching to a modern industrial world. Without acquiescing in that world, they show some skill in addressing it.

A portentous ethical agenda faces all of us who live in this world of rampant economic forces that shape life, often more quickly than we can understand them. Thinking new thoughts, we might-possibly-learn from our past successes and failures.


Toward a Common Morality



When it comes to ethics, even truisms are telling. Once in a religion class I observed that the author we were discussing drew a pretty sharp line on a particular moral issue. "Well," the instructor reminded the class, "we all draw the line somewhere."

And so we do. Both street gangs and military academies have their codes, and even those postmodern gods, millionaire athletes, get sanctioned for choking their coaches. Moral lines are important and we know it—American "live and let live" attitudes notwithstanding. Several years of teaching have even convinced me that students are less likely to be moral relativists than selective absolutists. Scratch the surface and you’ll probably find something which they believe everyone should do.

The significant ethical questions have to do not only with moral boundaries, but with how these are formed, who forms them, why a particular individual or group draws the lines here rather than there, how tightly or loosely lines are drawn, and how easily they contract or expand or erode. The metaphor of drawing lines applies to Hans Küng’s important new book, the latest installment in his effort to advance a "global ethic." Küng, theologian and president of the Global Ethic Foundation, is seeking a viable "outline of the future." Given this future orientation, perhaps it is best to think of Küng’s project in terms of moral vectors—lines with directionality and moral force—leading into the 21st century.

Küng is surely on to something. We—who hear daily about bloodshed in places like Kosovo, are affected by an Asian economic crisis with worldwide repercussions, and know that the $150 Nike shoes sold in U.S. inner cities are cheaply made halfway around the world—are all globalists now on moral matters. And Küng is not alone in stressing the urgency of formulating a global ethic. He cites various world leaders who, individually or in concert, press for some sort of universal moral code.

Küng’s underlying thesis is essentially the same as that of the 1993 statement of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, "Towards a Global Ethic (An Initial Declaration)": In the face of multiple global challenges (political, economic, ecological), a new world order is needed. But there can be no viable order without a viable global ethic. And among the major religions a consensus about the core of that ethic already exists.

Those familiar with the Parliament’s document might recall that it contains two parts: a short "Declaration," drafted by a committee, and a longer section on "Principles," drafted primarily by Küng, who felt that a brief, "prophetic" statement simply would not be enough. In this book Küng presents "an ethically oriented overall view developed step by step through argument," a view which encompasses the global political and economic realms.

Küng begins with an analysis of Henry Kissinger’s amoral construal of international relations and diplomacy, and proceeds to insightful discussions of Richelieu, Bismarck, Woodrow Wilson and the early international relations specialist Hans Morgenthau (with fascinating comments on Morgenthau’s moral ambivalence and his intellectual relationship to Nietzsche). These early chapters reveal the need for an ethic that capitulates neither to crude political realism nor to lofty idealism.

The starting point for this ethic "must always be what is, with a progression from there to what should be." In his search for a middle way, Küng is "all for morality but against moralism," for the latter makes dialogue nearly impossible. Moral principles are clearly in order, but absolute pacifism, for example, is irresponsible. Readers familiar with Max Weber’s famous essay "Politics as a Vocation," which calls for an ethic that falls between a romantic "ethics of ultimate ends" and a worldly "ethics of responsibility," will recognize affinities between that classic text and Küng’s project. Küng’s thought also has affinities to the "Christian realism" of Reinhold Niebuhr (though Küng cites him but once).

Küng’s second step is a fuller articulation of that needed ethic and, as a sine qua non for its effectiveness, a challenge to the world’s religions to work for peace among themselves. These middle chapters are largely a review and development of Küng’s earlier writings on global ethics and responsibility. The desired ethic, Küng argues, must be "related to reality," "penetrate to the deeper ethical levels," "be generally comprehensible" and be "capable of securing a consensus. The fact that an ethic meeting these criteria has already been formulated and published ("Towards a Global Ethic") should demonstrate to skeptics that such an ethic can be worked out.

The core of the ethic—"a minimal consensus, not a minimal standard"—is the principle that "every human being must be treated humanely." This may be reformulated in terms of the Golden Rule, found in various religions, and in terms of "irrevocable directives" concerning commitment to cultures of truth and tolerance, nonviolence and respect for life, economic justice, and equal rights and partnership between men and women.

It is important to emphasize what the ethic is not. It is not a duplication of the Declaration of Human Rights, not a casuistic moral sermon that would solve every difficult case, and not an enthusiastic religious proclamation. Each of these approaches would lead to an ethical cul de sac.

In the final part of the book Küng turns to economics and business at the macro, micro and intermediate levels. He states that globalization is inevitable, unpredictable, but not entirely beyond human control. Neither worn-out welfare-state models (Sweden) nor neocapitalism (Reaganism, Thatcherism) will suffice in this new situation. We require an ethic that is neither reductionistic and economistic nor idealistic and moralistic, neither the pure market economics of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman nor the utopian, inefficient, antimarket economies of the left. An analysis of international declarations (often underestimated) and a growing concern about business ethics (evident in the work of Max Stackhouse, Dennis McCann, Shirley Roels and Preston Williams) indicates that something very much like the global ethic, with its fundamental guiding norms, is gaining ground in the economic sphere.

Küng engages an impressive range of thinkers. Some readers may object that he devotes so much space, in a book espousing a global ethic, to American and European (especially German) writers and issues. Also, while the intended religious audience is broad, Küng singles out his Christian sisters and brothers for challenge and critique.

Here I would come to Kung’s defense. Non-Western voices are not absent from this book, and in other writings Küng has been exemplary in engaging other religions and cultures. Furthermore, even if primarily Western in origin, the political and economic doctrines Küng discusses have had a worldwide impact. They must be addressed.

Finally, given the "minimal" character of the ethical consensus, particular developments and refinements will inevitably occur within as well as between and among traditions. Küng therefore is justified in placing more weight on his own tradition—which is by no means monolithic. The American reader, for instance, will learn a great deal from the European writers (e.g., Max Huber) on whom Küng draws. Küng would no doubt welcome parallel efforts from other traditions to develop the consensus that he and others claim already exists.

As he seeks to bring the global ethic to bear upon politics and economics, Küng makes several historical and systematic forays into each sphere. For instance, he offers a detailed evaluation of misguided steps in the Bosnian debacle, and in order to show why religion ought to be taken more seriously in international affairs he draws upon but rejects Samuel Huntington’s thesis about a "clash of civilizations." He makes important judgments about the legitimate place of "interests" in economics—without, however, probing deeply enough the morally questionable aspects of this often uncritically accepted term. Political scientists, economists and other readers might quibble with these and other aspects of Küng’s argument, and if they don’t stop at quibbling, this is all to the good. Küng hopes that those who think about and influence politics and economics will test his "ethically oriented overall view" and thus advance the project. I, for one, hope that Küng’s work can provide a basis for discussion and action on several fronts.

In that spirit, I enter certain reservations about Küng’s project. One has to do with the assumptions that seem to guide the work. Implicit and sometimes quite explicit in his argument is a Kantian framework for thinking about morality. The Golden Rule functions as a categorical imperative, and duty is strongly emphasized. As John Maynard Keynes observed, behind every proposal there is probably some theoretically minded scribbler, and for Küng one of those scribblers is Kant.

The precise manner in which Küng is or is not a Kantian I leave aside. The issue is whether the imperatives can in fact be applied to concrete circumstances, especially without giving more attention to virtues, such as we find in the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. If not, then the consensus surrounding the imperative may not count for much.

For example, the claim that "every human being must be treated humanely" begs important questions, namely, Who counts as human? and What does humane treatment entail? The history of slavery, the treatment of women, and the persistence of legalized torture should remind us of this. Küng is aware of this problem: "What is truly human is not always easy to define," he says, "but anyone can give many examples of what is truly inhuman." Perhaps, but even the definition of "inhuman" is often up for grabs.

Küng could have clarified what he means by concretizing the ethic had he taken up, for instance, the death penalty—an issue about which he is silent. In the wake of the widely protested execution of Rwandan war criminals, the well-publicized execution in Virginia of a Paraguayan national (despite the pleas of Madeleine Albright and the World Court), and the remarkable Soering case (wherein the European Court of Human Rights unanimously held that the extradition of a German national from the United Kingdom to the U.S., possibly to face the death penalty, would constitute a breach of the European Convention prohibiting torture and inhumane and degrading treatment), surely this is a fitting test case for a concrete global ethic.

How might Küng handle this issue? With Michael Walzer, he would probably place it under the heading of a "culturally differentiated morality," about which "consensus is not necessary." "In disputed concrete questions like abortion or euthanasia," Küng tells us, we can learn from Walzer that "no unifying demands should be made on other nations, cultures or religions to have the same moral praxis." If anyone doubts that the death penalty qualifies as a "disputed concrete question," that person has never led a group of undergraduates through a discussion of Dead Man Walking. So I assume Küng would counsel against any "unifying demands" upon the U.S. to cease this practice. But implicitly, at least, certain international human rights groups and the European Court of Human Rights are making just such a claim. They believe that the "moral praxis" in the U.S. is wrong and ought to change.

If "unifying demands" must await moral consensus at the local level, what remains of the global ethic and, especially, its prophetic edge? What "moral praxis" is not, at one time or another, disputed? Does the fact that the humaneness of bonded child labor, often tied to the caste system, is disputed within India mean that "no unifying demands" should be placed on that country to halt the practice, or that India should not pass laws on the subject (as it has) until its citizenry is of a common moral mind?

Or consider the issue of abortion. In the negotiations over the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, now accepted by virtually every nation except the U.S., the minimum age at which the fetus becomes a child was hotly disputed. The convention finally included in its preamble words taken from the 1959 Declaration on the Rights of the Child, stating that "the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth." However, no such language appears in subsequent articles, leaving it unclear whether the convention means to regulate abortion.

A similar ambiguity appears in "Towards a Global Ethic," which states that "every human being without distinction of age... possesses an inalienable and untouchable dignity" (emphasis added). This would seem to render most abortions morally suspect if not reprehensible. But clearly that argument would not enjoy consensus—the disagreement about when human life begins is too great. Thus, in the case of prenatal life, the "minimal consensus" about "irrevocable, unconditional norms" turns out to be minimal indeed and begins to evaporate into thin air.

Given the range of pressing moral issues that Küng takes up (including war genocide and ecological destruction), I would not make so much of this issue except for two things. First, in the section on politics, Küng attacks the prevailing dichotomy between personal morality and the morality (or amorality) of politics at the macro level. But to relegate abortion (or say, assisted suicide) solely to the realm of personal—indeed, private—choice and leave it there seems to reaffirm that dichotomy.

Second, in his discussion of economics as it intersects with ecology, Küng has an interesting section on responsibility toward future generations. He draws heavily upon the philosopher Hans Jonas, who in turn shows the importance of a religiously grounded moral vision. But to expect that the global ethic can tell us something important about our responsibilities to far-off future generations when deep disagreements keep it from being specific on our responsibilities to prenatal life strikes me as moral leapfrog. It is but a short step to saying that the global ethic is a very good guide, except in areas of real and immediate controversy. At this point, relativism and moral isolationism ("Who are we to judge other persons’ and cultures’ morals?") win the day. Apparently, human beings don’t live in one moral world after all.

We are back to the question of drawing the lines—where we draw them, and why. In the future, Küng and others seeking to further the global ethic project might pay less attention to the "minimal consensus" and more attention to the several types of bias that tend to vitiate and fragment the content of an ethic that is already quite thin.

An historical example might help us here. In his zeal to protect indigenous people of the West Indies from Spanish conquistadors, the 16th-century Dominican Bartolomé de Las Casas advocated the importation of African slaves, whom he believed would be treated better than the Indians. Later, he repented of this view. I suspect that many of us are like the "early" Las Casas: we’re all for treating human beings humanely, but partially blinded as to just what that entails.

As Küng clearly understands, categorical imperatives can take us only so far. What is required is conversion—a theme present in this book but which could be further explored. Conversion is often quite particular and requires us to confront our own, not just somebody else’s, morally jaundiced view.

Successful pursuit of the global ethic project requires us to be humble about our own "little conversions," as Karl Barth once put it, and thus to be willing to find the best in those with whom we disagree. Las Casas’s concerns about indigenous peoples were no less justified because he had a blind spot regarding a proper strategy for their relief. We may commend the one even as we fault the other.

In this regard it is disappointing that Küng’s treatment of his own Roman Catholic tradition is one-sided. The present papacy represents for him a destructive and rigid "moralism" at odds with the spirit of an ethic consisting of norms which, as "Towards a Global Ethic" puts it, are "helps and supports" to people, rather than "bonds and chains." In Küng’s view John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae renders him a dualist who separates the life-loving sheep who uphold Vatican teachings on abortion, contraception and euthanasia from the death-dealing goats who do not. Also anathema to Küng are the Vatican’s alliances with fundamentalist Islamic nations at the conference on population in Cairo and the conference on food in Rome.

There may be fitting rebuttals to Küng’s charges, but even if there are not it is regrettable that, when it comes to economics, he barely mentions John Paul II and the tradition of Catholic social thought. If Küng is looking for a middle ground and wants to demonstrate the viability of a religiously grounded vision, then surely Catholic social teaching deserves more weight. Shortcomings notwithstanding, it has been seeking a prophetic, creative and responsible middle way between collectivism and laissez-faire capitalism for more than a century.

Finally, I would suggest that though one can’t do everything in a single book, at a certain point the global ethic project must engage more fully and critically the various symbols and tenets of the great faiths. Critical analysis of background beliefs and practices—in other words, theology—might help clarify how and why particular moral boundaries are drawn as they are, and whether and how they should be redrawn.

Furthermore, as Küng points out, religion cannot be reduced to ethics. One cannot really talk about religious ethics, then, unless one is willing sometimes to forget about ethics and focus on other, "higher" things. A more robust theological focus will bring to light religion’s profound contribution to a world in need: not merely consensus on moral imperatives, as crucial as this is, but hope in the face of moral impotence and profound evil, confidence in otherworldly aid in this life, the courage to change, and even holy fear. Without leaving politics, economics and interreligious dialogue behind, Küng can advance the global ethic project by returning to those themes upon which, in a dissertation on Karl Barth, he sharpened his theological wits: the fact of sin, the call to repentance and the mystery of grace. These, too, are urgent global issues.

Religion and the Future of Human Rights

As one surveys the surge -- indeed, the explosion -- of human rights laws and activities over the past 40 years, one has to ask whether the overall level of public morality has been improved. The question is cosmic and probably unanswerable. But one of the many factors to be considered is the potential long-range consequences of the aspirations that have become a part of international law since the establishment of the United Nations. Torture, totalitarianism, political detention, the oppression of women, and massive malnutrition may still be tragically present in the universe. But have moral forces been launched that will eventually abate or abolish the inhumanity of these abuses of human rights? The broader question, of course, is whether any moral force has ever had any permanent effect on people's morality since Cain killed Abel. But again we cannot say for certain, since we can only surmise how much worse things would be if the forces of morality had not been vigorously advanced through the centuries by human rights activists, jurists, legislators and individuals with humanitarian instincts.

One of the central global forces in seeking to create what is perceived to be a higher personal and public morality is, of course, religion. The United Nations Charter (1945) grouped religion with race, sex and language, and required all signatory nations to pledge to promote human rights without distinction as to these four. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Optional Protocol (1966), together called the International Bill of Rights, followed the same approach, adding the fight to freedom of thought and conscience to the conditions which may not be made the basis for any invidious discrimination.

But understandably, the elimination of intolerance and of discrimination based on religion or belief was perhaps the most difficult and intractable of all the UN's aspirations. It was not until November 25, 1981, that the UN General Assembly was able to reach a consensus on the "Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion and Belief." And then the final document was not a covenant or a treaty to be ratified by all UN member nations; it is only an article for informal agreement and common aspiration.

The Declaration on Religion seems to be more a Western document than do other UN covenants and treaties. At its core is its exaltation of tolerance and freedom of religion. The declaration notes that the denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion has "brought, directly or indirectly, wars and great suffering to mankind." The General Assembly obviously does not feel called upon to inveigh against the reasons why religions have done things which, in the words of the declaration, "amount to kindling hatred between peoples and nations." The document does not even bring up those reasons but urges only that there be "understanding, tolerance and respect in matters relating to freedom of religion and belief." The norm for the conduct of religious groups is that they not use religion "for ends inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations" and its purposes and principles.

Is this a norm that has enough clarity and consistency to make a difference? Would Muslim nations or Protestant and Catholic forces in Belfast or militantly anticommunist nations like the United States be likely to come to the conclusion that they cannot impose their views about religion on others if in so doing they violate some of the UN's principles? One hopes that the answer would be affirmative, but it is still too soon to try to assess whatever impact the 1981 UN statement on religious freedom may be having. . . .

It cannot be denied that the UN Declaration on Religion tends in the direction of the privatizing of religion. It states that in the event of a clash between what a religious group holds to be true, and the beliefs or nonbeliefs of another group, the principle of "tolerance" should be supreme. That principle has scarcely been a priority followed by all religions, and some would not agree to it now. One has to wonder, therefore, whether there will be an adverse reaction to the UN declaration. Will some militant religious sect reject its attitudes and its approach? Militant Muslims could maintain that the declaration tolerates and even exalts indifference, and that as a result it undermines the very foundation of national and international law and morality. Staunch anticommunists may feel that the declaration condones rather than condemns the Soviet war on religion. And secularists may feel that it is replete with "loopholes" by which religious zealots can justify the repression of disbelievers or dissidents. But in the end one has to say that if the General Assembly were to agree to anything concerning what international law should affirm with respect to human rights and religion, its 1981 declaration reflects what is perhaps the only approach available to 160 nations representing at least a dozen major world religions.

The UN document does, however, raise essential though probably unresolvable questions. Does it seek to create a certain supermorality based on human rights outside of formal religious structures? Does it tend to "paper over" the profound cultural and political differences in the approach of various nations to the role of religion in the formation of morality? Does it minimize the importance of these differences in clearly suggesting that they have to be subordinated to or sublimated by the ideal of promoting tolerance and understanding?

Although these issues are difficult, the UN Declaration on Religion does contain principles which merit applause and admiration. It states, for example, that every child is guaranteed the "right to have access to education in the matter of religion or belief in accordance with the wishes of his parents." Moreover, the child shall "not be compelled to receive teaching on religion or belief against the wishes of his parents." Other specific rights are protected; e.g., all people may observe days of rest and celebrate holidays in accordance with their religious traditions.

The United States clearly had an immense influence on the formation of the United Nations Charter and the International Bill of Rights. The U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are reflected in the Charter and the human rights covenants, which for the first time in history gave international effectiveness and enforcement to the aspirations of Western democratic states. The UN Declaration on Religion also reflects what the United States developed as a way to harmonize the interests of government and the objectives of religion. The Constitution's First Amendment forbids an establishment of religion but maximizes the free exercise of both religion and irreligion. To some extent that is also the underlying formula of the UN declaration. The document does not prohibit state-sponsored religion, but it strongly advocates tolerance and expressly forbids any discrimination on the basis of religion or belief.

Can such a formula, applied throughout the world, allow diverse religions to flourish and in so doing create the necessary moral support to ensure the enforcement of a wide range of human rights? Or does the denial of an official status to any organized religion tend to inhibit that religion, so that it will not radiate those moral and spiritual values which are, by everyone's admission, indispensable for the successful enforcement of internationally recognized human rights?

These are the questions which will be asked more and more -- especially by the Muslim nations where religion, government, law and morality are interwoven and inseparable in ways almost unknown to Western nations. In the literature about human rights, however, there is -- at least up to now -- -no pronounced rejection of the entire set of presuppositions on which the UN human rights covenants are grounded. Nations which have inherited Anglo-American or common law from the Commonwealth -- such as India -- feel comfortable with the international covenants, even though they were fashioned in large part by the former colonial powers. African nations are less comfortable with the UN covenants, but those covenant are not substantially dissimilar from the civil law or the Napoleonic Code which Belgium, France and Portugal brought to some African countries.

The nations of Asia theoretically feel less kinship with the premises and principles of the new international human rights law, but again there have been no strong protests from scholars or jurists in Asian lands. The millions living in former European colony nations should recognize that their liberation from the domination of a foreign power came about because of the widespread acceptance of the human rights and fundamental freedoms set forth in the documents of the United Nations.

The deepest and firmest conviction of those who drafted the International Bill of Rights was that there is a common and universal set of moral principles known or knowable to all human beings. For centuries the Catholic tradition has called that concept the natural moral law and has defined it as a participation by humanity in the eternal law rooted in God himself. Jurists and others perceive that tradition as deriving from the universal respect that people have or should have for the voice of conscience which can or should be heard by all human beings. Others would describe in somewhat different terms the moral assumptions underlying the UN human rights covenants. But it seems fair to state that in the vast array of diverse nations, there is some kind of consensus that accepts or at least does not reject the premises and the principles on which those covenants rest,

But, one has to ask, does this consensus stem from the religious tradition of these nations, or has it arisen despite or contrary to that tradition? And, equally important, can the contents of the International Bill of Rights endure and grow if the religious tradition of a nation or region is in fundamental opposition to it on, for example, the role of women in society or the way in which political dissidents are to be treated?

During the 40 years in which the International Bill of Rights developed, few took the time to think about these profound and troubling questions. In addition, they were not pressing, since the covenants did not become a part of world law until 1976. The hope was and is that all the world's religious and moral traditions would continue to articulate their viewpoints and that somehow from all the different sounds a world symphony would be created. No one can say with finality whether that symphony is in the process of being created. But the dream and the vision of the international covenants' framers continue to echo and inspire. The primary promises and pledges now contained in world law give hope to the humiliated, the marginalized, the dispossessed and the alienated. If such people become angry, they think of fighting for their rights. If they witness the degradation of other human beings by despots, they feel not only apprehension and anxiety but a determination to rise up against tyranny.

Nonetheless the question recurs: Can a worldwide morality and jurisprudence about human rights come to have a paramount influence when those rights are based not on theology or any organized religion but only on the rational commitment that all people are equal and should have equality and justice? In the history of the world it has almost always been assumed that the ultimate and permanent basis of a nation's morality must rest on religion and be agreed to by the vast majority of its citizens. Except possibly for the United States -- although one could argue that the U.S. from 1790 to about 1950 was a de facto pan-Protestant nation -- nations have grounded their public morality in the people's religious, ethnic and cultural roots.

Perhaps even that deep-rooted tradition has to be deemed an anachronism in a world where sovereign nations themselves may in many ways be anachronisms. In any event, the International Bill of Rights has bypassed the idea that all human rights derive from the morality or mystique of individual nation-states. Instead, it has proclaimed a wide variety of economic and political rights which are to be preferred in the event that any nation seeks to annul them as inconsistent with that nation's sense of moral or legal priorities. It is a revolution that seeks to change something fundamental in the way nations have operated. It is a magnificent and beautiful experiment, which came to birth in 1976. Its feasibility and its chances of success are not very clear at this time. But in times past, the establishment of a set of rules or laws like the Code of Hammurabi, the Justinian Code, the Magna Carta or the U.S. Bill of Rights has eventually had an enormous impact. Consequently there are many reasons to think that the promulgation of the International Bill of Human Rights, while seemingly an act that could be perceived as naive and unrealistic, may be one of the most important events in world history.

But there is some reason to think that there may be a surprisingly clear and coherent consensus in the family of nations about the nature and enforceability of human rights? A review of some systems of law tends to confirm the idea that the framers of the International Bill of Rights were not just dreamers or superidealists; they were building on persistent and profound strands in the history of jurisprudence in the West and other cultures.

In 1968 UNESCO, to celebrate the International Year for Human Rights, published a collection of texts gleaned from different cultural traditions which illustrate the universality in time and space of the rights of humanity. The collection's title, The Birthright of Man, reflects the idea that the struggle for human rights is as old as history itself. The desire to protect the individual from the abuse of power by a monarch, a tyrant or the state has its roots in the traditions and faiths of India, China, Japan, Persia (modern Iran), Russia and other nations.

The perennial conflict between the positive law of the sovereign and the unwritten law of the gods or of nature is seen in its classic form in Sophocles's Antigone, in which the respect for the dead and the love of a brother transcend whatever the king might order.

In the Code of Hammurabi, 2,000 years before Christ, a monarch records that his mission is "to make justice reign in the kingdom, to destroy the wicked and the violent, to prevent the strong from opposing the weak . . . to enlighten the country and promote the good of the people." And in the medieval period, Thomas Aquinas's understanding of the natural moral law formed the matrix for ideas about inalienable, indefeasible and imprescriptible human rights.

But while all the rhetoric and the reality of human rights law prior to the past 40 years may be impressive, one has to concede that the UN's human rights covenants have taken a great leap forward. They contain a dream and a vision never really elaborated or espoused previously. The core of the human rights treaties can be discovered, at least in essence, in the history of law at the national level. But the notion of spelling out a code of rights to be enforced across the world is still a startling idea.

The dream of human rights appears to many to be utopian and almost unattainable because of the wretched conditions that exist in the world. For many reasons, human rights are often not being enforced. One of the major reasons is the buildup in arms during the 40 years since the human rights revolution began. The rise in the number of Third World military governments has had an adverse impact on human rights, since military-controlled governments are more than twice as likely as other Third World governments to make frequent use of torture and other violent forms of repression. In 1986 more than half of the world's military governments regularly used torture, brutality, disappearances and political killings to intimidate their populations.

In 1986, the International Year of Peace, global military expenditures reached $900 million. The huge pyramid of public debt built up by military extravagance was to a great extent responsible for the fact that in 1986 at least 1 billion people were inadequately housed, every third adult could not read or write, and one person in five lived in grinding poverty.

The hemorrhage of resources consumed for arms means that a Hiroshima-like catastrophe occurs every three days: for example, 120,000 children die unnecessarily. This grim statistic reminds one of the adage that statistics are just people with their tears wiped away.

The number of casualties from war during the 40 years of the human rights revolution is appalling. According to Ruth Leger Sivard's World Military and Social Expenditures, 1986 (World Priorities, 1986), 19.6 million persons were killed in World War I and 38.8 million in World War 11. But since 1945 about 25 million more have lost their lives in military conflicts, bringing the total killed in wars in this century to 83.6 million.

The United States in its role as the moral architect of the UN Charter and the human rights covenants certainly gave a creative impetus to law and idealism worldwide. But in the decades during which the U.S. has largely resisted ratification of UN treaties, it has established 300 major overseas military installations that cover 2 million acres and utilize 474,170 U.S. personnel (not including 250,000 U.S. service people aboard ship).

The person who suffers is carrying out St. Paul's mysterious mandate that all of us must somehow help make up what is wanting in the sufferings of Christ. For the Christian who believes in the solidarity -- indeed, the identification -- of every person with the humanity of the Son of God, the sufferings of that person will be a part of the redemption of the world. A brother or sister of Christ whose human rights are violated is a co-redeemer of the human race, an agent for the sanctification of Christ's church and, as a child of God, one chosen in the unfathomable ways of divine providence to bear witness in ways that may never be comprehended by the person who suffers.

While this theology of suffering may at first seem to promote a certain indifference to the violation of human rights, it should not, if correctly understood, lead to a passive acceptance of the brutalities that people and governments inflict on innocent human beings. Properly interpreted, the Christian mysticism about suffering should galvanize the faithful to action because it is not merely human beings who suffer; it is Christ himself. It is literally true that if human sin and suffering had been less, Christ's agony in the garden would have been less. At that moment Christ perceived all the abuses of human beings that would occur through the centuries, and he suffered personally for them. Consequently, if people can now diminish the level and number of affronts and abuses to the brothers and sisters of Christ, his suffering will be diminished.

Human rights activists operating in a secularized atmosphere do not make appeals to a theology or even a philosophy of human rights. They operate on those principles of humanitarianism and idealism that reflect universally accepted values in modern society. The law contained in the UN covenants is based on assumptions which are agreed to by the vast majority of humanity. It is further agreed that if these laws were strictly enforced, the abuse of human rights would be sharply curtailed. Some observers may wonder if these assumptions are adequate to the tasks involved. The worldwide consensus that the observance of human rights should be improved is so pervasive that the doubters and dissenters are not very visible. But it is self-evident that the human rights movement would be stronger still if it were buttressed by theological and philosophical underpinnings.

Those who believe in the Judeo-Christian tradition and perhaps the believers in any of the world's religions-may argue that law will not be effective without love. They are right. Love, or the capacity to subordinate one's own selfish interest to the good of others, is essential if civilization is not to revert to some form of human cannibalism. But law which can be defined as the enforcement of human rights is also the operating arm of love. Law is a feeble instrument even if it is strong and is supported by sanctions that will work. For without love, law has to rely on sheer deterrence or fear or threat -- and in those circumstances law will be evaded or avoided or ridiculed.

The quality of a society can be judged, Lord Moulton wrote, by its obedience to the unenforceable. Through the centuries human rights have not even been projected as enforceable by the world community. But now for the first time since humanity invented law, there is a plea for the internationalization of those fundamental rules or aspirations common to all people.

Even if all the human rights initiatives undertaken by the family of nations over the past two generations became miraculously effective, humanity still would not experience a return to some lost paradise forfeited by ancestral sin. But the implementation of human rights would be a way of curbing and civilizing all the brutish activities which derive from that primordial breakaway.

Americans have a unique role to play in the human rights revolution. It was the U.S., more than any other nation, that led the way to the formation of the United Nations and the development of that organization's 20 or more treaties. It is the United States that transmitted the moral and philosophical bases of its own governmental institutions to the family of humankind. So it is the U.S. which has a daunting moral, legal and political duty to verify and enhance the transcendent nature of human rights. George Santayana said it well: "Being an American is in and of itself almost a moral condition."

Another American -- lawyer, poet and Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish -- epitomized the U.S. mandate in these words: "There are those who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind are nothing but a dream. They are right. It is a dream. It is the American dream."

 

Capital Punishment: Deserved and Wrong

Social critic Ernest van den Haag argues that any attempt to establish the moral wrongness of the death penalty must show that no crime ever deserves capital punishment; that is, he says, opponents of capital punishment must disprove the contention that there at least some convicted criminals who morally deserve execution.

I disagree. In fact, I think that opponents of capital punishment must do precisely the opposite. If their position is not to be perceived as sentimental, if they hope to persuade any significant number of their overwhelming opposition, they must start by making clear that their case is not in principle argued on behalf of those who have been rightly convicted of capital crimes. Opponents of the death penalty should be emphatic that relative to what is "deserved" -- that is, to what those who have committed murder have reason to claim from their society -- there are many who "deserve" to die. Indeed there must also be many who similarly "deserve" that penalty among those who receive lesser sentences (as also among other guilty persons who are never apprehended or are not convicted). Indeed, there are some for whom legal execution is much better than what they "deserve." If the rhetoric rings a bit harsh to anti-capital punishment sensibilities, it is not designed for preaching to the converted. Somehow it must be conveyed that the capital punishment debate is not about what murderers deserve, but rather about how society should express and defend its fundamental values.

Implicit in references to deserving are the dual assumptions that to speak thus is to speak with the vocabulary of retributive justice, and that the principle of retribution, however much qualified by other relevant principles, is inherent in any notion of penalty or punishment. The formulation of penalties may be motivated or even dominated by considerations of deterrence, rehabilitation, mitigating circumstance, humaneness, respect of persons or protection of society, but in every case there is necessarily the assumption that the legal penalty is occasioned and justified by the behavior of the one penalized.

It is precisely the guilt of the offending party that legitimates the externally imposed forfeiture of some valuable commodity -- whether freedom, property or life itself. This fact would remain true even if "rehabilitation" were again to be favored in penal theory, for apart from wholly totalitarian premises, no mentally competent adult (a concept which raises another set of questions) can be deprived involuntarily of liberty in order to undergo rehabilitative measures simply because it is judged that he or she needs or would benefit from such measures. Only the guilt incurred by specific offenses renders the individual subject to a deprivation of liberty, irrespective of whether the deprivation may be used for a constructive purpose. Thus the individual is presumed to have "earned" or "deserved" the deprivation, and it is this "deserving," with its indissoluble element of retribution, that constitutes the deprivation as punishment (as contrasted with persecution or oppression).

Granting that an indissoluble element of retributive justice attaches to the notion of punishment does not make retribution the whole of justice, nor does it imply that any specific type of punishment is prima facie appropriate. Establishing capital punishment as potentially "deserved" requires a further step. The essence of the idea of deserving, whether as retribution or reward, is reciprocity. The rhetoric of the American Declaration of Independence may speak of "rights" to life and liberty as inalienable, but the enjoyment of such rights within society was and is conditional; otherwise deprivation of liberty by penal incarceration would be inconceivable. It is no more unreasonable that our claim on society to respect our lives should be contingent on our respecting the lives of others than that our claim on liberty is contingent on our respecting the liberty, person and property of others.

Bluntly stated, individuals who voluntarily take another's life (except under traditional categories of exoneration, particularly self-defense) thereby forfeit any claim on society's respecting their own. Strictly from the standpoint of "deserving," murderers deserve no better fate than their victims, and this assertion applies not simply to the relatively small number actually sentenced to death but to a substantial percentage of the far larger number who receive lesser sentences. If it is valid that not respecting another's right to live forfeits any claim one can make for one's own life, it applies even to the killings erupting from anger, jealousy or revenge which make up such a large part of murder statistics but are not normally subject to capital punishment.

What this situation demonstrates, however, is the severe limits of the notion of "deserving" as the basis for the death penalty. Long before Furman v. Georgia (1972), which briefly halted executions in the United States, or Gregg v. Georgia (1976), which reinstated the death penalty although imposing criteria that must be met to justify the capital sentence, it was already applied only to a limited number of those convicted of murder (for example, women were rarely executed). It was as true prior to those two crucial Supreme Court cases as it is now that the fundamental question regarding capital punishment is not what murderers have done or deserve. The issue is what society should do and be in response.

If "deserving" were the key to punishment (not simply its presupposition), should we not also restore torture to the penal system? Sadistic cruelty, the prolongation of terror and pain, the casual callousness of some murders for no more reason than to eliminate witnesses to a minor theft -- such horrors of contempt for life frequently underlie the distancing language of homicide and due process. On all too many occasions, hanging would truly be "too good for him," but that familiar phrase reminds us how far civilized law restrains itself from meting out thoroughgoing retribution, presumably for reasons that must supersede society's legitimate concern for reciprocity, proportionality and just deserts.

The struggle to abolish capital punishment in the United States is currently a losing one. If it is to be won in the arena of public opinion and legislation (for it clearly will not soon be won by judicial review), any argument capable of persuading opposition must first establish its realism by agreeing that execution can be deserved. There are, nevertheless, two (and perhaps only two) arguments that supersede the issue of deserving and seem, in principle at least, capable of broad assent.

The most fundamental argument for discontinuing the death penalty is that society can best express the seriousness of its commitment to the sanctity of human life by abstaining from taking it, despite having justifiable cause. To respect human life precisely where its bearer has forfeited personal claim to that respect would be society's ultimate statement both of the sanctity of life and of the kind of society it wants to be. Undeniably, the reciprocity of killing as punishment for murder in its own way takes life very seriously; but two side effects undercut its impact. Achieved reciprocity implies a new equilibrium, a state of justice achieved or restored, but the taking of an innocent life cannot be compensated, any more than a jealous lover's act of murder is morally neutralized by a self-punishing suicide. Murderers should never be allowed the comfort of the illusion that they can "pay" for their crime.

The second side effect is that the whole process of killing or being killed may enforce the image of a "contest -- an exciting highest-stakes gamble enacting in real life the games of children and the fantasies of television, with the possibility of one's own violent death adding zest to the challenge (as it apparently does for some race drivers, mountain climbers or professional daredevils).

The principle that society best expresses its cherishing of life by abstaining from taking even the life that deserves to be taken corresponds to the logic of ultimate goodness as articulated by those religious traditions in which God's greatest attributes are love, mercy and compassion -- which attributes are held to be expressed precisely in the fact that persons are not dealt with as strictly as they deserve. This is not to say that a secular criminal-justice system should embody, for example, a theology of grace, but it is not too much to ask that a culture's symbols of ultimate justice and life's sanctity inform its ideals and practices. Protecting even the lives of those who have forfeited their claim to protection articulates society's abhorrence of killing.

The best paradigm for this position is the biblical story of the first murder. The mark put on Cain was a sign and burden of shame and culpability, but it was also explicitly a sign of protection -- a warning that his life must not be taken in retaliation. Opposition to capital punishment need not be sentimental, lenient, or even sympathetic toward the convicted. In principle it is perfectly compatible with views of punishment harsher than those normally practiced toward convicted criminals (murderers or otherwise), but whether one's general attitude concerning punishment tends toward the severe or the lenient, the basic fact of the Cain story as a paradigm is the preservation of a guilty life. There remains room to differ on how deep, how painful, how indelible, the mark shall otherwise be.

The second fundamental reason for abolishing capital punishment does return us to the issue of deserving, although in an inverted manner. A society that respects life should never permit itself to execute an innocent person if it is within the society's capacity to avoid such an act -- as it surely is. Refraining from executing even those persons who may deserve execution is the way -- the only way -- in which to avert the occasional execution of persons mistakenly convicted, and to leave open the possibility of their exoneration. It is also the only way to avert the execution of persons who did commit the crime in question, but did so under circumstances of mitigation or diminished capacity such that capital punishment would not normally have been imposed had the circumstances been more fully understood.

Such cases, however, are secondary to the horror of executing one wrongly convicted, and focusing on them might occasion confusion regarding the general thesis. Except in cases of severely diminished capacity, the perpetrator of murder still forfeits any personal claim on life, even though society may add an injustice of its own by being inconsistent with a normally more lenient treatment of similar circumstances.

The criminal-justice system is quite imperfect as a mechanism for determining guilt and innocence. "Law and order" advocates are more than ready to grant this generalization with respect to the all-too-frequent case of guilty parties going free, but inevitably it happens occasionally in the opposite direction as well. The burden of proving guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt" is far from absolute as a protection against the accidents of incriminating circumstance, the political ambitions of some prosecutors, the potential for framed evidence, the passions of communities, and the prejudices and limitations of jurors, judges and prosecutors alike. It is sad enough when any conviction and imprisonment is belatedly recognized as mistaken, for society cannot ever redress the injustice of incarcerating an innocent person. Pain and humiliation cannot be reversed nor can the lost years of freedom be restored.

Yet society need only forego this one form of punishment in order to assure that it will not itself take an innocent life or prematurely cancel the possibility of the wrongly convicted person's experiencing vindication.

Albert Camus's essay "Reflections on the Guillotine" cites a 19th-century French jurist's application of the law of probability to the chance of a judicial error with a result of one innocent man's being condemned in every 257 criminal cases. Perhaps differences of a century in time, of American versus French legal systems, and the safeguards of Supreme Court restrictions serve to further reduce such a probability (although racial bias and politics may push in the opposite direction), but just how often this happens is not the point. The possibility, indeed the inevitability, of mistakes is inherent in this or any other criminal-justice system. If execution of the innocent nevertheless is avoidable, a humane society will elect the option that avoids it. Most of those who murder are, after all, already spared. Sparing the small remainder is cheap insurance against the most terrible consequence of judicial fallibility.

These two points, of course, do not constitute the whole case. Capital punishment's lack of demonstrated superiority as a deterrent (the evidence for its effectiveness being at best mixed), the capacity of society to protect itself equally well by permanently imprisoning those who are currently being executed (which is possible at limited marginal cost, especially when one takes into account the cost of the extended trial procedures and interminable appeals and reviews which usually accompany capital punishment) -- all these points are important, but their utility is chiefly as rebuttal arguments in response to the empirically weak but emotionally strong claims made on behalf of capital punishment.

Likewise, some of the "unconverted," perhaps particularly among those with strong religious convictions, may yet be moved by more idealistic arguments for a different sense of what human life as such deserves, the horror of a particular individual's behavior notwithstanding. There are, for example, highly conservative evangelical or fundamentalist Christians, including one ranking member of Pat Robertson's presidential campaign team, who oppose capital punishment on the grounds that responsibility for life and death belongs only to God, and that society should never cut short any person's opportunity to repent or embrace faith.

In any case, a change in the American mind-set regarding capital punishment is very much an uphill goal. Those arguments most likely to be persuasive are ones that grant rather than challenge the strength of the pro-capital punishment position - -the "deserved" character of the death penalty -- yet seek to refocus society's priorities toward how it can best express revulsion at killing and inculcate the cherishing of life.

A Practical Christian Pacifism

Few moral and theological positions are as deeply cherished by their adherents, yet so quickly dismissed by their opponents, as pacifism. The moral legitimacy of using violence is among the most urgent issues of our time, and yet its discussion slips quickly into an exchange of stereotypes. Pacifists are to be commended, even admired—runs the familiar observation in mainline Protestant, Catholic and evangelical circles—but we who know what the world is really like cannot share their naive optimism. The pacifist’s reply has become equally familiar: the principles of just war, noble as they may sound, in practice merely pronounce a blessing upon ruling nations and ideologies.

I have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the gulf separating pacifists from defenders of just war. The church in which I was raised, the Christian Reformed Church, is what one draft board, in refusing a friend’s request to be recognized as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam war, aptly termed a "war church." Calvinist theology has long been hostile to pacifism, and most Reformed churches’ reflections on war begin by distinguishing justified from unjustified wars. Yet the Reformed perspectives on the nature of the person and of society can actually support a realistic form of pacifism—a version that has received too little attention in either the "peace churches" or the "war churches."

Pacifism need not be politically naive, nor need it place undue faith in human goodness. These may be telling objections to some pacifists, but a careful articulation of the pacifist vision can meet them. By the same token, pacifists ought not deride just-war theory as merely Realpolitik in vestments, for the just-war tradition, when taken seriously, is just as stringent in its demands as is pacifism.

The case for Christian pacifism has been made frequently and fervently by many writers. The Gospel writers record that Jesus called his followers to a way of life in which violence and division are overcome by sacrificial love. We must not return evil for evil, Jesus taught, but must return good for evil; we must not hate those who wrong us but must love our enemies and give freely to those who hate us. These themes in Jesus’ ministry were deeply rooted in the Hebrew prophetic tradition, and Jesus’ ministry an his sacrificial death were a continuation and a fulfillment of that tradition. Followers of Jesus, Christian pacifists say, must follow both his example and his teachings: they must show love for all in their actions and seek healing and reconciliation in every situation.

The early Christian community understood Jesus’ commands to prohibit the bearing of arms. Christians refused to join the military, even though the Roman army of the period was as much a police force as a conquering army. Those who converted to Christianity while in military service were instructed to refrain from killing, to pray for forgiveness for past acts of violence, and to seek release from their military obligations. A striking example of the pervasiveness of pacifism in the early church is the fact that Tertullian and Origen—church fathers who stood at opposite poles regarding the relation of faith to philosophical reasoning—each wrote a tract supporting Christians’ refusal to join the military.

A profound change in the Christian attitude toward war occurred at the time of the emperor Constantine, whose conversion to Christianity helped bring the Christian community from the fringes to the center of Western society. From the time of Constantine to the present, pacifism has been a minority view in the Christian church. The just-war tradition, rooted in the ethical theories of Plato and Cicero and formulated within the Christian tradition by Augustine, Aquinas and the Protestant Reformers, defends military force as a last resort against grave injustice. According to this view, when the innocent are threatened by an unjust aggressor and all other remedies have failed, Jesus’ demand for sacrificial love may require us to use lethal force.

Pacifism and just-war theory reach different conclusions only in a narrow range of cases: both positions insist that Christians must strive always for healing and reconciliation and must act out of love for all, and both traditions unequivocally condemn the reasons—whether nationalism, territorial or economic gain, revenge or glory—for which nearly all wars have been fought. Yet the differences that exist are both theologically and politically significant. Just-war defenders argue that if all means short of violence have failed and organized violence promises to be a limited and effective means of reestablishing justice, Christians may participate in war. Pacifists insist that to resort to warfare, even for a moral end, is to adopt a means inconsistent with the Christian’s calling.

Why is the pacifist vision of a healing and reconciling ministry of nonviolence not universally embraced in the churches? I would single out five prominent arguments to which pacifists, if they are to make their own position cogent and realistic, must respond.

Pacifism is surrender. "The pacifist viewpoint is appealing in principle, but in practice it means surrendering to the aggressor," is a charge heard often. "Capitulation to the forces of evil cannot be moral."

The problem with this objection is that it equates pacifism with passive nonresistance. Pacifism is not synonymous with "passivism": the pacifist rejection of war is compatible with a great many measures for defense against aggression. In fact, pacifist theorists have urged the development of a civilian-based non-military defense, which would encompass organized but nonviolent resistance, refusal to cooperate with occupying forces, and efforts to undermine enemy morale.

The tendency to equate pacifism with "passivism" and capitulation reflects how little we know of the remarkable historical successes nonviolent tactics have achieved, even in the face of brutal repression. From the courageous Swedish and Danish resistance to Nazism to the transformation of Polish society by the Solidarity labor movement, and from the struggle for Indian self-rule led by Gandhi to the struggle for racial equality in the United States led by Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, nonviolence has been a creative and effective force. Whether nonviolent resistance can always overcome aggression and whether its cost in suffering and death will in every case be less than that of war is difficult to say, but at least it cannot be said that pacifism is merely a policy of capitulation.

Pacifism extolls purity. "The main problem with pacifism" runs a second objection, " is that the pacifist places a higher value on his or her own purity of conscience than on saving others’ lives. If we are going to fulfill our obligations, we have to be willing to get our hands dirty and not hold ourselves on some higher moral plateau than everyone else. Pacifists enjoy the freedom that others ensure by their willingness to resort to arms.

This objection rests on two confusions. In the first place, pacifism is an objection to war per se, not merely an objection to personal participation in war. Pacifists do not ask for a special exemption because of their high moral views or delicate sensibilities; they refuse to participate in war because it is immoral. Their exemption from military service is simply the compromise position that has developed in a society in which moral objection to war is not unanimously shared.

A second confusion in this argument is the notion that taking part in war shall be regarded as a lesser evil, rendered necessary by extreme circumstances. Such a claim has no part in traditional just-war theory—or, indeed, in any coherent moral theory. The just-war proponent believes that war is sometimes required by justice, in which case it is not the lesser of two evils but is itself a good. The issue is whether intentional killing in war is ever a good thing, not whether one ought to grit one’s teeth and bravely commit one wrong rather than another.

Pacifism is based on optimistic humanism. "Pacifism links a noble ideal—the avoidance of violence—to naive and implausible assumptions about the inherent goodness of human nature. If I thought that I could trust people and nations to resolve their differences peaceably and fairly, I would be a pacifist too. But history teaches us differently."

This objection brings us near the heart of the theological argument against pacifism. Indeed, it is a telling argument against some forms of pacifism. Gandhi, for example, was sustained by a deep faith in the goodness of human nature, a goodness he thought nonviolent action could call forth. "If love or non-violence be not the law of our being," he wrote, "the whole of my argument falls to pieces" (in Gandhi on Non-violence, edited by Thomas Merton [New Directions, 1964], p. 25). Similar optimism about human nature seems to have motivated some Quaker writers and much of the pacifism of American church leaders following the First World War. Such optimism requires a selective and unrealistic assessment of human behavior and human capacities. If pacifism rests on a trust that people have a natural capacity and an irrepressible tendency to resolve their differences justly and harmoniously, then pacifism is a delusion, and a dangerous one.

Such trust is not, however, essential to pacifism. There can be a realistic pacifism, a pacifism that gives due weight to the sinfulness and perversity of human nature.

Pacifists and defenders of just war can agree that every life is tainted with sin, and that evil will inevitably arise, but still disagree about how we ought to respond when it does arise. An essential companion to the doctrine of sin is the doctrine of grace. Though human nature is corrupted by sin, it is also illuminated by God’s presence and guidance; God’s grace shows itself in countless ways in the lives of Christians and non-Christians alike. In light of this fact, evil demands a response that overcomes rather than compounds evil. Such a pacifist stance differs significantly from a Gandhian or humanistic faith in the capacity of the human heart for goodness, while retaining the conviction that there are other remedies for sin besides war.

It should be noted, further, that realism about human nature cuts two ways: if it undermines a pacifism based on optimism, it also undermines the assumption that weapons of destruction and violence intended to restrain evil will be used only for that purpose. The reality of human sinfulness means that the instruments we intend to use for good are certain to be turned to evil purposes as well. There is therefore a strong presumption for using those means of justice that are least likely to be abused and least likely to cause irrevocable harm when they are abused. An army trained and equipped for national defense can quickly become an army of conquest or a tool of repression in the hands of an unprincipled leader. But a nonviolent national defense force, or a peacekeeping force bringing together citizens of a dozen nations, is of little use except for its intended purpose.

Pacifism confuses moral categories. "The basic confusion of pacifists is their assumption that the principles of Christian morality which we ought to follow in our individual lives can be applied to governments. Only individuals can truly be moral; governments are by their very nature ‘immoral,’ if we judge them as we would judge individuals. Killing is wrong for individuals, but for states an entirely different standard must be applied."

The notion that morality applies to individuals and not to governments is completely contrary to a central doctrine of Reformed theology which is endorsed, in varying forms, by other Christian traditions as well: that Jesus Christ is the Lord not just of the church, nor of a special sphere of religious activity, but of all of the natural and human world. We are not called to serve God in our religious activities and to carry on as usual in the other areas of life—far from it. We are called to live as followers of Jesus Christ in every human activity. Thus, we must obey God’s demands for justice and reconciliation not only as families and churches but as societies. There is no room in Christian social thought for excluding governments from the realm of morality. If Christian ethics permits killing in certain circumstances, then violence is legitimate as a last resort, both for individuals and for governments. But if, on the other hand, Jesus did in fact demand that the members of the new Kingdom he inaugurated renounce all killing, then we must restructure both our personal and our institutional lives to fulfill that demand.

Pacifism is too patient. "To suffer wrong rather than harm another, to return nonviolent resistance for violent oppression, might have been appropriate at an earlier stage in our struggle. But the violence inflicted on us for so long leaves us no choice but to use force in return. We can endure no more; only arms can bring justice now."

This argument, the cry raised in Soweto and San Salvador, is painfully familiar, and it is impossible to hear it without feeling the deep pain of those who make it. I am not sure whether this argument can be answered. Those of us who regard it at a comfortable distance may not know the possibilities that remain to those whose lives have been stunted by violence.

Are there wrongs so grave that only violent means can set them right? I do not believe there are, but I do believe that the historical point at which one faces this question is significant. Nazism would surely have been destroyed by sustained nonviolent resistance had Christians and others not averted their gaze from its evil for so long. But whether Nazism could have been destroyed by nonviolent means in 1939 is a far more difficult question. Similarly, the Christian churches of South Africa, both black and white, could once have ended the policy of apartheid through nonviolent reforms, but today, as the black death toll mounts into the thousands, it is difficult to imagine that the system will fall unless commensurate force is brought to bear against it.

Situations of extreme oppression do not invalidate the pacifist vision of nonviolent change. Active but nonlethal resistance is both theologically and practically defensible even in seemingly hopeless circumstances—as the courageous work of André Trocmé in Vichy France and of several church leaders in South Africa today makes evident. Yet many in such situations turn to violence as their last hope in the struggle for justice. We may dispute their conclusion, but our response should be more one of solidarity than of condemnation.

I have argued that the major objections to pacifism can be met by a pacifism grounded in Christian commitment and realism about human nature. To answer these objections is not to show that pacifism is the only responsible stance that a Christian may adopt. The issue of the justifiability of violence needs to be faced squarely and debated vigorously in the churches, and pacifists and non-pacifists can learn much from each other in this debate. Nevertheless, I believe that the practical pacifism I have described deserves more serious consideration than it has received in Christian circles, especially since the major alternative to pacifism in Christian ethics, the just-war tradition, has significant deficiencies. Important as the just-war tradition has been in the development of Christian thinking about war and peace, it gives insufficient weight to the central Christian calling to be agents of healing and reconciliation.

Furthermore, the radical changes that the nuclear age has brought to the phenomenon of war make it impossible to weigh means against ends in the way required by just-war theory. War is justified, according to just-war criteria, when its good result—the restoration of justice—outweights the harm it will cause. But when the possible consequences of war include the destruction of humankind and the permanent defacement of the entire natural and human world, we do not know how to balance benefits against such costs. The just-war tradition cannot guide us in thinking about such a prospect.

What are the practical implications of such a pacifist stance? Several first steps can be clearly identified. The cessation of nuclear testing and of the development of new weapons systems, and the subsequent reduction of existing stockpiles of weapons would stabilize the international balance of terror. If at the same time means of international cooperation were created and international authorities strengthened, the threat of war would begin to hang less heavily over us. To go beyond these preliminary steps to abolish war would require far more drastic attacks on the political and economic roots of war.

No one can consistently call for peaceful alternatives to war without reflecting on the ways in which one personally participates in and benefits from social institutions that cause violence. Some people may refuse to take up arms, others may withhold taxes designated for military ends; and others may renounce jobs or possessions that implicate them in injustice. Here there is an urgent need for more open and honest discussion in the churches, for we are too quick to condemn those who bear witness in a way to which we do not feel called. We ought not to demand the same actions from everyone. Out of more open and honest discussion may come new and still untried ways of putting flesh on a shared vision of peace.

Practical Christian pacifism is grounded in faithfulness and hope, but also in realism. It provides not only a moral basis for dealing with conflicts but a framework within which to carry on the vital task of building structures that can eventually eliminate war and its causes.

Capital Punishment: The Question of Justification

In 1810 a bill introduced in the British Parliament sought to abolish capital punishment for the offense of stealing five shillings or more from a shop. Judges and magistrates unanimously opposed the measure. In the House of Lords, the chief justice of the Kings Bench, Lord Ellenborough, predicted that the next step would be abolition of the death penalty for stealing five shillings from a house; thereafter no one could “trust himself for an hour without the most alarming apprehension that, on his return, every vestige of his property [would] be swept away by the hardened robber” (quoted by Herbert B. Ehrmann in “The Death Penalty and the Administration of Justice,” in The Death Penalty in America, edited by Hugo Adam Bedau [Anchor, 1967], p.415).

During the same year Parliament abolished the death penalty for picking pockets, but more than 200 crimes remained punishable by death. Each year in Great Britain more than 2,000 persons were being sentenced to die, though only a small number of these sentences were actually carried out.

I

In this regard as in many others, the laws of the English colonies in North America were much less harsh than those of the mother country. At the time of the Revolution, statutes in most of the colonies prescribed hanging for about a dozen offenses -- among them murder, treason, piracy, arson, rape, robbery, burglary, sodomy and (in some cases) counterfeiting, horse theft and slave rebellion. But by the early 19th century a movement to abolish the death penalty was gaining strength.

The idea was hardly new: czarist Russia had eliminated the death penalty on religious grounds in the 11th century. In the United States the movement had been launched by Benjamin Rush in the 18th century, with the support of such other distinguished citizens of Philadelphia as Benjamin Franklin and Attorney General William Bradford. By the 1830s, bills calling for abolition of capital punishment were being regularly introduced, and defeated, in several state legislatures. In 1846 Michigan voted effectively to abolish the death penalty -- the first English-speaking jurisdiction in the world to do so.

In the years since, 12 states have abolished capital punishment entirely. Although statutes still in effect in some states permit the death penalty to be imposed for a variety of offenses -- ranging from statutory rape to desecration of a grave to causing death in a duel -- murder is virtually the only crime for which it has been recently employed. There are about 400 persons in U.S. prisons under sentence of death, but only one execution (Gary Gilmore’s) has been carried out in this country in the past 11 years.

However, the issue of whether capital punishment is justifiable is by no means settled. Since the Supreme Court, in the case of Furman v. Georgia in 1972, invalidated most existing laws permitting capital punishment, several states have enacted new legislation designed to meet the court’s objections to the Georgia law. And recent public-opinion surveys indicate that a large number, possibly a majority, of Americans favor imposing the death penalty for some crimes. But let us ask the ethical question: Ought governments to put to death persons convicted of certain crimes?

II

First, let us look at grounds on which capital punishment is defended. Most prominent is the argument from deterrence. Capital punishment, it is asserted, is necessary to deter potential criminals. Murderers must be executed so that the lives of potential murder victims may be spared.

Two assertions are closely linked here. First, it is said that convicted murderers must be put to death in order to protect the rest of us against those individuals who might kill others if they were at large. This argument, based not strictly on deterrence but on incapacitation of known offenders, is inconclusive, since there are other effective means of protecting the innocent against convicted murderers -- for example, imprisonment of murderers for life in high-security institutions.

Second, it is said that the example of capital punishment is needed to deter those who would otherwise commit murder. Knowledge that a crime is punishable by death will give the potential criminal pause. This second argument rests on the assumption that capital punishment does in fact reduce the incidence of capital crimes -- a presupposition that must be tested against the evidence. Surprisingly, none of the available empirical data shows any significant correlation between the existence or use of the death penalty and the incidence of capital crimes.

When studies have compared the homicide rates for the past 50 years in states that employ the death penalty and in adjoining states that have abolished it, the numbers have in every case been quite similar; the death penalty has had no discernible effect on homicide rates. Further, the shorter-term effects of capital punishment have been studied by examining the daily number of homicides reported in California over a ten-year period to ascertain whether the execution of convicts reduced the number. Fewer homicides were reported on days immediately following an execution, but this reduction was matched by an increase in the number of homicides on the day of execution and the preceding day. Executions had no discernible effect on the weekly total of homicides. (Cf. “Death and Imprisonment as Deterrents to Murder,” by Thorsten Sellin, in Bedau, op. cit., pp. 274-284, and “The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment in California,” by William F. Graves, in Bedau, op. cit., pp. 322-332.)

The available evidence, then, fails to support the claim that capital punishment deters capital crime. For this reason, I think, we may set aside the deterrence argument. But there is a stronger reason for rejecting the argument -- one that has to do with the way in which supporter of that argument would have us treat persons.

Those who defend capital punishment on grounds of deterrence would have us take the lives of some -- persons convicted of certain crimes -- because doing so will discourage crime and thus protect others. But it is a grave moral wrong to treat one person in a way justified solely by the needs of others. To inflict harm on one person in order to serve the purposes of others is to use that person in an immoral and inhumane way, treating him or her not as a person with rights and responsibilities but as a means to other ends. The most serious flaw in the deterrence argument, therefore, is that it is the wrong kind of argument. The execution of criminals cannot be justified by the good which their deaths may do the rest of us.

III

A second argument for the death penalty maintains that some crimes, chief among them murder, morally require the punishment of death. In particular, Christians frequently support capital punishment by appeal to the Mosaic code, which required the death penalty for murder. “The law of capital punishment,” one writer has concluded after reviewing relevant biblical passages, “must stand as a silent but powerful witness to the sacredness of God-given life” (“Christianity and the Death Penalty,” by Jacob Vellenga, in Bedau, op. cit., pp. 123-130).

In the Mosaic code, it should be pointed out, there were many capital crimes besides murder. In the book of Deuteronomy, death is prescribed as the penalty for false prophecy, worship of foreign gods, kidnapping, adultery, deception by a bride concerning her virginity, and disobedience to parents. To this list the laws of the book of Exodus add witchcraft, sodomy, and striking or cursing a parent.

I doubt that there is much sentiment in favor of restoring the death penalty in the U.S. for such offenses. But if the laws of Old Testament Israel ought not to govern our treatment of, say, adultery, why should they govern the penalty for murder? To support capital punishment by an appeal to Old Testament law is to overlook the fact that the ancient theocratic state of Israel was in nearly every respect profoundly different from any modern secular state. For this reason, we cannot simply regard the Mosaic code as normative for the United States today.

But leaving aside reference to Mosaic law, let me state more strongly the argument we are examining. The death penalty, it may be urged, is the only just penalty for a crime such as murder; it is the only fair retribution. Stated thus, the argument at hand seems to be the right kind of argument for capital punishment. If capital punishment can be justified at all, it must be on the basis of the seriousness of the offense for which it is imposed. Retributive considerations should govern the punishment of individuals who violate the law, and chief among these considerations are the principle of proportionality between punishment and offense and the requirement that persons be punished only for acts for which they are truly responsible. I am not persuaded that retributive considerations are sufficient to set a particular penalty for a given offense, but I believe they do require that in comparative terms we visit more serious offenses with more severe punishment.

Therefore, the retributive argument seems the strongest one in support of capital punishment. We ought to deal with convicted offenders not as we want to, but as they deserve. And I am not certain that it is wrong to argue that a person who has deliberately killed another person deserves to die?

But even if this principle is valid, should the judicial branch of our governments be empowered to determine whether individuals deserve to die? Are our procedures for making laws and for determining guilt sufficiently reliable that we may entrust our lives to them? I shall return to this important question presently. But consider the following fact: During the years from 1930 to 1962, 466 persons were put to death for the crime of rape. Of these, 399 were black. Can it seriously be maintained that our courts are administering the death penalty to all those and only to those who deserve to die?

IV

Two other arguments deserve brief mention. It has been argued that, even if the penalty of life imprisonment were acceptable on other grounds, our society could not reasonably be asked to pay the cost of maintaining convicted murderers in prisons for the remainder of their natural lives.

This argument overlooks the considerable costs of retaining the death penalty. Jury selection, conduct of the trial, and the appeals process become extremely time-consuming and elaborate when death is a possible penalty. On the other hand, prisons should not be as expensive as they are. At present those prisoners who work at all are working for absurdly low wages, frequently at menial and degrading tasks. Prisons should be reorganized to provide meaningful work for all able inmates; workers should be paid fair wages for their work and charged for their room and board. Such measures would sharply reduce the cost of prisons and make them more humane.

But these considerations -- important as they are -- have little relevance to the justification of capital punishment. We should not decide to kill convicted criminals only because it costs so much to keep them alive. The cost to society of imprisonment, large or small, cannot justify capital punishment.

Finally, defenders of capital punishment sometimes support their case by citing those convicted offenders -- for example, Gary Gilmore -- who have asked to be executed rather than imprisoned. But this argument, too, is of little relevance. If some prisoners would prefer to die rather than be imprisoned, perhaps we should oblige them by permitting them to take their own lives. But this consideration has nothing to do with the question of whether we ought to impose the punishment of death on certain offenders, most of whom would prefer to live.

V

Let us turn now to the case against the death penalty. It is sometimes argued that capital punishment is unjustified because those guilty of crimes cannot help acting as they do: the environment, possibly interacting with inherited characteristics, causes some people to commit crimes. It is not moral culpability or choice that divides law-abiding citizens from criminals -- so Clarence Darrow argued eloquently -- but the accident of birth or social circumstances.

If determinism of this sort were valid, not only the death penalty but all forms of punishment would be unjustified. No one who is compelled by circumstances to act deserves to be punished. But there is little reason to adopt this bleak view of human action. Occasionally coercive threats compel a person to violate the law; and in such cases the individual is rightly excused from legal guilt. Circumstances of deprivation, hardship and lack of education -- unfortunately much more widely prevalent -- break down the barriers, both moral and material, which deter many of us from breaking the law. They are grounds for exercising extreme caution and for showing mercy in the application of the law, but they are not the sole causes of crimes: they diminish but do not destroy the responsibility of the individual. The great majority of those who break the law do so deliberately, by choice arid not as a result of causes beyond their control.

Second, the case against the death penalty is sometimes based on the view that the justification of punishment lies in the reform which it effects. Those who break the law, it is said, are ill, suffering either from psychological malfunction or from maladjustment to society. Our responsibility is to treat them, to cure them of their illness, so that they become able to function in socially acceptable ways. Death, obviously, cannot reform anyone.

Like the deterrence argument for capital punishment, this seems to be the wrong kind of argument. Punishment is punishment and treatment is treatment, and one must not be substituted for the other. Some persons who violate the law are, without doubt, mentally ill. It is unreasonable and inhumane to punish them for acts which they may not have realized they were doing; to put such a person to death would be an even more grievous wrong. In such cases treatment is called for.

But most persons who break the law are not mentally ill and do know what they are doing. We may not force them to undergo treatment in place of the legal penalty for their offenses. To confine them to mental institutions until those put in authority over them judge that they are cured of their criminal tendencies is far more cruel than to sentence them to a term of imprisonment. Voluntary programs of education or vocational training, which help prepare prisoners for non-criminal careers on release, should be made more widely available. But compulsory treatment for all offenders violates their integrity as persons; we need only look to the Soviet Union to see the abuses to which such a practice is liable.

VI

Let us examine a third and stronger argument, a straightforward moral assertion; the state ought not to take life unnecessarily. For many reasons -- among them the example which capital punishment sets, its effect on those who must carry out death sentences and, above all, its violation of a basic moral principle -- the state ought not to kill people.

The counterclaim made by defenders of capital punishment is that in certain circumstances killing people is permissible and even required, and that capital punishment is one of those cases. If a terrorist is about to throw a bomb into a crowded theater, and a police officer is certain that there is no way to stop him except to kill him, the officer should of course kill the terrorist. In some cases of grave and immediate danger, let us grant, killing is justified.

But execution bears little resemblance to such cases. It involves the planned, deliberate killing of someone in custody who is not a present threat to human life or safety. Execution is not necessary to save the lives of future victims, since there are other means to secure that end.

Is there some vitally important purpose of the state or some fundamental right of persons which cannot be secured without executing convicts? I do not believe there is. And in the absence of any such compelling reason, the moral principle that it is wrong to kill people constitutes a powerful argument against capital punishment.

VII

Of the arguments I have mentioned in favor of the death penalty, only one has considerable weight. That is the retributive argument that murder, as an extremely serious offense, requires a comparably severe punishment. Of the arguments so far examined against capital punishment, only one, the moral claim that killing is wrong, is, in my view, acceptable.

There is, however, another argument against the death penalty which I find compelling -- that based on the imperfection of judicial procedure. In the case of Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court struck down existing legislation because of the arbitrariness with which some convicted offenders were executed and others spared. Laws enacted subsequently in several states have attempted to meet the court’s objection, either by making death mandatory for certain offenses or by drawing up standards which the trial jury must follow in deciding, after guilt has been established, whether the death penalty will be imposed in a particular case. But these revisions of the law diminish only slightly the discretion of the jury. When death is made the mandatory sentence for first-degree murder, the question of death or imprisonment becomes the question of whether to find the accused guilty as charged or guilty of a lesser offense, such as second-degree murder.

When standards are spelled out, the impression of greater precision is often only superficial. A recent Texas statute, for example, instructs the jury to impose a sentence of death only if it is established “beyond a reasonable doubt” that “there is a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society” (Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, Art. 37.071; quoted in Capital Punishment: The Inevitability of Caprice and Mistake, by Charles L. Black, Jr. [Norton, 1974], p. 58). Such a law does not remove discretion but only adds confusion.

At many other points in the judicial process, discretion rules, and arbitrary or incorrect decisions are possible. The prosecutor must decide whether to charge the accused with a capital crime, and whether to accept a plea of guilty to a lesser charge. (In most states it is impossible to plead guilty to a charge carrying a mandatory death sentence). The jury must determine whether the facts of the case as established by testimony in court fit the legal definition of the offense with which the defendant is charged -- a definition likely to be complicated at best, incomprehensible at worst. From a mass of confusing and possibly conflicting testimony the jury must choose the most reliable. But evident reliability can be deceptive: persons have been wrongly convicted of murder on the positive identification of eyewitnesses.

Jurors must also determine whether at the time of the crime the accused satisfied the legal definition of insanity. The most widely used definition -- the McNaghten Rules formulated by the judges of the House of Lords in 1843 -- states that a person is excused from criminal responsibility if at the time of his act he suffered from a defect of reason which arose from a disease of the mind and as a result of which he did not “know the nature and quality of his act,” or “if he did know it . . . he did not know he was doing what was wrong” (quoted in Punishment and Responsibility, by H. L. A. Hart [Oxford University Press, 1968], p. 189). Every word of this formula has been subject to legal controversy in interpretation, and it is unreasonable to expect that juries untrained in law will be able to apply it consistently and fairly. Even after sentencing, some offenders escape the death penalty as a result of appeals, other technical legal challenges, or executive clemency.

Because of all these opportunities for arbitrary decision, only a small number of those convicted of capital crimes are actually executed. It is hardly surprising that their selection has little to do with the character of their crimes but a great deal to do with the skill of their legal counsel. And the latter depends in large measure on how much money is available for the defense. Inevitably, the death penalty has been imposed most frequently, on the poor, and in this country it has been imposed in disproportionate numbers on blacks.

To cite two examples in this regard: All those executed in Delaware between 1902 and the (temporary) abolition of the state’s death penalty in 1958 were unskilled workers with limited education. Of 3,860 persons executed in the United States between 1930 and the present, 2,066, or 54 per cent, were black. Although for a variety of reasons the per capita rate of conviction for most types of crime has been higher among the poor and the black, that alone cannot explain why a tenth of the population should account for more than half of those executed. Doubtless prejudice played a part. But no amount of goodwill and fair-mindedness can compensate for the disadvantage to those who cannot afford the highly skilled legal counsel needed to discern every loophole in the judicial process.

VIII

Even more worrisome than the discriminatory application of the death penalty is the possibility of mistaken conviction and its ghastly consequences. In a sense, any punishment wrongfully imposed is irrevocable, but none is so irrevocable as death. Although we cannot give back to a person mistakenly imprisoned the time spent or the self-respect lost, we can release and compensate him or her. But we cannot do anything for a person wrongfully executed. While we ought to minimize the opportunities for capricious or mistaken judgments throughout the legal system, we cannot hope for perfect success. There is no reason why our mistakes must be fatal.

Numerous cases of erroneous convictions in capital cases have been documented; several of those convicted were put to death before the error was discovered. However small their number, it is too large. So long as the death penalty exists, there are certain to be others, for every judicial procedure -- however meticulous, however compassed about with safeguards -- must be carried out by fallible human beings.

One erroneous execution is too many, because even lawful executions of the indisputably guilty serve no purpose. They are not justified by the need to protect the rest of us, since there are other means of restraining persons dangerous to society, and there is no evidence that executions deter the commission of crime. A wrongful execution is a grievous injustice that cannot be remedied after the fact. Even a legal and proper execution is a needless taking of human life. Even if one is sympathetic -- as I am -- to the claim that a murderer deserves to die, there are compelling reasons not to entrust the power to decide who shall die to the persons and procedures that constitute our judicial system.

Needed: A Continuing Sexual Revolution

Samuel Johnson reportedly once told an aspiring author, "Your manuscript is both good and original; unfortunately, the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good." The danger in reflecting on the eight articles in The Christian Century’s sexual ethics series is in producing just such a manuscript. It is tempting to repeat many of the good things already said; and to the extent I offer my own comments, I suspect -- especially judging from the letters sent to the Century during the series -- that I might be regarded as either too radical or not venturesome enough. Nevertheless, I want to conclude the series by drawing out from the diverse articles what I see as five general theses. Though their topics were diverse, series writers revealed much more in common than otherwise.

(I) It is crucial that the church confront more forth-rightly a whole range of sexual issues. John J. McNeill told us that "the AIDS crisis . . makes it clear that churches do not have the luxury of time in dealing with homosexuality." Karen Lebacqz said that despite the growing numbers of single persons, the church has given little attention or support to their sexuality, and a new ethic is desperately needed. Mary Pellauer observed that pornography is a huge and flourishing industry, one that oppresses women and children in particular, and that the churches have not discovered how to disentangle healthy forms of sexuality from sexual violence. In an epidemic of teen-age pregnancies, mainline churches, intimidated by the religious right, have lost their nerve, according to Allen I. Moore; they provide neither leadership nor support to teen-agers in the area of sexuality. Lois Gehr Livezey reported that sexual abuse and violence are commonplace, underreported and increasing, and she argued that the church needs to break down the wall of silence on the topic. Charles E. Curran reflected on how the discrepancy between official Catholic teaching and Catholic sexual practice has raised deep questions about the credibility of the church’s teaching office. Finally, Merle Longwood maintained that distortions of male sexuality complicate many parts of our lives, and that the movement for change among men must be a vital part of the church’s mission. A note of urgency is clearly sounded throughout the series, and I agree with it wholeheartedly.

(2) Despite some important movement on certain issues, the churches have not been able to deal creatively and forthrightly with sexuality in virtually any form.

Homosexuality is a prime case in point. Though it has been more than a dozen years since McNeill wrote his groundbreaking book The Church and the Homosexual (Sheed Andrews & McMeel, 1976) , he laments that the serious moral debate about homosexuality that he hoped his book would open up has not taken place. The response of his own Roman Catholic Church "was to try to silence the messenger rather than debate the message.

Viewing the churches as a whole, the picture is somewhat more varied, thanks in no small part to McNeill’s courageous leadership. The past dozen years have seen more serious and open debate about sexual orientation in North American churches than during any comparable time in history. Though the substantive changes have not been earthshaking, at least some congregations (called "Opening and Affirming Churches," "More Light Churches," "Reconciling Congregations," etc.) in several mainline communions have declared their support of full gay and lesbian participation. And debates over ordination are vigorous and public in several denominations.

On women’s issues, it would be difficult to deny that there has been significant engagement in some parts of the church with questions of women’s ordination, inclusive language, leadership patterns, theological imagery and reproductive self-control. Change on a number of other sexual issues could be documented as well. So one side of the picture is that churches have been engaged in an unprecedented debate on issues of sexuality.

But the other side of the picture is what I want to stress: churches still have enormous difficulty dealing with sexuality. McNeill is right in pointing to the claim in Habits of the Heart by Robert Bellah et al. (Harper & Row, 1985) that the therapeutic mentality of the liberal middle class renders it uncomfortable with moral argument. We "embrace pluralism and the uniqueness of the individual, and conclude that there is no common moral ground and publicly relevant morality," says McNeill. Actually, our problems in confronting sexuality extend much further back in history than to the emergence of the therapeutic mentality. Inherited sexual dualisms (spirit regarded as essentially different from and superior to body, and -- the patriarchal counterpart -- male regarded as essentially different from and superior to female) continue to have a formidable grip on our personal lives, our communal ethos and our institutional structures.

Another aspect of the church’s quandary over sexuality is its tendency to react to sexual problems rather than taking constructive initiatives. Like the medical system, the church is much more oriented to disease than to health. In its own way the Century series illustrated this point by focusing on sexual problems.

The combination of a continuing immersion in sexual dualisms, a middle-class therapeutic mentality, a fear of division, reactive tendencies and the very complexity of sexuality itself make the church an uncertain trumpet. One letter-writer responded to several of the series features with these words: "Taken all together, these articles demonstrate the tremendously complex nature of human sexuality. I have great sympathy for the authors, and I agree much more than I disagree with them. But it will be very difficult, if not impossible, for the church to teach along such ambiguous lines. I would like to see a little more courage and a lot more clarity." I would extend that wish beyond the authors to the church at large.

(3) The appropriate sources of and authority for sexual theology and ethics remain unclear, and are a matter of contention (and here the authors themselves expressed differences) Is Scripture a basic and viable source? What about the church’s tradition? McNeill wrestled critically but hopefully with both on homosexuality. Pellauer was skeptical about the usefulness of a tradition fixated on procreative sex in helping us to sort out healthy from unhealthy sexuality. Regarding sexual violence and the violation of women, Livezey found much in Scripture and tradition that must be rejected because they are actual accomplices in these oppressions. Lebacqz argued that a tradition condemning all genital expression outside marriage is unhelpful in developing an ethic for singles’ sexuality, and she contended that we must add to the traditional norms of procreation and union another norm, "appropriate vulnerability," as a major divine intention for our sexuality. Moore did not appeal directly to Scripture and tradition for teen-age sexual norms; rather, he appealed to an ethic of social justice and fulfillment. Curran wrestled with how sexual questions have raised the most significant issues of ecclesiology and churchly authority for Catholics, arguing that tradition supports a plurality of specific moral convictions. Finally, Longwood proposed Jesus Christ as the "model of maturity" for men’s sexuality and urged a sexual ethic of social justice and the common good. Obviously, there was no unanimity among these authors about the relevance of Scripture and tradition for human sexuality today, at least insofar as their particular topics were concerned.

Significantly, most of the authors strongly insisted that in formulating a sexual ethic we must deal seriously with actual sexual experience. The refrain was compelling: we need to listen carefully to women’s stories; we need to hear of the actual experiences of those who have been oppressed by sexual violence; we need to listen to the gospel speaking profoundly through gay and lesbian experience; we need to hear the voices of men struggling for a richer and more just sexuality; we need to pay attention to teen-agers yearning for the church to stand with them; we need to heed the voices of single persons who feel both avoided and condemned by the church in their struggle for responsible sexual expression.

In my introduction to the series I argued that the sexual theology we need is different from simply a theology about sexuality. The latter tends to be argued in a one-directional way: what do Scripture and tradition say about our sexuality and how ought it to be expressed? This question is important and should never be neglected -- but it is not enough. We need to ask also (after the manner of various liberation theologies): What does our experience as human sexual beings tell us about how we read Scripture, interpret the tradition and attempt to live out the meanings of the gospel? The questioning must move in both directions.

A number of Century readers objected to this approach. Perhaps the most consistent charge in readers’ letters was that the series authors had elevated subjective sexual experience over scriptural authority. Let us then ask the question directly: Can we find a clear, consistent and authoritative sexual ethic in Scripture and tradition?

At various points the Bible endorses sexual attitudes and practices most of us would now reject: women are regarded as the property of men; menstrual blood and semen are unclean"; intercourse during menstruation is proscribed; and polygamy, levirate marriage, concubinage and prostitution are accepted. On these matters some would argue that the cultic laws of the Old Testament are no longer binding, and they must be distinguished from its moral commandments. But such arguments fail to recognize that Scripture treats most of the sexual mores mentioned above as moral, not cultic, issues.

Those who argue that since Christ is the end of the law, the Old Testament law is irrelevant must, if consistent, deal with the New Testament pronouncements about sexual issues, including Paul’s various declarations. Even on such a major issue as sexual intercourse between unmarried consenting adults, neither the Old or New Testament contains an explicit prohibition (which John Calvin discovered to his consternation). Indeed, the Song of Solomon celebrates one such relationship. Our best biblical scholarship reaches Walter Wink’s conclusion: "There is no biblical sex ethic. The Bible knows only a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in any given country, or culture, or period" ("Biblical Perspectives on Homosexuality," The Christian Century, November 7, 1979)

Nor does the postbiblical Christian tradition provide unambiguous guidance. Selective use of tradition is

almost as common as selective use of Scripture. Most of us would fully agree with the tradition’s endorsement of monogamy and fidelity as consonant with the gospel. Many of us would endorse the movement toward affirming love as the governing sexual norm. Some of us would celebrate those parts of the tradition that not only tolerate but actually affirm gay and lesbian Christians, including clergy. But few of us would endorse those elements of tradition that baptize patriarchal oppression, endorse violence against women, oppress lesbians and gays, exalt perpetual virginity as the superior state, or declare that heterosexual rape is a lesser sin than masturbation (on the view that the latter act contradicts nature while the former act, while also sinful, is in accordance with nature) The postbiblical tradition, like Scripture itself, does not provide one coherent, consistent sexual ethic. We are left, whether we like it or not, with unfinished business. This leads directly to the next theme.

(4) We must continue to work on developing our sexual theology. A viable Christian sexual theology for our time will affirm that sexuality is always much more than genital expression. Sexuality expresses the mystery of our creation as beings who need to reach out for the physical and spiritual embraces of others. It expresses God’s intention that we find our authentic humanness not in isolation but in relationship.

Under such a theology, sexuality will be understood as intrinsic to the divine-human connection, as one of the great arenas for celebrating the Source of Life. Sexuality will enter directly and consciously into our understandings of every major Christian doctrine -- God, human nature, sin, salvation, church, history and eschatology. Our sexuality will be understood as expressing our created destiny for freedom, creativity, joy and shalom (Livezey) It will embrace appropriate vulnerability (Lebacqz) Sexual ethics will affirm only those sexual expressions that are respectful and nonexploitative (Pellauer) , and which treat persons nonstereotypically and with a fundamental commitment to equality (Longwood) Such ethics will evaluate sexual acts and expressions in terms of how they contribute to social justice and the fulfillment of all in community (Moore)

We need, too, a more erotic spirituality. To our impoverishment, much of the heterosexual, white, male tradition has banished eros from Christian theology and spirituality. We have been prisoners of an agape reductionism, of theologies that have vilified or devalued the erotic, often confusing it with the pornographic. We have been prisoners of theologies in which hunger. desire, passion and yearning have been relegated to the pagan world. Dante found eros in the kind of love that moves the sun and the other stars. Perhaps we, too, will come to see eros as intrinsic to God’s energy, God’s own passion for connection, and hence also as part of our yearning for life-giving communion and relationships of justice.

When we move in this direction, we shall embrace a more incarnational theology. The church has much to learn here from lesbians and gays, for when they affirm themselves in the face of social oppression they affirm the basic goodness of human sexuality and of our embodiedness. Many Christians still learn to fear, despise, trivialize and be ashamed of their bodies. If we do not know the gospel in our bodies, we may not know the gospel. When we find bodily life an embarrassment to so-called high-minded spiritualized religion, we lose our capacity for passionate caring and justice. We lose the sense of the holiness of the bodies of starving children and the bodies of women and men torn by violence and torture. Instead of confining the incarnation to one person 2,000 years ago, forgetting Jesus’ message of the indwelling God as the reality and destiny of all people, we might embrace the scandal of incarnation more radically.

(5) We need a continuing sexual revolution. As I attempted to argue at the beginning of the series, the sexual revolution is not over. In a deeper sense it has just begun. Beyond our need for a more adequate sexual theology and ethics, numerous specific issues cry out for reassessment, change, revolution. The authors of this series have probed a number of them, to our great benefit; let me suggest a few others.

Joining vigorously in the fight against AIDS and in compassionate ministries to all affected by this scourge is crucial. As the AIDS crisis worsens, it has the capacity to bring on an antisex hysteria. Beyond anything we have ever known, AIDS has linked in our consciousness the two greatest fears in our society -- sex and death. For the church to allow the fear of death to govern its sexual ethics would be an unholy capitulation. We need to help our children to understand and feel good about their sexuality, even in a time when sex seems almost synonymous with fear and death.

The sexuality of the aging, the infirm and those with handicapping conditions needs to be affirmed. Sadly, church-related institutions still commonly both deny and punish the sexuality of their residents, and clergy routinely ignore the sexuality of such persons in their pastoral care and counseling.

It is also time for the church to begin reflecting on sexual rites of passage.. The church has found ways of liturgizing other major life and death events, but, aside from the wedding ceremony and infant baptism, it is typically silent about other important sexual occasions of our lives. To that extent the church fails to bring Christian resources of support, guidance and care to deeply significant aspects of its members’ experience. Is it too bold to suggest that we consider ways of naming and celebrating the onset of a girl’s menstruation? Or the coming of age for boys -- in the face of the currently destructive secular rituals of naming and achieving "manhood"? Or the affirming of one’s sexual orientation? Or the commitment to a new relationship of intimacy other than marriage? Or rites of abortion which convey faith’s healing resources after agonized choice? The church is losing countless teen-agers and young adults, not to mention older persons, because it continues to be silent, timid and negative about sexuality.

The hegemony of the nuclear family, and the resulting temptation to police the sexuality of everyone who does not fit that mold, need to be challenged. In elevating a relative, historical social structure to ultimacy, we have enforced a sexual model which excludes and devalues countless persons. Accordingly, we need to rethink our theology of marriage. It has been 300 years since Protestants began to understand that God’s primary purpose in creating us as sexual beings is not procreation but giving us the desire and capacity for intimacy. We have generally adopted this conviction as it pertains to heterosexuals, but not to homosexuals. Further, we have too frequently assumed that the church and its clergy have the power to "marry" couples in the wedding rite. Not so. Only a couple has the power to create a marriage through their covenanting together and with God. The wedding ceremony celebrates and supports that reality; it does not create it. So responsible theology ought to insist that the question is not whether the church should "marry" same-sex couples but whether or not such covenanted relationships do in fact exist. Where they do, the question is whether or not the church will publicly recognize and celebrate the reality that, by God’s grace, exists.

We must also confront homophobia, which has effects beyond gays, lesbians and bisexuals. Rooted as it is in male sexism, homophobia undermines male friendships, bolsters the oppression of women and contributes fearsomely to our social violence. Though its varied dynamics are complex, the root cause of homophobia is always fear, and the gospel has resources for dealing with fear.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s convinced some of the dubious notion that making love would prevent man war. That bumper sticker dictum did, however, contain the hint of a more authentic reality: our major social ills do, in fact, have profound links to the sexual dualisms that split spirit from body and establish patriarchy. The feminist movement has pointed to the buried connections between militarism, urban violence, racism, economic exploitation and ecological abuse on the one hand, and sexual distortions on the other. The infant movement of a new men’s consciousness holds enormous promise for addressing the distorted masculinism that contributes so much violence and peril to our fragile planet.

A continuing sexual revolution is urgently needed. That patriarchies, a fear of sexuality and a desire to control others continue to exist throughout the church is reason enough for a sexual revolution. Positively put, the reason is in the gospel: the Word made flesh, and the Word still becoming flesh (Christ is risen!)

Robert McAfee Brown recently noted Martin Buber’ s response to S¢ren Kierkegaard’s broken engagement (Spirituality and Liberation (Westminster, 19881, p. 104 f.) After years of courting Regina, the Danish theologian decided that this human love would distract him from the "higher" love of God, so he abandoned her. Buber commented that this was "a sublime misunderstanding of God." Creation, far from being a hurdle on the road to God, is that very road. God draws us to the divine self by means of loved ones, not by renunciation of them. Buber’s remark should remind Christians of their call to a deeply incarnational spirituality. God, working through another earthy Jew 2,000 years ago, tried to impress that call on us. And is still trying. The revolution is not yet over.