Civil Society Graced by Moral Regeneration

In criticizing civic renewers, Don Eberly raises two questions. Perhaps the leading voice among the moral regenerators, Eberly asks: “How . . . do gentle appeals to civic-mindedness help curb teen pregnancy, confront the crack epidemic, stop playground shootings, slow the vulgarization of American culture, or reverse the complete de-moralization of our schools?” His Council on Civil Society also asks: “Why would anyone want to participate in civic life in the first place?”14

While the questions reveal the flaw of the civic renewal school, they equally demonstrate how the moral regenerators miss the mark. With good intentions, the moral regenerators seem genuinely interested in restoring community life in which members strive to abide by the golden rule. The Council on Civil Society’s "Call to Civil Society" notes that “the core challenge facing our nation today is not primarily governmental or economic.” Rather, “we suffer from moral depletion.” Given this, “the essential social task of civil society — families, neighborhood life, and the web of religious, economic, educational and civic associations — is to foster competence and character in individuals, build social trust, and help children become good people and good citizens.”15 That so few could argue with such a lofty goal represents a key problem. In order to bring everyone together in a day of fundamental moral disagreements, the Call to Civil Society reverts to proposing the same democratic pseudo-religion as the civic renewers, albeit with a tacked-on plea for generalized religiosity.

Citing poll numbers to document public concern with moral decline, the statement outlines behavior with which people are concerned: first, behavior that “threatens family cohesiveness [including] teenage pregnancy, unwed childbearing, extramarital affairs [and] easy sex as a normal part of life.” Second comes behavior that is “increasingly uncivil” such as “neighbors not being neighborly. Children disrespecting adults. Declining loyalty between employers and employees. The absence of common courtesy.”16 Such concerns do not preclude discussion of moral principles. Indeed, “the qualities necessary for self-governance are the results of certain moral ideas about the human person and the nature of the good life.”17 But what precisely are those assumptions; what binding obligations do they impose on Americans?

Those obligations, according to the Call, include moral truth and recognition of individual human dignity. But the Call’s exhaustive list of moral truths and the requirements for human dignity lack coherence. It lists twelve bases for human virtue, ranging from the family to religious institutions to business, labor, and “public moral philosophy.” What do these bases have in common? Each helps shape human character because individuals and groups interact with or within all these institutions and belief systems. The Call offers very little to integrate these “seedbeds of virtue” or to frame a coherent public moral philosophy. Indeed, even the view that “all people, as persons created in the image of God, possess transcendent human dignity” is true only “for many of us.”18 In the end, the Call to Civil Society appeals to common political principle, not to transcendent moral principle.

The Council self-consciously bases its critique of modern life on poll numbers — on the opinion of the majority. Reflecting its goal of restoring civility through consensus, the insistence on popularity severely hinders addressing the fundamental moral questions upon which reinvigoration of decent communities depends. Morality is not opinion, it is truth. This does not mean that any one person or institution has exclusive access to moral truth. All people have access to significant portions of the truth, provided they are willing to look for it. But they must develop the right habits to find these truths, requiring local institutions that will uphold and transmit norms to them. As Russell Kirk explains in Enemies of the Permanent Things:

A norm means an enduring standard. It is a law of nature, which we ignore at our peril. It is a rule of human conduct and a measure of public virtue. The norm does not signify the average, the median, the mean, the mediocre. . . . A man apprehends a norm, or fails to apprehend it; but he does not create or destroy important norms.19

In other words, communities are not in the position to use surveys to determine how their members should live. The creator (God) determines what constitutes a good life, not the creature (man). To think otherwise is to conceive of man as an infinitely malleable being, properly subject to the whims of those with power. While the moral regenerators do not see man as a malleable creature, in building a program on opinion rather than truth — by eschewing the question of why Americans should value community and virtue — they leave themselves once again with only politics as the bond among citizens. As stated in the Call to Civil Society, “our shared civic faith is one of republican self-governance.”20

Practically speaking, self-government in a democratic society is the primary goal, and perhaps the only goal, of the moral regenerators. Self-government is indeed a worthy goal. That sustainable freedom and well-ordered liberty requires great virtue in the people seems irrefutable; unless Americans lead ordered lives and rear their children to do the same, public order will disintegrate. However, the civic republican tradition to which Eberly and others look for moral regeneration is by nature hostile to religious morality. Demanding religious awe from the people, such a political vision sees religion as a competitor and adversary that is best pushed out of public life altogether. Republican virtue then becomes political rather than moral, seeking service to the state rather than to God, ultimately undermining the virtues of the people and itself.

Like the other community boosters, moral regenerators end up presenting community and virtue as necessary tools for rebuilding a strong democratic political life. This is simply inadequate; to say that democracy is good because it is just and good is not enough. The problems run far deeper, as Americans can no longer assume their own children or own neighbors agree on what justice and goodness are, what they require, or even whether they are worth pursuing. The Council on Civil Society unwittingly points to this problem, maintaining that the American political tradition insists on “the disestablishment of religion and the right of religious freedom” as a means by which to “relativize the political domain.”21

To argue that politics can and should be relativized and that this is the goal of religious liberty misrepresents the American tradition and the fundamental roots of both virtue and freedom. Relativism is as destructive in politics as in any other realm of conduct. This is not to say that any one person has all the answers as to what is good for any people. But a free people must exercise prudence to secure goals higher and more permanent than transient political majorities. A virtuous people must seek to walk in the ways of God, using politics only to protect the essential cultural institutions of family, church, and local association in which they learn how to act as they should.

There is no one, perfect way to construct a community or to do politics because each community faces a unique set of circumstances, ranging from climate to the nature of local industries to its local history. But each community must seek to teach its people how to lead good, that is godly lives. When this is not seen as the primary purpose of community, people will embrace political action as a valid means by which to shape individual and community character to fit some un- or even anti-religious mold. In order to combat the tendency to make politics supreme, Americans must reestablish their status as creatures created in the image of God and destined for a future life in which conduct in this life matters. Then they must look to the traditions of their families and churches — and their nation — to find the most fitting means by which to recreate community. Only by concentrating on the proper end of life can Americans recreate communities of virtue.

A Tradition of Godly Communities

Scholars like Barry Alan Shain have shown that early America was characterized by what he calls Protestant communalism. Small, tight-knit communities were dedicated to specific visions of how best to walk in the ways of God. Various associations in each community sought to further this goal, bringing citizens closer to one another in the process. Public expressions of faith were common, whether days of thanksgiving and fasting or election day sermons admonishing the people to rededicate themselves to public virtue as both the reflection and the protector of a proper, godly life. Laws were designed to uphold public morals and to marshal public support for individuals who upheld them.22

Some today may blanch at reading local sumptuary laws, statutes that criminalized adultery, or Sabbath observance laws. But none of these provisions, common throughout colonial and post-independence New England, made freedom any less real. Americans were free because they owned property, exercised procedural rights, and enjoyed the freedom (often nonexistent in European countries at the time) to leave communities they found uncongenial. Those holding a vision of the requirements for a good life different from their neighbors generally left to join another community whose members shared more congenial beliefs and habits. Can Americans say as much in today’s era of never-ending federal court orders, legislative mandates, and bureaucratic regulations?

Small towns and neighborhoods in America used to be cohesive; they did not seek openness to all ways of life. Nor did they seek economic betterment as the sole proper goal. Faith and tradition were ruling forces in the lives of Americans, bidding them care for their families and neighbors and their souls, as much as their pocketbooks. Indeed, these responsibilities trumped even political loyalties, forcing upon Americans in colonial times the decision to separate from England when the threat of centralization and tyranny made them fear for their local communities.

Contemporary mischaracterizations aside, local American communities from the colonial era through the beginning of the twentieth century provided a great measure of freedom and broad-based public participation — not to mention stable families and low crime rates — because they self-consciously promoted faith-based morality among their people. Whether through prayer in public schools, construction of nativity scenes in the town square, or religious pageants held on public property, towns in America came together to express their faith and reaffirm the moral code it prescribes. Such practices formed the essence of community, fostering a practical consensus based on religious faith and moral truth.