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The Modern Assault on Community The call of adventure and fortune weakened the call to
faith and domestic In banning public expressions of faith, the courts are not seeking to protect dissenting individuals. In Lee v. Weisman, the Supreme Court ruled against a Rhode Island middle school that had invited a local rabbi to offer a nonsectarian prayer at a commencement exercise. In his concurring opinion, Justice David Souter claimed that whether this innocuous prayer had harmed any one was irrelevant. His point was that the supposed violation of the nonestablishment clause of the First Amendment could not be tolerated; the goal was and is specifically to prevent the community from expressing its faith in public. Souter’s reasoning represents a corrupt interpretation, not only of the Constitution, but also of public life that has gained currency in the past generation. Out of fear of lawsuits, public schools today go out of their way to avoid even modest affirmations of religion. Schools commonly forbid the singing of Christmas carols at what they now dub “winter” concerts. Schools continue to take the traditional vacation week before New Year’s Day, but officials do not dare utter the word Christmas. A public high school in Fairfax County, Virginia, even refused to allow its drama club to perform A Christmas Carol for fear of favoring a Christian message over other possible visions. The divorce of religion and morality from community life has coincided with the largely unnoticed, but dramatic severing of ties that have historically bound public schools to their communities. In the name of ensuring that all children receive a “thorough and efficient” or an “equal” education, authorities in an increasing number of states have pushed through new school funding schemes that essentially disenfranchise local taxpayers, making them “payers” but no longer “owners” of the local schools. The mechanisms vary from eliminating local property taxes to raising state income taxes. All end up making the state — not the local municipality or school district — the tax collector and school administrator. Even in Vermont, a state with a history of local control and annual town meetings, the state itself, not the town, now assesses, collects, and distributes school property taxes in a supposedly equal fashion throughout the state. These measures not only infuriate parents who have moved to certain towns to become stakeholders in a particular school system.23 They also weaken defenses against the intrusion into the curriculum of all sorts of politically correct nonsense, including textbooks, field trips, and special projects that teach that innovations in sexual behavior are beneficial and that opposition to homosexual behavior reaps harm by lowering the self-esteem of those inclined to live that way. The unhealthy divorce of religion and morality from
community life Thus the most basic traditions, those of family and ethnic ties, are being torn apart by the prevailing ideology of equality. No longer can Americans rely on finding common ground with neighbors and coworkers on any subject of importance. The result: the breakdown of traditional communities left helpless to defend themselves against those who promote alternative lifestyles. Forbidden by law and the courts from upholding their common moral vision, traditional Christians and Jews withdraw, leaving the public square to those whose disordered libels render them incapable of forming any coherent community life of their own. Restoring Faithful Communities To restore viable communities, Americans must reorder their public and private lives on the recognition that religious faith is the central, most important, and most basic calling of life. Faith is not only the basis, but also more fundamentally the proper goal of community itself. Community life is the most fundamental outgrowth of culture, which is inherently religious. The word culture comes from the Latin colere, referring to cultivation, as in agriculture and as in the cultivation of virtue and good character. From colere comes both culture and cult, a root word for religion. The intimate links between these words reveal the extent to which religion, culture, and ritual were all recognized until recently as part of human nature. As long as they are not prevented from doing so, people will seek to come closer to the divine presence that gives their lives meaning, to uphold common conceptions of what is good and right, and to bond with their fellows by acting in common with them. But that bonding can only begin with those who are closest to each other: parents, siblings, spouses, neighbors, and those with whom they share important cultural and religious traditions. Only after Americans have formed these bonds can they reach out beyond themselves to form wider communal and eventually political bonds. Even at the most practical level, religion “works.” Studies often hailed by the moral regenerators consistently show that active members of churches and synagogues are more likely than nonmembers to participate in charitable activities. They also demonstrate that faith-based social services — not the sterile programs recommended by secular therapists — help individuals conquer drug and alcohol abuse most effectively. Religion also offers a moral code by which individuals and communities can live. Most important, religion creates cohesive congregations in which consistent standards of morality are taught and enforced; it binds people together spiritually, emotionally, and in habits of conduct. Those congregations serve as major gathering places for social interaction and fellowship. While local businesses like barbershops, drug stores, and coffee shops can play a similar role, they lack the moral authority and coherence of religious institutions. More delegation of governmental authority to the local level and greater use of faith-based programs can foster a greater presence for religion in public life. But the most important requirement for renewed communities is courage. Americans need courage to join with their neighbors to express their faith, not defiantly, but insistently. They need courage to form their own neighborhoods. They need courage to resist the state takeover of their schools whether through educational bureaucracies or through new school funding mechanisms of the legislatures. They need courage to take back their churches, calling upon clergymen to uphold the morality and faith given by God and affirmed by their traditions. They need courage to act in public ways that show love of neighbor and a determination to uphold standards, abiding morality, and faith. Arbiters of public opinion might condemn this appeal to courage as judgmental and frightening. Yet only by acting with courage can Americans uphold the chief end of man as the chief end of their communities, thereby saving their culture from anarchy and ruin. Dr. Frohnen, a legislative assistant to the United
States Senate, has taught political science at the Catholic
University of America. In addition to earning a Ph.D. from
Cornell University and a law degree from Emory University,
he has written The New Communitarians and the Crisis
of [Top of Page] ENDNOTES 1.Robert A. Nisbet, The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1990). 2.Etzioni, The Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities, and the Communitarian Agenda (New York: Crown, 1993). 3.Robert N. Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) 13. 4.Ibid., p. 39. 5.Ibid., pp. 212-13. 6.Ibid., pp. xiv. 7.Robert N. Bellah et al., The Good Society (New York: Knopf, 1991), pp. 209, 183. 8.Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J.P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1969), p. 189. 9.Ibid., pp. 62-63. 10.See Bruce Frohnen, Virtue and the Promise of Conservatism: The Legacy of Burke and Tocqueville (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993), ch. 5. 11.Bennett, The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals (New York: The Free Press, 1998). 12.Don Eberly, “Civic Renewal vs. Moral Renewal,” Policy Review, October 1998, p. 46. 13.Irving Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism (New York: Basic, 1978), p. 262. 14.Eberly, “Civic Renewal,” pp. 46, 47. 15.Eberly, America’s Promise: Civil Society and the Renewal of American Culture (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), pp. 219-221. 16.Ibid. 17.Eberly, “Civic Renewal,” p. 47. 18.Eberly, America’s Promise, p. 228. 19.Russell Kirk, Enemies of the Permanent Things (Peru, Illinois: Sugden, 1988), p. 17. 20.Eberly, America’s Promise, p. 227. 21.Ibid., p. 228. 22.Barry Alan Shain, The Myth of American Individualism: The Protestant Origins of American Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 23.Amity Shlaes, “Educating Mary Barrosse: Schools and How We Pay for Them,” Policy Review, April & May 1999, pp. 59-70. |
virtue,
testing the fabric of communities in the course of the
nineteenth century. But communities began falling apart only
after adherents to a different vision of the good life
— one based in material prosperity and equality rather
than religious virtue — began using the government and
the courts in the current century to undermine the ability
of religion and tradition to shape local life. Ironically,
the modern assault on community has often been driven by
newcomers who move to small towns because religiously
informed traditions have made these communities delightful
places to live or raise a family. Frightened away from the
big cities by high crime and social disintegration, these
newcomers are horrified to find the locals still joining
together in public expression of faith. Pushing an ideology
of strict separation of church and state, the newcomers
appeal to the courts to move crèches off public
property, to remove displays of the Decalogue from
courthouses, or to eliminate prayers from public ceremonies.
In the process, they undermine the very thing they sought: a
safe, functioning community.
corrupts
other aspects of life as well. It impedes those who desire
to live near those who share one’s fundamental values.
Real estate agents in many parts of the country refrain from
discussing with potential buyers of a house the location of
the nearest church or synagogue. Landlords in some states
must rent apartments and even rooms in their own homes to
whomever inquires, including practicing homosexuals and
couples living together outside of wedlock. Even ties of
extended family and ethnicity have become suspect. Court-
and bureaucracy-ordered quotas force employers to ignore
local ethnic networks in favor of formal hiring procedures.
Only with elaborate, documented procedures can employers
defend themselves in the event a would-be employee claims he
was denied a job because of racism. But these procedures
separate individuals from their ethnic and family ties,
making the workplace, as well as the neighborhood, simply a
miscellaneous collection of strangers. The procedures undo
the ties of loyalty that would otherwise bond separate
employees and residents into groups of friends capable of
supporting one another and enforcing standards of conduct
that promote the common good.
Modern Liberalism (University Press of Kansas, 1996) and
Virtue and the Promise of Conservatism: The Legacy of Burke
and Tocqueville (University Press of Kansas, 1993). With
George Carey he edited, Community and Tradition:
Conservative Perspectives on the American Experience (Rowman
& Littlefield, 1998).