Theological Ethics, the Churches, and Global Politics

Author(s): Lisa Sowle Cahill

Source: The Journal of Religious Ethics , Sep., 2007, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Sep., 2007), pp. 377-
399
Published by: Blackwell Publishing Ltd on behalf of Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc

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 THEOLOGICAL ETHICS, THE CHURCHES,
AND GLOBAL POLITICS

Lisa Sowle Cahill

ABSTRACT

Several discourses about theology, church, and politics are occurring amon
Christian theologians in the United States. One influential strand centers
on the communitarian theology of Stanley Hauerwas, who calls on Chris-
tians to witness faithfully against liberalism in general and war in particu
lar. Jeffrey Stout, in his widely discussed Democracy and Tradition (2004)
responds that religious people ought precisely to endorse those democrat
and liberal American traditions that join religious and secular counter-
parts to battle injustice. Hauerwas, Stout, and many of their interlocutor
envision liberal U.S. culture as the context of Christian social ethics. The
ensuing debate rarely incorporates Catholic scholars, feminist scholars,
scholars of color, or international and liberationist voices. Their inclusion
could enhance an understanding of the role of the church in society, and
support a common morality in the face of global pluralism. More impor-
tantly, it could broaden the scope of discourse on religion and politics to
envision global Christian social ethics.
key WORDS: church and politics, Christian social ethics, common morality,
globalization, global politics, Hauerwas, religion and politics, Stout

To be a disciple is to be part of a new community, a new polity, which is

formed on Jesus' obedience to the cross. The constitutions of this new polity
are the Gospels.
-Stanley Hauerwas (1981, 49)

Unless citizens wake up, and take responsibility for the condition of their
society, democracy will be completely eviscerated and the economically pow-
erful will no longer be answerable to anyone else.
-^Jeffrey Stout (2007, 6)

"Hope" refers to an imaginative vision toward overcoming a state of reality,

an expectation of the good via God's gracious gift of liberation. Hope moves
one from despair to change amid history.
-Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan (1997, 145)

The Catholic tradition . . .possesses a strong vision of the importance of so-

cial solidarity for the achievement of full humanity. [It] will have important
influences in the way we understand what justice requires in the economic
and political domains of the global network.
-David Hollenbach (2006, 30)

JRE 35.3:377-399. © 2007 Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc.

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378 Journal of Religious Ethics

pressures of current events, both domestic and international, are lead-

ing Christian theologians in the United States to pose the problem of
"Christ and Culture" (Niebuhr 1951) in ways responsive to our contem-
porary context. This is obviously not a new phenomenon. Today we are
concerned about the condition of civil society and participatory politics,
the Iraq War, economic globalization, immigration, the environment,
and interreligious communication. Yesterday's urgent concerns included
the Vietnamese conflict, the civil rights movement, destabilized gen-
der norms, and the changing public role of the churches, especially the
Catholic church after the Second Vatican Council. For a previous gen-
eration, theological ethics answered challenges such as World War II,
industrialization, American and European movements for labor rights,
and religious tolerance among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.
The theological and ethical claims made by any given author must be
seen as part of his or her strategy to engage with a particular audience in
a particular context, over issues of mutual urgency. This is not to say that
the truth or validity of such claims should be reduced to their sociopolit-
ical effectiveness. Yet contextual demands are powerful determinants of
the way theologians perceive the ethical consequences of their ultimate
commitments, and render their religious beliefs into calls for action. In
fact, the active practices in which Christians are engaged reciprocally
shape religious commitments and theological construals. The process of
interpreting ethics and politics theologically occurs in both a social and
an ecclesial context; the social and the ecclesial are intertwined and in-
separable. Communities of faith and practice are constituted of members
who have many simultaneous affiliations, all of which constitute identi-
ties and provide opportunities for and constraints on vision and action.
Faith communities or "churches" are themselves interactive social agents
that both define and are defined by the societies in which they live.
This is true even for churches and theological positions that
seem to take strong stands "against" culture and identify for them-
selves a marginal, prophetic role. For example, the countercultural
"neo-orthodox" theology of Karl Barth was inspired precisely by the fail-
ure of a decadent form of Protestant liberalism to resist the rise of Nazism
(see Hauerwas 2001, 150-52). Barth, on the one hand, calls for Chris-
tians to reject any external standard of the claim and command of God.
Yet, on the other hand, he does so precisely to uphold the socially critical
role of Christianity as faithful to a sovereign God who uncompromisingly
governs the protection of life.

1. Hauerwas and Stout on Church and Politics

In his Gifford Lectures, Stanley Hauerwas expresses at length an

with eloquence his admiration for Barth, as a theologian who refus

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 Theological Ethics, the Churches, and Global Politics 379

to translate or accommodate his convictions in the name of "social re-

sponsibility," by which Hauerwas obviously means "acceptability" in the
terms of the reigning wisdom (Hauerwas 2001, 222). This is a longstand-
ing theme for Hauerwas. "Put starkly, the first social ethical task of
the church is to be the church - the servant community .... As such the
church does not have a social ethic; the church is a social ethic" (Hauer-
was 1983, 99). Drawing on the work of his friend and colleague, the
Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder, Hauerwas proclaims, "The
Gospel cannot be at home in the world, because the church that is called
into existence through the work of the Spirit exists to witness to the God
found in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ" (Hauerwas 2001,
219). Although Hauerwas mentions the life of Christ and the resurrec-
tion, his focus is not on Jesus's inclusive ministry of the reign of God,
nor on the power of the resurrection to overcome suffering and enable
socially transformative Christian communities. He does see a new way
available within those communities, but it consists in maintaining fi-
delity to demanding internal ideals, while expecting incomprehension
and rejection by the world outside the church. Like Yoder (1972), Hauer-
was espouses a nonviolent Christian witness, formed and carried out
within communities emulating the cross of Christ.
It is relevant to their theological stances that Yoder and Hauerwas
are both North American theologians formed in the era of the Vietnam
War, and against a cultural backdrop of liberalism in theology as well
as politics. Both rely on Barth for a theological vocabulary of resis-
tance to militarism, individualism, and secularism. Liberalism does not
always lack a critical edge, but that edge is often turned against re-
ligious traditionalism, and even against religious belief as such. Lib-
eral Protestantism drank heavily of nineteenth-century developments
of post-Enlightenment cultural and intellectual streams, especially "the
spirit of open-mindedness, of tolerance and humility, and devotion to
truth wherever it could be found" (Dillenberger and Welch 1954, 211).
The liberal spirit included respect for science and the scientific method,
especially the evolutionary theory of Darwin; skepticism regarding meta-
physics; interest in finding continuities in experience and reality; and
optimism regarding "man" and his future (Dillenberger and Welch 1954,
213-14).
Barth mounted a radical attack on liberal Christianity by restoring
theologically the "infinite qualitative distinction" between God and hu-
manity, using a phrase from Kierkegaard (Barth 1960, 10). Hauerwas
cites this move approvingly in his Gifford Lectures (Hauerwas 2001,
154). Hauerwas also endorses Yoder's judgment that "Protestant lib-
erals . . . had long regarded humans, not God, as the center of Chris-
tian faith" (2001, 152). Like philosopher Alasdair Maclntyre, Hauerwas
rejects "the platitudinous emptiness of liberal Christian moralizing in

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380 Journal of Religious Ethics

which the positions of secular liberalism reappeared in various religious

guises" (Hauerwas 2001, 20, citing Maclntyre 1995). On this basis, the
apparent ecclesial isolationism of Hauerwas's "community of character"
could potentially work as a socially transformative force warning believ-
ers, not against participation in any other communities (such as political
parties, universities, professions, or civic associations), but against ca-
pitulation to liberal norms.
Jeffrey Stout is part of a different theological trajectory, one that ex-
plicitly undertakes a critical appropriation of some liberal values as
compatible with socially progressive religious and theological aims. Also
within this trajectory are a good number of interpreters of the legacy
of Reinhold Niebuhr (Lovin 2003) and of modern Catholic social teach-
ing (Douglass and Hollenbach 1994). Stout, concerned with the state
of modern U.S. democracy, finds a remedy for social ills in a recovery
of democratic government understood as "the full range of provisions
a modern republic makes for allowing citizens to influence and contest
electoral, executive, legislative, and judicial decisions by demanding and
giving reasons" (Stout 2005, 717). He calls his approach "pragmatism,"
and believes that ethical obligations and norms are generated out of
"social-practical doings" (Stout 2005, 720). Within ongoing social prac-
tices, "truth-claims are put forward and entitlements to them are as-
sessed by attending to objective considerations" (Stout 2004, 273), not
merely to what a given community defines to be true on tradition or
authority (Stout 2004, 277). In this sense, his theory is realist, albeit
non-metaphysical and nonreligious (Stout 2004, 253). It also demands
that the norms of Christian social ethics be tested within shared social
practices and according to "objective considerations." Although address-
ing the same problem - the tendency of modern liberal individualism to
undermine civil society, encourage placidity toward government by com
fortable citizens, and permit the hegemony of institutions that exploit
the socially vulnerable - Stout's solution is quite different from that of
Hauerwas.
Stout's adversaries are theological and philosophical varieties of what
he calls "the new traditionalism" (including Hauerwas and Maclntyr
and liberal secularism (John Rawls and Richard Rorty). What these hav
in common is that they disallow that every person or group within a
litical community has a stake in and responsibility for good governme
and civil society, and hence should be a full participant in the democra
process. On Hauerwas's terms, it seems, faithful Christians should re-
nounce participation; and on secularism's terms, religious communities
should, as such, be barred from politics. On the contrary, as Stout unde
stands it, "The spirit of democracy . . . resides mainly in the disposition
hold one another - and one's rulers - responsible for the institutions a

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 Theological Ethics, the Churches, and Global Politics 381

policies we have and to be inclusive in one's conception of citizenship"

(Stout 2005, 717). At the same time, Stout shares with Hauerwas a re-
luctance to see human moral knowledge as grounded in a foundation
more universal than particular community traditions. This undercuts
the global relevance of his political program, a point to which I shall
return later.
The main ethical issues treated by Hauerwas are war and biblical
nonviolence, considered as internal mandates for the church. He also ad-
dresses sex, marriage, bioethics, and care for the disabled, as part of the
Christian way of life in a church that cultivates necessary virtues. He
praises Catholics such as John Paul II and Dorothy Day as exemplars
of such virtues, but without developing the public ramifications of their
social witness as grounded in Catholic social tradition (Hauerwas 2001,
226-40). On one level, this strategy allows him to warn advocates of
this tradition's public engagement not to be uncritical of regnant public
norms. On yet another level, it undercuts the political power of Catholic
social teaching, and its ability to engage persons and communities in all
spheres of society. In my view, Hauerwas tends to rewrite in his own im-
age that social teaching and the political practices out of which it grows.
He does not explicitly envision a role for Christians or churches in chang-
ing discriminatory social practices based on race, class, or gender. He
rarely if ever addresses how the "social ethics" that "is" the church might
define and address obligations of justice in an era of globalization, when
our responsibilities extend beyond liberal society. Nor does he elaborate
any transformative possibilities of prophetic dissent, in view of victims
of genocide, militarism, sex trafficking, and patent restrictions on the
availability of life-saving drugs. Yet problems like these call for institu-
tional action and the fostering of forms of participatory democracy that
give the oppressed and their advocates an effective voice.
Hauerwas may be right to challenge "the very idea that Christian
social ethics is primarily an attempt to make the world more peaceable or
just" (Hauerwas 1983, 99), but the modern popes and Day certainly view
Catholic social ethics as necessarily an attempt to make it so. John Paul II
was frequently eloquent on issues of consumerism, materialism, and the
discrepancy between the rich nations and the developing world. Day was
a critic of the injustices against the poor perpetrated by industrialization.
During World War II, she demonstrated in the United States against
the German government, and in favor of admitting Jewish refugees into
the country. Day was surely committed to Catholic spirituality, liturgy,
and theology, integrated through a communal life of daily service to the
poor. But she and Peter Maurin also inaugurated The Catholic Worker,
a newspaper still aiming to awaken other Catholics to the radical social
messages of the Bible and Catholic tradition, and urging them to apply

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382 Journal of Religious Ethics

their convictions to policy on issues such as immigration and the death

penalty (Zwick 2005, 1-29). x
Stout, meanwhile, is certainly a social activist, but does not do much
better than Hauerwas at putting global issues on the agenda of the
churches, nor at showing why or how religious communities might have
something distinctive to bring to the political process from which other
elements of liberal society need to benefit. Stout avoids any strong af-
firmation that the "objective considerations" by which morality must
be measured trace back to objective, relatively invariant aspects of the
human condition. Instead, his goal is the renewal and reform of the lib-
eral tradition, on which a particular society, the twenty-first-century
United States, is based. A chapter of Democracy and Tradition called
"Democratic Norms in the Age of Terrorism" is a philosophical discus-
sion of the justification in a democratic society of unconditional norms,
for example, against torture, and offers the conclusion that the United
States will lose respect and inspire terrorists if it does not adhere to its
own moral principles (Stout 2004, 183-202). This is a correct and needed
message for a popular culture enthralled by a television series, "24," that
dramatically communicates the opposite ideological message. Yet Stout's
focus remains on the internal moral character of liberal society, not on
global issues such as multilateral and regional political solutions to ter-
rorist violence in the Middle East and beyond.
An entire chapter of Democracy and Tradition is devoted to "Race and
Nation in Baldwin and Ellison" (Stout 2004, 42-62), and Stout's respect
for and gratitude to his colleague Cornel West are clear. The chapter
deals primarily with the need to cultivate pervasive and shared virtues
of "justice, friendship, generosity and hope," against Black Nationalism's
despair that these will ever be possible in a white supremacist society.
Yet Stout seems to see religious and non-theistic approaches to social
reform as running on parallel tracks, with the religious grounding of the
theological analysis bracketed for the purposes of joint social commit-
ment (see also Stout 2005, 720; for a critique of the bracketing of religion
and theology, see Dickens 2006).

2. Black Church Politics and Theologies

For some reason, neither Stout's interlocutors nor those of Hauerwas
seem to have fastened on the relevance of the political activism of the
black churches as offering a productive challenge to their arguments
and worldviews.2 Most African Americans are Christian evangelicals,

1 For a similar critique, see Kallenberg (2004, 212).

2 The critical literature on Hauerwas is immense, and the responses to Stout are begin-
ning to assume comparable dimensions. Therefore, I could be wrong.

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 Theological Ethics, the Churches, and Global Politics 383

who are, perhaps paradoxically, "decidedly Democratic in their voting

behavior" (Fowler et al. 2004, 99). In recent elections, alienation from
secular cultural trends has made African American churches a fertile
recruiting ground for Republican candidates, which was one factor in th
2004 presidential election. This illustrates the power of these churches'
political influence. Blacks who are members of churches are far mo
likely to vote than those who are not (Fowler et al. 2004, 100). As the
central social institution in the black community, the church is a force f
political organizing, voter registration, and campaigning for candidates
Black churches form the self-understanding, the political discourse, an
the active political commitments of their members. African Americ
clergy lead their congregations in applying biblical narratives of captivit
and freedom as a prophetic message of justice for a troubled society.
Against Hauerwas, this activism displays political engagement for jus
tice as an intrinsic aspect of evangelical commitment and ecclesial iden-
tity. Hauerwas's reminder that faithful Christians must be willing to un
dertake unpopular causes is an important wake-up call for members
"mainstream" denominations who have been lulled into complacency by
prosperity. But those who have some personal familiarity with the cost o
the cross as an everyday reality view suffering in a different perspectiv
As womanist theologian Jacquelyn Grant sees it, the cross is Jesus's sol
idarity with the oppressed, and hence rules out acceptance of the status
quo in favor of the struggle for liberation and justice (Grant 1989, 217)
According to Shawn Copeland, to "live at the disposal of the cross" r
quires "a praxis of compassionate solidarity, justice-love, and care for th
poor and oppressed." This demand is directed toward "especially tho
of us who have the luxury to stand and watch hungry women and men
(Copeland 2003, 191). If Christian character mandates abstinence from
processes of political change, it is certainly not for Christians situated
beneficiaries of current social arrangements to make that call.
Against Stout and others who minimize the epistemological value o
practical religious commitment, black prophets like Sojourner Truth an
Martin Luther King, Jr. were forceful instigators of broader cultur
movements inspired by new knowledge of the meaning of human dig-
nity. Such prophets were not only effective rhetoricians who made an
appeal to underground reservoirs of cultural value, or public preachers
who widened the imaginative horizons of their contemporaries by in
voking powerful religious symbols and stories. Thanks to their biblicall
informed commitments and practices, integrated with their own exper
ences of a people's slavery and abuse, they also recognized earlier tha
most that justice goes beyond liberal equality to embrace what liberatio
theologies call the "preferential option for the poor." They were able to
validate special advocacy for and empowerment of an oppressed minorit
as an essential item on the moral and legal agenda of a nation.

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384 Journal of Religious Ethics

The option for enslaved, marginalized, or silenced peoples is not just

the product of scriptural themes, theological concepts, or theories of
justice. It is closely tied to social and political relationships, to prac-
tices of solidarity and resistance that illumine and confirm moral truth
existentially and performatively. The prophetic action of black leaders
and churches underlines an important and more general point about
moral epistemology and the role of religion in it. Truths about practical
matters - about ethics and politics - can be known only through practi-
cal reason, operating in practical experience (Cahill 2002). Such knowl-
edge is necessarily inductive and incremental. Sometimes the truths at
which practical reason arrives are particular and limited; sometimes
they are general and even absolute. As practical, knowledge in ethics
and politics always arises within contextual experience; it is generalized
by inducing others to recognize commonalities with their own experi-
ence, and to identify empathetically with the experiences and realities of
others. The basis for this generalization is the common humanity of the
other, as embodied, self-conscious, social, and capable of knowledge and
choice.
A religious view of the world orders one's own experience, and that
of one's community; a religious worldview is embodied in practices of
life; and a religious worldview evokes and shapes the imagination, af-
fections, and sympathies with which believers relate to others. This is
why religious communities are not dispensable add-ons to the democratic
process. Religious traditions seed recognition of moral truths in distinc-
tive ways, linked to the moral priorities of their worldviews, narratives,
and practices. A distinctive contribution of Christianity is the "preferen-
tial option for the poor," which goes beyond liberal equality and rights.
A religious truth-claim about ethics and politics can be generalized if
and when it corresponds to the moral experiences of others, is rooted in
common humanity, and is confirmed in moral practices.
Hauerwas is right that communities and their narratives can train
members to see the world truthfully and live according to a truthful de-
scription of reality, or can fail to do so (Hauerwas 1974, 2-3, 34-36).
Stout too agrees that moral truths, concepts, and norms emerge, are
evaluated, and are revised within discursive social practices tied to the
commitments of their members (Stout 2004, 267-69, 273, 286). If this
is the case, then differences in practices can make a difference in the
real truths discerned. Religious communities can sponsor truths about
common humanity that are valid beyond the originating context of per-
ception. Such truths can premise the extension of corresponding social
practices, and the simultaneous reform of dissonant practices. The ex-
ample of African American church activists and African American the-
ologians confirms William Schweiker's insistence that biblically inspired

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 Theological Ethics, the Churches, and Global Politics 385

and politically tested Christian convictions "are disclosive of dimensions

of reality" in general, and "cast light on how rightly to orient existence,"
not just for Christians but for all (Schweiker 2006, 718).
Recognition broadens as a result of the expansion of moral vision and
reordered perceptions of "the real," through exercises of political par-
ticipation, mutual criticism, and solidarity around shared goals. In the
democratic spirit urged by Stout, Christians and other religious persons
may enter such processes while voicing conviction as to the truth of their
visions and values, as well as to their transcendent inspiration, as long
as they display the virtues of honesty, empathy, humility, and openness
(Dickens 2006, 397, 406, 413, 417). "The disclosive power of Christian
symbols, metaphors, parables and narratives grounds the properly pub-
lic nature of Christian claims" (Schweiker 2006, 718).
African American theology and its politics exemplify two related as-
pects of Christian social ethics that are representative of other liberation
theologies. First is the priority of the needs, goods, and voices of the least
well-off or most oppressed. The premise of the generalizability of this
option for the poor is that shared humanity brings the capacity to rec-
ognize essential human needs, and to respond to others' deprivation of
basic goods with empathy, compassion, and action. The impossibility of
enumerating, in the abstract and universally, complete lists of goods and
rights is due to the practical nature of moral knowledge. Yet this im-
possibility poses no real barrier to the practical knowledge of the truth
that many people and whole peoples are excluded from any semblance
of human well-being. To treat it as an obstacle to collaborative politi-
cal action undermines the radical social message of Christianity, and
the application of that message in real-world, global politics. The ethical
agenda of liberation theologies (like that of the New Testament) is to
decry violent or exploitative uses of power that circumscribe access to
clearly necessary goods (as in the parable of judgment in Matthew 25).
These theologies are "realist," both in the sense of assuming an objective
and in some sense "universal" morality (approached inductively and per-
spectivally) and in the sense of accepting that rectification of injustice
requires engagement in a political process, and hence negotiation and
compromise.
Second, these theologies use concepts and symbols of sin and hope to
illuminate actual social situations of oppressive deprivation as evil or un-
just, as unacceptable, and as amenable to change. In other words, though
realist, these theologies do not endorse "political realism" in the sense of
simply accepting self-interest as the one governing principle of personal
and political behavior, thereby eliminating all other moral principles as
irrelevant to a functional political understanding of "justice." Power re-
lations based purely on self-interest or group interest are denounced as

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386 Journal of Religious Ethics

structural sin; Christian symbols such as the "reign of God" and the
"resurrection" are invoked to explain and give life to transformative
practices and nourish confidence that change is possible.

3. Rights, Religion, and a Common Morality

The commitment to shared humanity and, derivatively, to some cross-
cultural (if revisable) standards of justice is even more important to con-
fronting global iniquity than it is to dealing with injustice in the liberal,
democratic, capitalist society of the United States. With Stout and Rawls
(Rawls 1999), one might rely in the latter context on the political tradi-
tions that are historically shared, if not universal. Some authors writing
about religious ethics within this context have argued that universaliz-
ing language such as "human nature" and "human rights" is contingent
on the Western religious and political traditions that gave it birth, and
that international deployment of this vocabulary is unwarranted, risky,
or even dangerous (Porter 2005; Davis 2005, 2007). Stout himself thinks
that ideas of unconditional obligation trace back to nonuniversalizable
community consensus (Stout 2004, 195), and suggests that when groups
in revolt against "imperialism and global capitalism" use language of
"rights, liberation, and self-determination," they have simply co-opted
the oppressor's vocabulary to make their case for rebellion (Stout 2004,
230).
Religious ethicists writing with a focus on issues of global justice
have pushed communitarian theorists and Stout to make their com-
mitments to moral realism and global ethical standards unequivocal
and unreserved (see Little 2006, 2007; Schweiker 2004a, 2004b, 2006;
and Hollenbach 2003, especially 231-59). Simeon Ilesanmi sees socio-
economic and development rights as an imperative for religious ethics,
in view of the conditions of material deprivation that economic globaliza-
tion is imposing on many societies, especially in Africa (Ilesanmi 2004).
David Little finds that Stout wants to accommodate rights language,
but is unable to ground it adequately, given that his liberal-democratic
"traditionalism" cannot carry Stout's own apparent assumptions about
justice and injustice (for example, racial-ethnic discrimination is wrong)
into the international arena (Little 2006, 302-6).
Sumner Twiss essentially agrees with Little that international hu-
man rights discourse assumes and reveals "a core set of minimal values
held in common by otherwise diverse ethical communities." These values
may or may not be justified in terms of a "transcendental source," but
they always go beyond political participation to include "provision of ma-
terial, social and economic necessities - for example, nutrition, shelter,
clothing, health care, and education." Ultimately, the common morality
behind human rights targets unjust patterns of access to these goods

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 Theological Ethics, the Churches, and Global Politics 387

(Twiss 2005, 655-56). Twiss's allusion, in support of this view, to the

Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain indicates that he does not see
this morality as simply the product of cultural cross-fertilization and
borrowing, but as rooted in universal requirements of human physical
and social well-being, and of any good society (Twiss 2005, 655 n. 1; 2004,
57-59, 64-65). Maritain himself believes that moral agreements among
different cultures and religions are due ultimately to the fact that cer-
tain requirements of the common good are entailed by the "conditions of
existence and development" that human persons need as such (Maritain
1947, 48).
Little makes an especially strong argument that if human rights lan-
guage can not be understood to refer to a universal human morality
and universally binding obligations, then it is pointless both philosophi-
cally and politically. Though the Universal Declaration on Human Rights
(UDHR) may have arisen out of general reactions of shock and guilt to
Nazi atrocities, and may correctly be tied to a particular set of generating
events, the moral claims that it captures are not limited to that setting.
Its purpose is to ensure that "communities everywhere" guarantee basic
conditions for community life to be "healthy, constructive, and edifying"
(Little 2006, 307). Hence rights language is not justified for some com-
munities and not others. Included in the very meaning of human rights
is universal obligation. "Since rights language is understood to be univer-
sally binding, it is, by definition, understood to be universally justified"
(Little 2006, 302).
Of course, it is not enough to assert that if human rights language
cannot be regarded as referring to universal obligations that are some-
how inherent in the human condition, and are so cross-culturally and
globally, then human rights language will not be effective in accomplish-
ing the purposes intended by the drafters of the UDHR. A critic might
well respond, "So much the worse for human rights language," and would
find much to validate his or her perspective in the continuing deplorable
world record of human rights abuses and in the selective application of
human rights standards. What is needed is an account of moral knowing
that grants historicity, particularity, and fallibility, but that still makes
a credible case for reliability and commonality, beyond the "need" for it
to be so. An adequate account would go beyond de facto agreements on
norms, to identify aspects of human existence that are relatively invari-
ant across time and place, that are readily acknowledged to be so cross-
culturally, and that can ground virtually indisputable claims about the
essential conditions for human life, health, society, and flourishing.
As proposed above, such an account can only be induced practically
and historically, and on the basis of generalizable human experience. In
fact, in defending an absolute norm against torture, Twiss brings his-
torical, psychological, and sociological evidence to show that torture can

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388 Journal of Religious Ethics

and should be prohibited in all "the world's moral systems" on the basis
of its demonstrably destructive and violent effects on individual victims
and on social practices. Societies and moralities base such prohibitions
on "strands of moral intuitionism, natural-law-like thinking and conse-
quentialism," but common to all is the practical recognition that torture
violates human persons and the common good (Twiss 2007, 364).
Basic aspects of human "existence and development," and derivative
claims about human goods and violations of goods, are really not very
difficult to uncover. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum, among others, has
proposed various lists of shared experiences related to the human body,
human consciousness, and human sociality, such as the need for food, wa-
ter, shelter, freedom of movement, and freedom from pain; the capacity
for sexual pleasure and reproduction; intelligence and practical reason;
affiliation with other human beings; and the desire and capacity to for-
mulate desires, goals, and life plans (for example, Nussbaum 1992; for
a discussion, see Cahill 1996, 46-61). On the basis of such experiences,
human beings and societies everywhere value nutrition and health care,
education and employment, sexual self-determination and the ability to
choose a sexual partner and raise children, the opportunity to live in
local and larger societies and participate in their institutions, and the
ability to change the place and geographic region of residence to improve
one's condition of life. The particular embodiments of these goods and
their social organization will vary culturally.
Despite this variation, the basic and essential nature of goods is al-
ready tacitly acknowledged by anyone who strives to secure them for
themselves, family members, and associates. But simple recognition of
goods does not solve the most difficult moral problem: creating agree-
ment on equitable access. Two aspects of morality must be distinguished.
One aspect is the identification of basic goods; another is the recogni-
tion of the basic equality of persons as deserving of those goods. David
Hollenbach has referred to these two dimensions as the "Aristotelian" mo-
ment and the "Kantian" moment in ethics (Hollenbach n.d.). In dealing
with cultural pluralism about ethics and politics, the second "moment" -
recognition of basic human equality - is considerably more troublesome
than the first. To this, human rights discourse and similar manifesta-
tions of common morality are primarily addressed. They aim at agree-
ment that all persons and societies are guaranteed access to material,
social, and political goods at some basic level. The UDHR targets, for
example, slavery and torture, to which could be added rape, deprivation
of health care and nutrition, and exclusion from basic goods on the basis
of gender, ethnicity, or race.
Programmatic moral statements such as the UDHR represent a call
for respect, dignity, and equality, and constitute a mandate for societies
to rein in self-interest and invest in the common good. "The insistence on

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 Theological Ethics, the Churches, and Global Politics 389

legalizing human rights nationally and internationally itself attests to

how strong and enduring is the temptation confronting all communities
to find reasons sooner or later to subvert individual protections" (Lit-
tle 2006, 308). According to Ilesanmi, human rights represent human
interdependence and the universal responsibility to ensure human de-
velopment. In its present form globalization "functions more as a tool of
avoidable deprivations than of economic empowerment." Yet, if brought
under the governance of human rights, "it could produce . . . global pros-
perity" (Ilesanmi 2004, 89-90). The key issue at stake is not what consti-
tutes deprivation, empowerment, or prosperity - but who should share
in such conditions, and at whose cost or benefit.
The reason norms such as "human rights" are controversial is not be-
cause there is general cultural disagreement about the goodness of food,
clean water, and necessary medicines; or about the badness of sexual vio-
lence, enslavement, or being tortured and killed. Rather, disagreements
arise about who is entitled to goods and protections, and who is not en-
titled, or whose entitlement can be overridden to protect the access and
shares of more powerful individuals and groups. What is disputed is es-
sential human equality, or that equality requires equal rights to basic
access, not the fundamental nature of the human goods to which access
is claimed or desired.
Cross-cultural debates about ethics and politics can be difficult and
tendentious because interlocutors suspect or know that different view-
points on just access arrangements are veiled attempts either to gain or
protect advantage in power over goods, or to rearrange access arrange-
ments within another culture in a way that disrupts power relations
already internally secured. Existing debates about which nations or cul-
tures should bear the costs of reducing global warming to protect an en-
vironment that is supposedly a public good, or about how women's rights
to education and health care should be universalized, illustrate these
problems. These difficulties support rather than invalidate the idea that
there is a "universal" morality in the sense of a common perception of
human and social goods to which everyone wants access for themselves.
They also reveal very clearly that the lack of a common morality regard-
ing routes of access to goods pinpoints the problem's source as another
human universal: a bias in favor of making self-interest rather than mu-
tual respect, dignity, and equality the operational principle of moral and
social behavior. Here the theological vocabulary of "sin" may be usefully
applied.
Resolution of the practical, political problems of global justice as equi-
table shares in basic goods and social institutions is difficult, and not to
be achieved in the abstract. The task is to widen agreement over entitle-
ment patterns and practices, which amounts to convincing adversaries
both that one is sincerely committed to equity and the common good,

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390 Journal of Religious Ethics

and not only to self-interest, and that the humanity of other stakehold-
ers compels empathy, equal respect, and equal practical consideration,
and even special consideration for those currently most excluded. The
necessary practical agreement on human rights, or on other forms and
norms of a just social relationship, requires a process that Twiss de-
scribes well. The process must push diverse cultural representatives or
groups to engage in dialogues or even shared practices and projects that
can uncover "the operation of analogous moral principles or rules, shared
understandings of key human moral capacities (for example, sympathy,
compassion), and shared human vulnerabilities to suffering and oppres-
sion," as well as increase the realization that "all cultures are open to
change and accommodation" (Twiss 2004, 62).

4. Theology, Religious Symbols, and Political Empowerment

Religion, theology, and the churches - in fact, all faith communities -
contribute to this process in distinctive ways. First of all, "secular" cul-
ture is more a figment of the Western elite imagination than a reality
for most peoples of the world. Hence, religious communities and their
explanatory theories (theologies) are vital to personal formation, local
communities, civil society, ethnic and national identities, and political
participation worldwide. Second, religious practices and symbol systems,
and the moral practices that interface with them, are among the sites at
which people come to know and become committed to the "realities" of
human goods, of other persons, and of access arrangements.
It is essential to biblical Christianity that it challenge the exclusion of
the economically and socially "poor," though this is certainly not to say it
is the only religious or moral tradition to do so. By identifying exclusion-
ary attitudes and practices as sinful, Christianity rejects the prospect
that such practices are inevitable, justified, or acceptable. Moreover, cer-
tain key biblical themes emerge to the forefront as catalysts for change
when the Gospels are read from the standpoint of the oppressed. Fore-
most among these are resurrection and hope. Resurrection is an escha-
tological reality that already rectifies unjust suffering and bestows new
life; it is experienced in and with the cross, not only as a future expec-
tation or reward; and it is effective in every dimension of the disciple's
and the community's life, not only in specifically liturgical or ecclesial
settings. Hope is rooted ultimately in God's promises of redemption and
Jesus's ministry of the reign of God. It is enabled proximately by prac-
tices of conversion, reformation, and resistance that make a concrete
difference in personal and social relationships.
The Salvadoran theologian Jon Sobrino, a friend and survivor of the
Jesuit martyrs of the University of Central America, theologizes on the
basis of work with the poor in his country. In his view, "the risen Christ

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 Theological Ethics, the Churches, and Global Politics 391

can become victoriously present in the following of the crucified Jesus,

so that this following can here and now be shot through with the tri-
umphant aspect of the resurrection of Jesus

limitations of history" (Sobrino 2001, 13). Fro

victims," it is essential to say, "with some da
in history of the triumph of the resurrectio
in the following of Jesus" (Sobrino 2001, 13).
similar point from the standpoint of the opp
soldier, Moltmann became aware of Hitler's d
of-war camp, and was overcome by shame and
realized that the cross is not only God's solida
God's rectification of the guilty, through whic
In the experience of the cross is the power of
visions of the New Testament "were prospect
and women saw the crucified Jesus as the liv
cast ahead by God's coming glory" (Moltmann
Although theologies of atonement that ce
for violence are theologically and ethically
Williams 2006), some of those who suffer testif
of consolation, but of mysterious empowermen
the cross. JoAnne Marie Terrell interrogates
symbolism and the religious and political re
image of Jesus on the cross "have salvific pow
it reinforce the exploitation . . . ? Are there w
service in churches and in the communities t
nonexploitative? . . . . [I]s there power in the
The cross of Christ can only be said to end vio
of the whole story about Jesus, including the
fering and death, resurrection, and continuou
Spirit," and in that light the ecclesial and pol
are integrated (Terrell 2006, 48).
The themes of Christian identity as demand
of common humanity, against oppression, and
ecclesial, and sociopolitical liberation are pe
ogy, as in liberation theology more generally
the point that cultural institutions that creat
be dismantled only by "holding on to justice
necessary, and indispensable values that we ca
in our scholarship, in the lives of those in our
in the worlds we live in" (Townes 2006, 161).
option, for "hope is dangerous," giving vulner
aligning believers sometimes with unworth
into confrontation with disappointment, deso
of despair. "But there is something about hop

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392 Journal of Religious Ethics

the risen Christ, that is solid enough to sustain our lives and overcome
skepticism and doubt

believe in this hope, it will or

always predictable, not alway
protest with prophetic fury t
1997, 191).
The truths of Christian po
sive practices of the reign of God, its confidence that historical ap-
proximations of those practices are possible, its hope in the face of
contradictions - are validated in action itself. According to Edward
Schillebeeckx, "If truth is to be universal, and thus truth, then it is also
mediated practically, even politically and socially." The cognitive content
of the Christian faith cannot be reduced to a theory. It "is manifested
historically in the way in which" the churches follow "the story of the
life and death of the risen Jesus," with "trust and hope" that "manifest
themselves in a message of universal justice and peace of and for one
another in a praxis of solidarity" (Schillebeeckx 1993, 177).

5. Catholic Social Tradition

Catholic social ethics offers a tradition of political practices, church

teaching, and interpreting theologies that explicitly connects the prax
of the reign of God with public analysis and participation. Centeri
concepts such as common good, human dignity, differentiated forms
justice, social and material rights and duties, subsidiarity, participation
and solidarity provide a vehicle for Catholicism's public voice in plural
istic societies and across the borders of culture and religion (Hollenbac
2002; Himes 2005). Modern Catholic social thought was generated, i
the late nineteenth century, from the cross-fertilization of natural la
tradition, faith commitments and insights, social disruptions followin
industrialization and now globalization, and an ongoing critical rea
ing in view of hermeneutical and political theories. It can be and h
been faulted for a number of reasons, including overoptimism about h
man nature and the historical possibilities of justice, a bias to locate bo
moral and political authority at the top of a hierarchy, failure to recogn
the Western and Christian origin of some of its key concepts, and lac
of integration of its theological and philosophical-political dimensi
(Boswell et al. 2000; Heyer 2006). Especially in "official" manifestati
like papal encyclicals, Catholic social teaching suffers from selectivity r
garding the justice issues it targets, often neglecting realities like raci
and sexism.
Nevertheless, in its recent and still evolving incarnations, this tra-
dition provides a fruitful framework for understanding and promoting
the roles of religion and theology in politics. One asset is an internal

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 Theological Ethics, the Churches, and Global Politics 393

pluralism that incorporates both evangelical and "common morality" ap-

proaches, allowing these strands to stand in mutual support and critique
(Heyer 2006, 185-88). Another is the strong connection drawn among
religious commitment, theology, and advocacy. Still another is the in-
tentional outlook to the "universal common good," which has been on
the agenda of the modern popes since the 1960s. Finally, this tradition
is now being appropriated and reincarnated by activists and thinkers
from the developing world, and by those working in multicultural and
multireligious contexts, making the core vocabulary more flexible and
nuanced.
David Hollenbach writes of "intellectual solidarity" and "social soli-
darity" across a now global "network of crisscrossing communities" that
enables incremental knowledge of just global arrangements, and the pli-
able, decentralized infrastructure required to move toward such arrange-
ments in a changing international environment (Hollenbach 2002, 229;
2006, 29-31, 35). The type of "universalism" that emerges from this ap-
proach does not consist of incontrovertible philosophical claims, lists of
goods and rights deduced from first principles, or even stipulations and
specifications arrived at by human rights committees or religious sum-
mits. It is a "dialogic universalism" premised on common humanity and
assuming a common reality but historically articulated and implemented
"in a pluralistic but interdependent world" (Hollenbach 2003, 10-11; see
also 239-49).
In my view, the tradition of Catholic social thought (not unparalleled
by Protestant counterparts) represents the realities of political engage-
ment by the churches better than either an ecclesiology of an inten-
tionally disengaged witnessing church, or a politics of liberal democracy
reliant on the traditions of a particular cultural heritage. Catholic social
thought has attempted to adapt to global cultural pluralism. The voices
of women, people of color, the developing world, and non-Eurocentric the-
ological perspectives are beginning to have a significant effect on the way
that tradition is received, read, and applied, and even on its official epis-
copal and papal formulations. The proliferation of liberation theologies
worldwide and the prioritization of a "preferential option for the poor"
within magisterial teaching itself are good illustrations of this (John Paul
II 1992, 447, no. 11).
The work of two of Hauerwas's Catholic students exemplifies inter-
esting ways of meshing an evangelical inspiration, a commitment to
democratic participation and civil society, and action to realize the com-
mon good locally and globally. For example, under the provocative title,
Torture and Eucharist, William Cavanaugh transforms Hauerwas's ec-
clesiology in a cultural context opposite to liberal democracy: Chile under
Augusto Pinochet (Cavanaugh 1998). Cavanaugh argues that the church
must inspire practices that confront and turn back social violence, and so

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394 Journal of Religious Ethics

must, for example, excommunicate known torturers and those who abet
them, as has been done by Latin American Roman Catholic bishops.
A further dimension of Cavanaugh's work is that it shares with
Catholic social thought the idea that Christian formation can and should
have a positive effect on society and in politics, through direct engage-
ment in and commitment to the social order. Cavanaugh identifies the
Catholic Action movement of the 1930s as preparing the church in Chile
to resist the privatization of religion and disentangle itself from cor-
rupting temporal relationships. Catholic Action training also produced
lay people with "properly formed consciences for action in the world"
(Cavanaugh 1998, 140). In Latin America, "an entire generation of
Catholic leaders, both lay and clerical, was trained in a style of address-
ing social issues from a Catholic perspective," and came to regard social
change as "an imperative for Catholics," who saw themselves as "the
vanguard of constructing a more just society" (Cavanaugh 1998, 141).
Under Pinochet's military regime, the church created an alternate
social reality in collaboration with other agencies in civil society, both
Christian and Marxist. The church instituted "a wide range of programs
covering legal and medical assistance, job training, soup kitchens, buy-
ing cooperatives, assistance to unions and more" (Cavanaugh 1998, 264).
Women's groups were particularly effective. The Catholic Church's Com-
mittee of Cooperation for Peace in Chile and its Vicariate of Solidarity
combated the individualization and social fragmentation that stifled re-
sistance. The church provided legal aid to victims of repression and dis-
seminated information on Pinochet's abuses. According to Cavanaugh,
the Catholic church was the most important force resisting state repres-
sion and violence, and its transforming networks had pervasive effects
throughout the society.
Another example is Ugandan Emmanuel Katongole, a Catholic priest
who sees Hauerwas as validating the importance of particular identities
and communities so vital to African culture (Katongole 2000). Katongole
also appreciates Hauerwas's insights that no moral point of view is possi-
ble without formation in the realities of a concrete tradition, and that no
moral action is possible without an imagination informed by a specific
vision of the world (Katongole 2005, 134). Like Hauerwas, Katongole
rejects liberal political definitions of justice, democracy, and peace, and
calls for concrete communal patterns of life that can resist "nation-state
politics" (Katongole 2005, 139). Yet, he insists, for African Christians
the kingdom of God can be neither a spiritualized gospel nor a closed
community. Christianity must help form "transnational identities, as-
sociation, and communities," with an influence that is "reflected in the
social, political, and economic spheres of life" (Katongle 2005, 140, 144).
To abandon a commitment to any moral objectivity about the common
good, based on shared human needs and values, would also be to abandon
any confidence in or commitment to global social change that counteracts

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 Theological Ethics, the Churches, and Global Politics 395

acts of naked self-interest by partisan groups, states, and transnational

economic powers. Whether for societies or individuals, knowledge and
the will to act are closely intertwined with action; "truth" emerges at
the point of their convergence. Today, worldwide movements for human
rights, women's rights, racial-ethnic respect, democratization of politi-
cal systems, religious dialogue and tolerance, the environment, and eco-
nomic participation are already forms of global practice. These practices
highlight previously unrecognized moral realities, identify values, raise
individual and social consciousness, and motivate further collective ac-
tion (Cahill 2002, 327, 342). This is happening both locally and globally,
and religious communities, including Christian churches, are among the
bearers and catalysts (Schreiter 1998). This is more than a sociological
fact. It is a religious vision, a theological norm, an epistemological con-
firmation, and a political mandate to define Christianity in the century
to come.3

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