{"id":4105,"date":"2015-02-20T21:27:49","date_gmt":"2015-02-20T21:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=4105"},"modified":"2015-02-20T21:27:49","modified_gmt":"2015-02-20T21:27:49","slug":"a-better-social-imaginary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/a-better-social-imaginary\/","title":{"rendered":"A Better Social Imaginary?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Leaving<\/a><\/p>\n

Family. The word itself can bring different emotions to different people, depending of their own experience. Why is it that many times children raised in Christian homes end up choosing to leave the sacred and enter a more secular existence? I wonder that myself, especially since I have two grown children who have experienced this very thing. What role did I play in all of this? Is this a good development or a bad development? What happens as time unfolds? Will my children return to their roots? Do I want them to? And what about Christians who have left the Church for a multitude of reasons? Will they ever return? Should they? If they do return, what are they coming back to?<\/p>\n

In his comprehensive treatise on the historical\/philosophical\/theological development of Western Civilization, Charles Taylor tackles the issues of the religious\/secular debate head on. A Secular Age<\/em>[1]<\/strong><\/em><\/a> is no leisurely read. Taylor\u2019s primary focus in this prolific text can be summarized thus, \u201c\u2026the change I want to define and trace is one that takes us from a society in which it was impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others.\u201d[2]<\/a> This \u201cplurality of options\u201d \u2013 when and how did they arise in Western societies? These are the questions that Charles Taylor examines here. It would be impossible to do justice to Taylor\u2019s work in a 1,500-word post, so I will only focus on one piece of the argument here.<\/p>\n

After the Protestant Reformation began, the most vicious war in Europe\u2019s history to that point, The Thirty Years\u2019 War, enveloped the Continent. I used to teach a class called War and Peace, which was a class that surveyed the \u201cJust War\u201d Tradition. Using the text, The Shield of Achilles<\/em>[3]<\/strong><\/em><\/a> as a foundation, here are some of my teaching notes that are helpful in framing this period, 1618-1648:<\/p>\n

For our purposes, the reason why the Thirty Years\u2019 War is treated as a single war is that a single constitutional issue was at stake throughout: would the princely state of the Habsburg dynasty impose their constitutional form of the state and Catholic religion on the contested areas of Germany and the Netherlands, or would the secular relationships among the national, absolutist monarchs of the new kingly states of France, Sweden, and Britain prevail instead?<\/p>\n

It started as a civil, holy war of the highest order: Catholic imperialists versus the Protestant and secularists of the newly formed kingly states. It was fought in what is modern day Germany. Force became a common medium of political intercourse. National animosities that had been held in check for centuries by a unity of religion found expression on the battlefield.<\/p>\n

This was a \u201crighteous,\u201d religious war wherein the only acceptable outcome to the opponents was either the conversion or the annihilation of the opposing side. This was the culmination of Augustine\u2019s premises. This was a war fought on the behalf of God where there were no rules whatsoever.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Into this context steps Hugo Grotius, one of my heroes in history.<\/p>\n

As a celebrated child prodigy, Grotius wrote Latin elegies at the age of eight, entered the university at eleven, and is said to have converted his Catholic mother to Calvinism with irrefutable arguments when he was twelve. At fifteen he went with a friend of his father\u2019s on a diplomatic mission to France where the king, Louis XIII, introduced the young Grotius as the \u201cmiracle of Holland.\u201d \u00a0In 1598, at the age of fifteen, he emerged with his doctorate and returned in 1599 to practice law in The Hague. In 1607, at the ripe old age of twenty-four, Grotius was appointed Advocate, or attorney-general, of Holland. He was deeply involved in attempting to heal the schism in the Dutch Reformed Church while asserting the independent federal status of the States of Holland. This went against the centralizing goals of Prince Maurice of Nassau who had Grotius arrested, and imprisoned for life at the age of thirty-five. Grotius eventually escaped and fled to Paris where he was denied a university post because of his Calvinist background. He regretted his career. He thought that he should have stuck with literature and not law. His last words are reported to have been, \u201cBy undertaking many things, I have accomplished nothing.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For many reasons Hugo Grotius was a humble and broken man. He was most broken by the carnage he saw in the Thirty Years\u2019 War. So he spoke up in a powerful way in his now famous work The Law of War and Peace<\/em>. Up until this time, the Church was the one that set the rules for moral order. But after the disillusionment of the Thirty Years\u2019 War, perhaps it was time for a new order, a new authority. The stage was now set for a more secular age. This is understandable to me. When one has been let down by an authority, it makes sense to find another one, a more dependable one. According to Taylor, what Grotius does in his work is to create the beginnings of a new \u201csocial imaginary\u201d:<\/p>\n

Starting from the 17th<\/sup> century, this idea has come to dominate our political thinking and the way we imagine our society. It starts off in Grotius\u2019 version as a theory of what political society is, that is, what it is in aid of, and how it comes to be. But any theory of this kind also offers inescapably a theory of moral order. It tells us something about how we ought to live together in society.<\/p>\n

The picture of society is that of individuals who come together to form a political entity, against a certain pre-existing moral background, and with certain ends in view. The moral background is one of natural rights; these people already have certain moral obligations towards each other. The ends sought are certain common benefits, of which security is most important.<\/p>\n

The underlying idea of moral order stresses the rights and obligations which we have as individuals in regard to each other, even prior to or outside the political bond. Political obligations are seen as an extension or application of these fundamental moral ties. Political authority is legitimate only because it was consented to by individuals (the original contract), and this contract creates binding obligations in virtue of the pre-existing principle that promises ought to be kept.[4]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Into the discussion enters John Locke, who furthers Grotius\u2019 ideas and adds greatly to the new social imaginary, one that is thoroughly secular in nature, one that lifts humans \u2013 particularly individuals \u2013 to positions of moral authority. Who, then, needs religion? Who needs a Church to call the shots, when that institution has proven itself inept and ineffective? If this were true in the 17th<\/sup> and 18th<\/sup> century, how much more true would it be in the 21st<\/sup> century, particularly in the individualized West? These are common questions today. How do we answer these questions? I guess it all depends on your social and spiritual imagination.<\/p>\n

I admire Grotius for his courage and wisdom, though I do not agree entirely with his theories or ultimate conclusions. To give humans the sole authority to set all moral and ethical standards can be dangerous. A higher, more pure and righteous authority is still essential, even in the 21st<\/sup> century. The 20th<\/sup> century was the bloodiest in human history. Humans destroyed fellow humans in unfathomable ways. And, we see it happening in the present age as well. So what is the answer to this mess? Certainly, there are no easy answers. But is a renewed Christian Church part of the answer? I could only imagine.<\/p>\n

As I look back on my own parenting career, I sometimes feel pretty deflated. My kids are resistant to having a spiritual dimension in their lives at least in part because of my imperfect modeling. Their dad was for most of their growing years a pastor, a minister of the Gospel. But it was not always good news for them. Legalism, hypocrisy, and inconsistency were their companions as they grew up in the Church. I can\u2019t say there were not some good times \u2013 in fact, there were some extremely good times. But in spite of this, my children question the purpose of the church, and at times even a belief in God. Is this normal? Probably. If we lived in the 16th<\/sup> century, would it be different for them? We will never know for sure. My hope is that one\u2019s personal journey is always fraught with a multitude of experiences and that sometimes a secular journey just might end up going in a spiritual direction.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Charles Taylor, A Secular Age<\/em> (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007)<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid., 3.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Phillip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History<\/em> (NY: Knopf, 2002)<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Charles Taylor, A Secular Age<\/em> (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007) 159.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Family. The word itself can bring different emotions to different people, depending of their own experience. Why is it that many times children raised in Christian homes end up choosing to leave the sacred and enter a more secular existence? I wonder that myself, especially since I have two grown children who have experienced this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[491,2,186],"class_list":["post-4105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lgp4-3","tag-dminlgp","tag-taylor","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4107,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4105\/revisions\/4107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}