Abstract
In an increasingly secular society, where moral relativism and identity politics are easy answers to difference, can religious ethics play a critical, constructive role, both in politics and in academia? Miller answers in the affirmative, arguing for religious ethics’ normative and even prophetic contributions. These are grounded in the recognition that identity and otherness (“intimacy and alterity”) exist in a dialectical relationship, “which calls for responding to the other as someone to whom I am responsible” (3), not only as one I tolerate.
M. envisions religious ethics as a discourse whose home is in public and private universities, not seminaries for “the professional formation of religious clergy” (30). It assesses the social contributions of religious traditions without endorsing their backing faith commitments. Thus M.’s basic normative criterion is a liberal one: “the nonrelative value of moral subjectivity,” and “autonomy as the ability to self-critically adopt” commitments, “under our own authority” (99). Further, to battle “illiberal sentiments” such as “patriarchy, racial supremacism, religious discrimination or zealotry” (5), it is necessary to make a “cultural turn” to the real world, aided by anthropology and ethnography. To this end, M. includes one chapter on duties to children, beginning with the case of a critically ill US child; and one on six studies of specific subcultures. Four deal with global Islam, one with religious organizing after Katrina, and one with Catholic and Muslim women negotiating nontraditional roles.
Readers of this journal will recognize that even theological ethics—ethics premised on the relation of humanity and all creation to a God who saves—also today includes practical political concerns, interdisciplinarity, cultural and interreligious dialogue, and the grounding of normative insights in concrete information and praxis. In the Catholic world, the abundant literature on Christian ethics and economic inequality, racism, sexism, war and peace, immigration, and ecology, is both attuned to local and global realities, and data-informed on cultural developments such as the resurgence of the religious and political “right” here and abroad. This engaged theology and ethics is generated from within research universities, and draws on a long tradition of Catholic social teaching, with philosophical conversation partners, and the relevant social and human sciences. It embodies another “bottom line” goal complementary to M.’s respect for autonomy: responsibility for building the just and participatory infrastructures of the collective common good.
With a few exceptions (e.g., Augustine, Martin Luther King, and John Paul II), M. does not reference the work of theologians. Fortunately, however, the social character of moral agency and responsibility comes into the foreground as the book moves along, expanding its liberal premise. One example is M.’s chapter on memory, social identity, and political responsibility. He does not cite notable theologians such as Johann Baptist Metz or Miroslav Volf, but they and others who have written on memory, religion, violence, and reconciliation would certainly agree with M.’s main theses. Collective memory is key to political life, and can be constructed and manipulated for good or ill; hence, it is important to “create occasions of memory with an eye toward habituating civic identity and communal solidarity” (265).
A strength of this book is M.’s thesis that consideration of the emotions is essential to understand “the dynamic relationship between character and culture, between the private and public formation of the virtues.” Augustine’s vision of goods in relation to God (his “iconic realism”) teaches that human beings (and implicitly all creatures) deserve to be regarded in their own right, not merely in relation to the self (195–97). Drawing from, yet moving beyond, Augustine’s just war morality, M. argues that “modern, liberal democracies” demand the virtues of “self-restraint, critical self-analysis, and openness to deliberate publicly … in a context of cultural pluralism” (206).
M.’s liberal take on religion’s mode of engagement in public life will be controversial. He thinks religious ethics should adhere to the norms of “public reason” by bracketing any comprehensive vision of the good, in favor of democratic values. Public reason’s main task is to establish when and why “coercive public policy” justifiably limits individual freedoms. Religion can encourage “civic empathy” in imagining how this prospect seems to those whose freedom is restricted (293–94). Yet need the public role of religion be so circumscribed? After all, M. himself encourages the efforts of faith communities to form citizens in “empathic indignation” against injustice and in egalitarian “political solidarity” (147). Martin Luther King, “The Nuns on the Bus,” Pope Francis, and the Rev. William J. Barber III (leader of Raleigh, NC’s “Moral Monday” protests) all use reasons, biblical narratives, and symbolic actions to summon their communities to higher ideals of the common good, in the process evoking resonances and commitment among fellow citizens from multiple traditions. Theirs are passionate and inspiring visions that go far beyond debates about dogmatism, coercion and legally protected freedoms.
That being said, this is an important book for theological ethics and public theology as well as religious ethics. In cultures in which political behavior is driven by xenophobic emotions and “alternative facts,” we all need to understand both how progressive faith-based politics might play in secular, liberal circles; and how to make inclusive religious values more emotionally compelling and politically effective in forming responsible citizens.