I conclude by speaking from within my own
tradition. The task of Christian political thinking today is to use our
heritage to think our way into radically new world, which could not be
anticipated, a world whose only present order is the order of the common
fear, and that is the fear of a world gyrating out of control, far beyond
national sovereignties, towards a common disaster. Moreover, as Christians
dong political thinking, we must recognize that our starting point is one
of relative affluence and power, which must increasingly be shared with
others. At least as European and North American Christians, our task is to
persuade our fellow countryman to the tasks of a new realism, a new way of
life that is brought under the discipline of a more equal world.
In that task, we can learn from St. Augustine that unless one begins with
where people are, with their given perception of their own self interest,
then you will not be able to move them. And from Aquinas we can learn that
it is not impractical to hope that people will be rational, that if shown
the impact of new world realities upon their old, more narrow perceptions
of self- interest they will respond reasonably and modify their claims.
From Augustine we can learn that pious hopes without the astute use of
power cannot change the world. And from Aquinas we can learn that religion
has that kind of power. The power to defined reality has traditionally
belonged to religion; and it is a power whose responsibility, especially
in these times, should bear
heavily upon us. It is the power to legitimate or de-legitimate political
authority, because religion defines the world within which leaders are
perceived as truly leading, or only wandering.
Let us make no mistake. Political leaders can respond to new world
realities only as religions redefine that world, and thus redefine what
acting responsibly within that world means. I cannot overstate how
seriously I think we need to take ourselves. Religion has been granted by
most people in the world the power to tell them what is real. It is an
awesome and terrible responsibility. We in religion have the power to
legitimate or to de-legitimate secular rule. And our concrete situation is
that the old way of making the world work no longer works.
The
French existentialist Albert Camus spoke eloquently of this.
“Tomorrow” he said,
“the world may burst into fragments. In that threat hanging over our
heads there is a lesson of truth. As we face such a future, hierarchies,
titles, honors are reduced to what they are in reality: a passing puff of
smoke. And the only certainty left to us is that of naked suffering,
common to all, intermingling its roots with those of a stubborn hope.”
We need a new politics. A politics guided by a new sense at what the
future of the nation state must be if there is to be a human future at
all. The prophet voice of the world’s religions is, I think, that last
best hope of humanity. This must be a voice critically a wear of its own
parochial base, and so able to transcend its narrow self-interests to
wards a more comprehensive hope. This hope must be pursued within the
tension of the Augustinian sense of the tragic limits of human moral
achievements, and the optimism of St. Thomas about what may still be
possible when the full dimensions of our predicament become clear.