// Comments from the Fellows

Chris Oleson Ph.D

A Quibble with 'Faith in America '

There are many things in Gov. Mitt Romney's recent speech, 'Faith in America ' that are justly to be praised. As others have pointed out, the explicit call for vibrant participation of religiously informed citizens is chief among them.

In light of the fact that the answers to questions such as these (1) are matters of divine revelation, (2) do not directly affect the well-being and virtue of a citizenry, and (3) are either deeply disputed or roundly ignored in our pluralistic culture, Romney's statement that one ought not to make of them a "test" for American political office is surely reasonable. One need not regard such questions as unimportant in order to see them as incidental to the next four years of America 's political battles.

In place of these contentious doctrinal disputes, Romney calls upon religious voters to make their political judgments based upon what he calls our "common creed of moral convictions." He writes:

"It is important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America , we share a common creed of moral convictions. And where the affairs of our nation are concerned, it's usually a sound rule to focus on the latter - on the great moral principles that urge us all on a common course."

As wonderful as all this sounds, it is here that I find myself quibbling with Gov. Romney, for it strikes me that, in 21 st century American society, "a common creed of moral convictions" rooted in "the great moral principles that urge us all on" is just as chimerical a source of unity as would be a particular religious tradition. As the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre as pointed out on numerous occasions, what pluralistic Americans (religious or otherwise) share is actually a common moral "rhetoric" which disguises underneath it a cacophony of competing frameworks of moral perspective.

Certainly we share a common set of morally pregnant vocabulary words. We all speak of "values," "rights," "freedom," "dignity," "democracy," "justice," "equality," "family," "patriotism," etc. However, what we all mean by these terms (even if we were to confine this "we" to those Americans who consciously identify themselves with a particular religious tradition) is anything but clear. What I mean by the words justice, freedom, and dignity as opposed to what my fellow citizen means by them is, as experience lamentably confirms, often starkly opposed.

For some, freedom demands the right to choose abortion; for others that "right" marks the tyrannical end of freedom for a significant segment of the population. For some, equal justice necessitates the right of people to marry persons of the same gender; for others this trivialization of the natural purposes and complementarity of gender and sexuality constitutes a grave injustice to a vital aspect of the common good. For some conscientious and prophetic patriotism demands a denunciation of the nation's military activity. For many others such pacifistic sentiments are a serious betrayal of what we owe to our country.

What all of this points to is a citizenry (both religious and non) embodying a bewildering diversity of competing and often internally confused moral perspectives. The natural consequence of this is a diversity of competing and often confused claims to rights and obligations, as well as profound disagreements over the correct allocation of praise and blame.

We simply share no clear, common public standards by which to clarify our moral differences. We cannot, for example, collectively explain how one rationally identifies what a genuine "human right" is, as opposed to a false claim to such rights. As MacIntyre has written, " the question of what it is in virtue of which a particular moral judgment is true or false has come to lack any clear answer" for us. In this he is clearly correct.

Thus, more is obscured than clarified about our social and political condition when Gov. Romney writes:

Perhaps the most important question to ask a person of faith who seeks a political office, is this: does he share these American values: the equality of human kind, the obligation to serve one another, and a steadfast commitment to liberty?

They are not unique to any one denomination. They belong to the great moral inheritance we hold in common. They are the firm ground on which Americans of different faiths meet and stand as a nation, united.

It would certainly be wonderful if our moral-religious culture possessed this kind of coherence and unity. It would be lovely if Alexis de Toqueville could still write of contemporary American religious bodies, "All differ in the worship one must render to the Creator, but all agree on the duties of men toward one another.all sects preach the same morality in the name of God.the result.is that everything is certain and fixed in the moral world."

Alas, this is unfortunately no longer the case. We have lost that socially crucial unity of moral understanding that Aristotle called " homonoia " and which he identified as an indispensable quality of healthy political communities. It is certainly understandable that one would wish for such a condition to be ours, but to speak clearly and in detail of what "faith in America " means is now always to articulate an American ideal which will be alien and unattractive to a significant portion of our population.

Chris Oleson Ph.D . is associate professor of philosophy for the Legion of Christ at their Center for Higher Studies in Thornwood, New York. He teaches the history of modern philosophy, the philosophy of culture, as well as various courses in moral and political philosophy. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the Catholic University of America and a Master of Arts in Religion from Yale Divinity School.