LONDON LECTURES - October 2001
MORAL LEADERSHIP
1. TAKE ME TO YOUR (MORAL) LEADER
If a week is a long time in politics then the six months between doing the first and last drafts of these lectures has seemed like an epoch.
In the last six months we have witnessed some significant events which seem to have changed the landscape or at least affected the light in which we now view the scene. The terrorist attacks in America have been talked about in apocalyptic language. They raise fundamental issues about leadership in the modern world. How do political and religious leaders hold together the principles of justice and mercy in the pursuit of freedom and peace?
The race riots in Oldham have exposed some of the inherent instabilities of modern Britain. Amongst many issues to be faced are those of leadership especially by those who hold positions of responsibility within the faith communities.
The prospect of human cloning comes ever nearer with Doctors such as Seberimo Antinoni breaking ranks with colleagues and announcing publicly his plans to proceed with the first ever cloning of a human baby. Here is an episode of modern science that begs the question as to who exercises leadership both within the scientific community and in the world at large.
Then there is an increasing awareness of the damage that we are inflicting upon the planet with our reckless exploitation of its finite resources. Hard won agreement on various protocols seem to be falling apart. Discord about the environment makes the future even more precarious and again begs the question as to who can or will offer leadership on behalf of the whole earth.
The principles involved will be both pragmatic and moral.
While the planet is under threat from both our irresponsible attitude to the environment and from the terrorist attacks of extremists there is a wide spread feeling that the very ground of our communities is being shaken by a social earthquake.
Writers such as Robert Putman in his book "Bowling Alone : the Collapse and Revival of American Community" is suggesting that we are exhausting our social capital. His thinking is influential in shaping that of the Prime Minister. Anxieties about the community's deficit seem to be opening up new possibilities so that the Government is creating even more opportunities for faith communities to be engaged in the state's social and educational provision. This is highly contentious.
On the one hand the faith communities are responding enthusiastically to these initiatives arguing that they need to be partners in the regenerating of society because the spiritual and moral are as important as the economic and physical aspects of regeneration.
Yet on the other hand this is bitterly opposed by philosophers such as A.C. Grayling who believe strongly that the state should disengage from the faith communities whose beliefs he believes are fundamentally irreconcilable . He fears that embracing the faith communities into the State's social provision will ultimately institutionalise division within society.
Sharpening the focus of this debate is the Government's latest White Paper on education which gives strong affirmation to the involvement of not just the churches but all faith communities in the state provision of education.
When I trained as a teacher 30 years ago and was doing my PGCE if anybody had ever said that in 30 years time the State would be offering the church a greater stake in education you would simply have been laughed out of the tutorial. It is a fascinating feature of our so called post Christian society that 30 years on the Christian church's contribution to education is not simply being sought after but positively affirmed and encouraged.
In his address to the Christian Socialist Movement on March 29th of this year the Prime Minister in a speech entitled "Faith in Politics" spoke unequivocally; "Church Schools are a true partnership between the Churches and the Government. They are a pillar of our national education system valued by very many parents for their faith character, their moral emphasis and the high quality of education they generally provide."
But his position has been strongly criticised by Bill Morris of the TUC who like Grayling fears that schools that are faith based will fuel sectarianism in society. The issue of faith schools raises a number of interesting features about modern society.
Faith Schools are an example of both the opportunity and the obstacles that Christians face in the modern world. On the one hand, it shows a culture that is apparently open to spirituality yet, on the other hand, it presents a culture which refuses to attach greater credibility to one religion more than another.
How the Church negotiates the Mission of God in this new world is the subject for a different series of lectures! What it reveals is a context in which the exercising of leadership, moral and spiritual, presents challenges that leave many of us feeling that we are in a unique situation in the history of the church's engagement with human society. Lessons from the past are not only poor masters for the future but pretty inexperienced servants! All these things seem to have come into much sharper focus in the last six months and make me feel grossly inadequate to the task of offering any thought whatsoever about the requirements of moral leadership in the modern world!
In a concise and perceptive essay in Crucible ("Whither Anglican social ethics?") Alan M. Suggate discerns some of the major shifts in the social context of the last 50 years. These have profoundly shaped the ethical debate. Society has undoubtedly become more plural which means "The Church of England has to struggle harder to receive a hearing and sustain a public theology". Anyone who has ever been landed with the task of doing "Thought for the Day" knows that struggle!
Suggate adds that social policy has deposed certain assumptions about person-in-society, social justice and welfare in favour of freedom and responsibility of individuals and families. As someone who is closely involved in urban renewal programmes on Merseyside I wrestle all the time with these changing assumptions which are expressed by both politicians and civil servants in their formulation and execution of public policy on community regeneration.
In July this year I was invited to preach at the Durham Miners Gala in Durham Cathedral. There was not a New Labour M.P. to be seen for miles!
I preached on Jesus' Nazareth Manifesto and Keir Hardie making the observation that we were well supplied with focus groups and spin doctors but where were the prophets today who spoke up for the poor. The reaction to the sermon made me aware that people feel that the political and moral ground has shifted beneath their feet.
Suggate also draws attention to the fact that there is now a greater international awareness. "Global capitalism imperiously both homogenises and fragments, provoking resistance from pressurised cultures and people." (before September 11 th !)
This creates a very different world and calls for the emergence of international moral leadership the like of which we have never seen. Furthermore offering leadership in a globalised world cannot be done without the media which itself creates a highly problematic context in which leaders are projected.
Such is the canvass upon which I will seek to paint over the next few weeks.
I began my preparation for these lectures in the two weeks of March either side of St Patrick's Day. I read in the library of St Deiniol's Hawarden the home of William Gladstone in North Wales. The story goes that while he was felling a tree news came that Queen Victoria was inviting him to form his first administration. He opened the message from the courier, remarked 'very significant' and continued felling the tree! Having completed the arboreal task and in his short-sleeves, he then pronounced these famous words, "My mission is to pacify Ireland". These sentiments were remarkable not because that work over a century later has yet to come to fruition, but because there are very few Prime Ministers who would have described any of their tasks in the language of mission.
Yet for Gladstone both his public office and his private life were characterised by imperatives that were explicitly both spiritual and moral. On the same weekend this year in an interview for the Sunday Telegraph the present Prime Minister, Tony Blair, spoke openly and yet with reticence about the spiritual and moral foundations of his own political outlook. In particular he spoke of the shift in his views from utilitarianism to natural law.
"I'm far more of a believer in the power and the necessity to make judgements about the human condition, as opposed to simply saying, well look, what's good for the greatest number is fine. I'm a great respecter of science, and the ability of science to inform our perceptions of the world. But I think there is a danger sometimes that we look at everything just in terms of what its utilitarian value is"
Although utilitarianism is the most popular frame of morality today the Prime Minister has rumbled its inadequacies. 'The greatest happiness for the greatest number' is a fine principle when that consists of building more and better schools and hospitals. But it is inadequate to the task of framing a moral position to withstand a policy of, say, ethnic cleansing.
Matthew D'Arcma commenting on the interview compared Blair to Gladstone as two Prime Ministers who could be ranked together not only because of their political ambition to settle the Irish question but also on account of the moral and theological convictions underpinning their political philosophy and pragmatism.
If ever there were a political dilemma that called for moral as well as political leadership it is in Northern Ireland where the peace process flounders. It is salutary to remind ourselves of the influence for good that was the legacy of the MPs from Ireland when they joined the British Parliament in the 19 th century. It was only "the entrance of Irish members into the British parliament, which occurred in 1804, (that) revived the hope of the abolitionists of the Slave Trade." And later secured a majority in the House of Commons for the abolition of the Slave Trade. (A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious Systems of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in this country; contrasted with Real Christianity 1836) The Rev Thomas Price in his review notes on the life of William Wilberforce that the Irish MPs were generally free of the commercial interests of the English MPs who resisted both the abolition of the slave trade and the end of slavery on the grounds of economic ruin. William Wilberforce, who had the ability to become Prime Minister, yielded up the opportunity of high office in the Cabinet because he was possessed of the moral conviction that slavery was evil. He was tenacious of the moral principle and brooked no opposition from those who warned that if he persisted he would "ruin the Empire".
He was a politician whose ambitions were rooted theologically and ethically in the Bible. Here was a moral leader. Here is a flavour of Wilberforce's rhetoric:
"It is another capital excellence of Christianity that she values moral attainments at a far higher rate than intellectual acquisitions, and proposes to conduct her followers to the heights of virtue rather than of knowledge."
He compares Christianity favourably with the systems of antiquity
"Many of the philosophers spoke out, and professed to keep the lower orders in ignorance for the general good; plainly suggesting that the bulk of mankind was to be considered as almost of an inferior species. Aristotle himself countenanced this opinion. An opposite mode of proceeding naturally belongs to Christianity, which without distinction professes an equal regard for all human beings, and which was characterised by her first promulgator as the messenger of 'glad tidings to the poor'"
But the 19 th Century which opened with Wilberforce's moral and political triumph of abolishing the slave trade and slavery and closed with Gladstone's explicitly moral agenda and in the decades in between saw some of the most radical social reform ever witnessed in Britain, from the Parliamentary Reform Bill to the Factory Acts, was a very different period from the century we now inhabit at the beginning of the third millennium. Even though there was sometimes fierce opposition to the proposed reforms there was a clearly defined ring within which the pugilists fought their good fights. And even though some had begun to think in ways that would redefine the philosophical boundaries forever, there was an ethical settlement of Christian principles that held sway. And even though by virtue of its Empire Britain was exposed to a variety of other beliefs there was such a confidence in the superiority of its own systems that it would take more than a century for the supremacy of Christianity to feel the cold shower of pluralism.
It is tempting and misleading for Christians to ache nostalgically for this bygone age when moral absolutes seemed as firm as the iron railings to which the suffragettes chained themselves. There were blind-spots in the moral vision of the 19 th century. The rightful emancipation of women happened in the century that also saw the undermining of Christianity's pre-eminence. Indeed some feminist commentators would argue that it was the very undermining of the dominance of Christianity that opened up the liberation of women.
We do well to be cautious in thinking that the grass must have been greener on the other side of the twentieth millennium. I like the advice of the satirist R J O'Rourke who suggests one word as a corrective for all those of us who want to go back in time to some mythical golden era. Just remember one word: "Dentistry!".
I deliberately begin these lectures with such recognition because in the current debate about spiritual and moral values in public life Christians are either perceived or accused of wanting impossibly to turn the clock back, of wanting to put the moral genie back in the bottle and of not noticing that the bottle is already shattered into a millennium of cultural shards. What I want to do is to chart a way forward that is consonant with the virtues of the past and takes us into the future. I hope to demonstrate that just as St Paul found common ground with the moral and philosophical leaders in the Areopagus at Athens so there are new bridges to be built between our richly diverse culture of sub-cultures or, as Jonathan Sachs the Chief Rabbi has described Britain 'a community of communities', and the moral essence of Christianity.
This will take us in this first lecture to observe some of the shifts in moral outlook in Britain today; in the second lecture I will explore how and at what points this moral maze might connect with our understanding of the Kingdom of God; in the third I will take courage and suggest a proposition - a latter-day Areopagan Altar - as to how Christianity might speak the language of moral conviction into a diverse and pluralistic culture; and fourthly in the last lecture I will conclude with an essay - an attempt - to draw from Jesus those qualities that might characterise those who either aspire to or have projected onto them the responsibilities of moral leadership.
As I read the scope of this I confess to hearing in my head the lyrics of a song by Shirley Bassey "What kind of fool am I"! Why did I ever let myself in for such a tall order? I am neither politician, nor philosopher, nor moral theologian. The more I have read the more inadequate to the task I have felt! I am but a jobbing bishop, a pastor both learning and teaching, who is called upon - almost daily - to comment by insatiable media on everything from the ethics of Big Brother to the niceties of the Geno Project. But here I am sharing my thoughts because the discipline of marshalling these ideas has been of the greatest benefit to me personally - and I am grateful to the London Lectures Trust for this opportunity of self-edification! Should any of what follows be of benefit to you then that surely is a bonus! For me, personally and individually, this series of lectures has proved of tremendous value.
I trust that in these three preceding sentences you began to sense the slippage into the current moral climate where individualism has been elevated to the status of a moral principle and everything is authenticated by the prefix or suffix "me personally". In today's world it appears that in so far as something may bring benefit to an individual personally without at the same time inflicting harm on another it is deemed morally acceptable.
It is a reduced form of utilitarianism where the principle of the greatest happiness for the greatest number now translates into the greatest happiness for the individual so long as the greatest happiness for the greatest number of other individuals is left unaffected by the action. Paul Vallely in his book 'New Politics' describes the condition of "Modern man". (By the way, rather surprisingly sexist language from a leader writer of the Independent; it is interesting, in passing, to note how "man" is an acceptable generic term for describing negative issues but unacceptable when referring to virtues! I digress!), Paul Vallely's otherwise excellent treatise on the contemporary relevance of Catholic Social Teaching summarises the condition of 'modern man' as 'confined to the language of individualism (he) has lost the ability to make moral sense of his life and takes refuge in a world view which celebrates consumerism, the freedom of the individual and a blind faith in science" (p 154)
This tripod of stilts supports the edifice of modern life in the northern hemisphere. And those who find themselves in leadership, which they have either sought or had thrust upon them, secure their own position by appealing to, encouraging and reinforcing these blind beliefs in the freedom of the individual, consumerism and science. It is not without significance that advertising agencies that arose out of the commercial need to sell products are now used to sell the offerings of political parties. The merging of products and politics into a seamless marketing exercise is the ultimate genuflection at the altar of consumerism and individualism.
But this modern scenario is not without its own contradiction as Robin Gill skilfully points out in his own book 'Moral Leadership'. He salutes the publication of Veratis Splendor by the Vatican and applauds the Pope for his expose and for showing the contradiction "that in the secular world individual conscience and autonomy have become ever more important at precisely the moment when genetic and social determinism have also become predominant". Gill wishes the Pope had gone further to expose the inconsistency. The moral relativism that is the heterodoxy of post-modernism (please note the small 'p' and 'm' for it would surely be unacceptable to elevate to the status of a movement something so inherently diffuse) requires us to believe that there are no moral absolutes.
We are products. And here there is a touch of irony. In a consumer society dedicated to the freedom and autonomy of the individual where choice and the freedom to choose whichever product suits are elevated to the point of authenticating our very existence we ourselves are no more than products of social conditioning!
The moral relativists see ourselves as products of social conditioning. Social determinism means that there is no absolute right or wrong. We believe and make our choices - economic or moral - according to the society in which we have been conditioned and determined. This is a bleak picture. It means that when confronted with an old lady trying to cross the street there is no objective difference between helping her across or knocking her down. There is, of course, a difference for the old lady - but a purely subjective one; there is no moral objectivity that binds the other to her in some sort of obligation and responsibility. The action sprang from a process of conditioning and determinism.
The pushing of this argument to its logical conclusion has all sorts of repercussions for public policy and moral leadership not least when it comes to the criminal justice system, the treatment of offenders and the nature of punishment.
Iris Murdoch in her book 'Metaphysics as a guide to Morals' writes "Just (proper) deterrence, rehabilitation and retribution are the three bases of a political theory of punishment, and most fundamental of these is retribution." Yet it is precisely the retributive element about which people today are less sure. Deterrence, reformation and the protection of society is the triangle in which people feel most comfortable. But as C S Lewis remarked in his essay 'The Abolition of Man' if you take out the retributive element from punishment what right do any of us have to subject another person to reform and transformation if they do not in some sense deserve it. If you evacuate from the debate about punishment all mention of moral objectivity then you abandon at the same time all notion of desert and retribution.
But although we can see evidence of the slippage into moral relativism and the autonomy of the individual I want to begin to swim against the tide of other commentators and suggest that there are some contra-indicators which suggest that popular culture is not totally barren of objective moral principles. Two episodes in particular suggest that the moral vaults of our culture are not entirely bankrupt of the capital of ethical absolutes.
Firstly, when the world community acted in concert against South Africa, a sovereign nation, forcing her to change her internal structures and abolish apartheid nobody protested that this was an unacceptable violation of her integrity as an independent state. In the furious and sometimes violent debate about apartheid and racism nobody said (neither those on the left, nor the forces of liberalism) that morality was simply a product of social determinism, that it all depended on how your society had been conditioned as to whether or not you thought that black and white were equal. Nobody said that apartheid was relatively wrong, although those on the right who advocated a softly-softly approach did give the impression that apartheid was tolerably wrong, that is, a wrong which could be tolerated in an evolving process of social change.
The world community eventually spoke and acted decisively and declared apartheid to be not relatively but absolutely wrong and forced South Africa to change. What was it that opened the door of Nelson Mandela's cell in the prison on Robin Island? It was the intuiting by the world community of an absolute moral value that all men and women are equal regardless of race, colour or creed.
Of course, there were many factors that brought about change, internal as well as external, economic and political as well as ethical. But the point is that in the moral debate at the end of the twentieth century which supposedly had given birth to moral relativism there was no reference to the autonomy of the individual and to the importance of choice. Instead, there was the elevation of a moral principle of social justice beneath which autonomous individualism was decisively subjected. And rightly so.
It was the Anglican Church amongst others under the leadership of Archbishop Desmond Tutu who while living in solidarity with the disadvantaged enabled others to trace back from their moral intuition to the God who had spoken through the historic deliverance of his people and supremely in the just and merciful Jesus. And although I concede that it was probably a popular subscription to the utilitarian ethic of the greatest happiness for the greatest number that won the day (the blacks constitute the greatest number in South Africa), the principle of utilitarianism did in this instance offer insight into and access to an absolute and universal value. But I emphasise my point: the voice of social determinism and moral relativism was strangely silent at the end of the twentieth century.
The second episode is closer to home for me. Last year within the six weeks of Lent I visited 14 secondary schools and Colleges of Further Education and met with literally thousands of 16 - 18 year olds. I asked if I could meet with sixth formers to hear their dreams and dreads, their longings and their loathings about the future millennium. I asked too if I could tell them why I thought that Jesus Christ was relevant two thousand years on. To simulate the discussion we produced three video clips - on the future of the planet, relationships and the spiritual quest. I asked - sometimes there were 250 young people - on a scale of 0 - 10 how worried they were about the future of the planet. In each venue on each occasion 100% placed themselves between 5 and 10. I then asked the ethical question whether we ought to do something about the future. 99% of them felt that we should, placing themselves between 5 and 10.
This encounter with thousands of young people impressed on me the moral absolutism of their views. When we explored the source of their moral conviction it ranged from enlightened self-interest with one young man who believed in reincarnation and wanted to ensure a decent environment for his rebirth, to a clear sense of duty to future generations. Andrew Kirk in a chapter on ecology and the environment in his book 'What is Mission' writes about seeing the earth not so much as what we have on trust but what we actually borrow from future generations. He quotes the African proverb: we have borrowed the present from our children. I found this attitude prevalent among the young people I listened to.
I do not deny that environmentalism is the new indoctrination to be found in schools today. I for one am happy with that doctrine, although I have to confess that along with the rest of the church I have been slow to embrace the moral and theological imperative of caring for the environment. The prophetic voice has been heard from outside the walls of the church. It is important to signal with this example that when it comes to moral leadership the church has sometimes been the audience and not the prophet. But the point of this example is that our society, especially its young people, manifests a moral conviction that is not totally explicable in terms of the tripod of consumerism, autonomy of the individual and blind faith in science.
The sense of duty towards future generations challenges the god of consumerism with a restraint on exploitation and unsustainability, checks the autonomy of the individual by confronting the god of choice with the needs of others and resists blind faith in science by questioning the gods of the laboratory who genetically modify our food and clone our pets and maybe even yet our babies.
In Kantian terms the ethical aspirations of young people sound like categorical imperatives. There is a moral duty to care for the environment. It is not just about doing something in order to achieve certain outcomes which would render it a hypothetical imperative. We ought to live in a responsible and careful relationship with the environment because that is both how it is and how it ought to be.
But where does such intuition derive. That's for a future lecture. For now I simply want to reiterate that there is evidence especially, thank God, among young people that the cultural cupboard is not bare and, in fact, is being replenished with moral principles. Schools play their part and so do the media. I conclude this lecture with a passing reference to the latter not least because they create the public world in which we all live and move and having our being,.
I have lectured on this in the third Stuart Blanch memorial lecture under the title 'Towards a Theology of Communication'. It is relevant to the theme of moral leadership because there is no leadership without followership, and there can be no following without communication and communion. I do not want to repeat the thesis although I have made provision for copies of that lecture to be made available with transcripts of this. Suffice it to say that the media create the context for both moral debate and moral leadership in the modern world.
Because our imaginations are engaged and stimulated by, amongst other things, drama and conflict the media, especially television, know how to secure an audience. They present a world to us, indeed interpret the world, in terms of opposites. Sociologists of the media style this as the binary meaning of television in which issues are polarised into opposing positions - left and right, Arab and Jew, black and white, unions and management, wet and dry, Christian and Muslim. The drama and conflict that flow from these contrasting opinions make exciting programmes that engage the audience and establish the all-important ratings.
There are two ways of viewing this. On the one hand, you could note that this is but a form of classical discussion, the famous dialectic in which you seek to arrive at the truth through the cut and thrust and counter-thrust of argument. On the other hand, you might despair at the reduction of important moral and political ideas into even more extreme opposites where subtlety and nuance forever give way to mega-phonic sound-bites.
Today's moral leaders usually have about twenty seconds in which to articulate their opinion! They may have taken an hour to deliver their lecture! (I do apologise!) They may have been given five minutes in the studio to engage in a dialectical interview with Humphreys or Paxman! Then an editor will choose about twenty seconds from either the former or the latter which will be played and replayed on news bulletins and upon which the audience will then form their judgement. These will then be picked up by the press who will go to someone famous for taking an opposite view and an article will appear based on the Titans' clash of sound-bites.
This then will find its way to the insatiable internet that will gobble up such morsels for infinity. My youngest daughter rushed up to me recently to declare that there were 4,100 pages on the internet all about me! "How do I get them off?" I begged. "You can't", she chirped as she rushed back to surf the net. My heart sank as I imagined people unknown to me logging on to find out my moral opinions. "Take me to your moral leader" they will speak into their voice-activated lap-top. And where will be server take them? Such is the new world in which moral leaders are now framed and the debate about morality is now texted!