Miroslav Volf, A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good (Grand Rapids: Brazos, forthcoming 2011), 192pp., ISBN 9781587432989.
My link of a few days ago to Volf’s ‘Soft Difference’ article was really a set up for a post on this forthcoming book from him. Having read the article a few times over the years since it first appeared, I have wondered whether he would ever provide a fuller, worked-through, applied treatment. This book may or may not be that hoped-for work, but I’m looking forward to it all the same.
The publishers make available a pdf excerpt here, which includes the Table of Contents, Introduction, and Chapter 1.
Volf begins the Introduction by noting the debates about the role of religion in public life, drawing attention to the numerical growth of religions and the unwillingness on the part of religious people ‘to keep their convictions and practices limited to the private sphere of family or religious community’, as well as their aim ‘to shape public life according to their own vision of the good life’ (ix).
As it should be, according to Volf:
‘Unlike those who think religion should stay out of politics, I will argue in this book that religious people ought to be free to bring their visions of the good life into the public sphere – into politics as well as other aspects of public life’ (x).
He notes the views of of Sayyid Qutb, a significant representative of ‘religious totalitarianism’ of the radical, militant Islam sort, but says:
‘The position that I myself will advocate in this book will be an alternative both to the secular total exclusion of all religions from public life and to Qutb’s total saturation of public life with a single religion’ (xi).
I find that distinction helpful... neither ‘total exclusion’ nor ‘total saturation’...
It’s a position Volf designates as ‘religious political pluralism’ (xi), ‘a vision of the role of the followers of Jesus Christ in public life, a role that stays clear of the dangers of both “exclusion” and “saturation”’ (xiv).
Mentioning H. Richard Niebuhr’s fivefold typology in Christ and Culture, he notes (as many others have done) that ‘the actual representatives of these five stances toward culture are less clear-cut and tend to combine elements from more than one category’ (xv).
‘My contention in this book is that there is no single way in which Christian faith relates and ought to relate to culture as a whole... The relation between faith and culture is too complex for that. Faith stands in opposition to some elements of culture and is detached from others. In some aspects faith is identical with elements of culture, and it seeks to transform in diverse ways yet many more. Moreover, faith’s stance toward culture changes over time as culture changes. How, then, is the stance of faith toward culture defined? It is – or it ought to be – defined by the center of the faith itself, by its relation to Christ as the divine Word incarnate and the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’ (xv).
His Introduction closes with six points on the relation of the ‘center of the Christian faith’ to the broader culture (xv-xvi):
• ‘Christ is God’s Word and God’s Lamb, come into the world for the good of all people, who are all God’s creatures and loved by God.’
• ‘Christ came to redeem the world by preaching, actively helping people, and dying a criminal’s death on behalf of the ungodly. In all aspects of his work, he was a bringer of grace.’
• ‘A vision of human flourishing and the common good is the main thing the Christian faith brings into the public debate.’
• ‘[T]he proper stance of Christians toward the larger culture cannot be that of unmitigated opposition or whole-scale transformation. A much more complex attitude is required...’
• ‘The way Christians work toward human flourishing is not by imposing on others their vision of human flourishing and the common good but by bearing witness to Christ, who embodies the good life.’
• ‘Christ has not come with a blueprint for political arrangements; many kinds of political arrangements are compatible with the Christian faith’, and Christians are to ‘grant to other religious communities the same religious and political freedoms that they claim for themselves’.
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