[Mb-civic] MUST READ: Church, state, and Katrina - James Carroll - Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

Church, state, and Katrina

By James Carroll, Globe Columnist  |  September 12, 2005

THE DISASTER on the Gulf Coast is the occasion for public prayer. 
President Bush invites the nation this week to place the victims of 
Katrina in the hands of an all-loving God, an impulse many of us share. 
In Boston and other cities, religious figures have been at the forefront 
of welcome expressions of concern. On the scene of the catastrophe 
itself, religious organizations have provided heroic relief, often in 
stark contrast to hesitant government agencies. The value -- and values 
-- of religion have been on full display during this crisis.

And yet, Katrina's aftermath opens a curtain on the new -- and 
troublesome -- place religion occupies in the culture of America. 
Continuing a train of thought I began last week, I find myself wondering 
if the abysmal performance of government agencies in responding to this 
crisis isn't related to the unprecedented emphasis the government itself 
has been putting on ''faith-based" groups as key providers of social 
services? There is nothing new, of course, in religious organizations as 
generous suppliers of various public needs. One thinks of the parochial 
school system or the Salvation Army. But politicians from Washington to 
the state capitols have exploited this tradition of religious generosity 
to justify the rollback of programs dating to the New Deal.

Why is the shift from government to religion troubling? Doesn't it 
square with the idea that common-good activities flourish from the 
grassroots up? And isn't religion essentially a matter of compassionate 
love, an ideal no one would claim for public institutions? Religion 
directly addresses the mystery of death and suffering: What better 
institution to meet the needs of the suffering? Aren't religiously 
motivated providers, for whom the cardinal virtues are professional 
qualifications, less prone to large and small corruptions? What's to 
choose between, say, Mother Teresa and a form-obsessed social worker? 
Wouldn't we all prefer to have our needs met by the communion of the saints?

Maybe not. My unease is partly rooted in a question about religion and 
partly in concern for something essential to civil society. Religion, 
too, is of the human condition, and religious people (as they will tell 
you) are as sinful as anybody. The good reputation of religion survives 
despite those sins. Government, meanwhile, is held in contempt, a 
dichotomy related to a divide of the mind embodied in the ''separation 
of church and state," which has virtue on one side, corruption on the 
other. The state is firmly located in ''secular" culture, lately 
denigrated as the ''culture of death."

An over-the-top critique of the nonreligious realm -- ''secularism" -- 
is a staple of religious rhetoric, but the main tenets of democracy 
itself (pluralism, human rights, rational inquiry) were vigorously 
opposed as ''modernism" by almost all religious organizations. The 
''state," it turns out, is as holy as the ''church."

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/09/12/church_state_and_katrina/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20050912/3ffe4119/attachment.htm