c. 1998 Religion News Service
NEW YORK _ Are Americans rediscovering the importance of moral truth?”Miss Manners,”for one, believes they must if a civil and democratic society is to survive.
At a one-day symposium Wednesday (May 27), columnist Judith Martin (alias Miss Manners) joined 100 religious leaders, scholars, and political analysts at the Carlyle Hotel here to confront what they called”our nation’s main challenge at the close of the century.” The symposium was jointly sponsored by the New York-based Institute for American Values and the University of Chicago Divinity School.
The group, led by Jean Bethke Elshtain, a scholar at the divinity school, lamented what they perceive as a declining civic morality and what that means to society.
The group also released a report,”A Call to Civil Society: Why Democracy Needs Moral Truths,”which examines the moral dimensions of America’s current social ills, including teen pregnancy, sexual promiscuity and the abandonment of children by fathers.”Too many Americans view morality as a threat to freedom, rather than its essential guarantor,”the non-partisan group contended in the report.
The document presents an overview of democratic virtues and a comprehensive strategy for renewal. It was endorsed by experts from a range of political and social perspectives who comprise the Council on Civil Society, a joint project of the institute and divinity school.
Among them are Sens. Dan Coats, R-Ind., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., Princeton University criminologist John Dilulio, Connecticut College president Claire Gaudiani, Fuller Theological Seminary president Richard Mouw, Commonweal editor Margaret Steinfels and Harvard professor Cornel West.”The goal of the document was really to push the civil society debate more upstream,”said David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values. The 30-page report says America’s moral crisis is directly related to what it terms the absence of moral truths in recent decades.
Among its recommendations for renewal of U.S. democracy were efforts to insure that children grow up in married, two-parent households and to adopt a”civil society model”for solving social problems and evaluating public policies.
It concluded by calling on families, neighborhoods, faith communities, businesses and media institutions to recommit themselves to the ideas that democracy depends on moral truths and that a”democratic civil society is a way of living that calls us fully to pursue, live out and transmit moral truth.” No consensus, however, was reached at the symposium as to exactly how that might happen.
An absence of moral truths was seen, for instance, in the”mess”in Washington, which is how the symposium referred to allegations that President Clinton had sexual relations with a former White House intern.
What has happened, according to UCLA public policy professor James Q. Wilson, is that the American public no longer distinguishes between sexuality and a sense of decency.”Moral leadership is what people care deeply about, inside or outside of Washington,”Wilson told the group.”Somehow we have reduced the office of public servants (by) allowing different standards.” Martin responded by noting that people have retreated from the use of etiquette and civil manners in confronting negative behaviors, expecting instead that law will solve such problems.
Smoking, she noted, used to be considered rude in public places; now it’s become illegal in many cities.”When society tries to regulate behavior (through legal means), it runs into all sorts of problems,”the columnist said.”That’s what we’re seeing in Washington and the question now becomes, should this be handled by law or etiquette?” Although marriage often helps in developing maturity, adults are having an increasingly difficult time looking beyond their own wants and desires, suggested keynote speaker and Northwestern University professor emeritus David Gutmann.”What’s gone wrong? Why has the developmental stage been stunted in so many young people who become adolescent parents?”Gutmann asked.”(Because) of the deconstruction of fatherhood, the attitude that marriage is a prelude to divorce, and the impact divorce has on our children.” Pollster Daniel Yankelovich was among the panelists who questioned whether Americans believe in moral truths at all.”There is no doubt this excessive individualism has created an intense hunger for community with a spiritual dimension,”he said.”(But) have we identified the right moral truths or are we being moralistic and preachy (in the group’s report)?” Despite their inability to reach a specific conclusion, the group’s concerns remained intact.”In what does the good of human beings exist? How can we come to recognize, to honor, and to cultivate that good?”asked Elshtain.”Civil society is one way we have devised to answer that question.”
IR END KADLECEK
