77 - God's Federal Republic: Reconstructing Our Governing Symbol

God's Federal Republic: Reconstructing Our Governing Symbol
By William Johnson Everett
New York, Paulist, 1988. 204 pp. $9.95.

Everett envisions his book as a response to Robert Bellah's challenge to reconstruct our biblical and republican heritage in order to overcome the individualism that is eroding American public life. According to the author, a professor of ecclesiology at Emory, we must work at the symbolic level as we seek to reconstitute the relation between faith and politics. The old central symbol of that relationship, the Kingdom of God, has been marginalized. because of its patriarchal and hierarchical associations. By reflecting on a contemporary central symbol, God's Federal Republic, Everett hopes "to reconstitute the public argument about how we should see the interconnection of our faith and our public life." The task of reflection is threefold: first, the character of symbol is examined; second, the historical development of three central governing symbols-kingship, republic, and covenant-is traced; and third, a theory of a covenanted public and its theological implications is constructed.

In the first section, Everett argues that a symbol is a motivator and a model. It motivates because it elicits deep and pre-rational responses that are rooted in earlier experiences. It is a model because it makes

78 - God's Federal Republic: Reconstructing Our Governing Symbol

visible the main relationships that sustain action in complex situations. Governing symbols are those that embrace many areas of life and enable people to move easily from one arena to another. They shape our vision and give rise to norms. But the symbol Kingdom of God no longer enables us to move between religious and political discourse. A contemporary governing symbol is required.

The historical section is a good review of the development of the governing symbols of kingship, republic, and covenant. Everett discusses the achievements and limits of kingship, traces the republican heritage from its origins to its modern form in America, and emphasizes American federalism as he rehearses the history of covenant conceptions. The section as a whole undergirds Everett's conviction that a federal republic is an important contemporary symbol because "the making of constitutions and design of federal republics have continued as the major way people try to build peace in the obliteration of old orders."

In the third section, public is defined as a kind of discourse characterized by equal participation, common concerns, persuasion rather than force, and a common world. The dynamics of this public and the personality that it requires are then examined. Covenants are crucial to a legitimate public, for without covenanting there can be no persuasion, no peaceful adjudication of disputes, and no genuine representation of one by another. The vision of the self that inhabits this public world is that of the performer self, homo publicans, and the self as covenant maker, homo foedans. Everett closes this section with an attempt to use the symbol, God's Federal Republic, to think about salvation, sin, God, Jesus, Spirit, and church.

The book is an important contribution to the discussion initiated by Bellah and his colleagues. The historical section, which comprises more than half the book, is well done and insightful. The third section, on the other hand, although it does provide a series of interesting suggestions, is not as substantial an argument. For example, the therapeutic image of self, which Rieff, Bellah, MacIntyre, and others all see as the dominant image in twentieth century America, is ignored except for a brief section on narcissism.

Everett addresses the book to "people who wish to think afresh about the religious depths of public life … ministers, politicians, theologians, teachers and students concerned about public affairs as well as many others in the professions and politics." In a word, the book speaks to all of those who, like Everett, have been challenged by the central issue of Habits of the Heart. On the whole, the book is a welcome addition to an important contemporary discussion.

Roger G. Betsworth

Simpson College
Indianola, Iowa