391 - Politics and Political Theologians

Politics and Political Theologians
By Andrew M. Greeley

A YEAR ago at the meeting of the editorial board of the Catholic journal Concilium, I twitted my good friend John Metz with the comment that even though he was a political theologian he could not deliver a precinct. John noted that campaigning had nothing to do with political theology. This year-perhaps to the astonishment of the angels as well as the assorted local saints -Concilium met at St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, County Kildare. I obligingly suggested that John establish contact some evening with the local chapter of the Sinn Fein because if ever there was a revolutionary country, he was in it. The reply was the same; the IRA had nothing to do with political theology.

But the experience was uncanny for me. Less than one hundred-fifty miles from Belfast, we were sitting around a table in the great Victorian balls of Maynooth, enjoying its superb cuisine, talking about liberation, revolution, and oppression. Almost outside our windows a revolution was going on (you can't park cars on O'Connell Street in Dublin, not because of traffic problems but because bombs have a way of turning up in parked cars) for the liberation of a people who have been oppressed for a long time. A phone call could have brought to us one of the soft-voiced, gentle-eyed, peak-capped killers who make up the Provisional wing of the IRA. Somehow, none of our political or revolutionary theologians wanted to have anything to do with real revolutionaries. I guess I could understand the reluctance, for the typical provo is an ignorant, inarticulate psychopath-one of the sort of men who really make revolutions, unlike the tenured college professors who talk about them.

The day I returned from that troubled word-intoxicated island I discovered that the problems of political theology were multiplying. In the Journal of Current Social Issues, Roger Shinn led the way in an issue devoted to an agonizing reappraisal of political theology. In Worldview, Richard Neuhaus delivered a devastating

Andrew M. Greeley, a Roman Catholic sociologist and theologian, is Director of the Center for the Study of American Pluralism, part of the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago. He is also the author of numerous books, including Unsecular Man (1972), That Most Distressful Nation (1972), Priests in the United States: Reflections on a Survey (1972), and Touch of the Spirit: Virtues for Today's Christians (1971).

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critique of Gustavo Gutierrez's Theology of Liberation. Shinn leaned heavily on the later Ellul, and Neuhaus tells us that Daniel Berrigan is devoting much of his time to Ellul. The tides of fashion are beginning to turn. The next step, I confidently predict, will be that some theologian will come along and expose Ivan Illich and Paolo Freire for the narrow, ideological enthusiasts that they are.

I

But my critique of political theology will not be based on theological grounds so much as political grounds. Let my perspective be clear. I am, among other things, a survey sociologist interested in political sociology. I am working with two colleagues on a history of American politics during the past quarter-century-a history based on, you should excuse the expression, empirical data. A hint to make you buy the book: Contrary to what everyone knows to be true, the Catholic ethnics have moved to the left during the last decade while the rest of the white population has not done so. In addition, I am a Chicago Irishman whose view of politics has always been shaped by the worm's eye view of the precinct. Politics may mean many things to my friend John Metz. But from my perspective, politics is getting votes-not merely getting votes, of course-but if you don't get votes then there isn't much else you can do unless you take power by force and impose your will on others.

I would make the following case against much of the so-called political theology or theology of liberation that I read:

(1)It is absolutely innocent of even the most minimal social science sophistication.

(2)It is devoid of any sense of what it takes to govern society-of the arts of creating political conditions, arts which, it turns out, are apparently necessary even in socialist nations.

(3)It is lacking in the humility which would come from admitting either that reality is complex or that it is capable of making a mistake.

Even in the reappraisal of political-revolutionary theology in Current Social Issues and Worldview, one has the feeling that one is still very much not only on the university campus but in a part of the campus where sociology, political science, and especially economics do not exist. I have no objection to theologians becoming concerned about social issues. On the contrary, I welcome it. But I expect that if they are going to pontificate on society they at least will do their homework and master the complexity of social issues. In the current romantic and moralistic mood that is upon theologians, there seems to be little room for even acknowledging the existence of complexity, much less mastering it.

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When one looks in Gutierrez's frequently insightful book for any social analysis, any economic evidence to back up his assertions about exploitation and about "liberation" as a necessary replacement for "development," one encounters quotations from Marx and Marcuse-worthy men, no doubt, but hardly students of the agricultural and industrial economics of Latin America. And when one reads the endless pronouncements of theologians and church bureaucrats about the evils of American society and of the American people, one is forced to wonder if they have ever perused the Gallup poll or talked to anyone but themselves and those who attend the same cocktail parties as they do.

The plain fact of the Latin American situation-which Gutierrez, Freire, Alves, Shaull, etc., etc., ignore-is that North American economic interests in the continent represent a very small part of the economy of the United States. The loss of all American interests in the southern continent would have a marginal effect on the United States for a couple of months-and of course would spell total economic disaster for the Latins. Brazil is one of the richest countries in the world in its natural resources. The failure of the nation to convert such resources into prosperity for its people has little if anything to do with North American oppression and much to do with the internal structural problems of Brazilian society. Hating North America may be a marvelous outlet for envy, but it doesn't solve the economic and social problems of one's own country. The United States is a great scapegoat. But scapegoating never fed anyone.

Nor is there much hope that a "socialist" revolution would solve these problems unless the Soviet Union or China were willing to pick up the tab for such a revolution as Moscow has obligingly done in Cuba. There is no escaping the fact that Latin American countries need two things to reduce poverty and misery: a strong industrial base and a technical middle class that knows how to put resources back into the further development of such a base instead of sending profits off to Swiss banks to prepare for the day of the next revolution. Neither industry nor a middle class will be developed without close cooperation with some country that already has both. It doesn't have to be the United States; it could be Russia or Germany or perhaps even France. It could even be China-which the new breed of fellow travelers are so eager to extol as socialism that works. But one doubts that the Latin culture is nearly as ready to accept the iron regimentation of Mao's mandarins as was the Chinese culture.

I am not denying that American corporations have exploited Latin American countries. But it must also be said that the performance of ITT in Chile is not typical of all American corporations, and many American companies have behaved with an intelligence

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and enlightenment that one could scarcely expect of capitalists. Small good it has done them.

Nor would I deny that American political policy with regard to Latin America has frequently been stupid and even malicious. I'm just saying that most of the economic and social problems of these countries are internal, and a "political theology" which indulges itself in romantic and ideological denunciations of North America obscures the fact that North America can't solve the internal problems of Brazil or Peru. These problems will only be resolved by economic development (yes, I'll use the hated words), and that requires cooperation with some industrial nation, in all probability the United States.

North Americans who are not Protestant theologians-like most other people in the world-have been known to get weary of being denounced. When they are told, in season and out, that they are oppressors, they might just stop listening.

II

To turn to domestic issues, the recent analyses by Professor Wright of Wisconsin and Professor Schuman of Michigan of antiwar sentiment among the American people show how totally wrong the theologians were who so enthusiastically committed themselves to the peace movement. The old were more against the war than the young. Those with a grammar school education were more likely to oppose it than those with a college education, and Catholics (those hated ethnics) were more likely to be against it than Protestants. Furthermore, in a study done in New York City, the occupational group most likely to oppose the war were construction workers-those terrible hard hats. In retrospect, it appears quite clear that the strategies of the peace movement and of the theologians who underwrote it were precisely those strategies that were most likely to offend just those groups who ought to have been the natural allies of the peace movement. That takes real brains.

One could go on about ecological theologians who know little about economics, secularization theologians who know very little about Durkheim or Weber, black theologians who apparently know very little about ordinary black people, new politics theologians who didn't know that young people tend to vote the way their parents did, and theologians of sexuality (endorsing every kind of sexual activity from wife swapping up to, but just short of, bestiality), whose knowledge of family life in America (other than that of themselves and their friends) is apparently gleaned from reading Freud. But the point is made: if theologians are going to use the categories and perspectives of social science, they ought to know what they're talking about.

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One of the first things you learn as a social scientist (at least if you go to the trouble of collecting data) is that people are far more complicated and far more unpredictable than your theories would lead you to believe. They don't always see reality the way intellectuals do; and they don't always want the things-including especially discipline and order-that intellectuals think they ought to want. You don't win them over by shouting at them or denouncing them or even by submitting them to an ideological brainwash that provides them with slogans and an enemy to shout the slogan at. You win the support of people-and I don't care whether it is in the nineteenth ward or Itursk or Sao Paolo-by listening to them, discovering what they think their needs are, learning from them, and then, and only then, trying to persuade them that your vision, your policy, your program is the best way to obtain what they want. The alternative is oppression either by physical force, in which you compel people to do what you think is good for them, or by indoctrination, in which you compel them to think what you believe they ought to think.

If you are convinced that you are right-supremely and morally right-then you must choose between one of those two alternatives. Consensus, compromise, coalition formation would all be a betrayal of ideological purity. Obviously, you begin with indoctrination because it is less bloody than physical force. Morality comes first from "consciousness raising and then only from the barrel of a gun.

Try as I might, I can see little difference between Freire's "conscienization" and indoctrination. Both are designed to lead the uneducated to believe what their betters think they ought to believe. Raising someone else's consciousness means winning him to your viewpoint (unless you concede him the possibility of winning you to his viewpoint-a possibility that is quite invisible in any of the political or liberation theologians). You justify this effort at convert-making on the grounds that you are right. Perhaps you even concede that while the tactics you use may look a little like indoctrination, they are still justified because your cause is the correct one. Indoctrination of the left is acceptable because the left is right, and left wing ideology is good for people.

That's what missionaries have always said. Politicians, particularly those politicians who govern by something besides raw force, have never been able to afford the luxury of such missionary righteousness.

Finally, social science-at least the fact-grubbing variety that I practice-prompts one to think that social reality is complex, grey, uncertain, intractable. One intervenes, of course, because one must, but with considerable caution, humility, and self-doubt. One's program may work, but it also may make things worse. One's analysis may be moderately plausible but it may also be completely

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mistaken. One's strategies may lead to victory. They may also reelect Richard Nixon. I do not believe that this is a conservative position, though by and large, conservatives of the non-ideological variety seem more ready to admit complexity and ambiguity than are many liberals. But I see no contradiction between a liberal perspective and intellectual humility. Or, if there is a contradiction, then I guess liberals are going to have to abdicate their intelligence, for anyone who thinks that social reality is as neat and simple as ideologues-such as Fannon, Marcuse, Gutierrez, and the Berrigans-think it is, simply doesn't know much about the world or about humankind.

III

I confess that I look in vain for any such self-doubt in most of the political and liberation theologians. They are so certain of themselves and their world view that they simply cannot admit that something might be learned from other perspectives, from empirical research, from international economics, or even from the people they are so determined to convert and liberate. A word of caution, a note of uncertainty, an admission of the possibility of error, a vague concession to greyness-where does one find this in Shaull, Alves, Freire, Gutierrez, Cone, etc., etc.? The recent issue of Concilium on the "Political commitment of the Christian community"-can one find in it much indication that the authors believe that there are some issues (indeed most issues) on which members of the Christian community can in good faith and good conscience disagree? When does one hear a political theologian concede that human reality is so complex and so obscure that no policy, no program can possibly be so self-evidently correct that all Christians are compelled to accept it without question or debate?

I don't fully understand the reasons for this lack of self-questioning among the political theologians. It may be a function of the sort of personality that is attracted to theology or at least that is attracted to pontificating theologically about social problems. It may be a function of the theoretical and a priori nature of theological methodology. Or it may be the result of the fact that most theologians are professors, and things always look clear, simple, and elegant in the academy.

There are all kinds and varieties of political theology. Metz is much more cautious about offering programs, but he seems to think that the church or the Christian community still is in a position where it can offer intelligent comment and criticism on a wide variety of social and political issues. I doubt it. Christians, informed by the religious vision provided by the Christian symbol system, and competent in the various technical and political skills that are necessary, may very well engage in theologically reinforced

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politics. But what does the church know about such issues? As a complex and pluralistic social system itself, how can it take a single stand that is both informed and responsive to the insights of all its members? Political theology, at its very roots, seems really to hearken back to the days when Pius XII issued an encyclical every month or so, laying down the Catholic position on almost every imaginable issue. I think we can do very well without any more of that.

Political and social concern are inescapable for the one who has been possessed by the gospel. But the shape of one's political involvement and the programs and policies one supports can hardly be derived from the words of Jesus. To equate a given policy with the gospel is to engage in idolatry in the Tillichian sense, for such an equation invests a very contingent series of political stands with the authority of the absolute.

It is bad business, particularly when the policy fails. And most policies fail. As the late Gus Weigel remarked, "All human enterprises, given sufficient time, go badly." But that is a bit of wisdom that a messianic theologian of liberation couldn't possibly hear.