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Freedom: Hierarchy or Humanity?
By Marjorie Suchocki

"Freedom [in the traditional theological sense] does not issue from the human condition; it is a gift bestowed from above. This freedom demarcates and perpetuates a hierarchical order, not only from God to the world, but even within the world, where humanity is divided into spiritual orders of kings and servants, Thus the locus of this freedom has not been humanity per se. Dignity and worth are held, insofar as they are granted, by a higher authority. Theologically, the higher authority is God; practically, the higher authority has been the hierarchical social structure, reinforced by the sense of divine institution . . . As liberation movements make gains in society, the new experiences of freedom resulting from this ideology will challenge the traditional forms of freedom's expression."

THE idea of freedom has been of prime importance to religion, philosophy, and politics, but the incarnation of the idea has been hindered by the practical realities of social and economic conditions. The idea of freedom largely remains ideal, contradicting and contradicted by social reality. "So slow is the translation of idea into custom."¹ With this comment, in Adventures of Ideas, Alfred North Whitehead summarized the lengthy process of western history with regard to the idea of freedom, understood in its most fundamental sense as a profound "respect for man as man."²

I

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Thus goes the rhetoric which forms the rallying symbol of

Marjorie Suchocki teaches religious studies at the University of Cincinnati Evening College and at Edgecliff College, Cincinnati. She did her doctoral work at Claremont Graduate School, under John B. Cobb, Jr., in the area of process theology.
¹ Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: The Free Press, 1967), p. 50.
² Ibid., P. 86.

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freedom inherent within civil religion. But these rights, these ideals, are not casual political slogans, nor is their power derived solely from their Lockean roots. In America, these ideals have a strong foundation in the unique religious experience of the colonies. Sydney Ahlstrom, in "The American National Faith: Humane, Yet All Too Human," notes three factors shaping the distinctly American consciousness: the selfsearching individualism associated with revivalism, the millennial sense of realizing God's purposes for the world historically in America, and the "dynamic new sense of vocation and individual responsibility" which issued into a "broad egalitarian tone to the social order ."³

Long before the Revolution, freedom in America was associated with a society whose bonding depended upon the commitment and contribution of its individual members as they worked together to achieve their vision of God's purposes. Formed under the notion of a covenant with God and with each other, many church communities moved increasingly toward the active role of the laity in making social decisions, mingling Enlightenment notions of human rights with the new structures of ecclesiastical government. Concern for human rights developed as a form of responsibility through which each individual contributed to the societal good-a good which, in its theocratic form, incorporated spiritual and political goals together.

Thus the political freedom of the Declaration had strong roots in the religious consciousness developed through the colonial experience, and its transfer from spiritual theocracy to political democracy was presaged in its colonial beginnings. The specific movement to the political order in the Declaration in no sense annihilates freedom's religious roots; the appeal to God as the ultimate ratifier of inalienable rights is a natural appeal within the nation's historical context.

Whereas the Declaration pronounces divine ratification for the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the Constitution places responsibility for inauguration of these rights in the people of the United States. Far from negating the spiritual dimension derived from divine approval, the Constitution simply continues the American movement toward an internalization, an actualization, of the ideals of

³ Sydney Ahlstrom, "The American National Faith: Humane, Yet All Too Human," Religion and the Humanizing of Man, ed. James M. Robinson (The Council on the Study of Religion, 1972), p. 106.

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freedom. God's work waits upon human initiative and human responsibility. The ideals move closer to custom.

The continuing official documents and statements of the nation reiterate the conjunction of divine and human forces in the implementation of the national ideal of liberty. Robert Bellah, in his pivotal essay on civil religion, cites inaugural addresses which tie the goals of the nation to the achievement of an egalitarian society under God ⁴ and Sidney Mead argues from documents and observations of history that America is indeed the "nation with the soul of a church."⁵ Divine sanction suffuses the expressed goals of the nation. Whether these goals are considered from the perspective of divine mandate or from the perspective of human activity, the goals exact religious awe.

II

Yet these officially proclaimed goals of the nation are highly idealistic. The rhetoric of the nation clashes sorely with the realities of its achievements. The proclaimed ideal was and is "liberty and justice for all," but the three/fifths compromise in the Constitution denied the reality of social and political freedom to blacks. Abigail Adams made a now famous extension of the ideal to include women; the light dismissal of her claims simply denied the ideal to women. The Naturalization Acts of 1870 and 1875 denied the ideal to peoples considered "unassimilable" on the basis of their oriental heritage, and repeated abuse and misuse witness to the long denial of egalitarian freedom to native American Indians. Freedom, then, as Charles Long points out in "Civil Rights - Civil Religion: Visible People and Invisible Religion,"⁶ may be the ideal of the nation, and yet remain painfully absent for many in that nation. The enacted regard for persons as persons is restricted, in keeping with long custom, to a privileged group.

The actual limitations of freedom in a nation which made freedom the banner of its birth suggest that the function of freedom as an ideal was not to evoke freedom itself, but to elicit actualization of quite another ideal-that of a unified nation. What the founding fathers saw as the pressing need was not egalitarianism in its own right, but rather the need for an autonomous nation which would provide an economic freedom insured by laws enacted by those desiring that freedom.

The egalitarianism involved within the notion of freedom was recognized for its power over the human imagination, and hence for its power to evoke action toward a unified nation. Thus the ideal of freedom was utilized not so much for its own qualities involving" respect for man as man," but for the ability of these qualities to elicit

⁴ Robert N. Bellah, "Civil Religion In America," pp. 3-23, in Religion in America, eds. William G. McLoughlin and Robert N. Bellah (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968).
⁵ Sidney E. Mead, "The 'Nation with the Soul of a Church,"' pp. 45-75, in American Civil Religion, eds. Russell E. Richey and Donald G. Jones (New York: Harper & Row, 1974).
⁶ Charles H. Long, "Civil Rights - Civil Religion: Visible People and Invisible Religion," pp. 211-21, American Civil Religion, cited above.

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realization of a new nation. This is not to say that the ideal functioned only to unify the nation-the fervor with which the egalitarianism within freedom was embraced is demonstrated in the moves toward social reform which took place during and immediately following the Revolution. Prison reforms, the abolition of harsh punishments, legal action against slavery in the northern states, and improvement of education all indicate an increased value attached to freedom as the regard for persons. But the principal use of the ideal of freedom, and its major function within what we formally call civil religion, was precisely its power to unify, through its symbolism, a people otherwise divided by strong and often antagonistic sectional interests. Freedom was the stated ideal, but its pragmatic usefulness lay in its evocation of another ideal, unity.

This usage of freedom is self-consciously present at the founding of the nation, for the correspondence and notes of the times indicate an awareness of the need for a unifying symbol which would effectively mobilize the people in the fight for economic and political autonomy as a nation.⁷ Freedom in the sense of an egalitarian right became that unifying symbol, and remained to promote a mystical identification of America itself with the ideal of freedom. Thus the unifying power of the symbol became an actualized reality, but the essence of the ideal as freedom in its deepest sense was but partially realized, and that within a relatively restricted group. The idea of freedom continued to be contradicted by history.

III

Yet if freedom has been a missing reality for vast portions of people in the United States, there is nevertheless one realm where freedom in its fullest sense of democratic humanism has indeed been actualized, and hence retained a vital power. This is the realm of literature. Writers of America have given shape to the reality bespoken by the rhetoric, whether by portraying new struggles for its achievement, or by foreshadowing its actual existence in the truth of fiction, poetry, and essay. Men such as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Ralph Waldo Emerson depict an American society where freedom is not simply a unifying symbol for the nation, but is enacted in the daily life of common people. In no sense do these writers portray a saccharine reality of a freedom easily achieved; the struggle with custom is vividly present; yet they powerfully draw the issues of freedom and the achievement of freedom through the homely figure of a Huck Finn, the earthy self-portrayal of Whitman, or the Emersonian nation of friends.

The tension between the two uses of freedom-the literary vision of democratic humanism and the political necessity for a unified na-

⁷ See, for instance, the notes on the debates concerning formulation of the Declaration of Independence in The Works of John Adams, the Second President of the United States, ed. Charles F. Adams (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1850-56), Vol. 11, pp. 370-71.

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tion-is illustrated dramatically in the Civil War era. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, regardless of its literary deficiencies and social inaccuracies, dramatized the plight of the slaves. Stowe was really the first American writer to look at the slaves as people. Her book mobilized a massive anti-slavery sentiment among many of her northern readers, and eventually contributed to the sense of morality which accompanied the economic and sectional hostilities erupting into the Civil War. The war, it was believed, would accomplish freedom for the slaves. Thus literature performed a significant part in injecting the national ideal of freedom as egalitarianism into the social and political conflicts. Politically, however, the issue of freedom was clearly related not to egalitarianism, but to the unity of the nation. Abraham Lincoln, the "great emancipator" of legend and the revered hero of civil religionists, speaks clearly on the issue: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the union and is not either to save or destroy slaves…. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the union."⁸

Thus while the ideal of freedom acts in behalf of another ideal in the formal life of civil religion, serving the ends of a unified nation, it emerges in its own right as an enacted respect for persons in the life of literature. Leo Marx illustrates this extensively in his essay, "The Uncivil Response of American Writers to Civil Religion in America,"⁹ through his analysis of obscenity and vulgarity in American literature as a protest against the empty rhetoric of officialdom. Marx claims that "obscenity is not merely a linguistic solvent for the old, threadbare national religion, it is a means of generating a new religion," with this "new religion" identified elsewhere with "the struggle for egalitarian rights and principles."¹⁰ What Marx calls the new religion is in reality simply the language of the old civil religion taken literally, and portrayed in literature. The explicit nature of the ideal, rather than its pragmatic usefulness, is held as the true goal of the nation in this egalitarian form of civil religion.

The power of freedom's portrayal in literature is that finally the actualized ideal is brought into vision in a highly concrete way. No visionary Republic in the Platonic sense is exalted, but a very earthy America. Egalitarian freedom-the enacted respect for each person-can exist by this Mississippi River, in this small town, these factories, that city. Against the social reality of freedom's empty rhetoric in official America, demonstrated by the existence of many Americans who are invisible by virtue of their exclusion from the dignities of freedom, there is also the reality of a continually depicted alternative in literature. The closeness of the two realities, so that the

⁸ Albert Bushnell Hart, ed., American History Told by Contemporaries (New York: Macmillan, 1915), Vol. IV, p. 399.
⁹ Leo Marx, "The Uncivil Response of American Writers to Civil Religion in America," pp. 222-51, in American Civil Religion, cited above.
¹⁰ Ibid., pp. 243; 223.

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ideal seems not far off, but near at hand, clothes the ideal of freedom with a new sense of attainability.

In twentieth century America, this sense of attainability has joined forces with the far-reaching social effects of technology and world politics as they have each contributed to vast economic and philosophical changes in our society. The ideology of the literature is reinforced by new economic aspirations, and these aspirations are in turn given justification and clarification through the ideology of the literature.

Within the context of these changing social conditions, the essence of freedom as proclaimed in the literature of the nation has also been picked up in the songs of the nation, expressing and further motivating the demands of excluded groups that the nation's language concerning freedom be translated into actuality. Civil rights for blacks, for Chicanos, for Indians, and the equal rights amendment for women-each represents a demand through civil procedures that the nation be what it has proclaimed itself to be-a land where "liberty and justice for all" is a social reality.

IV

In colonial times freedom was the condition which allowed realization of the purposes of God in the state; freedom was responsibility to government for the sake of God through that government. In revolutionary times, the emphasis moved more strongly toward the human aims and ends of government. In each case, however, ultimacy belonged not to freedom, but to what freedom could attain. In the process, to be sure, the essential quality of freedom-the regard for the worth of persons-was presupposed, but the ultimacy rested elsewhere. In the literature of the nation, the ultimacy moves to freedom itself in a reversed situation, for now government is the presupposition, and freedom the ultimate good. The writings of the various liberation groups support this new valuation of each individual within the societal situation. In each case, the call is primarily for a pragmatic recognition of the essential worth of the individual within society, and for a societal structure which promotes opportunities for individual development enriching to the total community.

The change which such an expectation of freedom presents to traditional religious formulations of freedom and human dignity lies in the positive valuation of humanity as humanity which is inherent within the language of freedom in civil religion. Regardless of the pragmatic uses to which this notion of freedom has been applied, the power of its use lies in the proclamation of an essential dignity belonging to every man and woman. This dignity is not necessarily a gift from God, nor does it depend upon a hypothetical pre-fallen condition of our forebears; rather, the locus of dignity is humanity per se. This is the basis for the democratic orientation of civil religion, of the urgency toward realization of a just society. The transcendent dimension of civil religion is

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thus rooted in the notions of humanity, ascribing a worth to persons which calls for an ever fuller incarnation of the idea of freedom. Likewise, the judgmental factor in civil religion is rooted in the positive valuation of humanity, taking the measure of social reality against the potentials considered possible in light of this humanity. Freedom is thus integrally related to human worth here and now.

Traditionally, freedom has been free-will, and related less to the dignity of humanity than to the culpability of humanity. Conditions have been posited which do indeed affirm an essential human goodness, and freedom has been related to this essential goodness. But the essential goodness has generally been a rather hypothetical goodness, for while human nature may have been deemed to be free and good, human existence frequently has been considered a just bondage based upon an existential sinfulness. True, freedom is considered to be given anew through divine grace. Freedom is then akin to an ability to carry out the commands of love, which is to say, to contribute to and to be enriched by the relationships between the individual and others in community. This in itself accords well with the freedom we have been identifying with the language of civil religion, but the context of this theological freedom is, unlike that of civil religion, often neither humano-centric nor democratically oriented. The difference is crucial.

Luther expresses this difference of orientation well in the imagery he uses to describe the freedom of a Christian:

Not only are we the freest of kings, we are also priests forever, which is far more excellent than being kings, for as priests we are worthy to appear before God to pray for others and to teach one another divine things. These are the functions of priests, and they cannot be granted to any unbeliever… He, however, who does not believe is not served by anything. On the contrary, nothing works for his good, but he himself is a servant of all . . . Who then can comprehend the lofty dignity of the Christian? By virtue of his royal power he rules over all things, death, life, and sin, and through his priestly glory is omnipotent with God because he does the things which God asks and desires. ¹¹

Luther is careful to qualify these remarks as pertaining to all Christians; this uniform priesthood of the believer can be read indeed as a precursor to democratic freedom. Yet it is noteworthy that the Christian transcends the world in a freedom which is achieved because of identification with God. God, not humanity, is the locus of freedom; the imagery of kingly rule and priestly privilege follows from the exalted state of the Christian, who is "omnipotent with God." Humanity in its existential condition is represented by the unbelievers: nothing works for their good, and they are servants of all in the most negative sense, for their servitude stems not from Christian freedom, but from human bondage. Freedom, when it is experienced, does not issue from the human condition; it is a gift bestowed from above. This freedom de-

¹¹ "The Freedom of a Christian," in Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings, ed. by John Dillenberger (New York: Doubleday, 196 1), p. 64.

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marcates and perpetuates a hierarchical order, not only from God to the world, but even within the world, where humanity is divided into spiritual orders of kings and servants. Thus the locus of this freedom has not been humanity per se. Dignity and worth are held, insofar as they are granted, by a higher authority. Theologically, the higher authority is God; practically, the higher authority has been the hierarchical social structure, reinforced by the sense of divine institution.

Theologies of the social gospel in the nineteenth century, and theologies of hope and process in the twentieth century, have moved away from this perspective, developing within theology a greater emphasis upon human worth and dignity. The liberation movements, with their identification with the humanistic egalitarianism of civil religion's idealistic language, may reinforce this shift in a radically broad way, for these movements highlight the differences which exist between the proclaimed ideal of freedom in civil religion and freedom in traditional religion. So long as these differences were obscured by a civil religion which did not function according to its ideals, the natural interplay between civil religion and traditional religions could proceed in relative harmony.

American theologies and society often seemed to reflect each other in their reciprocal processes of influence, for where there is no ultimacy in the notion of freedom, the notion does not clash with a hierarchical order, whether that order be within church or state. Liberation movements, however, work from a reformed civil religion in which the rhetorical language is taken quite literally. Here the egalitarian qualities of freedom are paramount, presenting a contrast to the long theological tradition. This is not to say that the liberation groups are themselves utopian models of human harmony based on a finally realized ideal of freedom. Not at all. The point is simply that the actions of these groups toward the achievement of a just society find their ideological base in a newly emphasized humanistic understanding of freedom. As liberation movements make gains in society, the new experiences of freedom resulting from this ideology will challenge the traditional forms of freedom's expression. The realities flowing from the language of civil religion must then be reckoned with in the theologies of traditional religion.

V

We suggest that the women's movement today must be singled out as a particularly effective bridge for interaction between the two modes of religion. The major difference between the women's movement and other liberation groups is the very obvious fact of the pervasive presence of women within every group. Women, as a subordinate class, are omnipresent. They are half of the human species, but cannot be isolated into a separate group since the relationships between men and women are essential to humanity. The encounter between men and women takes place in every sphere of daily living-home, work, play;

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all aspects of life reflect the complementary polarities of a humanity which is masculine and feminine. The significance of this factor is quite simple, but it is profoundly revolutionary in its social and ultimately ideological effects. If women were accorded the dignity, respect, and opportunities associated with an egalitarian freedom, then no facet of society would be untouched. The implications go beyond the breadth of society, however, and take on dimensions of depth as well, for this kind of freedom for women would affect the hitherto dominant class of men in a way more personal than any other liberation group. For when ethnic groups of a background other than one's own require freedom, such freedom may indeed be magnanimously accorded during one's public life, but be forgotten or negated in private life. Freedom for women requires a release of personal domination, as well as public domination. Hence such freedom requires an internal and personal assent on the part of the ruling peoples.

There is yet another bridging strength deriving from women's pervasive presence throughout society, which is that their bid for freedom combines the strengths of both the dominant and the subordinate class structures. In the days of the social gospel, the impetus toward an egalitarian regard for all persons came from within the dominant social group; in that sense, it was a thrust toward democratization from above to below. A weakness in this approach lies in the emphasized "otherness" of the group to whom one extends dignity. Dignity and freedom are still perceivable as "gifts from above," with all the hierarchical implications left intact. On the other hand, the strength of this approach lies in the indispensable self-reforming efforts of the dominant group.

In our day, liberation demands stem from the excluded groups in a reversal of the nineteenth century procedure. In this case the basis of freedom is more clearly humanity, not hierarchy. But this approach entails the danger that freedom may be enforced by law apart from any reforming changes in attitude on the part of the hitherto dominant class. Furthermore, insofar as these dominant and subordinate groups are clearly divided along racial and/or financial lines, the very fight against the limitations of these lines reinforces the sense of alien otherness which works against freedom. But the women's group cuts across these lines. Women are both within and without. "Otherness" takes on a different dimension in this case, for it more clearly demonstrates the reality that the "other" is also "thou." Insofar as freedom is a gift; it is mutually accorded on the basis of personhood, not hierarchy.

Women, as a subordinate group within all groups including the dominant social class, reinforce the mutuality dimensions of freedom for all groups. As integral members of every class, their need and demand for freedom forces each class toward the internal attitudinal reform which is essential for genuine freedom. And yet women, as the most uniformly subordinate of all peoples, also make the appeal for freedom from the strength of the excluded groups; the appeal is not hierarchy, but humanity. If freedom should be accomplished in the

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internalized way required by the women's movement, then and perhaps only then would the essential qualities of freedom as held in the language of civil religion pass into custom, for such an internalized assent to the worth of persons is the basis of all true liberation.

The women's movement, therefore, represents a call for the pervasive realization of the ideal of freedom formally espoused in the language of civil religion. Since such realization touches every domain of society, both personal and public, its accomplishment would mean society's experience of freedom on an unprecedented scale. According to the reciprocal dynamics between ideas and history, the enaction of women's claims to freedom must create a reaction in the perception of ideals, a reformulation of the meaning of freedom, and a reexamination of its basis. The manner in which this affects theology is simply that societal gains are also gains within the church. Women have already made progress within the churches, even though this progress may as yet be slight. As they continue to create new freedoms within the churches, whether through ordination, theological scholarship, voting memberships, or greater administrative service, these new experiences must affect the self-understanding of the total church, which is to say, the theology of the church.

Insofar as egalitarianism represents an essential worth of persons as persons-a humanism-then theological formulations will move further away from autocratic notions of God, since these tend to entail a subordinate and principally negative depiction of the world. Instead, there will be an increased emphasis upon the worth of the world. The positive valuation of humanity, and the judgmental factors in society as well as in eschatology which this valuation activates, will be reinforced and deepened.

The tragic and traumatic nature of much human experience within the twentieth century will prevent such theological changes from assuming easy or overly optimistic views of the human condition, and indeed, the very suffering involved in the struggle for recognition of each human being as a person of worth and potential here in this world must tinge the humanistic expressions of theology with the dark shadows of experience. Yet a courage and joy based on human worth and realized in human freedom must characterize the theological understanding.

As American theology moves in these directions, it will be in fruitful accord with the civil religion whose proclaimed ideals, however unwittingly, foster such sensitivities. The impact of the women's movement in achieving a new experience of freedom for the whole of American society may well increase the strength of this shift, reinforcing and furthering theology's incorporation of insights derived from civil religion.

Slowly indeed are ideas translated into custom. But when this finally occurs with respect to the idea of freedom, then society as a whole in its living, in its thinking, and in all forms of its religions, will reap the benefits accrued during the long maturation.