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I'hc Church anti Liberal Democracy
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overall distributive shares. To be sure, some concern lor the “most disadvan
taged” is built into the system, but not in a manner that qualifies my appro
priate concern for my self-interest. Missing entirely from Rawls’ position is
any suggestion that a theory of justice is ultimately dependent on a view of the
good; or that justice is as much a category for individuals as for societies. The
question is not only how should the shares of any society be distributed
equitably, but what bounds should individuals set for themselves if they are to
be just. In an effort to rid liberalism of a social system built on envy, Rawls
has to resort to the extraordinary device of making all desires equal before the
bar of justice. As a result he represents the ultimate liberal irony: indi
vidualism, in an effort to secure societal cooperation and justice, must deny
individual differences.
Perhaps Solzhenitsyn’s critique is truer than even he suspected, for his
criticisms reach to the basic moral presumptions of our society. Perhaps what
he criticizes in us results not from our having been untrue to our best insights,
but because we have been true to them. Of course, there have always been
richer experiences of trust and community in our polity, but the problem is
that such experience and community have no way to find political expres
sion.35 Thus blacks are encouraged to participate fully in our political process
so that their interests might be known, yet there is no political recognition that
the history of their suffering might or should be recognized as a valuable
political resource.36 Such concerns make good political rhetoric, but have
little to do with the reality of politics which deals with the satisfaction of
interests as articulated through group conflict and cooperation.
4. The Church as a School for Virtue
If this analysis of our society’s polity is even close to being correct, then
it is by no means clear what the church’s stance ought to be. The temptation is
to assume that the task of the church is to find a political alternative or ways to
qualify some of the excesses of liberalism. But such a strategy is both theolog
ically and ethically problematic, for it fails to recognize that our society offers
no ready alternatives to liberalism. We are all liberals. In fact for us in
America, liberalism, a position dedicated to ending our captivity to nature,
custom, and coercion, ironically has become our fate. The great self-
deception is in thinking that the tradition of liberalism gives us the means to
recognize that it is indeed a tradition. Instead it continues to promise us new
tomorrows of infinite creation. And the more we are convinced we are free,
the more determined we become.
For the church to adopt social strategies in the name of securing justice
in such a social order is only to compound the problem. Rather the church