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become hesitant and embarrassed to use it. We must take courage from
Solzhenitsyn’s example and clearly say that the problem with our society and
politics is its sinful presumption that man is bom to be happy, when he clearly
has to die. A truthful politics is one that teaches us to die for the right thing,
and only the church can be trusted with that task.42
Moreover, by taking seriously its task to be an alternative polity, the
church might well help us to experience what a politics of trust can be like.
Such communities should be the source for imaginative alternatives for social
policies that not only require us to trust one another, but chart forms of life for
the development of virtue and character as public concerns. The problem in
liberal societies is that there seems to be no way to encourage the development
of public virtue without accepting a totalitarian strategy from the left or an
elitist strategy from the right. By standing as an alternative to each, the church
may well help free our social imagination from those destructive choices. For
finally social and political theory depends on people having the experience of
trust rather than the idea of trust.
But we must admit the church has not been a society of trust and virtue.
At most, people identify the church as a place where the young learn
‘‘morals, ’’ but the ‘‘morals ’’ often prove to be little more than conventional
pieties coupled with a few unintelligible “don’ts .” Therefore any radical
critique of our secular polity requires an equally radical critique of the church.
And it is a radical critique, for I am not calling for a return to some
conservative stance of the church. My call is for Christians to exhibit confi
dence in the lordship of Yahweh as the truth of our existence and in particular
of our community. If we are so confident, we cannot help but serve our polity,
for such confidence creates a society capable of engendering persons of virtue
and trust. A people so formed are particularly important for the continued
existence of a society like ours, as they can provide the experience and skills
necessary for me to recognize the difference of my neighbor not as a threat but
as essential for my very life.
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Narrative Character of ( hristian Soc ial
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