GEORGE GRANT AND RELIGIOUS SOCIAL ETHICS IN CANADA

118 / Religious Studies Review Vol. 6, No. 2 / April 1980

and nonconclusive. Yet his discussion of the universalizability requirement serves to show how the wide thesis about narrative-dependence is further qualified. Although he ac- cepts many of the standard criticisms of the requirement (it allows so much room for divergent kinds of substantive moralities, it cannot do justice to evil, etc.), he continues to think that a serious mistake is made if it is ruled out on either philosophical or theological grounds. The universalizability requirement is a necessary but not sufficient condition for moral judgments because it “expresses the fundamental commitment to regard all men as constituting a basic moral community” (1974, 85). It is a requirement “that everyone must acknowledge regardless of his status, peculiar biographical history, or the commitments and beliefs he holds” (1974,85). A “natural” or generally negotiable requirement is then binding even though it is independent of status, biography, commitments, beliefs, and so on, i.e., fundamental features of narrative. Again, the claims offered on behalf of narrative-dependence prove accordingly to be exagger- ated and the relation between narrative and “natural” morality still unclear.

4 A virtue of Hauerwas’ work overall is that the focus remains on matters of substance. He has not become preoccupied with questions of “methodology.” Many other ethicists might do well to take to heart the observation E. M. Forster offers about novelists: “The novelist who betrays too much interest in his own method can never be more than interesting; he has given up the creation of character and sum- moned us to help analyse his own mind, and a heavy drop in the emotional thermometer results” (1955,80). The issues I have raised here are, I hope, in accordance with a substantive focus. And I trust that my own gratitude to Hauerwas is expressed by my attempt in this essay to consider his work seriously. It would be a pity if he, by stopping to analyze his own mind, succumbed to excessive self-consciousness or ceased to be bold. But his work would profit from further scrutiny of the interrelations of the three themes, of what he must give up in order cleanly to go f ~ r w a r d . ~

Among recent efforts to explore this course in detail, I find Martin Hollis’ discussion especially acute. For example: “. . . I judge that the self needs tobe social. Although a passive conception absorbs the actors into the characters, an active one need not make the characters mere masks” (1977, 86).

One recalls Socrates: “A good man cannot suffer any evileither in life or after death and . . . the gods do not neglect his fortunes.”

Historically the distinction between suicide and murder has suggested a moral and religious difference between the harm I can inflict on myself and the harm someone else can inflict on me. Perhaps the distinction affords a clue to the difference between doing and happening and our zeal for some nonnegotiable bound- ary between them.

On this interaction, see Hans Frei’s description of realistic narrative (1974, e.g., 13-14). ’ For conversations and suggestions on the matters discussed in this essay, I am particularly indebted to Stanley Hauerwas, Robert McKim, Paul Nelson, Susan Owen, Ephraim Radner, John Reeder, Rebecca Rio-Jelliffe, Edmund Santurri, and William Werpehowski.

REFERENCES

DWORKIN, GERALD 1978 “Moral Autonomy.” In H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., and Daniel Callahan (eds.), Morals, Science and Sociality, 156-71. The Hastings Center.

1955 Aspects of the Novel. Harvest Books.

1974 The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. Yale University Press.

1968 Philosophy and the Historical Understanding. Schocken.

1977 “The Social Construction of Self-Knowledge.” In Theo- dore Mischel (ed.), The Self: Psychological and Philosophical Issues, 139-69. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

1977 “Self-Knowledge.” In Theodore Mischel (ed.), The Sey: Psychological and Philosophical Issues, 170-200. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

1974 Vision and Virtue. Fides. 1975 Character and the Christian Lfe . Trinity University Press. 1977a Truthfulness and Tragedy. University of Notre Dame Press. 1977b “Learning to See Red Wheelbarrows: On Vision and Relativism.” Journal of the Amerkan Academy of Religion 4512,

FORSTER, E. M.

FREI, HANS W.

GALLIE, W. B.

GERGEN, KENNETH J.

HAMLYN, DAVID W.

HAUERWAS, STANLEY

643-53. HOLLIS, MARTIN

KELSEY, DAVID H.

MEAD, GEORGE H.

MORSE, CHRISTOPHER

MURDOCH, IRIS

1977 Cambridge University Press.

1975 The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology. Fortress Press.

1934 Mind, Selfand Society. University of Chicago Press.

1979 The Logic of Promise in Moltmunn’s Theology. Fortress Press.

1966 “Vision and Choice in Morality.” In Ian T. Ramsey (ed.), Christian Ethics and Contemporay Philosophy, 195-2 18. London: SCM Press. 1970 The Soueregnty of Good. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

1965 Beyond Tragedy. Scribner’s.

1966 Elements for a Social Ethic. Macmillan.

Models of Man: Philosophical Thoughts on Social Action.

NIEBUHR, REINHOLD

WINTER, GIBSON

GEORGE GRANT AND RELIGIOUS SOCIAL ETHICS IN CANADA

Teny Anhrson Vancouver School of Theology

Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1 L4

For the past decade a growing number of Canadians have become aware of the precarious existence of their country. The “quiet revolution” in Quebec, with its insistence on recognition of French-Canadian needs and aspirations, the revival of a Quibqo i s independence movement, the awakening of Anglophone Canada to the realization that we have succumbed to the comfortable but seductive embrace of the American empire, the unexpected vitality and sophis- tication with which northern native peoples resist the invasion of their nations in the far north all make “the national

Vol. 6, No. 2 / April 1980 Religious Studies Review / 119

question,” the future of Canada, a focal concern for thoughtful citizens. It is once again fashionable to ask what our nation has been and what kind of society we wish to become. What vision of our situation and of our possibilities can serve as a guide for our more immediate decisions?

George Grant, one of Canada’s foremost thinkers, has been and continues to be a pivotal figure in this political and cultural stirring. Recently, Larry Schmidt has edited a volume of excellent essays on Grant’s thought, George Grunt in Process: Essays and Conversations ( 1978). This collection provides an admirable review of his thought, explicating well its various strands and motifs, though only a few of the essays offer much criticism of his views. Rather than attempting a survey of these particular essays, I will draw upon them and point to them as resources as I address a different task. I shall seek to indicate some of the ways in which Grant’s thought, as expressed in various Dublications. is important

33). According to Grant, “Universalism implies a world- wide state, which would eliminate the curse of war among nations; homogeneous means that all men would be equal, and war among classes would be eliminated” (Grant, 1965, 53).

The religious assumption of this regime is belief in progress, including confidence in the mastery of nature and a view of time that sees it not as a moving image of eternity but something simply at the disposal of human will. The modern “is a way of being, and consequently a way of taking beings. It is a particular vision of the nature of things, of the being of beings” (Lampert, 1978, 186).

The pervasive growth of such a regime and its underlying world view is inimical to the survival of particular cultures and “peoples” or “nations.” This includes Canada especially since the United States is the most potent carrier of this “fate.”

for r&gious sdcial ethics, especialiy but not only in danada. doing so, I write from the standpoint of a western, What happens to nationalist strivings when the societies in question

are given over, at the very level of faith, to the realization of the Christian with a technological dream? At the very core of that faith is service to the

special interest in northern native aboriginal rights. Both process of universalization and homogenisation.. . . How much Grant’s cultural background in Ontario and his form of difference can there be between societies whose faith in “the one Christianity are not mine. A love of the wilderness and the best means” transcends even communist and capitalist differences? land rather than a passion for tradition, and a revised and (Grant, 1970, ix).

Canadian and as a

deepened social gospel rather than Platonist theology have been formative for my own viewpoints. But I find disturbing and challenging Grant’s perceptions, insights, and questions about Canada, Western societies, and modernity.

Throughout his writings, Grant addresses a variety of classical ethical and meta-ethical problems: natural law, the relation of freedom to law in morality, love and truth, the nature and knowledge of the good, the foundations and principles ofjustice. He has illuminating comments on these subjects from a different angle of vision than is prevalent in most contemporary ethics, both philosophical and theological. But of greater significance for religious social ethics are the very questions Grant chooses to struggle with, and why and how they lead him again to these classical problems.

His perception of what issues are at stake can be seen, first, in Grant’s raising to intellectual scrutiny “the national question.” Are “peoples” (nations) an intrinsic political good to be preserved and enhanced or anachronisms that will and should disappear since they are at best instrumental goods? It can be seen, secondly, in his critique of what he views as the nemesis of nation and community, namely, the universal, homogenized state-the regime of technological society and secularized liberalism. The two matters are closely linked in Grant’s thought. They are opposite sides of the same coin. I shall begin with the second and comment more briefly on it because its importance for social ethics is more obvious and widely recognized. A relatively large and distinguished company of thinkers, including social ethicists, has been and is engaged in the critique of modernity. In addition, a large number of the essays in Schmidt’s volume explore this aspect of Grant’s thought more thoroughly and profitably than is possible here.

1 The universal and homogeneous state (a phrase Grant takes from A. Kogtve) is “the regime that incarnates the claims of Liberalism and is predicated upon the triumph of technique over change in natural and human affairs” (Cooper, 1978,

In his later writings, Grant claims that technology and the will to power unchecked by any belief in objective good or order leads finally to mastery of human beings as well as of nature and devours even its erstwhile partner, liberalism, including its precious tradition ofjustice (Grant, 1978,88).

Powerless to stop this disaster, the task of philosophy is not (as in Hegel) to reconcile us to the universal, homogenized state as necessity but rather to clarify this public condition, inquire into its metaphysical underpinnings, and, one hopes, to alienate us from it (see Lampert, 1978).

Much of Grant’s writing, then, entails describing the baleful effects of this regime, in its combination of efficiency and individualism, on politics, culture, and religion; ad- dressing the problem of getting outside the thought forms of modernity in order to gain critical distance; seeking to probe into the “primal apprehension of being” out of which both liberalism and technology come (here he draws on Nietzsche and Heidegger); and critically analyzing some of the modern carriers of modernity and its regime, the universal, homogeneous state (e.g., the present system of edu- cation and principles of morality).

Is this regime of technology and liberalism as evil and inevitable as Grant claims? His challenge evokes comparison with other critics of modernity-J. Ellul (see J. Badert- scher’s perceptive essay in the Schmidt volume), H. Mar- cuse, T. Rozak, P. Tillich, P. Berger, P. Slater, and C. Lasch, to name a few. Grant’s analysis certainly raises more radical questions about the direction of society and about the economic and political options before us than are common in religious social ethics. An encounter with his thought will force ethicists to examine their own presuppositions concerning moral agency and freedom of the will.

Three suggested agenda items will illustrate the possibilities of Grant’s analysis. First, more study is needed on how critiques of the technological society relate to Marxist analysis, especially concerning alienation, which Grant suggests is one of the few places Marx transcends the “pro-

120 1 Religious Studies Review Vol. 6, No. 2 I April 1980

gressivism” of modernity. What is the relation of political and economic structures to basic world views, cognitive styles, and “ways of being and taking beings”? Are capitalist and socialist systems both destined to evolve into similar versions of the universal, homogeneous state? What are the possibilities of fostering the humanist, counter-modern resources of certain types of socialism? Canadian Christian Socialism of the 1930s, Third World “development- without-modernization” movements, Nyerere’s socialism, Illich’s “convivial society” all point toward the cultural changes that must accompany the transformation of economic structures. One is reminded of Tillich’s belief that the task of “religious socialism” is to correct and deepen Marxist socialism and free it from its captivity to “the capitalist spirit of self-sufficient finitude” (Tillich, 1956,

Secondly, Grant forces us to reconsider an old problem: What is the public good and how is that ascertained? One need not disbelieve, as Grant seems to assume, in the reality of an objective moral order in order to be skeptical of past attempts to specify its content. There is a need, as Grant shows, for some common understanding of and commitment to a common good beyond the social contract device of enlightened self-interest. Grant’s Platonism and his nostal- gia for old Ontario provide starting points for discovering other ways of talking about the common good.’

Thirdly, B. Zylstra notes that while Grant generally finds love and technology at odds with each other “since love restrains the human passions while technology emancipates them” (Zylstra, 1978, 152), he also mentions a positive link. “The realization of love may well require technology” (ibid.). Clearly, technology is needed to overcome hunger and poverty and to combat disease. Can the advantages of technology be acquired by a people or nation without the recipients’ being engulfed by the entire world view and malaise Grant has identified? This is the question being asked by many Third-World countries, by northern native people in Canada, and by other traditional societies.* In sociological terms, is modernization a single “package” of advanced technology, specific institutions, and a certain kind of consciousness? Or are its ingredients separable? (Berger, Berger, and Kellner, 1973, 20).

112ff.; 1948, 49-50).

2 I turn now to discuss what I think is the most distinctive aspect of Grant’s work as far as its significance for social ethics is concerned: he launched the debate on the “national question,” and forged a link between this debate and modernization.

Grant’s Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism (1965; reprinted, 1970) became a major vehicle for raising to public awareness and intellectual scrutiny Canada’s economic, cultural, and political absorption into the American orbit. “George Grant set the stage for the Canadian nationalist debate. He provided it with some of its basic vocabulary, he identified the social agents responsible and he outlined the cultural consequences of the new economic order” (Glenday, Guidon, and Turowetz, 1978, 2). Religious social ethics since World War 11, like other intellectual endeavors in Canada, tended to reflect the cultural captivity Grant laments. The agenda of social issues, for example, inclined heavily toward problems whose prime

impact was not domestic but on the United States or the Third World. How could anything of real significance be happening in “the branch plant” unless it had to do with the interests of the “head office”? This view of the hinterland as seen from the metropolis is nicely illustrated by a Newsweek comment on Canada’s very own (at last?) event of political violence that temporarily attracted world attention, the Oc- tober crisis in Quebec in 1970: “A minor power militarily, an appendage of the United States economically and of limited interest culturally [Canada] was one nation that seemed destined to live out its days in boring tranquility” (cited in Resnick, 1977, 145).

Of course, in terms of world power politics, Canada is and always has been a hinterland, very much on the edge of big-power interests. Allowing the metropolis’ view of reality and interest to define so completely our own interests, identity, and self-perceptions, however, is another matter. It had happened to an alarming degree in the two decades after World War 11. Simply making the Canadian national question a subject of study and discourse as Grant did was itself a significant political act. Up to that time, given the cultural imperialism of the United States, with its political assumptions and interests, that seemed an irrelevant, perhaps quaint issue.

Both the agenda of religious social ethics and the pattern of study in the postwar period betrayed a colonial mind-set. Douglas Hall, in his fine essay in the Schmidt collection, notes a similar model for theology where the pattern was to learn from Europeans (Hall, 1978). In social ethics Americans provided the basic insights and methods which were then applied to the particularities of Canada. Grant breaks this pattern by entering more deeply into the Canadian experience. He struggles with its peculiarities in a way that shapes the appropriation of these traditions and cultures and in turn illuminates new dimensions of them for others.

Grant points to an even deeper aspect of our cultural dependence by illumining the character of the basic vision and identity we have uncritically adopted. As Hall points out, both the United States and Canada derived their iden- tities from Europeans.

Never before have w e questioned the destiny first envisaged for us by those real ‘discoverers’ of America, i.e. those European intellec- tuals who saw in this Continent the stage on which the new man they heralded would enact his enlightened role. We have accepted that destiny, and have embellished it with messianic significance of our own devising (Hall, 1978, 122).

This acceptance has made, Hall thinks, a truly contextual North American theology difficult if not impossible. On the other hand, it may be partly responsible for the flourishing of religious social ethics in the United States, that is, more attention has consequently been given to working out the implications of this destiny for individual and collective behavior.

But is the identity-especially a vision of the good society-that was received from the parental culture identi- cal for the United States and Canada? Further, is the man- ner in which it is received different for the two societies? On the whole, Canadians have accepted the identity bequeathed by the parental culture with less explicit intention- ality and have embellished it less with messianic significance

Vol. 6, No. 4 I April 1980 Religious Studies Review / 14 1

than have Americans. Perhaps this is partly why social ethics, especially with respect to working out consistent ex- pressions of that identity, has been less vigorously pursued in Canada.

Regarding the question of the identity bequeathed by our “European parents,” Grant is convinced that at least the vision of the good society for Canada was distinct from that of the United States. An interesting example of this difference is found in the first major novel to be written by an author born in Canada, Wucousta, by John Richardson. The characters in conflict represent the law and order of the British Empire on the one hand (Colonel De Haldiman) and the passionate rejection of such conventional order by a kind of anarchist individualist (Wacousta) on the other. It is clear from later novels that Wacousta is intended by the author to be representative of American political philosophy. The conflict reveals that neither of these is appropriate to govern the new world. “A synthesis of them, eventuating in a new generation and a new philosophy, is required” (cited in Mathews, 1978, 14). The struggle of the new land is seen, not as a battle between garrison and wilderness, white man and native, but between alien exploiters and community builders.

This pattern is frequently repeated in Canadian literature (Mathews, 1978, 22). It includes a double rejection, both of imperialist, oppressive order, and of anarchist individualism. There is also a search for some synthesis that recognizes the importance of social order and community along with space for individual and group differences, spontaneity and variety.

Something of this vision of the good society appears in Grant’s own description of the English-speaking Canadian’s “belief that on the northern half of this continent we could build a community which had a stronger sense of the common good and of public order than was possible under the individualism of the American capitalist dream” (Grant, 1970, x). Grant laments not only the passing of this dream but the irony that the “British tradition” which many (including himself) counted on as an antidote to American influence was itself a major source of the presuppositions informing American culture. Indeed, since 1945 Britain herself has lusted after the American way of life. “British- ness” was thus an illusory bulwark. I might add that to many prairie Canadians the “bulwark,” as expressed in the cultural snobbery of “upper Canada,” cloaking central Cana- dian economic hegemony, appeared worse than the “disease’’ it was meant to check.

In any case, the pervasive power and attraction of American society-a mix of liberalism and advanced technology-had so enthralled Canadians in the period following World War I1 (though of course the process had started much earlier) that most of them came to perceive their identity, including assumptions about the good society, in terms similar to the American dream.

The early part of the postwar decades was charac- terized in Canada by a liberal internationalism that per- vaded all classes and groups, partly because excessive nationalism was seen as a major cause both of the Great Depression and World War 11. The decade 1955-1965 saw a few changes, with some stirrings of concern for more

Landmarks in Black Studies 0 in Liberation Theology 0 in Old Testament Studies

BLACK THEOLOGY A Documentary Historyy 1966- 1979

Q _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Gayraud S. Wlmore and James H. Cone, Editors ‘In substance. scope and thematic arrange- ment this is an authoritative interpretation of a major contemporary theological. religious. social and political movement”

Union Theological Seminary ‘It will become a primary resource wher- ever theology Black theology. or the Black religious experience is being investi- gated. researched. or taught’

School of Religion. Howard University 672 pages. $19 95 cloth. $12 95 paper

-PAUL LEHMANN.

’ -LAWRENCE N JONES,

Write for catalog

Maryknoll. NY 10545 ORBlS BOOKS

TRIBES OF YAHWEH A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israely

Norman K. Gottwald Drawing on sociology and anthropology. Gottwald reveals Israel as a tribe which achieved autonomy within Canaanite society This Israelite counter-society was both egalitarian and socialistic - revolu- tionary qualities which were reinforced by the religion of Yahweh By providing both Church and Synagogue with a care- fully researched account of the bases of their traditions. The Tribes of Yahweh makesa notablecontribution to a theology of liberation to be developed by Jews and Christians alike xxv. 916 pages including 7 charts. 5 indices. 99 pp notes. $29 95 cloth. $19 95 paper

1250-1050 B.C.E.

PUEBLA AND BEYOND Documents and Commentary A first-hand account and assessment of pre-Puebla. the Conference itself. and its impact on the churches. including the official English translation of the final Document Contents I Overview Penny Lernoux and Moises

Sandoval on the history and highlights of the conference

II Documentation Pope John Paul Ilk opening address, with introduction and commentary, the final Puebla DOCU- ment with introduction and commentary

Ill After Puebla Thesignificanceof Puebla for the Catholic Church in Latin Amer- ica by John Sobrino, SJ, and in North America by Joseph Gremillion, the significance of Puebla for the Protes- tant Churches of North America by Robert McAfee Brown

384 pages, $7 95 paper

Vol. 6, No. 2 / April 1980 122 / Religious Studies Review

economic control. But Diefenbaker’s clumsy attempts to lessen the ties with the American empire contributed to his defeat, the specific occasion for Grant’s lament.

Grant did not envisage a complete disappearance of a Canadian entity. “Canada has ceased to be a nation, but its formal political existence will not end quickly. Our social and economic blending into the empire will continue apace, but political union will probably be delayed” (Grant, 1970, 86). Our values and underlying philosophy “go with internationalism” rather than with “nationalism,” and in the Canadian setting that means continentalism. The imperialism we experience is a soft, not a hard imperialism. Like a younger brother or the son of a wealthy stockholder, Cana- dians enjoy the fruits of the vast American empire but avoid most of “the dirty work necessary to that empire.” That is what makes it so seductive. “We want through formal nationalism to escape the disadvantages of the American dream; yet we also want the benefits of junior membership in [that] empire” (Grant, 1970, ix).

Insofar, then, as Canadians accept the basic concept of the good society as conceived by Americans, for Canadian social ethics the working out of that concept is similar to American social ethics, distinguishable only by distance from the power and the action. Hence the significance for religious social ethics in Canada of Grant’s challenging of that acceptance and his raising again of the national question. Is there a concept of the good society preferable to the American, liberal, technological regime? What kind of society might that be? Is it possible to sustain, let alone realize in any way, such an alternative on the North American continent, in the very backyard of the United States? These questions recall social ethicists in Canada to different foci and agenda. They break a pattern of seeking elsewhere for “light for our darkness,” and they raise the possibility of a new, indigenous vision of the good society with the challenge of working out its quite distinctive implications for individual and collective behavior.

The national issue, however, as formulated in these questions, is of wider importance. Grant’s insights and discussions of these matters are of more than parochial interest. In attempting to understand the claims and pro- posals of native peoples-Indian and Inuit-north of the sixtieth parallel, I discovered how widespread in various parts of the globe are these concerns and how inadequate reigning Western political philosophies and ideologies (liberal and socialist) are in taking full account of them.

The Dene, for example, who have occupied the area of the Mackenzie River basin for 35,000 or more years, remain a relatively intactculture. They have adapted to but have not been absorbed into or shredded by their relatively limited contact with European culture. The Dene speak of themselves as a nation, using the term, quite appropriately, to describe, not a country or state (as is common in popular usage), but a “people” or group of persons who are bound together by a shared history, culture, beliefs, and values, and in addition share an explicit economic and political association. The latter is important because it distinguishes a nation from an ethnic group that could be described simi- larly except that it remains primarily a cultural association. The Dene nation is threatened by an impending massive invasion by distantly controlled mega-projects exploiting nonrenewable natural resources of the north in a way only

recently made possible by sophisticated technology. Under- standably, their national consciousness, “a lively sense of, and perhaps pride in, what distinguishes one’s own from other peoples,” has been heightened.

There are aboriginal groups on every continent, many in more immediately oppressive situations, for all of whom survival as “peoples” or nations is in doubt. They are beginning to discover each other and to feel a growing kinship in their common plight, describing themselves as “the fourth world” (Manuel and Poslums, 1974). Many other nations- Slavs, Basques, Biafrans, Georgians-to name a few in capitalist and socialist countries, struggle against domina- tion and resist assimilation with a fervor not readily ac- counted for in either Marxist or liberal t h e ~ r i e s . ~

If they are free and equal individuals or members of a victorious proletariat, does it matter whether they survive as nations? “Can the disappearance of an unimportant nation be worthy of serious grief?,” Grant asks (1970,3). In one of the stimulating recorded conversations in the Schmidt volume, Grant reflects on French Canada:

Why is genocide more terrible to me than individual murder? Because it wipes out a people who can never be again. I’m not talking of race and racial purity, but there is something about a group of people.. . . The French stuck down in North America have produced something that is nowhere else. Do you want to see them disappear? (Schmidt, 1978, 15).

Of course, the questioner in this conversation quite properly points out the dangers of nationalism. Nationalism may be defined as “the desire to preserve or enhance a people’s national or cultural identity when that identity is threatened, or the desire to transform or even to create it where it is felt to be inadequate or lacking” (Plamenetz, 1973, 23-24). But the experience of the last two centuries has been such that the very word nationalism assumes a more negative connotation of fanaticism with its attendant insistence that an individual give supreme loyalty to the nation state. Martin Buber, himself a nationalist, uses the word in this way: Being a people is simply like having eyes in one’s head which are capable of seeing; being a nationality is like having learned to perceive their function and to understand their purpose; nationalism is like having diseased eyes. A people is a phenomenon of life, nationality (which cannot exist without national feeling) is one of consciousness, nationalism one of the superconsciousness (cited in Baron, 1947, 3).

Grant’s questioner equates nationalism with the imperialism that destroys lesser nations-the very thing Grant seeks to stop. But Grant correctly observes that cosmopolitanism has also generally been a mask for some particular imperialism. In the case of Canada, cosmopolitanism comes down to “immersion in the culture of the United States.”

It is important to ask, then, whether it is good to have nationality without nationalism (to use Buber’s terms) or cosmopolitanism without homogeneity (to use Grant’s terms). We are pushed with Grant back to familiar but hauntingly difficult basic questions in social ethics. What is the relationship of a particular good to a universal good? Even a brief history of the varied interpretations of the story of the tower of Babel and Pentecost reveal the various Chris- tian views on this.4 It is surely an important item on the

Grace and F ~ t h in the Old Testamen1 Can salvation by grace through faith be found In the Old Testament? Ronald M. Hats shows how to listen to the Old Testament, to hear it speak on its own terms about salvation by grace through faith. Counterbalances the view of the Old Testa- ment as only a book of countless rules or historical information. paper $3.75

The Psalms Renowned Old Testament scholar Claus Westermann provides a clear basis for understanding the structure, content and message of the Psalms. Brief, well-written survey, translated by Ralph Gehrke, unlocks the vast treasure of praise and lament found in many unfamiliar psalms. Ideal resource for study grouDs. paper $4.95 - - . . .

Fear, Faith, and the Future How much do we reall know about the future7 Are there any reasons for optimism and hope? This book is a Christian answer to Future Shock and Limits to Growth. Ted Peten presents a thoughtful analysis of many future-related problems. Brings a biblical understanding of the future into dialog with secular doomsday prophets. Affirms God's Word as the basis of hope for today's Christians. paper $3.95

Grow-books for Christian study

Faith Under Fire Biblical Interpretations of Sufi ering Why does God let me suffer? Danlel 4. Simundson examines the answers given to this question in both the Old Testament and the New. "Useful to Christians who in times of crisis wonder why, and in times of well-being reflect on meanin "- Wetter llrueggemann, Eden Seminary. "A very, very helpful and clear statement of the bib1 ical interpretations of suff ering."--Roberf P. Meye, Fuller Seminary. "I know of no comparable book." -David M. Gunn, Sheffietd. paper $4.95.

Following the Way Breathtaking photography and vivid text by BNC. E. Schein carry readers into the places, life and customs behind the text of St. John. tlluminating view of all aspects and controversies regarding the historical geography of the Fourth Gospel. Includes informative maps, drawings and interesting discussions on the crucifixion, feeding of the 5,000, and historical-geographical comments on all 21 chapters of John. A unique, indispensable

study. cloth $12.00

124 1 Religious Studies Review Vol. 6, No. 2 1 April 1980

agenda of Jewish-Christian dialogue. How should we relate love of our own to love of the good? “How to express a proper love of one’s own within a Christian life?” is the question Grant poses (in Schmidt, 1978, 21).

But Grant’s questioner raises yet another crucial issue regarding nations or peoples, surely one that contributed to the fact that the liberal individualism of America became a symbol of freedom. Primal group ties and loyalties can be smothering and tyrannous. “The differentiated character of society, as composed of many different institutions having different functions, is overlooked. Individuality is overlooked. So is the aloneness and separateness of the soul before God (in Schmidt, 1978, 20). There is a danger of romanticizing these more primal communities and forget- ting that persons in them often were and are locked into rigid hierarchies and fixed roles, as feminists particularly remind us.

Clearly some of the individual freedoms so prized by liberals are needed in nations. Grant, bitterly critical of liberalism at one stage, later acknowledges its obvious truths and virtues. Liberalism in its generic sense of belief in political liberty is so basic that “it is difficult for me to consider as sane those who would deny that they are liberals” (cited by Christian, 1978, 174). But in terms of Grant’s own analysis does this concession plant the seed of the homogeneous state?

Even if it can be established that nations (as defined above) are a political good generally to be preserved and fostered, important questions remain. What political and economic power must they possess if they are to be effective antidotes to the homogenization of modernity? Are there other, possibly more viable “mediating structures” between the “homeless individual” and the large bureaucratic structures of modernity (see Berger and Neuhaus, 1977). What can and should be the relationship of nations to states? English-speaking North Americans tend to assume that each state should represent a single nation; therefore Angloconformity, disguised by “melting-pot’’ or “mosaic” rhetoric, has been the dominant model. Aspirations for nationhood within the larger unit are disparagingly re- ferred to as “Balkanization.” We need to ask, however, whether or not there might be advantages to a several- nation state.

I have attempted to indicate the significance of George Grant’s work for religious social ethics in Canada and elsewhere. Perhaps it can be sdmmarized by describing a choice facing Canadians but yet one that has parallel varia- tions in many places. Northern native peoples and QuibeCois in Canada seek recognition of their identity as peoples. They want a measure of economic and political independence with some control of the process of modernization. Is this a hopelessly backward step away from the true destiny of universal brotherhood and the struggle for human liberation defined either in individualistic or collectivist terms? Or is it an opportunity for repentance, in the sense of rethinking existing patterns and turning in a new direction? Is it an invitation to explore the possibility that a several- nation state might check some of the ills of modernity and prepare the way for a different North American society? Social ethics entails reflecting on what does and should go into making such moral decisions, and Grant’s work is indeed significant for such an enterprise,

~ ~~~

NOTES

There has been considerable interest among religious ethicists in recent years to establish broadly received and understood grounds for moral standards and justice. See, e.g., R. W. Terry, 1970, 30.

* Berger, Berger, and Kellner (1973) examine this concern sym- bolized in one Third-World slogan, “Development without modernization”; see esp. ch. 7.

For a helpful survey of conventional Marxist views of ethnicity and “nations,” see Enloe, 1973, ch. 3.

See, e.g., B. Anderson, “The Babel Story: Paradigm of Human Unity and Diversity,” and other essays in Part I1 of Greeley and Baum, 1977.

REFERENCES

ANDERSON, B. 1977 “The Babel Story: Paradigm of Human Unity and Diver- sity.’’ In A. Greeley and G. Baum (eds.), Ethnicity. Seabury Press.

1978 “George P. Grant and Jacques Ellul on Freedom in Technological Society.” In Schmidt, 1978.

BARON, S. W. 1947 Modern Natwnalism and Religwn. Harper.

BERGER, PETER, BRIGITTE BERGER, and HANSFRIED KELLNER 1973 The Homeless Mind. Random House.

BERGER, PETER, and R. J. NEUHAUS 1977 To Empower People: The Role of Medmting Structures in Public Policy. American Institute for Public Policy Research (Washington, DC).

CHRISTIAN, WILLIAM 1978 Schmidt, 1978.

COOPER, BARRY 1978 George Grant.” In Schmidt, 1978.

ENLOE, C. H. 1973

GLENDAY, D., H. GUIDON, and A. TUROWETZ 1978

GRANT, GEORGE 1970 Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. 1978 Mount Allison University.

GREELEY, A., and G. BAUM (EDS.) 1977 Ethnicity. Seabury Press.

HALL, DOUGLAS JOHN 1978 tian Theology in North America.” In Schmidt, 1978.

LAMPERT, LAURENCE 1978 1978.

1974 Macmillan Canada.

1978 Canadian Literature: Surrender or Revolution. Toronto: Steel Raid Educational Publishing.

1973 “Two Types of Nationalism.” In Nationalism: The Nature and Evolution of an Idea. Canberra: Australian National Univer- sity Press.

RESNICK, P. 1977 Vancouver: New Star Books.

BADERTSCHER, J.

“George Grant and the Terrifying Darkness.” In

“ A imperio usque ad imperium: The Political Thought of

Ethnic Conflict and Political Development. Little, Brown.

Modernization and the Canadian State. Macmillan.

Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadzan Nationalism.

English-Speaking Justice. Sackville, New Brunswick:

“The Significance of Grant’s Cultural Analysis for Chris-

“The Uses of Philosophy in George Grant.” In Schmidt,

MANUEL, G., and MICHAEL POSLUNS The Fourth World: An Indian Reality. Toronto: Collier-

MATHEWS, ROBIN

PLAMENETZ, J.

The Land of Cain: Class and Nationalism in English Canada.

Vol. 6, No. 2 / April 1980 Religious Studies Review / 135

SCHMIDT, LARRY (ED.) ZYLSTRA, BERNARD 1978 Anansi.

George Grant in Process: Essays and Conversdwns. Toronto: 1978 “Philosophy, Revelation and Modernity: Crossroads in the Thought of George Grant.” In Schmidt, 1978.

TERRY, R. W.

TILLICH, PAUL 1970 For Whites Only. Eerdmans.

1948 1956

The Protestant Era. University of Chicago Press. The Religious Situutwn. Meridian Books.

Notes on Recent Publications

Comparative Studies PHILOSOPHY EAST/PHILOSOPHY WEST: A CRITICAL COMPARISON OF INDIAN, CHINESE, ISLAMIC, AND EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. By Ilai Alon, Shlomo Biderman, Dan Daor, and Yoel Hoffmann. Edited by Ben-Ami Scharfstein. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Pp. 367. $16.95.

In this work aspects of the thought of three philosophical traditions-Indian, Chinese, and Western-are compared and contrasted. Islamic philosophy is considered part of the Western tradition, as is Greek and European thought. The first two-thirds of the book consists of general essays comparing social contexts, modes of argument, and relationships between philosophy and religion in the three cultures. The final third consists of essays comparing and contrasting particular philosophers. Sankara is compared with Descartes and Augustine on the nature of the self; Al-Ashari is compared with Spinoza on causality and freedom; Han Fei Tzu’s understanding of Li is compared with Plato’s notion of Idea; Berkeley’s idealism is compared with that of Vasubandhu; and Kant and Nagarjuna are compared on the possibility of knowledge. The quality of the essays varies, but on the whole they are well-written and display careful analysis. The strength of the study lies in the fact that its authors are sensitive to differences as well as similarities, and that they are impartial in their analysis of the particular traditions with which they deal. Drawbacks include a lack of enthusiasm on the part of some of the authors for their endeavor, and a failure to explain the significance, existential or philosophical, of their comparisons. At the end of the book there is an extensive bibliography of works pertaining to comparative philosophy. For those interested in a critical introduction to comparative thought, this book is worth the purchase.

Jay McDaniel, Trinity University Sun Antonio, TX 78284

THE INTRARELIGIOUS DIALOGUE. By Raimundo Panikkar. New York and Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978. Pp. xxviii + 104.

These five essays, written over the past ten years, emerge from Panikkar’s experience of interreligious dialogue. The author’s more recent book, Myth, Faith and Hermeneutics (Paulist Press, 1979), complements the sparseness of this collection. Panikkar identifies the significant reflective task “when interpersonal dialogue turns into intrapersonal soliloquy” (10). Unifying these essays is the notion of intrapersonal dialogue as a religious act and, moreover, the study of religion within this context as the singular religious act for many today. This may be the case when intrareligious dialogue elicits self-questioning, the question of the relativity

$5.95.

of beliefs (as distinguished from faith), and the possibility of change/conversion. Panikkar articulates the context for a contemporary spirituality more than for a theology. Intrareligious dialogue may be such a private act that it lacks the public aspect required in the theological task. Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s Relzgwus Diversity (Harper 8c Row, 1976) would bring to these essays of rather privatized reflections a “critical corporate self-consciousness.” Both books should be read together and would serve well to introduce students to contemporary religious thought.

William Cenkner, Catholic University of America Washington, DC 20064

WORLD FAITH AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER: A MUSLIM-JEWISH-CHRISTIAN SEARCH BEGINS. Edited by Joseph Gremillion and William Ryan. Washington, DC: Interreli- gious Peace Colloquium, 1978. Pp. vii + 248. N.p.

This collection consists of the papers from the second conference of the Interreligious Peace Colloquium (Lisbon, 1977). The focus is on “A New International Economic,” “Restructuring the International Order,” et al., asking what relevance these international studies have for historic religious communities, and vice versa. Most notable are contributions from Philip Land, James Grant and John Sewell, Richard Falk, Robert Bellah, and Isma’il Abdalla. The contributors find an emerging consensus among certain circles of experts as to the nature of, and steps to, a new world order; but there is frustration over the fact that governments are not being won over. In looking for ways to develop the “political will” among peoples required to face the earth’s future, the contributors note the importance of religion. A good contribution to a vital search just beginning.

William J e y Boney, Virginia Unwn University Richmond, VA 23227

TWO MASTERS, ONE MESSAGE: THE LIVES AND TEACH- INGS OF GAUTAMA AND JESUS. By Roy C. Amore. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1978. Pp. 186. $5.95.

In this careful, exegetical re-opening of the question of possible Buddhist influences upon the New Testament, Amore finds parallels in the lifestyles of the Buddha and Jesus as wandering masters and in their teachings about striving for a pure mind, free from greed, anger, lust, and anxiety. Amore argues that (1) the gospel source Q is in part reworked Buddhist material, mainly from the Dharmapada; (2) Buddhist sayings and biographical materials filtered into Christian communities regularly from the earliest period; (3) Jesus adapted and incorporated Buddhist sayings into his own teaching; and (4) Buddhist influence continued in the early Christian community, helping to transform the Jewish

GEORGE GRANT AND RELIGIOUS SOCIAL ETHICS IN CANADA

Documents

Transcript of GEORGE GRANT AND RELIGIOUS SOCIAL ETHICS IN CANADA