Abstract
Between a Rock and a Hard Place is a perceptive and timely contribution to current debates in public theology. Elaine Graham’s prose is incisive and briskly paced, and she demonstrates not only great breadth of reading in theology and the social sciences, but also close attention to theology as it is practiced in the real world. And while Graham echoes more traditionally liberal concerns in her call to recover public theology as a distinctly apologetic endeavor, she does so in a highly nuanced way, taking particular account of postliberal challenges to that tradition. I briefly summarize the book’s three sections, before making several critical observations.
Graham maps the current state of play in Part 1, giving particular attention to the uncharted territory in which the West finds itself in relation to religion and the secular. Her explication of this condition is one of the strengths of the book. The West is becoming not only more secular but also more religious—yet religious expression is less tethered to institutions, and secularism is marked, at least in some quarters, by a growing degree of self-awareness that might qualify as post-secularism. As theorists from José Casanova to Jürgen Habermas to Charles Taylor have made clear, a bewildering variety of expressions of both belief and unbelief is available today, with the implicit rules governing the interactions between religion and politics being revisited. Thus, even as traditional religious practice appears to be in decline, religion is becoming increasingly central to, for example, social policy. Faith-based organizations now deliver significant portions of government welfare; the post-Westphalian settlement and Rawlsian presumptions of neutrality are giving way to new conceptions of public debate; notions of ‘shared space’ and ‘dialogic pluralism’ are giving opportunity, at least theoretically, for religious reasoning that was once checked at the door.
Graham summarizes the current context in which public theology must be practiced as ‘characterized above all by complexity and ambivalence’. As she puts it, ‘I am clear we are not talking about religious revival, and yet equally I am not convinced that the resurgence of religious discourse and practice is but a blip on an otherwise undisturbed trajectory of modernity’ (p. 64). At the same time, defenders of a triumphalist version of reason and science ‘continue to maintain a vigorous defense of secularism in many quarters’. It is not yet clear what kinds of new settlements might emerge from these opposing forces. ‘Faith-based organizations and secular civil government alike must learn to navigate a path between the “rock” of religious revival and the “hard place” of secularism, with little in the way of established maps or rules of engagement to guide them’ (p. 64).
In Part 2, Graham briefly reviews a number of theo-political approaches, looking for potential maps that might guide us through this emerging landscape. She understands public theology to be a discipline that ‘seeks to comment and critically reflect from a theological perspective on aspects of public life such as economics, politics, culture and media,’ noting that the discipline features ‘a commitment to a particular kind of theological method, which is prepared to submit to the procedural norms of public discourse’ (p. 71).
Numerous voices would take exception, of course, to her characterization of theology submitting to ‘procedural norms of public discourse’, and thus she critically engages with two representative challenges. First, she considers postliberalism, engaging with the work of Phillip Blond, Graham Ward, and Luke Bretherton. Despite the fact that these political theologians take vastly different routes in developing their proposals, they are arguably united in postliberal concerns over the degree to which theology can or should ‘translate’ its first-order theological speech to make it more intelligible or applicable to those outside the Christian tradition. Second, Graham examines the public theology of contemporary evangelicalism. In this case, rather than attending to academic representatives of evangelical political theology, she focuses on its grassroots public expression in the UK, such as legal cases brought by evangelicals in response to diversity legislation. She describes the discourse that emerges from these cases as representative of an ‘evangelical identity politics’ associated with leaders such as, among Anglicans, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali and Archbishop George Carey, and lobbying groups such as Christian Concern.
In Part 3, Graham sets out her own constructive proposal, arguing that in a post-secular age public theology must reclaim its identity as a form of Christian apologetics. Rather than limiting apologetics to a rational defense of Christian doctrine and propositions, as it traditionally has been, Graham follows Max Stackhouse in suggesting that the appeal of Christianity is not simply its superiority over other religious or philosophical systems, but rather its attractiveness as a form of practical wisdom that contributes to human flourishing and the common good. While allowing that public theology must remain rooted in the Christian tradition, she argues that it is not incommensurable with other traditions of reasoning, and therefore a dialogue in which wisdom and understanding can go both ways, between the Christian and the secular, should be pursued.
There is much in these pages to welcome, and more that could be said in appreciation for the book’s learned clarity. In what space remains, however, I want to engage with two of her main critiques.
In her chapter on postliberalism, Graham is an appreciative critic, looking for ways she can take on board its emphases and correctives; she finds particular points of commonality with Bretherton’s proposals. In contrast, however, her critique of Phillip Blond reveals deeper disagreements, and even suspicions. Blond, a theologian and former student of John Milbank, published a political manifesto called Red Tory, drawing on the work of John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle, among others. Blond called for a return to communitarian conservatism, one rooted in the mediating structures between the individual and the state, from churches to trade unions. In contrast to the abstractions of political liberalism and the nation state, Blond asserted that only local communities— bound by local economies and thick narratives of history and creed—can form the virtues leading to human flourishing. Blond leveled his critiques at threats to this place-based vision, from the Left’s reliance on big government to the Right’s coalition with big business and global finance. Blond then put this vision into action, starting the think tank ResPublica to develop concrete proposals in the trenches of Westminster policymaking.
Graham is critical of Blond’s work in public policy, however, for being insufficiently theological. Given that the Radical Orthodoxy with which Blond is associated seems to call for theologically ‘out-narrating’ one’s philosophical opponents, Graham worries that he ‘appears surprisingly reluctant to declare the theological roots of his political convictions…In refusing to “go public”, Blond omits to indicate the sources of the traditions and practices which will actually inform a renewed political and cultural economy of virtue’ (p. 109). She expresses skepticism about Blond’s agenda, worries that some ‘sleight of hand’ is at work, and quotes at length those critics who believe Blond’s ambitions are covertly to reestablish ‘hierarchy and the restoration of a form of theocracy’ (p. 123).
But is Graham critiquing Blond for something he never set out to do? Surely it is appropriate for policymakers who are practicing Christians (even those who have taught theology) to develop concrete, pragmatic policies on various issues without having to demonstrate the metaphysical grounding of a given recommendation. Even if such an attempt might be technically possible, is the world of think tanks really the place for such discussions, least of all in modern Britain?
Furthermore, if Graham’s larger hope is that public theology might regain a more apologetic objective, are not Blond’s public arguments more consistent with what we see modeled in the Gospels? One rarely observes Jesus starting with didactic instructions about the Kingdom of God; he is more often making provocative political statements, drawing curious historical connections, and telling stories that appear off point. He picks grain on the Sabbath, eats with sinners, and only later explains himself theologically, when ‘those with ears to hear’ follow up and ask questions.
Whatever one thinks of Blond’s project, it is clear that Blond and his think tank are saying new, interesting things not often heard in today’s poll-tested political world. Surely hearing a Christian (and a theologian, no less) advance a vision of the common good that provokes questions and defies easy categorization is to be welcomed. Were we to recover the kind of public square in which policymakers were actually questioned about a policy’s underlying theology(!), it is hard to believe that Blond would not relish the opportunity. He hardly hides the fact that some thinkers on whom he draws deeply write from a distinctly Anglican perspective and theological vision. In the meantime, however, Christians know that the parameters of quotidian policy discussion remain largely set by the tradition of political liberalism. Where the real opportunities for greater theological transparency exist, perhaps, is in local neighborhoods and cities, where the rules of political liberalism are not so fixed, and where citizens can bring their deepest commitments to bear on political questions with less fear of reprisal.
A second question is raised by Graham’s critique of the evangelical activism expressed in court appeals to protect freedom of religious speech or challenges to employment laws that require employees to perform duties they believe to be abetting same-sex marriage. Graham finds much less to agree with in this chapter and, echoing Rawls, expresses concern from the outset that evangelicals maintain a ‘confessional public theology which rejects many of the principles of the liberal democratic public square’, resorting instead to a politics of victimhood in the face of a rising secularism (p. 140). While one might question how representative are the particular activists on whom Graham focuses, she is right to direct attention to how theology is lived on the ground. And there is undoubtedly much to lament in some of the besetting sins—the Biblicism, the Manichean tendencies—Graham accurately observes in some quarters.
Yet the counter-cultural positions conservative evangelicals take are arguably intrinsic to evangelicalism’s vitality, as sociologists such as Christian Smith have pointed out, and central to evangelicalism’s sense of mission. It is, from an evangelical perspective, conformity to the culture that robs the liberal theological project of its sense of mission. Thus Graham’s call to evangelicals to adopt ‘a degree of realism about the end of Christendom’, to stop ‘seeking refuge’ in their grievances and instead ‘cultivate positive virtues of citizenship’ (p. 174) is, in fact, another way of saying evangelicals should give up precisely those perspectives that they believe give them something distinctive to offer the world, and are thus expressions of faithful discipleship and citizenship.
Whether the tactics of court battles present the most irenic witness is another question, of course. But the reality is that such tactics are not anachronistically conservative, as Graham laments—they are fundamentally liberal. Court battles represent the way that many political debates are settled in liberal democracies today, and as political scientist Jon Shields has shown in his ethnography of the Christian Right, conservative evangelicals play by those rules more conscientiously than most. Furthermore, whether or not one finds a particular stance they take persuasive—for example on same-sex marriage—evangelicals are conducting the argument on the wholly reasonable grounds of religious liberty, ostensibly on behalf of all citizens who want the freedom to live in accordance with their religious convictions. One cannot help but wonder if Graham’s disagreement is less with evangelicals’ alleged disregard for ‘the principles of the liberal democratic public square’ and more with their taking particular positions that do not adhere to her own.
These points of disagreement notwithstanding, when it comes to Graham’s own constructive proposals near the end of the book, one might expect to encounter pointed reminders of Tillich or the Niebuhrs—but we are directed instead towards an apologetic of discipleship. Graham calls for a practice-oriented, communal performance of Christian witness, with a particular concern for solidarity with the poor. ‘The primary expression of public theology,’ Graham writes, ‘will be in practical demonstrations that authentic faith leads to transformation…’ (p. 215). Just as Graham has perceptively captured the current age, with all the uncertainties and reexaminations of previous settlements between the religious and the secular, she perceptively captures as well the timely importance of public theology as Christian witness. Her book is a thoughtful and thorough guide that will be of great benefit to many.