Discussion Group Report

The study group discussion in October centered on WNET interviews of Father Richard John Newhouse, Michael Lerner and Bill Moyers conducted by Peggy Noonan. Ms. Noonan began the discussion, "There is a growing sense of loss in this country which is shared in common by its people, a loss of faith, family, and freedom. Politicians really can't get to our deepest problems, which are largely spiritual ones."

Father Newhouse added, "When society takes God out of the public square, we lose something... If good and evil, right and wrong are simply things that I define and have no ontological reality outside of themselves, all of life becomes a will to power... Remove God from our lives, and all that is left is the will to power."

Mr. Lerner continued, "Both the left and right have wronged religion in the past 50 years. The left has failed to understand the psychological, ethical, and spiritual dimension of human needs. It needs to recognize that human beings need more than material goods and individual rights; they need a story that connects them to a larger ethical and spiritual good. The right understands that principal and, because it does, it has been very effective in attracting people, but ironically it never challenges the way the economic and political spheres are basically spiritually and ethically corrupt."

Mr. Moyers added, "The public is more cynical now than it used to be about its institutions and political realities. What's happening is that the political realm has become very much removed from the realities of every day life. People are searching in their private lives to fulfill an inner yearning. Our great task is to find a story that embraces the plurality of our society, to re-create a consensus that will provide a common core; and we can't do that if we're shouting at each other. This consensus would come from religion, the search to satisfy the inner life. People are searching for a new moral or social order."

Our group questioned some of the assumptions made by the interviewees. These commentators characterized secularists as having led us away from morality, when actually humanists place great emphasis upon the need for ethical behavior. Newhouse, Lerner and Moyers spoke as if the important "nuclear" values come from religion, but the evidence is strong that the reverse is true. Such values as compassion, justice, and honesty seem to have been appropriated in recent decades by religion from humanism. In previous epochs religion was more concerned with promoting and enforcing conformity and blind obedience to authority, often with physical cruelty and ostracism. Would the "consensus" of values being advocated by the speakers really mean a movement to conformist thinking? Who will decide what these values will be, the religious leaders?

The right to dissent is essential to the successful functioning of democracy. Perhaps the present cacophony in the public sphere is a sign that freedom of expression is active and alive. The idea that a greater consensus about national purpose in American life was more alive in earlier times than it is now may be an illusion; even during World War II there were large organized groups in America that supported Hitler's objectives.

There does appear to be social decay in several aspects of American life: high rates of violent crime, family disintegration, irresponsible sex, and high drug usage. Poverty and over-crowding seem to be more accurate causes for these problems. The disheartenment and suffering which poverty brings to people raise serious questions about the morality of some aspects of our economic practices.