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Moral Vision and Moral Practice in the Public Square Imperative or Impediment— A Christian Perspective
By Garnett Roper JP PhD
At the very outset, let us admit that any focus on morality nowadays raises questions of integrity and credibility. It is the case that often those who shout loudest about morality and moral causes have been found wanting on the frontlines when moral courage is required. The real vanguard of morality are not the traditional voices and the traditional centres. Often there seems to be two overarching considerations to which complete loyalty is given: power and profit these are the new gods, these are what capture and captivate the spirit. How to make a buck and how to gain and maintain power. These voices range from those who call profit blessing to those who swear there is no alternative to the market. What is the use of our high- sounding words used in the name of morality, if when push comes to shove, we lack the courage to make moral choices on the cutting edge issues?
The credibility of the voices that speak loudest in the name of morality is waning because they have been guilty of cherry picking among so called moral issues. They have reduced moral struggles to certain pet issues like abortion and the rights of LGBTQ community. The culture war issues from the metropolis to the North are the only concerns for these who shout loudly in the name of morality. There is no consensus that these two issues and the way they are framed are essentially moral considerations. However, what is clear is the choice of these issues of abortion and homosexuality is governed largely by ideological considerations. Those who proclaim in the name of these issues are concerned about the threat of marginalisation of the power of the church. These issues are dog whistles to betray where one’s political allegiance lies and often these issues are sponsored by connected commercial interests and the sources of donor funds for NGOs. Whether or not this is so, those with eyes for these issues have no eyes for the more vexed moral consideration of certain existential issues in our midst such as social exclusion and the debilitating social condition that are part of the antecedent causation of high crime and violence. At any rate, this morality that is a single-issue based morality is just not holistic and contextual enough.
The credibility of the voices that shout in the name of morality is undermined because we have failed as centres of moral examples and moral conduct. The mistreatment of each other and the excuses we make for ourselves fly in the face of our moral proclamations. Some have argued that the focus on the malfeasance in the church has been disproportionate and has been borne out of the desire to discredit the church as a centre of moral authority. That however does not excuse or explain away our moral failings. The failure of many in leadership in their personal lives who fail to live up to the standards they set for others to attain and in some respects who fail to be decent and honourable as human beings are too glaring. Morality is a seamless garment. When we come calling in the name of morality our own actions and inaction are called into question, the finger points back to us. Let us determine that when we are calling for a moral vision and moral practice in the public sphere we are also at the same time, pledging ourselves to exemplify moral courage and moral consistency in the little things that we do in our own everyday life. The world is longing for moral examples from all of us. Morality is not just a big-ticket item; it is a day-to-day matter both for the public space and our private lives.
First of all, I will frame the topic,
Moral Vision and Moral Practice in the Public Square: Imperative or Impediment—A Christian
Perspective as a thesis: ‘From the perspective of Jesus and the prophets a moral vision and moral practice in the public square are an imperative rather than an impediment”. I am building upon and reflecting on two Grace Kennedy Lectures given in 1989 and in 1992 by G Arthur Brown and Dr Burchell Taylor respectively. G Arthur Brown spoke about “Patterns of Development” in which he referred to what he considered the golden years between 1955 and 1970 and period of decline due largely to the oil price hike which succeeded those years. G Arthur Brown advised that Jamaica, in order to get ahead of the curve, should focus on the knowledge economy. The clear objective of development was to increase GDP and per capita income. Taylor’s lecture was about the place of morality in the public square. He argued that morality belonged to the nature of our humanity and he argued that it ought
not be pushed out of the public square into the margins, and he argued that the church has a legitimate role to play in shaping of this public morality. In fact, he bemoaned the deterioration in the way in which the church carries out its role nowadays. Three decades ago, Taylor warned of the danger of anti-clericalism and anti-authority which targeted the church and rejected its voice. He did not say it in so many words, but this would be sowing to the wind and the society would soon reap the whirlwind.
If one reads the preamble to the 2030 national plan put out by the PIOJ, one sees that the wording of that summary accepts moral vision and moral practice as imperatives in the public square: it is based on seven principles –
Transformational leadership Partnership Transparency and accountability Social cohesion Equity Sustainability (economic, social and environmental) Sustainable urban and rural development
It begins with what it advocates as a return to core values and attitudes that guided our fore parents such as, it says, these include: trust, honesty and truthfulness,
respect, forgiveness and tolerance, love, peace, unity, discipline, responsibility, cooperation, integrity, punctuality and good work ethic.
Problematising the topic: The public square implies a space of consensus in pursuit of the common good. It often ignores the voices and players that are excluded from the public square and also that there is nowadays, no longer one public but many publics. There are a variety of enclaves of class, religion and politics that have diverse values, needs and interests. The idea of a shared communal interest by these diverse interests and that there is parity of participation by them is overly idealistic and optimistic. There are many competing publics defined separately by their needs, values and interests. Secondly when moral vision and moral practice are spoken of there are three tendencies that need to be resisted: 1. There is morality insisted on by agents of the American/evangelical culture wars that are against abortion and LGBTQ rights. This often obscures the fact that these issues are more ideological than moral as we said above, or that these issues are ways to deflect from the struggles for more fundamental rights of the subordinate groups.
2. There is a puritanical and judgmental bent that focuses on those sins which are called the sins of the poor. That body polices a section of the population to render them less than worthy of full participation in the economy and society.
3. There is a longing for theocracy in which we seek to join those who exercise dominance in relation to the rest of the society. In this way, morality is a ruse to maintain the status quo ante and to reinforce the dominance of the ruling elite; it is not a profound coming to terms in the name of God and history with the structural inequities in the society.
The moral vision that emerges from the bible is one in pursuit of equality, dignity and the humanity of the people by ensuring access to the basic necessities that are essential to their quality of life. This ensures that these basic necessities that are required to sustain life are available and accessible to the most vulnerable in the population. It is best expressed in Micah 4.4 “every man shall have his own vine and fig tree and none shall make them afraid on God’s Holy Mountain.”
The question is whether or not such a moral vision of the community is an imperative or impediment to development as it is now conceived, or what is the notion of development that makes equality, dignity and humanity achievable? Micah is interacting with the account of the reign of Solomon as a kind of golden age in Israel in 1 Kings 4, as well as with the prophecy of Isaiah. The summary assessment of the period of Solomon’s reign offered by the Deutoronomist is that from Dan to Beersheba there was safety in Israel and everyone sat under his own vine and fig tree. The Isaiah assessment is more Messianic in nature and speaks of the righteousness as the dominant feature and ends by saying the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
In this regard, the moral vision is of prosperity and security and the moral practice is one marked by equity, equality and a guaranteed quality of life in which the basic necessities, plus, of life are available to all. In a word this is righteousness and faithfulness. Micah is interacting with circumstances in the 8th century B. C. in which large plantation have spread out over the country sides in Israel, while the small farms holdings have been decimated. At the same time, because of the Assyrian siege that has led to the overrunning of the ten northern tribes in Israel, the monarchy was organising the militarisation of places like Micah’s home village of Moresheth. This is the reason Micah speaks of beating swords into plowshares. And none shall make them afraid. He imagines a golden age of prosperity and security. But the prosperity is measured in the experience of the vulnerable and the poor and rural peasant farmers.
There is little faith that any targeted development aimed at improving the lot of the poor and vulnerable, the so called “everyone” is viable. Development is in terms of the investment in the owning classes, the rising tide will lift all boats in the harbour approach to economic practice. Development is thought of in terms of the expansion of access to certain very conspicuous consumer durables. Whether or not the basic necessities on which a higher quality of life depends are available and affordable. The question is whether or not this vision of development which is a moral vision and requires moral practice is an impediment to total and sustainable development.
The first peril to be overcome is the one that arise from the fact this is the vision of development that is nicknamed and demonised. When we want to dismiss it, we mock it and nickname it “socialism”. There are those idealogues who are waiting to put on a poisonous label and a disqualifying tag. Even persons who have no experience of socialism are afraid of it. All that has to happen is to nickname something by that label and it has killed it in its infancy. The idea of everyone having the emblems of prosperity and security on God’s holy hill is offensive to these idealogues.
By contrast, the images of development with which we are more sympathetic are of few people with yachts and jets and acres of undisturbed lawns. We want to see the skyline and the shoreline dotted with high rises in which buildings are giants and people are dwarfs. This is the image of development with the idle rich enjoying extreme opulence. This is a vision of development for the few but not for the many. The moral vision and the moral practice are necessarily for the many and not just for the few.
What Micah describes is a moral vision committed to entrenching those things that affirm the humanity of all its people. In this way, the basic necessities required to sustain a basic quality of life are provided to all. There is food and there is comfort food, there is shelter and there is safety, and everyone has a stake, or a franchise, (his own vine and fig tree) in the land. This is a critique of what was obtained in the social environment in which they were huge plantations but the decimation of small farmers. It was an ethos for some but not for all. It is a challenge to systems that are for the few but not for the many. It is a counter foil to those systems which assume and deepen the yawning gaps within the society.
Micah’s moral vision is one in which the dignity of each citizen is assured and protected. Everyone shall have his own vine and fig tree and none shall make them afraid is a simple goal and a simple lifestyle but one therefore that is attainable for all. The bar is set in manner that is replicable throughout the society. The extras are missing but the essentials are provided. The vine and fig tree according to the Targums are not just for food but they are a space to meditate, not just to consume but to contemplate, not merely to possess but to aim to be and to become. This is the very thing that is lacking in many of the spaces that are too cramped for social distancing in which people are forced to live in spaces where basic human needs are ignored and neglected.
Perhaps above all else Micah’s moral vision is one of equality. It provides for all without distinction even if it is not for all without exception. It is the layers of the society and the classes of the society and the enclaves within the society that are included in the community that the prophet envisions. It is a levelling of the playing field, it is a removing of the boundaries and barriers that can result in everyone being provided for. Are we convinced that all persons are equal or must we believe that some are more equal than others? One of the most profound divisions in the communities in which we live is that there remain two social classes, the dominant and the sub-ordinated. Usually this means that one is accounted for, and provided for and included and the other is not. We have yet to believe and to understand that there are some who if they are not specifically included, they are excluded. This is the case with the disabled. It is also the case with sections of the population with inherited disadvantages.
One of the things that the Covid-19 pandemic has done is to provide litmus paper to make visible and palpable the demarcations of the inequality within the society. We now know for example that 55% of our household do not have either the internet connection, the platform nor the equipment to participate in virtual learning. This is a fact has been occasioned because they were never included in the development agenda before. In the past, we would have been blinded to this factor. We are often befuddled by our violence producers and by our hot spots of crime and violence, why we ask ourselves are they like this? But it seems to me that if we look below the surface at the public goods which they have been denied and the personal goods that they have been unable to afford it might give us some clues. But more profoundly, the society has done too little to affirm their equality with the rest of us and their dignity and humanity. (The vaccine roll out in which 142 Countries have not had a single dose of the vaccine while 75% of the doses that have been distributed have been in ten Countries. There are allegations that only the wealthiest quintile in Jamaica have so far had access to the vaccine that just like the Sigma run the Government has permitted them to get their vaccines.) We have not invested in them and they have not invested in themselves or the rest of us. Their lives are under-valued and so they place no value on human life.
To be fair, part of the miracle of this society has been that every time this Country has been put on the map internationally, whether through sporting competition or otherwise, it has been by persons from these under-served communities. That is not intended to reinforce our social inequality but rather to challenge us that we could do far more and better for ourselves if we pursued policies of social and economic inclusion.
What about the pursuit of equality, dignity and building the infrastructure for a better quality of life for all human persons that could constitute impediments to developments or what about developments and those who pursue it in those terms that would make them impediments. I offer the following three features: the first is what I am calling our habit of otherising. The word first came into use in an attempt to identify the attitude of birtherism to President Barack Obama; they otherised him, they assumed that he belonged to a group that was alien to themselves.
The problem of otherising is however part of our cultural thinking in Jamaica. If I may illustrate it by referencing to our crime fighting and policing strategy. The Public Defender, Ms Arlene Harrison recently gave the crime statistic for detentions by the police in the ZOSOs in Mount Salem, St James and Denham Town in Kingston. Between 2017 and 2018 the police detained 572 persons, 40 of whom were children, and only one was criminally charged. In Denham Town they detained 722, only four were criminally charged. The assumption in the society is that in order to make us safe the police have a right or ought to have an option, to take away the freedom of persons who live in these places. Somehow we excuse and tolerate it because we otherise them, we make them alien to ourselves. It seems to me that we are not going to succeed at a moral vision without affirming our common humanity as a community. We have to return to the philosophy of Half Point and Junior Reid “One Blood”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4xr2665JOk
The other thing that gets in the way of developing an ethos of equality, dignity and humanity is a tendency to polarise or to deepen the polarisation of the society. Or put differently our fear of polarisation and of being accused of polarising causes us to shy away from directly advancing these considerations. This is because matters related to the deepening of inequality and undermining human dignity and denying vulnerable populations the basic essentials on which the quality of their human life depend are rooted in the very structure of the economy and society. It is not the result of the policies of any one administration or is it dependent on the members of the political class alone, what they do or fail to do. It is institutionalised. This is the glue that holds the things together, it is the wheel within the wheels. Therefore, when focus is given to these things, the cultured despiser, the punditocracy pigeon hole and demonise those who advocate for equality and in addition to this, they stoke the fears and hatred within the society. They do this in order to intimidate and or force you on the defensive. When this happens, the proverbial temperature increases and the language becomes harsh and vitriolic. This requires us therefore, to insist on morality with the language of love and spirit of temperance and forbearance. Even our quest for a moral vision and moral practice must be tempered by love and forbearance.
While being evicted from her Milwaukee apartment, Danielle Shaw (left) and relatives wait until the movers carrying down her refrigerator and stove are no longer blocking the stairwell. Photograph by Michael Kienitz. Via harvardmagazine.com
A third thing that gets in the way is what I am calling economisation which I am using economisation to speak of things in the way we do them in economistic terms only. Often those with moral voices talk themselves into a corner because they think they lack the economic means. While there are economic implications for a moral vision and moral practice, often what moral vision and practice require is not for an increased cost to be paid but an agreement to accept less return. We suggest that they are unworkable in economic terms. It is greed that is the real enemy of equality, dignity and security of the humanity of all our citizens. May I illustrate this. The National Housing Trust (NHT) when it was first developed was both moral vision and moral practice. It did not impoverish anyone. If anything, it has proven with the construction of Greater Portmore in St Catherine to be the single greatest act of economic enfranchisement in the history of this Country. This year many of the original mortgages have been completely liquidated (burned) so people have the equity in their homes to engage in further and better economic activities. One is not convinced that the Inswood and Bernard Lodge experiment is likely to be effective in the same way because at the start of the project, it has sought to exclude the subordinated classes in favour of the economically dominant classes. It took moral imagination to take the social security approach to housing with the NHT. The question is not whether we ought to seek to so order our society in a manner that guarantees the basic necessities to all. The question is whether we can afford not to do so.
Spaces like Montego Bay that from its inception, was called meagre bay and fat bay was based on the principle of enforced inequality and still it is surrounded by 18 squatter communities. It is where the primary space for commerce for the majority black population is 12 acres of land at the Fustic Road, Charles Gordon market without adequate parking or sanitary convenience. And then we wonder why there is such extra-ordinary levels of violence in that space. There is no solution to its violence that does not also deal the problem of economic exclusion. Land tenure is a central feature of the social and economic reality of that space. There is a human and moral and justice imperative that is required for the amelioration of those issues. If you ask me and I would begin with the road that runs to Salts Spring and open it up through Flowerhill to Holiday Inn and therefore give the homes on that side of the hill a chance to be included in the economic bonanza of resort development and make it possible for people to travel to and from work on the seaside corridor in relative ease. The road to development is the development of a road.
Moral Vision and Moral practice are imperatives of development, the question is whether or not we possess the moral courage to pursue development in our space to guarantee security and prosperity for all. I think time come for everyone to have their own vine and fig tree and none shall make them afraid on God’s holy mountain. The mouth of the Lord Almighty has spoken.
