Finding a bridge by Bishop Robert Barron
O
ne of the most remarkable differences between the social protests of the 1960s and those of today is that the former were done in concert with, and o�en under the explicit leadership of, religious people. One has only to think of the crucially important role played by the Rev. Dr Mar�n Luther King and so many of his colleagues and disciples in the civil rights demonstra�ons fi�y and sixty years ago. But we don’t find today the same concert between those agita�ng for social change and the religious leadership. There are many reasons for this phenomenon. Perhaps the most important is simply that the number of people who subscribe to religion, especially in the ranks of the young, has precipitously
dropped in our society. But I also think that there is something subtler at play as well, and I have to put on my philosopher’s hat to ar�culate it. In the 1960s, Dr King and company were certainly using Biblical ideas and terminology to express their cri�que of injus�ce and their longing for a righteous society, but they were also more or less confident that, in doing so, they would find a recep�ve audience among those trained in the poli�cal tradi�on that we might characterize as “classical liberalism.” This, broadly speaking, is the public philosophy shaped by such figures as Thomas Jefferson, John Stuart Mill, and especially John Locke. As is evident in some of their principal texts – 29
