Religion & Law

We talk a lot here about social pluralism, by which we mean, roughly, that authority is not a monopoly of the civil government.  The social pluralist maintains that authority can also be found in the Church, in families, and certain other groups.  Those of us who think about and write on these topics are familiar with many of the best historical and philosophical accounts of how social pluralism was "discovered," how it is has been theorized, how it has been applied, and how is has been -- and is being -- denied.  I mention this only in order to mention an old book upon which I happened recently, Frederick Watkins, The Political Tradition of the West (Harvard University Press, 1957).  The first sixty some pages of the book (which runs some three hundred and sixty pages) tells the story of the emergence of pluralism, through the emergence of the Church, with remarkable economy and elegance.  It's one of the best accounts I've read, even if one might want to quarrel a tad here and there.  Jenkins doesn't shrink from stating the Church's understanding of its role vis-a-vis "the state" (49):  "With regard to the value and importance of the state there was room for a legitimate difference of opinion among Christians.  Although Augustine might seem to dismiss it as nothing more than a robber band, the general view was that political authority should be respected as a useful and necessary agency designed for the salutary chastisement of men.  All were agreed, however, that the church was the primary instrument of salvation, and that other interests should be subordinated to its all-important mission.  In this way the age-old primacy of politics was suddenly reversed, and the state was reduced to the position of a secondary agency subject to the moral authority of another organization."  Watkins presciently worried that pluralism -- and with it liberalism -- is threatened by "the absolutist concept of the sovereignty of the state" (359), and he wasn't talking primarily about the USSR.