|
| |
On the
Role of American Religious Communities
In Achieving the Millennium Development Goals:
A Consultation
The Church Center at the United Nations
New York, New York
June 8, 2005
“The United Nations’ MDG Campaign for a
Better World: Introductory Remarks”
Speech delivered by Michael
Gottsegen, CLAL Senior Fellow, Assistant Professor Brown University
Michael Gottsegen, Ph.D.
CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership
WELCOME
On behalf of the Consultation on Interfaith Education, which is sponsoring
today’s program, and on behalf of the other lead organizers of this program
Reverend Chuck Henderson, Sister Joan Kirby and Dr. Sheila Gordon, I want to
welcome you all to this consultation “On the Role of American Religious
Communities in Achieving the Millennium Development Goals." Not only are we
fortunate in the speakers who will be featured in today’s program. If you take a
look around the room, and take a glance in your folder at the roster of
participants, you will see that we are as fortunate in the illustrious and
diverse assemblage of participants who have come together today from across the
religious spectrum to focus on this most important issue.
I am Michael Gottsegen. I am a Senior Fellow at CLAL – The National Jewish
Center for Learning and Leadership. I am also a member of the CIE Executive
Committee, and I am delighted to see you all here.
The CIE is an association of organizations that work in the field of religious
education and are committed to advancing inter-religious understanding through
engagement with adherents of other faith traditions. The CIE was formed in 2001
with the explicit aims of mapping and advancing the field of inter-religious
education, a field that its member organizations conceive of in the broadest
terms, as encompassing formal and informal venues, as spanning the lifecycle and
as bearing directly and indirectly upon the most important issues of our common
life. (For more information about the CIE, see the flyer in your packet.)
We all know that one of the important goals of inter-religious education is
becoming more sensitive to, and appreciative of, religious differences, but
inter-religious engagement also helps us to discover points of convergence. And
while most of us would readily accept that the quality of our civic life depends
upon cultivating respect for our religious differences, we must also acknowledge
that the quality of our civic life and, even more, our society’s cohesion as a
moral community, and our capacity for collective action, hinges upon our
discovering that we are knit together by certain shared values and moral
attitudes.
I mention this because it relates directly to why we are here today and why the
CIE has chosen to convene a consultation “On the Role of American Religious
Communities in Achieving the Millennium Development Goals." For the intuition
that brings us here is the intuition that, as concerns the Millennium
Development Goals -- a program that aims to cut extreme poverty and hunger by
50%, to reduce by 2/3 the mortality rate of children under 5 and by ¾ the
mortality rate of women in childbirth -- our differences are matters of degree
not of kind, and that on the deepest and most profound level we will find that
there is a substantial convergence among our respective religious articulations
of the proper human and national response to the present possibility of
overcoming extreme poverty on a global scale by 2015 or 2025. Today’s meeting
will put this intuition to the test.
The members of the CIE also share the conviction that in an era in which
religious differences and disagreements among the members of our American polity
get the most attention, it would be extremely salutary for our national life if
the voices of America’s religious communities – from right to left, from
fundamentalist to liberal, from red states to blue – were to rise up in thousand
part harmony on behalf of this very important moral – and religious – issue of
our day.
CONCEPTUAL RATIONALE
I want to speak for a few more minutes about how we came to convene this
gathering and our sense of its broader significance.
You may be familiar with the ethical principle “ought implies can,” which has
been generally taken to mean that there is no obligation to do the impossible.
This principle can be taken in a number of senses, but one of these concerns
material possibility versus material impossibility. For example, in practical
terms, you cannot be morally obligated to dive into the deep end of the pool to
save someone from drowning if you yourself do not know how to swim. Doing so may
be a praiseworthy and most meritorious manifestation of supererogatory virtue,
but few moralists would say it is obligatory to sacrifice yourself in this way.
[Of course, as you are all religious leaders, I know you could cite
counter-instances where one’s tradition counsels or commands self-sacrifice, but
I don’t need to tackle such hard cases right now.]
I want to pass to the opposite case, to the situation in which one possesses the
ability and the resources with which to save another who would otherwise die,
and one can do so without sacrificing one’s life, or one’s way of life, or the
lives of others to whom one has a prior obligation. Consider the situation, in
other words, where one can save another – or countless others – at a relatively
minimal cost. Surely in such a situation, where it is possible to save another,
it becomes obligatory to do so and blameworthy not to. It is obligatory, in
other words, because it is possible. And because the cost of doing the right
thing is so low, and the consequence of doing nothing is so awful, deciding
whether to act in such a situation should not be a difficult choice. (Just what
action I am obligated to take -- just what action will be most effective -- may
be harder to determine but my obligation to act for the other’s sake in such a
situation should be clear.)
I mention this because it seems to me that we who live in the most developed of
the developed countries -- with a GDP of almost 12 trillion dollars and a per
capita GDP of more than $40,000 – who constitute the fortunate 5% of the world’s
population – in relation to the one billion who struggle to survive on a per
capita income that is equivalent to less than $1 a day, and 3 billion who
struggle to survive on less than $2 a day – are in the position of the wealthy
householder who can, at relatively low cost to himself, save his impoverished
neighbor from destitution and death.
Now it is not the mere fact of the difference between the wealth of the advanced
countries and the extreme poverty of the least developed countries that gives
this relation – or juxtaposition -- its moral force. Indeed the fact that one
man is on dry land and another is drowning does not make the former’s preference
to remain safely on shore blameworthy unless he happens to have ready means at
his disposal that would permit him to save the drowning man without putting
himself at serious risk in the process. And, indeed, if we in the advanced
countries did not possess the material and technical wherewithal to bring the
drowning billion to dry land and the “nearly drowning” two billion as well, the
mere fact of our hard won affluence would not be evidence of any moral failure
on our part. But as the experts from the UN and from the Millennium Development
task forces who are with us today will explain, we in the advanced countries do
possess the material and technical wherewithal to end extreme poverty by 2015
and this is what makes our endeavoring to do so a clear moral obligation and our
failure to so endeavor a moral failure.
Now every plan comes of course with a price-tag – and one might imagine that
this price is practically too much to bear, and that this is why the U.S.
government has balked at fulfilling the financial pledges it made in the year
2000 (along with the other most developed countries) to provide material support
for the achievement of the MDGs. Indeed, if the level of required support were
so great as to impose serious financial hardship upon the most developed
countries, the reluctance of our leaders to provide the necessary level of
support would at least be understandable. But in fact the price-tag for ending
extreme poverty comes in at a relatively low 0.7% of GDP, which is less than a
penny from every dollar of national income Such a tiny fraction of our national
income that could achieve so much for the denizens of the poorest countries, and
yet our leaders balk! And the United States, the richest of all countries, is
presently giving only about 1/5 of what it pledged, less than one fifth of a
penny for every dollar of U.S. GDP, and while the US still gives more than any
other country in the world in absolute terms, in relative terms, as a percentage
of its GDP, US development assistance is at the very bottom. [No wonder they
hate us!]
What a failure of political leadership. What a failure of political will. And
yet, if American leaders are failing to do the right thing, it must be because
they sense – rightly or wrongly -- that supporting the MDGs and paying up in
full is not politically expedient, and that giving any more than we are
presently giving would not be acceptable to their constituents.
Are we and our fellow citizens so selfish or self-centered? Do we utterly lack
the elementary sense of responsibility that those with so much should show
toward those with so little? Are the American people so unwilling to share their
national wealth with others, to give others a helping hand and the real chance
to lead lives of dignity and self-sufficiency, as the Millennium Campaign
promises to do? Or, could it be, that our leaders have sold our fellow citizens
short.
Indeed the American people are generous. And if there is little support for
contributing the very modest amount that is being asked of us, maybe it reflects
not selfishness but a lack of information – about the magnitude of global
poverty and about the fact that we now have a plan that can alleviate it. Give
Americans the information, and we would hardly need to remind them of their
responsibilities, so certain is it that they would do the right thing if they
fully understood the situation and the opportunity for doing great good that it
presents.
If there has been a great failure of leadership to date, then, it has been a
failure to focus our collective attention on the issue of extreme global poverty
and on the plans that now exist for tackling this scourge. And this line of
reasoning explains one of the most important reasons why we have convened this
consultation. If our political leaders have failed to put this issue on the
public agenda in a properly thoughtful manner, then we as religious leaders must
do so. Collectively we possess the agenda-setting power that enables us to play
this role. But before we can inform others, we must become informed ourselves
and that is a significant part of our work today.
I mentioned a moment ago that the American people are generous, and there is no
doubt that American generosity is closely bound up with American religiosity and
with the teachings of America’s biblically based religions which counsel
righteousness and generosity. Do not the religious traditions that so many
Americans hold sacred counsel us in almost one voice to care for the widow, the
orphan and the stranger, to love our neighbor, to lift up the fallen and comfort
the afflicted? Do not these same traditions tell us that our wealth is a
blessing and a trust and that those who have been blessed with so much have an
obligation to use it for the benefit of those who have so little?
(Of course, I do not meant to imply that non-Abrahamic faiths place no emphasis
upon these values, but only to take note of the fact that almost 90% of
Americans claim to be adherents to one of the three Abrahamic faiths (in fact
over 85% of Americans identify themselves as Christians), which is a fact of
demographic and cultural significance.)
Given how large a percentage of the American body politic identifies as
Christian, it is really quite striking that most of our political leaders – most
of whom are themselves Christians – are seemingly reluctant to appeal to these
widely held religious principles – or even to their secular analogues -- when it
comes to reflecting upon, or making the case for, international development
assistance for the poorest of the poor. Our leaders proceed in this regard as
though such appeals to the religiously-cultivated moral sentiments and
principles of their fellow Americans would violate the canons of discourse that
properly govern our civic life – which is something of an irony given their
decreasing reticence when it comes to making a public show of their private
religiosity – though in a manner strangely devoid of public policy implications.
[The practitioners of this public form of private religiosity are rather
selective when it comes to when they ask – or do not ask – WWJD?]
Instead the case for or against foreign development assistance tends to be
framed in terms of the question of whether giving it is in the short or
long-term American national interest which, in a given case, may or may not be
congruent with the interest of the global community as a whole to which a more
religiously or ethically oriented reason would have us look.
Notwithstanding the limitations in moral reasoning that are thereby entailed,
there are good historical, philosophical and prudential reasons for preserving
the canons of an American political discourse that gives proper primacy to the
question of what is in our national interest. In a democracy, after all, we do
expect our representatives to give primacy to the interests and opinions of
their constituents not to the opinions and interests of all humanity, let alone
to the counsels of religious texts or religious authorities. But that this
happens to be the case does not make it a virtue for the religious people and
religious communities of this country to subordinate the freedom of their own
moral imaginations and collective deliberations to these same self-imposed
limitations. In other words, if it is arguably inappropriate for our political
leaders to place the question of what is good for the globe ahead of the
question of what is good for America, it is entirely appropriate for our
religious leaders to do so and for the rest of us to do so as well insofar as we
are human beings concerned with discerning, and doing, and advocating what is
good and right. Free from the duties and responsibilities of being congressman,
we are free to take a broader and longer view. Indeed, the most significant
contribution that religion makes to our political life may be the indirect
contribution that it makes by fostering just this capacity – and obligation – to
take the broadest and the longest view – to take a God’s eye point of view --
which is necessarily broader and wider than the perspective of most public
officials who will tend to define the good in terms of the national interest (if
not in their even narrower and more short-sighted political interest).
For it is in the nature of things that deliberations upon the right and good --
from a perspective that is religiously informed, and in solidarity with all the
inhabitants of the globe -- cannot but transform the attitudes and opinions of
the men and women who also happen to be citizens and voters, whose opinions are
taken seriously by politicians who (for noble and less noble reasons) are very
serious about representing the opinions of their constituents.
Mindful of this reality, the members of the CIE, who believe we are religiously
and morally obligated to support the MDGs and all necessary means for achieving
them, have convened this gathering in the belief that the religious leaders of
this country can potentially turn around public opinion on this issue if they
make the topic of the MDGs a subject for religious reflection and deliberation
in their own religious communities: Transform the opinions of men and women
through prayerful reflection and deliberation, and you have transformed the
opinions of citizens; transform the opinions of citizens and you will ultimately
transform the opinions of their representatives as well. And ponder this fact:
all of this might be brought about without a major media buy or expensive
political advocacy campaign – which is not to say that the latter do not have
their place as well.
Especially in our present era of increasingly pervasive globalization, in which
the nature, magnitude and complexity of so many of our most pressing problems
outstrips the capacity of nation-states to respond in an adequate way, the
vocation of religious reflection to concern itself with the interest of the
whole – in contrast to political calculation which takes the elevation of the
interest of a single part as the very definition of virtue – may provide the
essential corrective that could render the self-interested and anarchical
jockeying of nations compatible with the achievement of the global common good.
This is not to deny the obvious – that religions are as capable as nations of
confusing the interest of a part (my part, of course) with the interest of the
whole. But, at least the religions tend to regard this as a vice not as a
virtue. And the more practical point concerns not religion in the abstract, or
religion at a particular moment in the past, but the concrete role that the
religions might play in the context of today, in which there is a profound, and
ultimately uncertain, dialectic playing out between the forces of globalization
and an international order (or disorder) of nation-states. In this context, the
world religions, which predated, and never quite adapted to, the world of
nation-states, are positioned to make a salutary and perhaps indispensable
contribution to our collective human future. Only time will tell of course; and
much depends upon the religions overcoming their own propensity to behave like
national actors in a zero sum game. But we at the CIE are hopeful, and we
believe that a darn good measure of whether this hope is well-placed will be
whether or not the religious communities in this country, and in the other most
developed countries, make a significant contribution to ending extreme poverty
by 2015/2025.
WHAT THEN DO WE HOPE TO ACCOMPLISH TODAY?
To become better informed about the Millennium Development Goals, about the
overarching moral vision that informs them, and about U.S. government policy
with regard to the goals.
To reflect together upon the religious significance of the MDG program in
general and of Goal Eight, in particular – which spells out the steps that must
be taken by the most developed countries in order to achieve the other seven
goals that refer to improvements that are to be achieve in the least developed
countries.
To reflect together upon the religious, and practical, challenges and
opportunities that the MDG agenda, and current U.S. policy as it relates to this
agenda, present to America’s religious communities.
And finally, by day’s end, we hope to form a working group of organizations
that will commit to meet over the course of the next few months to share ideas
and to develop suggestions for actions that America’s religious communities
might take to engender that transformation of American public consciousness that
would be the enabling condition for the change in political will upon which the
success of the Millennium Development Goals Campaign depends.
OVERVIEW OF THE DAY’S PROGRAM
If you take a look at the day’s schedule in your folder, you will see that the
day flows back and forth between an explicit focus on the MDGs, with
presentations by senior officials from the UN Millennium Campaign and Millennium
Project Task Forces, on the one hand, and structured opportunities for religious
reflection, on the other. The day will also oscillate between formal
presentations, small group discussions, and reporting back to the whole.
This morning, we will begin with a presentation by Eveline Herfkens, the
Executive Coordinator of the UN Millennium Campaign, followed by two religious
responses, one by Rev. Richard Cizik of the NAE and one by Rabbi Yitz Greenberg
of JLN.
We will then break into smaller groups for about an hour to explore the
religious significance of the MDGs, and then conclude this session by reporting
back to the whole group.
A short coffee break will follow, after which will come the first of our two
sessions on the MDGs proper and Goal 8 that will feature presentations by, and
q&a with, representatives of the Millennium Project and Millennium Project Task
Forces.
We will break for lunch between these two MDG-focused sessions.
After the second MDG panel, we will break again into smaller groups to discuss
the religious or theological challenges and opportunities that the MDGs pose for
our respective religious communities.
{After the printing of the schedules we noticed a mistake in the description of
the second MDG focused session: the first presentation will focus on issues of
Maternal and Children’s Health the second on the issue of Hunger}
Finally, for the day’s last session, we will all come back together again for a
town-meeting style plenary discussion – or collective brainstorming session – to
focus on the practical question of what is to be done, on the practical question
of what we can do as religious leaders – within our own denominations and
inter-religiously -- to effect that shift of collective consciousness that would
be the precondition for the mobilization of political will in this country in
favor of the MDGs.
As you can see, we have a lot to do today – and it is a lot for a single day. If
it is to be successful, we will need to keep on topic and to watch the clock.
Especially in the small group discussions, the facilitators will endeavor to
keep the discussion on point, reminding you that the related issues that will
tend to come up have their place in another part of the day’s program. So jot it
down for later… and if somehow you don’t get a chance to mention it, send it to
us by email, or note it on the evaluation sheets you will find in your packet.
Finally: In your packets you will find a sign up sheet for you to indicate the
nature and level of continuing involvement that you want to maintain with the
inter-religious working group that will be forming on the basis of today’s
consultation to further explore the issues and questions which we will be
considering today.
|
On
the web @ www.globalinterfaithed.org