Politics and Religion In present day political philosophy discourse the central orthodoxy is liberalism. This involves the concept of the autonomous individual who exercises the faculty of rational free choice. Closely allied to liberalism is the concept of “methodological individualism”; essentially Margaret Thatcher’s assertion that “there is no ‘society’ only individuals”. This entails the proposition that even if an entity called ‘society’ did in fact exist its nature would be directly reducible to the behaviour of the individuals comprising that society. An easy critique of this viewpoint involves a story about the dynamics of society commonly told in sociology circles. A teenage girl, in a creative mood, gives one of her friends an unusual and original hairstyle. The ‘hairstyle model’ arrives at school the next day only to be told to immediately leave and get a more suitable hair-cut??? OR the style takes off and becomes fashionable for a considerable time??? That the ethos of a society is created by the actions of its individuals must entail the idea that there is an element of the random, the bizarre even, in this creation process. And society may also, of course, be moulded by the actions of particularly talented or charismatic individuals to a degree that is of an order of magnitude greater than the influence of the typical ‘man in the street’. The dynamics of the ethos or values or morality of a society reduces to the actions of each individual in that society only in a trivial sense. One important critique of strict liberal theory is communitarianism. This involves, on the one hand, the assertion that liberalism denies that an individual’s identity is partly socially constructed. Furthermore, if this denial is accepted, then liberalism must hold that there is no morality other than personal opinion; that is, no morality at all. The communitarian requires that laws must sometimes create social norms rather than simply reflect them. It is the religious implications of the above political analysis that concerns me here. Liberalism would be closely analogous to the protestant ethos whereas the catholic churches would operate on what might be considered to be a communitarian basis. Someone once remarked to me that the theoretical political ideas described in Plato’s Republic were successfully implemented (in a pragmatic sense, that is in the sense that the system actually operated over a considerable time) on two occasions; in the Roman Catholic Church and in Soviet style communism. This observation referred to what might be termed the ‘democratic centralist’ method by which a hierarchy is created. The ‘brightest and best’ are recruited from the population in general into the lower echelons of the hierarchy by even higher authority layers. Of course, in defence of the Catholic Church, the values which it requires of its membership are moulded by, some would say, millennia of tradition and certainly not the simple whim of a tyrant. In its more absurd extremes it might be argued that a liberal society is purely an amalgam of self-deluding individuals whose opinions have no grounding other than the economic clout of the individual in question. The protestant ideal, on the other hand, involves the pre-supposition that society is composed of religiously motivated individuals who regard the bible as the source of religious authority. The individual is charged with the responsibility of interpreting the contents of the bible in an honest fashion while, of course, the final arbiter as to which interpretation is most accurate is the conscience of the individual. Now, as a matter of general principle there is always some difference between an entity and the theoretical description of that entity. When a Unitarian, or, indeed, any human being adopts a philosophical stance of his/her own it is advisable that s/he consult the various orthodox models available in order to learn from them and then create a personal theory of motivation to guide his/her actions in the world. The catholic/communitarian models allow, in the worst case eventuality, for blind and unquestioning obedience to an authority which has no justification other than the ability to wield power. Within the liberal/protestant descriptions of society the worst excesses involve an amoral population whose actions are limited only by economic constraints, economics itself being the central preoccupation. The wise individual seeks a ‘middle way’ between these two extremes as a matter of general principle and judges individual instances of principle on their merits. For instance, being hidebound by tradition can sometimes be preferable to being a slave to fashionable and transient whims. A Unitarian is a dissenter. This does not mean that the Unitarian devises a personal theology entirely out of his/her own experience without reference to the experience of others. The Hebrews, it is said, plundered Egypt before they set out to find the promised land. A developed theology of monotheism was chief amongst the things they took from the land of the Pharaohs. Our beloved Bill Parfrey often remarks that he is a “majority of one” in his religious beliefs. Perhaps we should learn from him. As Unitarians we should seek to create a personal theological system to suit our needs and to accurately reflect our experience; a theology unique to each one of us. But essential to the creation of this personal view of reality is the necessity for communion with others of, at least, somewhat like mind. Brendan Burke MA(Phil) 6th May 2007 Cork. Cover