Liberal Hope

Lots of people in the eighteenth and nineteenth century…thought that hope of heaven was required to supply moral fibre and social glue – that there was little point, for example, in having an atheist swear to tell the whole truth in a court of law. As it turned out, however, willingness to endure suffering for the sake of future reward was transferable from individual rewards to social ones, from one’s hopes for paradise to one’s hope for one’s grandchildren.

– Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), p. 85

Reading this quote crystallized two things for me.

First, people need hope. Richard Rorty is far from a sensitive critic of Christianity. In many parts of his writings he is quick to point out the ways in which Western society, as he reads it, has radically departed from Christianity, often coupled with a dry, vitriolic sneer. However, when he comes to the Christian idea of hope, he says nothing of this kind. He states that belief in ‘heaven’ is not the norm in Western societies, but does not then go on to say that this shows that humanity has entered into some better stage of maturity, or that ridding itself of this entire category of thought is a good thing for the West. Rather he simply notes the way in which the content of hope has changed over the last two hundred or so years. To hazard a broad generalization: this is because people need hope. Human beings always long after a better future, and this gives meaning and drive to the present.

Second, a hallmark of political liberalism and many contemporary societies is the way in which this hope has been secularized and transferred to a social context. Rorty’s remarks about heaven are not an accurate summary of the Christian view of heaven as the new creation, but even with his dodgy caricature the point he is suggesting seems very perceptive to me. The political philosophy which runs through the veins of the United States and which has a dominant role in most Western societies (political liberalism) asks people to hope. The recent election of Barack Obama, of course, illustrates this.

Rorty suggests that most people today are driven by a hope for their kids and for their grandkids. They hold onto a picture in which life is safer, more free, more comfortable, and less cruel for those who will come after them. Rorty suggests that this will lead many to be good citizens and to live a relatively moral life. It will lead many to sacrifice and to act kindly.

Do you agree with Rorty’s diagnosis of this feature of contemporary social life? If so, how ought Christians be trying to communicate what they believe about Jesus and hope into this context? In an environment of widespread liberal hope, is there room left for a distinctively Christian hope? Ought Christians hold that this secularized, social hope is necessarily a bad or harmful thing?