Bahá’í World/Volume 24/Covenant and the Foundations of Civil Society

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[Page 185]

Wendy M. Heller explores the

religious origins of the organizing principles ofcz'vil society, tracks their secularization in the modern era,

and examines the prospect of an inclusive global maral order based on

the enduring concept Ofcovenant.

COVE NANT

AND THE

FOUNDATIONS OFCIVIL SOCIETY

ver a century ago, Bahá’u’lláh, Founder of the Bahá’í Faith,

wrote of the impending disintegration and collapse of the established order of civilization: “Soon will the present—day order be rolled up,” He proclaimed, “and a new one spread out in its stead.”1 1n the interval, experience has home out the prescience of revelation; this century has seen Bahá’u’fléh’s prophetic terms, of disequilibrium and chaos, of the shaking of foundations, become so much a part Of daily life that, because of the pervasiveness of such disintegration, some have been led to mistake an abnormal state for a normal one, and to conclude that there simply are no foundations for any human endeavor, and that, in consequence, strife and conflict are the inevitable condition of existence. Yet an increasing number of scholars are now Willing to shed the “obtuse secularism”2 that, as

1. Bahá’u’lláh, Gleaizings from the Writings ofBahd'u ’Zldh, trans. Shoghi Effendi (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1976), p. 7.

2. Peny Miller, “From the Covenant to the Revival,” in Religion in American Life, ed. James Ward Smith and A. Leland Jamison (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), vol. 1, p. 336, n. 20.

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a feature of contemporary frameworks of thought, has systematically excluded serious appraisal of the central importance of religion and spiritual reality in human life and society. Faced by the evidence of the bankruptcy of modernity, Whose promises of prosperity through materialism and ideology have proven hollow, thinkers and scholars have begun to turn the light of critical scrutiny upon the far—reaching effects that the displacement of religion by secular ideology has had on civilization in the modern era. That same secularism Which was once heralded as the emancipation of civilization is now increasingly identified as the root cause of its disintegration.

This conclusion had been anticipated in the Bahá’í writings, Which affirm that social and moral deterioration is directly related to the decline of religion as a social force. “Religion,” Baha’u’llah wrote, “is verily the chief instrument for the establishment of order in the world and of tranquillity amongst its peoples. The weakening of the pillars of religion hath strengthened the foolish and emboldened them and made them more arrogant. Verily I say: The greater the decline of religion, the more grievous the waywardness of the ungodly. This cannot but lead in the end to chaos and confusion.”3 Material civilization, cut loose from the moderating influence of spiritual values, He warned, “Will prove as prolific a source of evil as it had been of goodness When kept Within the restraints of moderation. .. The day is approaching when its flame Will devour the cities. . . .”4 Affirming the central role of religion in the civilizing of human character, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explained:

Universal benefits derive from the grace of the Divine rehgions, for they lead their true followers to sincerity of intent, to high purpose, to purity and spotless honor, to surpassing kindness and compassion, to the keeping of their covenants When they have covenanted, to concern for the rights of others, to liberahty, to justice in every aspect of life, to humanity and philanthropy, t0 valor and to unflagging efforts in the service

3. Baha’u’llah, Tablets ofBahd 'u’lláh revealed after the Kitdb-i—Aqdas, comp. Research Department, Universal House of Justice, trans. Habib Taherzadeh, 2d ed. (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1988), pp. 63~64.

4. Baha’u’llah, Gleaniizgs from the Writings ofBahd ’u ’Zldh, p. 343.

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of mankind. It is religion, to sum up, Which produces all human Virtues, and it is these Virtues Which are the bright candles of oivilization.5

In the 19303 Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, singled out as an agent of social decline the “prevailing spirit of modernism With its emphasis on a purely materialistic philosophy Which, as it diffuses itself, tends to divorce religion from man’s daily life,” resulting in the erosion of “conceptions of duty, of solidarity, of reciprocity and loyalty” as the center of gravity shifts to the individual self. Symptoms of such a society that has lost its spiritual bearings, he wrote, include religious intolerance, racism and xenophobia, terrorism, crime, alcoholism, the weakening of the family, and the breakdown of political and economic structures, to name but a few.6

In the Bahá’í View, however, the current experience of disorder and turmoil is only one aspect of a two—fold process that is ultimately therapeutic and evolutionary, rather than solely destructive. It clears the way for a recovery and renewal of the true and enduring foundations upon which a global moral order can be constructed. Though grounded in eternal verities, this process of spiritual and social evolution is forward looking and cannot be confused With a return to a vanished and unrecoverable past.

Sociologist Robert Bellah has remarked that the characteristic modern attempt to substitute “a teehnical-rational model of politics for a religious—moral one does not seem to me to be an advantage. Indeed it only exacerbates tendencies that I think are at the heart of our problems. If our problems are, as Ibelieve them to be, centrally moral and even religious, then the effort to sidestep them With purely technical organizational considerations can only worsen them.” Although the contemporary combination of the morality of self—interest, capitalism, and technological rationality has departed from the earlier religious and moral world View, he argues, it does not follow that the only possible alternative to modern secularism is

5. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Secret osz'vz'ne Civilization, trans. Marzieh Gail (W ilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1957), p. 98.

6. Shoghi Effendi, The World Order ofBahd ’u 716%, rev. ed. (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1955), pp. 183, 187.

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the “literal revival of that earlier conception.” Indeed, he suggests, “only a new imaginative, religious, moral, and social context for science and technology will make it possible to weather the storms that seem to be closing in on us in the late 20th century.”7

The Covenantal World View

In the search for solutions to current social problems, attention has been drawn to the importance of social institutions such as the family and religion that represent “seedbeds of Virtue”: the spiritual foundations provided by religion imbue individuals with the Virtues on which both civic participation and governance depend.8 Yet the connection is even stronger. Religion provides not only the foundations but the bricks and cement of societythe shared beliefs and moral values that unite people into communities, as well as the world View and account of the meaning and purpose of life that infuses those moral values with sense.9 These, moreover, provide the basis of all legitimation for authority, the source of legal institutions, as well as the touchstone and standard for evaluating the direction of society.10

Many of those who in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries influenced and fashioned modern Western political institutions understood the pivotal importance of religion to the coherence and maintenance of a social and political order. They were far less influenced than has often been thought, by that typically modern secular rationalism that displaces God by human reason;11 on the contrary, the world View that informed their thinking was based on the scriptural account of human nature as having a spiritual purpose, which was summed up in the idea of the divine Covenant

7. Robert N. Bellah, T he Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in T ime of T rial (N ew York: Seabury, 1975), p. xiv.

8. Mary Ann Glendon and David Blankenhorn, eds, Seedbeds of Virtue: Sources of Competence, Character, and Citizenship in American Society (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1995).

9. Bellah, Broken Covenant, p. ix.

10. Ibid.

11. Ellis Sandoz, “Philosophical and Religious Dimensions of the American Founding,” The Intercollegiate Review 30 (1995): 27—42; A. James Reichley, Religion in American Public Life (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1985).

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between God and humankind. The purpose of human reason was to know the existence of God, Whose handiwork was evident in creation; the summit of human freedom was to recognize and to give assent to the superior authority of revelation, thus entering into a covenant to willingly obey His commands.

This covenantal account of human nature, shared by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is reaffirmed in the Bahá’í Faith as an eternal truth. So it is not surprising to find that some of Baha’u’llah’s teachings about freedom and rights, for instance, bear a similarity to certain ideas of earlier ethical thinkers, for the very reason that the concepts of religious freedom and conscience are directly related to the idea of the divine Covenant. But to confuse this transhistorical continuity for simple influence would be a mistake underrating its great significance. J ohn Locke (1632—1704), for instance, drew his vastly influential ideas on religious toleration and liberty directly from the Bible and the logical implications of the Covenant. According to Daniel J. Elazar, the long history of deliberation about the rights and obligations of parties to compacts in medieval J ewish public law anticipated the seventeenth—century political theorists precisely because “both schools flowed from a common source”———the biblical covenants.12 David Little points out that modern doctrines of freedom of religion, including that in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, far from being reducible to the influence of Enlightenment rationalism, are “unthinkable” apart from the religious concept of conscience, a concept also asserted in the Qur’án.13

Much has been written about the tremendous impact of seventeenth—eentury covenant or “federal” theology on the founding of the American colonies and subsequent developments of the U.S. constitutional era. The pivotal concept of the covenantal View is a distinctive idea of freedom, Which throughout its history and in various diverse settings has retained a remarkable unity and consistency. “Covenant liberty” has been conceptualized as a

12. Daniel J. Elazar, “Covenant as the Basis of the Jewish Political Tradition,” The Jewish Journal ofSociology 20 (1978): 5—37, p. 18.

13. David Little, “The Western Tradition,” in David Little et 31., Human Rights and the Conflict ofCultureS: Western and Islamic Perspectives 012 Religious Liberty (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988), p. 26.

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dialectic of freedom and duty: the liberation gained was from the bonds of selfish desire; the supreme achievement of human freedom and agency was submission to the divine law. According to Bellah, the “profoundly social” nature of this “covenant liberty” was reflected in the words of the eighteenth—century New England Baptist, Isaac Backus:

The true liberty of man is, to know, obey and enj 0y his Creator, and to do all the good unto, and enj 0y all the happiness with and in his fellow creatures that he is capable of; in order to which the law of love was written in his heart, which carries in it’s nature union and benevolence to Being in general, and to each being in particular, according to it’s nature and excellency, and to it’s relation and connexion with the supreme Being, and ourselves. Each rational soul, as he is part of the whole system of rational beings, so it was and is, both his duty and his liberty to regard the good of the whole in all his actions.14

In the nineteenth century, through a number of factors, not least of which was the corrosive effect of secularization and its resulting atomistic individualism, the social consensus in this religious Vision of social and moral order became steadily eroded. Today that original religious concept of freedom as “true liberty” that “meant freedom to do the good and was almost equivalent to Virtue,” a conception embedded in a context of social obligation and divine purpose, has been displaced by an ideological notion of freedom as the liberty of the isolated individual to pursue selfinterest without interference.15

Locke 011 Religious Freedom 1n the world View within which Locke composed his doctrine of religious toleration, the primacy of freedom of the individual conscience was due to the importance of genuine belief (that is, freely given consent to divine authority) in attaining salvation, for “Faith only and sincerity, are the things that procure acceptance with God.”16 Although Locke is usually identified with the theory of

14. Quoted in Bellah, Broken Covenant, p. 20.

15. Bellah, Broken Covenant, p. xii.

16. John Locke, A Letter Concerning T oleration, in The Works ofJohn Locke, 10 vols. (London: 1823; reprint, Aalen: Scientia, 1963), V01. 6, p. 28.

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social contract, his Views on human nature, purpose, freedom, and the good were squarely within the covenantal perspective. For Locke the testimony of revelation was, as reason itself must conclude, of an authority necessarily superior to human reason, and as such “carries with it Assurance beyond Doubt, Evidence beyond Exception”; “faith” was the assent of reason to revelation and constituted the supreme degree of assent possible by human reason.17 The “highest perfection of intellectual nature” lay “in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness; so the care of our selves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty.” That “real happiness” was spiritual, not material. The “great privilege of finite intellectual Beings” did not consist in freedom to do whatever the will chose, but rather “the great inlet, and exercise of all the liberty Men have, are capable of, or can be useful to them, and that whereon depends the turn of their actions. . .[consisted] in this, that they can suspend their desires, and stop them from determining their wills to any action, till they have duly and fairly examin ’d the 1good and evil of it as far forth as the weight of the thing requires.” 8

Within the oovenantal world View, the perfection of human freedom was, in essence, to become determined by the good. Thus, Locke wrote, “If we look upon those superiour Beings above us, who enj oy perfect Happiness, we shall have reason to judge that they are more steadily determined in their choice of Good than we; and yet we have no reason to think they are less happy, or less free, than we are.” Rej ecting the vulgar notion of liberty as license, he observed: “Is it worth the Name of F reedom to be at liberty to play the Fool, and draw Shame and Misery upon a Man’s self? If to break loose from the conduct of Reason, and to want that restraint of Examination and Judgment, which keeps us from chusing or doing the worse, be Liberty, true Liberty, mad Men and Fools are the only Freemen.”19

Though all men desired happiness, and thus sought the good, it was evident that not everyone thought the same thing good. But the apparent existence of a plurality of goods, he argued, would

17. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 4.xvi. 14.

18. Ibid., 2.xxi.Sl—52.

19. Ibid., 2.xxi.49, 50.

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only be true “were all the Concerns of Man terminated in this Life,” that is, if ultimate happiness could really be found in material pursuits and the satisfaction of desire. Were this the case, there could indeed be no way to judge between individuals’ conflicting choices, or conceptions of their highest good, such as “why one followed Study and Knowledge, and another Hawking and Hunting; why one chose Luxury and Debauchery, and another Sobriety and Riches.” The good would be defined by the object one pursued. Yet Locke dismissed this conflation of desire and human good as a dangerous delusion, remarking: “’twas a right Answer of the Physician to his Patient, that had sore Eyes. If you have more Pleasure in the Taste of Wine, than in the use of your Sight, Wine is good for you; but if the Pleasure of Seeing be greater to you, than that of Drinking, Wine is naught.”20 For Locke, freedom of conscience was the necessary precondition for fulfilling one’s duty to God and thus attaining the object of existence (the good), for “the end of all religion is to please him, and that liberty is essentially necessary to that end.”21

Locke conceptualized the theory set forth in his Letter on Toleration (1689) as an explicitly religious idea, required by the scriptural command of “charity, meekness, and good—will in general towards all mankind, even those that are not Christians.”22 Indeed, he characterized the concept of religious toleration as the hallmark of true religion itself. While the Letter is a foundational document of modern liberalism, it is possible to see in it the extent to which Locke took seriously not only the rights of individuals but their social obligations, as well as the civil rights of communities. In proper perspective, individual rights were located within a context that took account of correlative responsibilities; rightly understood, the individual’s freedom of conscience did not conflict with, and thus did not supersede, the right of society to maintain the conditions of order upon which all its individual members depend. This was true with regard to religious, as well as civil, society.

20. Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2.xxi.54. 2l. Locke, Letter Concerning T olemtion, Works, vol. 6, p. 30. 22.1bid., p. 5.

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The principle that defined the scope of, and linked to gether, the domains of freedom and obligation was that the exercise of freedom in the act of recognizing an authority (that is, giving “consent”) entailed a strong obligation of obedience.23 Provided that membership in a religious society was by choice and “absolutely free and spontaneous,” Locke argued, “it necessarily follows, that the right of making its laws can belong to none but the society itself, or at least, which is the same thing, to those whom the society by common consent has authorized thereunto.”24 What of those who, having joined, later came to disagree with some part of the doctrine, or who disobeyed the code of conduct required of members? Individual freedom of conscience remained unabridged so long as one was as free to leave as to enter a religion. As for those Who disobeyed the laws, Locke recommended that “The arms by Which the members of this society are to be kept within their duty, are exhortations, admonitions, and advice. If by these means the offenders will not be reclaimed, and the erroneous convinced, there remains nothing farther to be done, but that such stubborn and obstinate persons, who give no ground to hope for their reformation, should be cast out and separated from the society... I hold,” he wrote, “that no church is bound by the duty of toleration to retain any such person in her bosom, as after admonition continues obstinately to offend against the laws of the society. For these being the condition of communion, and the bond of society, if the breach of them were permitted without any animadversion, the society would immediately be thereby dissolved.”25 Excommunication, he argued, was the just and reasonable way to treat those Violations of norms which, as he correctly realized, if permitted unchecked, would dissolve the unity, order, and integrity of the community.

It is important to note that in arguing against the use of coercion in religious matters, Locke was arguing against the sometimes brutal, physical punishments notorious to the era (“‘galleys, prisons, confiscations, and death”26) used by the Civil authority in matters

23. Locke, Letter Concerning T oleraz‘ion, Works, V01. 6, p. 13. 24.1bid., p. 14. 25.1bid., p. 16. 26.1bid., p. 49.

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concerning belief, and especially when imposed on persons of a different religion. The use of force was appropriately exercised by the civil authority in enforcing civil laws, which did not concern belief. But far from considering expulsion to be coercive, he regarded it as a simple matter of holding people accountable to their solemn promises, freely given. Nor did it have anything to do with civil rights: “Exeommunication,” as such, Locke argued, “neither does nor can deprive the excommunicated person of any of those civil goods that he formerly possessed.” For no one had “any civil right” to partake of the privileges that accrued to membership in a voluntary religious association.

Religion and Civil Order

To see how much the common understanding of the relationship between religion and civil order has changed, it is useful to look at what Locke says about religion and civil government in the Letter. In his argument about the separation of the “ecclesiastical” and the “civil,” the distinction involved was not between a religious sphere and an irreligious one: Locke took for granted that religious principles were the foundation of the civil order. He also acknowledged the justice of theocraoy in principle (by which he meant specifically a commonwealth in which civil and religious law and authority were combined). His famous contention that there could be no Christian commonwealth did not rest on any claim that theocraey itself was inherently unjust, but rather on the simple fact that no Christian commonwealth, or indeed any specific form of government, was prescribed in the Gospel; and only what was clearly warranted by the revealed scripture could be considered binding. However, where theoeraey was ordained in the Holy Scripture itself, as it had been in the Law of‘ Moses, Locke insisted, it was obligatory.28

Locke was concerned, rather, with the just extent of the jurisdictions of civil and religious authority in a society where the

27. Locke, Letter Concerning T oleration, Works, vol. 6, p. 17.

28. Ibid., pp. 37-3 8. See also The Reasonableness ofChristz'anz'ly as delivered in the Scriptures, in The Works ofJohn Locke, lO vols. [London: 1823; reprint, Aalen: Scientia, 1963], vol. 7, pp. 13—16.

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general consensus in Christianity among the majority of citizens was obscured and overshadowed by Violent dissensus between denominations. This disunity was intractable in the absence of any universally recognized source of authority to adjudicate the competing interpretations which had led to the fractionation of the body of the religion into sects. In proposing that the “Civil” should be separate from the “religious,” by “religious” Locke was referring primarily to the contentious sources of difference between denominations, not to the broad foundation of religious morality which was uncontested. It seems he was also trying to apply to the problem at hand a conceptual distinction, familiar to Christians, between “the ‘religious’ duties owed directly to God,” as contained in the first four of the Ten Commandments (concerning matters of faith and worship), and the “‘moral’ duties owed to fellow human beings” which made up the rest of the commandments (the social or moral laws concerning actions against persons and property, and so on).29 While laws concerning inner belief applied only to believers, the laws concerning outward behavior justly applied to every citizen, regardless of belief, as they constituted the moral basis of the civil order.

But the origin of both these duties in the revealed scriptures underscores the fact that the domains of the spiritual and the temporal, the “religious” and the “civil,” are ultimately not radically separate but are two aspects of one reality.30 The relevant distinction in this case involved that of competence to judge, and thus to impose punishment: only God could judge the sincerity of one’s belief; but human authorities could judge actions in society. Locke wanted to ameliorate a prevalent condition of his time—the subjection of people to Civil punishments for not belonging to the state church or attending worship—by putting things in their proper order. He proposed that membership in religious associations should be voluntary and never compulsory; that different faiths should be free to practice their beliefs (provided they did not engage in sedition against the civil order), and that civil power

29. Little, “Western Tradition,” p. 19; Locke, Letter Concerning T oleraz‘z'on, Works, vol. 6, pp. 39—43. 30. Cf. Little, “Western Tradition,” p. 20.

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should be used only to enforce the civil, public laws of morality, public security, and order, while religious institutions should hold only the members of their own community to be bound by that religion’s beliefs, practices, and laws. In making these proposals, Locke was in effect articulating the religious—not seoular—principles for the just governance of a religiously plural society. The theocraey of the Israelite Commonwealth, Locke pointed out, was the source of the concept of “separation” he was arguing for, and he cited this fact as the highest possible warrant of its justice.

Locke also argued against the use of physical punishment or deprivation of property, whether imposed by religious or civil authorities, on anyone at all in matters of belief and worship, primarily because it was unwarranted in the Christian scriptures, and secondarily because it was ineffective anyway as coercion could never procure belief.31 But it would distort him out of context, and collapse a crucial conceptual distinction, to read this Classic argument against coercion in matters of religion as an extension of rights of conscience specifically pertaining to the Civil domain, into the domain of the voluntary religious community, as if its internal life were also, like the civil sphere, a space undefined by any commitments to particular beliefs or a distinctive way of life. To do this, as Locke correctly saw, would condemn any association based on belief to dissolution.

It is important to recognize that for Locke, and, for example, the framers of the US. Constitution, the fact that the revealed social laws of religion were the moral foundation of the civil order was never in question. In the US. constitutional era the “disestablishment” issue primarily concerned doing away with public tax support for churches, which amounted to extracting compulsory contributions to religious funds from nonbelievers. Yet introducing that explicitly financial “disestablishment” did not contradict the general expectation by all that government ought to operate on the basis of the moral principles of religion.32 Thus it can be said that, in a broader sense of the term, the “establishment”———that is, institutionalization—of those religious laws

31. Cf. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Secret ofDivine Civilization, p. 46. 32. Reiohley, Religion in American Public Life, p. 113.

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and values with civil application was never in question, nor even mentioned, except affirmatively, because it was the indispensable foundation of the society.

And it stfl1 is, for the deep structure of the Westem legal system in general remains the biblical moral code and even church canon law, although the religious origins of the ciVfl law have been largely effaced.33 According to socio10gist Mattei Dogan, in spite of a decline in religious belief “in Europe, Christian morals have been absorbed into the State. The philosophy of the Ten Commandments, the prophets and the apostles is embodied in the civil legislation of the wh01e of Europe.”34 In the sense that a society’s governmental structures, processes, and laws represent the institutionalization Of the mora1 values of its people, no state can exist without an “established,” that is, institutionalized, set of beliefs that define its moral orientation. Those beliefs, implicitly, are prior to the institutional structures; without them, “institutions” are a hollow shell. And, inescapab1y, the moral authority of civil laws depends on an underlying belief in a legitimating conception of good that makes those laws right.

The Secular Turn

In the modern era, those distinctive concepts of freedom and of toleration became detached from their original religious foundations and anchored to another, secu1ar system of thought that rej ected any pre-existing obligation of divine origin. The idea of the good was demoted from its universal transcendent position and relativized t0 the individual. This shift reflected the displacement, in modem secular philosophic 1ibera1ism, of the religious View of human nature as a creation of God, by a (sometimes tacit) materialist account of human nature as self—creating and autonomous, of ultimate good as something private and (potentia11y, at least) different for each individual. Individual freedom retained its prominent position, but instead of freedom to recognize the good (that is, God), it was

33. Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 198.

34. Mattei Dogan, “The Decline of Religious Beliefs in Western Europe,” International Social Science Journal 145 (1995): 405—17, p. 417.

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construed as freedom to choose between a plurality of goods or to create one’s own good, but in any case, the self, not a transcendent source of that self, was the autonomous measure of its own good. The concept of covenant, as the origin of society, was replaced by social contract, in which the people themselves, and their private interests, were seen as the authoritative source of the social bond.35 By the twentieth century, a process that had begun with the attempt to apply religious principles to mitigate the problem of religious disunity had resulted in the eviction of the religious basis of the entire collective moral system which had been taken for granted as an indispensable foundation and the purpose of championing religious liberty at all.

A key feature of the secular turn in modern moral philosophy has been the attempt to separate the right, or justice, from any substantive conception of human good, such as would be found in a religious world View———~that is, an account of reality, human nature, and purpose which gives direction and meaning to human life. This conception ofjustice is regarded as prior to the good and as universally valid because it does not depend on, and thus give privilege to, any particular conception of the good. While it has been given various renderings, the neutral conception of justice is generally concerned with ensuring a maximum, or an equal amount of, liberty (and thus opportunity) for individuals to pursue their own self—chosen conceptions of the good life.

However, the View that it is possible to do right independently of reference to the good would have been foreign to the thinking of such a religious philosopher as John Locke. According to Locke,

A good life, in which consists not the least part of religion and true piety, concerns also the civil government: and in it lies the safety both of men’s souls and of the commonwealth. Moral actions belong therefore to the jurisdiction both of the outward and inward court; both of the civil and domestic governor; I mean, both of the magistrate and conscience.36

35. Bellah, Broken Covenant, ch. 1;Miller, “From the Covenant to the Revival,” p. 335.

36. Locke, Letter Concerning T oleration, Works, vol. 6, p. 41.

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Likewise alien would have been the modern secular notion of an autonomous human reason able to formulate its own morality or ethics without reference to God. For Locke,

A dependent, intelligent being is under the power of and direction and dominion of him on whom he depends and must be for the ends appointed him by that superior being. If man were independent he could have no law but his own will, no end but himself. He would be a god to himself and the satisfaction of his own will the sole measure of all his actions.37

Locke’s conviction that belief in God was the essential ground for a commitment to justice is reflected in his refusal to grant atheism the status of a moral foundation equivalent to religion. For “Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all. Besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretense of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration.”38 This often misunderstood passage did not imply atheists should not have the same civil rights as other citizens; it merely refused to allow religious toleration to extend, by sophistry, to an opposite, antireligious position that, because it denied the source of legitimation for “the bonds of human society,” lacked the basic commitment to authority necessary to uphold any civil order (and, of course, lacked any reason to consider religion worthy of toleration).

Locke, in sum, thought that the right was intrinsically dependent on the good, that the good was necessarily the divine good, and that while the coercive enforcement of sectarian do gmas and forms of worship—quite oorreotly—had no place in civil government, religious principles and moral values were inseparable from it.

In recent years, the idea that justice can be conceptualized in the absence of any commitment to a set of transcendent values, or with a minimal set of values, has been abundantly criticized and its

37. Quoted in John Dunn, The Political Thought ofJohn Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), frontispiece. 38. Locke, Letter Concerning T oleration, Works, vol. 6, p. 47.

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contradictions enumerated, from a variety of perspectives, particularly with respect to its implications for community life.

Modern secular liberal philosophy was never intended to constitute communities but rather to provide a theory of neutral arbitration among the various individuals and communities over which the modern state has jurisdiction. Thus it is not surprising that the principles of liberal polity, emphasizing difference and individualism, should be in tension with the concerns and needs of communities, which depend upon unity and mutuality. In the historical experience of irreconcilable religious sectarianism which gave rise to modern liberal political theory, the irreducibility of disunity arose, as Locke was keenly aware, from the fact that the points of contention involved the assertion of secondary doctrines and practices above and beyond what was Clearly warranted in the scripture. But because such doctrines were not warranted—or were not clearly warranted—they could never gain consensus by a conclusive proof of their authority, and thus could only appeal to probability; hence they could always be disputed. In contrast, he observed, clearly warranted deductions caused no division.39 Under the circumstances, without any universally recognized authority (for the same reason—absence of a clear scriptural warrant for any such institution), dissensus was inevitable and at best might be managed but never eliminated.

It is thus the absence of any infallible, scripturally warranted center of interpretive authority that is the root of the historical, religious problem to which the theory that would become modern secular liberalism was originally proposed as the solution. The presumption of irreconcilable difference, and hence of disunity, is ingrained in that system of thought; and this, along with the primacy of individual liberty (which as Locke noted became a practical necessity precisely because of dissension and the need to choose between competing sects), continues to shape contemporary concepts of the liberal polity. On the resulting model, the community, as Philip Selznick observes, is not to be “based on shared identity, shared purpose, or shared understanding of the

39. Locke, Letter Concerning Toleratz'on, Works, vol. 6, p. 57; cf. Shoghi Effendi, World Order ofBahd ’u ’Zldh, pp. 20—21.

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common good; rather it is constituted by the principles of right ordering that govern liberty.” But that emphasis on individual freedom and autonomy meets its limitations precisely where community life begins: for communities are constituted by unity and sustained by commitments to shared purposes. Regulatory rules and procedures for ensuring individual liberty cannot account for or provide, for example, “ideals of caring and social justiceineluding care for children, health, families, the environment, aesthetic values, opportunity, and the well-being of future generations.”4O Such goals guided by ideals are unintelligible apart from a Vision of human good, excellence, and happiness.

The limiting consequences, as Selznick has noted, of conceiving the community as a mere “framework Within Which autonomous choices can be made” are that “The political quest for a distinctive kind of community is abandoned. We are not to seek, through politics and government, the kind of community that Will best redeem the promise of fellowship or most closely approximate the potential for human growth, creativity, and responsibility.”41 As the strictly value—neutral state attempts to exclude from public institutions and governance any reference to the kinds of ultimate goals associated With a particular good way of hfe—-and thus With rehgion—it precludes and indeed disqualifies itself from being able to “advance human excellence.”42 For to do that requires a conception of the good, something to Which the neutral state disclaims any access.

As many have pointed out, modem liberal theory contains deep contradictions. It is now Widely recognized that, despite disclaimers, a conception of the good and a theory of human nature~and thus a set of particular beliefs——is being implemented all the same in liberal theory, and this implies an exclusion of other beliefs:

Any conception of the human good according to Which, for example, it is the duty of government to educate the members of the community morally, so that they come to live out that

40. Philip Selznick, T he Moral Commonwealth: Social Theory and the Promise OfCommum'ty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 381.

41. Ibid., p. 382.

42. John Rawls, quoted in ibid., p. 382.

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conception of the good, may up to a point be held as a private themy by individuals or groups, but any serious attempt to embody it in public life Will be proscribed. And this qualification of course entails not only that liberal individualism does indeed have its own broad conception of the good, Which it is engaged in imposing politically, legally, socially, and culturally wherever it has the power to do so, but that in so doing its toleration of rival conceptions of the good in the public arena is severely limited.43

According to Selznick, “fundamental values—not only basic requirements of justice and citizenship but broader ideals of personal and social well—being” are inevitably employed if only tacitly; for instance, merely to have decided that human beings need liberty is already to have committed oneself to a belief about human nature. “The presuppositions of liberalism represent genuine moral choices, and their reaffirmation is a continuous act of moral choice, the more so as liberalism takes seriously the quest for social justice.” As the pursuit of social justice becomes an aim and purpose in government, that endeavor embodies an ensemble of values far beyond any neutral or procedural concept of basic liberties. Thus, for example, “Education for basic skills may arguably be morally neutral, but not education for citizenship, for enlightenment, for social responsibility, for deferred gratification, for intellectual and aesthetic ap1:)reciation.”4‘4 And the same is true of a Wide range of other social issues.

Ever more urgently, social theorists now call for recovering a balance between the individual and society, between rights and responsibilities Within a coherent framework. “Our situation today,” Selzniok writes, “calls for a more robust idea of community, one that gives greater weight to the claims of mutuality and fellowship. Liberalism’s thin theory of community weakens its capacity to speak With a clear voice where the public interest demands discipline and duty as much as (and in a given context perhaps more than) freedom and self—realization.” For that same insistence on

43.Alasdair Maclntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), p. 336. 44. Selznick, Moral Commonwealth, pp. 383, 384.

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value neutrality and emphasis on individualism undermines the security and well-being of all when it eliminates any basis for calling upon individuals to sacrifice their individual preferences and concrete, short—term interests for the needs of a more abstract common good: “it is hard to justify sacrifice—w-a ban on gas—guzzling vehicles, a program of compulsory national service, a required course of study—when individual choice is held sacred.”45

The idea that civil governance requires a value—neutral ethic that strictly avoids all reference to a transcendent good is a peculiarly modern secular development, which appears to be an attempt to extend the principle of noncoercion in matters of belief into a vastly altered context. In the new context, the possibility of moral consensus upon any religious foundation has been wholly abandoned, and instead it is taken as axiomatic that the only available ethical common ground is secular, that is, nonreligious. And yet, every attempt to construct such a secular public ethic or conception of justice with universal validity discloses a tacit dependency upon what turn out to be spiritual values.46 When we trace the concepts and principles on which justice~ineluding the essential ideas of human equality and obligation—order, governance, and citizenship depend, it becomes clear that any theory of these that was entirely stripped of all its borrowed religious values would be little different from the theoretical Hobbesian “state of nature”: a war of all against all. Such a condition, ruled only by the

45. Selznick, Moral Commonwealth, pp. 385, 386.

46. Some contemporary theorists acknowledge, in passing, the religious origin of the ideas as a once-helpful ladder that can now be kicked away. Locke wrote of the epistemic dependence of philosophers on revelation: “He that travels the roads now, applauds his own strength and legs that have carried him so far in such a scantling of time, and ascribes all to his own vigour; little considering how much he owes to their pains, who cleared the woods, drained the bogs, built the bridges, and made the ways passable; without which he might have toiled much with little progress. . .. It is no diminishing to revelation, that reason gives its suffrage too to the truths revelation has discovered. But it is our mistake to think, that because reason confirms them to us, we had the first certain knowledge of them from thence; and in that clear evidence we now possess them.” (Reasonableness ofChristianz'ty, Works, vol. 7, p. 145.)

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unrestricted competition of self—interest, is nothing less than radical individualism47 Yet the consequence of unbridled individualism is ultimately the erosion of the altruistic values on Which community, civil society, and, some argue, human evolution itself, depend.48

It has been suggested that even after the modern secular turn, and the resultant weakening of the authority of religion, the social order continued to run on the “accumulated moral capital” of the past,49 a fact that temporarily concealed the true social cost incurred by abandoning religion. As this reserve has gradually exhausted itself, we have witnessed an acceleration in the rate of social and moral deterioration, expressed in the loosening of every form of personal obligation, and have seen secular ideologies and theories go bankrupt, unable to create community, to teach moral values and Virtues necessary to sustain the political order, or to stem the rising tide of conflict and Violence. The progression of this disintegration has only thrown into relief the fact that “no matter how undermined, a remnant of the older morality provides much of what coherence our society still has.”50 Such recognition has led to an emerging interest in the underlying principle at the basis of that morality, the idea of covenant, as “an idea Whose time [has] come back.”5 1

The Concept of Covenant

Covenant, it has long been recognized, is not merely a theological concept but it has been termed the most powerful and

47. See also Bellah, Broken Covenant, p. 26.

48. Ronald Cohen, “Altruism and the Evolution of Civil Society,” in Embracing the Other: Philosophical, Psychological, and Historical Perspectives on Altruism, ed. Pearl M. Oliner et al. (New York: New York University Press, 1992), pp. 104—29.

49. J ames Q. Wilson, “Liberalism, Modernism, and the Good Life,” in Seedbeds of Virtue: Sources of Competence, Character, and Citizenship in American Society, ed. Mary Ann Glendon and David Blankenhorn (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1995), p. 19.

50.Bellah, Broken Covenant, p. xiii.

51. Daniel J. Elazar, “What Happened to Covenant in the Nineteenth Centuiy?” in Covenant in the Nineteenth Century: The Decline ofan American Political T raditz'on, ed. Daniel J. Elazar (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), p. 4.

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enduring form of political foundation and one of the “fundamental political concepts illuminating the origins and basis of political 1ife.”5:2 Since the earliest biblical covenants uniting the Israelite tribes, the idea that human political relationships, like the relationship between God and humanity, ought to be based on “compact, association, and consent” has provided various peoples the inspiration and pattern for community organization and state building. According to Elazar, the resurgence of this world view in sixteenth—century Reformed Protestant Christianity in Europe gave rise to the federal theology on Which English and American Puritans, Huguenots, and Scottish Covenanters based their political theories and constitutional principles, and Which influenced the development of federal states in Switzerland and the Netherlands as well as the federation of the New England colonies into the United States of America. Moreover, he notes, “the biblical Vision for the ‘end of days’—the messianic era” includes an extension of this divine “grand design” for human polity to “a world confederation or league of nations, each preserving its own integrity While accepting a common divine covenant and constitutional order. This order Will establish appropriate covenantal relationships for the entire world.”53

The idea of covenant refers to a constellation of concepts: the free and Willing recognition of a binding duty, originating in or guaranteed by a transcendent source, to act together in a collective enterprise defined by a purpose and according to a set of precepts or laws, With accountability in the form of blessing and benefits for fulfillment and punishment and retribution for failure.54 The vast ramifications of this idea become apparent When we consider a few of the imp1ications that can be traced to the idea of covenant. The element of free and Willing recognition is the origin of the

52. Elazar, “Covenant as the Basis,” pp. 6, 10.

53. Daniel J. Elazar, Exploring F ederalism (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1987), pp. 119, 126—27, 120.

54. Cf. a different rendering of elements in Donald S. Lutz, “The Evolution of Covenant F em and Content as the Basis for Early American Political Culture,” in Covenant in the Nineteenth Century: The Decline of an American Political T raditz'on, ed. Daniel J . Elazar (Lanham, 1\/[D: Rowman & Littlefie1d, 1994), p. 35.

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principle of consent, as the basis of free society and self—government. The recognition of a binding duty generates the concept of strong obligation through the recognition of authority. The location of the duty in a transcendent, divine source is the pivot Of the idea of legitimation. In the summons to a collective, purposive enterprise the community is created, implying for each individual a commitment to participate and engendering a sense of identity, loyalty, and responsibility. The set of precepts that guide and direct this enterprise define the character of the moral and political order of the community. It is here we find the content of law, rights and responsibilities, the hierarchy of values, and the Virtues entailed by them. It can also be seen here that, because of its centrality to the lives and well~being of all the individuals Who belong to it, that collective enterprise is itself an entity Which has rights (in Virtue of its responsibilities), and all those Who identify themselves With this community share an obligation to give attention and care to the protection of the community as a Whole. And finally, the element of retribution and proportionality is the basic principle underlying all forms of accountability and is a fundamental component of all moral codes.55

The vehicle for ensuring the orderly practice, maintenance, and transmission of a society’s values is its institutions.56 The specification of institutional structure can be considered as a separate formal element of a covenant,57 but the history of revealed covenants is notable for the absence of provisions for institutions or the scope of their authority. That this absence has been the prime cause of intrareligious conflict and schism highlights the profound significance and unprecedented potentiality Of the institutional arrangements in the Bahá’í Faith. The structures and principles of the Bahá’í Administrative Order are not only clearly specified in the texts Whose authority is universally recognized by Bahá’ís, but

55. Alison Dundes Renteln, “A Cross—Cultural Approach to Validating International Human Rights: The Case of Retribution Tied to Proportionality,” in Human Rights: T heorjy and Measurement, ed. David Louis Cingranelli (New York: St. Martin’s, 1988).

56. Selznick, Moral Commonwealth, pp. 232—33.

57. Lutz, “Evolution of Covenant Form and Content,” p. 37.

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they are the subj ect of a special revealed covenant. The specific provisions of Baha’u’llah’s Covenant ensure the integrity as well as the flexibility and responsiveness of the system of governance, and guarantee the unity of the Bahá’í Faith itself by eliminating the historical cause of schism.58

It has been pointed out that the covenantal element specifying the precepts governing social behavior is the historical source of bills of rights, not as a “legalistic limit on the power of government, but rather as a ce1ebration of the fundamental value commitments of a people.” According to Donald S. Lutz, the current concept of a “1ega1istic bill of rights. . .is a direct descendent of [this] foundation element found in covenants.”59 Numerous colonial Bills of Liberty exemplifying the people’s “value commitments a11 point to the earlier covenants, and the Bible that underlies them, rather than to any Magna Carta or English common law tradition.” It has also been suggested that, in addition to the tendency to federal structure, democratic participation and collective, consensus-oriented decision—making are intrinsic aspects of covenantal polity.60

In the covenantal concept of authority, the obligation to obey the law arises as a consequence of the relationship one recognizes and free1y affirms between oneself and the source of those laws. Baha’u’llah begins His Most Holy Book, his Book of Laws, with a renewal of the great Covenant. “The first duty” is recognition of the authority of the Lawgiver; the second is to observe His or— . dinances.61 Here, we can see, morality is grounded in belief as ’ “conscious knowledge”62 and begins With a duty, not a right. Consequently, it can be seen, the right to religious freedom comes into being, as a human right, in order to be able to fulfill the duty of obedience to God. That is, it becomes a civil right as a resu1t of being held as a religious conviction.

58. Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 143—57.

59. Lutz, “Evolution of Covenant Form and Content,” pp. 42—43.

60. Elazar, “Covenant as the Basis,” pp. 17, 36.

61. Baha’u’llah, The Kitab-i-Aqdas: The Most Holy Book (Haifa: Bahá’í World Centre, 1992), par. 1.

62. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í World Faith: Selected Writings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu ’Z—Bahd (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1976), p. 383.

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The order of the two duties of recognition and obedience has an important implication. Obedience, in a covenant, follows only as a consequence of the genuine recognition of a source of authority higher than oneself. This is Why the covenantal form of legitimation and authority can never be confused with authoritarianism because it is noneoercive by definition, beginning as it does With the free, uncoerced consent of individual reason. Thus, those Who have seen coercion lurking Wherever there is “transcendent authority,” Who feel that anyone Who believes in a universal truth is bound to feel justified in forcing it on someone else, simply fail to recognize the critical point that coercion is entirely inconsistent With, and indeed, Vitiates the principle of covenant. Although recognition of God is a duty, it cannot be performed at all unless it is consent willingly given, for coerced belief is no belief at all.63 Thus, in the past When ecclesiastical institutions undertook, Without warrant in their own scriptures, to make affiliation in a particular faith or sect mandatory and to use force upon those WhO were not believers, this was itself a contradiction of the most basic principle of the divine Covenant.64

However, the voluntary principle means that once one has given consent, recognized the authority of the lawgiver, and become a party to the covenantal relationship, one has obligated oneself to the relationship, With all its provisions and implications. This conception of consent makes the eovenantal relation very different from the social contract, and contemporary notions of contract, Where individual interests are the measure of the contract itself. Selznick writes: “a social ethic is the linchpin of the covenant. . .. This social ethic is something more than a natural, unconscious acceptance of social norms.” It “suggests an indefeasible commitment and a continuing relationship.” Moreover, as he has noted, covenant is the foundation for all other particular promises and

63. See Locke, Letter Concerning T oleration, Works, vol. 6, p. 11.

64. Although the use of force is authorized in the Qur’án, it is permitted only in defense, and never against peaceful nonbelievers. See, for example, Mohamed Talbi, “Religious Liberty: A Muslim Perspective,” in Religious Liberty and Human Rights in Nations and in Religions, ed. Leonard SWidler (Philadelphia: Ecumenical Press, 1985), pp. 175—87; Little, “Western Tradition,” pp. 29—30.

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contracts.65 In a covenant, we enter into a relationship, which is not determined by purely individual interests. Entering it constitutes an affirmation that our own best interests are necessarily located within it, and that they are inextricably interrelated with those with whom we share membership in this collective enterprise. The covenant thus integrates the private and the public, the spiritual and the temporal, as through the personal covenant with God the individual enters the social covenant. Miller writes of this idea as it was once conceptualized:

The personal covenant of the soul with God is impaled on the same axis as the social, like a small circle within a larger. Before entering into both the personal and social covenants men have a liberty to go their own gait; afterwards they have renounced their liberty to do anything but that which has been agreed upon. The mutual consenting involved in a covenant, says Hooker, is the “sernent” which solders together all societies, political or ecclesiastical; “for there is no man constrained to enter into such a condition unlesse he will: and he that will enter, must also willingly binde and ingage himself to each member of that society to promote the good of the whole, or else a member actually he is not.”66

The covenantal concept of social interdependence is expressed

I)!

as an encompassing, global perspective in the Baha 1 writings, in the central principle of the oneness of humanity. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá writes of Baha’u’llah’s teaching:

The Blessed Beauty saith: “Ye are all the fruits of one tree, the leaves of one branch.” Thus hath He likened this world of being to a single tree, and all its peoples to the leaves thereof, and the blossoms and fruits. It is needful for the bough to blossom, and leaf and fruit to flourish, and upon the interconnection of all parts of the world-tree, dependeth the flourishing of leaf and blossom, and the sweetness of the fruit.

For this reason must all human beings powerfully sustain one another and seek for everlasting life; and for this reason must the lovers of God in this contingent world become the

65. Selznick, Moral Commonwealth, p. 479m (citing Pitkin). 66. Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956), p. 90.

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mercies and the blessings sent forth by that clement King of the seen and unseen realms. Let them purify their sight and behold all humankind as leaves and blossoms and fruits of the tree of being. Let them at all times concern themselves With doing a kindly thing for one of their fellows, offering to someone love, consideration, thoughtful help. Let them see no one as their enemy, or as Wishing them ill, but think of all humankind as their friends; regarding the alien as an intimate, the stran er as a companion, staying free of prejudice, drawing no lines.

This View of human interdependence is reflected in Shoghi Effendi’s explanation of the Bahá’í conception of society as based on the subordination of “every particularistic interest, be it personal, regional, or national, to the paramount interests of humanity, firmly convinced that in a world of interdependent peoples and nations the advantage of the part is best to be reached by the advantage of the Whole, and that no abiding benefit can be conferred upon the component parts if the general interests of the entity itself are ignored or neglected.”68 As the Universal House of Justice has explained,

This relationship, so fundamental to the maintenance of civilized life, calls for the utmost degree of understanding and cooperation between society and the individual; and because of the need to foster a climate in Which the untold potentialities of the individual members of society can develop, this relationship must allow “free scope” for “individuality to assert itself” through modes of spontaneity, initiative and diversity that ensure the Viability of society.69

The implications of such a model, and such a Vision, to serve as the foundation of a global social order are developed in the Bahá’í International Community’s statement, The Prosperity quumankind:

Human society is composed not of a mass of merely differentiated cells but of associations of individuals, each one of Whom

67. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu ‘l—Bahd (Haifa: Bahá’í World Centre, 1978), pp. 1—2.

68. Shoghi Effendi, World Order ofBahd ’u ’Zldh, p. 198.

69. Universal House of Justice, Individual Rights and Freedoms in the World Order ofBahd ’u ’Zldh (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1989), p. 20.

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is endowed With intelligence and Will; nevertheless, the modes of operation that characterize man’s biological nature illustrate fundamental principles of existence. Chief among these is that of unity in diversity. Paradoxically, it is precisely the wholeness and complexity of the order constituting the human body—and the perfect integration into it of the body’s cells—that permit the full realization of the distinctive capacities inherent in each of these component elements. No cell lives apart from the body, Whether in contributing to its function or in deriving its share from the well—being of the Whole. The physical wefl—being thus achieved finds its purpose in making possible the expression of human consciousness; that is to say, the purpose of biological development transcends the mere existence of the body and its parts.

What is true of the life of the individual has its parallels in human society. The human species is an organic Whole, the leading edge of the evolutionary process. That human eonsciousness necessarily operates through an infinite diversity of individual minds and motivations detracts in no way from its essential unity. Indeed, it is precisely an inhering diversity that distinguishes unity from homogeneity 0r uniformity. What the peoples of the world are today experiencing, Baha’u’liah said, is their collective coming-of—age, and it is through this emerging maturity of the race that the principle of unity in diversity Will find full expression. . ..

...Beeause the relationship between the individual and society is a reciprocal one, the transformation now required must occur simultaneously Within human consciousness and the structure of social institutions.70

The principle of interdependence and the relationship of the interests of the individual and society naturally has crucial impli cations for the concepts of governance and of justice.

Governance as Trusteeship

Governance is frequently mentioned in the Bahá’í writings as trusteeship, as the administering of a trust. This itself is an enduring concept, and it is worth examining Why. Baha’u’llah speaks of the governors and administrators of society as “trustees” or “trusted ones” of God. He writes: “Know ye that the poor are the

70. Bahá’í International Community, The Prosperity ofHuman/a'nd, reprinted

in The Bahá’í World 1994—95, pp. 277—78.

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trust of God in your midst. Watch that ye betray not His trust. Ye will most certainly be called upon to answer for His trust on the day when the Balance of justice shall be set.”71 The relation of trusteeship is itself a kind of covenant—an agreement concerning the exercise of power under a set of circumstances determined by a relationship with ethical obligations implying proportional recompense: reward for fulfilling the trust and punishment for breaking it. Thus we can see why the preeminent Virtue of governance is trustworthiness, described by Baha’u’llah as the “greatest portal leading unto the tranquillity and security of the people,” and “the supreme instrument for the prosperity of the world.”72

The salient fact in trusteeship is that power is being exercised on behalf of some person or persons who, for some reason are not in a position to do so directly—because they are absent, young, old, and so on; this principle operates also in professional ethics, where power is exercised on behalf of a vulnerable client or group. We can include as vulnerable creatures to which we stand in the relationship of trustees such entities as the environment, future generations, in fact all those who will be affected by the exercise of power. Although all persons are equal before God, as Baha’u’llah indicates it is really the most vulnerable whose interests and rights we need to be most concerned to safeguard, those who are without wealth, without social status or prestige; rather, it is those who do not have a voice to speak up Whose rights need to be proteoted—the poor. In a covenantal order, it is not merely the governors of society Who have an ethical duty to care for the best interests of their people. The sense of responsibility to the common good is a Civic Virtue that devolves on each member of the polity; as an ethical duty it increases in proportion to the power and influence individuals exercise whether formally or informally in various social roles, for example, as leaders of thought, scientists, authors, and scholars.

71.Bahá’u’lláh, Gleaningsfrom the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 251. This warning evokes the judgment upon Belshazzar in the “handwriting on the wall” read by the prophet Daniel: “Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting” (Daniel 6:27).

72. Baha’u’llah, T ablets of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 37-3 8.

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Anyone Who governs or administers does so on the basis of this covenant of trusteeship. The content of the trust obligation thus is not reducible or subj ect to the desires or preferences of the individuals involved. They do not have a right to decide, for instance, to repeal a moral law because it is unpopular. And this is why mere maj oritatianism (as the sum of the preferences of the many) is not a true entailment of any kind of representative government that occurs in a relationship of trusteeship, or covenant. Equity inevitably requires that some must get less than they might like to have so that others will not have to go without, and that some individuals must sacrifice their purely private interests when those conflict with the common good. Thus it is essential that there be a way to know what the common good is, in the cases where there is a conflict of preferences. And that means there must be a shared Vision that characterizes that community as a moral order, defined by an idea of what constitutes human excellence: a set of values and principles that serve as terms of reference and the standard for evaluative decision making. In this perspective, the Virtue of sacrificing self—interest for the common good is not something that can be imposed by an external source (otherwise it is not “sacrifice”), but it arises out of personal commitment and the genuine consciousness of a unity of interests that is best described as love. And where love is concerned, no sacrifice entails a net loss.

The Virtue of trustworthiness implies strong accountability. The trustee, in this case the governors of society, will be “called upon to answer for His trust.” But accountability can only have motivating force if it is real and inevitable, and not merely a Chance of getting caught. Our own “best interests” are really only fused with those of “the poor,” that is, an “other,” by a certainty that how we act toward others determines how we will be judged, and what we will receive. Thus ‘Abdu’l-Bahá writes:

...a religious individual must disregard his personal desires and seek in whatever way he can wholeheartedly to serve the public interest; and it is impossible for a human being to turn aside from his own selfish advantages and sacrifice his own good for the good of the community except through true religious faith. For self—love is kneaded into the very clay of man,

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and it is not possible that, without any hope of a substantial reward, he should neglect his own present material good.73

The adoption of a spiritual perspective transforms that self—love into a reference point for understanding the needs of others and seeing their interests as linked with one’s own: “0 son of man!” Bahá’u’liah reveals, “If thine eyes be turned towards mercy, forsake the things that profit thee and cleave unto that which will profit mankind. And if thine eyes be turned towards justice, choose thou for thy neighbor that which thou choosest for thyself.”74

From a Bahá’í perspective governance is really a spiritual practice, for the judgments we make are dependent on the inner orientation of the heart. In religious scriptures, the metaphor of the balance is invoked as the image of the administration of justice which is the measure of good governance. (Thus, even the familiar image of the scales of justice is an ancient religious concept.) Baha’u’iléh, in His tablets, speaks of governance as spiritual accountability:

It behoveth every ruler to weigh his own being every day in the balance of equity and justice and then to judge between men and counsel them to do that Which would direct their steps unto the path of wisdom and understanding. This is the cornerstone of statesmanship and the essence thereof. From these words every enlightened man of wisdom will readily perceive that Which Will foster such aims as the welfare, security and protection of mankind and the safety of human lives.7

Using a balance, or any measuring instrument, is a two-step process: before the scale can be used to weigh anything the justice of the instrument itself must be ensured, and this is only possible by orienting it to a standard that is outside of and transcends the self. The one who would govern must first govern the self, must come under the rule of divine justice, must set aside the self’s inclination to place a thumb on its side of the scale, and must

73. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Secret ofDivine Civilization, pp. 96—97. 74. Bahá’u’lláh, T ablets ofBahd ’u 716%, p. 64. 75. Ibid., pp. 166—67.

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become a servant of the interests of the people, regarding their interests as one’s own. In this respect it is worth recalling that to have “scruples” comes from the term for some of the tiniest of weights.

The covenant perspective also calls forth the Virtues and the Vision that make governance more than mere management, that is, the sense of being entrusted With “the care of a community.”76 Governance, as trusteeship, is described in the Bahá’í writings as the care of a living organism, and institutions of governance as a channel through Which the spirit that gives it life, that is, the promised blessings of the Covenant, flow. Baha’u’llah’s exhortations t0 the rulers of His day invoke this sense of transcendent, loving obligation for the care of society as a living being: “Take ye counsel together,” He wrote to Queen Victoria, “and let your concern be only for that Which profiteth mankind and bettereth the condition thereof. . .. Regard the world as the human body Which, though created Whole and perfect, has been afflicted, through divers causes, With grave ills and maladies.”77 To know What profits mankind and betters its conditions requires reference to a Vision of human good, just as the physician must know not only What disorder the patient suffers from, but what remedy is required for the patient to become healed something that depends entirely on a Clear Vision of what “health” is.

The Spirit of Covenant

What makes a covenant work is the spirit it engenders, which has been referred to as “loving-kindness” and “grace,” and Which Shoghi Effendi refers to as “transcending love.” Elazar suggests that the spirit that characterizes covenantal relationships

really means the obligation of a partner to a covenant to go beyond the narrowly construed contractual demands of the partnership in order to make the relationship between them a truly Viable one. .. A covenant is, after all, a contract and the tendency in contractual systems is for people to act like lawyers, that is to

76. Selznick, Moral Commonwealth, p. 290. 77. Quoted in Shoghi Effendi, World Order ofBahd ’u 716%, pp. 39—40.

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say, to try to construe the contract as narrowly as possible when defining their obligations and as broadly as possible when defining the obligations of the other parties.

In contrast, the covenant spirit impels one to interpret “one’s contractual obligations broadly rather than narrowly, the broader the better.”78

The collective, social purpose of the great Covenant between God and humanity has always been the spiritual advancement of Civilization, and this is reflected in the fact that, as Elazar has remarked, “one of the greatest achievements of oovenantal societies” is “the institutionalization of reform,” that is, the dedication, on principle, of political institutions to the improvement of social and economic conditions of all citizens. Citing the role of covenantal thinking in the abolition of slavery, and nineteenthcentury reform movements in law and prisons, education, and mental health, he says: “a strong case can be made that the very idea of reform emerges from the covenant world View and is only possible where that world View exists.” In fact, he claims, “The progress of civilization can be traced as corresponding to the periods in human history when the historical vanguard has recognized the covenant idea and sought to concretely apply it to the building of human, social, and political relationships.”79

It has been suggested that the power of oovenantal unity is expressed in its ability to create a “founding synthesis”: the basis of oovenantal polity, not in common descent but in common consent, creates “kinships of greater dignity and sanctity” than mere ties of birth or ethnicity.80 Covenants, therefore, are more than instruments that bind, but are in fact “liberating devices that call into existence new entities,” that create relationships and forge bonds of mutuality between different and formerly hostile peoples.81 It is this powerful concept which, Bahá’ís believe, has the potential to unite the peoples of the world in a global political and moral order. In the idea of “founding synthesis,” we can see

78. Elazar, “Covenant as the Basis,” p. 29.

79. Elazar, “What Happened to Covenant,” pp. 14—15; Elazar, “Covenant as the Basis,” p. 10.

80. Elazar, “Covenant as the Basis,” pp. 27, 25.

81.1bid., p. 7.

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the mutual relation of such Bahá’í principles as the unity and equality of humankind, the oneness of religion, and the abolition of prejudice. These bring together diversified elements, change their existing beliefs about one another, and change their relationship to one another, uniting them into a new structure.82 In contrast, the ideology of rights-based individualism has no way to account for or evoke an altruistic ethic which moves people to become more concerned with giving to others than with getting their own share, an ethic that goes beyond respect for others at a distance to loving sacrifice so that others will have more than oneself. An altruistic ethic arises from a relationship that encompasses otherness as an embrace.

That ca11to human unity is expressed in Baha’u’llah’s writings in the classic language of the eternal Covenant, as a summons to unite in a global moral community, authorized by a sacred obligation, in order to obtain the promised blessing of peace and prosperity:

O contending peoples and kindreds of the earth! Set your faces towards unity, and let the radiance of its light shine upon you. Gather ye together, and for the sake of God resolve to root out whatever is the source of contention amongst you. Then will the effulgence of the world” 3 great Luminary envelop the whole earth, and its inhabitants become the citizens of one city, and the occupants of one and the same throne. ..

There can be no doubt whatever that the peoples of the world, of Whatever race or religion, derive their inspiration from one heavenly Source, and are the subj ects of one God. The difference between the ordinances under which they abide should be attributed to the varying requirements and exigencies of the age in which they were revealed. All of them, except a few which are the outcome of human perversity, were ordained of God, and are a reflection of His Wi11 and Purpose. Arise and, armed with the power of faith, shatter to pieces the gods of your vain imaginings, the sowers of dissension amongst you. Cleave unto that which draweth you together and uniteth you. This, verfly, is the most exalted Word which the Mother Book hath sent down and revealed unto you. To this beareth witness the Tongue of Grandeur from His habitation of glory. 83

82. Shoghi Effendi, World Order OfBahd ’u 716%, p. 155. 83. Baha’u’llah, GZeanings from the Writings ofBahd ’u ’Zldh, p. 217.

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The unity of the human race that is both made possible and mandated by the Covenant, as Shoghi Effendi has explained, “implies the establishment of a world commonwealth in Which all nations, races, creeds and classes are closely and permanently united, and in Which the autonomy of its state members and the personal freedom and initiative of the individuals that compose them are definitely and completely safeguarded.” 84

A Universal Moral Community

It has been argued here that the foundations of civil society are themselves religious, that the structures and principles of law, order, and governance are dependent upon a world View Which locates the purpose of life in a transcendent spiritual destiny that is realized in the idea of the eternal Covenant, and Which entails a particular conception of human freedom as sacred. Like freedom, tolerance is not a secular, but a religious idea. The dignity of all humans, from Which human rights arise, is a religious concept and depends upon a definition of human nature as spiritual in essence. Rej ecting the notion that “an innate sense of human dignity Will prevent man from committing evil actions and insure his spiritual and material perfection,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá states: “if we ponder the lessons of history it Will become evident that this very sense of honor and dignity is itself one of the bounties deriving from the instructions of the Prophets of God,” and is instilled only by education.85

The duty to respect each person’s dignity, that is, as tolerance or “civility,” is itself dependent upon “piety” as reverence for a higher authority to Which one is accountable.86 It is piety that both justifies and commands tolerance as a duty Which is inextricable from righteousness. Baha’u’llah writes:

The heaven of true understanding shineth resplendent With the light of two luminaries: tolerance and righteousness.

O my friend! Vast oceans lie enshrined Within this brief saying. Blessed are they Who appreciate its value, drink deep therefrom and grasp its meaning, and woe betide the heedless.. ..

84. Shoghi Effendi, World Order ofBahd ’u ’Zldh, p. 203. 85. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Secret ofDivine Civilization, p. 97—98. 86. See Selznick, Moral Commonwealth, ch. 14.

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He goes on to recount: “At present the light of reconciliation is dimmed in most countries and its radiance extinguished While the fire of strife and disorder hath been kindled and is blazing fiercely,” and then He delivers a warning against committing injustice and tyranny against people because of their religion, specifically in reference to the rise of anti—Semitism in Europe. Significantly, it is “two great powers Who regard themselves as the founders and leaders of civilization and the framers Of constitutions” Who “have risen up against the followers of the faith associated With Him Who conversed With God [M0ses].”87 Clearly secular civilization and even constitutions are not sufficient to guarantee basic human rights.

The protection of tolerance depends upon having an order in Which unity is based upon guiding principles anchored in a spiritual View.88 These alone enable us to determine the “constructive limits of freedom” that are essential if tolerance itself is not to be exploited for purposes of domination. Only spiritual principles enable us to answer the question, “Where does freedom limit our possibilities for progress, and Where do limits free us to thrive?”89

An important feature of the divine Covenant in history has always been its power of renewal, through Which guiding norms can be adapted to the requirements of the times, in light of the overall goal of the advancement of civilization. Today the critical requirement of the times is the consciousness of the oneness and wholeness of humanity. It is this concept Which provides the perspective from Which socia1 discourse can be rescued from sterile

87. Bahá’u’lláh, Tablets ofBahd ’u 'Zldh, p. 170.

88. See Glenn Tinder, T olerance: T award a New Civility (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976), pp. 152—58. A Vital Bahá’í principle, articulated by Shoghi Effendi, is that “Unlike the nations and peoples of the earth, be they of the East or of the West, democratic 0r authoritarian, Who either ignore, trample upon, or extirpate, the racial, religious, or political minorities Within the sphere of their jurisdiction, every organized community enlisted under the banner of Bahá’u’lláh should feel it to be its first and inescapable obligation to nurture, encourage, and safeguard eveiy minority belonging to any faith, race, Class, or nation Within it.” (T he Advent of Divine Justice [Wilmettez Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1990], p. 35).

89. Universal House of Justice, Individual Rights and Freedoms, p. 8.

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contentious polarities, reconciling and integrating the necessary aspects of unity and diversity—equality and equity, rights and responsibilities, freedom and limits, individual and community.

But the current deification of difference for its own sake, the ideology of individualism and particularism, and its consequent aggressive anti—universalism, are all forms of mistaking the illness of the age—disunity—for normalcy. The danger is that a retreat inward t0 particularism (With the competition and adversarial struggle that implies) only exacerbates the problem and draws us away from the solution. The narrowing of the moral community to those most like oneself is a recipe for disaster, because it Vitiates those conditions that foster respect for others and creates instead exactly the conditions that justify indifference to the suffering of others, prejudice, hostility, and violent conflict.90

To consider unity as the core truth of humankind is not to advocate a vague abstraction or a stifling notion of uniformity, but to stress the relationship of diverse parts to one another in a complex interdependent system. In contrast, When atomistic difference is Viewed as the core truth, relationship is precluded; indeed, such concepts as equality, and even the very idea of universal human rights, become incoherent the more the idea of radical diversity is pressed, for such ideas as equality and human rights cannot be invoked Without appealing to principles With universal validity, and Without tacitly referring to a higher—order category in Which the two entities being contrasted can be recognized as two kinds of one thing. The exclusion, in secular theories, of the possibility of a transcendent basis for a sense of human unity marks the limit of those theories to provide any integrating principle or framework for human community beyond criteria of shared material conditions such as location, kinship, class, and culture.

Yet even some Who stress the urgency of locating shared human values find that proj ect confounded by the fact of diversity in the existing communities of humankind.91 As philosopher Paul

90. See Samuel P. Oliner and Pearl M. Oliner, The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers ofJews in Nazi Europe (New York: Free Press, 1988).

91. See Sissela Bok, Common Values (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995).

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Gomberg argues, a universal morality must be grounded in the possibility of universal community, and this is dependent upon a universal identity. Only such an identity can provide a more inclusive perspective than that of “parochial moralities” Which confine the scope of obligation to the group.92 As long as people’s identities are formed With reference to small groups, that identity Will determine the limits of their moral community and conception of justice. But there is no merely rational way to climb out Of that impasse. Something else, beyond reason and enlightened self—interest, must create a larger sense of identity With others Who are very different. The only possible source of such an identity, and consequently of global community, must be a spiritual one: only the spirit of transcending love has the power to unite people Who are dissimilar in material conditions and background.

Baha’u’llah’s charter for world order offers to the human civilizing process, at this critical moment in history, the renewal of the society—building power of the great Covenant. It is the transcendent principle implicit in the divine Covenant that has always been the agency of spiritual and social development, enabling the passage to each new stage in the history of the cumulative integration of human society. The Covenant is the fulcrum on Which human Vision is lifted to new heights of unity, Where the moral community, previously confined to those Who are akin, is expanded to embrace, integrate, and unify formerly contending peoples and kindreds into a single polity.

That Vision is expressed in the words of Shoghi Effendi:

The Faith of Baha’u’flah has assimilated, by virtue of its creative, its regulative and ennobling energies, the varied races, nationalities, ereeds and classes that have sought its shadow, and have pledged unswerving fealty to its cause. It has changed the hearts of its adherents, burned away their prejudices, stilled their passions, exalted their conceptions, ennobled their 1110tives, coordinated their efforts, and transformed their outlook. While preserving their patriotism and safeguarding their lesser loyalties, it has made them lovers of mankind, and the determined

92. Paul Gomberg, “Universalism and Optimism,” Ethics 104 (1994): 536—57.

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upholders of its best and truest interests. While maintaining intact their belief in the Divine origin of their respective religions, it has enabled them to Visualize the underlying purpose of these religions, to discover their merits, to recognize their sequence, their interdependence, their wholeness and unity, and to acknowledge the bond that vitally links them to itself. This universal, this transcending love Which the followers of the Bahá’í Faith feel for their fellow—men, of whatever race, creed, class or nation, is...both spontaneous and genuine. They Whose hearts are warmed by the energizing influence of God’s creative love cherish His creatures for His sake, and recognize in every human face a sign of His reflected glory.

Of such men and women it may be truly said that to them “every foreign land is a fatherland, and every fatherland a foreign land.” For their citizenship, it must be remembered, is in the Kingdom of Bahá’u’lláh.93

93. Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 197—98.

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