New Book Chastises Both Right and Left for Neglecting Moral Goodness

According to Dr. John Harris, the religious foundation of mainstream conservatism has a contempt for moral reason and Western tradition which makes it a very weak alternative to the Left's "do what you want" ethic. The Christian faith has in past centuries appealed to believers through an inner voice of personal responsibility. The new emphasis on inflexible Bible readings and end-of-the-world prophecy has created an atmosphere where very little sober self-discipline goes on.

Author John Harris argues in his new book, A Body Without Breath How Right and Left Have Both Stifled Moral Reason Within the Christian Faith, that American society is locked in a futile cycle of debates about religion. From the pledge of allegiance to public prayer to the content of schoolbooks, our most prickly disputes are sustained from both extremes by poorly examined assumptions. In fact, Harris maintains that the political Left and Right are competing for the same plot of material satisfaction. Both insist that sickness be cured and crime eliminated. The only difference is that one side funds behavior modification programs while the other submits itemized prayers along with its generous tithes."

Harris, a former professor of English who holds a doctorate in comparative literature and reads nine languages, is a surprising critic of liberalism, coming as he does from a highly academic past. Yet more surprising is his criticisms frequent return to the sexual revolution, where he claims that liberalism not only lost its moral will and sense of humility, but also learned to lie about love. With so many recent books protesting feminisms war against motherhood and the news medias slanders" of the right (for instance, Ann Coulters work of that name), these are not new themes taken separately. The linking of them into a causal chain, however, with the lapse of principled self-control at their origin, is quite fresh.

If such control comes from reason, it remains at least as spiritual to Harris as intellectual. He sees divine grace not in the mere ability to do good, but in the resolve to keep doing it without yielding to despair. He produces a great many Greek and Roman texts, as well as the sayings of Christ, to argue that the fusion of reason and hope in the Christian faith does not truncate our humanity, but fulfills it." This view has little resonance, of course, with the so-called Religious Right, which represents grace as a rapturous mystery without notable connection to works", common sense, or ordinary human history. To Harris, such exclusive hysteria" bears much of the blame for liberalisms overrunning of the academy and other intellectual circles. Every moral crisis," he protests of the Right, is met with a barrage of scriptural verses ripped from all context and unexamined for inner coherence or ambiguity." As a result, he insists, those who claim that their lives are founded on the Bible are every bit as self-indulgent and subjective in their habits as leftist free-thinkers who do what feels good and call it an act of conscience.

Predicting political movements is all but impossible, especially in these days of mass communication; but John Harris revives elements of the Western tradition that offer an appealing alternative to the latter twentieth centurys great deadlocks. Not Bible study versus Darwin, quilting, and condoms-but a morality of personal responsibility enjoying infinite forgiveness for failure, and an ethic of service to a power beyond this world of Disneyland social programs." Harris has dedicated his new career to creating such a movement. With fellow academics like Tom Bertonneau, he has founded The Center for Moral Reason to advance the Christian ethic and the Western tradition at a time when, he says, mainstream 'conservatism seeks to conserve nothing but profit margins, and the 'old-time religion is far more occupied with Armegeddon than with telling the truth or scorning luxury." A Spartan doctrine? So it sounds; but, he adds, human beings have an irrepressible need to serve something beyond themselves, and when it isnt the supremely good God, it can only be various debased, man-made idols. Of these, they must sooner or later grow sick."