Book Review: "The Case For Civility"

Our world is changing at breakneck speed and much of the change is driven by social media. As I write this Hosni Mubarak has been forced to resign as president of Egypt because of the pressure from common people communicating through the social media and cell phone networks. What fills the power vacuum in Egypt remains to be seen and hopefully the new government will stand up for all its citizens, including a sizable minority of Coptic Christians. New governments, in the last decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, may seem to be more democratic, but it may be as dangerous, or even more in the case of Iraq, to be a Christian in these countries today. And the problem does not only exist in these countries, but even in modern democracies like Canada and the United States, where Christians tend to be either marginalized or radicalized. How can people who look at the world in fundamentally different ways co-exist in society in a peaceful way that fosters community instead of breaking it down? This is the subject of a book I recently enjoyed by Os Guinness titled The Case For Civility.

I found the book very helpful in shaping my thoughts about how to think about the Christians role in society and culture. Typically, Christians have responded to our secular culture in one of two ways. Liberals, seeking to be inclusive, have embraced it and adapted their dogma so they can fit right in. Conservatives especially those in the religious right have attempted to change society to fit their beliefs, but often without much social conscience. And then there are the secularists who wish to deny any debate that has any basis in matters of faith. Os Guinness argues for a different approach. The titles of two chapters in the center of the book sum up his argument nicely. Chapter Four, Say No to the Sacred Public Square, argues that tying public policy to one distinct faith, like Christianity or Islam, is dangerous. One only needs to look to Afghanistan or Iraq to see what happens to faith minorities when public policy is tied too tightly to one faith. On the other hand it is also folly to divorce all discussion of religion from public policy as Guinness argues in Chapter Five, Say No to the Naked Public Square. What is needed is a cosmopolitan and civil public square as he argues in Chapter Six. In Canada and the United States we may not be burning heretics at the stake, as we have not completely forgotten  Servetus’s advice, when he said, “To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man”,  but neither have we completely embraced Milton’s  advice, “to let truth and falsehood grapple”.

Hopefully the framers of the new government in Egypt read The Case For Civility and consider its wisdom before we see another country fall victim to too tight a connection between religious fundamentalism and government policy.