Civility and the everyday world
Civility somehow signals an acceptance and indeed a certain embrace of the civitas: of human society in this world. On this score, many religious belief-systems and faiths are ambivalent. On the one hand, this world is seemingly, at least from a certain perspective, to be scorned, since it is tainted with sin or vice, and since ultimate salvation can only be found beyond this world. Conforming to “civilized” standards can therefore be seen as making a compromise and lowering the ultimate standards. Within most religions, those who suggest a relaxation of traditional mores or a more open attitude to other beliefs, are often accused by more conservative circles of entering into compromises with this world or, in other words, for being willing to sacrifice transcendent truth for worldly comfort and peace.
On the other hand, religions have to find their place in this world, and it is through action in this world that moral and religious ideals move from being mere theory to actual practice. Embracing and performing good deeds directed towards others, even the stranger, indeed, even the one totally outside the circle, is in most religious traditions seen as the epitome of moral virtue. In several religious belief-systems, finding God in this world, through the encounter with other living beings and in the mystery of the whole of creation (or being), summarizes a pious and at the same time ethical way of dealing with this world.
Being “civilized”, in the sense of acting within human civilization in a way that fosters good-will and peace, is thus highly consistent with being a religious believer or practitioner. It is in the tension between these two relationships of religion to the everyday world that much of the challenge of religion and civility comes to light. And it is here that the “critical” dimension is so important: how do we critically engage with our own norms as they are confronted with those of others?
Choices of pluralism
In societies where one has to live close together with people of totally different religious beliefs, the religious person is faced with three choices, to put it in very simple terms: (1) to withdraw from the community of others, at least in terms of religious practice, and thus compartmentalize one’s life into the religious and the secular, or shying totally away from the secular; (2) to attack the secular or non-religious by means of one’s religion, being in conflict (civic and spiritual, if not physical) with the “others”, the “out-groups”; or (3) to take from one’s religious tradition and beliefs those virtues and traits that embrace life with the other in this world: love of neighbor, altruism, respect, and empathy.
The latter, empathy, may be of special importance to “religious civility”: namely, the ability to recognize in the other’s beliefs the predicaments as well as values of one’s own, and to acknowledge a shared wish to protect and encourage the life of belief, arguably including even non-religious belief. The religious believer who wishes to live by the third choice, even if sometimes having to resort to aspects of the first, will often be in the position of being “critical” while fighting for “civility”, since regularly, traditional prejudices will have to be challenged and boundaries have to be crossed for the sake of displaying civility. Through such a display one hopes, of course, to manifest real respect of the other, hoping also through such civility and respect to elicit the same civility from the other toward oneself.
The challenge of civility
My conclusion is that Iselin Frydenlund’s development of “critical civility” as a virtue challenges religions at their very core: namely, how we are to be part of this world, and reconcile ourselves to pluralism and disagreement. For religion to be “civilized”, some of religion’s claim to represent the totally un-worldly, the totally other, must be given up or at least relativized. Many of us hope that it is through such an attitude that one can also actualize the core values of the world’s religious traditions and faiths.
Henrik Syse is senior researcher at PRIO
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