Christianity has lost three important guide wires: integrity, credibility and, most pressingly, civility, said Os Guinness, co-founder of The Trinity Forum. Guinness believes that Christians must abandon political bitterness and fulfill Jesus' command to love one another. His approach to the intractable differences among world religions is to create a "political framework of rights, responsibilities and respect to which all agree."
A great-great-great grandson of Arthur Guinness, the Dublin brewer and founder of the Guinness brewery, Guinness was born in China where his parents were missionaries during World War II. In childhood he witnessed the Communist takeover of China.
Guinness earned an undergraduate degree at the University of London and a doctorate in social sciences from Oriel College, Oxford. He has been a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and he has published more than 20 books, including "The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends on It." In 1991 he co-founded
The Trinity Forum, an organization that hosts forums for leaders in business and politics.
He spoke with our colleagues at Faith & Leadership.
Q: What is important about civility?
How we live with our deep differences is at stake with civility. It's the American way as described by James Madison, with no state church and no religious monopoly. The framers [of the U.S. Constitution] got religious liberty right with the First Amendment in 1791, long before they got race or women right.
However, the way the founders set the country up has been breaking down since the 1960s, or really since the Everson case in 1947. We have incessant cultural warring with, as Richard Neuhaus put it, the sacred public square on one side and the naked public square on the other. Both of the sides are well funded, both employ batteries of lawyers, both are nationally led and it's a disaster for America. What Neuhaus and others call the "civil public square" is a key to the American future; Christians should be champions of that civil public square.
Q: Is there a tension between civility and the prophetic role of the minister in the pulpit?
Misunderstandings surround the idea of civility; it's frequently mistaken for squeamishness about cultural differences, false tolerance or dinner-party etiquette. Classically, civility is a republican virtue, with a small "r," and a democratic necessity, with a small "d." It's the only way you can have a diverse society, freely but civilly, peacefully.
