[239.1] DISCERNING THE CHARACTER OF HOPE

No religion [or ideology] which is narrow and which cannot satisfy the test of reason will survive [a] coming reconstruction of society in which the values will have changed and in which character, not possession of wealth, title or birth, will be the test of merit. Mohandas Gandhi.

This is true. Except that the current revaluation we are undergoing -- through forms of globalism and localism over-determined by economic competitiveness -- may in fact be elevating riches, celebrity and power over all other posibilities of human becoming. In which case the character we need to have modelled for us also has to be one which can 'keep faith', remain patient, and recognise hope beyond neurosis. This is the calling of common, as opposed to sentimental, 'sainthood': if by the word 'saint' we mean a person (like Dorothy Day, say) who might simply help us to become clearer-sighted about what it means to be a companion of Jesus in the saeculum. On which see also Vitor Westhelle, 'Crises of Society, Crises of the Church: Toward an Eschatological Reading of the Saeculum,' in Communion, Community and Society: The Relevance of the Church, Wolfgang Greive, ed., (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation), pp. 97-109, 1998.

Nb. The CTBI booklet, in print but hard to obtain, is a local church resource I contributed to in 2001-2. Not much else around on that theme, sadly.

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