Compassion and Solidarity: The Church for Others

by Gregory Baum

In the forthright style that has earned him a reputation for controversy, theologian Gregory Baum presents the new Faith and Justice movement in various churches — especially the Roman Catholic Church — together with the considerable opposition to it. He discusses why many Christians are becoming activists, turning their faith into deeds by working for the liberation of the poor. He argues for a new ecumenism, permitting a more representative opinion within the Church and, in a larger sense, for what he believes are the fundamentals of a "just society."

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction

112 pages, Paperback

First published May 26, 2011

About the author

Gerhard Albert Baum (1923–2017), better known as Gregory Baum, was a German-born Canadian priest and theologian in the Roman Catholic Church. He became known in North America and Europe in the 1960s for his work on ecumenism, interfaith dialogue, and the relationship between the Catholic Church and Jews. In the later 1960s, he went to the New School for Social Theory in New York and became a sociologist, which led to his work on creating a dialogue between classical sociology (Marx, Tocqueville, Durkheim, Toennies, Weber, etc.) and Christian theology.

In the 1970s, he welcomed the insights of the Theology of Liberation that came from Latin America and other societies. He also became interested in the work of Karl Mannheim and developed a program of ideology critique that he hoped would eliminate the ideological elements in religion, especially those elements that preached contempt for others and allowed Christians to remain unmoved by the suffering of the victims of social injustice and structural violence.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Baum continued his study into ideology critique by integrating the work of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. He connected the Frankfurt School's concept of "the end of innocent critique" with the Catholic Church's "preferential option for the poor". Both concepts extended his interest in ideology critique. Since Baum has always been interested in social ethics, he also studied the work of Karl Polanyi, with whom he sympathized greatly.

Reviews

[JC · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a friend who grew up in the United Church, is studying in a Catholic institution in Waterloo, but is working towards ordination in the Anglican Church. We met at an ecumenical faith group in Guelph a number of years ago, and since then, have enjoyed long conversations over baseball games quietly humming on a small television in the background or wandering around the grounds of Ignatius Jesuit Centre among contemplative art installations and small organic community farm plots. These have been very enjoyable conversations for me because I don’t have that many friends who enjoy discussing the trivial and esoteric details of theology with me. This friend of mine is fairly moderate politically. He’s involved in Green politics a lot in Guelph, but is very critical of socialism generally and has little patience for anything substantially influenced by the social theory of the Frankfurt School. So we have a lot of disagreements politically, but I can at least say for myself, am always learning new things around him and appreciate him deeply as an intellectual interlocutor of sorts (‘intellectual’ being a better descriptor of him than myself, haha).

Well this friend of mine is always passing along reading recommendations to me, and he knows I’m fairly interested in leftist politics, so one of his more recent suggestions was Gregory Baum. He has recommended Jacques Ellul and Gustavo Gutierrez in the past (both of whom I had some familiarity with beforehand), but I am admittedly a little suspicious of his curation of liberation theologians, as he seems to have more sympathy for Western academics involved with liberation theology (like Metz), than liberation theology actually coming out from the ‘Third World’ itself. Either way, I was not very familiar with Gregory Baum before his recommendation, nor aware of liberation theology in the context of Canada (which Baum was involved in, as he taught in Toronto and McGill during his years here).

I think this series of Massey Lectures is a very fascinating glance at Canadian liberation theology in the Reagan Era, just at the precipice of the Soviet Union's collapse. Baum is much less sympathetic to bic-C Communism and the Soviet Union than many other liberation theologians, and probably has a far more positive view of John Paul II than I would. (I have been binge-watching The Americans over the past couple of months and have rather enjoyed the episodes involving 'liberation theology' and the World Council of Churches). Of course, in the context of 21st century neoliberal austerity, JPII seems almost radical today, and of course there’s still lots for Baum to cherry pick from JPII's “Laborem exercens” encyclical. I of course am not catholic, and I would be out of place to offer my very unqualified opinions on catholic social teaching here, so I won’t go on much more about it. I will just mention two quotes from the final lecture that I think are worth contemplating. (I think the last of the five lectures was my favourite.) Baum says:

“…the power of government normally defends the inherited order. Yet the more powerful protector of the system is culture or, more correctly, mainstream culture. The state does not usually enforce the order of society against the will of the people. What happens rather is that mainstream culture creates in people certain values, norms, and expectations, which makes them accept the given system as a good thing. Culture legitimates the existing order.

That the dominant culture blesses and stabilizes the existing order is a theory accepted by sociologists from both the left and the right wing, from the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci to the conservative American sociologists Talcott Parsons and Peter Berger, who regard society as an acceptable equilibrium that deserves support.”

This is an emphasis of the Frankfurt School that I particularly appreciate, because I have seen the powerful effect religion has on people’s politics, both for good and bad. However, I don’t believe in cultural change simply for the sake of itself, but because I believe another world is possible, and I appreciate how explicitly Baum spells out such a conviction in his final Massey lecture:

“Ethics demands that a society organize itself in such a way that all its members participate in production and that all have their basic needs supplied… [The churches] are not naive, claiming that if we all become more generous or more loving than our economic problems will disappear. What they say instead is that we need structural change in the economic order and that this can be brought about only as we as a society opt for compassion and solidarity… What the church leaders are saying is that what we need are structural changes in the economic order, that might mean, for instance, worker ownership or community ownership or other alternative forms of economic development — and then the churchmen add that this political task can be achieved only through an ethical commitment to solidarity.”

Baum is fascinating writer, and I hope to read some more of his work. Beyond his engagement with the Frankfurt School, he mentions briefly some dialogues he had with Jewish thinkers in this lecture, but I know he's done a lot more on that ecumenical front and hope to read more about that when I have the chance.

[Robynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is from Baum's 1987 Massey Lectures. I was fascinated to read these lectures as a primary source document, written in the final years of the Cold War, as well as a contemporary commentary on the church universal. In many ways, Baum's commentary is eerily prophetic; this is especially the case with his commentary on the West's fixation with power capitalism. In many ways, the real tragedy is that, twenty-five years later, nothing seems to have changed. I appreciated Baum's call for a renewed,ecumenical response of the church universal to the plight of the poor and the weak (not like that isn't a two-thousand-year-old message). This must be, he argues, in direct contradiction to the church's historic support for social and political power. This is liberation theology from a Canadian perspective. Baum recognizes that "it is easier to write a daring position paper than to carry it out" (106) so offers few practical solutions. Nonetheless, it's a reminder that compassion and solidarity reside in the realm of the possible.

[Brian Hull · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We are so used to hearing the churches preach morality that we easily mishear their social message"

"We need structural change in the economic order...this can be brought about only as we as a society opt for compassion and solidarity."

These two quotes largely capture what Baum is saying in this book. It is a short, worthwhile read for those interested in re-envisioning the role of the church and theology in our society.

[Shahna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this way back in University. I honestly don't remember it very well. I should probably read it again.