Papal message challenges some All-American assumptions FAITH AND REASON
With the official release of Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment, it’s clear that it will challenge several strains of thought prominent in the United States. That includes U.S. individualists who tend to support limited government and fewer environmental restrictions — Rush Limbaugh has already accused Francis of Marxism — and those who perceive a strong conflict between science and religion.
The pope’s entire case for caring for “our common home,” as he puts it, is moral. And the precise moral worldview being articulated — what might be called “communitarianism,” the idea that we’re all in it together — deeply challenges an individualistic value system that research suggests is quite prevalent in the United States. In several places in the text, the pope explicitly critiques “individualism.”
“In the particular case of the United States of America, which does have a strong individualistic trend, we will be challenged by the pope,” says Bill Patenaude, a Rhode Island-based Catholic commentator who writes the blog Catholic Ecology.
At the same time, the document represents a megamerger of religious faith and a vast amount of carefully researched scientific information — challenging the way that so many Americans have been conditioned to think about the relationship between science and religion.
In essence, the pope rolls science and faith into a comprehensive statement about our global, common responsibility to address the planet’s vulnerability. Let’s take the key points in turn:
AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM
The United States, says Dutch social psychologist and intercultural researcher Geert Hofstede, is “one of the most individualist ... cultures in the world.” Individualism, as defined by Hofstede, is “a preference for a loosely knit social framework in which individuals are expected to take care of only themselves and their immediate families.”
Hofstede isn’t the only one making such observations. The Pew Research Center noted recently that “Americans’ emphasis on individualism and work ethic stands out in surveys of people around the world.” That’s not to say that every American is a rugged individualist — just that this way of thinking is more prominent here than in many other nations, according to researchers.
There are many benefits to individualism in that it drives people to strive to succeed and allows them to choose their own paths and innovate in order to achieve
If we can overcome individualism, we will truly be able to develop a different lifestyle and bring about changes in society.”
Pope Francis
their goals. In the context of the pope’s encyclical, though, what matters is how such an outlook also helps to explain why we have such conflicts over collective environmental problems such as climate change. For instance, numerous studies have found strong links between manifestations of individualism — such as free-market beliefs and libertarian values — and the denial of global warming or the perception that it isn’t a very serious problem.
That includes the research of Yale law professor Dan Kahan, whose “cultural cognition” model divides people’s moral values along two axes — one running from very hierarchical to very egalitarian and the other from very individualistic to very communitarian. In this analysis, individualists are people who are much more likely to assent to statements such as: “It’s not the government’s business to try to protect people from themselves” and “It’s a mistake to ask society to help every person in need.”
Kahan’s model maps possible worldviews using four quadrants, based on where they lie on the hierarchical-egalitarian and individualistcommunitarian spectra, and then takes note of what kinds of issues people in the different quadrants tend to view as “high risk” and “low risk.”
In the context of U.S. politics, we’re used to watching hierarchical individualists (typically Republicans) and egalitarian communitarians (typically Democrats) clash along both moral axes. But the pope is a different blend from what we’re used to. “The Pope is hierarch communitarian,” Kahan says by email. “No doubt about that.” In this analysis, Francis lies in the top right quadrant of Kahan’s diagram. Yes, he’s pro-life, but he’s also an environmental activist.
The communitarian side lies at the heart of the pope’s current environmental endeavor and his call to address a global, collective problem — global warming — and to focus, in particular, on how it harms those who are most vulnerable.
“That’s very much where the climate problem has taken the environmental movement ... concern for the people who are affected by it but didn’t cause it,” says Evan Berry, a professor of philosophy and religion at American University. “Interestingly, those are the most basic concerns of Christian morality. This is Catholicism 101.”
It’s there throughout the encyclical. Francis criticizes “individualism” by name on several occasions. Here’s one example:
“Disinterested concern for others and the rejection of every form of self-centeredness and self-absorption, are essential if we truly wish to care for our brothers and sisters and for the natural environment. These attitudes also attune us to the moral imperative of assessing the impact of our every action and personal decision on the world around us. If we can overcome individualism, we will truly be able to develop a different lifestyle and bring about changes in society.”
So clearly, Francis is critiquing individualism — especially at its extremes.
SCIENCE, RELIGION IN CONFLICT
At the same time, from the Scopes trial to the stem cell dilemma, we are also a country that has seen major discord between science and religion — and has, thus, been conditioned to see them as in conflict.
While perceptions of conflict are especially focused on the teaching of evolution, they extend into matters of reproductive health and the environment, where U.S. evangelicals tend to be considerably less accepting of the science of climate change.
Pope Francis is having none of that. The encyclical contains a grand statement about the necessarily complementary relationship between science and faith. “Science and religion, with their distinctive approaches to understanding reality, can enter into an intense dialogue fruitful for both,” Francis writes.
“The catechism of the church is very clear on that,” Patenaude says. “Faith and reason are not opposed to one another. They are the two strands of the DNA of Catholic intellectual thought.”
Francis’s encyclical lives up to that merged identity — much in the way the pope himself does, with his chemistry background.
The heavy layering of science extends far beyond the climate issue. The encyclical is full of scientific content on diverse environmental issues, and sometimes it throws around highly technical concepts such as ocean acidification, “bioaccumulation” and “synthetic agrotoxins.”
So if you’re one of those who insists that science and religion are in conflict — or one of those who stokes that conflict — Francis presents a major challenge.
In sum, here we have a leader of one of the world’s dominant faiths articulating — and coming soon to the United States to articulate further — a vision in which science and faith are partners in a communal quest to protect the vulnerable from the rampant profit motive and exploitation of the Earth.
For U.S. individualists and science-religion battlers, that is serious cause for contemplation — which, perhaps most of all, is what Francis’s encyclical is asking of us.