Personal and public morality
4/14/1998 NOTE: A photograph of Phil Wogaman is available upon request. By Phil Wogaman* The President's recent difficulties have given rise to a good deal of moralizing. As a life-long Christian ethicist -- and as a pastor of the church the Clintons often attend -- I have taken more than passing notice.
Much of the media attention has not impressed me as being terribly profound. Sometimes it has even seemed a bit sanctimonious. But what I miss most of all is a sense of proportion. It is as though we can expect flawless behavior from others, and any flaw, or even an allegation of flaws, cancels out every other quality of character, leadership, and vision. And so the hunt is on to locate flaws.
I am most struck by the discussions of the relationships between personal and public morality. That is an old subject. Reinhold Niebuhr's 1932 book, Moral Man and Immoral Society, was an analysis of how people who are perfectly upright and "moral" in their personal behavior sometimes behave in very selfish ways in their business and political life. Personally, they can be very self-disciplined. They can be caring fathers and mothers and prone toward good deeds at the highly individualistic level. But at the same time they can pursue their self-interest aggressively, even ruthlessly in the institutions they belong to and support.
Later in life, Niebuhr remarked that sometimes the terms should be reversed. Sometimes society as a whole rises to a higher moral point than many of the individuals that compose it. For instance, civil rights laws embody a higher morality than the prejudices of many individuals.
The late John Bennett wisely observed that "the personal character of our leaders in public life is of great importance, but the primary emphasis should be placed upon integrity in the discharge of public responsibilities." That should not be taken as disregard for personal character for there can be a close relationship between personal character and public responsibility. But it should be a caution against a narrow conception of character and a disregard of public issues of enormous importance. Perhaps it can also be a caution against rushing to judgment on the basis of rumor and unproved allegations.
Amid the great national debate over morality, some have asked whether there are no moral absolutes any more. Surely to people of faith, there are indeed absolutes. God is certainly the absolute point of reference, and we are taught that love of God and our neighbor is the supreme principle. Everything else has to be a working out of these absolutes, and there surely is room for continuing debate. But when asked whether any person perfectly exemplifies the moral absolute, I can think of only one. And he was crucified.
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*Wogaman, pastor of Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington and seminary professor of Christian ethics, is the author of 13 books. He is a clergy member of the Baltimore-Washington United Methodist Annual (regional) Conference.
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