麻豆社

Good morning. Many of the tributes to Archbishop Desmond Tutu have stressed that his politics were rooted in his spirituality. But his politics were also rooted in polity, that rarely used word which describes a political system in terms of its most basic aims. What is life for? How do we help human beings: individuals, communities, a whole nation, to find fulfilment? The polity which Desmond Tutu, promoted, Anglican as he was, had its roots in 16th century England, in the ferocious battles between different groups of Protestants, all arguing about what the Church of the English nation should be like. A scholarly priest, Richard Hooker, produced five densely argued books rather forbiddingly called The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. If you read political science you are almost bound to come across it, because it inspired figures like John Locke and Edmund Burke and still influences our political culture not least in the English regard for tolerance and fair play. Hooker, unlike some other Protestants of his time, had a firm belief in the authority of law, both in church and state. Law, for him, was not just something restrictive. It was the God-given way people were made ready for heaven by becoming more just, charitable and wise through the course of their earthly lives. He appealed to examples in nature to show how everything in the universe has some kind of purpose built into it, whether to follow the laws of physics or to reproduce itself, or to write books on philosophy or to stand for Parliament or to pray. As Hooker saw it humans are born primed to participate in the life of God and the point of law is to help us to do so. This means that rules matter. Life is not just about my individual choices, because the important thing about me is not my individuality but my humanity and it is my humanness which connects me to everyone else.

So it follows that laws which prevent people from fulfilling what they are for, laws which for any reason favour the few rather than the many, are simply unjust and it is right to overturn them. I don鈥檛 know whether Desmond Tutu studied Hooker, but he lived his polity: refusing to separate the life of the Church from that of the wider community and protesting vigorously when state law failed to support the aspirations of the majority. It also explains why he was unsparingly critical of corruption under majority rule. And why he was both forthright and relentlessly tolerant. Justice and forgiveness as Hooker patiently demonstrated over his five volumes, are at the same time the road to heaven and the basis of a good society on earth.