Many years ago, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go invit­ed Amartya Sen, who had recent­ly won a Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ics, to come and speak. He appeared beside Gary Beck­er, a dis­tin­guished pro­fes­sor of the Uni­ver­si­ty’s famed eco­nom­ic depart­ment, and an adher­ent to the “Chica­go School of Eco­nom­ics.” At one point, after the speech­es, a ques­tion was posed about how the two would define the role of eco­nom­ics in soci­ety. Beck­er gave what is prob­a­bly his stan­dard Econ 101 intro­duc­tion, explain­ing how eco­nom­ics stud­ies how ratio­nal human behav­ior influ­ences the aggre­gate behav­ior of mar­kets, etc. After sev­er­al min­utes of this, the ques­tion was posed to Sen. 

Eco­nom­ics is the study of how to erad­i­cate pover­ty. That at least, is what I remem­ber him say­ing. He may have con­tin­ued on after that, but he did­n’t have to say more. His study of devel­op­ment was not an abstract prob­lem of defin­ing and max­i­miz­ing util­i­ty. Eco­nom­ics was about help­ing people.

Econ­o­mist Brad DeLong reminds us that the word “ecu­meni­cal” shares a root with “eco­nom­ics” and “ecol­o­gy.” The root is oikos or home. “ ‘Ecu­meni­cal’ dia­logues,” DeLong writes, “are inside-the-house-dia­logues, dia­logues with peo­ple who you trust and like enough to invite into your house to warm them­selves by your fire and toast marsh­mal­lows. If a dia­logue is not ‘ecu­meni­cal’ but ‘inter­re­liglous’… well, you are say­ing that they’re not your friends, not peo­ple who you invite in to sit by the fire.”

That’s a com­ment direct­ed at a dis­cus­sion about whether evan­gel­i­cals will embrace Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor Mitt Rom­ney, a Mor­mon – that is, whether they will see includ­ing him in their dis­cus­sion as “ecu­meni­cal” or “inter­re­li­gious.” But the con­ver­sa­tion began by dis­cussing Pope Bene­dict XVI’s shift away from the ecu­meni­cal out­reach that his pre­de­ces­sor so nobly under­took, out­reach not just with­in the house­hold of Chris­t­ian faiths, but to Jews, Mus­lims, and many oth­er groups. 

Bill­mon argues that the Pope, in recent remarks quot­ing a the­olo­gian who said that Muham­mad brought only “evil and inhu­man” things to the world, did Osama bin Laden a sol­id favor. He points out that bin Laden’s strat­e­gy rests on polar­iz­ing the world, and pulling Mus­lims onto his side:

Any­thing that pro­motes or facil­i­tates this grand strat­e­gy helps Al Qae­da win. Any­thing that inhibits it — that pre­vents the Islam­ic world from polar­iz­ing into pro-West­ern and anti-West­ern camps — helps defeat bin Laden.

Ecu­meni­cism is bin Laden’s ene­my. See­ing the world as fun­da­men­tal­ly full of “them,” with a tiny core group of “us” is how he achieved what­ev­er suc­cess he’s gained.

This dis­tinc­tion, between those who see the world as fun­da­men­tal­ly “us-ver­sus-them” and those who look for ways to bring peo­ple togeth­er, gets to the heart of a lot of the debates we find in soci­ety. I think this divide encom­pass­es the “red-fam­i­ly/blue-fam­i­ly” divide that Doug Mud­er pro­pos­es as a sup­ple­ment or replace­ment for Lakof­f’s Strict Father/Nurturant Par­ent dichoto­my. We see it in debates between lib­er­al the­ol­o­gy and con­ser­v­a­tive the­ol­o­gy. Indeed, we see it in the dia­logue between Fran­cis Collins or Ken Miller and Richard Dawkins or Dr. Myers. 

Like any of these sorts of arche­typ­i­cal view­points, every­one has the capac­i­ty to enjoy both, to encour­age peo­ple they dis­agree with to come into their home and the ten­den­cy to want to keep cer­tain peo­ple out. We want a Strong Father to pro­tect the home (Mud­er’s “inher­it­ed oblig­a­tion fam­i­ly”) against out­siders, and we want a nur­tur­ing par­ent to wel­come new peo­ple in to Mud­er’s “nego­ti­at­ed oblig­a­tion fam­i­ly.” Amer­i­can vot­ers seem to want pro­tec­tion against dark-skinned peo­ple, whether immi­grants from the south or insur­gents in Iraq. George Bush appeals to that by wag­ing war in the Mid­dle East, but he’s pru­dent enough to hedge. Bush’s rhetoric about bring­ing democ­ra­cy to the Mid­dle East may seem hyp­o­crit­i­cal, but it is meant to appeal to our bet­ter angels, the part of our minds that want to wel­come peo­ple into our house­hold of democracy.

When we rec­og­nize this, a lot of con­flicts become less impor­tant. Slac­tivist’s dis­cus­sion of the evan­gel­i­cal per­spec­tive on Bib­li­cal inerran­cy fits neat­ly with­in this frame­work, his call for “evan­gel­i­cals … to approach scrip­ture with a bit more … Niebuhri­an humil­i­ty” is a call to treat peo­ple who dis­agree as friends, not as out­siders to be hat­ed or feared. 

These divi­sions have impor­tant con­se­quences, we care for, and feel eth­i­cal oblig­a­tions to, those who we con­sid­er part of our group, the ones we invite under our roof. Those we keep out­side, we feel less oblig­a­tion for. In 1948, Aldo Leopold argued that ethics had been expand­ing since time immemo­r­i­al, and that this expan­sion was nec­es­sary and appro­pri­ate for our envi­ron­men­tal future. Leopold’s A Sand Coun­ty Almanac is a clas­sic of nature writ­ing and eco­log­i­cal think­ing for many rea­sons, but his argu­ment still holds today. His claim was simple:

The first ethics dealt with the rela­tion between indi­vid­u­als; the Mosa­ic Deca­logue is an exam­ple. Lat­er accre­tions dealt with the rela­tion between the indi­vid­ual and soci­ety. The Gold­en Rule tries to inte­grate the indi­vid­ual to soci­ety, democ­ra­cy to inte­grate social orga­ni­za­tion to the individual.

There is as yet no eth­ic deal­ing with man’s rela­tion to land and to the ani­mals and plants which grow upon it. Land, like Odysseus’ slave-girls, is still prop­er­ty. The land rela­tion is still strict­ly eco­nom­ic, entail­ing priv­i­leges but no obligations.

“The exten­sion of ethics to this third ele­ment in human envi­ron­ment is,” he argued, “an eco­log­i­cal neces­si­ty.” We live in a home, we invite more and more peo­ple into that home. But unless we rec­og­nize that home, our oikos, itself as with­in our sphere of com­mon inter­est, we can­not pro­tect it.