Oaths are small windows that let in a lot of light. Humans, being the promise-making, promise-breaking social animals we are, need something to bind us together and keep us true. For most of history such purposes have been served by God or by our idea of the sacred. But what happens when society lacks a sense of the sacred, or, like ours, disagrees whether the sacred is located on the inside (my conscience) or the outside (the divine)?
This is the tangle we are negotiating at the moment and, because oaths are so iconic, the negotiations are highly newsworthy. Thus, earlier this year we heard about the Girl Guides abandoning God. At the weekend, we read about proposals to lose the oath in court. And then this week, we learned that the Scouts are introducing a promise that leaves God out.
There is a straightforward response to all this, and then there is an interesting one. The straightforward one is to point out that since we live in an increasingly plural society, in which more people believe different things about different things, we should recognise and reflect this in our institutions. Thus, the right to swear an affirmation rather than an oath in court, and the Scouts’ decision to offer an alternative godless promise, are sensible and proportional responses to a shifting, complex cultural landscape. By contrast, the Guides’ blanket ban on a religious oath is not, but rather a depressing example of secularists imposing their beliefs on others (though, in all fairness, the Guiding case was not helped by the sheer, teeth-grinding banality of the promise they invented). Straightforwardly, then: if people believe different things, given them the choice.
The interesting response is to ask what happens if you aggregate this across society. What, now, binds us together. While “let people choose which of the oaths/ affirmations/ promises they want” is a reasonable response in these particular cases, choice is not the panacea that liberals, whether economic or social, believe it to be. “I want that one” is not the end of an argument, as every parent knows.
The problem comes in the fact that we are, as noted, social animals, for whom stable association is not an option, so much as a necessity. Stable association is predicated on long-term, common interest or commitment or perceived good to which relevant parties assent. They don’t have to agree on everything, just on that which is integral to their association. So long as they do that, they can agree to disagree on things that St Paul once termed adiaphora, or “things indifferent”.
Thus, the courts can get away with oaths and affirmations because the common commitment in the court room is truth telling. Oaths and affirmations are merely the means to that end. Similarly, the Scouts can get away with differing promises because they are not an exclusively, or confessional, religious organisation.
However, a singular emphasis on personal choice can end up dissolving not only the ‘things indifferent’ but pretty much everything else.
What, republicans rightly ask, about them? Are they to be excluded from the Scouts? In the words of a Republic spokesman, “No one should have to swear allegiance to the Queen or any unelected monarch in order to join a club.” Should the Scouts really insist on royal allegiance as essential to their identity?
How about those who think all talk of “honour” and “duty” and “Law” is just irredeemably old fashioned and singularly ill-suited to the 21st century? Why demand such anachronistic commitments in a modern organisation aimed at young people?
And, if we want to push things to extreme, what about the sincere postmodern philosopher, alert to the epistemic pitfalls of reality, called to give evidence in court? She doesn’t believe anything she could say is “the truth”, let alone whole or exclusive truth. Should she be permitted to declare, according to her conscience, that she will do her best to recall the truth in as far as her cognitive and linguistic faculties permit? Must we insist on such a philosophically naïve, perhaps even indefensible attitude to “the truth” in our courtrooms?
The example may be far-fetched but the point stands. Giving people the choice helps ease tensions and allows us to live well together. But at some point, you have to refuse people’s ‘choice’ and insist that for this institution or organisation to retain its integrity, it needs to draw a line in the sand; and if you don’t like that, it’s tough.
Choice is a means rather than an ends, a good modus vivendi but a pallid vision of the good life. Societies that don’t acknowledge the validity of conscience and personal choice end up becoming oppressive and destructive. But those that don’t acknowledge the validity of anything but end up not being societies at all.
Nick Spencer
