NONPROFITS AND THE ENDS OF THE WORLD
JON VAN TIL
It is commonly expected that nonprofits exist to do good in this world. Many provide important services; most facilitate engagement; some build valued enterprise or organize on the basis of faith.
When a catastrophe strikes, like the recent tsunami, we look to
nonprofits to respond heroically. The hungry
require food; the homeless need shelter; the social and economic bases of
ravaged communities must be rebuilt; the spiritual needs of those who have lost
kin and kind must be addressed.
But
what if the nonprofit finds itself pressured by the beliefs of its leaders and
members not to respond to crisis by taking a
helpful or ameliorative stance, but rather to celebrate, often in quiet,
the tragedies that so often engulf the victims of natural or man-made
calamities?
The
nonprofit community has been warned of this possibility by one of its own,
foundation president Bill Moyers, who recently noted
the widespread acceptance among Americans of “a fantastical theology concocted
in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate
passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the
imagination of millions of Americans.”
Moyers explains that this view, as popularized by contemporary best-selling
authors like Tim La Haye, holds that “once
A
favorite web site among those awaiting what the Bible calls the “ends of world”
offers a current “rapture index” that is now set at the level of “fasten your
seat belts” (http://www.raptureready.com/rap2.html Read on
This
columnist will leave readers to their own theological constructions, but Moyers does raise an issue of concern: How should those committed to the melioration
of human suffering orient themselves toward others who may eagerly anticipate
the coming of further suffering as a precursor of their own personal salvation? Are those enamored by thoughts of “rapture”
likely not only to stand by while others suffer, but also seek to speed up the
process of the eventual “end of days”?
The writer Jared Diamond, in his new book, Collapse, and his New Years Day op-ed in The New York Times, “The Ends of the World as We Know Them”, identifies two major ways in which previous societies have found themselves doomed to precipitous decline. Such societies contain “a built-in blueprint for failure if the elite insulates itself from the consequences of its actions” and also show an unwillingness to “to re-examine long-held core values, when conditions change and those values no longer make sense.”
Diamond asks:
“Could this happen in the
security patrols, and filled with people who drink bottled water, depend on
private pensions, and send their children to private schools. By doing these
things, they lose the motivation to support the police force, the municipal
water supply, Social Security and public schools. If conditions deteriorate too
much for poorer people, gates will not keep the rioters out. Rioters eventually
burned the palaces of Maya kings and tore down the statues of
Journalist
Thomas Frank, in his probing exploration What’s Wrong With
And so, in a time of cultural, political, social, and economic turbulence, where does that leave the nonprofit organization? Writing half a century ago, the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm dissected what he would continue to see as the workings of the “insane society”. The role of the third sector in times like ours, riven with self-doubt, fear, and crisis, is three-fold, Fromm asserted. Voluntary and nonprofit organizations should focus on:
1) “Doing away with the harmful separation between theoretical and practical knowledge” in our educational system, which should involve significant possibilities for adult education as well as a thorough recasting of approach at the elementary and secondary levels;
2) Supporting and extending the creation of “collective art,” the processes by which we “respond to the world with our senses in a meaningful, skilled, productive, active, shared way,” and
3) Welcoming the emergence of a new and “universalistic” religion in the years ahead, a religion which “would embrace the humanistic teachings common to all great religions…(and whose) emphasis would be on the practice of life, rather than doctrinal beliefs”
The third sector’s commitment to the development of universalistic values might begin with a
recognition that service, advocacy, social entrepreneurship and faith are often
linked, as illustrated by the work of
such successful nonprofits as Habitat for Humanity or Catholic Social Services,
or such liberal arts colleges like
Religious belief, however, is
always a two-edged sword. The 19th
century social philosopher Karl Marx famously observed that religion, in the crisis times of late capitalism, can become an “opiate of the
people.” Thomas Frank shows how, in
contemporary
FURTHER
Jared Diamond, “The Ends of
World as We Know Them.” New York Times,
Thomas Frank. What’s the Matter with
Erich Fromm,
The Sane Society.
Bill Moyers, “On
Pitirim
A. Sorokin, The
Crisis of Our Age.
Jon Van Til, Growing Civil Society.
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