3 - After Abraham
Summary
We have seen that the concept of faith relates to some of the most important debates of our day. Democratic politics is not just a matter of the endless detail of policy decisions. There is also “the vision thing”, and the concept of faith has a starring role here. The electorate is hungry to put its faith in a leader who is not just a competent manager, and decent enough; he should also seem to have faith in the future. If his faith is sufficiently strong, we seem to feel, then he might be able to foster a whole new era of belief in the common good. Maybe believing in the common good is so hard that we need an inspiring exemplar, to guide us. And we must also refer to faith when thinking through the crisis of global capitalism. Has capitalism been too faith based? Have we dangerously idealized the role of risk, and made money-making too ideologically sexy? How can we dampen this down, and try to convert faith in the markets to faith in the general good? Faith also plays a role, albeit a background one, in the discourse of psychological health. Why has disaffection grown, in a time of affluence? Do we have a collective attitude problem, rooted in an expectation that happiness is a natural right? Can we recover something of the old religious understanding of the psyche, as a naturally problematic entity that can be redeemed by adopting the right attitude – of radical positivity?
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- Faith , pp. 51 - 69Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2009