Article July 13, 1998 Issue

Return to civility

An interview with Yale law professor Stephen Carter

By Kim Shippey

In Recent Years, Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter has become especially well known for his books The Culture of Disbelief (1993) and Integrity (1996), which was the first in a series exploring elements of good character he feels we should all strive for.

Now comes Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy (Basic Books). Over breakfast in Boston one morning recently, Professor Carter talked with our News Editor, Kim Shippey, about some of the issues raised in his new book.

"I began the series with integrity," he explained, "because it's a virtue without which the others have no meaning. Integrity helps us understand what is right and do it, even when there is cost. Civility is next, because having developed integrity as a tool for creating our own moral selves, we must next develop tools for interacting with others.

A life without faith is a life without the most powerful language of sacrifice and aspiration the human race has ever known.

Stephen Carter, Civility

"With Civility I'm most interested in reaching what I think of as 'real' people," he said with a smile, "what my wife Enola calls people who have real jobs!—as distinct from 'intellectuals' who fancy themselves as somehow living a life of the mind. Most of the 'real' people I meet really care deeply about civility and want to do something about it. They're troubled by its [apparent] decline, or at least by the levels of incivility. They also see the connections that those intellectuals sometimes resist between, say, manners on the one hand and one's particular political program on the other."

Professor Carter suggests that most aspects of caring or not caring about others are linked to the idea of civility. "Some say we don't need more sermons, we need better policies. And this, I think, misses where most Americans are—or at least want to be—on these issues. Most of them are very religious people. Religion is real to them. Prayer is real to them. God is real to them. What they believe about God matters—it changes who they are. And the idea of helping people to understand their connection to something transcendent and what that connection demands of them, is something that for most people is a very appropriate and an understandable way of looking at the world."

People are never moved to go out and risk life and limb because they read a clever Op-Ed piece. What moves most people is their faith.

It concerns Professor Carter that among the institutions that should be giving people instruction on how to behave, the church too often surrenders its initiative to the marketplace. "The markets are fine if kept in their place," he says, "but the other institutions that should give us moral instruction are breaking down, and in many cases ceasing to exist. We've got to go beyond economically measurable ways of assessing people and their lives.

"The greatest bulwark against the tendency to have the market dominate everything is, or ought to be, religion. But so many religions are caught up in so many causes, if you will, on the left and the right, that they are forgetting their obligation to teach people what to value in their everyday lives.

"The church, to me, is the last institution that can stand up and say there's a different set of values—values of caring and concern and sacrifice for others—that are at least as important as those of the marketplace." Sadly, he adds, market pressures have reached even the churches, which are so desperate to fill seats that they don't want to preach anything that will make congregations uncomfortable.

"We're told the baby boomers are going back to church, but look how they're shopping around until they feel they have what they want! They're sort of going to church. All too often, they're going to church not to be challenged but rather to be made to feel good about what it is that they are already thinking and doing—or not doing."

"The way we express things really matters," says Professor Carter. " 'Love your neighbor' is so much more powerful than 'Do good deeds.' These almost ornate forms of language have enormous impact. They really touch us, or enable God to touch us. People are never moved to go out and risk life and limb because they read a clever article or Op-Ed piece on philosophy or public affairs. That may be persuasive. But what moves most people is their faith. And faith is not just language. It has a power of its own that touches the soul. It can touch even those who are not particularly religious.

Civility creates not merely a negative duty not to do harm, but an affirmative duty to do good.

Stephen Carter, Civility

"Many people care about this issue of civility," concludes Professor Carter. "They are learning not simply how to treat others, but how they themselves should behave. They are going back to churches and synagogues, and are searching for a connection to a God who lives beyond the material world. What a tragedy it would be if we let all that energy pass!"

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