Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus (Hinges of History) (36 page)

But it is also true that the West could never have realized some of its most cherished values without the process of
secularization. The separation of church and state was achieved in the teeth of virulent Christian opposition, as was free speech, universal suffrage, tolerance, and many other values we would not be without. That these values flow from the subterranean river of authentic Christian tradition points up, once more, the paradoxical validity of the distinctions Jesus made between the religious establishment and true religious spirit.

United Nations headquarters in New York bears on its facade the great antiwar quotation from the prophet
Isaiah: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears
into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” But this does not mean that Jews, Christians, and Muslims—these Peoples of the Book to whom the quotation should be most meaningful—are the world’s most committed proponents of peace. The UN’s magnificent milestone, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, grew out of the twentieth century’s European wars, to be sure, but also out of the subterranean river of Western values—to such an extent that much of its language and form are modeled on the American Declaration of Independence. Mankind’s most effective check on the Alexanders and the Caesars, the Universal Declaration could have issued only from Judeo-Christian sources (to which non-Western tyrants everywhere give witness when they take exception to the declaration for espousing values not “indigenous” to their cultures). Though it is only a weapon of words, it is also a never-failing font for raising consciousness worldwide, and it stands as an unassailable intellectual (and even emotional) bulwark against political cruelty in all its many forms. But the fact that it is obviously founded on Gospel values does not mean that we should look to Christian forces to uphold the declaration.

The Western values of individual destiny, hope for the future, and
justice for all began in the world of the Jews, the inventors of the West. These values were then elaborated into an interpersonal tradition, which holds freedom and kindness in tension and continues to evolve as the Spiritual Story of the West. But the West has become the world; and this river of Judeo-Christian values is now accessible to all, and everyone can drink from its life-giving stream. If we find shining examples of true Christian spirit in the lives of people like George
Fox and Mother Teresa, we find equally compelling examples of the opposite in such contemporary “Christians” as the blood-soaked butchers of Rwanda and Serbia. Far more impressive than most Jewish or Christian lives are the examples of a Muslim economist like
Mohammed Yunus, who has created the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which pioneered the financing of businesses run by women too poor to offer collateral, or a Buddhist like the Burmese opposition leader
Aung San Suu Kyi, who has sacrificed a normal family life and puts her own life on the line daily for the sake of wresting freedom of speech and assembly from the fascist dictatorship of Myanmar.
Kindness and care for one’s fellow man, like the actions of the Good Samaritan, cannot be ascribed to one group of people more than another.

Does this then leave us with a spiritual tradition that has become so universalized that it may be claimed by anyone but can no longer boast any characteristic proponents?

W
ITH
THE
FRIGHTENED
WOMEN
of Jerusalem, we have stood on Calvary, where so many of the building blocks of our world were hewn—where even opposition to the death penalty began. With the children of Rome, we have wandered over the Janiculum and, in so doing, have reacquainted ourselves with our own ancient history—but in a freer, kinder world than the ancient Romans could ever have known. Let us now descend to the streets of
Trastevere and ask once more the question Did the life and death of Jesus make any difference—to the world and to Trastevere?

The history of the West is too enormous, eclectic, and brutal for anyone to claim to discern a line of spiritual development
running from Calvary to the present. To the Jews, who invented processive history, there is nothing inevitable about progress, for the future always depends upon the choices for good or ill made by individuals and communities in the present moment. We can sometimes, however, if we take into account large enough units of history, spot certain trends. The trends toward social
justice, human rights, and political peace, though always being disrupted and pushed back, appear to have made undeniable advances. It is hard to imagine international organizations like the United Nations, the World Court, and Amnesty International existing in earlier times. And though war and injustice continue to rage, we have at last found words to describe and condemn these oppressions, rather than praise them as we might once have been tempted to do. Such trends, it seems to me, are well summed up in the words of the finely balanced classical historian
Donald Kagan at the end of his monumental study of ancient and modern war,
On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace:

It is this enormous shift in consciousness, the origin of which Kagan, a secular American Jew, rightly locates in the
teachings of Jesus, that could save the children of the Janiculum and the Western world from the wars that wounded and killed the generations before them right through the hideous “world wars” of the twentieth century. The shift was long in coming, and has come, like many others—from abolition to labor relations, from suffrage to tolerance—only after centuries of struggle. Nor are any of these struggles won conclusively. There are still, for instance, pockets of
slavery in the world; and even in the West, there remain abundant labor exploitation, the unjust incarceration of minorities, the demonization of immigrants, and the continuing sufferings of the poor. The Balkan peoples have awakened from their extended Soviet sleep as people of the nineteenth century, clutching their undying ethnic hatreds while living in the twenty-first. But everywhere the Christian value system makes demands unknown in earlier ages. Even in the extremities of the West—in Northern Ireland, for instance, and in Israel—the pressure to make peace is quite unlike anything the Greeks or Romans or even the Elizabethans could have imagined.

In none of these arenas would any but a madman be willing to abandon the gains the West has made and go backward even by a century or two into the past. Far beyond the West, we watch those who struggle for the freedoms we enjoy and wonder where they get their courage. But, says Yuan Zhiming, one of the Chinese intellectuals who supported the students of Tiananmen Square, “
Democracy is not merely an institution nor simply a concept, but a profound structure of faith.” We must consider that Christianity’s “initial thrust” has hurled
“acts and ideas” not only “across the centuries” but around the world.

So much for the world. What of
Trastevere?

At the foot of the Janiculum there sits an unimportant square, embracing a small collection of buildings, once a cloistered Renaissance convent, today the center of a worldwide movement, named after the old convent and called the
Community of Sant’Egidio. Given the glories of Trastevere, you could easily pass it by, thinking it just another pedestrian church unmentioned in your travel guide. This is the heart of an ecumenical community of laypeople, founded in 1968 by a handful of Roman high school students, who decided during that year of student uprisings throughout Western Europe that they, too, wanted to do something revolutionary, something that would have permanent effect, not something that would vanish without trace. They wished to live in Rome as the early Christians had lived there.

They began to gather each night to pray together and read from the Bible, especially from the Gospel. They reflected on the Gospel and they did what the Gospel impelled them to do. That was thirty years ago. Today there are about ten thousand members of the community in Italy and a similar number beyond its borders, representatives on every continent and in most of the countries of the world. They do not live together; they have normal jobs and normal lives. They have only one slogan that I am aware of: “The Gospel and Freedom.” Though they gather to read the Gospel and pray together in small communities throughout the world, usually several nights each week, no member is obliged to attend anything. What has the Gospel impelled them to do? As I cannot describe the works
of each community, I will tell you about the works of the original community, which gathers each night for prayer in this ancient quarter of Trastevere, the same quarter where first-century Christianity gained its first Roman foothold.

Their church is filled to capacity, often to bursting. Though the founders are now in their late forties, the average age of the congregation seems about thirty, so the community continues to gather strength from fresh recruits. The prayer is the most beautiful I have ever heard, modeled on the sonorous chant of the Russian church and sung from the gut with reverence and feeling. Each night they choose a theme: on Monday night, for instance, there is “Prayer with the Poor,” on Wednesday “Prayer with the Saints,” on Friday “Prayer at the Foot of the Cross.” On Friday night, they sing:

They sing this three times with plangent conviction, as if to remind themselves of all those who have lost a child or a beloved or been themselves lost in the overwhelming tides of life and history. The darkness of the church is dramatically illuminated
by icons, especially a riveting icon of Christ. There is a quiet but pervasive sense of community; and following the half-hour service, people linger in the piazza outside to renew friendship and go off in small groups to dine together. Friendship is a profound experience for these people: they are true friends to one another, and they wish to be friends to the world.

There are more than a hundred satellite communities in and around Rome, engaged in various works. Some are communities of old people, some of poor working people, some of students. Each community tends to have its own coloration. The Trastevere community, which is made up mostly of middle-class professionals, sends out tutors to students in the poor communities. Each night in Trastevere fifteen hundred homeless people are fed, not on soup lines but at sit-down dinners, served with style and graciousness. Once a week fifteen hundred substantial bags of groceries are prepared and distributed. The sorting of the food into bags takes an assembly line of a dozen volunteers all evening. An identification sheet is started for everyone who comes to Sant’Egidio for help, so that the community may offer continuity of assistance, not just a handout. This assistance takes many forms—from helping resident aliens cut through bureaucratic red tape to the publication each Christmas of a colorful, easy-to-read handbook, titled
Dove Mangiare, Dormire e Lavarsi a Roma
(Where to Eat, Sleep, and Wash in Rome), a gift especially prized by the homeless. On Christmas afternoon, the ancient basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere opens its gates to a great feast for the poor, homeless, and elderly of Rome, hosted with true Italian generosity by the Community of Sant’Egidio. The Trastevere community runs three refuges for old people, two AIDS hospices, and a
home for abused and abandoned children. Its members have founded throughout the poor perimeter of the city many after-school programs for small children called
scuole popolari
, or “people’s schools,” where the children are taught the things they are seldom taught in state schools—not only reading but kindness. There are free language programs for immigrants, outreach programs for gypsies, and biweekly visits to prisoners, all organized by Sant’Egidio.