Response to Prof. Ernst Hirsch Ballin, ‘Christianity and the Future of
Christian Democracy. Salting politics with compassion’
Prof.dr. Theo de Wit
Thank you first of all, Professor, for your rich lecture. I have three
points that I would like to react on:
1. An author who writes and talks about ‘salting’ and ‘salty’ politics,
referring to Matthew 5 (‘ You are the salt of the earth’ ) is provoking
the listener to be alert on salty elements or suggestions in the words
of the speaker himself. Let us take the adjective ‘salty’ in the broad
sense of spicy, ‘pittig’ or ‘pikant’ in Dutch, tasty, but also
controversial, intended or unintended critical or ‘polemical’ , then
what the Germans call Unzeitgemäß, tegendraads in Dutch, and
further perhaps also future-oriented and prophetic.
I found several of such ‘salty’ elements in the lecture of prof. Hirsch
Ballin; for this moment, I mention four of them, of course, taking full
responsibility
a) The text is not a piece of apologetics when it treats Christiandemocratic politics, Christianity and the history of this religion
in general; on the contrary. Hirsch Ballin does not hesitate to
share with us his critical and self-critical reflections. For
example, often he warns against the temptation of
monopolizing values like respect and compassion; Christian
democratic politics, we hear, is not society’s unique ethical
guide; nor is being a Christian a priori the best or even the only
way to arrive at the humanistic view of man and society the
author is defending. Several times, we are invited to the humble
acknowledgement that people acting on behalf of the churches
often have ‘ trampled’ on the personalist principle and the
principle of solidary humanism; till the time of the
1
Enlightenment - the author quotes here Jonathan Israel’s
critical observation, ’virtually all churches explicitly sanctioned
ancient régime’s basic institutions on a daily basis’. There are
other examples.
b) Salty and critical is also what he tells us about migration in our
urbanized and globalizing societies. He makes the correct
observation that the causes of migration cannot simply be
separated between justified and good and dubious and bad –
and with this observation he is attacking a few decades of
migration politics in our country where we get used to endless
discussions about true and false migrants, the last category
polemically called fortune-seekers, ‘gelukszoekers’, in Dutch, as
if that is a criminal act. Hirsch Ballin describes most of these
people probably much more accurate as people ‘who make
tremendous efforts in the interest of their children’s future.‘
c) Salty is also his diagnosis of the growing presence of marketing
managers and media-advisors instead of ‘thinkers’ in our
political culture: their short-term biases, the transformation of
politicians in leaders who no longer know what they stand for
and in ‘political pleasers’ etc.
d) Salty, controversial and perhaps prophetic is, finally, what
Hirsch Ballin says about the political identity of his own
Christian Democratic Party, the Christen Democratisch Appèl.
(CDA) For him it is no longer evident that his party must stick to
his Christian name, to Christian symbols and to certain rituals at
his meetings. ‘I would not oppose such changes under all
circumstances’, he says, changes that can result in the
abandonment of this name etc. But he added to this: ‘I would
not recommend such a change under the present conditions‘,
especially the condition of ‘media-centric’ politics. Here is my
first question: under which circumstances would he be a
2
supporter of the transformation of his political party into a
secular identity and name, given the fact that e ‘media-centric’
political culture is probably here to stay?
2. For my second point I will focus on the famous dilemma of the
German lawyer Ernst Wolfgang Böckenförde, quoted by Hirsch
Ballin in a footnote: ‘The free, secular state has conditions that he
himself cannot guarantee.’ Der freiheitliche sakularisierte Staat
lebt von Voraussetzungen, die er selbst nicht garantieren kann.
That is to say, a free state is dependent on certain convictions, on
a certain pietas, as the Romans would say, first of all the pietas of
mutual respect, that cannot be object of obligation or legal
enforcement; if a state succumbs to the temptation of the
production or enforcement of these convictions, he loses his
character as a free state. This is, indeed, a severe dilemma,
especially because a majority can easily discriminate against an
outvoted minority, as Hirsch Ballin writes. And I would add:
minorities and groups who feel disrespected and unsafe in a state
will protest or even revolt against such a state, which will again
provoke repression, the obligation of certain convictions or at
least some sort of political correctness – the free state is thereby
undermining itself. In the last ten years we had, in our society and
in Dutch politics, signals of this dangerous or destructive dynamic.
When we demand from newcomers total assimilation, ‘to choose
for the Netherlands’, volledig voor Nederland kiezen, as several
politicians explicitly do, then, I think, politics is transgressing the
limits of a free state, because the state gets more and more in a
position to try to ‘create convictions’ or even to oblige and enforce
them. I would like to ask Professor Hirsch Ballin, where he himself
identifies the point where the state loses his character as a free
state.
3
3. The third and last point is, for me, the most fundamental and most
intriguing aspect of the lecture of Ernst Hirsch Ballin. When one does
a bit close reading of this text, you discover a specific and I would say
also very salty element in his definition of Christianity. Christianity,
we read, has essentially to do with ‘being aware’, being prepared to
be held responsible for your deeds and your omissions when
confronted by the existence and the needs of the other (18).
Christianity, that means the con-scientia of a ‘yardstick’, a yardstick
that is ‘not temporal’, he adds. In a text of a Jewish mystical Marxist,
Walter Benjamin, you can read that ‘for the Jews, every second is the
small portal, which the messiah can enter’.1 No room here for
ideologies of progress who can tranquillize us.
Or: in another metaphor in the text of Hirsch Ballin: every human
being ‘needs a mirror’, a ‘clear visible evidence of what someone
looks like and what needs to be brushed up’ (18). So - I translate now
taking responsibility on myself – a judgment is waiting, no, the
judgment is always there, the possible and actual judgment of the
other in his or her needs and existence. ‘There are always other
people’ (Er zijn altijd anderen), is the beautiful title of an interesting
book of an experienced politician from our green party, Herman
Meijer.2 The other, also the political other, is always other than we
can imagine, he or she can even disclose to be a big surprise, yes, to
be my enemy. And indeed, this ‘being aware’ is not a privilege of
Christians or Christian democrats; it may even be that they don’t live
it, don’t practice it anymore, that non-Christians or atheist people
take over the baton. These people are, in Hirsch Ballin’s theological
perspective, the ‘salt of the earth’ in the sense of the bible,
‘significant persons’, he writes, regardless of party membership (and
formal ‘religious membership’, I would add). And that is, he writes,
1
2
Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, Suhrkamp 1978, I, 704.
Herman Meyer, Er zijn altijd anderen, Skandalon, 2009
4
the only thing that will ‘count in the end’ – the eschatological end, I
suppose.
To elaborate on this point: a society that is faithful to the Jewish and
Christian heritage is a society that cherishes and keeps alive this
‘being aware’. The mass belief in a last judgment by a punishing or
wrathful God may be privatized or even dead and buried, as long as
this awareness is alive, the presence of a living God is assured. So, in
the end, we do not need a party with a Christian name – what we
need is the vitality of this awareness. The rest is esthetics, – but not
irrelevant because democratic politics is not only ethics but esthetics,
style and representation also, as my colleague Frank Ankersmit
explained very well in his book Aesthetic Politics.3 Politics is not
simply applied ethics; to be honest, I miss this aspect of politics a
little bit in Hirsch Ballins text.
My question: did I summarize the core of Professor Hirsch Ballin’s
theological-political identity well? If I did, perhaps in this identity we
can also find the source of his courageous opposition against populist
tendencies in our political landscape. Populist politicians are
collecting anger and resentment against the other, identifying the
other as obstacle of our happiness, of our full emancipation, our
rights, of our freedom, and framing and identifying a ‘we’ as victims
of the presence of the other. They generate a society of constant
mutual culpabilization and victimization, and - Hirsch Ballin did
foresee this very well a few years ago – that cannot end well.
But that is the reason we must, together with the ethical also defend
the esthetic dimension of our democracy. Populism, the Dutch
sociologist Willem Schinkel wrote, ‘constantly wants to unmask,
make visible: away with the backroom politics, transparency! Away
3
Frank Ankersmit, Aesthetic Politics. Political Philosophy Beyond Fact and Value, Stanford University Press,
California, 1996.
5
with the mask of political correctness, the people must – just as in
communism - be one with its representation.’ ‘But’, Schinkel asks,
‘when the demos or Volk is identical with its representation, what is
it else than something that sees only himself in the mirror, and sees
that it is good.’ 4 The other, according to Hirsch Ballin’s our ‘mirror’,
as we saw then, is dead, or, in a religious vocabulary: God is dead.
4
Willem Schinkel, ‘Voorbij de linkse biecht. Bij een boek van Herman Meijer’ (zie voetnoot 2) in: De Helling.
6