Whatever Happened to ‘Good Will Toward Men’? : An Increasing Rising Civil Incivility

Earthlings, many of whom claim to hear angels’ songs of “peace on Earth, good will to men,” are helping make it an angelic good year.

Earthlings, beginning with people at the top in political power, are spreading ill will and helping make it a devil of a year.

How to make these two claims match?

In the private world, angels, long segregated in scriptures or sacred song, are now integrated into mainstream culture. Popular with old-style and New Age believers alike, their androgynous images on book covers help ensure best-sellerdom. Many people insist their personal guardian angels have been active.

In the public world, however, the figurative angels are either failing in their job or their messages go unheeded. Divine messengers--what “angels” means--are supposed to connect humans with the divine and with each other, usually in civil ways.

Civil? Bah and humbug. Whatever is going on with the divine, on the human scale, 1995 found people in civil life being uncivil as seldom before. Politicians, nasty enough in their 1994 races, are huddling with advisors to assure that 1996 will see new annals of deviltry. Reports suggest that few will restrain their advisors who, having lost all interest in truth or moderation, plan attack ads to destroy opponents.

The budget battles on Capitol Hill pull both sides onto ever-lower planes of rhetoric and ever-higher levels of ill will. Bring up abortion or homosexuality, and the partisans reject each others’ very humanity. Politicians, savage in attacks on each other, are savaged by the media. Angels, presumably assigned to be guardians of the polis, the human city where politics occurs, seem to have been caught off guard. Everyone seems free to transgress, since no one watches the boundaries of tastelessness and hatred alike.

Who says angels are on the side of civility? In scriptures, they are often avenging “angels of death,” bringers of harsh announcements and utterers of fierce commands. Holy wars became unholy because mortals claimed they were acting on angelic sanctions.

So religion today is not always for angelic refuge, and the religious in politics are often the worst demeaners. In some Baptist vs. Baptist battles, many Southern Baptists, in coalition with other militants, do more than demean. They demonize President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, two Bible-drenched Southern Baptists themselves. Both men know politics is a contact sport. But not until now have we found the word “demonization” connected with religious attacks on highest officials. Who is on the side of the angels?

Christmas angels in their original role, neither cute nor kitschy, were connected with ways that are civil--civil here suggesting that one person regards the other with respect and openness.

Think of the best-known appearance by angels, in Luke’s Christmas story. Their words are memorized by millions; heard by millions more among the half of all Americans who will worship this weekend, and believed by still millions more, say the pollsters. In malls and markets nationwide, citizens hear the angelic song, King James version-style: “on Earth peace, good will toward men.”

In the churches, scholarly preachers refine this, saying better translations of the Greek eudokia in the “good will” phrase suggest “peace to all in whom God delights.”

Never mind. Americans have learned to improvise their own meanings to connect with Christmas. And “good will” among people is the constant theme they have cherished. How are they doing?

On two sites, Americans engage in “Christmas wars.” One is public schools, always rickety shrines, where, in a winner-take-all spirit, some Christian majoritarians would like a monopoly for their songs. The other are court-house lawns, which some of the same monopolists want to convert into their own sanctuaries.

Otherwise, says Penne L. Restad in an engaging history, “Christmas in America,” citizens have used the season to praise generosity of spirit and often show it. They have also tried to understand other sorts of believers. The Jews, Muslims and Hindus who honor their own angels, and nonbelievers who may honor none, have largely tolerated each others’ observances and even absorbed some beliefs from their neighbors.

Nothing is more striking, says Restad, than “as secularization and an increased popular and legal recognition of religious pluralism have helped denude public life of a common religious experience,” Christmas has become “the last widely celebrated public recognition of the miraculous.”

We will need miracles if the theme of “good will among people” is to stand a chance in our “in your face” society. Meanwhile, radio talk shows, which once promised to bring different sorts of people into communication, have largely become cruel forums for the like-minded--especially when politics is involved. How, in such a climate, can expectations of good will trickle up to governmental leaders?

Not easily. If we could consult a messenger of God or the gods, we would hear that change comes only when great numbers of people bother to change. Pointing fingers at politicians makes for good scapegoating, but solves little.

Back in 1968, when President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he would not run again, it was said that while, heaven knows, Johnson may not have been the best president a people ever had, we Americans, sure as hell, were not the best people a president ever had.

Evidence is mixed, but we do expect that hateful speech among political candidates would decline, were it not that the public responds to the big lies now communicated by uncivil politicians. Get mean and get votes.

Evidence is emphatically unmixed, that violence in sports and entertainment satisfies impulses of enough of the public to make it marketable on TV and in movies. This season, “Killer Instinct” video games consume the interest of girls as much as boys. Violence in play and hatred in work transcend gender distinctions.

Why such absence of good will, in a season when hosts of angels are singing its blessings? Hosts of scholars might long confer without coming to agreement. Some say we citizens are bored; others, that the populace is cynical. But to be bored and cynical, one must have lost interest in the humanity and presence of other people, who are intrinsically interesting--there goes boredom--and offer much promise--there would go cynicism. How and why have we lost interest in humans who are “other?”

We seem to have gradually lost the ability to meet other sorts, face to face, in a grid of groups. Politicians find it easier to trash each other for the camera, where they do not have to look into the other’s eyes. They can purvey distorted images without experiencing the damage they inflict.

This is also true with ordinary citizens. A society is healthy when people take part in “criss-crossing.” When a political order is functioning, citizens participate in local, voluntary, citizen groups. They do not just huddle in cocoons of exclusivity.

Thus, in good times, a pro-creche-on-the-courthouse-lawn militant in the Rotary Club enjoys sustained contact with a Jew who shows deep personal hurt when one religion claims dominance in a multireligious society. Consequently, the aggressive one comes to understand why not to press all claims. Their interests web and they are less likely to be uncivil or tolerate verbal cruelty from their elected officials or special-interest groups.

It is possible to make too much of miracles and angels--especially in the political and other public orders. Abraham Lincoln, no stranger to hard-ball politics, brought things to a more practical plane. He spoke about “the better angels of our nature.” He was not being a theologian. He simply observed there were times when “our bonds of affection” and “the mystic chords of memory” could touch the citizenry.

In a public where private citizens and exclusive groups would again find their interests and acquaintanceships criss-crossing those of others, there would be a chance for those “better angels” to have their say and their songs. Odds are good that, like the old translations of an angel chorus in Luke’s gospel, they would sing again of “good will,” and the singers would demonstrate it. Given the current climate, that would be a real miracle.