The Coming Social Renaissance: Restoring America's Civic and Moral Creed
by Don Eberly, exerpted from The Soul of Civil Society

America's Civic Vitality

The most important development at the beginning of the twenty-first century was the rediscovery of the nongovernmental sector of civil society, or as some call it, the voluntary or social sector. If the twentieth century was about the neglect, and even the systematic destruction of civil society through statist ideologies and destructive cultural influences, the twenty-first century may represent the era of its restoration.[1]

After decades of neglect, Americans are rediscovering that the social sector - consisting of families, neighborhoods, voluntary associations, and an endless variety of civic enterprises - is an essential and irreplaceable part of our democratic experiment. This sector performs thousands of essential functions in communities every day, from compassionate neighborly care, to maintaining public order and cleanliness, to meeting the recreational and social needs of residents.

Still more important than the practical functions of civil society is the role this sector plays in cultivating citizenship and generating values. Public in nature, though not governmental, the social sector provides public "space" where people learn through practice such essential democratic habits as trust, collaboration, and compromise.

Few things are more important to America's social order than the dynamic role voluntary associations and private charities have played in creating a stronger society. This social sector represents the most dynamic and unique force within the American system.

For one, it represents a peculiarly American channel for social action moral transformation. Many of the great social reform movements in his whether centering on moral uplift justice for women and children, or the eradication of poverty and suffering, were orchestrated by voluntary associations. At various periods in the nineteenth century, America witnessed an explosion in civic initiative which led to the creation of many of the charities that serve to this day.

The story of America's wide network of voluntary associations and activities has long been considered a principal source of America's distinctiveness and strength, as any number of foreign observers have noted over the course of American history. Few appreciate just how inseparable this civic vitality is from other American distinctions, such as the tradition of limited government and the separation of church and state. Historically in America, if civic work was to be done, it was to be done largely by individuals, not predominantly by government, and by an empowered religious laity, not merely by the ordained clerymen, of an official church who are hired to do this kind of thing, as was common in Europe.

In other words, civil society is part and parcel of who we are. It is a central feature of our history, a history which has been periodically renewed and appears to be entering a period of rebirth again in the early stages of the twenty-first century.


Evidence of Civic Renaissance

Fortunately, there are many signs at the beginning of the twenty-first century that the social sector is coming alive again, witnessed especially by a fresh outpouring of social entrepreneurship and civic reinvention. Increasingly, there is evidence of yet another fresh wave of charitable and civic initiative emerging to deliver an array of important goods, from crime watches to programs for poor youth to supplying food and shelter services for the hungry and homeless. There are five reasons why America may be on the verge of a social revival of Tocquevillian dimensions.

Lost Faith in Centralization. The first factor is the collapse of confidence in centralized systems of government, especially the welfare state as it has evolved since the New Deal, which is producing strong pressure for the devolution of policy, not merely downward toward local units of government but outward toward nongovernmental institutions in the community.

The relationship between civil society and the state is complex. While it is true that these sectors have always overlapped to some extent, the relationship between civil society and government has increasingly been characterized by competition and conflict, to the detriment of civil society. Civil society, with its quiet, voluntary ways, is no match for the taxing and regulating powers of a central state. Few doubt that the welfare state has supplanted private civic initiative to some extent. The debate is over the extent to which that displacement has occurred, and what should be done to revive civil society once it has been weakened.

The drive against the central welfare state in recent years has been driven by much more than concern over rising costs. It has been fueled by a desire to push back against the bureaucratization of America. The encroachment of trained and pedigreed "social service professionals" into nearly every corner of our society suffocates citizenship and discourages local nonprofessional care givers from getting involved in healing and renewing the lives of the poor.

What the return of interest in the social sector reflects is a repudiation of twentieth-century ideologies premised on grandiose dreams of national community and a loss of support for large, secular megastructures. What people long for today are real communities - local, particular, cohesive - as a bulwark against the uprooting forces of modernity and its impersonal structures.


The Quest for Values. The second factor is the search for values that registers consistently in public opinion polls. It is in communities, not through the large bureaucratic structures of modern society, where values must be recovered. This fits with a public which harbors a desire to see values renewed, but which is very doubtful that the work of moral renewal should be undertaken mostly by the state. In fact, it is the failure of society and culture to maintain ethical norms that causes many to turn to the state. As Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus have stated, "Mediating structures are the value-generating, value-maintaining agencies in society. Without them, values become another function of the megastructures, most notably the state."[2]

Much is lost when the mediating structures of neighborhood and family are bypassed and modern society becomes organized entirely around either the mechanism of the market or the state. For one, individuals are encouraged to see themselves, not as citizens of communities but as self-interested, rights-bearing consumers, a mentality which has contributed powerfully to the rise of modern individualism and social fragmentation.


Increased Volume of Volunteers. The third factor that points to the possibility of civic renewal is the renewed interest in volunteerism that is taking place across the entire age spectrum. America's retired population is healthier, more prosperous, and probably more active than any ever. Almost 110 million Americans now volunteer, averaging 3.5 hours per week, and that is likely to grow. The twenty-first century, according to forecasters, will yield a significant increase in volunteering by the retired and semiretired, filling such essential roles as mentoring and serving in local charities. A new phenomenon among middleagers called "half-timers" is taking shape in which entrepreneurs who have achieved financial success are trading in "money for meaning," according to the movement's leader, Texas entrepreneur Bob Buford. Numerous indicators of increased civic activism are also showing up on college campuses and among America's youth.


Inherited Wealth. Fourth, we are about to witness the largest intergenerational transfer of human wealth in history. Not only have the "baby boomers" created enormous amounts of new wealth, but for decades to come, they and their children will be the inheritors of the trillions of dollars represented by their parent's wealth.

The first five decades of the twenty-first century will see a transfer of at least $41 trillion. The availability of these two forms of wealth - new wealth and inherited wealth - will make unprecedented resources available for charitable investment. John Havens and Paul Schervish, the leading commentators on this phenomenon, estimate that $6 trillion will be available for charitable purposes between 1998 and 2052 as a result of this inherited wealth.[3]

These factors taken together are yielding predictions of a new "golden age of philanthropy." "Giving by Americans, individually and institutionally, is poised to grow at an astounding rate," predicts John Walters.[4] And that giving will likely generate new social ventures, ones which are results-oriented and highly entrepreneurial, just like the entrepreneurs who created the wealth in the first place. The new rich view civic endeavors much as they view venture-capital firms; they think in terms of "giving away money in the same way they made it - through small, flexible institutions, very focused, outcome-driven."[5]

The Social Sector as an Arena of Effective Action. Fifth, the social sector has suddenly taken on new credibility because it is perceived to be an arena of effective public action.

Poll after poll reveals that large majorities of the American people see conventional political action as synonymous with gridlock, excessive self-interest, and ineffectiveness. By contrast, many are searching for the means to improve society outside of conventional political involvement and are turning to the social sector, which is controlled by citizens and generally free of partisan taint.

Many observers have concluded that political disengagement must surely signal public indifference, but in reality, much of the passion and vision that was once directed toward political action is now frequently directed toward civic renewal. The driving impulse of these social sector initiatives is neither political power nor economic profit, but rather social improvement.

A new generation of civic activists is discovering the workings of social or civic capitalism. Chris Gates of the National Civic League describes it as turning from capital "P" politics to small "p" politics, focusing on small, local, and results-oriented forms of civic involvement. Says philanthropic expert John Walters, the world of private philanthropy is about to become "the most dynamic growth sector of domestic American life."[6]

The social sector increasingly has its own distinct identity, language, and dynamics. In many respects, the social sector is its own economy, with its own institutions, offering careers to a growing percentage of the nation's worleforce. Management guru Peter Drucker reports that over 800,000 new nonprofits have been created over the past thirty years. This trend has not slowed. The IRS reports that 45,000 new charities were created in 2000 alone.[7] Drucker states "the growth sector of a developed society in the twenty-first century is mostly unlikely to be business."[8]

Reflecting this trend is the growing number of professional schools that are providing degrees in nonprofit management and research into the workings of the nonprofit sector. Drucker calls for "principled, theory-based management" of this emerging social sector. Successful leadership in this sector, he says, could yield major results on the enormous problems facing the wortd.[9]

Also contributing to the rise of interest in the social sector is an explosion of academic research from across numerous social science fields focusing on the state of "social capital" in America. Magazines, journals, and newsletters serving the nonprofit sector are proliferating.

Interest in reviving the social sector has increasingly affected public debate. New terms, like "compassionate conservative," "communitarian," and the "civil society movement" have entered the public vernacular. Political consultant Dick Morris captures the political ramifications of the contest of ideas in this emerging field this way: Democrats own the public sector; Republicans own the private sector. But the voluntary sector - where the action is - is up for grabs. The party that makes the voluntary sector its own will acquire a lock on America's conscience." A more scholarly source, Michael Novak, the eminent American Enterprise Institute author, made a similar observation: "The American political party that best gives life and breath and amplitude to civil society will not only thrive in the twenty-first century. It will win popular gratitude and it will govern."

The recent embrace of a "civil society model" in public policy, which evaluates the success of policies in light of their impact on communities and which, to the greatest degree possible, relies on civic institutions to achieve public goods, is a welcome trend. In the end, more is at stake than the replacement of monopolistic government services with a pluralistic system of social service delivery, as vital as that is. These local civic networks become the incubators of democratic citizenship and habits. They are where we learn neighborly regard, practical civic problem-solving, and democratic values.


Civic Renewal and Moral Renewal

Ever since the term "civil society" entered the public debate in the mid-1990s, even informed observers have been confused over what exactly it means and where it is leading us. Although the concept of civil society has had a rich history in Western thought, it had fallen out of use until very recently.

The boundaries of the term are flexible, but everyone acknowledges that at a minimum they encompass the entire web of voluntary associations that dot our social landscape: families, neighborhoods, civic associations, charitable enterprises, and local networks of a thousand kinds. For some of us, civil society also embraces our national public philosophy and our culture - in other words, all of those intangible values and beliefs upon which democracy rests, as well as those very tangible institutions in which they are cultivated and sustained.

Voluntary associations are often referred to as "mediating structures" because they stand as a buffer between the individual and the large impersonal structures of the state and the economic market. Civil society is not an economic sphere where self-interested persons compete for advantage, nor is it generally understood as part of the political sphere where individuals and factions gather to gain power. Rather, civil society is a social sector where individuals are drawn together into horizontal relationships of trust and collaboration.

The weaker this layer of civic association, the stronger the vertical relationship of the individual and the state becomes - a relationship characterized not by voluntary action and cooperation, but by power, authority, and dependence. When civil society atrophies, the individual is left more and more isolated in a politicized and conflicted society in which all roads lead to the lawyer's office, to the courts, and to social agencies, which are increasingly called upon to exercise a custodial function over vulnerable individuals and fragile families.

The institutions of civil society are important, not only because they perform innumerable functions in countless locations every day, but also because they generate individual character and democratic habits. Through these institutions and networks, we become socialized as adult citizens, capable of being helpful, trustful, and respectful. Not surprisingly, many political theorists, most notably Alexis de Tocqueville, saw them as the basis of American greatness. If they weakened, he believed, American democracy would be imperiled.

No foreign observer deserves more credit for having bequeathed to us the capacity to understand the roots and requirements of our own democracy than Tocqueville. The civil society debate of the 1990s cannot be understood apart from the basic questions and doubts that Tocqueville injected into our collective consciousness during the mid-nineteenth century. Tocqueville was amazed by the power and vitality of American democracy, but was equally convinced that it contained seeds of its own corruption. Indeed, if there is any single concern that has animated today's civil society movement, it is the fear that American democracy has developed weaknesses.

But this discussion of civil society has its skeptics, who suspect the idea is vague and evasive, glossing over deeper and important ideological differences - perhaps intentionally. Some on the left has seen it as code for reaction, nostalgia, and conformity. Some on the right have seen it as perhaps too unaffirming of free markets and of the hard work of dismantling the welfare state and remoralizing the culture. Some critics complain that the entire civil society debate appears superficial and sentimental, offering inspiring themes but no concrete program for policymakers.

Perhaps the moment has arrived for a fresh evaluation. We would do well to follow the lead of two major national study groups that labored quietly at the end of the 1990s to address these issues of civil society and civic renewal. They regularly met, debated, sifted through research and polling data, and tried to make sense of all of the issues that the civil society debate has brought to the forefront: the loss of trust, the decline of civic participation, the weakening of core social institutions, and the erosion of public morality.

These two commissions were led by heavyweights and loaded with ideologically diverse scholars and public advocates of civic revival. One was the Pew-funded National Commission on Civic Renewal, cochaired by former U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett and former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, and directed by William Galston, a former policy adviser to President Clinton and arguably the nation's leading civil-society intellectual. The other commission was the Council on Civil Society, sponsored jointly by the University of Chicago Divinity School and the Institute for American Values, and cochaired by Jean Elshtain, the prolific author and commentator, and David Blankenhom, who is quickly emerging as one of the nation's most creative and formidable cultural reformers.

Both commissions released reports, which have circulated around the country and filled the nation's airwaves with debate. In many ways, the commissions were similar and addressed overlapping concerns. Each took as its starting point what I call the Paradox of American Progress: the dismaying fact that the United States is the world's undisputed military, economic, and technological leader, yet also leads the world in many categories of social pathology.

Each report confronts the myth that economic progress assures widespread social progress. Each emphasizes the importance of renewing the family, especially curbing divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing. Each strongly decries the state of America's media and entertainment culture. Each laments a possible decline in the civic spirit and its attendant virtues of civic trust and cooperation. Each speaks to the erosion of common moral norms and the rise of a corrupted form of individualism. And each offers a panoply of proposals for cleaning up the culture, fixing our institutions, and reinvigorating our public life. Although there are many similarities in the reports, they reflect two diverging streams of argument in the civil society debate with significantly different priorities. One wing seems mostly concerned about the civic life of the nation, the other mostly about the nation's culture and moral underpinnings.

The first wing was drawn into the debate through the provocative work of Harvard scholar Robert Putnam, especially his famous essay "Bowling Alone," in which he questioned whether Americans are still civic joiners. Putnam offered evidence - since widely challenged - that Americans were withdrawing from many mainstream civic associations and were essentially becoming isolated. Although the National Commission on Civic Renewal report addressed a wide range of moral and cultural topics as well as civic ones, its title, "A Nation of Spectators: How Civic Disengagement Weakens America and What We Can Do About It," places it squarely in the Putnam camp.

This wing of the civil society movement, which I call civic revivalists, appears to be interested mostly in promoting public work by individuals. This usually means civic work in furtherance of fairly conventional governmental objectives. Putnam's original research, which focused on regional governments in Italy, found that public support for government was far stronger when surrounded by strong civic communities. In other words, this group wants civic recovery, among other things, to temper the public's recent repudiation of govemment activism by splicing in an emphasis on civic localism. The overriding objective, in any event, is promoting civic works, not inspiring a renewal of ethics or cultural values.

One senses in this group a significant amount of discomfort with talk of morality, especially religion. Deliberations at the National Commission on Civic Renewal polarized repeatedly over the question of whether our society's deficit are mostly civic or mostly moral. Interestingly, although the final report was very balanced and nuanced, both William Bennett and Sam Nunn were decidedly in the cultural camp. A significant contingent of the civic restorationists responded with indignation over the possibility that the new civic conversation in America might include talk of moral values.

Civil society intellectuals of this school frequently go overboard in attempting to narrow the boundaries of debate around civic issues. I recently shared a platform with Benjamin Barber, a noted scholar from this camp, who stated emphatically, "What we don't need is moral character, but civic character. Our aim is democratic citizens; not the moral man." He added, "A society does not need moral truths; we need to live together."

Notice that he sought to equate moral truths with an implied threat of intolerance or moral majoritarianism. Barber's remarks are something of a bellwether of the philosophical impoverishment that still guides this debate in many quarters. His side allows that religion deserves a stronger voice in the public square because to insist otherwise is to marginalize it, but it resists the notion that our democratic experiment is grounded in moral truth or transcendence of even the thinnest kind. What is sufficient for a democracy, they say, is civic character, or in other words, a quickness to join. This is essentially civic secularism, and it largely misses the point.

If the public today has any preference for the basis of a reevaluation of American society, it points decidedly in the direction of moral values. According to Daniel Yankelovich, "Public distress about the state of our social morality has reached nearly universal proportions: 87 percent of the public fear that something is fundamentally wrong with America's moral condition." Sixty-seven percent of Americans believe their country is in a long-term moral decline. By a margin of 59 percent to 27 percent, Americans believe that "lack of morality" is a greater problem in the United States than "lack of economic opportunity."

The civic character argument is not unimportant: It represents a new point of potential convergence in our nation's public life. For example, politicians of both parties show a growing interest in empowering community-based charities. This is constructive as far as it goes, but it offers thin gruel for a nation looking for deeper transformation. How, one must ask, do gentle appeals to civic-mindedness help curb teen pregnancy, confront the crack epidemic, stop playground shootings, slow the vulgarization of American culture, or reverse the complete demoralization of our schools?

The public is quite clear on this. If some civic renewal advocates are dismayed by the discussion of moral reformation, many others see admonitions of civic engagement as inadequate and misplaced. The editors of my hometown newspaper scoffed at the Bennett-Nunn commission's suggestion that there's a failure of civic spirit, a response probably typical of many other small towns. Local folks in my central Pennsylvanian town, who like me are steeped in the gentle communitarianism of the Anabaptists or "plain people" of the area, simply do not understand what the fuss about civic decline is all about.

The habit of being "our brother's keeper" is deeply ingrained where I come from. An early morning fire recently destroyed the bedroom of a local farmhouse, leaving smoke damage throughout the entire dwelling. By sundown, fifty or so local volunteers - neighbors and relatives who showed up spontaneously, without prompting or moral admonishments by outsiders - had rid the house of every trace of smoke damage.

These folks would hoot at the thought that we Americans lack civic commitment. What really leaves them astonished is the sense of powerlessness they feel as they watch the bottom fall out of the nation's moral life, especially evidenced in the popular culture. As inconceivable as it is for these folks to not show up when the tragedy of fire or flood strikes, so, too, is the idea that our society would tolerate the loss of innocence in an increasingly toxic culture, wink at the problem of family collapse, and watch diffidently as unmarried mothers give birth to more than one-third of American children. How, they ask, can national leaders think that the civic spirit can be recaptured when we refuse to cultivate conscience among the young. Most importantly, they wonder, how can a nation advance by placing its faith in prosperity and civic participation alone.

The Council on Civil Society, which took this concern essentially as its starting point, stated its challenge boldly in the report's title: "A Call to Civil Society: Why Democracy Needs Moral Truths." "Our main challenge," it stated, "is to rediscover the existence of transmittable moral truth." Gently chiding those who argue that all we need is to spend more time volunteering, the report spotlighted "a deeper problem." American civic institutions are declining, it said, "because the moral ideas that fueled and formed them are losing their power to shape our behavior and unite us." "This weakening," it continued, "is closely connected to a range of social problems, from listless voting patterns to fragmenting families, from the coarsening of popular culture to expanding economic inequality."

The Council on Civil Society also issued a clarion call for civic renewal, but it concluded that America's civic crisis is primarily philosophical and moral. "Why would anyone want to participate in civic life in the first place? Why work to relieve suffering or achieve justice? Why tolerate dissent, why seek to persuade rather than overpower and rule? Even the most elementary civic act, such as voting, cannot be explained merely in terms of rational self-interest." The report argued that "the qualities necessary for self-governance are the results of certain moral ideas about the human person and the nature of the good life," and when the moral grounds of our existence is ignored, "all that is left is power."

A national consensus is beginning to emerge on certain key public concerns such as family disintegration and out-of-wedlock childbearing. Moreover, not-withstanding the reservations of some, religion is likely to have a stronger voice in the public square, both as a legitimate wellspring of personal values and as perhaps the richest source of renewed social capital in communities. It means that civil society is going to be a powerful place for people to gather and work in many cases transcending politics and ideology.

Most will rejoice to know that a majority of Americans now acknowledge that government, and especially the central government, may never again be embraced as the engine that drives American social progress, even though it will continue to carry heavy responsibilities in a host of areas. In the arena of civil society, a far more dynamic form of citizenship is being reborn, not one that concerns itself exclusively with casting a vote so that action can be taken in some distant legislature, but one that concerns itself with the improvement of living conditions in our neighborhoods.

In political terms, this means that a public philosophy is emerging that attempts to summon Americans toward greater and higher purposes than are usually invoked by simple appeals to self-interest and the economic bottom line. The values of citizenship, sacrifice, service to others, and the ethic of cooperation will once more gain strength.

The emergence of civil society as a framework for progress means that simplistic reliance on either the state or the market as mechanisms for social improvement will give way to deepening interest in creative ways to expand the social sector. The people long for relationships that last, human exchange that is trustworthy, institutions that function, and civic communities that rely firmly on life-enhancing values.

The stage is set for a far more promising and perhaps unexpected debate. That debate will center on the moral versus civic requirements of American citizenship. Was our constitution written for a moral and religious people, or was that merely a quaint sentiment which dominated during less enlightened times when we had fewer social protections against the risk of bad behavior? Will the recovery of civic character get us through the social storm, or will the renewal of our democratic experiment require more? This, it seems, is the question.

Notes

1. A portion of the present chapter appeared as "Civic Renewal vs. Moral Renewal," Policy Review 91 (September-October 1998). Permission to reproduce the article in its present modified form has been generously granted by the Heritage Foundation.

2. Peter L. Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, To Empower People: The Role of Me-
diating Structures in Public Policy (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute,
1977), 2.

3. John J. Havens and Paul G. Schervish, Millionaires and the Millennium: New Es-
timates of the Forthcoming Wealth Transfer and the Prospects for a Golden Age of Phi-
lanthropy (Boston: Social Welfare Research Institute, 1999), 1.

4. John P. Walters, 'The Coming Philanthropic Explosion," Philanthropy (Winter
1997): 2.

5. David Tgnatius. "How To Give Away Mountains of Money." Washington Post,
January 17, 1999, B7.

6. Walters, "Philanthropic Explosion," 2.

7. Reshma Memon Yaqub, "A Gift for Giving," Worth (December 2001).

8. Peter F. Drucker, "Management's New Paradigms," Forbes (October 5, 1998):
156.

9. Drucker. "Management's New Paradigms," 158.