A Politics of Ordinary Decency

I meant to blog on this a while back, but I see that Paul J. Griffiths’ “Orwell for Christians” from last month’s First Things is now online.

Griffiths argues that Orwell had a distinct moral epistemology that dovetails very closely with Catholic natural law theory, both formally (ordinary people are capable of perceiving moral truth) and substantively (in its judgments of certain actions as intrinsically evil). People whose ordinary decency is undistorted by some ideological commitment are perfectly capable of perceiving the evil of torture, oppression, abortion and other assaults on the dignity of the human person.

He suggests that Orwell can teach Christians to distrust political abstractions that are used to justify atrocities. Instead we should adopt a modest politics of “localist meliorism.” Griffiths argument is somewhat reminiscient of John Howard Yoder’s contention that Christians have no blueprint for a political utopia to offer, but can seek remedies for concrete injustices.