Dr Philip Boobbyer of the University of Kent gave these reflections at the AGM of The Oxford Group, held at the Initiatives of Change centre in London on 24 June 2010.
Initiatives of Change is best understood as what could be called a ‘prophetic tradition’. Yes it is a charity and organisation - and we are looking at legal, financial and structural issues today. But most profoundly it is a fellowship of people who seek to respond to the needs of the world in the light of absolute moral standards and the wisdom of the ‘still small voice’.
IofC has a tradition of trying to articulate a message for the world. During the Cold War, when it was called Moral Re-Armament, the movement argued that both East and West needed to look beyond selfish materialism to find a more inspired way of running the world; and in recent years, there has been much emphasis on how people of different religious backgrounds can change and co-operate with each other, without necessarily denying their differences.
The impulse to try to articulate a global message was also evident during the recent world tour by Rajmohan Gandhi, where we saw a call for a ‘coalition of conscience’, and for ethical living in public and private life. The word ‘conscience’ was prioritised because of its capacity to open up deep questions about our societies, and because it is a concept that speaks to people with different beliefs.
The word ‘conscience’ strikes a chord with me, because my work as a historian of Russia and the Cold War has involved studying why the concept of conscience became so important in the Soviet Union before the collapse of communism.
Here are three examples of how the idea of conscience was used:
(1) In her memoirs, Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, declared: ‘All I have is my conscience’. She meant I think that conscience and integrity are the very things that make us human.
(2) One of the characters in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s famous novel, The First Circle, Volodin, comes to believe that ‘we only have one conscience – and a crippled conscience is as irretrievable as a lost life’. It is a thought that reminds us of the relative fragility of our moral lives, and the ease with which we can get spiritually out of balance.
(3) One of the most famous Soviet human rights activists, Anatolii Marchenko, declared in an open letter in the late 1960s that it was the duty of people’s ‘human conscience’ to put a stop to crimes against humanity. People have a moral obligation to stand up against tyranny, he was saying.
Taken together, these examples illustrate how the concept of conscience can bring into focus our inner lives, and the spiritual values that make us human, while at the same time opening up discussion about external social needs: it links the inner and the outer, the private and public, and the intimate and the global in a creative way. And it is this linkage that IofC is typically concerned with.
‘Conscience’ is a not a panacea; appeals to conscience can easily become someone’s propaganda, or slogans for people to attack their opponents. And in the name of conscience, we can be driven by unhealthy impulses. We all know that. Yet it remains a challenge to the materialism and selfishness of our own time. By looking at things through the lens of conscience, and thereby challenging people to live in a more responsible way, IofC continues to have a global relevance and message.
IofC itself has internal as well as external challenges, and these are often felt at the ideological level. There is a tension between the fact that IofC is a faith-based movement, while at the same time being open to people of no faith. It is not an easy line to walk. It is vital for IofC not to lose sight of the idea that God has a plan for our lives and the world; that truth, expressed in different ways, is the baseline idea of the movement, and without it the work will fade away. But we should not forget that prophet voices sometimes come from outside faith communities. Solzhenitsyn, whom I quoted, was a religious man, Marchenko more secular, but both called on their leaders to listen to the voice of conscience in important ways.
So let us remain true to our religious roots, while being alert to the wisdom that comes from secular perspectives.
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