Introduction
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) is viewed by many as one of the most important Christian writers of the 20th century. George Grant (1918-1988) is considered to be one of the most significant public intellectuals in Canada in the latter half of the 20th century. Both Merton and Grant had an integrated vision of the faith journey that, judiciously so, threaded together a contemplative vision, life in the church and a prophetic and public commitment to the larger issues of peace and justice.
There are those who elevate the notions of contemplation and spirituality to the point in which spirituality and religion become, almost, enemies—the former is idealized, the latter demonized. There are those who ignore the deeper demands of the contemplative life, bury themselves in multiple church and parish activities and never enter the quieter and slower moving depths of the faith journey—it’s a case of the Mary-Martha, Martha and Mary dilemma—which should be prioritized and why? contemplation or action, action or contemplation? Then, there are those who attempt, always imperfectly and inadequately so, to live the contemplative journey within the religious framework of the church. Such an approach often ignores the broader and more comprehensive reality of public life that touches such perennial issues of justice and peace: economics, ecology, politics, social issues, militarism and culture are part of such realities. There are, of course, those who fragment the sacred and profane and reduce the issue of justice and peace, the hot button issues in the culture wars, to the secular realm—there are always tendencies, when this is done, to slip into the political ideology of the right, centre or left when defining, clarifying and acting on the larger and more significant issues of justice and peace. It should be noted at the outset that Merton and Grant had a highly integrated and holistic notion of peace and justice, hence to understand their thinking, such a perspective must be embraced.
The contemplative roots of peace and justice walk those committed to such a way of life into what G.M. Hopkins called the “inscape.” Merton was about to do his PHD on Hopkins when he decided to become a Cistercian monk, but the importance of the contemplative inner journey was front and centre for Merton. The tensions and clashes between the false and true self, false face and true face, ego and self-created interior warfare and could, if not handled well and wisely, rob a person of inner peace. The quest to live a just and peaceful life meant, therefore, going inward to order and educate desires. One of Grant’s earliest publications, “Philosophy” (1951), argued that Lady philosophy had to return to her contemplative moorings rather than playing mind games in the realms of logic, inductive and deductive reasoning. Grant, like Merton, knew that if there was not peace in the inward parts, there would not be a genuine justice in the public sphere. The inner inscape had to be discerningly faced, wheat sifted from chaff, dross burned from gold. Merton and Grant had lived with many an activist who held the banner of justice and peace high, but were not interiorly peaceful nor just and certainly not peaceful with those they differed with on controversial public issues.
The inner journey leads, inexorably so, to the outer and political dimensions of the contemplative way. There are those who reduce the meaning of peace and justice to war and peace, crime and punishment or wealth and poverty. There is much, much more to a mature understanding of peace and justice than such a narrow minded approach. If Justice and peace are to kiss and embrace, there must be a meeting of inscape and landscape, interior and exterior life—Merton and Grant were acutely aware that this is often not the case, and they, in their different ways, called for a more integrated notion of peace and justice. I will, in the remainder of this essay, explore and explain how this was the case in their prolific writings and prophetic lives.
Thomas Merton: American Prophet
Thomas Merton was acutely aware, as a young man, that a hyper activism was robbing one and all from a deeper quies. The drug of the vita activa had so come to dominate western thought and culture that most had become victims of their drivenness and desperate need to define identity and worth by a variety of fleeting and ephemeral goals and accomplishments. It was this unhinged and unbalanced view of life that, in many ways, guided, in principle, Merton to become a monk within the strict Cistercian order. Merton, naively assumed, the monastic life, if nothing else, was about a commitment to the vita contemplativa. Merton penned and published many a book, tract and booklet in the 1950s and 1960s on the monastic and Christian contemplative way (and the need to return to such a life style and way of being) as a countercultural corrective to the imperial demands of the vita activa. It was the sheer success of such books, reinforced by Merton’s commitment to the monastic way of life that won the hearts and minds of many.
Thomas Merton became, in the 1950s in the USA and beyond, the herald and prophet of a return to the contemplative roots and underpinning of the faith journey. Most simply assumed Merton would remain within such a calling and charism, but for Merton, the contemplative vocation was but the roots that must, in time, produce public and political, justice and peacemaking fruits. There were many that thought Merton had lost or forsaken his vocation as he pondered and wrote about the relationship of contemplation and action, meditation and public responsibility.
The late 1950s witnessed the emergence and birth of Merton as a political thinker—he could no more, in good conscience, remain the guilty bystander. The oppression that was occurring within the Pax Americana ethos (an updated version of the Pax Romana) in the midst of the Cold War raised the alert antennae of Merton. Peace without justice often legitimated and justified injustice and Merton was astutely aware of this graphic reality. Merton had encouraged a former novice and directee of his in the late 1950s, Ernesto Cardenal, to return to Nicaragua and struggle with his people to bring justice to a peace laden but unjust right wing political government (significantly supported by the USA). The civil rights movement was also gathering momentum in the late 1950s-early 1960s and the unjust pax that had existed for decades was being challenged by a variety of black movements. Merton could not be silent as such rallying cries took to front stage for a just peace or peace and justice. Merton wrote prolifically against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and the military industrial complex that was at the forefront of supporting both the war and the notion of a first strike nuclear position and policy against the communists. Merton did face the ire and opposition from some in his monastic and Roman Catholic communities, but he did have the support of the Peace Pope (John XXIII) who sent Merton the stole that he was consecrated in.
I have written in more length and depth about Merton’s journey as a peacemaker in my article, “Thomas Merton: Peacemaker” (Terrorism, Religion, and Global Peace: From Concepts to Praxis: Gorgias Press, 2012). Merton was quite aware that being only a peacemaker but not a seeker of justice could pander to peace through strength or law and order politics that justified oppression. But the quest for justice without both inward and outward peace would lead to conflict, violence and just another form of reactionary oppression. The living in the tension of being peaceful in a just way demanded a deeper inner discipline that worked its way out though advocacy, protest and formal politics. The principles of peace and justice, in short, had to move from thought to action and action took many forms---how to be active, in thought, word and deed as a dove in a just manner was close to Merton’s centre and core.
Most do not realize that Merton also had a serious interest and commitment to 1st Nations in a period of time when few did just as Merton was alert to the ecological crises that was becoming obvious in the 1960s: ISHI MEANS MAN: Essays on Native Americans (with a fine Foreward by Dorothy Day) was published in 1968 (all the essays had been written much earlier). Again, Merton was attuned to the plight of Native Americans, their unjust treatment, the oppressive peace that silenced them. Movements were afoot in the 1950s-1960s by Native Americans calling for a just peace and Merton, for one, heard the call. There is, of course, a close relationship between 1st Nations peoples and the land, and the turn by many Native Americans (and many other Americans such as Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Henry David Thoreau and Rachael Carson to name but a few) held Merton’s attention. There could be unjust peace in the land in which pollution poisoned water, soil and air, but justice demanded of the polluters an ethical constraint on a rapacious exploitation by large corporations.
It is impossible to follow the life journey of Thomas Merton without getting a sense of his commitment to living the difficult yet needful tension of living the contemplative and active life in a just and peaceful manner. The fact that Merton dipped his contemplative and ethical bucket in the Beatitudes with its knitting together of peace and justice (Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice—Blessed are the peacemakers) meant that all of Merton’s mature writings weave together, in a judicious and wise manner, the peace journey in a just way.
George Grant: Canadian Prophet
Thomas Merton was born in 1915, George Grant was born in 1918. This means both men lived through difficult and trying periods in North American and world history. Merton and Grant were prolific writers, both were concerned about the hawkish nature of the 20th century and both set the eyes of their minds, souls and imaginations on justice and peace. Merton tends to be better known, but those who live, move and have their being in Canada know George Grant well—he was the Canadian prophet of the mid-late 20th century in Canada. Sadly so, many Americans know American history well but know little about Canada and Canadian history even though Canada is their northern neighbour. Those who take the time to learn about the Canadian intellectual tradition will, in haste, hear about George Grant.
Grant was a prominent intellectual in Canada whose lectures and writings came to prominence in the 1950s (as did Merton’s). Grant’s many lectures on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) positioned him well to be the conscience and philosophic gadfly to the Canadian people. Some of Grant’s earliest publications such as Canada—An Introduction to a Nation (1943) and The Empire: Yes or No? (1945) made it abundantly clear that Grant, at core, was concerned about understanding and articulating the unique Canadian identity and how Canadians are not Americans or British even though Canadians have both peoples pressing in on them from all sides. Canadians have been known as peacemakers and citizens of the peaceable kingdom, but how did Grant understand, in the hot button issues of his time, the relationship of Canada to the waxing Pax Americana and the waning Pax Britannia? The answer to such a question takes us into Grant’s approach to the role of Canada (at a domestic and foreign policy level) as a just peacemaker.
Grant had been a pacifist in the 1930s and when in England in WWII, he worked in Bermondsey with those who were victims of German bombing. The end of WWII brought North America into the ideological Cold War and Grant was concerned that Canada be wary about slipping into American rhetoric about godless communism and an uncritical support for American militarism. The amount of money spent on the military could be more properly used for state supported programs for health care, public education, ecological concerns and basic civil social structures. It is important to note that Grant was what in Canada is called a High or Red Tory conservative (almost the opposite of American forms of conservatism).
The publication of Grant’s Philosophy in the Mass Age in 1959 (Grant was much more the philosopher and political theorist than was Merton) made clear that political liberalism, if unchecked and improperly pondered, could lead to a runaway form of individualism and libertarianism that would destroy historic communities, undermine the common good and demonize the important role of the state in bringing into being a just and peaceful commonwealth.
The publication in 1965, though, of Grant’s Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism, brought many of the larger political issues to front stage. The event that triggered the writing and publication of the book was the 1963 Federal election in Canada. The 1963 election, in many ways, had a great deal to do with war and peace issues. The Liberal Party of Lester Pearson (Pearson was the winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace) had close affinities with President Kennedy’s Democratic Party. Kennedy insisted that the Conservative Party and minority government of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker place, in Canada, warheads on their Bomarc missiles. Kennedy was upping the American presence in Vietnam and, in a variety of bully like ways, insisting that Canada follow the lead on the American view of China, Cuba, the Organization of American States (OAS) and American militarism. It was the High/Red Tory conservatism of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker that was softer on China, Cuba and less hawkish that offended Kennedy. Kennedy backed Pearson in the Federal election (Kennedy detested Diefenbaker), Pearson won the election and Canada took the warheads for the Bomarc missiles. The point to note is that it was a Conservative Canadian Prime Minister that took a more irenic and just peacemaking approach to both Canadian domestic and foreign policy and it was the Liberal (Lester Pearson) who was quite willing to follow the lead of Kennedy’s Pax Americana.
Lament for a Nation is a compact missive that questions the alliance of Kennedy-Pearson’s Pax Americana and highlights, from a variety of angles, the need for Canadians to follow a more thoughtful approach to just peacemaking—there was no need for anti-Cuba, anti-China rhetoric and a greater appreciation, Grant suggested, of the role of the United Nations (at an international level) and the Canadian state (at a domestic level) to ensuring that justice underwrote efforts for peacemaking and the quest for peace. Grant, as a historic High Tory, was fully and firmly committed to the role of a strong state and higher taxes to provide affordable and universal health care, affordable education and many other basic social services so that justice was properly delivered for one and all, for the marginalized and oppressed, for those who were being treated unjustly or bombed by napalm as in Vietnam. Grant very much seemed to be on the political left as a Red Tory in his criticisms of the American military industrial complex, power elites, corporate rule and the impact of such dominant forces on the poor and vulnerable. If justice was ever going to be brought into being, in an imperfect way and manner, the state, for Grant (and society) had to work together to challenge and limit the power of the powerful and distribute basic human services to meet the needs of one and all—this seemed to be a form of socialism from those who think from the political right, but for Grant, as a traditional Anglo-Canadian High Tory, this was the most reasonable way to ensure that justice guided and shaped the meaning of peacemaking—to quote Martin Luther King, who Grant much admired, “Peace is not the absence of tension—it is the presence of Justice”.
I mentioned above that Thomas Merton drew deeply from the well of the Beatitudes in his thinking and living—the same can be said for Grant. In fact, in Grant’s “Five Lectures on Christianity”, he holds the Beatitudes as high as the Holy Eucharist as the moral compass and north star of his ethical and political thinking—as did Mahatma Gandhi who both Merton and Grant deeply admired and respected—both men wrote about Gandhi in the most honorific way. Grant was convinced, and he suggested again and again, that it is the “Good”, at a foundational level, that must guide and shape public life rather than liberal notions such as “Liberty” and “Individualism”—when the “Good” is held high as the path to walk, justice and peace, in the classical sense, take on a deeper meaning. It is, therefore, most important, in Grant’s thinking, to recognize that his commitment to a higher order of the “Good” informs and gives meaning to such words as justice, peace and liberty. When this does not occur, the language of justice and peace (and the implications of their redefinition) become playthings of a free for all liberalism. One of Grant’s more important books, English Speaking Justice, probes the way even the language of justice can be used to create and foster oppression—the missive is a challenging approach to pondering what we mean when we think, speak and claim to act for Lady Justice.
George Grant, like Thomas Merton, had a commitment and interest in the contemplative Oriental traditions. Grant founded, in the early 1960s, the Religious Studies Department at McMaster University which has become one of the largest undergraduate and graduate Religious Studies Departments in North America. Grant was alert to the worrisome fact that North America had uncritically genuflected to the vita activa and, as a result, there was a frantic and restless drivenness in the inner life of most---in short, there was little or no deeper peace.
Grant’s interest in the older contemplative way in both philosophy and theology had a great deal to do with his interest in classical thought, but as the older western contemplative traditions had become eclipsed, many turned to living Oriental contemplative approaches in our all too human journey. The publication of Gandhi and Grant: Their Philosophical Affinities (2012) is but one book that illuminates Grant’s willingness to probe the contemplative dimensions of the “Good” in both the inner and outer political spheres of life. Grant, like Merton in many ways, was at the forefront of attempting to reverse centuries of the way the vita activa had subordinated and marginalized the vita contemplativa—the consequences for the human soul and society are what Grant called “intimations of deprival”. When the contemplative dimension of life is negated, life giving oxygen for the soul is minimized and a sense of deprival sets in. There is a sense in which what is just, right and good for the soul is as important as what is good, right and just for society—Grant saw this all so clearly and cleanly and, prophetic like, called Canadians back to an older, deeper, saner and more just and peaceful way of being. Grant wrote wisely and well, as did Merton, about the contemplative mother lode in Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and the mystical traditions in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Both men were on a definite search and quest to recover what had been lost for the soul and society. In short, like prophets of old, Grant and Merton ceaselessly reminded their audiences to remember what had been lost in the coming to be of the modern activist west and return to a wiser and more insightful contemplative way. It was by being rooted and grounded in the disciplines and discernment of the vita contemplativa that the vita activa would produce more just and peaceful fruit.
Thomas Merton and George Grant: 20th century North American Prophets
Thomas Merton died in 1968. George Grant died in 1988. Grant was much more the political philosopher and engaged political activist than Thomas Merton, but Merton, as a Cistercian monk, pushed the boundaries as far as he was able, to bring to front stage the need for justice and peace to embrace and inform one another. Both Merton and Grant were committed to reversing the hierarchy of the vita activa and the vita contemplativa. The contemplative and mystical way could, if understood and lived aright, reorient soul and society in a way that peace and justice dwelt both in the inner and outer realms of the human journey. Both men, in many ways, attempted to articulate and live forth the Beatitudes in which justice, peace and mercy dwell together. The Beatitudes ends with the reminder that those who embody, in thought, word and life, the fullness of the Beatitudes will be treated as the prophets of old—Merton and Grant understood, only too well, what was meant by such a reminder and timely warning. I think it can be legitimately suggested that Thomas Merton and George Grant were 20th century North American prophets and their insights have certainly had an impact beyond North America, also.
Ron Dart
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