jeffrey stout and piety ii

Jeffrey Stout and Piety II

Piety - an intriguing notion. It was precisely for lack of piety -

meaning that mix of civil and religious duty - that the early martyrs

were killed.

I think the accusation is still very much in play: Christians, if/when

they are faithful witnesses, stand accused of impiety against the

liberal secular order.

Stout describes modern piety thus:

Piety ... is not to be understood primarily as a felling, expressed in

acts of devotion, but rather as a virtue, a morally excellent aspect

of character. It consists in just or appropriate response to the

sources of one's existence and progress through life. Family,

political community, the natural wolrd, and God are all said to be

sources on which we depend, sources to be acknowledged appropriately.

Emersonians and Augustinians agree that piety, in this sense, is a

crucial virtue, and they share an interest in clarifying the proper

relationship between civic and religious piety. But they disagree over

how the sourecs should be conceived and what constitutes appropriate

acknowledgment of our dependence on them. ( Democracy and Tradition,

p. 20)