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The Right to Believe and Believing the Right Thing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Rod Sykes
Rod Sykes
Affiliation:
Emmanuel College, Victoria University in the University of Toronto
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Extract

During the summer of 1981 I had field training in an ‘outreach ministry’ of the United Church of Canada on an Ojibway Indian reserve in southern Manitoba. The Protestant churches first placed white ministers on the Swan Lake Reserve with the undeclared but clear intention to suppress the ‘paganism’ of traditional Ojibway spirituality. But the present policy of the United Church is to support the Band's recovery of self-determination in politics, culture, and religion. Some people in the United Church (and outside it) may worry that this non-proselytizing policy is a betrayal of our Christian duty to tell all the world that Jesus Christ is Lord. But quite the opposite is true. The silent witness given by the outreach minister in serving the needs of the Indians (as they see those needs) is one way to proclaim Christ's Lordship. Indeed it is the only way which is appropriate in our relations with a people whose exploitation has in the past proceeded under His name.

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Articles
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Religious Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , December 1982, pp. 439 - 450
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

page 440 note 1 It is contentious whether there is a non-epistemic doxastic morality, that is, genuinely moral norms governing belief. The comparison I propose does not mean to deny that there could be such norms. But there are norms governing our beliefs which rest on our concern for truth rather than on our concerns for benevolence and justice. These two kinds of norms are independent; therefore the parallels between them which I shall adduce are significant.

page 440 note 2 See Chisholm, R. M., Perceiving: a Philosophical Study (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1957).Google Scholar

page 441 note 1 James, W., The Will to Believe; and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, 1921), p. 17.Google Scholar

page 441 note 2 Gibson, A. Boyce, Theism and Empiricism (London: SCM, 1970), p. 159.Google Scholar

page 441 note 3 Hick, J., Faith and Knowledge (Glasgow: Collins/Fontana, 1964), p. 210 (my italics).Google Scholar

page 443 note 1 Hare, R. M., The Language of Morals (Oxford: O.U.P., 1974), pp. 155 ff.Google Scholar

page 447 note 1 See DePaul, M. R., ‘The Rationality of Belief in God’, Rel. Stud. 17, (1981), 343–56, for an attempt to render precise what he claims is our epistemic right, with regard to beliefs which are of the kind to be either necessarily true or necessarily false, to hold these beliefs as epistemically right ones.CrossRefGoogle Scholar