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The Politics of Hope

The Politics of Hope
By Jonathan Sacks
Jonathan Cape. 269 pages. £15.99
ISBN 0 224 04329 3

A newspaper on the day Jonathan Sacks began this book apparently stated: 'There is little doubt that most people believe that Britain is in severe moral decline.' In The Politics of Hope the Chief Rabbi gives a coherent analysis of how British - and to a certain extent Western - society has come to its present position.
His understanding and philosophical thought and contemporary reaction to it takes us from the Enlightenment through the growth of liberalism to what he calls the present day 'libertarianism' (to be distinguished from liberalism by its bent towards permissiveness). His Jewish scholarship also throws interesting light on aspects of the Old Testament along the way. The author explicitly states that this is a 'non-theological work' and his argument therefore eschews any reference to the 'Divine Promise'. He highlights very clearly, however, the poverty of moral relativism and does so in a way which compels attention from a world that does not acknowledge God.
This is therefore a book for all Christians who seek a greater understanding of society's condition and perhaps one to give to non-Christian friends who cling to the idea that all ills can yet be solved by an unaided 'value free' application of human intelligence.
Having thus made a competent diagnosis, the Chief Rabbi proposes the solution as being the 'strengthening of social institutions' within a moral framework. Sacks argues that social change depends on moral change and he believes that what was achieved by the Victorians in tackling their social problems inspires a sense of what is possible today.
In the book's final chapter there is an uncomfortable link made between Christianity and doomsday cults. The author, not unsurprisingly, rejects this apocalyptic view of time for what he sees as the Jewish prophetic dream of moving step by step towards a better society. For the author 'morality is the language of hope' and he endorses Christopher Lasch's statement that the Judaeo-Christian concept of hope 'rests on confidence not so much in the future as in the past.'
Christians will question the Chief Rabbi's confidence that 'we can change the world' by changing ourselves. But his book does provide a powerful pragmatic argument for a return to Judaeo-Christian morality and a challenge to today's believers to give expression to their hope in the future.

Sarah Creedy
Guildford