Because religious organizations are usually thought of as voluntary associations, and because freedom of conscience and of worship are so widely valued, the religious as well as the political must be accommodated. Because power is vested in the political, government must provide the protections for the practice of religion. That government might also provide the economic resources to sustain religion is a tradition of western Europe and of many Muslim societies but not an American tradition. Quite the opposite. In the United States, religion must fend for itself economically. Because of that hands-off tradition we have as much religion as we are willing to pay for -- which is a lot -- but not as much as someone in government decides that we need. 

We turn not to Jerusalem but to Athens for the secular tradition that led to modern liberalism and democracy. For me the search for the secular roots of the philanthropic tradition has drawn me to the writings of those who created the American Constitution. 

There are two sources of reflection on the relationship of philanthropy to the Constitution. The first is the Federalist papers; the second is Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. The central issue is the tension or conflict between the rights of the individual and the rights of the state. The rights of the individual are discussed in terms of self-interest, especially the forms of organized self-interest that James Madison and other called "faction." The rights of the state are discussed in terms of the need for unity and community: How can we organize our lives so that our self-interested behavior doesn't fragment and weaken and ultimately destroy us? How can we achieve some sense of community that is voluntary and not coercive, respectful of the dignity of the individual and yet sensitive to the collective requirements of political security and economic prosperity? On the one hand, Madison and his contemporaries perceived, there was the treat of faction; on the other hand there was the threat of the tyranny of the majority.

The American answer to the trade-off between the claims of self-interest and the claims of community is to be found in the First Amendment. Better to live with the risks of faction then to allow a majoritarian lowest common denominator to crush diversity.

These are, I believe, the essential arguments facing those now drafting and revising the new constitutions of eastern Europe. "Faction" there appears in its crudest and cruelest form: ethnic conflict. If voluntary association is the secret of the reform movement in eastern Europe, it is also likely to be the bearer of the most insidious enemy of democracy. Ethnic conflict--in its various linguistic, racial, and religious forms -- is war waged by voluntary associations of restricted membership against similar voluntary associations of different membership. These are voluntary associations that equate the "public good" with their own interests. From the perspective of Adam Smith's "impartial spectator," ethnic conflict disregards national and other political boundaries; ethnic conflict scorns economic rationality. Lebanon is our most poignant example of ethnicity as the ultimate value. Compared to ethnic faction, economic self-interest -- greed -- is a feeble emotion. 

Despite the extraordinary success of the United States as an ethnic refuge, melting pot, and salad bowl, the United States did not eliminate ethnic conflict. Slavery and racism and other forms of ethnic persecution have flourished here on a scale to rival any other nation in the world. The United States long tolerated the subjugation of its black population. The United States all but exterminated the American Indian. (The long wars against the native Americans has to be our historical equivalent of the Holocaust.) Even in its treatment of groups more closely related -- southern Europeans, for example -- the matter of establishing American culture was resolved more by conquest than by reason. The English victories over its French and the Spanish rivals for hegemony in the new world left us with the most widely shared resource we have: a single language. 

We delude ourselves, perhaps, but no one else, if we imagine a past without those terrible realities, or if we impute a greater wisdom to Madison and company than they had. Great genius is enough; perfection isn't necessary. A conscious awareness of the Holocaust, the Soviet purges, the unceasing mutual hatred of ethnic groups in all parts of the world; of the vast and uncontrolled diversity of language and culture; of struggles for religious freedom that lead to religious oppression -- such awareness should caution us in our optimism that the new democracies will find a short and direct path to the free, open, and democratic ideal. 

Madison and Hamilton and others of the founding fathers came to the profound insight that "the greatest of all reflections on human nature is government itself." Madison joined that insight to a view of human nature that gave full weight to the virtuous as to the vicious. Virtue in its more admirable forms provided the basis for hope that the destructive aspects of faction might be restrained and even countered. 

Voluntary associations might also reveal a concern for the well-being of the community and not simply for the agenda of each association. The voluntary associations that Tocqueville celebrated provided community where there was no government and charity where there was neither tax nor tithe. Churches and denominations proliferated, ethnic groups arrived from every corner of the world (often seeking refuge from ethnic conflict). Voluntary associations were created to meet new opportunities and to attack persistent injustices. The common weapon available to every battler for justice or angel of mercy was the right to persuade others to come together around a cause, to form an organization, to raise the funds to advance the cause, to influence and cajole and often harass the political and economic establishment. 

The genius of the system, if "system" it may be called, is captured in the First Amendment. Although most of us equate the First Amendment with the notion of a free press -- because the press continually proclaims its own importance the hidden power of the First Amendment is in the right of voluntary associations to intrude themselves into the public's business with no public mandate. One person acting alone cannot have much impact on public policy, and so organization is necessary; one person cannot command allies to join in, and so allies must be persuaded and recruited as volunteers. Once brought together, the members of an organization cannot be effective without resources, and so the right to raise money in the form of voluntary gifts is also essential to voluntary action.

To repeat the earlier caveat: voluntary association can be used for evil ends as well as good ones. By intent as well as by accident or inadvertence, voluntary action can be an instrument of the most antidemocratic sedition. (As a colleague likes to remind me, the Ku Klux Klan is also a voluntary association.) In a time of the abortion wars we should not need to be reminded that the single-mindedness of true believers in voluntary associations could burn down the house (as their counterparts have been doing in places as remote and different as northern Ireland, Lebanon, and Sri Lanka).

III

The philanthropic tradition is, indeed, "the social history of the moral imagination." It is the moral imagination that has made us free and that has given us insight into the good society and the good life. It is the moral imagination disciplined and advanced by voluntary associations engaged in good works that has persuaded us to place higher value on new virtues of tolerance and cooperation and openness and community.

There is nothing guaranteed, however, that voluntary associations will behave in enlightened and humane ways. The realistic assessment of human nature offers caution and hope at the same time. The framers of the American Constitution wagered their future and ours on the hope that divisive faction would become a unifying pluralism.

I have often thought in recent months about those charged with writing the new constitutions of eastern Europe. What is their view of human nature? What is the source of their wisdom about the trade-off between faction and the tyranny of the majority. If all we offer is a sanitized and idealized version of our own history and experience, we will not help them very much. We will also throw put blinders on our own eyes.

Unless we ourselves engage in serious and candid exploration of the awesome power and flexibility of voluntary action we will be like children playing with an expensive and dangerous toy. Unless we think of philanthropy as a First Amendment right, and understand voluntary association as the indispensable organization of modern democracy, we will not remain a more favored nation. Worse, we will have abandoned our children in the wilderness.