Miscellaneous
Christian Miller’s work has been concerned for years with human moral character and specifically how we can improve our characters and why it is important for us to try to do so. He sees Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as also concerned with character and the way in which the character of Americans can be improved to be more in keeping with the ideals and promise of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The elements of character Dr. King particularly emphasized were faith, hope, compassion and courage. The question for Christian Miller is whether and how these religiously infused characteristics can be transmuted in such a way that they are available to secular society. Without God, it is not necessarily the case that justice will triumph. We even see some evidence that character is in decline in America. But even if there is a God, there is a danger from a misunderstanding of Dr. King’s teaching—that we human beings can sit back and wait for the triumph of justice rather than actively pursuing it. Another problem is the moral relativism in the culture, which Miller rejects. Justice and character must be worked at and that will be difficult if we believe that all morality is equal.