For the ideal of the common good to make sense, it requires a free but coherent society, held together by shared values and respect for both individual liberty and public authority. Freedom to work together for the common good depends on a healthy fabric of institutions, traditions, conventions and social practices, protected by law. It is the moral communities within civil society, among whom the churches stand out, that uphold the common good by sustaining traditions and narratives that embody salutary social and personal values.
Civil society is that diverse and complex collection of organisations and institutions which carry out their purposes in the extensive space for human activity that lies between the household on the one hand and the state on the other. In that respect, institutional churches and para-church organisations, such as the Evangelical Alliance, are components of civil society. They relate to other institutions and organisations and interact with them, as well as with the state itself through engagement with the legislature (Parliament and local government) and with the executive (the national and local civil service). As with other collective bodies, it should not be forgotten that such institutions and organisations are comprised of individuals, who may themselves contribute to civil society through personal financial giving, letter-writing, online petitioning, prayer and the like.
An essential characteristic of a healthy civil society is confidence in justice, both distributive justice (giving to all their economic and social due and treating everyone equally and fairly) and retributive and restorative justice (through the administration of the criminal law). When it is clear to all that laws are being made solely for the common good, rather than for party advantage or to make a political point, and that justice is being upheld and administered with efficiency and impartiality, then we have the effective rule of law. To participate in society and its structures, in its social and political life, is part of our human responsibility to promote the common good.
