Evangelicals and Catholics make the vast majority of noise in the political fight against gay marriage. But they hardly constitute a majority of the opposition. Of the thirty-one states whose populations passed amendments banning recognition of same-sex marriage, how many of those had a majority of people thinking a coherent theological thought, thinking about the spiritual significance of marriage, or about the proper interplay between Church and state?

The answer, we may safely surmise, is zero. The vast majority of political opposition to gay marriage comes not from theological reflection, but from thinking about gay marriage, and then thinking, “Ick”.

This fact alone should alert us that the issue should have never properly been a question of policy. “Ick” is a satisfactory foundation neither for morality nor policy. And the fact that expressing disgust has been successfully stigmatized in polite company shows that the sentiment’s days are numbered. But trained as we are by politicians and demagogues to simply express ourselves while voting, above (and even to the exclusion of) other considerations, the American voting public will respect no boundaries of what may be decided politically. What may not be expressed over dinner is expressed in the voting booth.

But back to the Church. Assuming then, that theological reflection results in the conclusion that homosexual behavior is sinful, what should be its political strategy?

The most successful short-term strategy will obviously be to play up the “ick” factor. These people – “ickers”, if I may coin the term – will be more potently mobilized by what they already believe, than with theological catch-phrases. Joe down the street couldn’t give two hoots about the “sanctity of marriage”, but he knows he doesn’t like fags. These people will likely vote their minds regardless of the slogans used, but such a targeted campaign will, at least, slow the death sentence which stigmatization has given the “ick” norm.

The “ick” factor is, however, more nearly antithetical to Christian praxis than is homosexuality. Whatever we may think of it, theologically reflective Christians agree at the very least that sinners should be treated with love and humility. Ickers, on the other hand – some of whom may be nominally Christian, but many of whom are not – are quick to make the issue one of “us versus them”. “It’s unnatural”, they say, and thereby excuse themselves to behave inhumanly toward them.¹

Fortunately the Church has, for the most part, not given in to the temptation to pander to the ickers. They still talk about the “sanctity of marriage”, “Adam and Eve”, and the like, which are – if not theologically sophisticated ideas – at least theological ideas. This, in combination with the lack of a public icker voice (beyond Westboro Baptist at least, but their seriousness is debatable), has led to the unfortunate perception that the hateful actions of ickers are merely an expression of marriage theology. On the contrary, a theology of marriage should never be hateful, even if it regards homosexuality as wrong.

Thus emerges the quandary into which political action has put the Church. It cannot win battles in a pluralistic society without abandoning its most deeply held norms. And on the other hand, so far as it remains faithful to those norms, it cannot win political battles. And this quandary is not unique to the gay marriage debate:

The habit of Constantinian thinking . . . leads Christians to judge their ethical positions not on the basis of what is faithful to our peculiar tradition, but rather on the basis of how much Christian ethics Caesar can be induced to swallow without choking. The tendency therefore is to water down Christian ethics, filtering them through basically secular criteria like “right to life” or “freedom of choice,” pushing them on the whole world as universally applicable common sense, and calling that Christian.²

Stanley Hauerwas, Resident Aliens, p. 72.

Instead, recognizing the impropriety of expressive voting and the futility of political action without regeneration (at least on this front), the Church should – as the great Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper put it – “withdraw again into her spiritual domain“. The kingdom of God has nothing to do with the institutions of force, and the Church’s norms cannot be imposed (or even supported) from without upon a population which does not share her Spirit.

“Ick” has no place in Christian political discourse. Yes, we should feel disgust at sin, but primarily our own sin. When dealing with other sinners the proper attitude is to be disgusted “as if we were not disgusted”. The expressive vote, borne out of an “I am not like you” mentality, must be replaced with the recognition that the only difference between a saint and a sinner is the grace of God. Until the Christian has come to feel a visceral disgust at his own sin – the “plank in his own eye” – he has no business feeling the divisive “ick” toward anyone else’s.

1. Indeed, so far as the “ick” factor is at play, the gay marriage debate may be fruitfully compared to interracial marriage. Hence also the consternation of Christians at this analogy, for whom “ick” was never the driving issue (see below).
2. See also Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, p. 184, on how political battles force the secularization of the Church’s message.

109,033 words of 102 blog posts, in picture form:

And the 39,803 words in 379 comments:

Safari’s only on there because one article got slashdotted.

And finally, my 1,211 tweets, comprising 23,853 words.

More concentrated on current events. I get it out of my system over there so it doesn’t leak here onto the blog too much.

Make your own at wordle.net. And since pasting a feed only pulls the last 5 (or so) posts, here’s the code to generate the total text from WordPress which you can paste into Wordle.

All posts:

<?php include('wp-load.php');
query_posts('posts_per_page=-1');
while (have_posts()) {
    the_post();
    echo strip_tags(get_the_title()." ".get_the_content()." ");
}

Comments:

<?php include('wp-load.php');
$q="SELECT comment_content FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved=1";
$r = $wpdb->get_results($q);
foreach ($r as $c) echo $c->comment_content." ";

Christendom has a rich history of political theology. Nevertheless, the rise of participatory, secular democracies all but obviated much of the literature which was closely adapted to a feudal age, where (as Aquinas put it), “those who are subject to the law cannot make the law” (Summa, 2.96.6). The bifurcation of the old literature between that addressed personally to rulers (“rule justly”) and that addressed to subjects (“submit graciously”) became untenable. In principle at least, roles of both ruler and subject coincided within every enfranchised person in their capacity as voter. And rulers, for their part, found their autonomy much circumscribed, such that institutional momentum came to matter far more than which individual happened to be in power.

Theological flourishes on political treatises notwithstanding, the deepest theology rarely touched on institutional questions except to say that the Bible is silent on them. It was not until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that a self-conscious social doctrine was developed in parallel by the mainline Protestant denominations and the Catholic church in order to deal with these new political realities.

The Protestant-ecumenical tradition was forged somewhat less carefully than Catholic social doctrine, and contributed in no small part to the decline of those denominations later in the century as social conscience came to overwhelm theological distinctives. Fancying themselves modern prophets, they fastened themselves to anti-establishment doctrines in varying degrees. The tradition has more recently been reconstituted on somewhat firmer theological and social-scientific footing. Nevertheless, it still fails, along with Catholic social doctrine, to exhibit economic, political, and sociological nuance to match its theological insight. Without training in or deep study of the debates of the times, these political theologies are easily beguiled by “third way” ideologies, which cursorily dismiss the respective sides to a debate as “extremes”. Pure laissez-faire and pure socialism, they sing, must alike be rejected.

But the objections they raise against either side are most often patronizingly simple, and the “third way” is rarely fleshed out in its details. Understandably there is liberty for Christians to disagree on many issues, and it would be hasty to be too specific on that question. But then why dismiss the poles, simply for the fact that they are poles?

The failure to meet the sides of social-scientific debate on their own terms is a disservice to the Christian political conscience, compounded all the more for the fact that nearly all of them assert that all Christians have a political duty entailed by the rejection of the poles – whether revolutionary duty, activistic duty, or simply a duty to vote. But if even the standard-bearers of political theology fail to exhibit the social-scientific insight necessary to evaluate public policy alternatives,¹ how much less can the average Christian voter be expected to do so?

This is why it is crucial that politics be understood as a calling and not a duty. Every Christian cannot be expected to acquire expertise in policy issues, but every Christian can be expected to see through the pretensions of politics to all-importance. There is no more of a general duty to politics than a general duty to medical care, or trucking, or any other occupation which requires specialization – even if that occupation is socially necessary. Indeed, to participate without adequate understanding is simply irresponsible.

Thus, the project of political theology, properly conceived, should be theologically robust in the face of shifting ideology. It is true that any author tackling these issues will reveal, to a greater or lesser extent, his own understanding of the social sciences as they pertain to the questions at hand. But should it prove that his understanding is mistaken, will his theology remain standing? A political theology must never entail a social-scientific result, as if it should have been obvious to previous generations, and as if that dogma will never change in the future.

This robustness, 20th century ecumenical political theology largely failed to achieve. But as the cultural vestiges of Christendom continue to wither in the West, the task becomes more and more urgent.²

1. This was the complaint of Rev. Edmund Opitz, who later in his life worked for the Foundation for Economic Education. The theological foundations to his own thought, however, appear to be lacking in the same degree as the social-scientific foundations of his opponents.
2. For the shape of such a robust political theology, see Peace and the Politics of Conscience and Faith and Activism.

“…Land that I love…” It’s the king of tropes, both in politics and in conservative America – and the former largely because of the predominance of the latter. Hardly a speech or Silverado finishes without “God Bless America” stuck on the end.

The purpose, however, seems to be more to signal patriotism than piety. In response to this, the bumper sticker “God bless the people of every nation” has been floating around. A fine sentiment to be sure, but it’s hard to read it without the sense that it’s been posted out of frustration with the patriots. America is hardly a holy nation, certainly not in national covenant with God as was Israel – and why should we lay special claim to his blessings?

I do not deny that the phrase is often said in an exclusivistic manner, where “God bless America” could be just as well understood “God curse our enemies”. This likely even constitutes the vast majority of its invocations. Likewise, the Ku Klux Klan often claims they don’t hate other races; they simply love the white race. When said in a patriotic manner – especially where the armed forces are involved – “God bless the people of every nation” is a well-taken counterbalance to “God bless America”. In a zero-sum world – where victory for one means defeat for another; where prosperity for one means poverty for another – special love for insiders is indistinguishable from hate for outsiders.

But thankfully, we do not live in a zero-sum world, at least outside the realm of politics and war. Let us leave aside for the moment the question of what counts as blessing and assume, with most of those who invoke, that prosperity constitutes a blessing upon the nation. Exchange, by which a nation may become peacefully prosperous, is positive-sum. One can be blessed only by being a blessing to others, as indeed was promised to Abraham (Gen. 22:17-18). Clearly these blessings are not equivalent, but the structural similarity stands: Abraham was not blessed at the expense of other nations; rather, his blessing consisted in the fact that his offspring would bless other nations.

If “God bless America” is no more than a prayer that America might do good for others and do well itself, it would be at least unobjectionable. Nevertheless, the countertrope – “God bless the people of every nation” – would still seem to fit better with the universality of the grace of God. Why pray the one when you can pray the other?

The self-conscious universalism of the countertrope is, again, laudable as a response to an exclusivistic patriotism. But there is nothing unchristian about feeling more responsibility for those closer to one’s self. Locality matters. Certainly one is more responsible for feeding one’s own family than for feeding a family on another continent. “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Tim. 5:8). Earlier, Paul urged “that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Tim. 2:1-2; cf. Prov. 29:2). The fact that his reason pertains to life of the praying believer (that it may be godly and dignified) suggests he means that we pray for those leaders over us, which can be expressed succinctly as “God bless my nation”.

In principle, there is nothing wrong with considering one’s nation to be a sort of family. Yes, the national border is perhaps an arbitrary delimiter, but that is an intellectual, not a moral, question. Nor does the principle of diminishing spheres of responsibility (which the Catholics call subsidiarity) rule out a calling to serve more distant spheres – it requires only that one’s immediate responsibilities be addressed first. “For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church” (1 Tim. 3:5) – or indeed any wider sphere of responsibility? Nevertheless, this healthy localism must not degenerate into nationalism or exclusivism. One’s obligation to his family is greater than one’s obligation to the world, but that does not diminish his obligation of love to the world. At the very least that obligation is not to rejoice in or wish harm on them – that is, not to hate them.

Regardless of the the tilt of our personalities which may incline us to lean universalist or exclusivist, we must hold the truth of both impulses in tension as we pray for blessing: God has revealed himself to all the nations, and bestowed both common and saving grace according to his providence. Yet our responsibility is, by faith in that same providence, primarily to those closest to us, as it is in the smallest spheres where we are able to (and know enough to) do the most good.

God bless America. And God bless the people of every nation.

I suspect that the difference between wearing a Star Trek uniform (which will be rejected) and poking at a screen with a stylus (which was accepted) doesn’t have much to do with the usefulness of the weird norm, except so far as it proxies another variable. That variable is in the theory of mind of the observer – namely, the fact that we are somewhat revolted by attention-seeking.

When looking at a weird behavior, our minds automatically ask, “why would you do that?” In the case of the stylus, it pretty obviously has an instrumental purpose, even if what that purpose is isn’t obvious. It’s weird, yes, but as Roberts attests, people come to accept it pretty easily.

In the case of the Star Trek uniform, however, the easiest answer is, “he wants me to think he’s weird.” Attention-seeking provokes disgust, especially when we identify with the norm being violated. It’s why people make fun of hipsters, and are somewhat put off by nerds. It’s also why, as someone with some pretty far out tastes, I’ve never had a negative interaction stemming from those tastes. I don’t make them my identity, and I don’t share unless I’m pretty sure the other person is interested. Caplan seems to have had the same experience: you can live in a bubble, but still have social intelligence. “Don’t seek attention for its own sake” follows quite naturally from his first principle of social intelligence.

Indeed, it’s not even the weirdness that’s at the heart of this feeling, though it’s certainly more pronounced for weird behaviors. Attention-seeking can even make us resent behaviors that are thought well of – for example the professor who always makes sure you call him “Doctor”, or that kid who cracks a joke at everything. We respect his degree, and we laugh at his jokes, but seriously, how annoying!

All this means that I’m more optimistic about the prospects of online education. Nobody signs up for online classes and thinks, “people are going to think I’m so cool!” (ok, I know one or two Peter Thiel devotees who might fit the bill, but there aren’t enough of those to poison the stereotype). The utility of online education is pretty easy to see, so even if it’s a remarkably non-normal thing to do – as it is right now – the disgust factor doesn’t enter like it does with the Star Trek uniform.