This is Marco Rubio, son of Cuban immigrants, candidate for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from Florida, giving his farewell address to the Florida House of Representatives. It’s a powerful evocation of why the United States is a great country, combined with a remarkable mini-sermon on the love and grace of God. If he ever wants to leave politics, this man could make a real contribution preaching the gospel.
Category Archives: Faith and politics
The theological politics of John Rawls
Those of you who are interested in political philosophy ought to check out William Galston’s TNR piece on the roots of John Rawls’ views in his college flirtation with serious Christian theology. I can’t claim more than a superficial knowledge of Rawls’ work, but the questions Galston raises are interesting ones.
Mitt Romney, the Beltway GOP, and the meaning of Evansville
(Note: this was originally posted at Conservatives4Palin.)
I didn’t blog about it much, but at the beginning of the last presidential campaign, I was intending to vote for Mitt Romney. I wasn’t a huge fan, but my primary concern was finding someone who could beat Rudy Giuliani, the one person in the race I simply could not support; on that score, Gov. Romney seemed like the best option. He was the most conservative of the plausible candidates, and had proven himself to be an effective executive in a number of positions. His record in Massachusetts doesn’t look as good now as it did before I really understood the situation with RomneyCare, but even given that fiasco, the man’s a capable administrator with the guts to make tough decisions. I still think he would have made a better president than John McCain, though Sen. McCain made a better losing nominee since he brought Sarah Palin on the national stage.
That said, since Gov. Romney began his run for the nomination, the only thing he’s done that hasn’t lowered my opinion of him was to suspend his campaign; at every other point, the more I’ve seen of him, the less I’ve thought of him. His recent attempts to diminish Gov. Palin, both directly and by proxy, only compound that; I understand why he’s doing it, but this is one case where to understand most definitely is not to forgive. The fact that he’s denigrating someone who simply doesn’t deserve it is certainly no more acceptable because he’s doing it out of raw ambition, after all.
Gov. Romney’s comments aren’t only ignoble, however, they’re also revealingly clueless. I’m not certain whether he really believes what he’s saying or merely considers it to be a plausible line of attack, but either way, it seems clear that he does not in fact understand Gov. Palin’s influence, which means that he doesn’t understand the reasons for her influence—and in this, I believe he’s representative of the GOP Beltway types who now consider him the rightful heir (or at least a rightful aspirant) to the party’s mantle.
They don’t like her because she’s not one of them, and they fail to understand that that’s whyshe’s influential: that she isn’t one of them is the whole point. She’s one of us, a politician who remains of and for the ordinary barbarians of this country, and at this point, any effort—anyeffort, no matter what else it has going for it—to elevate another Beltway insider as the GOP’s standard bearer is doomed to failure.
All of this, of course, has been said before, here and elsewhere; but there’s a particular aspect to it which I believe is highlighted in a bitterly ironic way by Mitt Romney, of all people, dissing Gov. Palin as just another pretty face. I don’t mean the fact that Gov. Romney himself consciously tried to use his looks to his advantage, and thus was far more deserving of his own jab than Gov. Palin, though the irony there is sharp enough; but there’s something more significant in play here as well, something which is thrown into sharp relief by Gov. Palin’s trip last month to Evansville, IN.
The key thing to understand about that visit is something the executive director of Vandenburgh County RTL said, which Joseph Russo used in his headline: “[Palin] walks the walk and talks the talk. She could . . . be doing other things, but she chose to do this.”
To know just how much that means, you need to know something about the pro-life movement: it has been the beneficiary, from many on the Right, of much talk and very little walk. It’s a grassroots movement outside the elite culture, outside the halls of power, that is primarily used rather than supported by those who have influence. I can’t think how many strong pro-life people I know who looked back at the Bush 43 administration last year and said, in essence, yeah, he gave us Roberts and Alito, but what else did he do for us? Was it worth what we did for him? And the thing is, George W. Bush was no worse in that respect than any other leading conservative politician—he was, in fact, completely typical.
And he wasn’t only typical of politicians, either. I know a pastor who served for many years as the senior pastor of a large, influential Southern Baptist church in one of the cities of the Deep South—a good man, a godly man, and one well familiar with the corridors of power and the wielders of influence in the Southern Baptist Convention. We were talking one time about the whole issue of abortion, and he made a statement that absolutely floored me: he declared that over his whole career, he had never known a Southern Baptist pastor who risked anything for the pro-life movement.
Now, consider that. The SBC is known throughout the country as a conservative Christian denomination, it’s known everywhere for its support of the conservative social agenda, and if you asked a random selection of non-Southern Baptists what they knew about it, I’d bet most of them would mention its opposition to abortion somewhere in there—and yet, according to him, that has all just been words. When the rubber meets the road, effectively, he said, Southern Baptist pastors have been unwilling to walk the talk, unwilling to lay their reputations, the reputations of their congregations, their positions, or anything else on the line to back up what they said they believed. And in that, I don’t say this to bash the SBC, because in my experience, they too are typical.
The point here, let me reiterate, is not to criticize George W. Bush, or my colleagues in the Southern Baptist Church—or me, for that matter; in all honesty, I have to admit that there have been times that I too have ducked away from the issue of abortion instead of taking a stand. I speak here with the rueful honesty of a regretful and repentant sinner; I know I’m no one to cast the first stone. My point, rather, is this: when you see someone willing to put their political capital where their mouth is, willing to lay something on the line and risk something real for the sake of a cause in which they claim to believe, pay attention. Pay attention, because here you have found someone who actually believes something, and does so strongly enough to live it out when it matters.
This, to come at last to the promise of my title, is the meaning of Evansville—and make no mistake, it’s a meaning that the organizers of those events understand perfectly. They have no doubt seen plenty of Republican types show up for the photo op and then be long gone when it mattered; for Gov. Palin to come and speak, especially at a time when she (and everyone else who was paying attention) had to know she was going to get hammered by the ankle-biters back in Alaska—to make an effort that actually cost her something in order to support a cause she believes in—clearly meant the world to them. That she refused the offer of a fundraiser as part of the deal (which I suspect she would have seen as cheapening her visit, and quite frankly would have cheapened it) only made her visit all the more meaningful.
The thing is, those folks in Vandenburgh County were absolutely right to feel that way, and to see Gov. Palin that way, because with that trip she did something that politicians rarely do: she gave of herself for the sake of others. She showed by her actions that her political positions aren’t just political positions, they’re things that she believes deeply enough and strongly enough that she’s willing to spend her own political capital and put herself on the line for their sake, and for the sake of the people involved. She showed that she was willing to make that effort and take the criticism and the sniping from the peanut gallery for the sake of people trying to save the lives of unborn children in southern Indiana, and for the sake of Down Syndrome children like her own youngest son. She showed that what she believes isn’t a matter of political convenience, nor is it subject to renegotiation for the sake of political advantage, because it’s rooted in who she is and what she cares about and what drives her to do what she does.
And in that, she separated herself—decisively—from Mitt Romney, the GOP establishment as a whole (though not all its members; it was also heartening to see Michael Steele there, and one may hope that this is a sign of things to come), the conservative chattering classes, and many of the party’s presidential hopefuls. And in that, she showed clearly the roots of her influence, and the reason why that influence will not wane unless she decides to lay it aside. To borrow a line from Abraham Lincoln on U. S. Grant which others have borrowed recently, we’ve decided that we can’t spare this woman—she fights. If the Beltway GOP wants to win our support, let them stop trying to tear her down, and go and do likewise.
A pastoral comment on Sarah Palin
I forgot to mention this yesterday, what with everything else going on, but I have another post up over on Conservatives4Palin. Counsel for leaders within the church is also of value for Christians called to leadership outside the church, since I believe exercising Christian leadership in the marketplace and in government is an important form of Christian ministry.
The temptation and peril of theologized politics
The question of the proper interrelationship between religion and politics in this country is a complex one. There are those who argue that, essentially, there should be no relationship between them—that religion should be kept rigidly separate from politics; but as I wrote last month,
There’s a certain superficial appeal to this suggestion, but a little more thought shows it for the discriminatory idea it really is. Why, after all, should non-religious people be permitted to vote on the basis of their deepest convictions, but religious people be forbidden to do the same? Any attempt to make religion the problem is ultimately an attempt to privilege one mode of thought (the secular) over others, and thus is essentially antithetical to the nature and purpose of the American experiment.
That doesn’t mean, however, that an uncritical fusion of the two is a good thing, either; as I also noted in that post, that tends to result in religion becoming the handmaiden of politics. When our faith becomes “a tool to advance a political agenda,” and as such is no longer “free to critique and correct that agenda,” what we have is in fact a betrayal of Christian faith; we have the political heresy that I labeled “theologized politics.”
Now, it should be obvious why politicians encourage such a thing and seek to make every use of it they can; the short-term political benefits are undeniable. This approach essentially seeks to mobilize Christianity, with its adherents and their assets, as a political force to accomplish the political purposes of one party or the other. The goal is to deploy the church (or as much of it as possible, at any rate) as foot soldiers for the party in this or that political struggle. It’s an effective way to rouse people to active political participation, and to win not merely votes but enthusiastic and committed support. The theological side of the equation, however, is problematic, because the political side is primary; this results in a purely instrumental view of Christian faith, one which “make[s] men treat Christianity as a means,” as C. S. Lewis put it. It moves us from valuing social justice (or any other good) because God demands that of us, which is a good thing, to “the stage where [we value] Christianity because it may produce social justice.” This is a serious problem, because
[God] will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop.
The problem with theologizing politics is that it can be a good political strategy in the short term, but in the long term it has a toxic effect on both the church and the political process. One negative consequence for the church should be obvious: if Christians come to value their faith primarily for the excellent arguments it offers for their chosen political agenda, they will value it less for everything else—and this is not good for the church. Beyond this, it’s bad for our spiritual health, in that it’s essentially a replacement of true faith with something else. It’s bad for the community life of the church, because that “something else” is something outside the church, and fundamentally distinct from it. It could well also be financially bad for the church: if the primary goal is the advancement of a political agenda, then contributions should primarily go to that agenda, rather than to the local congregation. And finally, it’s bad for the witness of the church, because when the church becomes identified with one party, then those who don’t support that party will view the church as the enemy and respond to it with hostility.
The toxic effect of this approach on our political system in this country may be less apparent, but it’s still very real. The problem is that good politics requires a mix of passion and dispassion. One must care about one’s own positions and believe in one’s own ideas enough to want to articulate them and fight for them; one must be passionate enough about the problems in this country and committed enough to one’s proposed solutions to be willing to put the work in to address those problems and implement those solutions. At the same time, however, one must have the necessary dispassion to be able to step back and evaluate those ideas and solutions when they aren’t working; to be able to disengage from one’s own positions enough to consider what may be learned from someone else’s; and to be able to work with those with whom one disagrees, to come to compromises when necessary, and to make common cause when the time is right. When religion is brought uncritically into the political mix, only as a way of supporting one’s own positions (and not as a means of critiquing them), it is excellent at stirring people to passion, but not so helpful in creating the dispassion necessary to balance that passion. The result is something which has been aptly called “the politics of inflammation.”
At this point, again, someone might argue that the solution is to remove religion from politics; and again, the response needs to be made that the true solution is not to break that connection, but to repair it. What is needed is to break ourselves of the habit of using the language of Christian faith to support what we have already decided we believe, and to teach ourselves instead to use our faith to critique our politics, and ultimately to rebuild our political convictions on the ground of our faith.
Photo © 2008 Son of Groucho. License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.
What has Christ to do with politics?
What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? what between heretics and Christians?
—Tertullian, The Prescription Against Heretics, 7
This famous rhetorical question of Tertullian’s has been used in many ways—including, by many skeptics, as a tool with which to bash him in particular and Christians in general as arrogant know-nothings who prefer to stay ignorant. In context, that’s not exactly fair, given the nature of the philosophy he’s rejecting, and the sort of disputations it produced; but the fact remains that most people aren’t satisfied just to wave away all skeptical inquiries and challenges as Tertullian did, declaring,
With our faith, we desire no further belief. For this is our palmary faith, that there is nothing which we ought to believe besides.
I don’t think we should be satisfied thus. For all that he meant it as a rhetorical question, if we truly believe that all truth is God’s truth and that his common grace is available to all people—which, if we follow Scripture, I think we should—then his question needs to be taken seriously as a question, and addressed accordingly.
The same, I believe, must be said of the relationship between faith and politics. Consider Tertullian’s description of the philosophical art of his day as
the art of building up and pulling down; an art so evasive in its propositions, so far-fetched in its conjectures, so harsh, in its arguments, so productive of contentions—embarrassing even to itself, retracting everything, and really treating of nothing!
That’s as vivid a description of academic disputation now as it ever was—but at least as much, if not more, it’s also a vivid description of our political scene. Looking out at a political landscape in which people do things like try to bankrupt their political opponents with an unending stream of frivolous complaints, Tertullian might well have asked, “What has Calvary to do with D.C.?” And again, though he would undoubtedly have answered “Nothing,” and moved on, we need to stop and consider the question carefully and thoughtfully. What is the proper connection between these two very different things, the life of faith and the life of politics?
This is a problematic question, and while it has ever been thus—this relationship has never been as clear and easy to understand as many people have assumed—the current polarized state of American politics causes us to feel the problem quite keenly. The negativity and the fearmongering are corrosive to the spirit, and the vehemence with which people disagree is wearying. To be sure, neither the nature nor the degree of this problem are unique in American history (just think of the 1860s, when the political divisions in this country were so deep, we wound up going to war over them); what is new, however, is the particular role of religion in our political disputes. In the Civil War, as Lincoln noted, it was true that
both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other
(while in the background echoed St. James’ anguished cry, “This should not be!”). In contemporary America, the situation is very different. In our day, by and large, churchgoers tend to side with one party, while those who have no use for church vote for the other—and in popular perception, the gap is nearly total (to the frustrated fury of liberal Christians, who understandably don’t like being overlooked).
In light of this, many would say that the problem is that religion is mixed up with politics when it shouldn’t be. In this view, religion only serves to exacerbate our differences and drive the wedges between us deeper, and the only solution is for religious folk to keep their faith in their churches and out of the voting booth. There’s a certain superficial appeal to this suggestion, but a little more thought shows it for the discriminatory idea it really is. Why, after all, should non-religious people be permitted to vote on the basis of their deepest convictions, but religious people be forbidden to do the same? Any attempt to make religion the problem is ultimately an attempt to privilege one mode of thought (the secular) over others, and thus is essentially antithetical to the nature and purpose of the American experiment.
Our current situation is complex, and there is no one step we can take that will make it better; everyone involved in our political system contributes in some way to its problems, and it will take efforts from all sides to improve America’s political health. Those who are Christians need to address the ways in which overtly faith-based political involvement has often been unhelpful; to do this, it will be necessary for us to do a much better job of integrating our theology with our politics.
That might seem counterintuitive to many, who would point to the great many references to the Bible and Christian faith which we already hear from our politicians (and not just Republican politicians, either), but it’s the truth. The problem is that as frequent as such statements may be, most of them aren’t good political theology; while there may be an effort to relate Christian faith to politics, the effort is made in the wrong way and thus does not bear good fruit. Rather than true political theology, what we get instead is mere theologized politics; we get faith used as a tool to advance a political agenda, rather than free to critique and correct that agenda. This is the point at which things go awry.
The gospel-driven church and politicized faith
Hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel,
and who came from the waters of Judah,
who swear by the name of the Lord and confess the God of Israel,
but not in truth or right.
For they call themselves after the holy city, and stay themselves on the God of Israel;
the Lord of hosts is his name.
—Isaiah 48:1-2 (ESV)
These descriptions mark the Israelites as God’s people: he’s the one who chose them, he’s the one who named them, he’s the deity with whom their nation is identified and in whose name they take their oaths. He is, we might say, the God of their civil religion, in the same way as our public officials and witnesses in our courts swear on the Bible and end their oaths of office with the words, “so help me God.” But just as we have a lot of people who say those words and mean nothing by them, so Israel’s outward participation in the rituals of their faith said little for the reality of their beliefs; and so God says, “Though you call upon me and take oaths in my name, it’s neither in truth nor in righteousness.” Their faith, he says, is false, because it’s not based in real knowledge of him nor does it produce any real willingness to live as he wants them to live.
This is a pretty strong charge. In contemporary terms, he’s saying that the faith of the nation as a whole—not of everyone in it, of course, but of the nation as a whole—is nominal. It’s a matter of outward show with no inward reality, of religious exercise without any real faith. This wasn’t an issue which was unique to them, of course; if we want to be honest, looking around at the church in this country, we’d have to wonder if God would say much the same sort of thing to us, if Isaiah were alive in our day. I think Michael Spencer would agree; though he doesn’t put it in the terms Isaiah uses, his indictment of American evangelicalism boils down to pretty much the same thing: on the whole, we invoke the name of the God of Israel, but not in truth or righteousness.
Now, whatever disagreements I have with Spencer’s specific predictions, I think he’s identified a real problem in much of the American church; I think we need to realize that Isaiah’s words to Israel hit a lot closer to home than we might like to think. It seems to me that verse 2 offers us something of a clue as to why. At first glance, this might seem like an odd follow-up to verse 1; but consider the description of the people of Israel here: “you who call yourselves citizens of the holy city and rely on the God of Israel.” Here as in verse 1, God is identified as the God of Israel; and what does the prophet say in response: “The LORD Almighty is his name.”
That’s subtle, but I think it’s a rebuke to the parochialism of Israel. Their concern is only for themselves, and they see their God as just “an amiable local deity who exists to keep track of Israel’s interests,” as John Oswalt puts it. Instead of seeing themselves as a nation formed by the only God of all time and space for the purpose of bringing all the nations to the worship of that God, they see themselves as a nation like any other nation, with a god like any other nation, out for their own best interests like any other nation; and since they’re a small nation, they must have a small god, and thus they keep running after the gods of the bigger, more powerful nations in hopes of improving their geopolitical standing. What God wants them to see is that the nation ought to be only of secondary importance; he’s promised to return them to their homeland, yes, but not because their political independence or political power are of any significance whatsoever. It is, rather, for his own sake, for the sake of his reputation and his glory. What matters is God’s plan for the world, and their faithfulness to serve him by doing their part in it.
The Israelites didn’t get that, and didn’t particularly want to; and it seems to me that many American evangelicals, whatever they might say about what they believe, functionally don’t get this one either. Spencer’s right that the evangelical involvement in American politics has gone wrong in some important ways, and I certainly agree that “believing in a cause more than a faith” is a bad thing; but while that has in some ways and in some cases been the effect of evangelical political involvement, I think the real error goes deeper.
The real problem here, I think, is that we’ve made our nation too important in our worldview and theology—to the point of idolatry, in many cases. Many of us who consider ourselves Bible-believing Christians have the American flag in our sanctuaries and sing hymns to our country on patriotic holidays, and we never even stop to ask whether doing so honors and pleases God. There may be a prima facie case for including such things in our Sunday worship—I don’t know, because I’ve never heard anyone try to make it. It’s simply assumed.
I’m all for patriotism, in its place; I grew up in a Navy family and I’m proud of the fact, and one of the reasons I don’t support the Democratic Party is because I don’t believe they give this nation enough credit. I don’t accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic, but I do think many of them are deficient in that respect. But if I’m all for patriotism in its place, I firmly believe that’s second place, behind our allegiance to the kingdom of God; and I think it’s all too easy to mix them up, just as the people of Israel did.
This sort of mindset was evident, for example, in the predictions of many self-proclaimed prophets last fall that John McCain would defeat Barack Obama in November. Why? Because Sen. McCain’s policies were God’s policies and God was on Sen. McCain’s side, because Sen. McCain would be a better President for America and God’s on about blessing this country. They missed the fact, as too many Christians in this country (and not just conservatives, either) miss the fact, that America is not God’s chosen nation. The Puritan colonists of New England may have been trying to found a city on a hill that would lead the English church to reformation, but for all the many ways in which our presidents have appropriated such language to describe this country, and for all that many have agreed with de Tocqueville in describing America as “a nation with the soul of a church,” the USA is not the city on a hill that Jesus was talking about. We are at best, in Abraham Lincoln’s words, God’s “almost-chosen people.”
To lose sight of this fact is to lose sight of the truth that we worship, not the God of America, but the Lord of the Universe and Creator of all time and space; it’s to come to see the Lord Almighty as functionally an amiable local deity who exists to keep track of America’s interests. Granted, this doesn’t pose the same exact temptation as it did for Israel, since in our case, we are no small nation on the edges of power, but are rather one of the dominant powers of the earth; but it does skew our understanding of who God is and what he’s on about, and what we’re supposed to be on about.
When this happens, it results in the phenomenon that Spencer decries, not exactly because we’ve exchanged our faith for a cause, but rather because we’ve identified the kingdom of God in our minds and hearts with the nation of America. It results in us coming to believe that we advance the kingdom of God in the ballot boxes, legislatures, courts, and executive offices of this nation, that our battle is in fact against flesh and blood and is to be fought with the weapons of flesh and blood; when that battle goes against us, the temptation is there to conclude (as I heard people conclude last November 5) that God has somehow failed and that his will has not been done. Those sorts of reactions lead many outside the church to conclude that what American evangelicals really worship is our political agenda—a conclusion which should make us deeply uneasy.
None of this is to say that Christians shouldn’t be involved in politics, that the evangelical political agenda (broadly understood) is substantively wrong, that evangelicals should become liberals or retreat from politics, or anything else of that sort. But whether the substance of our participation is wrong or not, the spirit of our participation has been wrong in all too many cases, because—whether consequently or merely concurrently—we’ve lost the gospel focus to our faith. We’ve treated our faith as a this-worldly thing—whether it’s “God’s politics” or “your best life now,” it’s all the same mistake at the core—and ended up with a religion defined in this-worldly terms, as a matter of “do this” and “don’t do that” in which success can be quantified in this-worldly categories. In a word, we’ve ended up back in legalism; whether that legalism is focused on “thou shalt not,” on going out and doing good with Jesus as your role model, or on voting the right way and being politically active for the right causes, in the end, is only a difference in style. And whatever legalism might be, what it clearly isn’t is Christian.
Again, I do believe that there are things we should do, and things we shouldn’t do, and causes we should support, and votes which are honoring to God and others which aren’t. But none of those things is central to what the church is supposed to be, and none of them should be what we’re primarily about; none of them should be driving the bus. As Jared Wilson has been arguing at length for some time now, the church needs to be “cross-centered, grace-laden, Christ-focused [and] gospel-driven”; to be faithful to our calling, that must be the core of who we are and the purpose of everything we do. That should determine every aspect of our lives, in fact—which, yes, means that we should do certain things and not do other things, and certainly should shape our voting and our political involvement as it shapes everything else we do. But we should always be bringing everything back to the gospel, not to a list of do’s and dont’s, much less a political platform or agenda; that and nothing else should be the touchstone for our lives and our decision-making.If our politics is secondary to and derivative of our faith, we’re doing it right. If our faith is secondary to and derivative of our politics, we aren’t.
(The beginning of this post is excerpted from “The Stubborn Faithfulness of God”)
Faith in action: George W. Bush’s greatest legacy
He doesn’t get much credit for it from the country—it wasn’t in the interest of his political opponents or the media to let that happen, since it would have interfered with the narrative of all the bad things they wanted you to believe about the man—but what George W. Bush did to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic and other diseases in Africa was an unprecedented good on an amazing scale; and for all the difficulties with the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, that effort on the part of his administration has done a great deal of good as well. Eventually, once the politics are out of the way, he’ll get the credit for these things that he deserves.
A modest proposal on the definition of marriage
I offer this with two notes. First, this isn’t a “modest proposal” in the satirical sense, along the lines of Jonathan Swift; I am serious. Second, this isn’t my own idea; I ran across it some years ago and no longer remember who came up with it. That said, here is the proposal.I would be willing to support same-sex marriage given two conditions:
the abolition of no-fault divorce and the recriminalization of adultery.Those who argue that it’s absurd for heterosexuals to oppose redefining marriage to include homosexual couples on grounds of the sanctity of marriage while tolerating divorce for non-biblical reasons have a point; where they go wrong, in my judgment (and, I believe, on the biblical standard) is in arguing for combining the two. The best course, I think, would be to hold the line on the definition of marriage while reversing the no-fault revolution—but I don’t expect that to happen. (To tell the truth, I don’t expect to see my own proposal realized either, but we’ll get to that.) As a realistic matter, politics is a matter of tradeoffs (except for short periods), and you have to give something to get something. Given that, I think that no-fault divorce and the lifting of formal societal sanction on sleeping around have done more damage to the institution of marriage than would inclusion of same-sex couples in that institution, and so I think the tradeoff would be, on the whole, beneficial.Including the recriminalization of adultery in this deal would also ensure that those homosexuals who supported it were actually serious about marriage. There are those who argue that the true agenda behind the push for same-sex marriage is the desire to bring down the institution of marriage, or at the least render it irrelevant; and I’m quite sure there are those for whom that’s true. I’m also sure there are those for whom it isn’t. The willingness to advocate and enter into legal marriage on grounds that would make that marriage much more consequential (and the violation of it much more consequential) would draw a clear and unambiguous contrast between the two groups.As noted, I would be very surprised to see this proposal enacted, since there are a lot more heterosexuals who would be inconvenienced by it than there are homosexuals whom it would benefit. I suspect for instance that most liberal heterosexuals, if these were the only terms on which they could win marital status for same-sex couples, would refuse. Their attitude, I think, would likely mirror that of New England environmentalists who are eager to see species in other parts of the country added to the threatened and endangered lists, but much less eager when it’s a species like the New England cottontail; easy to stand on your principles, after all, when it only inconveniences other people.I also suspect that many conservatives would dislike my proposed deal. Part of that is that many would disagree with my arguments for it; just because I believe that it would, on the whole, strengthen the institution of marriage doesn’t mean that everyone has to agree with me, or that I’m necessarily right. Part of it too is that, given the divorce rate among evangelicals and fundamentalists, you have to figure that even many conservative Christians would balk at reversing the no-fault revolution.I don’t know how prominent people of homosexual inclination would react if this modest proposal were ever seriously debated; I suspect some, at least, would advocate for it with a certain sardonic humor, pleased to see the onus put on heterosexual America for once. I do think, though, that if people were forced to discuss it seriously, the conversation would be both enlightening and entertaining; and who knows? We might even learn something.
Richard John Neuhaus, RIP
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, founder of the Institute for Religion and Public Life and founding editor-in-chief of First Things, died this morning at the age of 72, of complications from cancer. I never met him—I’ve wanted to for years, but I knew it was highly unlikely that it would ever happen—and can’t say I knew him, apart from the occasional gracious correspondence by e-mail (I don’t know if my own experience is typical, but if it is, he has to have spent a lot of time e-mailing random readers), but I truly grieve his death. As a winsome, insightful, grace-bearing advocate for the gospel of Jesus Christ in our contemporary Western culture (and he was that, even as he never backed down from a fight he deemed worthwhile), he had few equals and fewer superiors over this past century. His death, coming so soon after that of Avery Cardinal Dulles, impoverishes not only the Catholic theological scene, but the whole church, in America and around the world. I have no doubt that First Things will continue strong under the leadership of Joseph Bottum, but as my wife pointed out when she called to give me the news, his own voice and perspective will never be replaced. I appreciate what Bottum had to say, which I think is just about perfect:
My tears are not for him—for he knew, all his life, that his Redeemer lives, and he has now been gathered by the Lord in whom he trusted.I weep, rather for all the rest of us. As a priest, as a writer, as a public leader in so many struggles, and as a friend, no one can take his place. The fabric of life has been torn by his death, and it will not be repaired, for those of us who knew him, until that time when everything is mended and all our tears are wiped away.
It is good and right that Bottum has chosen to repost today Fr. Neuhaus’ 2000 article “Born Toward Dying,” which the Anchoress rightly calls “deep, open, thoughtful, funny, moving and wise. Typically, so.” My only objection to her use of the word “typically” is that this really is Fr. Neuhaus at his best; it is, I think, a profoundly important piece, especially for our death-denying, thanatophobic culture.The Anchoress also posted a video of the Kings College Choir singing the seventh movement, “In Paradisum,” from Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem in D minor, which suits beautifully here:
Requiescat in pace, Fr. Neuhaus.