A Roundup of Evangelical Responses to Wayne Grudem

Evangelical theologian Wayne Grudem raised quite a clamor this week with his inflammatorily titled article, Why Voting for Donald Trump is a Morally Good Choice. In it, Grudem argues that Christians should vote for him, despite his obvious flaws, because not doing so would be helping Hillary win and bring about disastrous consequences for our nation, whereas Trump promises to help fight abortion, protect religious liberty, and produce positive results for a number of other issues Grudem holds dear. I disagree with him, vehemently. I haven't been keeping up with the evangel-o-sphere much since my conversion to Orthodoxy, but I felt called back to at least dip my feet in by the audacity of the very existence of a Christian case for voting for Trump. There is no need for me to comment personally, though, since numerous and better-informed evangelical teachers and thinkers have already written some excellent responses to Grudem's essay from a number of different angles. I will link to and summarize them here.

Character matters

John Mark M. Reynolds delivers a scathing rebuttal to Grudem's character assessment of Trump as a "good candidate with flaws". Reynolds argues that Grudem attempts to brush aside Trump's flaws, which so overwhelmingly awful as to render him unfit for the presidency.

Donald J. Trump is uniquely unsuited for the most powerful job on the planet. He is morally unfit, unqualified, and advocating for him stains any person who does so. 

Just as saying a kind word for Mussolini is a perpetual shame to GK Chesterton, so in the same way, advocating for Trump will tar Grudem. I beg him to retract it or he will lose the moral authority to comment on politics for the rest of his life. Trump is that bad.

Of course supporting a flawed candidate is acceptable in principle; even Lincoln had his flaws. But Trump is much worse. "We must vote for flawed men, but not for men who glory in their flaws," Reynolds reminds us. "Donald J. Trump is the least qualified, least fit nominee of a major party in the history of the Republic." Reynolds spends the rest of his time expanding and supporting this assertion; I will summarize his points.

• Trump continues to endorse many hoaxes and conspiracy theories: that Obama is not a natural-born American citizen, that vaccines cause autism, that climate change is a hoax engineered by China, that Ted Cruz's father had a hand in the JFK assassination. "It is ignorance combined with pride that does not care about the ignorance."
• Trump has not abandoned his support for torture.
• Trump makes openly racist and sexist statements, and refuses to apologize for them. he has called Mexican immigrants "racists" and called for a ban on all Muslims in the US. (Despite employing numerous illegal immigrants)
• Trump owns a strip club.
• Trump has done nothing to rebuke or distance himself from the support he has received from white supremacists and members of other hate groups. He repeatedly re-tweets anti-semites and racists. "To call such hideous evil “angry fringe supporters” is to look at the worst evil in the face and blink."
• "Trump has repeatedly had kind words to say for dictators including the butcher of Ankara and KGB Colonel Putin."
• Trump is in legal trouble in New York for calling his unaccredited school a "university". (A federal judge recently allowed a suit against Trump by former students to go to trial, after the election)
• "Trump lies like most of us breath[e]. ... This is not normal political behavior, but continuous lying so grand that Professor Grudem seems to forget one lie for the next."
• Trump was uninvolved in the rearing of his children, contrary to a point Grudem makes.
• Trump is indisputably a lover of money.
• Trump has promised to release his taxes, and has not.
• Trump has brashly asserted that he, and he alone, can save America. (And, more recently, that Clinton is the devil)
• Trump has induced a minor international crisis by stating, without precedent, that he would make America's defense of other NATO countries conditional on their putting in their fair share of military expenditures.
• Trump is the first presidential candidate to brag about his "manhood" in a debate.
• Trump "confuses Clinton’s Vice-Presidential nominee with a Republican governor of New Jersey. The man is ignorant of even the most basic facts about government and has no interest in learning."

Warren Throckmorton recalls a statement signed by 150 Christian leaders—including Wayne Grudem—in 1998, in the wake of the Monica Lewinski scandal. Part of the statement says:

We are aware that certain moral qualities are central to the survival of our political system, among which are truthfulness, integrity, respect for the law, respect for the dignity of others, adherence to the constitutional process, and a willingness to avoid the abuse of power. We reject the premise that violations of these ethical standards should be excused so long as a leader remains loyal to a particular political agenda and the nation is blessed by a strong economy. Elected leaders are accountable to the Constitution and to the people who elected them. By his own admission the President has departed from ethical standards by abusing his presidential office, by his ill use of women, and by his knowing manipulation of truth for indefensible ends. We are particularly troubled about the debasing of the language of public discourse with the aim of avoiding responsibility for one’s actions.

"To my eye," Throckmorton continues, "a vote for Trump contradicts every paragraph in this statement." The statement continues:

But we maintain that in general there is a reasonable threshold of behavior beneath which our public leaders should not fall, because the moral character of a people is more important than the tenure of a particular politician or the protection of a particular political agenda. Political and religious history indicate that violations and misunderstandings of such moral issues may have grave consequences.

I would agree with this statement's sentiment. Throckmorton does as well, and says, "I see a shift from then to now in the willingness to tolerate character problems for political expediency. ... People like James Dobson, Eric Metaxas and now Wayne Grudem are telling us that it is our duty to throw this reasoning aside and lower or abandon the threshold." Jonathan Merritt offers another commentary on this flip from Clinton to Trump, concluding that "Conservative Christians were unwilling to extend mercy to a Democrat who asked for it but have offered it freely to a Republican who doesn’t want it. ... Trump-loving evangelical leaders should either apologize to Bill Clinton or admit, after all these years, that they, too, have a character issue."

On the issues

Another post by Throckmorton reiterates this contrast to the statement Grudem signed in 1998 and his support for Trump based solely on the political consequences, agreeing with the former against the latter. He argues Grudem's critique of Trumps character doesn't go far enough, making several of the same points Reynolds did, then moves to examine Grudem's overriding question: "Which vote is most likely to bring the best results for the nation?" Throckmorton examines Trumps's policy plans, issue-by-issue, to show that Grudem's assessment is highly optimistic. I will briefly list his conclusions on these (all of which cite at least some research):

• Immigration: Trump's promised deportation of 11 million(!) illegal immigrants is expected to cost the economy $400 billion, and lower the GDP by at least $1 trillion. Trump's promised wall is expected to cost at least $25 billion (unless, of course, Mexico pays for it).
• Taxes: Trump's promise to cut taxes with no real plan for lowering costs (except the standard promise to "cut waste, fraud and abuse") will massively increase the national debt.
• Trade, Jobs, and the Poor: Trump's proposed tariffs would greatly increase the cost of imported goods. The conservative National Chamber of Commerce believes his economic policies would lead to a recession, with millions of lost jobs. Trump himself dismissed the risk of a trade war, but it would be a great hardship for the poor.
• Healthcare: The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget believes Trump's proposed healthcare solution would cost more and lead to more uninsured. Strangely, he has also expressed support for a single-payer system, which Grudem probably doesn't want.
• Debt: Trump is expected to add $11.5 trillion to the national debt. Clinton is only expected to add $250 billion.
• Foreign Policy: Trump's stance toward Russia is highly ambiguous; he has both praised Putin and claimed not to know him. It's hard to believe he would be tougher on the threat posed by Russia than Clinton. He has also said he might not intervene if Russia invaded a NATO ally and might recognize Russia's invasion of the Crimea.
• Supreme Court and Religious Liberty: Supreme court justices are unelected and subject to checks and balances regardless of who is president. Few conservative legal scholars think the possibility of conservative justices outweighs Trump's numerous flaws; Roger Pilion states that "Hillary Clinton is a deeply flawed candidate, to be sure, but the election of Donald Trump would so defile the party of Lincoln and America itself that it must be resisted. He is an aberration that we must get past, and quickly."

Throckmorton concludes:

If a vote for Trump is a moral choice, then I can’t see how a vote for Clinton is not one also. It probably comes down to which vision of the future each individual believes to be accurate. As I look at the evidence, I think Grudem sugar coated Trump and cast Clinton in the worst possible light. In any case, given how inadequate his analysis of Trump’s positions and character is, I think it is an abuse of his position as an evangelical leader to imply that there is a choice that good Christians should choose. If his standard no longer elevates moral qualities, then he needs to do a better job researching Trump’s proposals and what they portend.

Matthew Boedy (guest-posting on Throckmorton's blog) argues that "Grudem’s essay fails to live up to his own positive qualities for Christian influence on government." He refers here to a book Grudem wrote in 2010 arguing that Christians should have "significant influence" on government, namely "winsome, kind, thoughtful, loving, persuasive influence that is suitable to each circumstance and that always protects the other person’s right to disagree, but that is also uncompromising about the truthfulness and moral goodness of the teachings of God’s Word." (55) As a preliminary note, Boedy suggests that Grudem does not attempt to persuade so much as he dictates, arguing that voting for Trump is a moral obligation for Christians.

He then examines the core of Grudem's argument, the fact that Trump is more likely to nominate conservative Supreme Court justices than Clinton. His calling these justices "unelected" is highly misleading since, as Throckmorton also said, Supreme Court justices have always been unelected; they are selected by the executive and legislative branches, as part of the separation of powers. This fact will not change under Clinton or Trump. Obviously there is something in our system of government that can stop them: the election of a president who will appoint different justices (or the election of a senate that will refuse to confirm them). Grudem also follows a double standard in his description of the Supreme Court's activity: decisions he disagrees with are the work of "activist judges", but decisions he agrees with are perfectly fine. "He blatantly strips the court of any authority all the while saying his judges would rule in the opposite way but by the same manner." (Emphasis the author's)

Grudem's warning that Clinton could criminalize dissent rings hollow as he endorses a candidate who has already cracked down on reporters at his rallies, cultivates a hostile relationship with the media, and belittles and insults those who disagree with him.

Grudem argues that disqualifying Trump on the basis of his character constitutes reductionism, "the mistake of reducing every argument to only one factor, when the situation requires that multiple factors be considered." But Boedy responds that "to many in the church, character is not “an” element – it is the umbrella concern. It is not a “single issue” – it is the issue." This is why Grudem himself highlights character so much in his definition of "significant influence". It seems he is not holding Trump to the same standard to which he holds Christians seeking to participate in politics.

Kevin Vallier, writing for Bleeding Heart Libertarians, agrees with Grudem that Trump will probably be better than Hillary on the issues of abortion (by not being certain to appoint pro-Roe justices) and religious liberty, but argues that the latter is not as pressing or important as many other issues, and the former case is built not on certainty but on hope that Trump will follow through on his promises and keep moving "in a more conservative direction."

He then examines the other issues Grudem comments on, one by one:

• Free Speech: There is little evidence that Hillary will criminalize dissent or free speech. Like Throckmorton, he points out  that there seems to be much more risk of this with Trump, who has already threatened the free speech of those who criticize him.
• Taxes: Trump wants to cut taxes without a real plan to reduce spending, which will just increase our deficit.
• Education: Again, not as clear-cut as Grudem makes it sound; there is no indication Clinton is more hostile to school choice than Trump.
• Military: Our armed forces are far from "depleted", as Grudem says; we have the strongest military in the world with bases all over the world.
• Immigration: Obama has deported "huge numbers of illegal immigrants", and so it's misleading to talk about needing to "secure" our borders. Vallier also argues that Trump's attitude towards immigrants is deeply un-Christian; as Leviticus 19:34 commands, "The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God."
• Terrorism: Trump is more non-interventionist, and Hillary is "a hawk"; it's hard to argue that Trump will deploy more force against ISIS or terrorists elsewhere. Also, Trump supports torture and Hillary doesn't.
• China and Russia: They don't "push us around", as Grudem says. "We’re the ones with military bases near their countries, and we’re the ones who have repeatedly interfered with Iran’s political institutions over the last several decades."
• Israel: Again, Hillary is, if anything, likely to be more pro-Israel than Trump, given his preference for non-interventionism. Trump has also shown no recognition of Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians; "Christians should care about the plight of the weak and the poor, and that includes Palestinians."
• Energy: "If we want to be good stewards and to care for the global poor, we should be deeply concerned about our use of fossil fuels." Hillary is much better on this issue than Trump, who believes climate change is a Chinese hoax.
• Healthcare: It is an exaggeration to say that the ACA is "ruining the nation’s healthcare system"; it has indeed helped people afford insurance and treatment who couldn't before. There is also no reason to believe Trump will give us more free market-based healthcare; he isn't very concerned with market freedom.

Vallier moves on to some other issues which Grudem doesn't mention, but which he considers important: anti-poverty policy, justice for women and minorities, criminal justice reform, trade, and the rule of law. He generally thinks Hillary is to be preferred on these points as well (especially rule of law, for which Trump seems to show no concern). Vallier concludes that for the Christian, both Hillary and Trump are unacceptable choices, and proceeds to make a pretty good case for voting for Johnson instead. Johnson is far from a pro-life crusader, but he supports appointing originalists to the Supreme Court and returning abortion law to the states, two of the main measures Grudem hopes Trump will take against abortion, without the glaring (and honestly terrifying) character flaws.

Matthew Lee Anderson criticizes the pro-life case for Trump. He actually wrote this post before the RNC, but it is especially relevant now. After going over the reasons why he thinks Hillary is an unacceptable choices, Anderson says he remains convinced that "there are no grounds on which it is permissible or morally licit for a conservative Christian to lend their support to Trump by voting for him." He goes on to examine one of Grudem's central points, the argument that Trump is more likely to appoint conservative, pro-life justices to the Supreme Court.

This argument, he argues, is based on blind faith that there is a chance Trump will do as conservatives are hoping. Trump has consistently opposed himself to the Republican establishment, even after being nominated by them, and combined with his well-known tendency to contradict himself, his appointing pro-life justices as president is hardly a sure thing.

The argument also treats conservative justices as important enough to "trump" every other consideration. This attitude ironically plays into the trend toward judicial supremacy that gave us Roe vs. Wade, Obergefell vs. Hodges, and other such landmark cases. (This is similar to the point Boedy made) Supporting Trump solely for this reason will also tremendously devalue the pro-life vote; "every Republican candidate going forward need only offer the thinnest of overtures to pro-lifers to win their support, and that there will be nothing conservatives can do if such candidates do not deliver. ... By supporting Trump, pro-lifers make it astoundingly clear what kind of price the party has to pay to win their votes."

Anderson goes on to argue that Trump "has not merely lived in, but reveled in the moral atmosphere and commitments that stand beneath our abortion culture." (emphasis the author's) As Reynolds mentioned, he owns a strip club. He is, at best, a serial monogamist. He has bragged about the number of his sexual partners. When asked in an interview whether he had paid for an abortion, he dodged the question. Of course, Trump has not apologized or repented of any of these things, as he has not done for anything else. And Grudem thinks this man is the best hope of the pro-life movement?

Treating Trump's myriad flaws as the worthwhile cost of getting conservative justices, as Grudem does, degrades the pro-life movement. "It indicates that pro-lifers are willing to accept personal and cultural decay of our leaders for the sake of conservative judges and legal opinions. ... The pro-life movement can justify supporting Trump only by viewing his character, his known sexual vices, his unrepentant history of supporting abortion, etc. as acceptable side-effects that, in this case, are the cost of their hope for conservative justices." It separates the legal goals of the movement from "the broader cultural conditions pro-lifers are trying to establish to end abortion." Simply striking down Roe vs. Wade in today's culture and political climate would engender a massive backlash, in many ways of the reverse of what Roe itself did when the decision was passed. "But," Anderson points out, "if the recent history of morals legislation in this country is any indication, such a strategy does not work well over the long term. Judicial myopia leads to, in this case, cutting off the pro-life movements cultural nose on the slimmest of hopes of saving its political face."

He concludes his argument by saying, "as I see it, the choice pro-lifers face is whether they are willing to sacrifice their political lives in order to save their cultural and moral soul. I wish I had more confidence that they would choose wisely."

A more excellent way

Scot McKnight wrote my favorite response. He focuses not so much on examining Trump's character or taking Grudem's arguments to task, but rather on the significance of Grudem's endorsement (phrased as a moral obligation, as Boedy points out). He strongly warns against Christians aligning themselves (as Christians per se) with "the powers", or "the gods of this age", i.e. parts of the American political establishment. He continues with the wise and extremely quotable line:

The best way to seek the good of our nation is to be the church in the nation, not confuse the church and the nation. Evangelical leaders would be more evangelical if they refused to endorse political candidates.

In the rest of the short post, McKnight laments how strongly correlated conservative Christians have become with the Republican party. "What I care about is the dilution of the gospel and the alignment of Christians with a political party." His sentiments here are worth remembering for me, for Grudem, and probably for the other commentators I have linked to.

Finally, Amy Gannett describes the effect of Grudem's endorsement, and the aforementioned alignment of Christianity with Republican politics, on millennials. She again notes that Grudem does not give an endorsement so much as a moral imperative, and that he sets up a "hierarchy of morality" in which some moral values (such as religious liberty and the rights of the unborn) are to be valued and set above others (such as the equality of races and genders). By ordering his values thus and making this hierarchy so integral to his vision of Christian ethics, Gannett argues, he is "losing" millennials who feel strongly about social and racial justice and cannot simply weigh the scales and call Trump "good" as Grudem manages to.

We cannot call a candidate “good,” as Grudem does with Trump, who has made racist remarks. We will not call a candidate “good” who has demoralized and dehumanized women on national television. We will not buy into the hierarchy of Grudem’s proposed morals over others. Because Grudem (and others) are making this hierarchy of morality intrinsically related to the Christian life and theology, we will not stand with them.

Gannett concludes by warning against equating evangelicalism and American nationalism, in the same vein as McKnight. By and large, millennials do not consider America a "Christian nation", and we aren't able to look back on the "good old days" Trump promises to restore. "We don’t have a lot of national pride because we are waking up to the immense on-going racism that exists in our nation’s systems, the horrors of early American history, and the tragedies around the world that happen because every country has nationalists. So when you equate nationalism with Christian virtue, we’re out." Gannett concludes by asking evangelical leaders to reflect on where they have drawn their lines in the sand, to speak out against the evils Trump proudly stands for and not accept them.

Abortion, love for enemies, and the sins of all

You have heard that it was said, "you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. (Matthew 5:43-48 NKJV)

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If, like many of the people I know, you consider yourself "pro-life", know first of all that I share your basic conviction on the immorality of abortion. I believe the ethics of the killing of an unborn child do not simply come down to a woman's right to do as she likes with her body. Though I don't know how to "prove" it and am somewhat weary of attempts to do so, I believe abortion is the destruction of a bearer of God's image, the waste of a human life created to be a partaker in the life of the divine (cf. 2 Peter 1:4), and a terrible tragedy whenever and wherever it takes place.

Yet I hesitate to identify myself with the pro-life movement. This is because while I share its basic convictions on abortion, I feel that it doesn't act on them in a way that is consistent with its substantially Christian identity. (The inescapability of billboards with Bible verses and gestation milestones on any drive through the rural Midwest is a testament to this identity) In large part, I think this can be described as a failure to heed the Lord's command to love even our enemies—a radical teaching from the "sermon on the mount" which I often find myself coming back to precisely because its implications are so profound and far-reaching that we can always readily think of another way we are failing to live up to them. There are at least three such implications that I think are relevant for the pro-life movement. (And please bear in mind that I am attempting to speak corporately of the movement as a whole, not every single person who identifies with it)

The first is the simplest and most immediate: love your enemies enough to stop slandering them. By "slander" I am referring to the false accusation against Planned Parenthood that it has been selling aborted fetal tissue for profit based on the misleading editing of a video interview with PP officials promulgated by the Center for Medical Progress, used as justification for the recently-fervent calls to defund it. The unedited video is fairly long, which is probably why most people don't pay attention to it, but it makes clear that the payment PP accepts payment for fetal tissue strictly to cover the costs of preparation, handling, and transportation, not to make a profit. The ethics of using this tissue for research, legal as it is, are certainly worth further conversation, but no such conversation is happening, only cries of outrage over a demonstrable falsehood.

So far investigations by seven states, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the GOP itself have all failed to find any evidence of illegality in PP's handling of aborted fetal tissue. Yet despite all of this, anti-abortionists are not calling each other out on this myth, but perpetuating it, to the point where PP has stopped accepting even legal reimbursement in order to quell the rumors. So I simply have to ask: if you are one of those railing against PP for profiting off abortions, how much more proof will it take to convince you that these accusations are baseless? Will any amount be sufficient? Or have you simply determined that this will be its hill to die upon, regardless of the facts?

Underlying the endurance of the false claims made by the CMP's video among pro-lifers is an attitude towards truth that I find deeply disturbing for a Christian movement. Of course they are not making claims that they know to be false; I believe they are simply ignorant of how thoroughly the claims have been refuted. But this raises a new problem; it speaks to a failure to "do one's homework", so to speak, an eagerness to believe negative claims about PP without bothering to see if they are really substantiated. This is not just irresponsible; it is a failure to love those we consider our enemies. If you are reluctant to believe bad things said about your friends, then you should be just as reluctant (not eager) to believe them about your enemies, and should require the same amount of convincing. My attempt here to debunk the slander being spread about PP is an effort to obey this teaching, even if it means defending those with whom I strongly disagree from those I would consider my friends. The love of God does not conform to the divisions we create between ourselves.

As well, PP has made no secret at all of the fact that it has been performing abortions for decades. So why has the CMP's video ignited such ferocious calls to defund PP? How has the basic ethical situation changed? What it does with fetal tissue has no bearing on the morality of abortion. If abortion is just another medical procedure that women have the inalienable right to choose for themselves, as abortion supporters believe, then whatever is done with the fetal tissue afterwards is of little further ethical concern; it is just like disposing of, say, an amputated limb or removed appendix. If it is the killing of a person, as pro-lifers argue, then it is a monstrous evil whether the aborted tissue is given a reverent funeral or cut into pieces and sold at a profit. So why does this "revelation" even make any difference to their struggle to protect the unborn? The answer is obvious: because selling fetal tissue for a profit is illegal; if it is really what PP is doing, then it becomes possible to legally prosecute it and (hopefully) shut it down. Because the goal is to stop as many abortions as possible, right?

The second implication: love your enemies enough to talk to them, not past them, to listen to what they have to say, and maybe even (gasp!) to learn from them. Again, just as you would respect a friend in conversation, so you should do with your enemies. Too often it seems to me like pro-lifers are so focused on abortion itself—restricting it, controlling it, defunding it, or condemning it—that they forget what their would-be conversation partners are constantly trying to draw their attention to: the context of abortion. Abortion, like Scripture, has a context: the socioeconomic factors that drive women to end their pregnancies, the things leading up to the decision to terminate a life. This fact sheet describes those factors:

The reasons women give for having an abortion underscore their understanding of the responsibilities of parenthood and family life. Three-fourths of women cite concern for or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents; and half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.

As should be obvious, having an abortion is not a decision made lightly or easily. It is not the first wish that comes to anyone's mind in the event of an unplanned pregnancy; it is a last resort, undertaken when carrying a child to term is simply unimaginable for one reason or another. Yes, some abortions may happen because a woman simply doesn't want to care for a child with a disability or wants an "easy" way out of an pregnancy that would be more inconvenient than impossible to carry to term, but looking at the numbers we can't assume these cases are more than a minority. My friend Joe explains in his own words:

[Women who have abortions are] making a hard choice about their ability to provide for all of the people they need to. Sixty percent of women who have abortions in the US already have children; forty percent of women who have abortions in the US are below the official poverty line, and more than seventy percent are below what actually constitutes seriously poor. The choice that's being made isn't between a child and a Maserati or a child and a vacation to the Riviera; it's between having three children or having two children and enough money to give them food, shelter, and medical care.

Abortion is not so much a problem in itself as it is a symptom of deeper, interconnected problems: poverty first and foremost, our flawed health care system, lack of support for new mothers, abusive relationships, single parenthood, and everything else that undermines a woman's ability to care for her children. If it is to be consistent, the fight for "life" cannot be confined merely to unborn life; a fight against abortion must also address these factors.

I think much of the rhetoric leveled against abortion fails to take this context into account. Simply pointing to it as a monstrous evil, a testament to our nation's hardness of heart and full-speed trajectory away from God, a glaring sin which must be repented—these things might all be true, and they might make a single mother struggling to take care of her two children feel guilty about aborting her third, but they do nothing to help her situation or offer hope, and will thus ring hollow. I'm reminded of the Lord's words against the teachers of the Torah: "Woe to you also, lawyers! For you load men with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers." (Luke 11:46) Arguments from Scripture about the dignity or personhood of a fetus, while true, are not much better. Another statistic from that fact sheet that shocked me was that over 60% of women obtaining abortions identify as Christians (37% Protestant, 28% Catholic). No doubt many of these would agree, at least in theory, with pro-life rhetoric about the "sanctity of life" and the personhood of the unborn. Yet they still seek abortions, probably for the kinds of reasons described above, in spite of those beliefs. (The failure of their churches to offer them much-needed support in carrying their children to term is, to say the least, sobering)

This context also means that the kind of restrictions conservatives seek to place on abortion are not likely to be as effective as they hope, and will also ring insensitive at best, anti-woman at worst. A woman who wants to have an abortion probably feels that the alternative of not having one will be even worse, and so she may go to great (even illegal and dangerous) lengths to avoid that alternative. In all likelihood, she feels she has no other choice—can you imagine why trying to take away the one choice she feels she has left might seem callous and backward? In my other post on abortion, a doctor writes of his experience before Roe vs. Wade treating a women who had had a then-illegal abortion: "Her desperate need to terminate a pregnancy was the driving force behind the selection of any method available." We can expect such cases to become increasingly, tragically common if we take away womens' access to legal abortions without concerning ourselves with the context.

The very dichotomy between "pro-life" and "pro-choice" ideologies is also emblematic of a failure to listen, on the part of both self-identified camps. When did valuing life and respecting peoples' freedom to make their own healthcare decisions become necessarily conflicting goals? Who decided that you have to choose between them? Unfortunately, I think a good deal of the blame falls on the pro-life movement. While the legal measures it pursues against abortion and its providers do protect unborn life (at least in intention), they tend to do so by...constraining choice. Restricting when, where, and how abortions can be obtained, forcing doctors to attempt to dissuade women seeking abortions, or trying to defund organizations that provide them all have the effect of undermining and reducing a woman' choice of the medical treatment she desires and feels (however wrongly) that she needs. The pro-choice agenda is not so much an intentional campaign against life as it is a fight for womens' welfare and their ability to make their own medical choices—as just about any pro-choice supporter will tell you, if you listen. These things are not bad in themselves; why do we act as though we are opposed to them?

This article asks much the same questions. The author remarks on how "it has become a bad thing to be against ending preborn human life." Trying to stop abortions with legal force, as pro-lifers do, is "like trying to put out a fire with gasoline". It has led to defending unborn life becoming correlated with being against womens' health and their right to make medical choices for themselves, and with undermining their welfare. For example, opposition to an Ohio bill that would ban abortions when the sole reason is that the fetus has Down Syndrome is based on the impression that lawmakers are "controlling women and denying them the ability to make the most important choice that they will ever face". It's not unlike the fear among supporters of gun rights that any restriction on gun ownership is a prelude to the government coming and taking all their guns away—except that in this case, the total prohibition of abortion is the explicit goal of most pro-lifers, not just a feverish projection of one's own fears. The author writes about the pro-life legal struggle:

As long as the battle for preborn life takes place in capital buildings and courtrooms, pro-choice advocates will continue to believe that pro-life advocates are backwards and anti-women, that Planned Parenthood fights for the rights of women; and as the quote at the top of the piece argues, that rallies such as the one in St. Paul are held to prevent basic health care.

My friend Joe adds that the legal battle here is not just over the recognition of the personhood of a fetus or the moral status of abortion: pro-life supporters are also seen (rightly?) as promoting sex education that does not help prevent unplanned pregnancy, spreading misinformation about abortion and women's health, doing little to support (or even opposing) health care that promotes the welfare of women considering if they can support a child, and showing comparatively scarce concern for the welfare of children that have already been born. It bears repeating that not everyone who identifies as pro-life is involved in all or any of these things, but rare indeed is the voice of loyal dissent raised within the pro-life movement against them. Pro-choice supporters show a strong awareness of the deeper problems of which abortion is a symptom, problems that too often get ignored in pro-life rhetoric, and it is on this neglect that they base much of their own arguments. In a way, the pro-life cause is self-defeating precisely because the measures it takes to advance its agenda also strengthen its opposition.

I hope I have shown sufficiently how the effort to protect the unborn can benefit from talking to those it disagrees with rather than past them. This means not ignoring them or giving a dismissive response, but listening well enough to hear when they may be reminding us of what we have forgotten. It means addressing our rhetoric to what they are actually saying, not simply to ourselves. It means making their accusations our self-critique: do we, in our actions as well as in our words, care more about unborn life than life in other stages and forms? It should lead us beyond "pro-life" as a mere political cause to the more fundamental why: the recognition, preservation, and cherishing of the image of God and we whom God has granted to bear it. And the truth is, the most ardent pro-choice activist is just as much a bearer of the image of God as an unborn child, worthy of just as much of honor and compassion. If we confine our struggle for the sanctity of life merely to abortion, it becomes contradictory and self-defeating. Listening to the truths spoken by both sides offers hope for a stance toward abortion that combines the best (i.e. true) parts of both ideologies and none of their faults.

Once you stop believing that the two are opposites, it is possible to be both pro-life and pro-choice. If abortion is the result of women feeling like they have no choice, no other way of dealing with a pregnancy, then perhaps the best solution to the problem it poses is not to take away what little choice they have left, but to give them more freedom, more choices, better choices—alternatives to the taking of a life. Instead of condemning those who seek and provide abortions, highlight and celebrate the beauty of choosing life—and, inasmuch as you continue to work on a political level, offer the support needed to help more women make that choice. On a rhetorical level, zoom out from the impasse over abortion itself and turn to the distortions in our culture that give rise to both the justification and permissibility of abortion. As the article author puts it, "offer a hand, not handcuffs ... highlight the beauty of choosing life and offer support to help it come into the world." Not only will this undermine the basis for much of the ideological conflict over abortion and promote reconciliation; I think it will also truly undo the evil represented by abortion instead of just diverting it.

But this attitude of openness, of willingness to listen and seek reconciliation, is tragically rare in the pro-life movement, as far as I have seen. Far more common is the mindset of warfare: we must rally the troops and fight to defend the sanctity of life from all who would devalue and destroy it, from the horrific evil of abortion, no matter what it takes, even slander and bitter condemnation of the "other side". Instead of compassion and a helping hand, women seeking abortions are denounced as murderers and participants in a horrific national evil. The picketing and harassment of abortion providers is a highly visible example of this; according to the fact sheet, "Eighty-four percent of clinics experienced at least one form of antiabortion harassment in 2011. Picketing is the most common form of harassment clinics are exposed to (80%) followed by phone calls (47%). Fifty-three percent of clinics were picketed 20 times or more."

I don't think such an attitude of judgment and condemnation is fitting for fellow sinners such as us—especially not if there is anything to my previous two points and this condemnation is accompanied by corporate sin that is visible to no one more than the very people we condemn. Should immorality among those making a Christian profession of faith (claiming to be a member of "a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people" [1 Peter 2:9]) not concern us more than that of the world, where it is to be expected? Are we not first to judge among ourselves, and leave it to God to judge the world? As St. Paul writes: "For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges. Therefore 'put away from yourselves the evil person.'" (1 Cor 5:12-13) Going deeper into the sermon on the mount, the final implication of enemy love I want to discuss is this: love your enemies enough to see your own sin as worse than theirs.

This is one of the teachings of the Orthodox Church that I have found especially humbling, though it is by no means unique to it. It is obedience to the Lord's later teaching in Matthew 7:1-5: "Judge not, that you be not judged. ... And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? ... Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." It is to adopt as our own the sober self-understanding expressed by St. Paul when he writes, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first" (1 Timothy 1:15), as Orthodox pray before receiving communion. It is to feel the weight of our own guilt upon ourselves as heavier than a mountain, and cry out in repentance and prayer for the pardon and remission of our sins; meanwhile, we view the sins of others charitably, as lighter than a feather, pointing them out not simply to condemn but in loving admonishment, to speed them along the path of salvation. Loading others up with guilt over their own sins without giving priority to your own is the opposite of Christlike—it is pharisaic.

This focus on the seriousness of one's own sin and the importance of pursuing one's own salvation, the discouragement of dwelling on the sins of others, is amazingly pervasive in Orthodox theology and devotion. It is basic to the character of one being conformed to the image and likeness of Christ.  But there is also a rarer, more profound and radical dimension of the teaching: the idea that we are each responsible, in some way, for the sins of everyone. Obviously this does not imply a confusion of persons or a contradiction of the biblical idea that each one is responsible for his own sin; it is something you have to "put on", a different and counterintuitive perspective you have to shift into seeing, not something innate. We don't just see ourselves as involved in the same kinds of sins as others; we actually see ourselves as somehow responsible for the sins of others—and repent for all! As the book I am currently reading for my catechism class puts it, "a saint is one who sees himself in the sins of others."

This idea is presented memorably by the saintly Elder Zossima in Dostoevsky's classical novel The Brothers Karamazov. Fr. Stephen Freeman shares this quote from the book:

“Love one another, fathers,” the elder taught (as far as Alyosha could recall afterwards). “Love God’s people. For we are not holier than those in the world because we have come here and shut ourselves within these walls, but, on the contrary, anyone who comes here, by the very fact that he has come, already knows himself to be worse than all those who are in the world, worse than all on earth … And the longer a monk lives within his walls, the more keenly he must be aware of it. For otherwise he had no reason to come here.

“But when he knows that he is not only worse than all those in the world, but is also guilty before all people, on behalf of all and for all, for all human sins, the world’s and each person’s, only then will the goal of our unity be achieved. For you must know, my dear ones, that each of us is undoubtedly guilty on behalf of all and for all on earth, not only because of the common guilt of the world, but personally, each one of us, for all people and for each person on this earth.

“This knowledge is the crown of the monk’s path, and of every man’s path on earth. For monks are not a different sort of men, but only such as all men on earth ought also to be. Only then will our hearts be moved to a love that is infinite, universal, and that knows no satiety. Then each of us will be able to gain the whole world by love and wash away the world’s sins with his tears …

“Let each of you keep close company with his heart, let each of you confess to himself untiringly. Do not be afraid of your sin, even when you perceive it, provided you are repentant, but do not place conditions on God.

“Again I say, do not be proud. Do not be proud before the lowly, do not be proud before the great either. And do not hate those who reject you, disgrace you, revile you, and slander you. Do not hate atheists, teachers of evil, materialists, not even those among them who are wicked, nor those who are good, for many of them are good, especially in our time.

“Remember them thus in your prayers: ‘Save, Lord, those whom there is no one to pray for, save also those who do not want to pray to you.’ And add at once: ‘It is not in my pride that I pray for it, Lord, for I myself am more vile than all …’

Later, on his deathbed Zossima similarly teaches:

“Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of any one. For no one can judge a criminal, until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps more than all men to blame for that crime. When he understands that, he will be able to be a judge. Though that sounds absurd, it is true. If I had been righteous myself, perhaps there would have been no criminal standing before me. If you can take upon yourself the crime of the criminal your heart is judging, take it at once, suffer for him yourself, and let him go without reproach. And even if the law itself makes you his judge, act in the same spirit as far as possible, for he will go away and condemn himself more bitterly than you have done. If, after your kiss, he goes away untouched, mocking at you, do not let that be a stumbling-block to you. It shows his time has no yet come, but it will come in due course. And if it come not, no matter; if not he, then another in his place will understand and suffer, and judge and condemn himself, and the truth will be fulfilled. Believe that, believe it without doubt; for in that lies the hope and faith of the saints.

“If the evil doing of men moves you to indignation and overwhelming distress, even to a desire for vengeance on the evil-doers, shun above all things that feeling. Go at once and seek suffering for yourself, as if you were guilty of that wrong. Accept that suffering and bear it and your heart will find comfort, and you will understand that you too are guilty, for you might have been a light to the evil-doers, even as the one man sinless, and you were not a light to them. If you had been a light, you would have lightened the path for others too, and the evil-doer might perhaps have been saved by your light from his sin. (6.3.h)

Through his memorable depiction of Zossima, Dostoevsky shows the kind of humility, repentance, and love we are called to in Christ—a love that, like our Lord's, bears the guilt of the sins of others. At first I struggled to apply this attitude to the sin of abortion. How am I responsible for it? Not in any immediately obvious way; I don't know anyone who had one (that I know of), and I have never been supportive of it. But I have definitely not done much (if anything) to help address the problems I discussed earlier as the "context" of abortion. In that sense, I am a hypocrite. On further reflection, I realized that despite my words, in how I actually live I worship the same idol of self-governance as do those who convince themselves that there can be such a thing as a "right" to abortion. Most days I pray more as a quick distraction than a vocation, and the great majority of my time is divided up according to whatever I "feel like" doing: a subtle form of hedonism. So in some sense I am able to see myself as responsible for the sin that underlies abortion. The evil that it represents is not just something "out there" to war against; it is alive and at work in my own heart, and I am told to condemn it first of all. When I judge this evil, I judge myself first, and if I seek to heal it, I must be continually repenting of my participation in it.

I am the first among sinners. Paradoxically, so are you. Only when we truly believe this are we ready to pass judgment on the sins of others.

The American Worldview

In my last post I mentioned the idea of an "American worldview" that is instrumental in shaping American culture and public life. I meant to expand more on this, which I will do now.

What is a worldview?

I'll start be defining what I do and don't mean by "worldview". In evangelical circles there is a certain way of defining and thinking about worldview. The highly creative "choose your own adventure" apologetics book What's Your Worldview? by James Anderson (reviewed here) states that "[a worldview] represents your most fundamental beliefs and assumptions about the universe you inhabit ... It reflects how you would answer all the ‘big questions’ of human existence, the fundamental questions we ask about life, the universe, and everything." A worldview is to thinking as the atmosphere is to breathing: fundamental and indispensable, but hard to detect and usually taken for granted. The review further indicates that the "big questions" worldviews answer focus on such weighty topics as the nature or existence of God and truth.

This apologetics page explains in more depth what a worldview is:

Our worldviews consist of our best guesses or firm convictions in answering the universal human questions: How did everything come to be? Why are we here? What happens after we die? What’s important? A worldview is made up of the beliefs about what is real and important. It is our beliefs about the unseen – the spiritual, the philosophical, and valuable. Our worldview will determine how we interpret our lives and the world around us. It shapes how we think about everything.

It goes on to list four core areas of belief that worldviews pertain to.

• God and the immaterial
• The meaning and purpose of life
• Human nature
• What we trust is the primary source of spiritual truth [i.e. truth about what is unseen]

This paper gets into even more detail about worldviews:

Our word worldview comes from the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who in 1768 coined the term as Weltanschauung (in German Welt = “world” and anschauung = “view”). As the word itself suggests, a worldview is as a way of looking at the world. Your worldview is like the eyeglasses through which you view and interpret your experiences. Other phrases that capture the idea are “mental grid,” “frame of reference,” and “shared perceptions of what is real, true, and good.” A worldview seeks to answer the Big Questions in life, such as Who am I? Where did I come from? What’s most important in life? It’s a whole mountain of assumptions of which you may or may not be aware but upon which your conclusions are based.

Some common themes are evident here: worldviews comprise our most basic and important beliefs, our answers to the "big questions" about God, truth, the purpose of life, human nature, etc. Our worldview is important because it shapes and colors how we think about and interpret everything else in our lives and the world around us. It determines our presuppositional starting point for dealing with the information, events, beliefs, and questions we face in everyday life.

While the beliefs and questions this definition of "worldview" draws our attention to are hugely important, I no longer think it fully encapsulates the concept it sets out to do. This is because it centralizes cognitive beliefs and elevates them as the only thing that truly shapes our orientation to life. The paper explicitly says that worldview is distinct from culture, and that it is possible for two people (say, in a California suburb) to share the same culture but have very different worldviews. This assumes that culture is "shallow", consisting of things like language, behaviors, customs, and social norms that don't really affect at core how we view and interact with the world, while worldview is "deep" and consists of basic beliefs that do affect it. I think this assumption doesn't give culture enough credit—to our peril. The Christian philosopher Jamie Smith, similarly critiquing such cognitivist, belief-oriented "worldview-thinking", gives the example of a shopping mall as a significant formative influence which this kind of thinking misses (his reference to the Supreme Court is almost eerily timely):

Typical worldview-thinking is not primed to recognize something like [the way going to the mall shapes and aims our desire] because it is too focused on the cognitive. If you think cultural critique is based on ideas of beliefs, and that cultural "threats" come in the form of messages and "values," then you'll have a cultural radar that is only equipped to pick up on ideas and beliefs. But the mall has never been guilty of being a think tank; one doesn't usually think of the Gap or Walmart as sites of the culture war because they don't traffic in ideas. As a result, the threat of these sites doesn't register on worldview radar; because such worldview approaches remain largely fixated on the cognitive, something like the mall drops off the radar (while an institution like the U.S. Supreme Court is unduly amplified). But all the while the ritual practices of the mall are grabbing hold of hearts and capturing imaginations, shaping our love and desire, and actually forming us in powerful, fundamental ways. If our cultural critique remains captivated by a cognitivist anthropology, then we'll fail to even see the role of practices. This constitutes a massive blind spot in much of the Christian cultural critique that takes place under the banner of worldview-thinking. (Desiring the Kingdom 84–85)

The British theologian N.T. Wright, especially in his towering magisterial series Christian Origins and the Question of God, gives and utilizes what I consider a much more comprehensive and thus workable definition of a worldview. He begins his definition by saying:

Worldviews have to do with the presuppositional, pre-cognitive stage of a culture or society. Wherever we find the ultimate concerns of human beings, we find worldviews. From that point of view, as the echo of Paul Tillich in the phrase 'ultimate concern' will indicate, they are profoundly theological, whether or not they contain what in modern Western thought would be regarded as an explicit or worked-out view of a God-figure. 'Worldview', in fact, embraces all deep-level human perceptions of reality, including the question of whether or not a god or gods exist, and if so what he, she, it, or they is or are like, and how such a being, or such beings, might relate to the world, Though the metaphor of sight can over-dominate (worldview), the following analysis should make it clear that worldviews, in the sense I intend, include many dimensions of human existence other than simply theory. [i.e. the Greek theoreo, to see, discern, consider] (The New Testament and the People of God, 122–123)

This description has some parallels with the ones above, but also some clear differences: Wright explicitly argues worldviews are pre-cognitive (i.e. not consisting basically of cognitive beliefs), associates them with culture and society, connects them with the "ultimate concerns" of human beings (leaving room for desires and imagination, as Jamie Smith champions), and refuses to limit them to matters of theory. Elsewhere Wright clarifies, as above, that worldviews are like lenses through which you view the world: you rarely look at them or consider them consciously, except perhaps when they are violated or challenged; you more typically look through them at everything else. Or they are like the foundation of a house: normally out of sight and mind, but essential for supporting everything that comes after.

Worldviews, according to Wright, typically involve four things:

1. The stories through which human beings view reality; the overarching narrative, and perhaps one or more sub-narratives, in which people locate themselves to make sense of their context. "Narrative is the most characteristic expression of worldview, going deeper than the isolated observation or fragmented remark." (NTPG 123)
2. Answers to the basic questions of human existence and meaning, derived from the stories; element corresponds to the entire definition of worldview given by the earlier sources. These questions are basic ones like "Who are we?", "Where are we?", "What time is it?" (i.e. in the stories), "What is wrong?", and "What is the solution?". "All cultures ... have a sense of identity, of environment, of a problem with the way the world is, and of a way forward ... which will, or may, lead out of that problem."
3. These stories and the answers they provide to the basic questions are expressed in cultural symbols. Wright explains that these symbols can be either artifacts or events. Applying this model to second-temple Judaism, he names things like Jerusalem, the Temple, and the Passover as such symbols. These symbols "can often be identified when challenging them produces anger or fear." (NTPG 124) and can function as social or cultural boundary markers; those who observe them are "insiders" to a culture, those who do not are "outsiders". Symbols serve as acted and visible reminders of a worldview that is otherwise largely invisible.
4. Finally, worldviews include a praxis, a "way-of-being-in-the-world." The answer to the last question "what is the solution?" implies the need for action of some kind. "Conversely, the real shape of someone's worldview can often be seen in the sort of actions they perform, particularly if the actions are so instinctive or habitual as to be taken for granted."

Again, worldviews are like lenses through which people see the world, or like the foundations of a house: vital, but invisible. They are not usually called into conscious thought unless significantly challenged, but they can be discussed and reflected on if necessary; this is what makes conversion possible. More often, worldviews come into view through the basic beliefs (about what is) and aims (about what should be done) that they generate.

Thus, in Wright's (and my) view, worldviews are not so much what we today think of as "belief systems": theism, atheism, agnosticism, pantheism, and so on, nor are they epistemologies, though they probably include and assume these things. They are more comprehensive than either of these, much closer to what we would consider a "culture" with its common stories, symbols, and practice, and it makes sense to talk about them as belonging to societies (or in today's pluralistic world, subcultures within societies) as to individuals.

So, if it is possible to speak of worldviews as belonging to cultures and societies, it seems likely that the United States itself has a worldview, as I argued last time. Let's stop and try to see what this worldview is like using Wright's rubric.

Describing the American worldview

In what follows I will try to outline what I think the "American worldview" might look like. My answers will certainly be incomplete; you might be able to give some more examples.

Stories
The overarching American narrative, the one we locate ourselves in and see as having continued since our nation's earliest days, is the escape from tyranny and oppression (economic, political, religious) to justice and liberty, from absolute monarchy to democratic rule by the people, for the people. This mission was decisively accomplished by our gaining independence from Britain, but also continues to this day as we continue to work our America's founding principles and secure more and more rights for more and more people. This gives rise to subnarratives, like the women's suffrage and civil rights movements, which we look back on positively as having advanced the causes of liberty, equality, and individual rights which arguably serve as the end goals or ultimate "good" of the American narrative. Our story is one of struggle and victory over forces both internal and external that threaten to impinge on these causes.

Questions

• Who are we? We are rational human beings endowed by our creator with dignity, equality and certain intrinsic rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
• Where are we? The land of the free and the home of the brave, a beautiful land which we have claimed for democracy at great cost. More recently, it is also the world's largest economy, the most powerful global superpower, and a standard-bearer of sorts for the cause of freedom.
• What is wrong? People (or certain subgroups of people) are still not as free as they should be; depending on your political affiliation, this may be because of poverty, capitalism, crime, discrimination, illegal immigration, or oppressive government policy, and different rights may be at stake.
• What is the solution? Democratic or social change; mobilizing the people to claim their rights, just as the colonists did. 
• What time is it? This question doesn't have a very clear or strong answer; the most accurate one might simply be "now". There is no expected future culmination of America's history, except perhaps the spectre of dystopia, a hypothetical negative future to be avoided at all costs by doing/not doing ____.

Symbols
Some obvious American symbols would be artifacts like the flag, our founding documents, monuments like the Statue of Liberty, or buildings around our capital, irrespective of the people in them. Events like the Pledge of Allegiance and holidays like Veterans' Day, Memorial Day, and (of course) especially Independence Day would also be up there. while giving examples of symbols, Wright also mentions that monuments to economic success (e.g. skyscrapers) and veterans (represented by Veterans'/Memorial Day) might count. The key to seeing if something is a symbol of the American worldview is whether disrespecting it (whatever form that takes) is seen as "un-American", or even suspicious/threatening.

Praxis
Some of the symbols mentioned above (such as the Pledge of Allegiance, or still more the national anthem) are participatory symbols which probably fit into praxis as well. More generally, though, civic engagement and active participation in democracy are seen as ways to secure liberties. As well, some are called into military service (which is seen very favorably) ostensibly to secure those liberties. More prominent than either of these in everyday life and based on the popular idea that America is already the "freest nation in the world", though, American praxis is oriented towards something referred to as the "American dream". This consists roughly in living a comfortable, happy, life, provided for by the well-oiled consumerist/capitalist machine, enjoying your liberties without trampling on anyone else's; what you do with your freedom, resources, and time at this point is up to the individual. One could sum up the American worldview by saying that its highest goal is freedom and equality for freedom and equality's sake.

Which is what I meant last time by "ateleological". There is in this worldview little sense of what you "should" do with your freedom once it is secured; such a thing would be antithetical to the very idea of freedom. There is no common higher goal or end (telos) toward which we are to strive; individual freedom, the pursuit of happiness, and self-determination, secured by individual rights, constitute the highest goal, which in turn make it possible for each individual to determine his or her own telos and pursue it. In this regard, the American worldview is profoundly at odds with Christianity, which is strongly, unashamedly teleological in its vision for human flourishing: "whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." (1 Cor 10:31)

Within this worldview, the legalization of same-sex marriage makes perfect sense. A group of people was formerly marginalized and denied equal rights; it made its desire for equality known and, through years of struggle, received it in accordance with the American ideal of freedom. It's almost the Revolution in microcosm. There is nothing in the American worldview inconsistent with "marriage equality" because within it there is no room, no vocabulary to even express, the idea of divine will as a reason to do or not to do something. Maybe there was when the population was substantially Christian with a large shared moral foundation, but this foundation has largely eroded, and continues to do so in the increasingly pluralistic present. This response to the Supreme Court ruling is fantastic and worth reading in full; at one point the author says, "I've long said that if the only argument against same-sex marriage is that God disapproves, then it not only ought, but must be allowed in the United States."

So if we are so concerned with God's disapproval of homosexuality, let's at least be aware of the worldview of individual libertarian freedom and self-determination that has led to its widespread acceptance. As I said last time, this worldview is too fundamental to be resisted through the political, polemical processes that seem to come so naturally to conservatives. Rather, we can resist it the way the early Christians resisted the prevailing worldview of their own parent culture, namely by living a different one, one shaped (as Wright is eager to explain) around the "gospel" of the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. That so many churches view American freedom strictly as a positive thing, as entailing freedom to worship without persecution, and see no need to do as the early Christians did, is worrying.

How does the church become the alternative to the "American gospel" (drawing another parallel between the claims of country and of Christ)? Not embracing its language of equality and individual freedom as unqualified, "Christian" goods is a start, as is holding to Christian ethical teaching even if it is derided as unpopular or unequal. (But not seeking to impose it on those outside the church) Better still to examine oneself and one's church and look for how American values like individualism, self-determination, and directionless "liberty" have crept in. Or to look at how terms like "freedom", "equality", and even "rights" (ideas about which the Bible does have things to say) are defined and used in contrasting ways in American discourse and Christian teaching. I need to do this as much as anyone; I'm not even close to figuring out the answers to the questions I'm raising here, or even to adequately describing the American worldview.

Maybe the first step is simply to realize how comprehensive and pervasive worldviews are, and to look at how the worldviews of church and culture contrast. I would love to join (or start) a conversation on this subject.

The sanctity of marriage and the American worldview

AP photo.

Well, America, there you have it. This morning the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional, and that same-sex couples in all 50 states should be allowed to marry. Supporters of "traditional marriage" (a term with dangerous connotations) have lost the "culture war". Depending on who you're listening to, this is either a huge advance in justice, equality, and the American Way, or a decisive lurch toward moral dissipation and religious persecution of all who do not embrace the new regime of "marriage equality".

I try not to listen too closely to either of these opinions.

I still stand by most of what I said in my surprisingly popular post on same-sex marriage. I still believe God designed marriage as a gift for mankind to be enjoyed by a man and his wife; I still fail to see how this inexorably leads to fighting against the right of same-sex couples to legally wed, let alone to denouncing them as sinners who need to repent of their idolatry. I still think people who adopt these stances are very often being selective in how they stand for their Christian convictions in a way that does their living witness few favors. I still think Christ set an example as radical in his day as it is today in how we, his followers, are to humbly love all people. (Because public opinion is decisively in their favor, I no longer think gay couples can be described as "the tax collectors of our day", but the Lord's example still stands)

As the relative sparseness of my recent posts shows, I am reluctant to assume that my thoughts on a given topic are particularly wise or worth listening to. But considering the magnitude of the Supreme Court's decision, I think this is a good time to restate with more clarity some things which I am reasonably sure about. Since my previous posts on same-sex marriage went up before I started my journey to Orthodoxy, this will also be an interesting look (mainly for me) at how my approach to social issue like this has shifted.

The "sanctity of marriage"

If you are one of the conservative Christians wringing their hands over the decision and the collapse of the "sanctity of marriage" that it heralds, I would like to point a few things out. We live in a nation where 50% of marriages end in divorce (relatively easy, legalized divorce, at that), where many people elect not to marry at all and simply cohabit or have hookups to get the pleasurable part of marriage with none of the commitment, where marriages are marred by desertion, adultery, even spousal abuse. All this to say that if you are hoping to save the "sanctity of marriage" in American culture, you are far, far too late. (And I do think it is culture, not legislation or court decisions, that is the fundamental issue; no one ever passed a law to make the hookup culture possible, and the real problem is not that same-sex marriage is now legally a constitutional right, but that so many people already considered it to be one) Out of all of these problems, some of which are much more clearly condemned in Scripture, why have you made same-sex marriage your hill to die upon? (I could also ask: why do you not equally protest legalized same-sex marriage in other countries, if gay couples getting married anywhere apparently threatens the sanctity of marriage?)

As a recently-married man(!), I am happy to report that the sanctity of my own marriage has not been affected in the slightest by the legal state of affairs in the United States, or in any other country. The real threat to the "sanctity" of my marriage is not the efforts of third parties to redefine it in the eyes of the state, but my and my wife's own sin, our selfishness, our weakness, all the ways that we fail to truly represent the love between Christ and the Church. The Lord taught us to remove the log from our own eye before trying to take out the speck from our neighbor's eye (Mat 7:3-5), a point well made now as ever. Since taking interest in the Orthodox Church over a year ago, I have found it consistently does a better job of teaching and applying this kind of humility, to an almost radical degree, than most western churches. What right have we to condemn the damage we perceive others to be doing to marriage if our own marriage is full of sin?

As I said in my previous post, I think it's misleading to talk about the present conflict as being over the "definition of marriage". Why must the Church and the state have identical definitions of marriage, when their definitions of so many other things (not least who is a "Christian" and what is a "church") are allowed to differ radically? Talk of marriage as an "institution" adds to this confusion of terms. In classical Christianity, marriage is much more consistently considered a sacrament—a way in which God imparts grace to his people. If it is to be an institution, it is certainly no legal institution; Christians have been supporting a different ethic of marriage since before Constantine, when people of different social classes would be united in marriages that could not be recognized by the government. (An ironic reversal of the modern situation) America's historic profession of "traditional marriage" is an artifact of the Judeo-Christian ethic of its founders, not an article of the faith. This ruling is a radical redefinition of the legal institution of marriage, but it does nothing to alter the Christian sacrament of marriage. (This author puts it better than I can)

Keeping faith out of politics?

I'd like to turn now to one of the arguments I hear in support of the ruling: that Christians shouldn't oppose it because that would be bringing their faith into politics, which would be a violation of the "separation of church and state". (It goes something like that) As you have no doubt heard, this phrase, so often cited as a summary of the First Amendment (or at least the part of it pertaining to religious freedom), does not actually appear in it. The actual text reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

Obviously, this amendment pertains only to Congress; it says nothing about whether or how individual Christians, or members of any other faith, are to carry their faith into political engagement. (Does this also mean the president or Supreme Court can issue executive orders/rulings "respecting an establishment of religion"?) If there is a general rule stating that Christians should keep their faith out of politics, it will have to be found elsewhere.

But what if the problem is not the mixing of religion and politics, but the unwise mixing of religion and politics?

I said earlier that I stand by most of what I wrote in my earlier post. I say this because I no longer agree that "Jesus' concern [in ministry] was not political in nature, changing the conditions of the kingdoms of this world, it was incarnating a completely different kingdom that is not of this world at all, with any ensuing political change merely a side effect of the coming of the Kingdom of God." I now consider it much more accurate to say that Jesus' ministry was political, strongly so at times—just not in the ways people expected.

The truth is that the modern dichotomy between religion and politics (and, arguably, the ability to imagine "religion" as a discrete part of life separable from everything else) is a new invention, dating back to the Enlightenment and no earlier. It will do us no good to try to apply it to Jesus. In the first century, what we would call "religion" and "politics" were virtually inseparable, especially for the Jewish people, for whom there was little difference between "religious" and "political" parties. The Jews' definition of "salvation" entailed the forgiveness and vindication of Israel, the defeat of the Gentile nations that oppressed her, and the exaltation of the Lord as the actual ruler over the whole world. This would, of course, have earth-shattering political consequences.

In the opposite corner, the Roman empire had a worldview of its own which, if possible, combined "religion" and "politics" to an even greater degree: the emperor was divine, the son of god, savior of the world, the bringer of "peace and safety", and worthy of reverence, if not a god worthy of worship in his own right. To live as a loyal subject of the emperor was to pay him the proper respects; even the Jews merely managed to work out a deal where they would pray to their god for the emperor, rather than to him as everyone else increasingly did.

It is often assumed that Christ came bearing an unexpectedly apolitical answer to the hopes and prayers of Israel: instead of salvation from the Romans, salvation from sin and death; rather than the rulership of Jesus over an earthly kingdom, his spiritual headship over the Church. As the Lord said, "my kingship is not of this world." (Jhn 18:36) This is only partially true. Once you understand the worldview implicit in the Roman empire and the rising tide of emperor-worship, you begin to see all the ways that the New Testament writers (especially Paul) proclaim the Christian gospel in such a way as to contrast with the imperial "gospel". "Jesus is Lord"; by implication, Caesar is not. Jesus is the savior of the world, not Augustus. He is the ruler over all, whose coming we are to faithfully await; he is truly the Son of God; he is the one who will set the world to rights. He is the "real deal", the true Lord of which the emperor with all his pompous claims and titles is only an imitation. In the Christian gospel, all the promises of the empire were revealed to be false and Christ the one who could truly fulfill them.

In other words, the gospel, as the early Church understood it, was political in that it made "political" claims in competition with those of the empire. Yet this did not mean confronting Rome head on, with its own tactics, as if Jesus had tried to set himself up as a rival emperor in the east hundreds of years before the division of the Roman empire into east and west. Jesus triumphed over the powers and authorities of this world not by political or military victories (as the Jews expected), but primarily by dying and rising from the dead (cf. Col 2:15), demonstrating his lordship over death and all creation. Against the Roman "gospel" and the imperial worldview surrounding it, the early Christians fielded a different gospel, the gospel of Jesus the Messiah, with a different way of living, different answers to the questions to which the emperor claimed to be the solution, and a different narrative in which to locate themselves.

Confronting the powers

What I am suggesting is that American Christians today need to do the same with our country. Just as Rome offered its people a ready-made worldview by which to order their lives, I suspect that there is such a thing as an "American worldview". What is the narrative in which our American culture encourages us to find ourselves? What answers does the American way of life offer to the human condition? I am probably not the person to answer this question in full, but a few quotes from documents that have shaped our nation should be demonstrative. From the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The preamble of the Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

And from Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that helped pave the way for today's:

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. 

These help to sharpen the suspicions I already had: the American "worldview", though hard to define precisely, places a high priority on individual rights such as life, equality, personal liberty, and the "pursuit of happiness" (whatever that entails), and sees it as the purpose of government to secure these rights. In a more postmodern twist, this liberty entails the right to self-determination, the ability wherever possible to define the course and meaning of one's existence without hindrance. In light of these values, consider a few quotes from Justice Kennedy's ruling today:

From their beginning to their most recent page, the annals of human history reveal the transcendent importance of marriage. The lifelong union of a man and a woman always has promised nobility and dignity to all persons, without regard to their station in life. Marriage is sacred to those who live by their religions and offers unique fulfillment to those who find meaning in the secular realm. Its dynamic allows two people to find a life that could not be found alone, for a marriage becomes greater than just the two persons. Rising from the most basic human needs, marriage is essential to our most profound hopes and aspirations. 

The fundamental liberties protected by [the 14th Amendment] include most of the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. See Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145, 147–149 (1968). In addition these liberties extend to certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy, including intimate choices that define personal identity and beliefs. 

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.

Kennedy easily applies the rights to personal liberty and self-determination to marriage: if the right to marriage is so important, so essential to a meaningful, fulfilled, "dignified" life, then of course it is unconstitutional to deprive anyone of it without due process of law. However much conservatives may decry same-sex marriage, it's hard to argue that it runs against the spirit of the Constitution.

Maybe what we, as Christians, need to be critiquing is not individual hot-button issues like same-sex marriage, but the hypertolerant, individualistic, libertarian-self-determination worldview on which this nation is founded, which gave rise to this ruling and others that Christians have rightly decried. True justice, true freedom, and true meaning are found in Jesus Christ, not the American way. The early Christians refused to bow before effigies of the emperor; do we today refuse to bow before America's functional "savior", the ateleological sanctity of individual rights and self-determination? Do we glimpse even a fraction of the ways in which our citizenship in the kingdom of God pushes up against our American citizenship, or worse, do we consider the two somehow complementary, as if patriotism is really next to godliness? Obviously the way to oppose such intangible ideals is not by antagonistic protesting or pushing for such-and-such legislation. Rather, it is to live differently, as the body of Christ, the embodiment of a worldview centered around the death and resurrection of the Messiah—much as the early Church did.

Rather than a defeat, this ruling can be an opportunity for Christians to reevaluate and seek to embody to the world a more balanced vision of "God's plan for marriage"—to be known not primarily for what we are against (let alone for being sticks-in-the-mud on a few particular issues). The Christian model of marriage is not simply bigotry, but something far greater and more beautiful, of which the insistence on "traditional marriage" is only a corollary. Through marriage we are called to live out the self-sacrificial, transformative love between Christ and the Church (Eph 5:22-33), which even today has the potential to be a tremendously compelling witness for the faith. In the absence of a deeper closing statement, I think St. Paul's words are apt concluding instructions: "Repay no one evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all. ... Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." (Rom 12:17,18,21)

Is America a "Christian nation"?

The tricky part about determining if America is or was a "Christian nation" is that the term "Christian nation" is terribly slippery and seems to mean something different to just about everyone. Does it mean the majority America was Christian at its founding? (Certainly true) Does it mean Christianity was ever established as a state religion? (Certainly false, and against the intentions of the founding fathers) Does it mean that Christian morals or beliefs have somehow been enshrined in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence? Or does it mean that America is under some kind of ontological obligation to have its civil law reflect Christian teachings and ethics (this seems to be the effective definition of many who argue for America's status as a "Christian nation")?

The material in this course has helped to answer this question. First of all, it is certainly true that the vast majority of the English colonists in America were Christians, and indeed quite a few of the colonies (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Georgia) were founded in whole or in part for religious reasons.¹ Some, like Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, were founded as experiments in religious tolerance much like what we experience today. The Massachusetts Bay colony was founded by Puritans wishing to establish a theocracy according to their convictions.² Still others, like the Plymouth Plantation, were founded by religious dissidents seeking freedom from persecution (though this did not mean they were always tolerant of other churches). Maryland was even founded as a haven for English Catholics.³ Several of the colonies had established churches, either Anglican or Congregationalist.⁴ So the American colonies displayed a wide range of attitude towards religion, from full tolerance to relative apathy to what could definitely be called a "Christian colony".

The case for a "Christian nation" doesn't do much better if it turns to the founding fathers. Fully two-thirds of them were Anglican⁵, but most were relatively cool to religion and held faiths strongly influenced by the Enlightenment and Deism. Benjamin Franklin seldom attended church and didn't care to spend energy affirming the divinity of Christ. Thomas Jefferson distrusted organized religion and, famously, created the "Jefferson Bible" by cutting out all the parts of his Bible that he disagreed with. George Washington never received communion and preferred to refer to Providence or destiny rather than God.⁶ The struggle for independence drew inspiration from the political philosophy of the Enlightenment and came with a "rationalist ideology that spoke of Providence above all as a principle of progress."⁷ This came hand in hand with distaste for what was seen as outmoded Christian dogma and superstition. It's safe to say that by and large, the majority of the founding fathers esteemed Christianity only insofar as it aligned with the "natural religion" of the philosophers and Deists.

Given the patchwork nature of American Christianity and the founding fathers' preference for private, rational religion that left behind the struggles of orthodoxy of the past, it's easy to see how Pennsylvania and Rhode Island's model of religious tolerance became enshrined in the Constitution. It made no reference to Christianity or its God except the date in 'the Year of Our Lord', which was unprecedented at the time.⁸ The Federal Government had erected a "wall of separation between church and state" (first referred to by Jefferson in 1802) that consciously rejected the established church model of Europe, and one by one the state churches were dismantled, ending in 1833. Established churches became denominations that were free to operate apart from government aid or opposition, the church model which continues to this day.

So it's difficult to see how American can be called, in any meaningful way, a "Christian nation". The founding fathers were certainly no defenders of the faith, much more interested in the ideals of the Enlightenment and natural religion than in anything particular to Christianity. There was nothing distinctly "Christian" about the founding of the federal state as there was with Plymouth or Massachusetts Bay. Certainly the great majority of its population has been at least nominally Christian for much of its history—but what kind of Christian? By the time of its independence, America was home to Baptists, Methodists, Anglicans, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Quakers, and Catholics, to name a few.

When I hear appeals to America's supposed status as a "Christian nation", it is in the context of an attempt by the speaker to in some way lay claim to America's religious heritage for his own tradition or agenda. But America's religious history, even on the popular level is far too ambiguous for this kind of talk. If America is in some sense a "Christian nation", it is so in all of the diversity that the Church in America had in 1776 and has grown into today. If I may be allowed to finish with a truly atrocious pun, I think it would be more accurate to refer to America in a way that describes its heritage of religious diversity and tolerance: a "denomi-nation".

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1. Robert C. Walton, Chronological and Background Charts of Church History (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 2005), chart 96.
2. Justo L. González, The Story of Christianity Volume II: The Reformation to the Present Day (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 280.
3. González, The Story of Christianity, 286.
4. Walton, Charts of Church History, chart 96.
5. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (London: Penguin Books, 2009), 763.
6. MacCulloch, Christianity, 764.
7. González, The Story of Christianity, 320.
8. MacCulloch, Christianity, 764.