This post is in response to the
Manhattan Declaration, along with three interpretations of it. Like most ‘evangelicals’ in the USA I am deeply divided over the relation of church and state. Yet, having read (enough of) my Hauerwas, O’Donovan, Yoder, Grant, Milbank, I know when to smell a rat. This is what troubles me. Three pillars of the
MD are:
1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life;
2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and;
3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.
Set aside possible good intentions for the moment. Why do theses 3 points sound so, well, American? Because they are. They are
not, it seems to me, pillars based in the Gospel. They are
not pillars based in any major strand of historic Christian political thought.
To take but one example: appeal to the
imago Dei in (1) is distressing to me. Since when has the image of God ensured us ‘inherent rights of equal dignity and life’? If anything, I thought the
imago Dei, set in the context of the creation story, showed just how much life was a gift, and so not a right.
And yet the drafters of the
MD show no regard whatsoever for the historically variegated interpretations of what the
imago Dei teaches us Christians. Instead their appeal is to human rights language, in complete neglect over how human rights (as a concept) puts the challenge to Christian theological tradition in the most striking way. Do Christians have nothing to say to this dubious concept? Do we not have two millennia of tradition based in natural right, which has emphasised the very good moral question, not ‘what are my rights’ but rather ‘what is right’? Don't we want to start there?
In this vein, I fail to understand why the
MD has the unflinching support of American Christian leaders whom I respect. Justin Taylor says it is a ‘
well-reasoned natural law rationale’ – is it? No not quite. It is not natural law, but
new natural law. The kind of natural law advocated by people like Robert P. George and John Finnis – a version of natural law that does not find the law grounded in nature
extra nos, but in the human person. Taylor may very well believe this is a far superior natural law theory to that espoused by the majority of Christian thinkers (not to mention classical, scholastic, Reformation and even some early modern thinkers, Christian or not) throughout history, including many today. But well, can you say as much? Should we not address why the Christian tradition thought (and to a large extent, still thinks) differently? Or justify why the
MD is all too conveniently and worryingly wedded to the political philosophy of that remorseless, incorrigible late-modern experiment, the United States of America?
Then there is the response, voiced by other evangelicals like
Chailles and John MacArthur, which shows reservation for this joint statement on the basis of the Gospel – i.e. Catholic and Orthodox Christians do not have the Gospel right, so how could we in good conscience sign
MD? Frankly I’m just befuddled as to why this matters – American evangelicals seem so very eager to enlist Catholic support in their moral majority campaigns. When someone tries to justify on paper
why they agree, however, it becomes clear that no one really can say. Is it for political expediency that we rally the votes of those who don’t have the ‘Gospel’ like we do? That’s dubious enough, but let me press things further: what, I should like to know, would this group of dissenting evangelicals change about the
MD? My fear is not much. For to critique this document requires that they demonstrate historical debt to the Western and mostly Catholic theological tradition, which for good or ill is the solitary mother of our now-gone-prodigal Western political philosophy. But the very American
MD just does not promote such critical reflection. It does not help us Americans see what might be wrong with the way late-modern liberalism, i.e. America and its First Amendment, defines morality in terms of rights.
The third response is to those like
Halden, who vigorously critiques the MD on the basis of its pursuit of cultural hegemony. Halden is very Hauerwasian in his position, and for this I am very satisfied. It is a political message that needs to be heard, but I worry is not being heard, in churches and in small groups across the American evangelical spectrum. What I do not find appealing about Halden’s position, however, is that it fails to help us think about America within the wider context of modernity and the world. What would happen if American Christians saw America for what it was? That it directly opposed the Western political theological traditions of an older Europe? That it implies a history of progress that treats democracy as the
sine qua non of any good political theory, without which the ancients (with their foolish kings and hierarchies) could not sustain a reasonable and thus (for today) politically relevant discussion? The cultural hegemony button is a good one to press in criticising the Church. But is it the only button? Should we not also press the political factors that in many ways force Christian political participation to operate in this way? It seems to me, in fact, that the
MD is doing exactly what Charles Taylor advocates faith communities do in this rabid modern political climate – and did not Hauerwas enthusiastically endorse Taylor's thesis, after all?
All this I submit with some reservation, of course. Following Thanksgiving it may seem a bit unkind that I should sound so un-American and raise so many problems with those older and likely wiser than myself. The question invariably turns to this: how
should Christians in America act politically? I confess I have no real good answers. But this does not in any way mean that Christians in America should capitulate to the prevailing political lingo in an effort to express themselves, in an effort to be culturally relevant. But what did others think? Did the
MD rub anyone else the wrong way? Am I way off in where it offended?
