Some years ago, Ross Douthat wrote a wonderful and timely piece for FT, responding to the feverish concerns on the part of some folks on the secular Left that George W. Bush was either a theocrat or a theocratic fellow traveler.
Well, Michelle Goldberg, one of those who feared for our country back then, has decided that she ain’t seen nothing yet. Compared with Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann, George W. Bush was a theocratic piker. Perry and Bachmann, she thinks, are much closer to the real thing.
I’ve seen two sorts of responses to this line of argument. Michael Gerson, the erstwhile Bush speechwriter (and one of the most theologically sophisticated denizens of the Bush White House), argues that it is much ado about nothing. Indeed, the argument reveals more about those who hold it than about the politicians who rub elbows with all sorts of people holding all sorts of ideas:
Many have become unhinged by the interpretive power of a simple idea. In the case of Dominionism, paranoia is fed by a certain view of church-state relations — a deep discomfort with any religious influence in politics: Even if most evangelicals are not plotting the reconstruction of Cromwell’s Commonwealth, they nevertheless want to impose their sectarian views on secular institutions. It is a common argument among secular liberals that the application of any religiously informed moral reasoning in politics is a kind of soft theocracy. Dominionism is merely its local extension.
As always, this argument proves too much, making a Dominionist of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Obama, by this standard, would be a theonomist as well, on the evidence of his Call to Renewal speech in 2008 — a refutation of political secularism.
Peter Lawler, my personal nominee for our greatest living American neo-Thomist, deals with a slightly different version of the argument when he discusses the religiosity of the Tea Party. Against those who argue that the “Tea Partiers want big, moralistic, intrusive, religious government,” Lawler contends that the Tea Party is actually kinda sorta libertarian:
Here’s what they think: Wherever the national government–especially bureaucrats and judges–go, religion is chased away. So they want really small government so that they can live as they please.
All libertarians are for living as they please in the absence of government regulation. But it pleases THE TEA PARTIERS, very often, to live self-sufficiently as Christians with big families. What’s so bad about that?
So a big issue for many of the partiers is HOME SCHOOLING. They don’t want the government getting in the way of their decisions on how to educate their very own kids. And I have to admit that even I (who didn’t home school and would probably, on balance, always choose against it) am creeped out by the over-the-top hostility of our bureaucratized educational establishment to parents’ right to make this kind of fundamental choice for themselves….
So our TEA PARTIERS are really about thinking of the economic crisis of our time as an opportunity for a kind of new birth of freedom from government dependency. They are all about libertarian means for non-libertarian ends, for living, to repeat, as THEY please. Their religious intensity points away from big government, and that means all Americans opposed to big government have no reason not to ally with them. They’re part of–not opposed to–the libertarian drift of our time.
This, generally speaking, sounds right to me. (And I’m one of those homeschoolers, though the reading assignments in our house run more to C.S. Lewis, Peter Kreeft, and, yes, R.C. Sproul, than to Rushdoony.) I for the life of me can’t figure out how anyone, like Michelle Bachmann, who believes that the federal government is entitled to only 10% of our income, can be regarded as a theocrat. The big intrusive government required to enforce Biblical laws, one intended (in the words of our current President) to establish the kingdom here on earth, surely requires more than twice that much.
August 23rd, 2011 | 3:56 pm
To paraphrase an old Soviet joke, the left views the 2012 GOP candidates as about average as theocrats go–more theocratic than George W. Bush, but less theocratic than whoever will run next time. So, about average.
Michelle Goldberg and her ilk are deranged lunatics, best ignored.
August 23rd, 2011 | 5:07 pm
Brian, that’s a delightful way of putting it.
Sometimes I think that the real reason I’m not a liberal is that I’d get too exhausted constantly being in a tizzy about things.
August 23rd, 2011 | 5:14 pm
The grave concern should not be about theocracy, which nobody is seriously working to establish, but about government completely divorced from theism and natural law, which has already been established for all practical purposes; this is a transformation that is diametrically opposed to the principles of the Founders.
An intellectual defense of the intrinsic, inalienable rights of humanity cannot be constructed upon an atheistic foundation. The government the Founders created could carry out its purpose, founded upon theism at it was, and also tolerate atheism. It cannot do the reverse: fulfill the purpose for which it was created – to protect the inalienable rights of humanity – with atheism as its foundation. If humanity is merely the product of a mindless, purposeless process which quite accidentally spewed us forth, then there is no such thing as inalienable rights; we are just animals with greater intellectual capacity than other animals; we have no more intrinsic, inalienable rights than does a cow. Cows get butchered. In a government divorced from theism there are no inviolable ethical principles limiting the actions of those in power as they “do what they know is best” to those who aren’t.
Such a government cannot guarantee minority rights. Naturalism, as a school of jurisprudence, maintains that the law must reflect eternal principles of justice and morality — the laws of nature and nature’s God — that exist independent of governmental recognition. It is painfully obvious that this was the foundation upon which our government was established. This arrangement makes it possible for representative democracy to avoid becoming totalitarian in that the majority cannot tyrannize the minority because a baseline of inalienable rights which cannot be violated is established by the law’s recognition of eternal principles of justice; this protects everyone’s individual rights and the rights of the minority. In a government hostile to theism and natural law minority rights are only protected to the extent the government deems appropriate, as it recognizes no law outside its own. It refuses to acknowledge preexisting “eternal principles of justice” which restrict what it can do.
Atheism has become the de facto state religion. Atheism is a belief about God – that He isn’t there. This belief is one that must be taken on faith since it is impossible to prove that God isn’t there. Beliefs about God which must be taken on faith are essentially religious beliefs. Atheism is indeed a religion that has become, for all practical purposes, the state religion. Some would object here that atheism is not really an organized religion. On the contrary, it has become, in fact, the most organized religion; our government, to a significant extent, has become its organization.
If the current hostility of the state towards theism were directed at atheism instead, it would be apparent that that was unfair and contrary to the intentions of the Founding Fathers. That the current government hostility to theism is unfair and contrary to the Founders’ intentions should be just as apparent, but it’s not. This is due to indoctrination where there should have been education.
Maybe we should start filing law suits demanding atheism no longer be promoted in public education.
August 23rd, 2011 | 5:38 pm
Brian,
That’s gold.
August 23rd, 2011 | 5:44 pm
According to Ms. Goldberg’s official website, her new book “may be the most important book you’ll ever read about the future of the human race.”
No, it’s not titled “Dianetics” either.
August 24th, 2011 | 1:22 am
Michelle Goldberg and her ilk are deranged lunatics, best ignored.
Ah, the dismissive note.
But Gerson writes:
If this kind of attack sounds familiar, it should. It is not just an argument but a style of argument. Critics of a public figure take a marginal association and turn it into a Gnostic insight — an interpretive key that opens all doors. Barack Obama was once trained in a community organization that was associated with Saul Alinsky, whose organization was reportedly subject to communist influence. And we all know what that means. Or: Obama’s father was a socialist, anti-colonial Luo tribesman, and, well, like father like son. Never mind that that there is no serious evidence of political philosophic influence of father on son.
The Saul Alinsky example reminds me of Elizabeth Scalia, who accused me on her blog of using Alinsky tactics, never mind that I had never – and still haven’t – read him. There are conspiracy theorists on both sides of the political spectrum.
August 24th, 2011 | 3:00 am
Back before I found the Lord, I used to believe all the liberal and “libertarian” hand-wringing about how those awful Bible-thumpers were well on their way to setting up a theocracy. Then I noticed how our society had become more permissive than ever even as Christian conservatives became more politically powerful.
Of course, I still think plenty of televangelists are money-grubbing frauds, but if the “fundies” are really what the PFAW types make them out to be, wouldn’t they have established a real-life Republic of Gilead already?
And as troubling as Dominionism is, it still remains a semi-fringe ideology.
August 24th, 2011 | 3:08 am
Harry, I hope you can read this.
The United States is by design a secular country. Many of the founding fathers may have been Christian, but they had very different views. They knew that religion and government shouldn’t be mixed. Even Jesus was in favor of that: “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”.
And last I checked, humans created human rights, not God. We need to believe in god and creationism to have human rights? Where were those human rights in the 18th century? Was America a less Christian nation at that time?
August 24th, 2011 | 7:08 am
“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. ”
Nope, no religion there.
In this country, we seem to have more of a problem with Caesar taking over the things that are God’s than the other way around. But there’s nothing new about that.
August 24th, 2011 | 8:20 am
Hi, Matt,
Thanks for your response to my remarks. I think they summarize the typical, contemporary view of many Americans.
For interesting insights into the original view of government of the Founding Fathers, read Heir to the Fathers – John Quincy Adams and the Spirit of Constitutional Government by Gary V. Wood.
Thanks again.
August 24th, 2011 | 10:00 am
[...] …Joe Knippenberg explains. Joe’s post kind of goes along with Carl’s below. Comments (0) [...]
August 24th, 2011 | 10:39 am
Mike – Oddly enough, the Declaration of Independence, while important historically, isn’t actually a founding document of our government – the Constitution is. And aside from (some copies) mentioning the date as “the year of our Lord”, it makes no reference to God.
August 24th, 2011 | 11:21 am
Hi, Ray,
You wrote:
Here some excerpts from John Quincy Adams’ Jubilee of the Constitution speech.
August 24th, 2011 | 12:07 pm
harry –
I disagree.
Is it impossible to believe in the “laws of nature… that exist independent of governmental recognition” without believing in “nature’s God”?
Or just that there’s no evidence to establish It is there.
Same with the Flying Spaghetti Monster, of course. Hence the request for evidence.
In any case, I don’t see religion in quite the same way you do.
August 24th, 2011 | 12:16 pm
Harry – Adams’ words are all very fine, but the Constitution itself states that “We the People of the United States… do ordain and establish this Constitution”. Somehow it doesn’t feel the need to mention “nature’s God”.
August 24th, 2011 | 12:27 pm
Somehow it doesn’t feel the need to mention “nature’s God”.
Notice that when it comes to issues like abortion, liberals can discover words like “right to privacy” in the document. But when trying to find God in the Constitution, liberals suddenly favor a “strict constructionist” reading.
August 24th, 2011 | 1:00 pm
Joe –
Call me ‘liberal’ if you like. Try not to misrepresent my position on abortion, though.
The Constitution specifically says it doesn’t enumerate all rights. On the other hand, for a ‘foundational principle’ God is curiously absent.
August 24th, 2011 | 1:34 pm
Ray, I don’t think your analysis holds up. You use an “we’re all in this together” kind of argument for basic human rights, but also “so we can have nice things.”
That’s not inalienable, because of the latter. History has shown pretty bluntly what happens when people are viewed as not having sufficient contributory value towards the nice things goal. What’s worse, for any goal you set, people vary in ability to fulfill it. So its often innate differences that is why we “cannot has nice things.”
It’s a quirk of Christianity though that all value is equal in God’s eyes, which avoids this. I’m not sure you can look at the laws of nature in a secular sense and derive that all men have equal value because of the above problem.
August 24th, 2011 | 2:00 pm
The rejection of theism and natural law rebuilt American law on a strange new foundation, or more precisely, on no foundation at all other than raw power or “might makes right.” In other words, it was rebuilt upon godless theories of jurisprudence like legal positivism. Having rejected our humanity as the basis of our inalienable rights, it uses “legal personhood” as the basis of our rights, a personhood which they very conveniently have the authority to bestow and withdraw as they see fit. Corporations get it (to which I do not object), but the child in the womb does not.
Personhood can be measured as accurately as one can measure the presence of a soul in a living being, which is to say it can’t really be measured or verified at all. What qualities of personhood do corporations have that the child in the womb does not? For the atheistic government the answer can only be rooted in completely arbitrary standards it comes up with to suit its own purposes. This way it can, without any way for opponents of their rulings to definitively prove them wrong about personhood or the lack thereof, declare whatever they want to be a “person” and also declare that some members of the human family are not. This enables them to withdraw the protection of law from vast segments of the human family according to their own or popular bigotry.
Children living in the womb are a vast minority currently being lethally tyrannized by the majority since atheistic government abruptly withdrew from them the protection of law. Roe struck down laws enacted by the elected representatives of the people, laws protecting the child in the womb which were based upon the principles in the Declaration, the original foundation of our government. From the perspective of this segment of the human family the rule of law has been entirely abandoned and bloody anarchy reigns.
Roe didn’t just strike down laws protecting the child in the womb — it struck down the essence of “the United States of America, constituted and organized under a government founded on the principles of the Declaration of Independence,” as J. Q. Adams described its essence.
Until we alter or abolish the current government and rebuild American law on its original foundation, one segment of the human family after another will become the victims of bigotry sanctioned by the atheistic government. The elderly and disabled are another vast minority quickly becoming vulnerable to state-sanctioned euthanasia. God only knows which segments of humanity will eventually become the victims of outrageous practices that could only be “legal” under the current atheistic perversion of our original government.
August 24th, 2011 | 2:02 pm
Ray Ingles writes:
“the Declaration of Independence, while important historically, isn’t actually a founding document of our government”
Ray, I think what you mean to say is that the DOI is not enforced law, but even that is not quite right. Without the DOI, there is no nation, we’re still a set of colonies of the UK.
I would claim the DOI is the founding document of our nation.
But here we see the confusion: nation versus government. I would maintain that the government is irrelevant without the nation. That nation is what the Constitution was written to administer federally. The DOI is the why. The Constitution is the how and a second try at that. If we believe the why doesn’t matter, then we can restructure the Constitution any way we want. I suggest a reread of the DOI. It’s very instructive and carefully written to allow both God and Caesar while recognizing where the authority comes from.
I believe the trouble begins when we start thinking the government is god, that is, that the power belongs to the people in government rather than being on loan. I realize you do not believe in God. But I think you can see the power as being on loan from all the people, that is the nation as a whole, whereas I would see it as on loan through the people.
“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.”
There are many nations on earth that have yet to figure out why they exist. We don’t have that problem.
August 24th, 2011 | 2:05 pm
The Constitution is for answering WHAT the government can do, or to put it another way, HOW the government works. The Declaration answers WHY the government exists in the first place. Looking for WHY in the Constitution is like looking for philosophy in a car repair manual–hey look, it says nothing about God, therefore the auto company, mechanic, and car owners must be atheists! Um, no.
August 24th, 2011 | 2:18 pm
Dblade – I don’t ignore love either, y’know. But you’re right, the ‘all in this together’ side probably isn’t emphasized enough in that essay. I’ll have to see about updating it.
August 24th, 2011 | 2:25 pm
Brian –
But neither does it mean you have to believe in God to build, maintain, or drive a car…
August 24th, 2011 | 2:38 pm
Ray: And who exactly said otherwise? No one in this thread has said anything like that.
August 24th, 2011 | 2:43 pm
I’m not sure what’s at stake in this debate about God, the Declaration, and the Constitution. It seems clear that almost all of the Founders believed in a Supreme Being and believed that government should mirror nature, which itself mirrored God. It also seems clear that the Founders were divided on whether the God whose law underlay the country’s founding was identical to the Christian God as revealed in the Bible and in the Church.
If the question is what do citizens have to believe in order to continue to believe in the Constitution, then it’s clear to me that citizens have to continue to believe in the inalienable rights of man. Whether contemporary citizens have to share a belief in revelation as most Founders did or share a belief in nature’s God as some influential Founders did is another question. There are many contemporary citizens who seem perfectly committed to the Constitution and to the democratic experiment without believing in either.
August 24th, 2011 | 3:57 pm
Brian, perhaps I’m misunderstanding harry when he wrote, “The government the Founders created… cannot… fulfill the purpose for which it was created – to protect the inalienable rights of humanity – with atheism as its foundation.”
Apparently you have to be a theist to maintain and operate the Constitution. At least, that’s what I get out of that passage…
August 24th, 2011 | 4:04 pm
Mike Melendez –
I rather thought it was blood and gunpowder and support from a few European countries (and some luck) that carried out that particular divorce, actually. The DOI was a superlative piece of diplomacy, but that’s not the same thing as ‘the founding of a nation’.
Just so. As to ‘through the people’, well, a la Laplace, “I’ve had no need of that hypothesis.”
August 24th, 2011 | 4:53 pm
@Ray: I did not expect you to be a believer in power as the means to an end.
As I said, DOI is the founding document. It is not a magical scroll or a public relations announcement but a reason to fight and a place to build once the fighting ended. War can take you from A to B but after that you need something better or you wind up back at A with a different tyrant. For us, DOI is that something better.
That said, I can understand your difficulty with it given your beliefs.
August 24th, 2011 | 6:31 pm
Mike –
I’m trained as an engineer. Of course I believe in power as the means to an end. We disagree mainly on the source of political power, it seems, not the nature and use of it after that.
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