Increasingly, the name of the game is, according to David Gibson, “Golden Rule” Christianity: love your neighbor as yourself. This is what President Obama cited in explaining his support for same-sex marriage.
Of course, the gloss both Gibson and Obama give on this injunction is contestable. For them, respecting someone means endorsing or tolerating their choices and demands. (I recognize the difference between endorsement and toleration, but equivocate here because they equivocate.)
But cannot loving one’s neighbor as oneself also require that we hold them accountable for their sins and bear witness to them about the truth? In this context, by the way, toleration doesn’t require endorsement. It simply recognizes that in some instances the way to correct sin or error is not through punishment, but rather through admonition.
I’m tempted to argue that the position the President has taken represents the triumph of John Locke, who defined toleration as “the chief chracteristic mark of the true Church.” Locke meant in the first instance that coercion had no place in religious matters, but he also asserted that “everyone is orthodox to himself,” which meant to him that there is no (capital T) Truth other than toleration. You and I, dear readers, may not agree on what orthodoxy requires, but we can surely agree that, whatever it is, it doesn’t consist in Lockian subjectivity. Better a public square in which we disagree (civilly and indeed lovingly, to be sure) than one in which we all merely assume that each of us is entitled to his or her own opinion and leave one another alone. That would be–as Locke (I think) intended–the death of any genuine search for transcendent truth.
I’m not surprised by any of this, not the President’s “evolution” nor his attempt to explain his decision in terms of mere (Lockian) Christianity.
Invoking the Golden Rule may indeed be a good way to speak in a religiously diverse society, since (as Gibson points out) it’s not exclusively Christian. But we who also affirm the importance of the Golden Rule have to insist that, as a principle, it doesn’t necessarily get us to the President’s conclusion and that, inside or outside the Christian tradition, it comes as part of a package (including, say, John 14:6 and Paul’s letters and/or natural law).
Michael Gerson argues that there’s a generational shift going on and that “arguments in favor of pluralism have a tremendous advantage in America. In much of the country, social conservatives may need to choose a more defensible political line — the protection of individual and institutional conscience rights for those who disagree with gay marriage. It is also a commitment of genuine pluralism to allow those with differing moral beliefs to associate in institutions that reflect their convictions.” I’m not convinced that he’s right about the shift or about the appropriate response to it. The fastest growing millenial populations, after all, come from socially conservative groups. And a genuinely pluralistic response to the attempt to redefine marriage may be not to cede that ground and protect dissenting minorities, but to take the state out of the marriage business altogther, providing for publicly recognized civil unions and privately celebrated marriages.
But those are matters for another post.
May 14th, 2012 | 10:28 am
I think that the tendency to interpret opinion polls on gay marriage amongst the young as certification that we are up against impossible odds is a huge strategic mistake.
First, the young may endorse gay marriage, but they are some of the most thoroughly un-churched people in the world. They are not confirmed in a belief in opposition to traditional marriage, they simply have no idea.
Second, there is a de facto “gag order” against anyone who speaks out about gay marriage. It is a subject that most Americans aren’t just scared to address – they are terrified. People are afraid of losing their job, their friends, or even their lives if they stake out a strong position against homosexual activity in general or homosexual marriage in particular.
These two facts leave us in the enviable position of needing only to be willing to lose everything in order to save our culture. On the one hand you have the teeming millions who have never heard a coherent argument against gay marriage, and on the other you have intelligent, compassionate Christians who have a loving message of hope. Between them stand the demonic forces of sexual deviancy.
Listen, all that stands between us and the re-evangelization of culture are some scary looking demons. Does anyone else suspect that at the first confident word they will dissolve like a mist before the wind?
It’s up to us to speak out and state our case – and there is no time like the present.
May 14th, 2012 | 10:55 am
Since the premise of this post is Locke and toleration, it is important to note that Locke has no interest in toleration when it comes to matters of the material world and the political society — what he calls “civil interests”. Here order must be upheld, and no authority beyond the local potentate may be recognized. Indeed, “no opinions contrary to human society, or to those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society, are to be tolerated by the magistrate.” Toleration is, however, to be practiced in matters which Locke assigns to matter which have no relationship to worldly order — what he calls “the salvation of souls”.
Locke’s signature task is to sow such doubt and moral skepticism — since, of course, “everyone is orthodox to himself” — in the hearts of persons who all will one day be asked to choose between obeying God and obeying men, that they will never even realize the moment of decision has arrived. For Locke, the “magistrate” will always command the body while ‘freedom of worship’ will be preserved as a refuge for sensitive souls.
May 14th, 2012 | 11:00 am
Darel,
Amen, brother.
May 14th, 2012 | 11:50 am
Doesn’t outlawing something necessarily bring in ‘punishment’?
May 14th, 2012 | 12:15 pm
There’s a mistranslation happening these days. It’s goes like this: we translate “who are you to tell me what’s right and wrong?” which is a fine and dandy thing to say, into “there is no right and wrong.”
I may be Eastern Orthodox and you are Opus Dei and that guy over there is orthodox Lutheran and the other guy is an Orthodox Jew. None of us can allow the other to tell us what’s right and wrong, but all of us subject ourselves to the belief that there is an absolute right and wrong.
But none of us are a law unto ourselves, which is relativism. All of us reject the Lockean idea that we are all orthodox to ourselves in that we all accept our own corrupted state, and therefore we subject ourselves to the (o)rthodoxy of the church or synagogue to heal our corruption.
Here’s an interesting except from a 2007 interview with Senator Obama:
May 14th, 2012 | 2:51 pm
It helps to understand that the highest value of political liberals is “social cooperation” (in the words of John Rawls). Anything that stands in the way of such cooperation is by definition bad and needs be eliminated.
From this value flows toleration, reciprocity, ‘fairness,’ skepticism, relativism, individualism, etc. etc. If there is nothing in life worth fighting, killing or dying for, after all, then — assuming rational actors — by definition we won’t fight, kill or die.
Whether political liberals believe there is anything to live for, of course, is another matter entirely.
May 14th, 2012 | 7:38 pm
[...] Golden Rule Christianity – Joseph Knippenberg, First Things/First Thoughts [...]
May 15th, 2012 | 12:54 am
The natural law admits of admissible variations such as the theological opinions of various Christian sects and inadmissible variations. The inadmissible variations contradict the natural law: and the redefinition of marriage is an example of inadmissible variation.
May 15th, 2012 | 3:29 am
First, the young may endorse gay marriage, but they are some of the most thoroughly un-churched people in the world. They are not confirmed in a belief in opposition to traditional marriage, they simply have no idea.
A lot of younger people favor gay marriage simply because they are given this idea of religious conservatives or social conservatives as monstrous – not only their peers and the media, but even their public school teachers (!) contribute to this caricature of these unfathomably hideous people who want to restrict liberties just for the sake of restricting liberties.
In this narrative, social conservatives have only one motive: hatred of those who are not like themselves, or hatred just for the sake of hate/being enraged. (Yeah, a little bit of projection there, maybe.)
May 15th, 2012 | 10:06 am
Rather than “take the state out of the marriage business,” which is impossible, why not give the state a monopoly? France did it in 1791 and most European nations have followed suit. Mandatory civil marriage means that it is a crime (an attack on civil status) for any minister of religion to conduct a marriage ceremony for persons not already legally married. It is this that makes marriage a pillar of the lay Republic, for, if there are different kinds of marriage for different classes of citizens, how is the Republic one and indivisible?
The state cannot “get out of the marriage business,” because it has a clear interest in the filiation of children being clear, certain and incontestable. It is central to its concern for the upbringing and welfare of the child, for protecting rights and enforcing obligations between family members and to the orderly succession to property. To date, no better, simpler, less intrusive means than marriage have been found for ensuring, as far as possible, that the legal, biological and social realities of paternity coincide.
It is no coincidence that the same Assembly that introduced mandatory civil marriage had just turned 10 million landless peasants into heritable proprietors.
May 15th, 2012 | 11:45 pm
T’would be better to let temptations and John Locke lie. Ivory tower interests have little sway with rank and file Christians who have unwittingly accepted “Golden Rule Christianity.”
And the “generational shift” from rock to sand happened not with those who have heard nothing other than the same-sex ‘marriage’ propaganda all their lives, but with us who never in our wildest dreams could have imagined such. Our generation undermined “love” as we made it the banner for accepting divorce and adultery in the Church.
If we do not recover the basics such as love which has become a heresy, all roads are down hill.
http://www.amazon.com/Love-Prayer-Forgiveness-Michael-Snow/dp/159467664X/ref=pd_rhf_dp_p_t_2
May 16th, 2012 | 1:51 pm
I think that the tendency to interpret opinion polls on gay marriage amongst the young as certification that we are up against impossible odds is a huge strategic mistake.
First,
Second,
You forgot one:
Third, when young people get older, they will gain wisdom – especially with regards to how one goes about making a family.
Support for SSM is based on the fantasy that it is somehow possible to separate entitlement from responsibility. But it’s not.
It is common for the young to idealize irresponsibility & worship liberty. It is equally common for young people to not really ‘get’ that these ideals have costs. When these costs start to become clear, young people turn into middle-aged people.
Young people support gay marriage because they think there are no costs involved.
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