The End of Christian America

Mr. Zrim, I should add your statement that you’re not about advising others what to do is self-refuting as your whole project is to lay down a non-resistance ethic for …. not just you, but for Christians. You’re in the area of Christian ethics here. Ethical imperatives and norms are of the essence of ethics.

In addition, I never said the filing lawsuits should be our “default setting.” I agree that Americans are generally too quick on the lawsuit trigger, too insistent on “rights.” My practice, as I’ve said, is to try first to amicably resolve disputes or find alternative ways for a client to achieve its objectives without litigation. But as a last resort, sometimes there is no other way to prevent manifest injustice. If you want to say “there is a line” beyond which Christians should not go, it behooves you to specify that line with factual particularity. What criteria would you recommend be used to draw that line? You asked rhetorically whether your pastor shouldn’t advise you not to seek your daughter’s killer? Why? What should a pastor advise his parishioner who comes to him seeking to know what evaluative criteria should guide his decision about when it’s appropriate or not to offer up resistance? Never? If ever, when? Where? How? Deal with some concrete fact.

You persist in invoking “persecution” when I’ve suggested that most governmental actors whose actions oppress Christians or churches intend no persecution. If the government is not persecuting, should a Christian’s pastor still counsel non-resistance to the government? (On your principles, since accepting persecution is enduring the cross, if no cross is intended is it still a theology of glory to resist?) Suppose the County Tax Assessor mistakenly assesses a property tax levy upon church property and threatens forclosure for nonpayment within 30 days? Should the church resist or allow the church property to be seized?

If the Lord’s rebuke of Peter is to be seen as standing for the broad proposition that Christians should not resist persecution, you need to supply some biblical evidence that that interpretation can be gleaned from it. What is the exegetical evidence?

You’re simply not reading carefully. I never “veered” in and out of persecution, but on the contrary insisted most government contraction of religious liberty is not the result of persecution. You are reading in what you want to see because it sets up your straw man. You want to see theologies of glory where they don’t exist so you can play the theology of the cross and suffering in this age cards. You have not dealt with reality. Your entire argument is from stem to stern, from beginnign to end, predicated upon an imaginary construct of your own mind. One last time: Suppose the County Tax Assessor mistakenly assesses a property tax levy upon church property and threatens forclosure for nonpayment within 30 days? Should the church resist or allow the church property to be seized? What should the pastor advise?

You get an F for the day — you can’t change the hypo. This was a reality for my church. We met with the County, explained the mistake, our lawyer sent letters. Did no good. The bureaucrats didn’t care. The church had to file a lawsuit and seek a TRO and preliminary injunction from a judge. Got one and the judge excoriated the County Tax Assessor. But without the judge, we would have lost the property. Happens all over the place all the time. You don’t admit into your consciousness facts that are not congenial to your make-believe world.

Yes, a church should not resist lawful ordinances or statutes. A believer when insulted by a neighbor should not retaliate.

There are enough examples drawn from everyday life in which Christians and churches must submit to the authorities and refrain from unseemly retaliation and vengeance. We all have provocations every day, don’t we? If we all stood on our “rights” to self-respect and to be treated as we wish, we’d be holering all day long, especially at an unbelieving world. Christians can do a much better job of being less abrasive and hostile when dealing with unbelievers, and when insulted could do a better job keeping mum rather than hitting back with strident, accusatory rhetoric. We can treat them with respect and dignity even if we dislike their lifestyles or politics. Churches should withdraw from politics all-together. They should obey the magistrate’s zoning laws, noise ordinances, and be good neighbors who try to minimize adverse parking impact to the fullest extent practicable. Most large churches with parking issues do that.

But once in a while the government oversteps and violates the law. It isn’t always about us. It’s not “persecution” always. But all citizens, including Christians, have a civil duty to preserve civil rights, liberties, and hold excess government power in check. Why would be be exempted? Why should the ACLU care more for your civil rights than you?

Granted most of Christianity is other worldly — the promises and living hope are not in this world. The Bible doesn’t have a lot to say about the details of living as a citizen of this world qua citizen of the KoM — about how to fix my car engine or build a house or fashion a style of government or what is the best kind. It assumes that believers will use native intelligence to navigate their way through the KoM. It assumes I’ll figure out how to plant a garden and fix my car, and it assumes I’ll figure out a system of government that works well enough and how to make it work. It assumes I’ll use common sense to be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove to figure out that it takes a legal brief to correct a manifest and unjust government abuse. It might even be the goo-neighborly thing to do to defend my rights for the benefit of my non-Christian neighbor. I might be nice if I stand with my pagan neighbor to prevent injustice to him/her when he/she is a victim of racial discrimination or poverty, and my ACLU pagan neighbor may even stand by me when my rights to speak about Christ are eclipsed. It’s just the way the KoM operates. I dont’ find in Scripture any unique disability on Christians from acting in the KoM.

On what principled basis do you draw such lines of disabling restrictions? I think you just make it up as you go, and that’s the problem. That’s what I’ve been pushing you to see. Non-resistance when and how? Are we to be so a-political we don’t vote? I have 2K friends who go there: they see believers as so other-worldly that they should not vote, though one allows voting if the Christian doesn’t talk about it. Once you start down this path, it becomes very legalistic. Why not just say, the faith is mainly about a living hope, the gospel, Word and Sacrament, and doesn’t have much to say about this world, and leave the KoM affairs to be worked out on KoM principles without interjecting KoG principles (like non-resistance principles applied to government) where they don’t belong?

I’ll settle for Christians stepping up the their civic duty if not a “spiritual duty.” Nothing in Scripture that says we keep Western values afloat – I agree. A lot of Western values (materialism, self-centeredness) I’d rather sink. But nothing in Scripture about defending the innocent or doing good to neighbor? How about “love your neighbor as yourself”? My pre-born neighbors need help, among others.

Since you love 2K, you may be interested in Luther’s views on resistance (since he was a 2K architect). In Luther’s lengthly commentary The Sermon on the Mount (written in 1530, and published 1532), Luther argued an individual Christian was forbidden to defend himself. A Christian could not defend himself with a sword, and he could not even defend himself by going to court. (Calvin and the Reformed had a different view.) You’d applaud. But Luther seemed to change his mind when he developed his “Chrisitan-in-relation” doctrine, which was an exception that swollowed up his initial “rule.”

In contrast to the Christian as individual, Luther later wrote, there was the “Christian-in-relation” who had an “obligation” to “some other person, whether under him or over him or even alongside him, like a lord or a lady, a wife or children or neighbors, whom he is obliged, if possible, to defend, guard, and protect.” For the Christian-in-relation, it was “ridiculous” to say “turn the other cheek”—like “the crazy saint who let lice nibble at him and refused to kill any of them on account of this text, maintaining that he had to suffer and could not resist evil.”

A superior’s duty to the people under him or her came from “the imperial or the territorial law.” Only a “crazy mother” would not defend her child from a dog or a wolf. Christ “did not abrogate this duty, but rather confirmed it.” He also wrote: “Similarly, if a pious citizen sees violence and harm being done to his neighbor, he should help to defend and protect him. This is secular business, all of which Christ has not forbidden but confirmed.”

In short, Luther did not imagine, at least in earthly world before the end of time, some utopia free of injustice or violence. To the contrary, he recognized that violence (from wolves and from human predators) existed, and he insisted that good Christians had a duty to defend neighbor, even through force to defend their neighbors. This is resistance on steroids.

Because of Luther’s underestanding of human sin, he was also an advocate of Just War. Directly rebutting pacifists, Luther wrote “Whether Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved” in 1526, and answered in the affirmitive: “But what are you going to do about the fact that people will not keep the peace, but rob, steal, kill, outrage women and children, and take away property and honor? The small lack of peace called war or the sword must set to limit, to this universal, worldwide lack of peace which would destroy everyone.”

Much more reluctantly, Luther eventually endorsed the right of revolution against tyranny, in extreme circumstances. In the 1531 “Warning to His Dear German People,” Luther encouraged armed resistance to the Holy Roman Emperor, who was attempting to extinguish the Reformation by armed force::

“…when the murderers and bloodhounds wish to wage war and murder, it is in truth no insurrection to rise against them and defend oneself….Likewise, I do not want to leave the conscience of the people burdened by the concern and worry that their self-defense might be rebellious…. …self-defense against the blood-hounds cannot be rebellious.”

I wonder whether Luther’s writings on resistance in 1531–which presumed that the right of self-defense was obvious–represented a step away from his 1530 text denying that Christians could defend themselves. Some say so. But what is indisputable about Luther is his belief that good Christians sometimes had an affirmtive duty to do good, defend others, and eve nuse violence–in defense of others, in just wars, and in resistance to tyranny.

Food for thought.

CVD,

Believe it or not, I quite gravitate to the Christian-in-relation version of Luther (have you forgotten my Louisville slugger under my bed and pressing charges against my daughter’s killer instead of asking the judge to suspend justice like the confused Anabaptists do?). But, at the same time, I am truly left wondering if there weren’t some pretty important questions left lingering unanswered in his previous views.

I also wonder why, when it comes to our relation to others, 1) nine times out of ten it seems to have to be those further removed from our ordained circle of influence, e.g. that vast and impersonal population called “the unborn” (“innocent” is always a curious term for a Calvinist to describe these folks, BTW) instead of those both in and ex vitro at our own dinner tables, work places and school rooms. Why is our neighbor presumed to be those over whom we really have very little influence instead of those we come into contact all the time? Why is our neighbor across the nation instead of next door? Why is it such a Wal-mart piety instead of a Prevo’s Family Market one?

And 2) why, when it comes to those further removed, since they indeed do count too, different answers to these questions aren’t well tolerated? You’re hinting that this all might translates into what is commonly called a pro-life viewpoint. But what about those of us perfectly politically happy with states’ rights over either autonomous fetus- or female-rights? What if some of us think the best way to politically serve our neighbor is for him/her to be governed more locally, no matter what the decision may be? I know, another very unpopular suggestion in the land of moral federalists fighting each other. But I have no problem loving my neighbor—I just think there are diverse ways of doing it.

To clarify: I meant to say I would be unhappy if my fellow state voters voted to continue abortion on demand (I’d be happy if the courts returned the issue to the states by overturning Roe).

Mr. Zrim, welcome to the “Christian in relation” camp. But to be a member in good standing you have to stop finding something wrong with those who act on that belief. You’re not of an activist temperament. I have no problem with that; I’m not pushing you out of the sidelines and onto the field. My plea is that you stop finding something inordinate about “activism” and those who feel called to one form of it or another.

I wonder if you’re not trying to be holier than thou, as it were, by finding a theology of glory where Luther, who coined the term, did not. As you can see, he found Christians could have a political and a spiritual duty to defend or serve their neighbor, oppose the magistrate, and as a last resort, even overthrow the magistrate. Calvin agreed and went further.

My last and final plea: stop uttering banal generalities and deal in specific cases. The devil is in the details. Just as Luther’s “general rule” or preference had to yield to the exceptional “Christian in relation” case. I think you’d find when you leave the clouds and descend to the ground that the “ordinary” sometimes must likewise yied to the extraordinary. Ordinarily government does its job. The school board orders books and pays the light bill just fine. But sometimes the government, in an extraordinary case, enacts unjust laws that discriminate against people due to skin color or creed and tries to silence those whose views it doesn’t like. Sometimes government fails to protect the vulnerable. Sometimes extraordinary action is required by the citizen and Christian in relation. I’m happy for those ordinary people who in extraordinary cases are willing to step up and do extraordinary things, like protect your and my freedom to blog about such arcane matters as whether people who protect our freedom are doing the right thing.

mcotta,

I’m all for the Kuyperian idea of sphere sovereignty. Speaking of schooling, it’s very useful to argue against that the theonomist/transformationalist notion that school is an extension of the family (instead of an institution that overlaps with the family and church). To the extent that it lends out ordination to an un-ordained institution, it is in fact arguable that the trans/theon view can be an ironic undermining of a high view of the family. After all, if nobody wants their public school to be transformationalist (I don’t), then on what grounds can parochial school be said to be “shaping worldviews and making human beings”? Isn’t that a project reserved only for the family, for better or ill?

Nevertheless, the state does have something valid to say about marriage, because the institution of marriage is entirely grounded in creation, not redemption. Those who want marriage “re-defined” at least understand that much, even if they wrongly conceive of it defined as anything other than between one man and one woman. Nobody is married unless the state says so. The state might get it wrong, but that is no warrant to undermine its authority and ordination. The state is God’s left hand.

mcotta,

Incredible claim? That the state issues marriage licenses?

If you’re right then I don’t know how my own marriage is valid (which I’d prefer, and not just for tax purposes). My wife’s father married us, but that was because the state vested its power in him as a pastor to do so, not because he was her father. How is that an incredible example?

It seems to me your suggestion, which I have heard plenty of times before, is a creative way to circumvent hard decisions. But if we don’t have our licenses signed by the state, by whom are they signed? Can’t be the church, since marriage isn’t a redemptive ordinance. Or perhaps we need those “pieces of paper”? Maybe shacked-up fornicators are right, maybe all we need is to be “married in our hearts” because we say we are? Maybe the legitimacy of God’s left hand only counts when we agree with the decisions?

But if Jesus said to render unto (that maniac who thought he was deity and trampled the individual rights of God’s people) Caesar his due, and if Paul says that our authorities (who make all sorts of mistakes, up to and including our persecution) were given us for our good, does it really follow that there is anyone else who finally marries us?

I respectfully disagree with you both.

Zrim, the fact that we are called to obey civil magistrates does not in any way affirm that all the authority they have assumed is by God-given charter. It doesn’t mean that whatever they do and command under the sun is justly their to do and command. It might be true that God allows them to assume power not originally assigned by Him, but that again is not eqivalent with charter. What’s more, I cannot understand why you are ready to agree with me on state instrusion into the family sphere when it comes to children, but not to spouses.

CVanDyke, you’re argument has the appearance of self-evident truth only because of our historical myopia. It simply is not true that marriage has always been regulated by the state, nor is it true that the state has always been the only means by which property rights were managed, health and welfare maintained, and contracts (a special instance of which would be the contract of marriage) enforced. The west wasn’t as wild as your state sponsored public school history text would have us believe.

Before, and even after the rise of the modern nation-state, many cultures and societies managed themselves quite well in terms of marriage and many other aspects of life, apart from state interference and micromanaging, without falling into anarchy (if by anarchy is meant chaos).

You both might find it interesting to learn that for the better part of Western history marriage contracts were defined and regulated by common law, and that state issued marriage licenses did not appear in England until the fourteenth century. Why did they appear then? Well, why else? Aggrandisement, power-lust, and, as always, revenue.

State issued marriage licenses in the US are also a relatively recent development. It seems that some beaurocrat got the idea that marriages should fall under the auspices of the Dept. of Health. Genuis. Nice job they’ve done with it since then…

Law is needed, CVD, but not necessarily state law or legislated law. Common law worked quite well for many, many peoples for many, many centuries.

mcotta,

But before the modern nation-state someone in creational authority had to tell a man and a woman they were married. The point is that there are all sorts of ways across time and place to do this. I happen to live in a time and place where it’s the state. Romantically pining for another time and place to be patched onto mine, while perhaps interesting, finally doesn’t solve anything in the real world. I still need to know who says I’m my wife’s husband and she’s my wife in 21st century America. (If the state makes a few bucks, I don’t care.)

I have heard progressives argue the same thing you basically are; I have a distant relative who pastors in a liberal denomination that blesses same-sex unions. They also want marriage privatized. The common fear you both seem to have is that the state will make a decision you don’t like (Adam and Steve may marry, or they mayn’t). And instead of having to live with something you don’t like the idea is to circumvent, even undermine, ordained authority. I fail to see how this is any different from my daughter suggesting a decision I have made she doesn’t like means I have overstepped my parental bounds, pointing to another dad down the street who decided otherwise for his kids. Yes, I am suggesting what you are arguing is pretty adolescent and sophomoric.

mcotta, I appreciate your attention to exegetical concerns and to derive your conclusions from exegesis rather than from theological abstractions divorced from scripture. I also appreciate your concern that the state has become Beastlike and bloated. I am a strong believer in a smaller, less ambitions state. I also agree that many social and economic problems can be traced to state intervenion. Government, in my view, does few things well, and when it acts it tends to make a hash of things. I’m concerned that government has arrogated unto itself too many powers, and that its powers are corrosive to liberty.

With that said, I’m not sure that exegetically I can derive from scripture a precise form of government that is biblically mandated or a precise agenda for government that would allow me to say, biblically, that government has exceeded its proper, ordained role. The Gen. 4, 9, and NT passages are quite sparse and, I think, can’t be pushed to establish a full biblically prescribed political science. I see little in scripture that mandates the practicalities of government’s limits. I do think you can make a case for protection of private property and free markets from scripture, and so cast doubt upon the validity of a full throated socialism, as a professor at WSC does. But apart from that, I make the case for limited government on common grace, political and economic grounds rather than scriptural grounds. Getting to cases, I think the case for state licensing of marriage is a rather strong pragmatic case in today’s world. While the welfare state largely created the inner city breakdown of families, the solution it seems to me is at this point not withdrawal of the state from regulating these affairs. And the licensing of marriage does not harm and some good. If I were persuaded on exegetical grounds that the state exceeds its God-given authority in licensing marriage, I would agree with you.

Matt,

My comments thus come across to some thus conditioned as “adolesent and sophomoric.” Nevertheless, dream as I may, once and a while it is nice to dream. Sheesh, its’ just plain nice to think.

Granted, that was pretty snarky. Sorry. I like to think and dream, too.

But my point is that in something like Mark 11 we seem to see something being said about authority and submission that applies to all times and places. It is an interesting question whether Caesar could tax the Jews, etc. and so on and so forth. But that doesn’t seem to be what Jesus is interested in. He seems more interested in the fact that Caesar is God’s left hand, despite all sorts of other concerns, and that .

Personally, I really don’t think we 21st century Americans grasp well what the Bible seems to convey about things like authority, submission and obedience. We American-Christians seems to think more like Americans than Christians (I heard that, CVD). We question and speculate more than we submit and obey. We like authority when we agree with it or it goes our way. I know CVD has a fear of heights, but obedience is better than sacrifice, and obedience is what actually won our salvation.