Category: Novus Ordo Seclorum

Should Muslims Try to Legislate Their Morality?

Published on by D. G. Hart490 Comments

For most residents of the United States, the idea of Sharia law establishing the standards for civil law at the state or federal level (even before 9-11) is unthinkable. But lots of Protestants and Roman Catholics in the U.S. hardly blush when someone puts the question the way the Allies recently did — Should Christians Try to Legislate Their Morality?

On the ordinary playing field of fairness and equality before the law, the notion that Muslims and Jews and Roman Catholics should not try to legislate their morality but evangelicals may is nonsensical. The only way the premise behind the Allies’ question makes sense is if you think either that only the true religion may be legislated (say hello to 1650 Europe and goodbye to 1776 Philadelphia), or that the United States belong to the people who first settled it (say hello to Peter Marshall and David Barton and goodbye to David Hackett Fischer).

To say that Christians should not try to legislate their morality (if the followers of other religions may not) is not to affirm that civil society without religion as the social glue will be easy. Current debates about marriage are indicative of the problems that the American founding set into motion. But neither was life in Christendom easy for Muslims, Jews, and Protestants. So Americans tried to separate religious considerations as much as possible from civil society in establishing a constitutional republic. That led to secular society, a novos ordo seclorum (new order for the ages). Does such a society imply disrespect for God? Perhaps. But its explicit aim was not to deny God’s dominion but to make room for people from diverse faiths (or no faith) to try to live together (and please remember that even the Puritans did not welcome Baptists or Presbyterians). Legislating one religious group’s morality upsets the original agreement. Why Christians still don’t see this hurts my head the way drinking a curry squishee too fast does.

To be fair, I did not watch the Allies’ video. I’m a text guy when it comes to blogging. But if the discussion did highlight “the question of final authority” or as the post puts it: “As Christians, how do we help people find an authority outside of themselves?”, then I’m not sure the Allies are doing justice to the diversity of the American people (or to the United States’ law for that matter). We the people are sovereign through our representatives. This constitutional republic was established as a rebuttal to “final authorities” who dominated people and abused power. I understand that finding an authority outside ourselves is a proper basis for a w-w, a good philosophical way to refute secularism, and a habitual response of Roman Catholics and neo-Calvinists to the French Revolution. But the way I read the United States, we were not a philosophical republic but a polity that adapts pragmatically for the sake of protecting the security, peace, and legal standing of all its citizens (no matter what their faith). As for those citizen’s morality, they needed to conform to the laws that their representatives enacted, and those legislators represented people of diverse faiths.

In which case, we have moral problems in the United States and advocates of Christian morality (from the Baylys to the Allies) are not helping.

Postscript: I understand that Apu is likely not a Muslim.

Tim Bayly Does His Impersonation of Joseph Stalin and Alger Hiss (all in one)

Published on by D. G. Hart67 Comments

Tim thinks this exchange between Erik’s brothers’ Darryl/ell proves that 2k advocates are using theology for a political agenda. What it actually reveals is that Tim is afraid his followers will read the other side (e.g. Stalin). And worse, he cannot answer the question (e.g. Hiss) of why he supports the magistrate enforcing the sixth commandment but doesn’t apparently care about laws to preserve the first, second, third, and forth commandments.

R2K men aren’t Christians with a certain political argument but libertarians with a certain Christian argument by which they hope to shore up their political philosophy of each man doing that which is right in his own eyes.

And he thinks 2k advocates hide a political agenda behind Reformed theology?!? In the words of Tom McGinnis, “are you kidding me?”

What's Good for the Turks is Good for the Protestants

Published on by D. G. Hart24 Comments

Part of what makes studying the Ottoman Empire and Turkey fascinating is that you see aspects of civil society and political development that we in the West mostly take for granted. It is like studying a foreign language. I never understood English grammar as well as when taking Greek and Hebrew in seminary. To use English I never really needed to know the grammar. Not true for reading Greek (and faking my way through) Hebrew. The same goes for understanding the way western societies operate. We may take a civics class, but that doesn’t mean we understand the history behind or the choices made that resulted in a democratic and federated republic.

This is a way of introducing a poignant comment by Walter McDougall about the Turkish republic’s origins:

[Ataturk] set out to separate the state from Islamic religion, liberate women, define Turkish citizenship by residence rather than ethnicity, Westernize the legal system, promote economic development, and pursue peaceful relations with all of its neighbors.

In other words, Turkey accomplished in the 1920s what the United States did in the late 18th century. And Turkey also carried out some of the political outcomes that prevailed in Italy in 1870 when the papacy lost temporal authority over the Papal Legations. What was crucial in all three cases was for the laws of Turkey, Italy and the United States to be separated from the laws of Islam, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism respectively.

But apparently, some Protestants have not learned this lesson politics. They still insist that the state enforce God’s law. They also insist that they have no resemblance to Islam or Pius IX. In fact, one of the great ironies of U.S. history is that Protestants used a high-wall conception of the separation of church and state against any Roman Catholic attempts to receive state funding for parochial schools. When the courts then applied that same argument to public schools and removed prayer and Bible reading, Protestants (mainline, evangelical, and fundamentalist) cried foul. Apparently, separation of church and state is needed for Muslims and Roman Catholics, but not for our team.

Of course, the contemporary opponents of the secular may be right. The Bible may require a union of religion and politics and a return to Old Testament Israel. But are those contemporary critics of 2k and the secular willing to identify themselves as anti-American (not simply opposed to the U.S. of Obama but also to the republic of George Washington)? And are they willing to admit that they are anti-Western (in a way similar to political Islam)? Or do they want all the benefits of a constitutional republic in the West with whining rights about godless secular societies?

Van Der Molen Pulls Up and Chats A While

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Our typical interactions with the Indiana attorney and URC elder, who appears to be anti-2k all the time, have been of the drive-by variety in comm boxes at various blogs. But now Mark Van Der Molen has outdone himself and provided a substantial rendering of the history of the revision of the Belgic Confession, Article 36, on the civil magistrate. Particularly intriguing are the revisions’ emergence in the context of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod, an international Reformed ecumenical body that offered to churches like the Orthodox Presbyterian Church a “conservative” alternative to either Carl McIntire’s International Council of Christian Churches or the liberal Protestant World Council of Churches. Readers should check Van Der Molen’s account on their own. They should also be aware of the debate over whether confessional subscription to the revised Belgic extends to footnotes.

Instead of weighing in on another communion’s internal debates, I want to challenge several implications that follow Van Der Molen’s narrative:

First, he claims that 2k advocates have used the revision of Belgic 36 to:

1. remove the magistrate’s concern with the first table of the Law,

2. remove the magistrate’s subjection to the authority of the Word of God, and

3. remove the magistrate’s purpose in the advancement of Christ’s kingdom.

I can’t speak for all 2kers (particularly Scott Clark and Mike Horton, who have subscribed the Three Forms of Unity), but I am not sure that Van Der Molen describes accurately their motives or the consequences of their position. This construction is again a common tactic among 2k’s critics, that somehow 2kers want to see God’s word flouted, and Christ’s kingdom reduced, and the gospel denied. In point of fact, and an attorney should know this, the arguments of 2kers do not prove what their motives are. Also, important to note, is that 2kers have denied explicitly having such anti-biblical, antinomian, and anti-kingdom motivations. Instead, they have repeatedly affirmed that they promote 2k for the good of the church, the defense of the gospel, and the rule of Christ among his people. Doesn’t such testimony count for anything with an officer of the court (I guess not when he is prosecuting alleged offenders)? Of course, 2kers could be confused, foolish, or simply wrong about the effects of 2k. But Van Der Molen once again engages in the overreach common among 2k’s critics (not to mention Rush Limbaugh or Fox News).

Second, Van Der Molen has a Netherlands-centric reading of Reformed history. For instance, he accuses 2kers of re-writing history to make it fit their view (meanwhile he does not notice how 2kers have written a great deal about the larger history of Reformed Protestantism than his narrow topic of revising Belgic 36):

What is not legitimate is a “two kingdoms” re-writing of history to suggest the entire first table has been entirely removed from the magistrate’s purview. Kuyper did not argue for a “table 1-ectomy”. More importantly, neither did our Reformed forbears when they revised the confession. Until we see a “two kingdoms” proponent successfully overture for a second-table-only revision, our confessional subscription today yet stands with the churchmen who adopted the RES Declaration and the revised Belgic 36 which retains the principle that the magistrate’s tasks are subject to both tables of God’s law.

This is a questionable reading of history on several grounds. First, Van Der Molen shows no awareness of the revisions that American Presbyterians made to their confession 150 years before the Belgic revisions. Last I checked, Presbyterians were part of the Reformed churches. The American revision includes this language, which I admit is different from the Belgic revisions:

Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger. And, as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof, among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief. It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever: and to take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance. (23.4, emphasis added)

But in narrowing his historical analysis to the Belgic’s revision, Van Der Molen gives the impression that the Presbyterians don’t count (or that when he cites VanDrunen or me, Orthodox Presbyterians are not bound by Belgic as church officers).

Also troubling about Van Der Molen’s references to the Belgic’s revision’s context is a complete disregard for what happened to the RES or its member churches. The GKN, one of the big players in establishing the RES, no longer exists, having run out of confessional steam in 2004 to join the national generically Protestant church of the Dutch monarchy. Nor does Van Der Molen observe that the RES itself no longer exists, having in2006 voted itself out of existence when it joined the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, a body dominated by liberal Reformed and Presbyterian communions. So if Van Der Molen wants his church brethren to respect their forefathers, he may want to specify which forefathers they might be. The GKN? The CRC? The RES? Is Van Der Molen really pinning his hopes on that group of Reformed churches? Talk about re-writing history.

Third, and relatedly, Van Der Molen ignores the ecumenical relations that governed the churches that revised the Belgic Confession. He concludes by stating it is time now “for the Reformed churches to recover the Reformed confessions, Belgic 36 incuded.” Well, how about the American revisions to the Westminster Confession? Does Van Der Molen really want to recover that confession? Or how about the ecumenical relations that may bring tensions between the existing Belgic 36 and OP Confession 23? Did the CRC or GKN (or the Covenanters, for that matter) ever make teaching on the civil magistrate the basis for fraternal relations? Have the URC and OPC objected to the other communion’s teachings on the civil magistrate in attempting to produce a psalter-hymnal? Has Westminster California or Mid-America Seminary ever required its Orthodox Presbyterian ministers to own the Belgic’s teaching on the magistrate and forsake their own communion’s confession?

To my knowledge, the answer is no. But Van Der Molen seems to think that Belgic 36 now needs to govern all the Reformed believers. Why? Three syllables, two words: culture wars. Theonomy, the religious right, and certain varieties of neo-Calvinism (including the Federal Vision) are all reactions to the perceived secularization of the United States in a period known as “Post-Protestant America.” Conversely, 2k is a set of arguments with the aim of steering the churches away from “putting their trust in princes.” Both have developed at the same cultural moment. One has a very narrow reading of Reformed history. The other does not.

Not Everyone Uses the Plural

Published on by D. G. Hart62 Comments

Hold on to your seat. David VanDrunen responds to Ryan McIlhenny’s response to VanDrunen’s response to McIlhenny’s response to two kingdoms:

What is most important to me is that the Reformed community reaffirm the basic distinction between God’s two kingdoms—his common providential rule and his special redemptive rule—whether or not one agrees with all the ways I personally apply this distinction in exploring the Christianity-and-culture issues. This distinction is biblical and has very deep roots in the Reformed tradition. I would deem it a great blessing from God were the Reformed community as a whole to re-embrace it, and I see my efforts to defend the distinction as something I can do to serve the Reformed churches I love. The thing is, I struggle to think of any contemporary figure I have read or spoken to who either calls himself a neo-Calvinist or is commonly identified by others as a neo-Calvinist who does not speak of God’s kingdom in the singular. Possibly my own experience is just quirky, but ever since I began thinking seriously about this I have understood a one-kingdom view to be of the essence of what “neo-Calvinism” is. Thus I do not consider myself a neo-Calvinist. To me, the thought of a “two kingdoms neo-Calvinist” is like the thought of a “libertarian socialist.” It’s paradoxical, even contradictory.

And, of course, what makes the difference between the singular and plural of Kingdom important is how we live in this age (saeculum), a time between the advents of Christ, when believers live side-by-side with unbelievers. If kingdom is singular, what place do non-believers have in civil society? Do they have equal rights under the law, or do we put them in ghettos or treat them as dhimmi? And if Kingdom is singular, do believers learn from non-Christian philosophers, historians, and bio-chemists? Or do we bar non-Christians from universities?

Believe it or not, putting non-Christians in ghettos, treating them as dhimma, and denying them admittance to universities were all responses to making God’s kingdom singular.

This Guy Needs His Own Blog – Part 2 (Gamble vs. Lee)

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Brian Lee has some very helpful and wise reflections on his decision to open Congress in prayer. I call it a capitulation to the nation’s civil religion. I believe this is fair even though it hurts to say it because Brian is a good friend and a Reformed pastor whom I respect. It is fair because (I won’t give reasons for befriending Brian) civil religion is precisely the theme by which Brian frames his post-prayer considerations:

Civil religion is thick in America. “God” is on our money, and in the Pledge of Allegiance, not to mention in the Declaration of Independence. We regularly ask him to bless America at ball games. And every session of the U.S. House and Senate opens with a prayer.

Recently the question of civil religion became very concrete for me. I was asked, as a pastor in Washington, D.C., to serve as guest chaplain for the U.S. House of Representatives, and open that body with prayer. The question of “Whether and what sort of civil religion shall we have in America?” quickly became “Should I pray in the House of Representatives? If so, how?”

But Brian went ahead and prayed even though he remains torn about whether he should have prayed. The whole piece is worth reading but I highlight the best reason he gives for not praying (even though he did — it’s confusing):

2) The difference between Congress and church.

Before you file this under “most obvious argument ever,” take a moment to consider exactly what the essential difference is. A church is a particular worshiping community, a creedal body, because it prays to a particular God. When I pray publicly in church, I therefore pray in the first person plural. That is, I pray in common and on behalf of every member of that community. While guests are welcome to observe and join in, there is no presumption they must do so. In doing so I presume for all to whom we are praying, and how we are praying, and why we expect our prayers to be answered.

To whatever degree “Christian” may describe America, we are quite obviously not a creedal nation. Membership in Congress is explicitly not subject to a religious test; it is in this sense an anti-creedal body. It is therefore impossible for me to pray before Congress as I pray in church, on behalf of the assembled body, for Congress does not have an agreed-upon God. However, while I may not be able to pray on behalf of people who don’t share my faith, I can certainly pray for them. In this way, I occasionally pray for sick unbelievers when I’m invited to visit them in the hospital.

Christians must not presume false unity within a pluralistic group by praying in the first person plural on their behalf. If we do pray in such settings, we must pray as individuals, to a particular God, for the group. And indeed, this seems to me most consistent with the pluralistic character of our polity, that we retain our religious distinctiveness even as we enter the public square, instead of pretending as though there is none.

That difference and the pervasiveness of civil religion would have been enough for me (feeling all full of my abstract self) to decline. Another reason is one that Richard Gamble highlights in his book, In Search of a City on a Hill. That is, American Christians (especially conservative ones) have been way too silent about the state taking over Christian language and ideas. Gamble writes:

Today, 50 years after the city on a hill first appeared in modern political rhetoric and nearly 400 years since John Winthrop shepherded his flock to New England’s shores, Americans are left with a secularized metaphor, politicized by the Left and the Right and nearing the point of exhaustion. The metaphor has been forced to carry an impossible load of nationalist, populist and collectivist aspirations. Americans have inherited two political cities looming so large in the media, the political culture and even the church, that together they have eclipsed the historical Winthrop and the biblical Jesus. The biblical metaphor, appropriated by the Puritans and reinvented by modern Democrats and Republicans, has been transformed so successfully into a national myth that few can see or hear these words without all of their modern political meaning attached. Even many Christians, how might be expected to guard their property more vigilantly, argue over which national values the politicized city should stand for and miss the fact that they have lost their metaphor. They argue over which party ought to build the city, over whether Kennedy’s or Reagan’s vision best defines the city, rarely stopping to consider whether Jesus ever had America in mind in the Sermon on the Mount. Such is the power of civil religion in twenty-first century America. Even if Americans manage to convince themselves, in spite of the evidence, that John Winthrop envisioned a glorious future for American ideals and institutions, can they really convince themselves that Jesus intended the United States to take up his disciples’ calling as a city on a hill? Distracted by a contest between two early political cities, Americans forget that the original city on a hill was neither Democrat or Republican. It was not even American. (178-79)

In other words, most of the critics of 2k who fault the notion of two kingdoms for secularizing politics, or culture, or child rearing, wind up secularizing Christianity by making it serve ends that are common (and even profane). At least 2kers are up front about the secular and try to preserve the uniqueness of Christianity. The integralists, the ones who want to see all of life whole with everything Christian, dumb Christianity down.

And it is for the reason that civil religion is so hard wired in American political discourse that I would have preferred that Brian Lee decline the invitation to pray before Congress. If he could have editorialized before praying, and explained that he was praying only as a minister, praying for (not with) Congress members, then perhaps it would have been useful. But as it is I fear that the huge appetite of American civil religion will swallow up his good prayer and thoughtful post-prayer reflections.

Christians Assimilated (but compromised?)

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A terrific book review, now a little long in the tooth, of two books on Europe and its immigrant populations is worth pondering for a variety of reasons but it got me thinking specifically about the assimilation of Christians in a secular republic like the United States. Here is a striking passage:

PEOPLE WHO ASK whether better government policies could have made Muslim immigration to Europe less of a debacle tend to look at Britain and France as two ends of a spectrum of approaches. Britain has let immigrants go their own way. It has been multiculturalist, laissez-faire, tolerant of partial allegiances and unintegrated identities. If you are a Sikh policeman, you can wear your turban on duty. In immigration as in other matters, the United Kingdom is unusually disorderly and willing to run the risk that “parallel societies” will form; but it does offer immigrants more self-respect and freedom of religion. France, by contrast, favors the assimilatory pressures of the melting pot. It wants immigrants to embrace a single model of republican citizenship. France’s model may sound condescending and hypocritical, but at its best it can convince a newcomer that the country’s thousand-year-old history belongs to him as much as anyone. It is a fool’s errand to call either the French or the British approach “better.” Each is built out of thousand-year-old habits of political culture. But immigration experts tend to laud whichever of the two has led to riots less recently.

What was I thinking:

1) it is hard to assimilate people of diverse cultural backgrounds and religious heritages into a peaceful, moderately ordered, and free society. Americans often bemoan the size of the government, the disregard for morality, or the inconsistency of cultural expectations (myself included). But keeping very different groups relatively calm and peaceful is no mean feat (especially if you believe what Reformed Protestants do about human nature).

2) Where does the U.S. fall in this model? In some ways it looks more like its cultural grandparent, Britain. But we also have conformist expectations that resemble the French (which likely owes to our adopting a republican form of government under the influence of Enlightenment political thought).

3) If Christians who complain about the decadence of the U.S. only kvetch and do not riot, is their desire to follow God weaker than Muslims?

4) If Christians want non-Christians to fit in with American norms that stem from Christian convictions, are they doing the same thing as the French even though for religious as opposed to enlightened reasons?

Long Before David Barton, We Had American Presbyterians (to conflate the kingdoms)

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From J. C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty 1660-1832: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-American World (1994)

Once the Revolution had been firmly identified as the first crusade of the American civil religion, it became necessary to canonise the zealots who had brought it about. The Founding Fathers, where possible, were turned form political opportunists, propagandists or self-seekers of tepid or heterodox religious belief into the Luthers and Calvins, the Melanchthons and Zwinglis of the Novus ordo seclorum. With some exceptions, like the now-notorious Tom Paine, each became the subject of a secular epiphany. Especially was this true of the unlikely figure of George Washington, a stolid man of limited imagination and still more limited religious faith, but now repeatedly hailed (without irony) as the Moses or the Joshua of a redeemed people. On his election to the Presidency in 1789, the Presbyterian General Assembly presented him with a congratulatory address, professing to draw particular comfort from Washington’s personal piety:

Public virtue is the most certain means of public felicity, and religion is the surest basis of virtue. We therefore esteem it a peculiar happiness to behold in our chief Magistrate, a steady, uniform, avowed friend of the christian religion, who has commended his administration in rational and exalted sentiments of Piety, and who in his private conduct adorns the doctrines of the Gospel of Christ, and on the most public and solumn occasions devoutly acknowledges the government of divine Providence.

Washington’s reply was all they could expect. He championed religious toleration, acknowledged their prayers, and coupled an ecumenical Deity with a lively regard for the value of religion as a social cement:

While I reiterate the possession of my dependence upon Heaven as the source of all public and private blessings; I will observe that the general prevalence of piety, philanthropy, honesty, industry and oeconomy seems in the ordinary course of human affairs are particularly necessary for advancing and confirming the happiness of our country.

By the first centennial, the image of the Revolution as a holy war had expanded within the folk memories of the American sects to the point where the division and ambiguities within those denominations were forgotten. Presbyterians pictured the war as a Presbyterian crusade which sanctified martial heroism, turned the heterodox rhetoric of the Founding Fathers into the idiom of revivalist preaching, traced in the ‘apparent chaos’ of armed rebellions ‘the will of God. . . working toward order and organisation in a constitution depicted in terms reminiscent of the millennium. (389-90)

Peter Lillback got it honestly.

Clark goes on to observe an irony that continues to afflict “conservative” Protestants who do not oppose civil religion as they should, nor are as wary of the broad churchism that almost always traffics with baptisms of civil authority:

. . . this homogenisation of the position of colonial denominations acted to secularise the historical interpretation of the Revolution and to drain the role of the sects of its immense signficance: if most men, regardless of denomination, eventually seemed to have endorsed the Revolution, then the Revolution’s values and causes must by definition have been irrelevant to religious differences.

In other words, confusing the kingdoms brings into the kingdom (the earthly city sacralized) people who are not kingdom people while it empties the church (the foretaste of the heavenly city) of those attributes that make the church unique (and that divide the churches into different communions). It is, in the words of Vernon Dozier, a “big bowl of wrong.”

Roman Catholic 2K (and it's not Stellman)

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A good article, “Eudaimonia in America,” from last month’s issue of First Things by Robert T. Miller (it may not be available for free yet) shows that 2K thinking is even attractive among Roman Catholics. He doesn’t call it 2K. But the intellectual move is the same, namely, not to expect correspondence between the political philosophy of the nation and one’s own theological convictions.

Here is how Miller describes the problem that afflicts many conservatives (Tim and David Bayly take note):

America is under attack in the pages of First Things. In a recent article Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen tells us that America is founded on a philosophy of “unsustainable liberalism.” Implicit in the ideas of the American founding, he argues, are certain mistaken philosophical premises about individual choice and man’s separation from nature. Moreover, these mistakes are not merely intellectual because, as their logical consequences play out over time, the inexorable results are severe and pervasive social pathologies: a corrupt political order, a collapsing economy, and a degraded and degrading culture. Indeed, in Deneen’s account, pornography, sexual promiscuity, abortion, divorce, violent video games, cheating in academia, and Wall Street frauds all stem from the faulty political philosophy of the American founding.

Miller goes on to disagree with these observations about the U.S. but is especially critical of efforts to link the U.S.’s moral decay to an inadequate philosophical base (or w-w):

Liberal political philosophies are incompatible with the eudaimonism of the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. Does that mean that eudaimonists cannot support the American political system? I share Deneen and MacIntyre’s Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical commitments, but I am also deeply loyal to the American political tradition. The reason is that there is a great gap between politics and moral philosophy. Thinking that a certain set of political arrangements is the best way to organize a particular society in particular historical circumstances is a prudential judgment, and in supporting America’s liberal political system I do not thereby commit myself to a liberal political philosophy.

This point is obscured by the fact that liberal political institutions are naturally and commonly justified on the basis of liberal political philosophies, such as a theory of natural rights as in Locke, or a theory of personal autonomy inspired by Kant, or a theory of justice as in Rawls. People who support liberal political systems on such bases are philosophical liberals. But we can also view a liberal political order as embodying not grand philosophical principles, but reasonable, pragmatic, political compromises worked out among individuals who disagree sharply on matters of morality in order to allow such people to live together in peace and to pursue their various, often incompatible, goals.

In other words, while living on planet earth, we need to live on planet earth, not in our minds or the eschaton. Or, this is a matter of prudence, not of intellectual or theological certitude. Miller explains:

The pragmatic liberal thus makes a political calculation: The cost of prohibiting some appalling speech is the risk that the government will someday use the power it thus acquires to suppress other speech that the pragmatic liberal wants to protect. People like Deneen and me, who are in a religious minority now at odds with many of the norms of the larger, increasingly secular society, should reflect carefully before advocating an expansion of government power, for we are some of the people whose speech could easily be found disgusting and worthless. For pragmatic liberals, therefore, the decision in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants is sound not because people have a moral right to play disgusting video games (they don’t), but because the danger of censorship is too great to allow the government the power to restrict speech merely because, in the government’s view, the speech is disgusting and worthless.

An Aristotelian-Thomistic eudaimonist can thus be a pragmatic liberal in contemporary America. There is a deeper point here, however, and it is that, although the philosophical liberal must reject as immoral any form of government other than liberal democracy, the Aristotelian-Thomist can be much more flexible. Leaving aside some extreme systems that would substantially prevent a person from attaining his final end (e.g., a Shari’a theocracy or a Nazi or communist dictatorship), an Aristotelian-Thomist should conclude that, in the right circumstances, almost any form of government may be the best available. Hence, St. Paul urged respect for the Roman emperor, who was an absolute autocrat;St. Wenceslaus was a feudal overlord; and St. Thomas More served Henry VIII, who was a constitutional monarch.

The same goes for the confessional Lutheran or Reformed Protestant. Feel the ecumenical love.

This Guy Needs His Own Blog – Part 1

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As astute as these two critiques of Reagan’s civil theology are, they fail to consider one widely neglected but critical question: whether Reagan, or any American leader for that matter, should ever have called the United States the ‘city on a hill’ in the first place. Americans need not choose from among an anti-religious secularism that is deaf and blind to theology, or a low-voltage populist civil religion, or even a more chastened Puritan or Edwardsian sense of national election that keeps a place for divine judgment. The Christians among them can instead reserve divine election and the ‘city on a hill’ for the Christian church alone. Christians in the United States can think of themselves from an Augustinian perspective as, first and foremost, citizens of the City of God, living in tension with the world, and sojourning as pilgrims for a time within the current manifestation of the City of Man called ‘America’. Keeping their eternal citizenship in mind, they can object when either Democrats or Republicans co-opt any part of the church’s identity for their own use, no matter how good their intentions. They can live much of day-to-day life in common with their neighbours, but in the matter of worship, as Augustine wrote in the City of God, they must dissent. Part of that dissent means guarding the church’s unique identity and calling. (Richard M. Gamble, In Search of the City on a Hill, 161)

If presidents shouldn’t use the Bible to speak about the identity of the United States, how much more should ministers — specialists in the Bible — avoid identifying a nation with the city on a hill? And this is why the all-of-life Christianity that w-wists promote inevitably leads to identifying the nation in which 24-7 Christians live with the City of God. If my everyday activities are simply an extension of my spiritual duties, then everyday life in the United States must be an extension of God’s kingdom.

Augustinians are a rare breed.