Undeception

No one disputes the observation that most conservative American Christians are both inerrantists and believers in constitutional “strict constructionism”, i.e. the idea that if a given power was not enumerated or otherwise granted by the framers of the U.S. Constitution, it’s out of bounds for the U.S. Federal government. The clever parallel between the errors of inerrantism and constitutionalism seems to have first surfaced in the biblioblogosphere a couple of years ago and made ripples throughout many of the sites that I usually enjoy for their theologically unconservative Christian views. I’ve seen the comparison rediscovered and reasserted several times since, and it’s grated on my nerves long enough to get me to write about it.

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The first thing to point out is that believing that we should follow the Constitution as much as possible is not predicated on the belief that the Constitution is even approximately inerrant. What would it even mean to say the Constitution is “inerrant”, anyway? Most of the people who maintain that the Bible is inerrant mean primarily that the Bible does not err in matters of science, history, theology, and any presentations of facts. Now, can any of these expectations about the Bible be made to apply to the U.S. Constitution? Have you ever seen anyone try?

Taken that way, the inerrancy/constitutionalism argument is a sloppy criticism indeed, but the critics’ actual objection is not really as unreasonable as that. What they instead mean to imply is that neither the Bible nor the Constitution are infallible in their respective areas, and that inerrantists and constitutionalists believe against all the evidence that they are. The only thing that keeps this from being a completely laughable straw man is that there are indeed some constitutionalists, who indeed generally also happen to be inerrantist Christians, who talk as though the Constitution could not be improved upon in any way. There are certainly no fewer ignorant constitutionalists than there are among most political viewpoints, but even these would hardly say that criticism of the Constitution is out of bounds because of some mystical infallibility: rather, they’d say that criticism of the Constitution is automatically wrong-headed because the document was based on a sound political philosophy that they would be able to articulate even if the Constitution had never been written.

See, sniggering insinuations that constitutionalists believe the Constitution or its authors were endowed with something akin to divine inspiration is closely analogous to the preposterous idea that agreeing wholeheartedly with Why Evolution Is True is tantamount to believing in Jerry Coyne’s divine inspiration, when all it really takes is a decent, informed understanding of evolution to see that anyone who disagreed with the book’s broader points would be running afoul the scientific consensus undergirding the book. Many constitutionalists support adherence to the Constitution because they happen to think the principles are sound. Mocking the Constitution doesn’t knock down the political philosophy behind the Constitution, any more than refuting inerrancy logically refutes faith in God, of which the Bible is a fallible ancient expression. That actually leads me to perhaps the widest gulf between inerrancy and constitutionalism.

The constitutionalist’s “faith” in the Constitution is no more unreasonable than expecting any other law should be upheld or changed rather than merely ignored. Good laws, such as those against murder or theft, are meant to be universally applied. We suffer no loopholes or reading between the lines on those. Then there are tax codes: liberals, the chief skeptics in regard to constitutionalism, are the most likely to insist that every single person eligible to be taxed be required to contribute their fair share, and campaign to modify or repeal laws that don’t tax certain brackets in the proportion they see fit. The whole idea behind laws is that they do not suffer exceptions lightly: every possible exception must be codified in the wording, and every loophole must be closed or it will be exploited and the intent of the law thereby thwarted. If you understand this, you understand constitutionalism.

In fact, it’s not constitutionalists who make the U.S. Constitution out to be some sort of mystical exception: that’s actually done by those who have found it expedient to pretend that it, unlike every other “legal and binding” writ in jurisprudence, is a “living document” that is actually meant to be manipulated, conveniently misconstrued, and generally ignored.

And before you remind everyone, I am aware that Congress had compromised on these ideals before the first president’s first term was complete. This is a testament to the inadequacy of the Constitution as framed, and to the predilection of those in power for finding shortcuts to more power; but here again, this weakness doesn’t mean that we can allow politicians to proceed in running roughshod over “the supreme law of the land.” It means we need to patch up the holes a lot better. Here’s the thing: the Constitution never considers itself immutable, and neither do those who support it. But as with other imperfect or bad laws, you don’t ignore the flaws or come up with phony alternative interpretations of its meanings, like apologists who make the objectionable parts of the Bible into a holy allegory: you either amend it or you repeal it. If you think the Constitution should authorize the federal government to ensure that healthcare be free, or that abortions be illegal in all fifty states – whatever it is – you don’t corrupt the meaning of definite, established phrases in the Constitution to lend an air of legitimacy; you augment the powers of the federal government through the amendment process. Just as with any other law, exceptionlessness is a protection against the partiality and whims of demagoguery, the runaway ambitions of the political class, and power brokers who try to buy the federal government’s favor. To simply ignore the supreme law of the land when convenient is by definition lawlessness — and try to find a liberal who believes that anarchy is a good thing! Not having the powers of the federal government constrained by anything other than politicians’ imaginations is a sure way to maintain an oligarchy, which is essentially what we have now.

Please don’t dismiss me as a blind constitutionalist or a political conservative. I am neither. I used to have a higher opinion of the Constitution than I do now. I was taught by political and religious conservatives that although it’s not perfect, it’s the best thing free people have come up with in quite a long time, and maybe ever. I now think that’s an overstatement,  and I can point out several flaws without even trying very hard. Maybe the Constitution is entirely inadequate and awful, that the form of government it was intended to establish and perpetuate is useless for today’s world. Maybe what we need is more centralization of power rather than the checks and balances on national powers to preserve local, subsidiarian governments as intended by the Constitutional Convention. Maybe so. We can talk about that. But please don’t pretend that demanding that the federal government take no more power for itself than was set aside for it by the law written to establish it is somehow completely looney and absolutely necessary for reasonable people to dismiss. And still more, be intellectually honest enough to admit that insisting on laws having definite meaning that should not be ignored by the whims of the current majority is in any way related to believing that the Bible contains no errors.

The simultaneous popularity of inerrancy and strict constructionism among conservative Americans is mostly coincidental, with the exception that conservatives think that both ideas are worth conserving. Then again, given that there are plenty of things that even liberals want to conserve, that exception does not make the comparison of constitutionalism and inerrantism useful for anything but a cheap shot.

The Southern Baptists have done it again.

Despite taking a surprisingly progressive stand in favor of “a just and compassionate path to legal status…for those undocumented immigrants already living in our country” at their convention in Arizona this week, Southern Baptists have also “unanimously or near-unanimously” passed other resolutions that affirm or re-affirm some of their trademark old-time-religion stances.

• They lodged a complaint to the Obama Administration to revive flagging support for the Defense of Marriage Act.
• Calling out Rob Bell’s book by name, they affirmed their belief in “the biblical teaching on eternal conscience punishment of the unregenerate in Hell.” Note, not just hell, but eternal conscious “punishment” (known less euphemistically as “torment”).
• The gender-neutral and therefore “inaccurate” NIV 2011 was rejected, and pastors were encouraged to teach their congregations about the dangers of translating “men” as “people”, “sons” as “sons and daughters,” etc. Because that’s what the world needs now, apparently.

Regardless of your stance on each of those issues, I’m wondering how much influence large Evangelical and/or Fundamentalist bodies like the Southern Baptist Convention have on Christian culture. I’ve no doubt that there are plenty who try to follow what they have to say, but it becomes increasingly apparent that these bodies primarily serve the function of attempting top-down reform — or, as with the immigration and DOMA issues, attempting to use some high-profile influence to catalyze that quintessentially top-down reform known as “public policy”.

Don’t roll your eyes about that last remark, political progressives. You do it, too. The question these days doesn’t seem to be whether we should use the government to legislate our religious values: it’s which religious values you’re going to try to legislate.

I’m not just pointing all this out as an excuse to bag on “those loony Southern Baptists.” I wanted to suggest that resolutions and legislation from authoritative bodies, both ecclesiastical and governmental, may be as fine and dandy as they are inevitable, but the best reform comes from the ground up. And it seems to me that the Southern Baptists are losing that battle.

I think it’s safe to say that this is one post that most of my liberal Christian friends won’t be sharing with their friends.

I firmly believe that Christians should be preoccupied with the plight of the marginalized and the remediation of social injustice. I, too, have evolved considerably from my conservative Christian background and rejected the “Jesus is a Right Winger” presupposition characterizing the stereotypical American evangelical. However, time and again I am reminded that I am something of an anomaly among post-evangelical/liberal Christians (whatever you want to call me).  My theological evolution did not result in some sort of flipped switch that automatically turned me into a Democrat-supporting left-winger. I do not assume that the ideal way of going about addressing social concerns is through the government or that those skeptical of the state’s ability or moral authority to do this are selfish cretins who hate the poor and destitute. In fact, I think that the use of force that the government depends upon is often responsible for creating and perpetuating their plight.

At present I have no plans here at Undeception to debate the various and sundry reasons, both moral and practical, that I oppose wielding government mandates, the threat of publically sanctioned violence, in order to alleviate social problems. I intend this post to be a one-off statement, the kind of thing I might link to during other discussions in the future, but not any sort of opening salvo. I already tried doing the theology/politics thing on this blog, and I don’t think I’m going back.

However, in this one post, I wish to state for the record my belief that when people seek to influence voluntary interactions using involuntary power structures, particularly the kinds of structures run by power-seekers who have every reason both to promise the moon and to ensure that it stays within only their benevolent grasp (i.e. politicians), a vast array of unintended consequences, moral hazard, and artifacts of force will result, making truly voluntary structures wholly preferable. There is no end to the number of politicians who will seek and be granted power after promising to throw unending money at problems or propose attractive sounding schemes to address them, but one of the many devastating unintended consequences is that such publically funded charity has endangered inherently more calculated private endeavors by cutting away at our disposable income through confiscation and, more insidiously, by giving our society (and, indeed, the Church) the impression that voluntary forms of charity have been superseded by a superior broker of charity; truly it is said that no one competes with the government.

Our exemplar of social concern, Jesus of Nazareth, made a point to avoid placing himself in or ingratiating himself to the extant power structures, even though he ostensibly could have done one or either quite easily; rather, the powers-that-were recognized him as a threat to the very foundations of their coercive methodology, not just their refusal to use it to bring free healthcare and stabilize private industries. Statist Christians on both the left and right wing preach against theocratic tendencies: leftists decry the right wing’s attempts to restrict behavior not deemed to be Christian (such as homosexuality), but as a seemingly unquestionable principle they advocate using the state to enforce social justice and other such demands of godly morality that they believe in.

As I said, I don’t want to use this site to debate the particulars of political philosophy. What I would like is for socially conscious Christians to examine their assumptions about which political reality will best bring about their ideals and not simply adopt the political philosophy of the vocal progressive Christians they learned their theology from. I think there is much common ground that we can claim when we stand up for the disenfranchised and beg our evangelical brethren to not simply assume that “people are only poor because they are lazy” or the like; I agree that conservatives tend to turn a blind eye to the dangers of big business (but the Left also needs to recognize that the chief of these evils is their weapon of choice: inviting the government in to grant them all sorts of privileges and immunities). And you know, it doesn’t bother me so much when someone just happens to be gullible enough to trust government to do the most good because it has the most power (red flag!). But because they continuously broadcast their assumption that a socially conscious Christian will therefore vote a confiscatory, redistributivist political agenda, I feel compelled to ask, “Are you sure that the state really serves the interests of social concern in the way you think it does?” I invite you to read the news from a classical liberal/libertarian perspective from resources such as Reason Magazine or the Cato Institute. Suffice it to say that there is plenty of evidence that the more power we give to the state, the more we will all end up suffering.

(By the way, if you’re one of those people who believes that classical liberals/libertarians are un-Christian – or that Glenn Beck is a spokesperson for us – I invite you to read these rejoinders from a site I enjoy: 1, 2, 3.)