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Melinda Henneberger accuses Christian conservatives of “overturning the Gospels” by focusing on sexual morality rather than economic justice:

We as a nation—a proudly, increasingly loudly Christian nation—have somehow convinced ourselves that the selfish choice is usually the moral one, too. (What a deal!) You know how this works: It’s wrong to help poor people because “handouts” reward dependency and thus hurt more than they help. So, do the right thing—that is, walk right on by—and by all means hang on to your hard-earned cash.

Thus do we deny the working poor a living wage, resent welfare recipients expected to live on a few hundred dollars a month, object to the whopping .16 percent of our GNP that goes to foreign aid—and still manage to feel virtuous about all of the above.

Which is how “Christian” morality got to be all about other people’s sex lives—and incredibly easy lifting compared to what Jesus actually asks of us. Defending traditional marriage? A breeze. Living in one? Less so. Telling gay people what they can’t do? Piece o’ cake. But responding to the wretched? Loving the unlovable? Forgiving the ever-so-occasionally annoying people you actually know? Hard work, as our president would say, and rather more of a stretch.

While I’m sympathetic to a lot of what she says here, it’s too simplistic to say that Christians shouldn’t be worried about sexual ethics. Ms. Henneberger seems to buy into the idea that sexual behavior is essentially “private” and nobody else’s business. But why couldn’t conservatives say the same thing about economic behavior – as the libertarian philospher Robert Nozick put it, what is morally objectionable about “capitalist acts between consenting adults”?

The thing is, Jesus, Paul, and the Christian tradition generally don’t really go out of their way to separate “private” sexual morality from “public” matters of economics. Jesus comes down pretty hard on divorce, and Paul’s admonitions regarding sex are well-known. In Acts the church is notably economically egalitarian, but the Apostles also require Gentile converts to refrain from “sexual impurity” as one of the parts of the law that still apples to them.

Of course, this raises the question of who is being addressed by Christian ethics – the church or society at large? Is there a “minimal” morality that applies to everyone, while Christian morality only applies to Christians? But if that’s so, how can we apply Christian teachings on economics to society as a whole but not its sexual ethics (as liberals sometimes seem to want) or vice versa (as conservatives would like)?

W. James Antle III has an article in the American Conservative on the attempts, from adherents of a “consistent life” ethic to Joseph Bottum’s “new fusionism,” to extend pro-life principles to other issues. He cautions against drawing facile policy implications from a general principle of “reverence for life”:

Opposition to the shedding of innocent blood is a moral question, but attempts to order society and international relations justly often turn on prudential questions. One can agree that if human life is too sacred to be snuffed out by the abortionist that there is also an obligation to care for the children who thus enter the world. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that the welfare state, especially as constituted before the mid-1990s welfare reform in this country, is the best means to this end.

Similarly, the dignity of human life that is violated by abortion and euthanasia is also affronted by tyranny and oppression. But it does not follow that the proper corrective is U.S. war on a massive scale to effect regime change in oppressive countries.

In recent years, pro-lifers have awakened to the fact that opposing abortion requires more than lobbying for legal restrictions. It also requires compassionate treatment of women and children and efforts to make the horrible option of abortion seem unnecessary. This is a weighing of means and ends.

But as pro-lifers have tried to broaden their focus to issues far removed from abortion, they have often sidestepped questions about means in pursuit of noble ends. Food, health care, and employment for all are each worthwhile goals. But serious thought is required about the means, especially given decades of evidence regarding the failures of welfare statism and socialism.

I think he makes a fair point. Which policies are actually conducive to the protection and flourishing of human life is a matter of empirical investigation and can’t, by and large, be deduced from moral principles alone. However, that doesn’t mean that issue like abortion, war, capital punishment, and euthanasia are unconnected. For instance, in his essay “Toward a consistent natural-law ethic of killing,” Catholic philosopher Germain Grisez argues for a ethic of killing that unites opposition to capital punishment, most abortions, and strict limits on warfare. The logical connection is that these are all forms of killing and are naturally governed by the same set of moral principles.

Grisez argues that it is never permissible to intend the death of another human being. Killing can be justified only as a forseeable side-effect of another morally licit action aimed at preserving one’s life or the life of another innocent person (or persons). In the case of self-defense, for instance, the morally licit act is the use of necessary and sufficient force to repulse an attack on one’s person; the death of the attacker is not what is intended, only putting a stop to their aggression (Grisez is here following Thomas Aquinas’ account of justifiable self-defense). This line of reasoning, he thinks, rules out capital punishment altogether since the community almost always has alternatives for self-protection that don’t involve killing the offender (e.g. imprisonment, banishment).

He extends the same logic to warfare. Force is justified only as a form of communal self-defense*, and only the amount necessary to stop the aggression of the enemy force. Gratuitous slaughter of enemy soldiers is never justified, and the intentional targeting of civilians is, of course, prohibited. He argues, compellingly, that the U.S. policy of nuclear deterrence is morally unjustifiable insofar as it involves the targeting of civilian populations.

The point of Grisez’s article is simply that the same principles should govern the taking of human life in all cases. The state has no more authority to take human life than individuals would under the same circumstances. Thus no appeal to “realism” can justify loosening restraints on killing even during warfare.

So, devotees of a “consistent life” ethic are not necessarily wrong to see a tight connection between abortion, war, capital punishment, and euthanasia. However, I agree with Antle that things like anti-poverty policy, trade policy, or what have you require a great deal more empirical evidence to determine what will work best. It may be a mistake to make a certain position on those issues part of a whole “pro-life” package.**
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*Grisez doesn’t discuss the case of a nation coming to the aid of a third party, either another nation threatened by aggression or people being threatened by their own government. It’s hard to see how his argument could categorically rule these out as possible instances of justified military action, though.
**Though it is interesting to note that some of the more independent pro-life groups like the NRLC looked askance on welfare reform in the 90s on the grounds that cutting aid to single mothers and “family caps” would result in more abortions, while the more traditionally Republican-alingned groups like the Christian Coaltion supported it.

Call me a free speech absolutist, but this seems like a bad idea to me. I’ve long been troubled by the tendency to make religion into one more marker for the purposes of identity politics. In this country, it tends to, ironically, be religious conservatives who increasingly cry “religious discrimination” when criticized. This is not to say that there’s no such thing as religious discrimination, but positions motivated by or rooted in religion are still fair game for criticism.

Moreover, religion itself has to be fair game for criticism, and even mockery and derision. Religion is not like race or ethnicity for at least two reasons. First, you can change your religion. But secondly, and more importantly, religions make truth and value claims, and in a free society those claims have to be open to public inspection and criticism.

The idea that religion is like race or ethnicity and therefore should be off limits from criticism actually buys into a kind of relativism, because it treats religion as nothing more than a part of one’s identity, rather than something that actually makes a public claim on others. For Christians in particular, the proclamation of the Gospel is a public event, calling its hearers to faith. Anything making those kinds of claims can’t be ruled immune from criticism by legislative fiat.

That wacky atheist Michael Newdow is at it again, this time getting a federal judge to declare the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional again, possibly setting the stage for another go round at the Supreme Court. (The court, you’ll recall, dodged a bullet last time around by ruling that Newdow didn’t have standing to bring the suit since he doesn’t have custody of his daughter. This time, though, he’s brought the suit on behalf of other parents (Newdow is a lawyer and an M.D.).)

I predict much voluble outrage from bloggers, cable news pundits, radio talk-show hosts, etc. etc. at this godless attack on our great country. Despite this, the Supreme Court has pretty consistently ruled that the reference to God is nothing more than “ceremonial deism” intended to recall our history and/or shore up respect for the state.

It’s funny that those same conservatives who so strenuously object to removing “God” from the Pledge hardly ever point out that the Pledge itself was written by socialist Baptist minister Francis Bellamy, in part to express the ideas of his brother Edward, author of the (in)famous socialist utopian novel Looking Backward, whose bright, shining future is an authoritarian collectivist nightmare that ought to make any true conservative’s skin crawl.

Philosopher C. Stephen Evans reviews a biography of Wodehouse for Books & Culture (via Thunderstruck), offering some reflections on why Wodehouse is so beloved and seems to be more than a “mere” humorist:

According to Kierkegaard, the fundamental contradiction that is human existence can be experienced as either tragic or humorous, depending on our perspective. To smile at life (or anything), we must be able to occupy a “higher perspective,” which makes the “contradiction” painless. This is surely why so many situations that are painful at the time can be funny in retrospect; the person remembering the incident is beyond or above the contradiction, and this distance is a necessary condition for humor. Thus, to view life itself as humorous, to vary the metaphor, we must have a way of escape, “know the way out.”

But which do we do? The Christian, for example, knows the tragedy of the fall, but also knows the good news of God’s grace and forgiveness. According to Kierkegaard, the character he calls the “humorist” lies on the boundary of the religious life because the humorist has somehow acquired a “knowledge” of these religious insights. The humorist fails to be genuinely religious because this knowledge is a kind of merely intellectual appropriation of those insights; the humorist does not really take these religious convictions into the core of his or her own existence. If we shift focus from religion in general to Christianity in particular, perhaps humorists can be viewed as people who help themselves to the solution Christianity offers to the problem of human life without fully plumbing the depth of the problem itself.

I think that Kierkegaard’s description of the humorist fits the case of Wodehouse precisely. We love the world of Wodehouse because it is paradise, a world without sin. Of course Wodehouse has villains and intimidating aunts, but they are amusing rather than genuinely evil. We love the world of Wodehouse because it is the world we were born to live in, and it is a world in which we would love to dwell. Yet, as [Evelyn] Waugh himself clearly said, Wodehouse’s world is a world to escape to, not a world we aspire to find or create. It is not paradise regained but paradise never lost. Sin has here not been defeated; it has never really appeared.

(Via A Conservative Blog for Peace.)

Post to the host for May 2001:

Mr. Keillor,I’ve been wondering if you picture the Lake Wobegon Lutherans as ELCA Lutherans. If so what do you think of the new communion between the Lutheran and Episcopal churches, and thus what would the good reserved Scandinavian folks there in Minnesota think of their more liberal Anglican brethren?

Aidan

Dear Aidan, The ELCA Lutherans of Lake Wobegon were dead set against the new communion, although some of them (I name no names) have, while visiting their fallen-away children in distant cities, attended Episcopal churches (with the children) and partaken of communion. But they don’t want there to be an official link that might, over the years, grow tighter and, before you know it, you’ll find Pastor Ingqvist processing in a dress and a rhinestone-encrusted cape preceded by two guys twirling incense pots on chains like they were yo-yos and go through a lot of bowing and turning and genuflecting. And suddenly the Bible-based sermon of 25 minutes turns into a 6-minute homily about the beauty of flowers. And the Sunday School takes up the infrastructure needs of the inner cities. And soon you realize that your young people are a little shaky on their Bible stories and parables and can’t find Jeremiah or Deuteronomy or even Ephesians without looking up the page number in the index. No, the Lutherans of Lake Wobegon don’t care to go in that direction. Anglicanism is for when you take a vacation to England. It’s like nightclubbing that way. It’s for special occasions. You don’t want to make a practice of it.

This one’s from Anglican theologian Oliver O’donovan, from an interview he did with the Calvin Collge Chimes a few years ago:

I think [Stanley Hauerwas’] criticisms of the Christendom idea are partly wrong, first because he dismisses the church as always being a minority. I don’t know on what theological authority one could make that assertion. The church has very often been a minority. But whether the church is a majority or a minority at any time or place, the church is not given yet to be wholly visible to itself. There is a real temptation in wanting to be a visible minority, a gathered church in which you can say, “We are few, but we know exactly who we are, and we know who is on our side. The line is drawn clearly and unambiguously between us and the world.” That kind of visibility and definition is not granted to the church in our age. We know where the church is because we know where the sacraments are and where the word is preached. We see people gathering to the sacraments, we see the church taking form. I’m with Augustine and again a gathered church Protestantism. The edges are always indistinct. Is this person moving into the church, giving light to those who dwell within the house, or is he just standing on the edge and about to turn his back? We don’t know. … Even if it’s true that the church is going to be a minority, the church is going to be embattled and contested to a certain extent, but it can be so as a majority sometimes. Evil has its ways of challenging the church when it’s in an apparently confident position just as much. Even if the church is a minority, it can’t be a self-conscious minority which says to itself, “We’re perfectly safe because we’re a minority.” That I have to say I find troubling in the kind of catacomb consciousness I find in Stan and John Howard Yoder. I don’t think it was at all typical of the Christians that actually inhabited the catacombs. They didn’t huddle down there and say, “How nice. We at least know who we are while we’re down here.”

An oldie but a goodie from the Bruderhof site:

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil. It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Brandon has a good post on the now-common argument that the disaster in New Orleans has somehow discredited libertarianism. I’ve actually read people who say that this shows the bankruptcy of the concept of “limited government.” Should we assume such people are for unlimited government?

The problem with the handling of this situation, in my view, has a lot more to do with venality and incompetence than with excessive devotion to the principles of Locke and Jefferson.

Andrew Bacevich* reviews Robert Kaplan’s Imperial Grunts, which Bacevich says is a paean to American soliders who, in Kaplan’s view, are the elite vanguard of a new American empire which is the only hope for pulling the rest of the world out of chaos:

Reactionary populists idealize the past because they loathe the present. Kaplan proves no exception. Fawning over soldiers as a virtuous remnant of a lost, better age, he misses no opportunity to express his contempt for his contemporaries who do not share in the austere existence of the classic man-at-arms. The targets of his wrath include, but are by no means limited to, narcissistic intellectuals, risk-averse politicians, micromanaging generals, bean-counting bureaucrats, wimpy journalists who have never visited Djibouti or Mongolia, the entire “policy nomenklatura in Washington and New York–in its cocoon of fine restaurants and theoretical discussions,” and all manner of effete civilians, especially those residing in New England, which Kaplan, who makes his home in Massachusetts, describes as awash with pacifists.

Why are such people worth defending? How is it that a warped and decadent society manages to produce such sturdy warriors? Hovering in the background of his snapshot, these questions do not interest Kaplan. He prefers to focus on the American soldier in the field, where the order of the day has less to do with defending the country per se than with managing a global empire.

On that empire Kaplan is bullish. He views the global war on terror as an opportunity to push out its boundaries–if the policy-making twits in Washington will simply give dirty-boots soldiers the latitude to do so. “To be an American in the first decade of the twenty-first century,” he writes, “was to be present at a grand and fleeting moment.”

The events of September 11, 2001, inaugurated what Kaplan calls America’s “Second Expeditionary Era”–the first had begun with the expansionist surge of 1898–in which US forces once again sally forth to take up “the white man’s burden,” a phrase that he employs without irony or apology.

Kaplan laces his narrative with ostentatious references to emperors and adventurers, proconsuls and viceroys, ranging from T.E. Lawrence to “Ligustinus, the Roman centurion.” The cumulative effect is to suggest that the United States today is simply doing what empires throughout history have done: shouldering “the righteous responsibility to advance the boundaries of free society and good government into zones of sheer chaos.” To imply that other, less exalted considerations just might enter into the equation–power? profit?–becomes unseemly. For Kaplan, the essence of empire is helping those unable to help themselves, creating order out of anarchy and uplifting the downtrodden.

In this sense, as Kaplan sees it, 9/11 returned the US military to its nineteenth-century roots when advancing the boundaries of free society meant removing any obstacles impeding the westward march of the young Republic. Today’s war on terror is “really about taming the frontier,” with the frontier now literally without limits. According to Kaplan, the vast swath of Islam, stretching from Africa across the Middle East to Southeast Asia, now qualifies as “Injun Country.” The “entire planet” has now become “battle space for the American military.”

Read the rest here.
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*Yes, I realize I never finished my review of his book. Long story short: Bacevich thinks that we’ve reached a point where the entire political class as well as large swaths of the American public have come to believe in American military power as a nigh-omnipotent force for “spreading our values.” This, combined with an addiction to cheap oil, has embroiled us in the messy and dysfunctional politics of the Middle East with little appreciation of the dangers, Iraq being a case in point. The solution, in his view, is a strategic pullback, allowing other countries to pick up the slack of their own defense, a return to the policy of using force only as a last resort, and a genuine commitment to energy independence. I think he’s substantially right about all of this.