Posts Tagged → United States

How to Think About American Politics (by a British Observer)

Editor’s Note:  I am thrilled to introduce Alastair Roberts to readers of Mere-O.  Since I have started reading him a few months back, he has proved himself to be one of the most thoughtful and charitable interlocutors online.  I highly commend the below to you as an astute analysis of our American political environment. You should follow his blog here and follow him on Twitter. –MLA

In a post in response to the US election results, Steve Holmes shares some reflections upon the ‘mutual incomprehension’ among Christians that can be witnessed in many of the reactions and interactions that have followed the news of Obama’s re-election. He remarks on the overwhelmingly positive response to the news among non-American observers and the stark contrast between this and the vituperations, jeremiads, and philippics that have been elicited from some American Christians online.

'DSC_8923' photo (c) 2012, ljlphotography - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/Holmes invites us to take the incomprehension that exists between various Christians’ political positions in this context as ‘a gift that challenges us to discover the extent to which our opinions are shaped by the gospel, rather than by the culture we inhabit – and that challenges us to understand the breadth of opinions that might be consonant with the gospel.’ Rather than reacting to each other in anger or incredulity, we are invited to the sort of imaginative engagement with a different political perspective that might yield a more irenic spirit and a deeper self-awareness.

Within this piece, I – a moderately left-leaning Englishman – will attempt to work to some degree of understanding of the political imaginations of many American Christians, especially those on the right of the American political spectrum (admittedly, to many of us foreign observers, all leading American politicians can appear to be situated somewhere on the right of our political spectrum). As I am about as far from an authority as you can get on this subject, I would welcome any critical and constructive responses that would further the ends of mutual understanding.

The Unique Character of the American Political Situation

With the connectivity created by the Internet, the geographical and cultural difference between the UK and the US can easily be forgotten, lulling the observer into a false sense of familiarity with a social and political landscape that may be beyond his or her ken. Deceptive commonalities of language and overlapping discourses can also lead to the elision of distinct cultural phenomena. For instance, while the concept of ‘secularism’ plays a prominent role in theological discourse on both sides of the Atlantic, we should be cognizant of the significantly different forms that it takes.

In a similar manner, such expressions as the ‘separation of Church and State’ can have the effect of flattening out the many complex ways in which religious discourse can shape, be present within, and inform the deliberations and conversations of the public square. While England has an established church, the English visitor to America can be taken aback by such things as the greater visibility and assertiveness of Christianity in public discourse, the prevalence and power of American civil religion, and the deep politicization of American Christians. Continue reading →

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Every Foreign Land their Fatherland, Yet Every Fatherland a Foreign Land

U.S Postage Stamp, 1957

U.S Postage Stamp, 1957 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Another Fourth of July has come and gone, and many American Christians have thanked God for placing them within the borders of the United States. The love of nation and the love of God have had a history of becoming intertwined; it has always been a challenge of the faithful to finely differentiate allegiances to church and nation, while simultaneously finding points of alignment where the good for both can be pursued.

The declaration and pursuit of a common good can prove difficult in our present political environment, particularly for political and theological conservatives. President Barack Obama did much to advocate for and establish a liberal voice informed by the commitments of faith in his 2006 “Call to Renewal” address, but in recent years conservatives have been much more comfortable bringing their religious convictions to the public square and citing faith based arguments as foundational for policy initiatives and political agendas. The result: when Christian commitments are invoked, those on the left cry foul, claiming that conservatives are seeking to establish a theocracy. A similar outcome results when theological conservatives issue a call to pray for the nation.

When those on the left accuse theological conservatives of attempting to establish a theocracy, I wonder if they have ever read any conservative theology. Or, for that matter, whether they have noticed that it is often those on the conservative end, like the Baptists, who haven’t forgotten their heritage as a persecuted minority and who cherish the Danbury Letter written by Jefferson, that strongly argue for the protection of religious freedom and minority viewpoints within our democracy.

What liberals find distasteful, I believe, is not necessarily the politics of conservatives, but the right conservatives have to express their opinions and viewpoints within the context of a vibrant public discourse, and to persuade others to think, act, believe, vote, and organize as they do. Conservatives are often type-cast as mindless fools, winning over the majority through scare tactics and a futile longing for the past, while liberals cast themselves as intellectual superiors who have access to some type of spiritual or cultural knowledge unfathomable to the rest of us.1 Conservative aren’t just wrong, they are unenlightened regressives.

But the problem is this: conservatives are not wrong on all that they believe, nor are they unintelligent or moronic, backwards and ignorant. So too liberals are not wrong concerning all that they believe, nor are they godless, demonic secularists who wish to destroy this country and abolish religion.

The task, then, for Christians who are both liberal and conservative is to establish a space within the public square where the merits and weaknesses of our varying positions can be measured and engaged with dignity and respect. Love of nation is not necessarily a bad thing, so long as we maintain a unique identity under the cross; ancient Christians may give us some wisdom in this regard.2   As the Letter to Diognetus puts it, “Every foreign land is their fatherland, and yet for them every fatherland is a foreign land.”  The love and service of God is our higher calling. And it is the unique politics that is “church”, with our overarching commitment to “Jesus is Lord”, that should guide and direct our theological and political discussions so that they are conducted in a spirit of love and grace.

Along the way, it is the task of both liberals and conservatives to persuade as many people as possible to join them in light of what they believe to be true, and to argue for those positions with passion and clarity, while avoiding the temptation to demonize and marginalize their opponents. When individuals are persuaded and join a cause, that is an outcome of democracy, not theocracy. It is the workings of a strong public discourse that allows for divergent viewpoints to be voiced, and for the people to discern, to think, and to become convinced that a particular vision for the good is the best vision for the nation, and to vote accordingly.

The church has a role to play in a strong public discourse, one of service, not rule.3 And neither liberals nor conservatives should forget it.

  1. 1. Diana Butler Bass skewers political and theological conservatives in her latest book, Christianity After Religion. [↩]
  2. 2. The Letter to Diognetus, 5:1-10, reads: “For Christians cannot be distinguished from the rest of the human race by country or language or customs. They do not live in cities of their own; they do not use a peculiar form of speech; they do not follow an eccentric manner of life. This doctrine of theirs has not been discovered by the ingenuity or deep thought of inquisitive men, nor do they put forward a merely human teaching, as some people do. Yet, although they live in Greek and barbarian cities alike, as each man’s lot has been cast, and follow the customs of the country in clothing and food and other matters of daily living, at the same time they give proof of the remarkable and admittedly extraordinary constitution of their own commonwealth. They live in their own countries, but only as aliens. They have a share in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign land is their fatherland, and yet for them every fatherland is a foreign land. They marry, like everyone else, and they beget children, but they do not cast out their offspring. They share their board with each other, but not their marriage bed. It is true that they are “in the flesh,” but they do not live “according to the flesh.” They busy themselves on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They obey the established laws, but in their own lives they go far beyond what the laws require.”  See also this piece at Mere-O. [↩]
  3. 3. Mark 10:41-45. [↩]

The Dangers of Prudence and the Supreme Court’s Health Care Ruling

The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday on health care reform launched a tidal wave of commentary and opinion that captivated, if only momentarily, discourse among even casual observers of American politics.  The ruling was expected to be momentous, but the surprise twist of Chief Justice Roberts acting as the deciding vote busted up everyone’s expectations and sent the conversation spinning.

I’m still sorting out my own thoughts on the opinion, wavering between the “political genius” interpretation that puts Roberts (potentially) in the league of John Marshall and the “he simply got it wrong” camp.

It’s fascinating, though, how Roberts was caught between two principles of modesty that proved ultimately irreconcilable.  For one, Roberts (it seems) decided to protect the Court’s legitimacy by working, as much as possible, to defer the work of governance to the other branches.  But Roberts’ narrow understanding of the commerce clauses’ powers was also rooted in an interpretative modesty, an unwillingness to expand the reach of the government’s ability to coerce beyond that which had been previously established.

Ultimately, the two couldn’t stand together:  in order to maintain the court’s legitimacy, Roberts sacrificed his interpretative modesty and–as Alito and the rest argue in their dissent–innovatively argued that the law’s penalties for not purchasing health insurance constitute a tax.

'Supreme Court' photo (c) 2009, Mark Fischer - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/That’s a neat solution, a way of cutting through the gordian knot.  But prudential decisions of this sort are invariably accompanied by significant collateral damage.  To pick a non-legal example, when Bush first bailed out the banks, he invariably sacrificed conservative principles for the sake of our financial institution’s ongoing existence.  It’s easy in retrospect to criticize him for it, though we sometimes forget just how precarious things were (and, I suspect, few of us actually really knew just how dire the situation actually was).  Subsequent bailouts hardened our opinion against him, and understandably so.  It’s one thing to give an alcoholic on the battlefield a shot of whiskey before surgery.  It’s quite another to keep it flowing once the fellow’s on the mend.   That simply to say, though, momentary prudential concessions have their way of eventually being formalized into new doctrines.

That’s especially true, of course, within an institution that operates self-consciously on the grounds of precedent.  The question for the court going forward will be whether the expansion of the government’s powers of taxation is worth the cost of maintaining its legitimacy as a non-partisan institution.  Holding on to legitimacy this way, by offering a strained reading of the law, is potentially the sort of Faustian bargain that may go no better than it did for Bush.

Along those lines, though, my friend Josh Hawley suggests that turning the law into a tax includes conditions that prevent it from similar arguments being made in the future:

This is why: Roberts does not say that the government may now regulate anything it likes by calling the regulation a tax. He says this mandate can be read as a tax in these circumstances — that is, in light of the fact that it would be unconstitutional on any other ground and the court is supposed to avoid finding statutes unconstitutional if it can — and on these grounds: because it is administered by the IRS through the tax code and operates in many respects like a normal tax. Only if future regulatory schemes can meet all these criteria would they be valid under the taxing power. Yet Roberts does not give a single example of any such scheme — and we know for a fact, because they have told us repeatedly, that members of Congress would never have voted for this regulation if they had believed it was a tax.

That’s an interesting point and as a matter of political prognostication that may be true.  Josh is smarter than I and I’m inclined to defer.  However, it’s not implausible that future controversial bills will follow the course that this one has gone through–being advanced in the court of public opinion as “mandates” or what have you, and the defense that they are taxes (and hence constitutional) only coming when they arrive in court.

Idiosyncratic musings aside, I yield to a friend who passed along the following reflections on various aspects of the decision.

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The Medicaid decision is a real win for federalism, and this should not be lost amidst the focus on the mandate.  States cannot be treated as local administrative divisions of the federal government, period.  They are independent sovereigns, and they have the right to refuse participation in a cooperative-funding program they don’t like.  And Congress can’t radically change the bargain on the program mid-way through.  The Court has never set a limit on the spending power before vis-a-vis the states (it’s last chance to do so was S. Dakota v. Dole, which tied federal highway funds to a 21-yr-old drinking age).  This is a big win for states, especially because so many programs are cooperative-funding (transportation and primary/secondary education are the two biggies besides Medicaid).

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Roberts misses the importance of labels for democratic accountability.  The “Roberts is a genius” line of commentary is that he’s just hung a massive tax hike around Obama’s neck four months before the election.  True enough.  He emphasizes throughout his opinion that voters, not the courts, should hold their elected representatives accountable for policy — if the voters don’t want Obamacare, then throw out the bums who imposed it.  And he says in the Medicaid section that “permitting the fed govt to force the states to implement a federal program would threaten the political accountability key to our federal system.” (pg. 48).

Yet he misses the significant loss of political accountability in the taxing-clause discussion.  He says that we should ignore Congress’s label (“penalty”) and look past the “most straightforward meaning” (because of deference) and instead ask about the “function.”  Yet Congress’s label and the straightforward meaning are key to political accountabilityduring the legislative process.  If Congress was forced to label it a tax when the bill was introduced, then the bill may never have been passed.  We need honesty and accountability on the front end, as legislation is working its way through the system, rather than only on the back end when at best we can throw the bums out after the law is enacted.

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We should not overestimate the size of the win on the Commerce Clause.  I am more wary about the Roberts’ opinion the fellow over at Slate.  Roberts’ opinion refers to the Commerce Clause power as “broad” and “expansive.”  He reaffirms the continuing vitality of Wickard, which is the bugaboo of every legal conservative.  Because so few laws regulate “inactivity” by mandating the creation of “activity,” I highly doubt this will represent an enduring challenge to the modern regulatory state.  This is a win, for sure, but only because it drew a line at the way-far-out boundary and because none of the academics thought this argument serious even six months ago.