Flourishing

The Summer 2008 issue of Leadership features an article by Following Christ 2008 track chair Amy Black. “The Church and Politics Quiz” allows you to answer a series of questions which will let you know whether you’re a thumpin’ theocrat, a private patriot, a quiet critic, or a radical reformer (or somewhere in between!). Take the quiz.

Amy is associate professor of Politics & International Relations at Wheaton College. She earned her Ph.D. in Political Science at M.I.T. A specialist in American Government, her current areas of research include religion and politics, mass media, and Congress. Dr. Black served as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, working in the office of Rep. Melissa A. Hart (PA-04).

Her books include Beyond Left and Right: Helping Christians Make Sense of American Politics (Baker Books, 2008), From Inspiration to Legislation: How an Idea Becomes a Law (Prentice Hall, 2007), and Of Little Faith: The Politics of George W. Bush’s Faith Based Initiatives (Georgetown, 2004). She and her husband, Dan Treier, live in Wheaton with their daughter, Anna.

We’ve delved a little into politics here at Flourishing. I wrote about James Dobson’s sort of unfair words about Barack Obama and his view of the Bible. We talked a little bit about the Jesus for President tour. In the future we might talk about some more political topics as well, who knows?

I did want to embed David Letterman’s Top Ten List from last night. Why? Well, because it marks an interesting development political comedy for election 08.

Here it is:

Until now, comedians have struggled to find a good comedic angle for Barack Obama. McCain has been made fun of for his age and for his temper (in past primary seasons).

Comedians generally look for an angle to work when parodying politicians. As noted above, McCain is the angry old man. George W Bush is the imbecile. Bill Clinton was the philanderer and the cheese-burger eating jogger.

Gerald Ford was clumsy. Bush senior was the president who lost his lunch at a state dinner. You get the picture.

I think perhaps there are two reasons that Barack Obama hasn’t really been made fun of … yet. First, he doesn’t have much of a record (as a first term senator) and, two, he’s a pretty serious guy. As the campaign rolls on (three more months folks), there will be more ammunition for comedians. For now, like Letterman, comedians will have to take their cue from the meta-narrative provided by the mainstream media, namely that Obama is so far ahead that the election is all but decided.

C S Lewis has an interesting article by the title, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment” in his volume God in the Dock (1979). The central argument of the piece is:

“…[W]hen we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we have an object, a patient, a case.” (p. 497)

He goes on to argue that by removing the connection between crime and desert (consequence) we make the sentencing of criminals something other than a moral question. Sentencing becomes an experiment for technical experts (who decide on its effectiveness as a cure and/or a deterrent). The maxim Cuiquam in sua arte credendum, rules the day (”we must believe the expert in his own field”). There no longer is room for the public conscience to make value judgments. The public, Lewis points out, is not viewed as having sufficient technical knowledge to make such judgments. What is more, such judgments as are made by these experts rarely (if ever) employ the categories of moral theology.

This is interesting to ponder in the case of someone like Radovan Karadzic. Finally, after some twelve fugitive years, Karadzic awaits trial by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Karadzic’s indictment concludes that there is reasonable evidence to conclude that he committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Bosnian War (1992-1995) when he was the political leader of Republika Srpska.

What to do with Karadzic?

Allow me to state this as affirmatively and succinctly as possible. When the ITCY tries and (presumably) finds Karadzic guilty of one or more of the counts specified in the prosecution’s case, the sentence should be retributive. That is to say, its first goal should be to make this man pay for the grave moral evil over which he presided.

Certainly, we may hope that over the years of his imprisonment (there is no death sentence in the ITCY) he may come to some degree of genuine repentance (in both the non-theological and theological senses of the word) and an alteration of character. We may also hope that somehow his punishment may serve as a warning to other wicked men.

But, in the end, we must hope that he will be made to pay for his wrongdoing. He may, one day, find mercy. But as Lewis rightly points out, mercy only has any real meaning when found in the context of (retributive) justice.

What would a just sentence look like? This is a difficult question. I do, however, have a difficult time finding anything particularly just about allowing such a man to idle away his remaining years (he is 63) in the (relative) comfort of prison. Of course, I also find a spectacle such as the hanging of Saddam Hussein to wholly without justification. Hussein was a wicked man, but even wicked men ought not be mocked in the hour of their death.

I’m open to suggestions, but I wonder if there isn’t something redemptive about hard labor. It is, after all, in the midst of hard labor that Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov finds the beginnings of renewal and regeneration:

“…[T]he beginning of a new story - the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life…”

CNN reports on Shane Claiborne’s Jesus for President tour. The tour touts a new book by Claiborne and Chris Haw of the same title.

The story outlines the shifting nature of younger evangelicals’ political identity. In light of my earlier post, its an encouraging trend. Younger evangelicals, it seems, are injecting our faith into the way we vote and voting by principle and not simply by party affiliation. Hopeful sign.

There’s an interesting conversation happening at Jesus Creed on this very topic.

Last week I posted a short piece on the quarrel between Barack Obama and James Dobson. Dobson took offense to some comments that Obama made about Christians needing to appeal to things other than the Bible and our tradition when making moral arguments in the public square.

After the story made cnn.com, there was a flurry of comment from the Christian left, most notably Sojourners founder Jim Wallis. I’ve been familiar with Wallis for about three years now ever since I read his book God’s Politics. I didn’t really enjoy the book. In fact, to this day I’m not entirely convinced that it doesn’t attempt to persuade the world that God is a democrat on almost every issue. I say that tongue in check, mostly. I applaud Wallis for challenging Christians (especially evangelicals) to really examine issues and to do so from a thoroughly Christian perspective not simply a political philosophy baptized with God-talk. I don’t always agree with Wallis, but I respect him.

The ping pong match between red and blue Christians got me asking: where are the purple Christians? Francis Schaeffer once wrote that Christians may be co-belligerents with both parties over different issues, but never ultimately loyal to anyone other than Christ.

Are we anywhere close to that ideal? I don’t know for sure, but it doesn’t seem like it. It seems to me that Christians on the left and on the right are equally guilty of being uncharitable and attributing to the other the worst possible of motives for every legislative or policy decision. We’re polarized more than we care to admit, check out this dialogue as an example.

It seems to me that there needs to be a new day of dialogue and cooperation between Christians of various political persuasions. Perhaps Following Christ can be a place where some of those conversations begin. After all, we’ll be in Chicago together less than two months after a presidential election and day before the inauguration of a new president.

Jim Wallis likes to say that the monologue of the religious right is over. I hope so. In fact, I hope that all monologues within the Christian community are over and that we can move into tomorrow with frank, honest, and charitable conversation.

I opened my browser yesterday morning and pulled up cnn.com. It’s sort of part of my morning routine. Get a cup of coffee. Open the MacBook. Scan my RSS feeds. Check the news. You get the picture.

Yesterday’s headline was the very public quarrel between conservative Christian leader James Dobson of Focus on the Family and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

The issue? Biblical interpretation. Specifically, Dobson took Obama to task for a 2006 speech delivered at Call to Renewal, a gathering of progressive/liberal Christians. Read the text of the speech here.

The original CNN piece is here.

I’m going to go out on a limb (not really) and say that if you’re the sort of person who’s interested in Following Christ 2008, you’re probably also interested in being a redeeming influence in culture. Right? You’re probably also someone who spends most of your life in a that highly pluralistic environment known as the university.

So the issue raised in this little (and very public) tiff is actually quite germane to your life.

I don’t want to get into the specifics of the quarrel, you can read the CNN piece for that. I do want to consider one of Obama’s assertions. It just so happens that it is one that Dobson took issue with, but never mind.

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

- Barack Obama, Keynote Address, Call to Renewal.

I believe that Obama is right.

Christians have for centuries believed that there exist not only the (specific) revelation of Scripture, but general revelation in nature and reason. This general revelation could also be called Natural Law. As a result, it is possible to converse with those outside of the Christian faith on the basis of first things, moral principles that are knowable outside of Scripture. This means that we can discuss policies from a Christian perspective without using explicitly Christian language.

It doesn’t mean (and I don’t think Obama suggests) that Christians/the Church should abandon reflection on Scripture as a basis for views on all sorts of issues. After all, it is not only our “religious selves” that are Christ’s, we are Christ’s in our entirety (whole persons).

Religion seems like its going to be an issue in this election, but not as it was in 2000 and 2004. We’ve already seen a battle over the “reverends,” both with Obama (Wright and Pfleger) and McCain (Hagee and Parsley). Who knows what else we see before November.

For other interesting discussion see Erin Manning’s response to Jim Wallis’s response to Jim Dobson at Crunchy Con.

The professional economist is not really trained to answer, or even ask himself questions about absolute values. The economist is inside the squirrel cage and turning with it. Any question about absolute values belongs to the sphere, not of economics, but of religion.

-Dorothy L. Sayers, “Why Work?” in Creed or Chaos?

In her essay quoted above, Dorothy L. Sayers expressed regret over the undue influence held by economists in her day. There is, she claimed, something inherently unChristian about allowing economic criteria to be the sole (or absolute) means for deciding moral questions. Surely economists can tell us whether or not a given policy will have the desired effect, but they cannot tell us whether or not a given policy is morally right or wrong. Economics is descriptive and not normative. It tells us what is rather than what ought to be.

In their descriptive function, however, economists can dish out some interesting data. Consider an example published by Radha Iyegar and Jonathan Monten of Harvard University. The paper is entitled, “Is There an ‘Emboldenment’ Effect? Evidence from the Insurgency in Iraq.” Read the study here. It deals with the hot-button issue of terrorism. Specifically, whether or not talk of withdrawing from Iraq emboldens the enemy.

If you’re like me, you’ve listened to the rhetoric of both the White House and its critics and found both to be rather lacking. There have been many assertions since March 20, 2003. Many defended the war and some, even early on, criticized it. The unfortunate nature of political discourse in our country (i.e., through the medium of sound bytes) means that many assertions were effectively made in a vacuum. No data-specific rationale was given. Data, it seems, has been relegated to CSPAN.

However, two Harvard researchers have shown that the Iraqi insurgency acts in a rational manner in the timing and intensity of its offensive action on the battlefield. Specifically, they found incidents of insurgent violence increase by 7-10 per cent in periods following “intensified criticism of the Iraq War by the American public and in the U.S. media.” The effect diminished relatively quickly with violence returning to pre-spike levels within a period of one month.

The researchers concluded that the actions of the insurgents were a “systematic response” to a perceived opportunity to tip the weight of public opinion in the U.S. toward immediate withdrawal.

The Bush administration, and other supporters of the war, have long maintained that criticism of the war “emboldens” terrorist. The data suggest that they may well have a point. It seems then that the next five months may well be very difficult for U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq as we anticipate November’s presidential election which is, among other things, a referendum on the Iraq War.

All things considered, it is still both right and prudent to engage in a spirited discussion of both the morality and the practicality of the Iraq War. After all, reports of weakness in one’s enemy always serve to embolden.

Question: What role should economic realities play in Christian political thought?