"i'm sure that you're well aware of most of christianity's fixation on Adam and Eve and original sin, but there's a chapter in the Book of Mormon that not only refutes that, but shows how utterly unreasonable that is. it's found in 2 Nephi chapter 2."
There were a few questions that quickly sprang to mind after reading the chapter but I was most interested in the political implications of what I read. So I asked:
"Does this chapter not mean that Mormons should support libertarian politics (or possibly anarchy)? After all, if people are not able to choose whether to have a homosexual marriage or an abortion or not without outside influence, how do we know whether they are truly righteous? Of course, God is the one who needs to know these things, but didn't he set up freedom of choice to determine who is righteous and who isn't?"
The link between Christianity and freedom has long interested me. Many have made the argument before that the freest countries tend to be Christian. Maybe that's true depending on how you measure freedom but I've always wondered if that link is due to the text itself or our interpretation of it. I could be cultural and a lot of things go into building a culture beyond religion (and I'm sure a lot of culture goes into building a religion).
I never hear Christians discuss the topic of "free will" as granted by God in relation to government intervention. It seems that most people don't consider it an important question but I think it's a pretty vital question. Apparently, Christians in the 50s and early 60s also thought the question was important. So important, in fact, that many believed Christianity to be the backbone of freedom, which was threatened by communism and other leftist agendas that were growing the state to enormous proportions.
LibertarianPapers.org--an online journal published by the Mises Institute--has a paper addressing this very topic called "The Importance of Christian Thought for the American Libertarian Movement: Christian Libertarianism, 1950–71" (the full essay can be found in PDF or DOC format here: http://libertarianpapers.org/2010/14-haddigan-christian-libertarianism). It's quite interesting and I'd like to share some of the highlights. Feel free to discuss it further in the comments and/or read the entire paper if you have the time. I'm curious to know why "free will" or "free agency" is not more frequently discussed in a political context by Christians (besides the fact that it would obviously undermine church influence). It seems that many Christians used to be among the biggest proponents of libertarian thought before being usurped by the evolving Cold War conservatism thanks to men like William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater. Not that I dislike these men but it seems they did a lot to change the argument on the right-wing of politics from one of limited state power to one of concentrated power in what they considered the right areas. Lee Haddigan, the author of the paper, writes:
"The crucial development came, for the Christian libertarian, when Jesus wrote the desire to follow voluntarily the Ten Commandments into the heart of mankind. Jesus gave us the choice, the individual freedom, to believe in Him and his message, or to reject Him. And as no manmade authority can intervene in that decision, the most important an individual can make, then no earthly authority can intervene in an individual’s free agency in those parts of their life—economic, political, or religious—where mankind attempts to be a good Christian and live according to the laws revealed in the Bible. Thus, Government is a ‘necessary evil,’ as Thomas Paine once argued, limited to the police powers of preventing the unregenerate from injuring the ‘life, liberty and property’ of their fellow citizens. When the State arrogated powers to itself more than those basic functions it became the ‘enemy’ of the Christian libertarian, interposing governmental regulations between an individual and their God."
On the topic of free agency:
"Rowe continued the article’s explication of the importance of individual free-will by pointing out that the 'Bible is replete with evidence of free agency on the part of God and man alike.' God was 'free to create and sustain the universe,' and in the act of Creation man emerged free 'to accept or reject Him and His way of life.' Further, God had not coerced Jesus to redeem the sins of mankind and, similarly, Jesus had not compelled the rich young ruler to give up his wealth. He was given the choice 'to choose wealth instead of God.' Neither, did Scripture state that the recalcitrant young ruler should have his wealth redistributed for him; 'Jesus might have instructed his disciples to dispossess the young man and to distribute his goods to the needy, but He did not do that.'
Instead, Jesus taught, and made clear through his actions, that one person could not force another person to act morally. Jesus offered a path to salvation where each individual was at liberty to act according to their conscience, to honor God by voluntarily following the moral lessons contained in the Scriptures. An individual could not be forced, for instance, to give charity as Jesus had given us the 'power to choose between right and wrong,' and when the State took that responsibility upon itself (the welfare state) it broke the First, and Great, Commandment—‘Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.’"
One of the arguments used to justify liberal increases in state power utilized an adaptation of the classic Good Samaritan parable.
"It recounted the tale of a motorist who suffered an accident on the freeway, and who was rescued only after the police were called on a car telephone by a passing driver. Other motorists who witnessed the collision were stymied in their desire to help by their inability to stop on the fast-moving freeway. Keiser’s lesson was that in the new mechanized age the ‘hands-on’ efforts of the Good Samaritan were now impractical; that modern solutions, and modern agencies, were the only answer to modern problems."
A rebuttal to this argument and mode of thinking quickly followed.
"Keiser’s fellow Congregationalist, the Rev. Harry R. Butman, disagreed, and made his rejoinder in the article, 'The Minimized Man.' He argued the modern parable illustrated the lamentable tendency among many ministers, 'to move away from the teachings of Jesus into a religion of collectivism.' Butman contended that Keiser and his brethren were too ready to embrace 'an unthinking worship of the machine,' and as a consequence regarded problems in society as a product of the new industrialized America, structural faults only resolvable by 'engineers' who understood how the machine was supposed to work. Butman argued that Social Action ministers (of whom Keiser was representative) held an unquestioning assumption in the efficacy of the State in administering to the needs of the individual, because the State was the only agency capable of effecting significant and enduring reform in the new mass society. Keiser, Butman objected, dismissed the choices of the individual as irrelevant and ineffectual in the face of the reality of modern conditions, mistakenly claiming that the dictates of a Christian’s conscience were only fully attainable in the pastoral society the Good Samaritan, and Jesus, had lived in.
Butman countered that the teachings of Jesus were timeless; that 'his stress on the worth of the single soul, and his disesteem of the organized group,' were as relevant to an industrial age as to an earlier agricultural society. Where Keiser 'minimized' man by making the car telephone and the police the 'heroes' of the parable, and dehumanized man by substituting the impersonal assistance of an organization for the human contact and compassion of the Samaritan, God glorified man by making him in His own image. The poet of the Eighth Psalm, Butman explained, delivered 'a pean (sic) to man’s greatness as God’s son,' and that ennobling perspective should fortify the individual in the impersonal society inhabited by liberals, and help him maintain the scepticism to 'never grant the Moloch-machine or the godstate the idolatrous homage they get from the unthinking many.' Butman recognized that Christian libertarians could not escape the mechanized world, and held out little optimism that the prevailing collectivist society could be changed until there was a spiritual revelation in America, but he stressed the need to fight the good fight and 'hold fast' to God’s commandment to 'love his God and his neighbour with all his heart.'"
Carl McIntire discussed how the Eight Commandment established the morality of property rights. Property rights, of course, are important to to libertarianism as it is often described by libertarian thinkers as the origin of all other rights and freedoms.
"McIntire explained the meaning of each Commandment in the struggle to preserve individual freedom, and in his discussion of the Eighth Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ asserted that it 'establishes upon divine authority the right of private enterprise.' God decreed that that each individual held the sacred right to dispose of their private property as they deemed most suitable to fulfil one of the obligations of Christian freedom; the stewardship of responsibility to God to aid those who were not as fortunate as they were. The state could not usurp that responsibility by the forcible redistribution—taxation—of an individual’s private property without condemning America to a socialistic future. McIntire ended his explanation of the Eighth Commandment with the declaration that it was the religious justification of the private enterprise system, as understood by the nation’s founders, that conceived, 'the system of freedom that made America great!'"
Apparently the classical liberal argument used to be seeped in religious context. I imagine increasing popularity of Ayn Rand had something to do with the shift of the debate but perhaps it is more likely due to the increasing unpopularity of libertarian politics. At any rate, the argument of libertarian being godless was baseless.
"In the Autumn issue of 1964, Ralph Raico reviewed 'What is Conservatism'—a collection of twelve essays, edited by Frank S. Meyer, presenting the ‘fusionist’ ground where traditionalists and libertarians could unite to argue a common conservatism. Raico took particular umbrage at M. Stanton Evans’ essay, 'A Conservative Case for Freedom,' for arguing, the 'libertarian, or classical liberal, characteristically denies the existence of a God-centered moral order.' He then proceeded to demolish Evans’ argument by documenting the Christian faith of classical liberals like Ricardo, Bright, Cobden, Acton, Macauley and Bastiat. He quoted approvingly Bastiat’s 'Harmonies of Political Economy,' where the French economis wrote: 'There is a leading idea which runs through the whole of this work… and that idea is embodied in the opening words of the Christian Creed—I BELIEVE IN GOD.'"
Even Murray Rothbard came to the defense of Christian libertarians. It's best to have a unifying political goal of freedom than be fragmented by religion.
"In the same issue Peden’s editor, Murray N. Rothbard, delivered a cogent defense of the philosophy of Christian libertarianism. While admitting, it 'is a bitter pill for us non-Christians to swallow,' he argued that in the two thousand years since the death of Christ 'the greatest thinkers… have been Christian,' and to 'ignore these Christian philosophers and to attempt to carve out an ethical system purely on one’s own is to court folly and disaster.' Of course, Rothbard noted, Christian libertarianism should be questioned, as all tradition should, by the faculty of reason. But, the empirical record showed that the Christian system of values has 'the longest and most successful tradition,' and that the 'Christian ethic is, in the words of the old hymn, the Rock of Ages.' In an almost Burkean conclusion, Rothbard acknowledged that modern libertarians 'stand on the shoulders of the thinkers of the past,' and reminded them, 'it is at least incumbent upon the individual to think long and hard before he abandons that Rock, lest he sink into the quagmire of the capricious and bizarre.'"
Those were just some of my favorite bits. For anyone interested in this topic, I think you should read the whole paper. I was mostly happy to see a paper that dealt with the issue of free agency as it related to political freedom. Naturally, it would be political suicide to try to use this context in politics. The implications would be that the state should do virtually nothing and even Christians enjoy their handouts. So Mormons like Mitt Romney can get away with forcing an entire state to buy health insurance. And Obama can get away with forcing an entire country to do the same thing (but we all know he's really Muslim).
Thoughts? Questions? Fears?
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