Monday Editorial: Voting Morality

If someone asked me to design a state that would maximize (superficial) happiness, I might design a place where people were free to do anything they wanted, as long as it did not interfere with the happiness of others. This statement is not without its complications. What is happiness, truly? What are we to do with the fact that people often want things that don't really maximize their happiness?

In general, this is the way the United States is structured. The structuring is uneven, to be sure, but this is the general idea behind our "social contract."

The impact of this general approach is perhaps most visible when it comes to the Constitution's approach to religion. Although initially some states had official church connections--thus Maryland was Roman Catholic--the collection of states as a whole was not to have a state religion. To maximize happiness--and because many of the original settlers of America were fleeing religious persecution--individuals are free to choose whatever religion they wish here, as long as their practice of religion does not impinge on the freedoms and rights of others.

For this reason, it is difficult to see how someone could (technically) say that we were founded as a Christian nation, other than the fact that the original settlers were predominantly Christian in religion (at least nominally). Of course many of the "founding fathers" were Deists, which would not qualify them as Christians in the historic sense of the word.

Now, it was perhaps only in the late 20th century that the laws really began to reflect this basic principle of not having a state religion. And it is here that we see many Christians protesting a turning away from aspects of American law that had retained Christian influence. In my opinion, it is not that America was getting away from its Constitutional beginnings. It was rather that as the United States became more and more secular, those beginnings were finally making their way through the specifics of the legal system.

For example, it is difficult to see, on the basis of the Constitution, how homosexual practice could be illegal. On what non-religious basis would it be prohibited? But if Congress is not to pass laws that are based on specifically religious beliefs, how could such laws be constitutional?

The current conflict between political parties over issues like abortion or gay marriage are really a symptom of conflict over this constitutional principle. Can Congress pass laws that have a specifically religious basis but cannot be argued for on a purely secular basis? On what secular basis could Congress prohibit abortion in the first weeks of a pregnancy? Or on what secular basis could Congress deny gay couples the benefits of a civil union?

It is for this reason that we have heard talk in recent years of constitutional amendments on these sorts of issues. In this discussion is a tacit recognition that the Constitution provides no basis for prohibiting these things. Our drive to prohibit them comes from our Christian beliefs, beliefs that the Constitution does not afford status if we cannot demonstrate a concrete detriment to the happiness of others.

What we potentially find as Christians is thus that the Constitution is not nearly so Christian as we imagined. Indeed, we find that the Constitution may very well stand diametrically opposed to our Christian values. After all, do we not believe that our values are the right ones, and that true happiness would be for all of American society to follow them?

There is actually more than one model of Christian engagement with society when it comes to matters of this sort. Unfortunately, however, most Christians have no awareness either of the basis of their own position or how it relates to the others. They unthinkingly assume that their way of engaging culture is the right way and the Christian way.

For example, the Calvinist approach to society tends to follow the model set by Calvin himself, namely, to try to take over society. Puritan New England had no "non establishment" clause. The Calvinist assumption is naturally that Christians should take over the American government and make it our kind of Christian. After all, is this not how God relates to the world, manipulating those who will be saved and, by default, those who will be damned?

Of course this approach is the heart of why so many Christians fled to America in the first place, and why Quakers settled in Pennsylvania and others in Rhode Island--to get away from the Fascist Christian machines of Europe. Nevertheless, most of grass roots conservative Christianity has mindlessly absorbed this approach as well, even theological traditions like my own. The unthinking assumption is that, of course, we should try to make American law mirror our Christan understanding and force others to live the right way.

The inconsistency of this approach with my own theological tradition, coupled with how vigorously people in my church fight for it, is really ironic. For example, as Wesleyans we believe that God does not force anyone to choose him. We believe that God has sovereignly allowed humans to resist His will. Even in Romans 1, the language Paul uses in relation to homosexual sin is that God "gave them up." Certainly the presumption is that God will judge all at the judgment, but we believe that God does not force the world to obey Him for now.

In that sense, the American system is less in tension with the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition than it is the Calvinist system. Of course there are other approaches. Quakers and Anabaptists have tended to remove themselves from participation in the broader society altogether. The Lutherans tend to have a "two kingdoms" approach in which the government is the government and Christianity is Christianity and both just follow different rules. Probably the American system fits best with their approach to society.

But the question of how a Christian should vote in relation to these issues becomes a tricky one. On the issue of homosexuality, a Calvinist will vote against the American system and try to perpetuate specifically Christian laws. Indeed, Calvinists should probably plot to take over the Constitution and establish their form of Christianity as the state religion. I think Ariminians would vote in a way that they thought would most encourage movement toward God, which isn't always effectively done with a stick.

The issue of abortion is different because most Christians see it as murder. Concrete harm to others is a matter of the Constitution. I'm not sure that we will be able to make the secular case in the earliest weeks of pregnancy, but I think most states have become convinced that third trimester abortions should be severely limited. When people see what a second trimester unborn looks like, they are often convinced that it is murder as well.

Of course a vote for a president is not automatically a vote for or against abortion. Reagan and Bush were both in office for 8 years and abortion is still legal. If the Supreme Court were to overturn Roe vs. Wade, it would still be a matter of individual states whether abortion was legal or not. Most states would continue to allow it. It might require a little travel, but the vast majority of women would still be able to have an abortion if they wanted to.

Another serious question is what the side effects would be of appointing justices that are interested in overturning Roe vs. Wade. If we leave Roe vs. Wade out of the discussion for a moment, we should remember that it was the Clarence Thomas type justice that declared that the children of slaves--even if they were freed--could never be citizens and that Congress had no constitutional right to prohibit slavery (1857). And it was the Antonin Scalia type justice that upheld the Jim Crow laws that forced blacks to sit in the backs of buses in the South and would not allow them to go to the same schools as whites.

From a legalistic standpoint, these may very well have been the right decisions from a strict reading of the law. Part of me respects that. But true justice would have been to go the other way with the Dred Scott case, and true justice was done in the civil rights cases of the 60's and 70's. Those Christians who trumpet strict constructionism should pause to remember that, for the most part, they are championing an approach that most of the time rendered or would have rendered anti-Christian decisions. Roe vs. Wade is ironically far more likely to be the exception, than the rule.

A final thing to keep in mind here also is that the New Testament, and the roots of my own theological tradition, are far more interested in true change in a person than in making people follow the rules. To be sure, there was a 50 year period in my own church's history where we were rather shallow on the moral development scale and mostly just wanted people to look and act a certain way.

But this is not the true Wesleyan tradition that was interested in heart change. And it is certainly not the New Testament's "virtue based" approach to ethics, where it is from the heart that uncleanness comes and where the fruit of the Spirit comes not from the letter but from the Spirit within. From that perspective, the more Christian agenda is the one that aims to change people more than to make them follow the right rules.

How does this relate to the current election? I believe that McCain's position on abortion fits better with that of the majority of Christians. At the same time, we should not make light of Obama's goal of decreasing the number of unwanted pregnancies. I think McCain would support this goal too. These broader concerns represent a higher level of moral development than the lower "law" oriented approach that simply wants to make sure no one breaks a rule.