Whenever government plans to help some vulnerable group of people, the conservative complaint that pejoratively arises is that we have a 'nanny state' that protects people from the consequences of their actions. What is interesting here is that there is a conservative call for the state to treat its people as a parent would raise their child.
The article being reviewed today was written by Douglas Walker (click here for a bio). Though the title of his article asks whether we should legislate morality, since politics always includes moral aspects, the real issue he is dealing with are what morals should we legislate and what should be the basis for such legislation.
Here, Walker tells conservatives to reject the liberal notion of the state which says that the state should only allow for privacy and personal freedom unless that freedom harms a non-consenting someone else. Instead, Walker proposes that the government should be looking to make its people as virtuous as possible. And so the government should be focused on rewarding those who do good while punishing those who do evil.
The conflict that arises here is what standards should the government to use to distinguish good from evil. There Walker states that the government should use natural law to distinguish good from evil. According to Walker, natural law is based on God's design and can be discovered by reason. However, Walker is using the theistic definition of natural law here. The atheistic definition includes the use of reason but says nature is the source of natural law. And the laws we legislate because of natural law should contribute to the good of others.
Walker realizes that the government cannot criminally prosecute every violation of natural law. And so the government must accommodate its people by using wisdom to determine which wrongdoings should be criminalized and which ones should not.
The implication of Walker's view of the purpose of government is ominous for a democracy. That is because Walker seems to imply that Conservatives should use the current democratic procedures to instantiate this new role for government. But then one must ask if conservatives can feel comfortable with risking the work they have started by letting democratic procedures determine if their work will be continued. And since the role of government according to Walker is to make its people as virtuous as possible, the answer could very well be 'no.'
So again, conservatives are against the nanny state if that means that the state is helping too many vulnerable people in need. But when it comes to telling us what kind of government that at least some conservatives want, then Walker offers us a parent state that rewards us when we are good and punishes us when we are bad. The government must do this to create the most virtuous people possible.
What becomes of the current wall of separation between Church and State? Though Walker does not answer that question explicitly, the implied answer would be to imitate Reagan when he told Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down that wall. And if I am reading Walker correctly, the Church would be the ultimate authority in telling us what God's natural law says.
BTW, what happened to privacy in Walker's model here? That depends what one is doing. For Conservatives must not let government do what liberals insist on letting government do especially with sexual behavior between consenting adults: supporting immorality by turning a blind eye to it. As Walker wrote: 'No one has a right to commit wrong.'
What should be said in response? There are a number of issues to address. What Democracy implies for the kind of government we should have one such issue. What are the grounds for Walker's view of government and laws is another. And do the Scriptures, especially the New Testament Scriptures support Walker's approach?
Before saying what Democracy implies for the kind of government we should have, we need to adequately describe Democracy. Democracy consists of a number of essential ingredients: universal citizenship, elections to determine a nation's public officials and voting in government by those officials to determine legislation, and majority rule provided that such rule is not used to oppress the minority and deny them equality (click here for source which comes from Thomas Jefferson's 1801 Inaugural Address). At that point, even if Conservatives allow for the continuation of free and fair elections, the purpose of government is different under Democracy than under Walker's approach.
For it seems that a truly democratic government revolves around following the voice of the people as expressed through their elected representatives. In contrast to that, Walker's model of thought makes government into a parent and the people into its children. So while Democracy shuns hierarchy, Walker's approach revolves around hierarchy provided that the right group of people, such as conservatives who agree with him, are the ones at the top of the hierarchy. And whether those conservatives are religiously conservative or significantly embrace Walker's conservatism, Walker's view of government denies the equality that is so much a part of Democracy as Jefferson thought of it even though he did not practice it. That is because the conservatives who would be determining our government's legislation would not recognize equality for those who disagreed with conservative moral beliefs, they would look down on them. Whether that conservative denial of equality would turn into actual oppression would depend on whether they believed that the government could get away with it.
How did Walker come to his current view of government? In formulating his approach to government, Walker approach to arriving at a view of legislation and government has two significant problems, both of which are common among many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians. The first problem is that of relying too heavily on deduction. Many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians believe that, provided they use the right input, can deduce what reality either is or should in almost every area of life. It isn't that Walker only uses deduction in determining what legislation government should pass. After all, he cites the problems that involved the passing of the 18th Amendment on Prohibition as a mistake. He relies too heavily on deduction to determine the general approach government should have toward its people.
The second problem with Walker's approach is shared by traditionalists of every ideological stripe. That is that traditionalists rely too much on the past to understand and respond to the present. All we have to do to see that trend in Walker is to look at the antiquity of the sources he uses to build his case. Most of his sources are theologians who lived in Europe when Christendom was the rage. And even when citing more current people, such as Mathew Tuininga, he is still primarily referring to a relic, regardless of how valuable, from the past: John Calvin.
In addition, Walker primarily relies on religiously conservative Christian sources. It makes one wonder if he believes that either liberals or leftists, there is a significant difference between the two, have anything to contribute. Again, his selection of sources in determining what role government should have in how it relates to its people makes one wonder if his view of the conservative approach to government will involve the denying of equality for and even oppression of some groups from the minority--as opposed to the majority.
Finally, do the Scriptures, especially the New Testament, have anything to say regarding Walker's view of legislation and government? This is a very legitimate question because Walker, being a Christian, has not relied much on the Scriptures to build his case. Again, his case is based on his using deduction using the work of some Christians as starting points. Here we should note that Walker did refer to Romans 13 and what it said about how government is there to reward those woh do good and punish evildoers. At the same time, who Paul was referring to as those who did good or evil is not clearly identified.
What we should notice here is that the New Testament is largely silent about how government should relate to its people in our current context. After all, we live in nations that are religiously heterogeneous and where our civic responsibilities include involvement in a participatory government. Most of the Old Testament was written for a religiously homogeneous setting while the New Testament was written in a religiously heterogeneous environment but where the Christians there were not called to be involved in a participatory government.
However, if we look at what the New Testament says about how we religiously conservative Christians should relate to unbelievers, we might get a better idea of how government should relate to its people in societies that consist of believers and unbelievers.
We will turn to Matthew 10:14 first. Here, Jesus was giving a series of instructions to His disciples before sending them out. One of his instructions dealt with how to react to those who refuse to listen to what the disciples were saying. Jesus said (click here for Matthew 10:14):
If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.
Jesus told his disciples to leave those who would not listen. He tells them to leave.
Next, Jesus was instructing His disciples on how to relate to each other (click here for Matthew 20:25-28):
25 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 26 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— 28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Finally, we have Paul writing to the Corinthians after he instructed them on how to discipline a believer who was caught in a sexual sin (click here for I Cor 5:9-13):
9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. 11 But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.
12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13 God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.
When we look at the above passages, is there any hint that Christians should impose their values on unbelievers either directly or through a government acting in their name? Is there any hint that Jesus or Paul had a concern in controlling the behaviors of unbelievers? In the first passage, the disciples were told to leave those who would not listen. In the next passage, Jesus told his believers not to lord it over others. And though Jesus was talking about how to treat fellow believers, there is no reason why Christians should not use this passage as a guide on how to treat unbelievers. Rather than try to lord it over the other, we should serve them. And finally, we have Paul whose concern is with the purity of the Church, not necessarily the purity of society.
The point being is that the above passages tell us that we can't get to Walker's approach to any government that also rules over unbelievers from reading the New Testament. And that is especially true when considering the passages quoted above. Thus, Walker relies on the theologies of others to arrive at his conservative view of government. And that is the main problem with Walker's approach.
Walker seemed motivated by Tim Keller's search for a Christian view of government. And there is nothing wrong with Keller, or Walker, wanting to find a Christian political theory. But our canon is the Scriptures, not the writings of theologians. And so if there is not a clear biblical directive on how we should view government, we should not force the issue by depending on theologians to provide one for us. One reason why we should resist any urge to find a Christian view of politics is because the Scriptures, especially the New Testament, gives us no clear directive to do so. Unfortunately, we are often compelled to go beyond the Scriptures because we don't know how to take Biblical silence as an answer.
One other point needs to be made here. Us religiously conservative Christians have a penchant for authoritarianism. And perhaps that is a contributing factor to Walker's view of government as a parent who is trying to raise its children to be the best people possible. The reason why we have a penchant for authoritarianism is because the Scriptures tell us to be subject to so many authority figures that we have a difficult time turning that authority switch off when it needs to be off. In addition, being subject to so many authority figures, Christians might also be reluctant to let unbelievers exist in a non-authoritarian context. If that is true, then that reflects poorly on us.
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