In a recent piece I wrote concerning the Dominionist-driven Evangelical movement:
Their values are based
on the pursuit of political power, ethics rooted in a system of 'rights', and
economic concerns – namely profits. It is both tragic and obscene that a large
majority of professed Christians have embraced such Social Darwinist ethics and
utterly abandoned the religion of the New Testament. But generations of
Rights-based ethics have done this and Church leaders have abdicated their
responsibility to denounce this false system that is contrary to the New
Testament.
I was asked to follow-up on the question of Rights-based
ethics and what this has meant for the Church.
In a Rights-based system, if you have the civil right to do
something then it is a moral good. I have the 'right' to drive a loud pick-up
truck and blast my stereo, the 'right' to ride a deafening motorcycle, the
'right' to do whatever I want on my property and make as much noise as I want,
the 'right' to say whatever I want even if some deem it offensive and
threatening, the 'right' to carry firearms and buy assault weapons etc. I have the 'right' to sleep with whomever I want.
And then when this tendency degenerates we see further implications and ethical shifts:
I have the 'right' to overthrow the government.
I have the 'right' to hate my neighbour, the 'right' to live my life the way I want and let other people be hurt or die as a consequence if it inconveniences me.
And ultimately (in its decadent stage) complete epistemological shifts:
I have the 'right' to choose my gender, define my personhood, etc.
I have the 'right' to kill a child in the womb.
Rights become not just a means but an end. It's the logical if degenerate conclusion of this approach to ethics and it affects Christians as much as it does unbelievers - that is if those Christians are confused on these fundamental points.
If someone has the 'right', then you may not like it but you
cannot condemn it. It's part of the social consensus and in a democratic system
if it's agreed-upon law (whatever the apparatus may be for making that come to
pass), then it has a moral basis. The public has spoken. Functionally it's a
utilitarian ethical system and we see many Libertarians resort to such ethical
arguments in terms of the market establishing what is right or wrong in terms
of consumer products, lifestyle and the like. And many Christians echo these
ideas to a point.
To decry the system and its basis is tantamount to being unpatriotic
or in some contexts (such as war) it's treason. And if your side lost the most
recent political contest, then you must acquiesce to this reality. That's how
the system is meant to work. You can try again, make your case, and through
whatever legal means work to change the law. But if someone is acting within
their 'rights' then you can't accuse them of doing wrong.
This system may work to a degree, and it may preferable to
some of the alternatives. It has its merits one might argue and yet at present
we're also seeing its weaknesses as the consensus is in a state of collapse.
And yet one of the reasons is due to this contest over 'rights' and whose
'rights' are being trampled. The United States was born in a bloodbath over
such questions as men were willing to kill in order to assert their 'rights'
and when that system failed a civil war was fought – and we may see another one
erupt in the near future. But to both sides, the upholders of 'rights' are
moral and they even have a right to kill in order to defend these claims.
But here's where the Church utterly failed. This system of
ethics and this way of thinking are not Christian in the least and have no basis
in Scripture – in either Old or New Testaments. Again, we can live within such
a system but Church leaders should have been stressing over and over again not
to get confused, not to conflate the values and principles of this system with
the ethics of the New Testament. That might mean that maybe there's an open acknowledgement
that the US system is flawed and even un-Christian. Maybe God doesn't shed his
grace on such a system. Maybe it's a system that we don't want to venerate or
be willing to kill others in order to support it. Maybe we shouldn't fly its
flags in the front of our meetings. Maybe it's just lost man doing the best he
can and yet failing.
But that's not what happened. Instead Church leaders played a
large part in actively teaching that this system was part and parcel a
Christian one and that it was founded on Christian ideals – except it's not.
They argued that if the society was Christian, then the democratic result would
be Christian and so despite its problems the correct view would remain dominant.
But that's not the case either. And additionally that's not what the system
rests on. These notions are nowhere found in the Constitution or Declaration of
Independence. Even if they were, it wouldn't mean they were right or in
Christian terms – Biblical. But they're not and so such arguments fail on both
a theological and historical basis.
The system is presented as universal, applicable in all
places and at all times on the basis of Enlightenment epistemology and
observable laws of nature. It is therefore not tied to Christianity and indeed we
shouldn't be surprised to discover the Christian credentials of the Founding
Fathers are rather dubious. Enlightenment men all, some professed the faith but
in every case it was tainted by a values system that emerged in the chaotic
aftermath of the Renaissance-Magisterial Reformation era and the wars of
religion. The New Testament was not a central part of their thinking – and in
other cases it had almost no part in their thinking at all. Theirs was a system
rooted in 'rights', and the framework for a vision of power. Their goals were
not Christian nor is it what they produced, nor is it the ethic they lived by.
The New Testament knows nothing of a rights-based ethic
system. We have no rights. In fact we're told to turn the other cheek, go the
extra mile, allow for the spoiling of our goods, put the needs of others above
ourselves, love neighbour as self, take up the cross, deny ourselves, reject
the ethics and values of mammon, and be willing to give sacrificially. The
ethics of the New Testament are in fact antithetical to the Rights-based system
established by the Enlightenment-inspired Founding Fathers. Life, liberty, and
pursuit of happiness, or property? You won't find these 'rights' in the New
Testament.
At this point we hear the inevitable "Yeah, but..."
response. The problem is quite simple – people just won't have it. This ethic
means an abdication of not only 'rights' but security and respectability – the treasured
hallmarks of middle class life. It means rejecting the American Dream. It means
that by living out such an ethic the Christian is not going to be a respected
member of society, a mover and shaker as it were. We're not going to build big
businesses, because when you start to gather assets you have to protect them.
You have to assert your 'rights' and intimidate people who owe you money, you
have to file lawsuits, and you must be prepared to fight in order to defend your
holdings and your assets. This is incompatible with the ethics of the New
Testament which calls us to be strangers and pilgrims and not to entangle
ourselves in the affairs of this life. Investment, whether social or economic
implies having a stake in the game and a concern to petition authority over
questions of taxation and regulation, but these aren't our concerns and we're
not enter in to these struggles.
As I've repeatedly said, the entire spectrum of Sacral
Christianity (which includes the Evangelical sphere) simply won't have it.
They're not interested in such a form of Christianity. Truly it is foolishness
to them. And so they spend a great deal of time finding ways to explain it
away. The sacralist interpretation of US history and culture sanctifies the
various Enlightenment notions at the foundation of the US system and as such
anything the New Testament says is read through that lens – or ignored or
explained away by using that lens to take these imperatives and truths and bend
them out of focus.
Rights-based ethics has clouded Evangelical thinking when it
comes to politics and money and frankly this is the reason why the whole Covid
response went quickly off the rails. Everyone got pulled into a discussion
regarding 'rights'. Does the state have the right? The 'tyrannical state' is
trampling our 'rights' and so forth. These were the wrong questions as I've
said all along. Paul lived under a tyrannical system that abused rights and yet
his view of the state and frankly his actions demonstrate an understanding
completely at odds with that of the Sacral tradition and modern Evangelicalism.
As Christians we meet as the Church. This has nothing to do
with rights. We don't ask permission. We don't need the right. We simply won't
be denied. Christians have always suffered at the hands of the state for
insisting on meeting even in defiance of the law. We don't ask for their
permission. We don't seek it nor want it. We're doing it regardless. Whether
the state grants the 'right' or not is immaterial.
Now when it came to Covid the question wasn't about rights.
The questions were about love of neighbour, prudence, the Church's testimony to
the larger society and so forth. At that point congregations could decide to
meet using precautions or even temporarily not to meet. There were many options
and different congregations are in very different circumstances. This can be
determined by things like population density, proximity to nature, climate, the
demographics of the congregation – all sorts of things. Wisdom is required but
it can't be found if no one is even asking the right questions.
Such discussions rarely happened. Instead the Church which
has confused and conflated its identity with the state and culture got
entangled in a discussion over legalities, questions of rights, and ultimately turned
to lawyers and the like. It was a shameful episode that was further amplified
by the now multi-generational turn away from the ethics of the New Testament
that is at the heart of the Evangelical movement.
Rights being trampled upon generate anger and a sense of
injustice. It's right to be outraged by what we see in the world and to call
these things out. It's right to expose deceit and the ways the powerful deceive
and exploit the weak. But as Christians this does not translate into political action.
We expect these things to be. It's the norm in this present evil age. We need
to have our eyes open, we need to understand what's happening around us so that
we're never taken in by the world which is constantly trying to seduce us into
embracing its values – which unfortunately is the very thing that has happened.
The Evangelical leadership has shown that they're no shepherds at all but in
fact are hirelings for these are the values they have taught and as such the
Church has embraced these worldly values and viewpoints even while proclaiming
their adherence to a Biblical Worldview – which in the end is little more than
a philosophical syncretism between the world's knowledge and a cross-section of
Christian ideology based on a selective reading of Biblical doctrine.
We expect the world to exploit, use, abuse, and to be engaged
in all manner of unethical ideology and practice. We're to warn our people and
to warn the world of the coming doom that awaits them unless they repent and
turn to Christ. We have a message of hope but that's for individual soul, for
people and their children – not for their system. There's no hope or redemption
for the world order. It will perish. We're calling people out of it. The New
Testament envisions no Christian society or order – such concepts require a
redefinition of what Christianity is. They require 'another gospel' and today
this false gospel of Dominionism has become the new orthodoxy. And as this
gospel is about mammon and power it wields 'rights' as a weapon and justification
for its evil actions. 'Rights' allow this gospel to teach its followers not the
love their neighbour and in some cases if he resists – the seeking of his
destruction becomes an act of piety.