There are some things for which we do not give awards but which Americans tend to idolize nonetheless. Today I’m thinking especially of individual liberty in relation to the supposed constitutional right to have weapons, as well as the murkier right to private property. (Gird your loins for this take on such Constitutional matters.)
We’re not likely to hear a conversation about liberty as a form of idolatry in our courts of law, but it’s high time to have that conversation in our churches. Is it really okay for humans to do whatever they want? Do we really want to codify that idea? Is there nothing that Christian faith and theology can offer to these questions?
As promised, this is the first of a three-part blog series on theological ideas and why they matter. And they matter not least for the people who were killed or injured in Aurora, Colorado today and for the many species that are, even now as I write this, going extinct on this planet.
I begin with this fourth-century quote from St. Augustine: “If you understand something, it’s not God.”
I take Augustine to be urging two things at once: to adopt a profound humility in our theological reasoning and to avoid idolatry at all costs. (Whether he himself managed to do this is beside the point.)
Individual liberty (a modern, western, Enlightenment concept) might seem a bit out of place in a cautionary tale about humility and idols. But I believe liberty might well stand as a cypher for western modernity’s presenting sin: putting the human in the place of God. This has been happening slowly but surely for about three centuries now, at least.
The many benefits of the Enlightenment’s stress on individual autonomy and human rights notwithstanding, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” come with a significant theological and, I would argue, social cost. Concerning the former: forgetting that Christian theological traditions have never understood freedom to be synonymous with the absence of constraint (spiritual freedom is always for the sake of doing something in particular not anything at all). Concerning the latter: elevating individual freedom over the common good (individual thriving is never an end in itself but something to contribute to the greater good). I believe both are illustrations of Augustine’s cautionary note about humility and idolatry.
Consider first the unrelenting, grotesquely well-funded, and usually vitriolic rhetoric of the National Rifle Association. For them, apparently, any gun-control legislation whatsoever is a pernicious infringement on the right to “keep and bear arms” guaranteed by the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
We are facing yet again another moment when U.S. citizens ponder the role of guns in our common life. I think it’s important to note that violent crime has actually been decreasing steadily in the U.S. over the last few years, but mass killings have seen an increase. I’m not so sure that tighter gun control laws would have prevented what happened in Aurora today. But I don’t think that’s the point.
I think the point is the stress on individual liberty, that the individual reigns supreme in all matters of social and economic policy. I believe that is a form of idolatry, of replacing God with the human. Christians should say so, regardless of the policy implications.
Consider, second, that every single oil well, gas drilling operation, and fracking enterprise relies on a murky notion of the right to private property. (In those cases, property owned by corporations, but apparently the U.S. Supreme Court believes corporations to be individuals. But don’t single out the Supremes on this. I’m always amazed that the U.N. General Assembly’s “Declaration of Universal Human Rights” in 1948 included “private property” as one of those rights, in Article 17).
Here individual liberty comes home to roost in some vexing ways. Can you do anything you please with the property you own? No, but the constraints are wildly loose, and just try arguing any constraints at all in some parts of the U.S. and be prepared to talk to a shotgun (see the first consideration above).
The very notion that human beings have a “right” to “own” property and do with it mostly as they please flies in the face of a very traditional Jewish and Christian concept: stewardship. I’m well aware of the critiques of the biblical notion of stewardship over creation derived from Genesis. That said, are the problems with the concept of stewardship more difficult to deal with than the free-range property rights of corporations and, yes, individuals?
“Stewardship” means that what one stewards is not one’s own property. It is entrusted to that person or community for the one who does “own” it — or in this case, the One who created it. Sadly, most Christians seem to talk about stewardship only in relation to fundraising, and the planet is in peril because of it.
I return often to a wonderful 2009 book by a sociologist, James William Gibson: A Reenchanted World: The Quest for a New Kinship with Nature. I believe his thesis can be reduced to this: environmental change won’t happen unless and until we cultivate a re-enchantment with nature. And we are faced with severe obstacles in that task on nearly every front, not least is the modern western view of “nature” as simply a “grid of private property” (page 72). Just imagine flying over the U.S. from San Francisco to New York. What would you see out the window of that plane? Mostly property lines – state, corporate, and individual. Where is the Creator of all this?
There are of course many other forms of American idolatry – the flag, the institution of marriage, free-market capitalism, home ownership, and the Super Bowl, to name just a few. And of course, theology itself can easily become an idol, and Augustine was particularly keen to guard against that.
I’ll make suggestions in response to all that in the next two blog posts in this series, including how we might think about creedal statements in Christian history and also how the “erotic” is indispensable to “traditional” and “classic” Christianity. So stay tuned.
For now, as a beginning, I’ll offer this: Extolling the virtues of individual liberty belongs on a slippery slope toward idolatry, to replacing God with the individual human. I think that’s where any discussion of theological ideas – liberal, conservative, progressive, traditional, radical, or reactionary – needs to begin. Are we trying to deal with an encounter with the living God, the Creator of all, or an idol?
As the holy month of Ramadan begins, perhaps our Muslim sisters and brothers say it best:
“There is no God but God (lā ʾilāha ʾillà l-Lāh).”
That claim could, quite literally and practically and thankfully, change the world.
Thank you, Jay. As a former student of yours, I am glad to have found your blog!
One of the fundamental tensions I see in American culture is the idea of personal liberty/freedom vs community. And while I realize that these are broad labels that deserve nuance, the question still needs to be asked: At what point in time does our personal rights / freedoms have precedence over community rights / values?
Whether we talk about gun rights, or health care, or prison vs. public schools, the value of community (however defined) doesn’t seem to the the airtime that personal liberty receives. And the argument / rhetoric is usually framed from that perspective of personal rights. The press coverage after the Aurora shootings, at least here in the Bay Area, focused on the number of guns purchase and difference in gun laws here in California (with a self-satisfied pat on the back). I have yet to see anyone arguing that our community would be safer if people chose to give up their rights to own weapons.
This discussion, I believe, also surfaces in our various denominations – especially the question of personal salvation.
This, I think, is a great platform for the TEC to speak from. Where else can we agree to disagree and still worship together in community and seek God in the process. By focusing on the various community(s) within our reach – our municipality, our neighborhoods, our worshiping community, the beauty of the world around us – we might understand that the community is more important than the quest for personal rights.
Thank you, Jay. Kyle A. Lovett, pastor of The Church of The Crossroads in Honolulu, recently introduced me to your writing through a FaceBook share of this blog. Discussions of these “hot” topics have become mired in two-sided attacks, and I see no means of achieving community without introducing what amounts to an interruption in the cycle, which you do through pointing out our idolatry.
As a student of Ethnic Studies and Pacific Islands Studies, I have viewed this tendency objectification, but now, having been recently introduced to theology, I that understanding this process as idolatry, and relating to our relationship with God, as well as creation, opens a means of moving beyond – it offers hope, which neither the polarized political process nor social sciences alone can offer.
Thanks for taking time to post here, Alan! I agree — the polarization seems really daunting. Breaking through to something like a common vision will take some serious reflection on all sides. Best to you in your studies and give my best to Kyle!
This is a challenging reality since everybody has their own way of seeing things, thanks to article like this one people may see things differently.