Juris Naturalist

Jonathan Merritt is a journalist.  His most recent book “A Faith of Our Own” is written in a journalist’s rather than a policy-advocate’s or theologian’s style.  He employs metaphors and anecdotes which occasionally seem forced, but manage to keep the reader engaged.  He prefers to let others make his strongest points for him in well placed quotations.  He is not primarily making an argument but describing a landscape, a narrative, and its characters.  This is in keeping with the trend in the church to employ a narrative approach to the scriptures and to ministry.  If the reader comes to this book looking for something to agree with or disagree with they may be frustrated.

“A Faith of Our Own” tells the church how to stand rather than where to stand.  This is an important word to the church today.  Poised at the end of an era of Christian participation in politics, the current generation knows something went wrong over the last 40 years, but many of us lack an understanding of the history of the events that shaped us.  We know we want to do better than our parents.  We want the Gospel that we share to reflect Christ’s love.  We want to practice good stewardship of all the resources entrusted to us.  But we also know that obstacles have been constructed in the past which require our attention and honest repentance before we can expect the world to be willing to listen to us, or to be ready to accept God’s love through us.  Merritt shows how our generation is moving in that direction.
But he is not providing a blueprint, nor really even asserting a strong position. This book is not about taking a stand, but about an attitude of standing.  He is reporting.  Which is, perhaps, the correct approach for this time.  If Merritt has a goal, it is to re-engage some of us who grew up steeped in the religious right and to provide a model of repentance and humility.  He appeals both to those who remain in the fold, and to the many who were turned off by what he describes as the “culture wars” of our fathers.  I searched in vain for strong statements, but there are precious few in “A Faith of Our Own.”

Merritt is almost hipster in this regard.  If he were not sincere, his image would fit that mold, and in truth, he is probably most appealing to the hipster-Christian fold.  They will probably get it.  What feels like “anything goes” reading from the right might retain an echo of dogmatism reading from the left, while intentionally being neither.  This will annoy older Christians who will write him off as either a hippie or a poseur.  But he is genuine, and humble.  He should be heard and considered in earnest.  He is right that the appropriate approach “is not reaction or response, but reflection.”

I would go further than Merritt on most points.  I would, if it is possible, seem more conservative to the liberals and seem more liberal to the conservatives.  More importantly I would bring an analysis, rather than a report, of politics which demonstrates why the religious right movement of the last generation played out the way it did, why the liberal elements are progressing the way that they are, and why confusion about the appropriate role of Christians, and in particular the church as an institution, in politics remains among the most contentious issues within evangelicalism.

He claims that “Government can be a powerful tool for justice and goodness, and often Christians must advocate for policies that punish injustice, restrain evil, and promote a healthier society.”  But I only agree in part.  That government is effective, though flawed, at punishing injustice and restraining evil may be true, but I believe only the love of God can motivate us into goodness.  This may help resolve some of the confusion surrounding Romans 13.

When Merritt says “politics itself is not the problem,” he is hedging against the conservative-styled small-government movement which is yet another form of “foolish participation in politics,” un-nuanced and hypocritical in the hands of Tea-Partiers.  I agree with his concern, but I agree more with Jacques Ellul that politics “is the trap continually set for (the church) by the Prince of the World.”

Merritt identifies characters to some extent so entrapped, who thought very much was at stake in the culture wars, without explicitly identifying what those claims were, and whether they were right.  He does not go into depth searching what really was at stake and who really stood to gain or to lose in particular situations.  A more Ellulian approach might have sought out and described by way of a warning the ways that well-intentioned actors found themselves compromised by participation in and proximity to power.  There is no explication of the way of Jesus as a subversive power-under response to the demonic power-over ways of the world.  I’d recommend Mark Van Steenwyk’s recent “That Holy Anarchist” to Merritt and his readers on this count.

Merritt gets closest to this perspective in the excellent climactic chapter, “A Touch Closer.”   Taking his cues from folks like Shane Claiborne, Merritt describes a Christianity in action which is acutely attentive to the least of these.  “Follow Jesus.  Live like He did, give yourself to others, and share the good news that God has brought freedom to us all.” I’ve written before that those of us who believe in regeneration ought to perceive it as an event which adjusts human nature radically, changing us from primarily self-interested individuals, into God-and-others interested servants, living out a form of sacrificial altruism which rescues the oppressed while simultaneously providing a way of redemption for oppressors.  Claiborne emulates this beautifully in his work.  He is focused entirely on how to live out the way of Jesus before the world.  Merritt says, “When the religious leaders attempted to make Jesus choose sides, He declined.  When one of His disciples attempted to employ the world’s tactics at His arrest, Jesus rebuked him and displayed a radically different approach.  Through His life and ministry, Christ made it clear that His kingdom could not be pursued by marginalizing those who seek to marginalize you, attacking those who attack you, or combatting ‘anti-Christian’ earthly kingdoms by installing ‘semi-Christian’ earthly kingdoms.  Instead Jesus calls His subjects to begin ‘loving, serving, and hopefully transforming the enemy who seeks to destroy you.’”

Merritt’s concerns with the “brutal tactics” and “sour tone”, and his appeal for “passionate but reasonable discussion” lack the insight that when the pile of political goodies gets stacked too high, the competition for those goodies, which in politics in a democracy are allocated by argument, is bound to become vicious.  As Christians we can help reduce the negative tone primarily by removing some issues from the realm of political contention.  We do this best through voluntary sacrificial altruism, or what Merritt calls “sacrificial followship.”  It is for this purpose which we can apply the words of Merritt’s mentor, “As Christians we may be compelled to enter the political arena from time to time.  But we should always be uncomfortable there.”

Instead we should get involved.  We should say with Merritt, “If you are a woman who feels you cannot bring your child to term for any reason, come see us first.  We will walk beside you during this process to ensure that you can bring your child to term and provide for that child’s needs in infancy.  We will purchase diapers and pay for the doctor visits.” Our true concern for the unborn can best be communicated by what we are personally willing to sacrifice for their sakes.  Political activism is mere cheap talk in comparison.

Merritt recognizes the coalition-building element of politics as being close to the root of many problems.  I’d recommend a survey of public choice economics, my own discipline, in this regard.  A good place to start would be, ironically, Bruce Yandel’s “Bootleggers and Baptists” theory on regulation.  The same free market economists espoused by the religious right when politically expedient have a great deal to say about the dangers of political expediency!

Can I recommend this book to others?  Yes, though don’t look to Merritt for strategy, or answers to specific questions regarding policy.  Instead, read the story of a young man who has watched much of what has happened in the last twenty years, as the evangelical strongholds have begun to crumble, from positions particularly close to the action.  Merritt operates well as a reporter in part because he has a great deal to report.  But also read how Merritt has sought out a way to walk within the church, as it grows out of a peculiar stage, with incredible grace.

I could go more into the details of the text, describing the conversations recounted, the history as told from the inside, the close encounters with power and with love.  But this is what Merritt does well.  Instead I would encourage others, and myself, to imitate his attitude, his humility, and his passion for Jesus, as we proceed deeper into our understanding of how to advance the Kingdom of God in this present age.

I’ve read many comments and blog posts on Obama’s “You didn’t build that” comment and on Elizabeth Warren’s similar statement.  I agree with much of what has been said, but almost all of it has missed what I think is a much more basic point.  Indeed, much of what has been written has tended to lean upon making a moralist argument about liberty or property or the like.  While I have agreed with the moral premises of these authors, I prefer to economize on the use of moralistic arguments.  That is, if an argument can be made on value neutral bases, then moral capital can be preserved for other opportunities.  Further, what has been surprising to me has been the number of authors who are familiar with marginal analysis that have failed to employ it.  Since the 1870s we have known the power of and important distinctions implied by marginal analysis, yet we frequently leave our price theory so far behind as to forget it.  Let’s get back to doing the business of economists, that is, teaching economics, instead of the more fleeting fun of statesmanship.
The entire argument surrounding “you didn’t build that” (YDBT) could have been silenced by the following fact: The relevant part of what has been built by entrepreneurs is the marginal contribution on top of what already existed.
First, let us set crony entrepreneurs aside.  Cronies do not create new wealth, they merely redistribute productive opportunities to themselves and restrict the entry of competition, thus capturing rents, not profits.  This is the margin upon which our moralizing perhaps ought to focus.  While price theory can be employed to demonstrate the inefficiency of allocating productive opportunities through privilege, at least there are clear villains, accomplices, and (though somewhat less clear) victims in these cases.  There are complications with eliminating privileges (also normative in nature) such as transitional gains traps, etc., but the moral argument can at least strengthen and motivate a resolve to prevent the creation of new privileged cronies.
The rest of our entrepreneurs, those who take personal risks to manage resources in innovative ways, certainly deserve our moral approbation.  We tend to concentrate this praise upon the more successful of entrepreneurs, however those that fail are equally deserving of recognition.  Insomuch as our understanding of the world is constrained not only by what we do not know, but more importantly by those things which we do not know that we do not know, those opportunities about which we are altogether ignorant, the unsuccessful entrepreneur teaches us perhaps even more than the successful.
All entrepreneurs deserve our thanks then, but what for?  The fact that they are not solely responsible for the entire structure and environment within which they built their enterprises might lead us into believing that they are not quite as much to be thanked as we might just have thought.  But this misestimates the actual reward granted to the entrepreneur.  From whence come the profits collected by the honest entrepreneur? Does she collect revenues from the construction of roads, telephone lines, police services, legal and financial institutions?  Yes.  Of course, equally with everyone else, particularly with her closest competitors.  But her profits are not the same as her revenues.  Here the old confusion between economic profits and accounting profits, between averages and margins, rears its ugly head again.
What the entrepreneur does differently from others, particularly her competitors, but the rest of us as well, is the source of her profits and success.  It is the discovery of comparative advantages, of new productive processes, of increased division of labor, of new productive recipes and organizational methods which gives the entrepreneur her gains.
The public goods, which have been claimed to provide the bulk of the entrepreneur’s profits have contributed nothing toward this end.  Any other individual might have done just the same as she. In so doing her competitor would compete away the very profits she collects.  Public goods are public.  Anyone can use them.  Everyone does, whether in their productive or consumptive roles.  Public knowledge and application of particular productive methods also makes these distinctions public goods of a sense, in that anyone could employ them.  What remains as a source, generating profits, are the peculiarities of the individual responsible for making the relevant decisions.  Her earnings are normal, equal to everyone else’s, except inasmuch as her talents and abilities are unique, whether innate or intentionally developed.
So, then our entrepreneur’s profits are related to her uniqueness.  Yet this in and of itself is insufficient explanation for her actually receiving these profits.  A man can be unique in his capacity to sing his ABC’s in just so unusual a way, yet this peculiarity will not earn him any portion of our resources.  No, what the entrepreneur produces must ultimately be of use to her customers, and at such a price and quality that they should prefer buying it from her rather than foregoing it or producing it themselves, or purchasing a similar item from her competitor.  That is, we want the entrepreneur to produce this good, and we voluntarily exchange for the purchase of this good, because in so doing we are made better off.  The honest entrepreneur can not find success without so satisfying her customers.  
It is not uncommon for politicians and the public to miss the subtleties of marginal analysis, but when economists shirk away from their primary toolset there is cause for concern.  The argument for permitting the entrepreneur the profits of her labor is sound on positive grounds.  The idea that such a businessperson owes something more toward the provision of public goods both misses the fact that her profits derive from marginal improvements to the baseline market conditions which all other potential entrepreneurs had access, and the recognition deserved for having improved the lives of all her customers, thus abiding at a parity with society insofar as surpluses are shared.  Inequalities of opportunity are of no benefit to the blessed except to the extent that they are employed in benefitting others.  These basic facts of economic analysis are sufficient for demonstrating the mistakes in YDBT.  We should reserve our moralizing for the task of ending cronyism instead.

I recently read Jonathan Merritt’s “Green Like God,” an evangelical call to stewardship of creation.

I am always suspicious of greeny-type arguments, for reasons I will explain presently, but I decided to give Merritt the benefit of the doubt inasmuch as that is possible from a biased perspective, and we are all biased by what we have been previously been exposed to.
Merritt has engaged me on Twitter, which I did not expect.  I hope to retain his respect, and to approach this discussion in an intellectually honest manner.  I expect to learn something from this interaction.

Let me also preface by noting that Merritt and I share a few characteristics.  First, we both grew up Baptist boys. I’m not a PK like him, but I was in church almost every Sunday growing up.  Second, we both share a little of the “young, restless, and reformed” profile.  Neither of us would qualify for their poster-child, both we have both dipped in that stream some.  Third, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.  I never attended, but I lived in Durham, NC for eight years, working in full-time ministry, which means I met a lot of SEBTS students who were doing internships or volunteering.  I’ve had pastors who were graduates from SEBTS, and have known members of their leadership, who were also donors to the ministry where I worked.  Lots of overlaps there, so I understand some of the culture.  Fourth, I also had a sort of epiphany in seminary.  Of course, I wasn’t enrolled!  I used to sneak into a class in Christian Ethics at Duke Divinity taught by Stanley Hauerwas.  Consequently, I am highly suspicious of the interaction of evangelicals in politics.  I may even write my dissertation, or a future book on the topic, as Merritt has recently done.  I have not read  “A Faith of Our Own” yet, but I’m going to the beach for a week, so maybe I can fit it in then, and have more to say next week.  All this to say I feel an affinity for Merritt, a camaraderie, as we are fellow travelers seeking reform within the church of Christ which we both love, and with an intense interest in justice.

Green Like God I think was written to assuage the concerns Merritt was hearing from inside the church that Merritt had become heretical by championing environmentalist concerns.  He recounts several instances where church folk approached him negatively on account of his writings on the issue.  Further, his involvement in steering the SBC (now, the GCBC) toward a resolution on creation stewardship made him a threat to more conservative factions within evangelicalism.  In this book, Merritt primarily defends himself (though the tone is not defensive by any means) against charges of heresy, and actually provides a sound theology for creation care.

That God cares for His creation ought to be obvious, and a thorough reading of Scripture ought to reinforce what the creation teaches us both about stewardship of creation, and about God’s character as well.  Merritt deftly and appropriately counters arguments which are really lazy and selfish against creation care.  Eschatological arguments are common among these, as are faulty dominionist defenses.  Adam and Eve were given stewardship over creation, and we forfeited that role over to Satan at the fall.  Part of Christ’s redeeming work is the initiation of reconciliation of man to God, but also of all things back into their right relation with one another.  This includes humankind’s relationship with God’s creation, and the proper stewardship thereof.  By demonstrating the right attitude toward creation we also testify of how God set aright the relationship between us and Him.

Merritt rightly identifies the way many environmentalists go too far, worshiping creation rather than creator.  This is a legitimate concern and may be behind honest concerns within evangelicalism about the environmentalist movement.  I think both Merritt and I suspect that not many of the concerns are actually honest or legitimate.

Merritt challenges attitudes within the evangelical camp that have been used as justifications against good stewardship.  Further, he prophetically points to consumerist behaviors within the church.  We seldom adopt truly frugal lifestyle choices. We frequently fall into the purchasing of status goods.  We seldom obey the call to work hard so that we have something to share with the one who is in need.  We often work too hard in order to achieve the acclaim of men.  Indeed we often despise rewards in heaven in favor of the praises of men.  We have that reward in full.

Merritt handles these problems adeptly, and with more grace than I just demonstrated.
My only criticism is when Merritt somewhat less critically adopts much of the environmentalist propaganda and activist suggestions.  Most of these are trifles, but they get a lot of public attention because they are very visible.  If our intention is to get men’s attention, then programs like recycling, locavoring, and fair trade purchasing are easy ways to do that.  But that is almost all the good they do.

Recycling is often just as wasteful as throwing used packaging away.  Michael Munger is the chair of political science at Duke University and has written a good bit on the ways recycling can be wasteful.  For starters, most of what we recycle isn’t all that bad for the environment in the first place!  Glass is mostly sand.  Aluminum cans do not contain harmful chemicals. Paper decomposes.  Plastic may be more of a problem, but packaging has gotten ever more efficient and uses less and less raw materials all the time.  Much of the concern about recycling seems to be related to landfill space.  But this is not really a problem, so much s the fact that no one wants a landfill near them.  This is a NIMBY problem (not in my backyard), not a quantity of trash problem.
Last week Merritt tweeted that a full grown man disposes his own body weight in trash every three months.  The implication was that this is too much, and a dangerous quantity.  Indeed the link in his tweet carries one to an article with other similar statistics.  “This year the world will generate 2.6 trillion pounds of garbage — the weight of about 7,000 Empire State Buildings.”

I carried Merritt’s first statistic forward and calculated just how much trash would accumulate if he was right that an adult male disposes his own weight I trash every three months.  Let’s repeat the exercise here just for kicks.

The nightmare from the first few minutes of Wall-E is a myth. First, assume the average man, weighing 175 lbs. is about 6 ft tall.  If squished into a square shape he could easily fit into a space 2 ft by 2 ft by 6 ft.  Indeed, I postulate a 200 lb. man could be squished into such a space.  Let there be 400 million such men. Let each of them produce the same amount of trash for 80 years.  That would be 400 million, times 80 years, times 4 periods of 3 months per year, times a space 2 ft by 2 ft by 6 ft. Big number, huh?  Try 3.072 trillion cubic feet.

But wait.  A mile is 5280 ft, and a square mile is more than 27 million square feet.  And we can pile trash up higher than just one foot.  One landfill in California has trash 500 feet deep. At that rate we can pile our 3.072 trillion cubic feet of trash into piles a mile wide and a mile long, or 27,878,400 ft sq, and 500 ft high.  That would require 221 square miles, or a space 15 miles wide and 15 miles long. Now that’s one big landfill.  But it’s for the whole population for the next 80 years!  Even if we made the landfill more shallow, or increased population growth, or waste production per person (though the trend is in the opposite direction) the result is of similar magnitude.  Suppose we needed a space 50 miles wide and long.  We’ve got that, and more to spare.   The panhandle of Oklahoma, for example, is 33 miles wide and 166 miles long.

The point is that landfill space is not the problem.  Existing landfill space is, and this is only exacerbated by regulations and NIMBY influences which restrict the creation of new landfill space.  But we often hear claims like the Empire State Building factoid.

For starters the factoid measured the weight of the building empty!  How much space would the building take up if crushed down to rubble?  I don’t know, but there are several million people from Manhattan who can tell us how much rubble was created when two larger buildings were toppled some 11 years ago.  Astonishing how something so big can be reduced so dramatically. This also is true for environmentalist propaganda.

The same goes for the recent grocery bag kick some folks are on. I’m pretty confident a disposable grocery bag can be squished down pretty small.  Reusable bags, not so much.  How many uses do you suppose one can get from a grocery bag? How many disposable bags would fit into the same space?  How much time is wasted at the checkout counter by using reusable bags?  Multiply by the number of people in line.  Is time worth anything? Is the extra electricity wasted keeping all those people in line longer important?  Which is better?

Paper cups go into the trash and require a production process.  But washing dishes uses energy and may pollute the water.  Which is better?

The bottom line is that we can know which is better in a simple, indirect way.  We can look at prices.
Prices communicate information about relative scarcities and costs to the person making a relevant decision.  If grocery stores give disposable bags away for free but charge for reusable bags that tells me disposable bags introduce a higher cost.  I’m better off using the disposables, and everyone else is better if I use disposables, too!

That last bit is the hardest to believe, but it is true.  People’s eyes glaze over when we start to discuss the wonder of the market economy and the efficiency of prices.

Prices tell me whether to buy free trade or fair trade coffee.  I buy whichever is the best combination of price and quality.  I don’t check for the Fair Trade label.  Further, the debate is still out as to whether the benefits from Fair Trade even make it all the way down to the farmers.  Having spoken to some folks from Guatemala not so long ago I was told that it does benefit some farmers, but often at the expense of others who could not get into the program.  Often the poorest are the ones who do not qualify.  The demand for their product is then reduced and they end up worse off.

Locavoring seems to make more sense until one understands the role of increasing returns to scale.  It can be tremendously less expensive to produce tons of tomatoes in Florida and then ship them to Atlanta than it is for Atlanta to grow its own tomatoes.  Shipping is less expensive than it has ever been before, and this is thanks to efficiencies which are both good for the environment, but also easily motivated by the desire for greater profits by large firms.  Producing locally is often much more labor intensive and more land intensive than other methods.

Again, eyes will glaze over.  Some economists will be right about this and some will see it another way.  The question is do we believe in prices?  I do.

But Merritt might not, and that’s okay.  He can read and believe other economists.  We can disagree.  But in Green Like God he does not lay out both sides of the argument.  He makes assertions, unsubstantiated.  Recycling is not always better.  Eating local might not be the best way to live frugally.  Fair Trade may do more harm than good in some cases.

One final note.  I was expecting admonitions toward political activism in the book at some point.  There were hardly any.  This pleased me greatly.  The legislative process is almost certainly the worst way to make a difference in the world.  Instead Merritt concentrates on what the church and what Christians can do independently and voluntarily.  For this I applaud him.  I’m eager to read “Faith of Our Own” to see how he approaches public policy in general.  I’m hopeful that he might take an approach similar to Shane Claiborne and others who have emphasized what Christians can do to make the world a better place.  I believe sacrificial altruism best demonstrates the Christian Ethic.

I’ve just watched a talk by Dan Klein on his new book.  Dierdre McClosky and Peter Boettke were on hand as discussants.  Let me say by way of disclosure that I have had two courses with Boettke, have had multiple encouraging discussions (over meals, usually) with McClosky, and was graciously invited to present a paper to Klein’s small workshop at GMU.  Let me further say that I have not read Klein’s book, and that these comments are in response to the talk and Q&A  which followed only.

Klein’s book is about the importance of the recovery of use of allegorical forms in explaining economic concepts.  Adam Smith was very good at this, and demonstrated the importance of allegory particularly within his less well known work, “Theory of Moral Sentiments.”  McClosky noted that TMS was largely neglected from the early 1800’s until relatively recently, within the last 40 years.  Smith had various opinions of his own works, but found TMS worthy of a late edition, just a year before his death.  The centrality of the importance of the work to Smithian thought cannot be the reason for its neglect.

McClosky noted a major shift in theology at the same time.  Now this is quite interesting because the theological shifts in Great Britain included a new element, Evangelicalism.  The Priesthood of Roman Catholicism sought to influence the politics of the king under feudalism.  The pastors of the Reformation became dictators, or lent their support to dictators.  Anglicanism was peculiar in its relationship to crown and Parliment.  Evangelicalism moved further toward seeking its influential role through Parliment.  It was not to the King that the Abolitionists sent their petition, but to Parliment.

When seeking to influence a king, one needs to emphasize all the virtues.  Prudence is important, to be sure, but so is justice, and temperance, etc.  When dealing with a dictator, prudence is not always enough.  Tullock showed us that it might be enough to match the Laffer curve under a parlimentary structure, but that autocracy has peculiar problems of time and succession to deal with which make the importance of adopting a particularly long time horizon very important.  The same is true for a sole proprietorship firm.  It can thrive or die depending upon the successor’s abilities to manage.  A publicly owned firm, however, has a longer time horizon which is afforded by its structure.  I’m not sure we can say that parliment has a longer time horizon, but we can say that the time horizon of any one member of parliment is not as important as that of a king.  Similarly, the other virtues may be relatively neglected when dealing with a representative body.

Further, the way the state is approached by religion, be it clergy or popular religion, will be very different under a parlimentary system than under autocracy.  Appeals will be made to individual MPs.  Propoganda becomes much more important.  Also, religion itself is affected by the new structure.  Pluralism within a coalition will be accepted when singular issues are brought before the state, such as abolitionism.  But that coalition will have to either find a new focal point or it will disintegrate.  In the meantime, there will be struggles for dominance among the factions within the coalition.  Evangelicalism in the early 1800s was a hot messy stew of rivaling factions.

The one which obtained dominance in many cases, Darbyite Scofieldianism, appealed particularly to nationalism, and provided a cookie cutter solution to the ages old Jewish problem.  But other factions survived as well, sometimes in, sometimes out of the coalition.

In the meantime, Bentham may have been particularly astute in forming an alternative sect, perhaps appealing to men of means.  A rational calculation approach to policy.  Utilitarian and utilizable.  Practical, prudent, indeed.  With Parliment primarily preoccupied with parsing pecuniary problems prudence predominates.  Forming a broader coalition with the Evangelicals in the abolition of the slave trade relied on emphasis on prudence.

When only stakeholders have a voice or a vote, prudence will persist. But when the state seeks to be freed from these prudent constraints it may have to add more voices to the mix.  Enfranchisement may have had the effect of introducing the expressive voter to the decision process.  That a rich understanding of the role of the expressive voter has only really arrived in the last few years, thinking especially of Bryan Caplan’s book, Myth of the Rational Voter,” should cause us to pause and think harder about the effects of various enfranchisements, and how they might only have been granted when convenient to the decision makers, in a way that Tullock would describe.

We should look at which policies prompted new enfranchisements, and who stood to collect rents in consequence.  The more expressive, the more Baptist-y, the policy, the more likely the enfranchisement of a fringe group, or Bootleggers.

Why was TMS forgotten?  Because parliment was absolved of the other virtues in part by the Evangelicals.  Perhaps even crowded out of that role.  Evangelicals took it upon themselves to exercise the virtues that it had formerly spent its energies reminding the state to practice.  The Evangelicals indeed became a part of the state, in the Weingast North sense, and so took on the responsibility for practicing that set of virtues, absolving political economy with the explicitly political, or governmental, again in the Weingast-North sense, of any virtue beyond prudence.  Later political economy could content itself to think about wealth and wealth alone, or still later with efficient allocation of scarce resources with alternative uses, per Robins.  But justice?  The other virtues?  Normative. Discard.  Back to science, or scientism, at least.

Constantine married Christianity to Empire.  Henry VIII married Christianity to Monarchy.

Evangelicalism, it seems to me, is the attempt to marry Christianity to parliament.

This is the theme of a good deal of my thoughts lately.  I began by investigating the abolition of slavery in Great Britain.  The story of Wilberforce is powerful and inspiring, if one believes that legislation is a legitimate means to reform.  My paper “Abolishing Transitional Gains Traps” attempts to point out that while the abolitionist movement was successful at ending slavery, it was not a clean win.  There were innocent losers as a consequence of Wilberforce’s victory.  That, and Wilberforce was a winner, as were his colleagues, many of whom enjoyed approbation and power as a consequence of their success.  Some of which was no doubt misapplied at times.

I didn’t actually read Metaxas’ biography of Wilberforce.  I went in search of something closer to primary sources.  Besides, I was writing an economics paper, and so I had to spend some time on J.S. Mill, and Thomas Carlyle, etc.  But I am currently reading Metaxas’ take on Bonhoeffer.  The biographical content is great.  It is working out to be a good introduction to Bonhoeffer’s life for me.  I have already read some of the primary sources: Cost of Discipleship, Life Together, Letters and Papers from Prison.  I may take a long period to write about the connection between Bonhoeffer and Walter Eucken, an economist in Germany through and after the war, who worked with the same resistance groups Bonhoeffer was a part of.  Eucken’s economics are often criticized by Hayekians, and rightly so, I believe, but they are seldom understood.  I am hoping that Bonhoeffer may provide a set of lenses to understanding Eucken’s thinking, since he was a religious man.

But I’ve been sidetracked.

I come to Wilberforce, etc. because today was the annual Walk for Life in Washington D.C.  I went for a walk at lunchtime through the National Arboretum, next to the Capital, and watched the busloads of evangelicals and Catholics make their way to the hill, and I suppose the Supreme Court building.

Further Twitter has been ablaze with evangelicals talking about abortion.

The most recent bit I read was from John Piper.  Now, I agree with Piper about a whole heck of a lot.  But there are elements of the Reformed doctrine I have problems with.  Primarily, the statist elements.

Today Piper includes among the ways Christians can take action on the abortion issue the passage of legislation, and even encourages some to enter politics.  Among the Five Ways to Fight Abortion Piper also lists Supplication, Consideration, Education, and Proclamation.

Where is sacrifice?

I have changed my tune on abortion multiple times before.  But here’s where I am now.

I don’t think morality can or should be legislated.  I think if Christians want a woman not to have an abortion, then they should offer that woman however much she demands to not have an abortion.

We often talk about the value of human life, but we seldom are actually willing to pay for it.  Suppose the mother demands $10,000 for the baby.  Many would be willing to pay that price. Suppose she demands $1 million.  Well, you tell me, is the child’s life worth that much to you or no?  There comes a point at which purchasing that child’s life might threaten your own child’s life.  Which is to be preferred?  Which is more valuable?  What would Solomon do?

There is usually a presumption that the woman should be responsible for keeping the baby and bearing the cost herself.  This I suppose comes from a belief in Truth.  But I don’t see God imposing Truth on us.  Instead I see Him making sacrifice to exemplify truth.

I don’t know why people expect other people to be good.  Usually it is a stable equilibrium, and where ostracism is a credible threat tend to see greater solidarity, but I’m amazed at how well people usually get along.  There is a tremendous amount of common grace covering us.

But I don’t expect, or require it, of others.  I expect people not to harm me or others, given the likelihood of retaliation.  But I do not expect them to be altruistic, and certainly not sacrificial.

But I think this is what Christians are called to.

And I think legislation is merely another tool for force.  My public choice economics training has made me extremely skeptical of the capacity of legislation to do good, or even to do well.  Bryan Caplan’s book, “The Myth of the Rational Voter” explains why politicians might do better than expected, but still, not as well as we might through sacrifice.

And my continued experience in the church, and what I read from recent Christian history, seems to show how statism is the constant corrupter of the church.  What evangelicals all across the spectrum from Westboro Baptist Church to Jom Wallis’ Sojourners.  From Fancis Schaeffer to Frankie…  What they all seem to agree upon is that Christians should be fighting to build stronger coalitions within government.

I wonder what the actual size of the evangelical vote is, and how big of a swinging coalition they comprise.  I see Wallis and Metaxas as competitors within the coalition trying to shape its direction.  The same was true of evangelicalism during British abolition.  This is when Methodism and Baptists and many other groups found their identities.  It is when dispensationalism became a powerful force.

With the coalition solidified, fighting within took over.

I guess my main question is, can evangelicalism be rightly understood as that distinct portion of Christianity which sees legislation as a legitimate way for Christians to impact the world.  That in contrast to non Christians, to anabaptists, and to Christian monarchists or imperialists.

My guess is that it is more nuanced, but I think there is a story here.