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.

Among the first thoughts that occur to me regarding Jubilee:
1.  The importance of the role of tribes within the Jubilee laws is important.  Jubilee serves as a constitutional construct that protects the decentralization of power among the tribes.  Though kings may rise up from within particular tribes to play a leadership role over the nation of Israel, kings were constrained in allotting parcels of land as rewards, unlike divine right monarchists of Europe.  It is as though God built in many layers of constraints on kings in advance, even though he expressed a preference against there being a human king at all.  Note that the constraint is primarily on power, not on markets.  But it is possible that one tribe might have financial success such that it could buy up land from other tribes, eventually swallowing them up, though through voluntary transactions.  Why should this be a problem?  No reason, except perhaps to preserve the distribution of power.
2.  The laws regarding Jubilee were known in advance.  At least fifty years in advance.
The net present discounted value of a property which must be returned fifty years from now is equal to the value of that property today divided by one plus the interest rate raised to the power of fifty.  A million dollars fifty years from now is worth less than ten thousand dollars today at an interest rate of ten percent.  Knowing in advance that property would have to be returned, people would calculate accordingly.
Those who were operating under the assumption of jubilee approaching might stand to gain a huge windfall if they could somehow effect the suspension of Jubilee!
The failure to keep Jubilee then was an enormous injustice because it arbitrarily changed the reasonable calculations of many to the benefit of the few.
3.  Jubilee goes hand in hand with the prohibition of usury to fellow Israelites in need.  Together they serve as constitutional constraints encouraging solidarity and care for one another, under threat of ostracism.  In a market as thick as today’s global market solidarity is too difficult to sustain under mutually self-interested motives.  Ostracism is not an effective disciplinary mechanism.  This is a real problem within the church, where people just move their membership when things get hard.  But Jubilee and prohibitions of usury serve to make matters worse under conditions like ours, not better.
4. What we should learn most is that constitutional constraints on power are essential.  Jubilee was a simple and robust mechanism for the Israelites as a relatively closed and thin-market economy.  And even then the lust for power and the desire to manipulate the law gave way easily to idolatry and arbitrary creation of laws.  We need to find new simple rules (to quote Richard Epstein) which are robust to today’s market which can constrain power from influencing the market.  The concept of employing Jubilee today fails to appreciate how much scope for abuse of power such a market intervention would create.

I enjoyed your piece about Civil Disobedience and Jose Vargas.
One element I wonder why you left out:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously quoted Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” It seems nearly impossible for those stuck in an unjust situation to be able to get out on their own. Further, reform which approaches Pareto optimality is very difficult when transitional gains traps are involved. The incumbent beneficiaries need to be compensated for reforms that would make them worse off. These three principles together point to the need for people of good will who enjoy a privileged status to engage in civil disobedience at least along side, and preferably in place of, those in jeopardy.
What is necessary is for people to voluntarily declare: “I will provide refuge to illegal immigrants until the law is changed.” But we must also be willing to post bonds on behalf of immigrants sufficient to insure the incumbent beneficiaries of at least their status quo.
What I am suggesting is an attitude of sacrificial altruism, in the absence of which any reform is the choosing of a lesser injustice over a greater injustice. But such measures of injustice are subjective, and thus socially unmeasurable.

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.

1. Indeed  This website has more and better jobs than some of the other sites.  But do also check out Monster and the Washington Post Jobs section, and, ironically, Craigslist.  Oh, and as a last resort, USA Jobs…
2.  Internships.  It sucks, you don’t get paid as much as you would hope, and you have to make the coffee sometimes.  But you also can get valuable experience and even co-author on some good projects.  That has been my experience at the U.S. International Trade Commission.  Pick somewhere that produces the kind of work you would like to do and find out about internships there.
3.  Job-job.  Wal-Mart.  McDonalds.  Get a job-job while you are looking for THE job.  If you have to, take a non-paying internship to get experience, and take a job-job to pay the bills at the same time.  Work your ass off.
4.  Write.  While you are not working at THE job write the sorts of things you would like to be writing at THE job.  BE your future job.  Make a job.  I think this sort of practice breeds entrepreneurs.  Look around you and see what you can see.  Write about it.  Use the tools you learned at Mason Econ to tease out the Public Choice implications of local policies and write about them.  Do some research and then submit to a local paper or a research organization or think-tank.
5.  Learn some tools.  How good are you at STATA?  Hint: you are not good enough.  Get better.  Do you know Access?  SQL?  Can you use Macros in Excel?  Have you used Dreamweaver?  Can you write JAVA?  Find someone that needs a project requiring one of these skill sets and volunteer to do it as an opportunity to practice the skill.  You could take more classes, but having a product to display is infinitely more valuable.
6.  Learn something new.  Another foreign language.  More math.  Welding.  More math.  How to do taxes.  More math.  Read a good book, Peter Boettke’s new “Living Economics” is only $10 on Amazon.  Learn guitar.  More math.  (If you didn’t take Calculus 3 and Linear Algebra you don’t have enough math.  Don’t go back to school for this-though you could probably sit in on a course without paying and learn just as well…)
7.  Get a grunt job.  I sit at a desk 8 hours a day, and sit in traffic another 2-4.  I’m everyday a more level guy, my bubble is in the middle.  I miss the jobs I had as a younger man, working in a warehouse lifting heavy objects.  I sometimes dream about working in landscaping, construction, or manufacturing just so I could move my body.  Most of these jobs are hard work, but a lot of fun, and the people you will work with are salt-of-the-earth no bullshit people whom you will learn important life lessons from.  If you get the chance to take this kind of job, do it.  I’m surrounded by interns here in the district.  Young people who dress too well and stress too much about too many superficial trifles all day long.  Some of them never got a single callous or splinter in their lives.  When my professors were in grad school many of them worked construction over the summer to earn money for school.  Today grad students intern or take a long vacation.  Something’s missing.
8.  Volunteer.  Getting a job is about knowing someone whom you can help.  Exchange is about me having this which you want and you having that which I want and us swapping to magically create new wealth.  This happens through volunteering, only no money changes hands.  Networking happens when volunteering quite often.  Lots of guys in real jobs volunteer, too.  Demonstrate a good work ethic, and be a good conversationalist.  You may meet your future boss.  You may also meet your future wife!
9.  Go to church.  Just a recommendation.  Can’t hurt to give it a try.
10.  Don’t: waste time on facebook or blogs.  Play video games.  Watch lots of TV.  Stay drunk.  Get high.  Watch porn.
11. During this period of life you are transitioning from being a consumer to being a producer.  Spend your time producing.  Fix things around your house if you get bored.  Paint one of the rooms.  Ask a neighbor if they need any painting done!  Hint: you can often get premium “blooper” paint at Lowes for as little as $5.  Use the monotony of the work as a tool for meditation.  Offer to wash neighbor’s cars.  They might know of a real job for you.  Walk a dog. Fix a bike.
12. Go camping if you get the chance.  Not sure how that relates to a job search, but it seems like good advice, anyway…

Thanks for asking.  A lot of this is good advice I should be heeding myself, so it was good to bring it out of me.  Good luck, and let me know how you fare.

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.

I decided, before reading other people’s responses, to provide one of my own:

Am I a Christian Libertarian?

Jesus, God incarnate, demonstrated to us the way to perform justice when He died on the cross.  He suffered the punishment another deserved.  He also freed from bondage those whom were bound under oppression.  Yet, He did not heal all of those whom He met.  He only did as He saw His Father in Heaven doing.  As believers then, if we imitate Christ, we will adopt a peculiar ethic, and a sacrificial approach to justice.

The classical liberal tradition of thinkers flowing out of the Scottish Enlightenment, through the Austrian economists, and into Virginian Political Economy has demonstrated that the state has a tendency toward tyranny, no matter its form.  Various thinkers have assigned different legitimate tasks to the state, depending on their view of human nature, and their perspective on the capacity of constitutions to be initiated justly and then to maintain effective constraints on power.  At the extreme end of these thinkers are a group of anarchists, sometimes called anarcho-capitalists, who vary among themselves in their conception of anarchy.  That the approach is worthy of consideration, and not deserving of rejection out of hand, should be recognized by the recent work of Ed Stringham and Peter Leeson, among others (and both students of Peter Boettke, a professing Christian).

That Jesus might have been an anarchist as well has been suggested by writers such as Jacques Ellul, and is hinted at by theologians such as John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, and his protégés.  (Full disclosure: I have sat under the teaching of both Hauerwas and Boettke personally, perhaps the only person who can make that claim!)  The most cogent line of thinking among those who read Jesus, and the rest of Scripture for that matter (See Greg Boyd’s work.) has a decidedly Anabaptist flavor.

Having set this framework, let’s see if we can reconcile Christianity and Libertarianism.

The anarchist line of Libertarians recognizes that the state, the monopoly on the use of force, ultimately cannot be constrained.  For all of James Buchanan’s spinning, his argument requires a unanimity which is not forthcoming for the establishment of a workable constitution.  A constitution, that is, which will effectively and permanently limit the reach of the state.  Draw the line where you will, perhaps at Nozick’s night watchman, perhaps at Rawls’ minimax condition, no matter.  The state oversteps its bounds, whatever bounds it agrees to, without fail.

The tightest constraint on the state conceivable might include a judicial branch which employs the process of common law and precedent to hear individual cases and make decisions about the allocation of rights.  The law would essentially describe negatively the rights each individual could expect to hold protected from others, and would enforce voluntary contracts.  Ostracism might be employed as an effective disciplinary measure.  I say might because it is nearly impossible to tell what sort of system might emerge spontaneously among individuals with equal allocations of power and protection.

But the simple fact is that in the face of all due process justifications for this approach to constitutionally guarded justice we live in a world where power has been employed historically, and where there is an unequal distribution of power presently.  Following purely just processes from here on out does not guarantee to evenly distribute that power over the course of time and to correct historical injustices.  Further, in order to correct any of these injustices redistributive action may need to take place.  But seldom is it possible to isolate the beneficiaries of injustice and to tax from them what is necessary to make the oppressed whole.  We are, on so many margins, within what Gordon Tullock coined a transitional gains trap.

Suppose John Newton sails a boat to Africa and enslaves some people, stows them away to the West Indies, and sells them to one T. Carlyle, a plantation owner.  Later William Wilberforce comes along and suggests that the plantation owner ought to free his Equiano.  Wilberforce is a Christian, you see, and he understands Equiano to be a man and a brother, a fellow son of Adam and of Noah (not Ham).  It is objectively wrong to Wilberforce for Equiano to be deprived of his liberty.  But Mr. Carlyle has a legitimate problem.  He purchased Equiano at the market rate, which included the net present discounted value of all the labor Equiano was expected to provide for the rest of his life.  Indeed, Carlyle only just was able to afford to buy Equiano, and only did so as a risky bit of entrepreneurship on fully legal grounds at the time.  For Wilberforce to instantaneously emancipate Equiano would impoverish Carlyle.  Meanwhile, Newton would have gotten off amazingly with all the real profits, and would be unharmed by Wilberforce’s emancipating grace, and its costs.

You see, Wilberforce has brought grace to some, and a sword to others, but at no considerable cost to himself!  Instead he has employed, as an evangelical, Parliament as a tool for social justice and reform.  Even if, to the approbation of the Utilitarians such as John Stewart Mill, Wilberforce should compensate the plantation owner, he would have to do so at the expense of British taxpayers.

Suppose instead another voice enters the fray, assuming that grace is costly, and that to do justice must needs involve personal sacrifice.  Let’s call him Dietrich.  Dietrich sees early on the Parliaments are fragile.  Perhaps he perceives that a people downtrodden and discouraged will either need to find freedom in confession, or otherwise be lead down a road to serfdom.  Dietrich proposes that he buy Equiano from the plantation owner out of his own finds, which he has labored hard for, pursuing his vocation honestly, in expectation of having something to share with one in need.  Well, the plantation owner is taken quite aback by this demonstration of sympathy.  He is completely unfamiliar with such Moral Sentiments!

Now we might expect one of two reactions on the part of T. Carlyle.  First, he might consider good Dietrich a pumpkin-faced fool.  The good natured lad had failed to recognize the moral hazard in his action.  There are Equianos and John Strongs aplenty to be had from any passing Newtonian vessel.  However, there is an outside chance that the sacrificial action might have a transformative effect on the plantation owner.  He may come to experience grace freely given.  He may come to recognize the imago dei in Olaudah.  Carlyle might even come to recognize how dismal his own life has been, and repent of both his oppression and any other evil sciences he had been practicing.

Now, it is quite right to say that Wilberforce was the more practical man in this scenario.  He pursued a reasonable strategy, at least according to any Benthamite.  He may have been motivated into action by appropriate sympathies, good intentions.  And, he got the job done, didn’t he?  So what if it took decades, innumerable resources, and new strategies of activism?  And nevermind that the coalition which formed in the process became its own special interest group, affording itself privileges and seeking out rents.  Forget about the fact that Carlyle might have perceived the imminent emancipation and calculatingly cut cucumber consumption whilst whipping his workers worse.  A moral victory would have been won.

But Dietrich certainly took the more difficult approach.  He preferred life together in suffering with Equiano to adoption of the oppressors’ methods.  Nevermind that not all the slaves were able to be saved, it was just important that an attempt be made for Carlyle’s life as well.  After all, God is sovereign over the suffering of His innocents.  We are merely responsible to obey Christ when He bids us to take up His cross and follow.

This little vignette, with all of its biographical errors and loose interpretations, perhaps illustrates what it might mean to be a Christian Libertarian.  Having a full appreciation for the fallen nature of man, we look for mechanisms which correct or usefully channel that nature.  The market emerges in response to this, even in the absence of a state.  Indeed, a robust minimal state such as previously described might emerge in response to the presence of a market.  If judicial and policing services can be provided on the market, such as David Friedman has suggested, no state at all may be necessary.  Indeed, in reading I Samuel we realize that God understood the wicked proclivity of states to aggrandize power unto themselves.

But we live among pagans and idolaters and people who desire a state so that they can manipulate it.  We would love to have a messiah come and take over the state, to remove the wicked from power, and to set the world right through the exercise of His divine privilege.  We would love to be excused from obeying the rulers currently in place.  We might be satisfied by replacing the current leaders with others who have greater integrity.  But Jesus demonstrated none of these strategies.  He challenged the authority of every power-holder He met with His prophetic words.  He demonstrated the utter illegitimacy of all earthly power.  He did not deny that all the kingdoms of the earth belonged to Satan when tempted.

Instead Jesus demonstrated a subversive approach of sacrifice.  This is what it means to be a libertarian Christian.  To put no hope whatsoever in the state, yet not to seek rebellion.  To pay one’s taxes, but to not expect them to do any good.  To be the good one hopes to see in the world.  To care for the poor in spite of state welfare programs.  Spite of a kind that prophetically proclaims to the state: your very best and most sincere efforts are filthy rags.

The Christian libertarian says, the best unregenerate people are capable of is mutual satisfaction of wants.  In non-Christian marriage we ought to expect a Randian mutual rape.  Christian marriage ought to be an example of Christ’s relationship to His church, and as such, set apart as a church enforced covenant.  We don’t need marriage contracts with the state, unless as efficient bundles of other contracts to which all people should have access.  We don’t expect the civil government to capable of reflecting a positive sort of goodness or justice, but at its best only capable of enforcing negative justice.  We don’t seek out protections for ourselves or our families, but instead provide our own lives and homes as refuges for the world.

The usual mistakes made by Christian Libertarians as outlined by Joe Carter are overcome.  A consistent philosophy in which Christianity and Libertarianism are fully compatible has been described, though we might disagree on definitions.  The two words have not simply been mashed together, but a careful understanding of both traditions has been demonstrated.  Libertarian social mores are permitted for unregenerate souls.  That is, victimless crimes are not prosecuted, though sacrifices may be made to appeal to the latent imago dei which remains.  Therefore the charge of adjectivalization is refuted.  The charge of conservatism is denied with Hayekian vigor.  The accusation of insanity is dismissed.  Finally, I challenge anyone to find something more at the root of Christianity than sacrificial love in imitation of the cross, or anything more libertarian than a minimalist state or anarcho-capitalism.  This really is both.

What is difficult however is that most libertarians will find sacrifice foolish, and most Christians will find anarchy dangerous.  I think that is precisely where the Christian should find himself.

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.

But Mulder’s review sets me to thinking.

He argues that Piper makes a mistake in arguing for a miracle approach to resolving racial injustices.  That is, Piper says that what is needed to overcome racial injustices is for whites and blacks each to come to salvation and regeneration through Jesus.  Mulder thinks this is wrong because it implies equal proportions of culpability for the current racial injustice on both blacks and whites.  Clearly, whites are more culpable and have exercised more power-over than blacks in erecting structural inequalities.

Mulder then notes Piper’s application of the Wilberforce story, and criticizes it.

Mulder would have us follow Metaxas’ reading of Wilberforce more closely. “Wilberforce did not attack slavery through conversion efforts… Rather, he used a government apparatus to undermine an economicstructure.”

It was not even the use of the phrase “economic structure” when what is implied is clearly a state enforced institutional structure and not economic, or market-market based.  But Mulder’s faith in the state to effectively address structural injustices seems completely ignorant of public choice theory.

I have criticized the Evangelical cannonization of Wilberforce already.  But here is simply another example of this same lesson, employed by more liberal evangelicals rather than conservative evangelicals.

Wilberforce helped form a coalition which eventually wrought abolition of slavery in Great Britain and its Caribbean colonies.  That this coalition ended an unjust condition is easy to notice.  It is harder, infinitely harder, to recognize that this was done in an unjust way.  That is, the slave owners were not compensated by the Christians.  Instead the slave owners were only partially compensated, and that at the expense of the entire British taxpaying populace.  My claim is that it is unjust to force someone to do what is just.  The only route to justice is sacrifice.

I’ll have to write more later.