August 05, 2004

Christian Libertarianism

Usually when you're looking at sociopolitical issues, your opponents are the ones who anger and scare you. Today, I have looked into the far side of what's been termed the "religious right"--a group that some might call me a member of--and I've found something that's truly frightening.

I was reading part of today's Carnival of the Vanities, and I came across an article about "Christian Libertarianism" on a blog entitled Dispatches from the Culture Wars (You'll need to scroll down to July 30th, 2004. On the way you'll see posts entitiled about "More Anti-evolution Absurdity," "Biblical Literalism and Silly Rationalizations," and "A Case Study in Religious Right Hypocrisy," which ought to tell you where he stands on Christianity). He in turn links to a guy by the name of Jon Rowe who tells us how a group called "Christian Reconstructionists have managed to infiltrate libertarian circles." I had never heard of this group before. It turns out they want "to replace this big government with, of course, a biblical theocracy." (quoting "Dispatches")

From further reading I discover that these Reconstructionists (which I originally thought might have been some sort of holdover from the Civil War era) want to set up a government based on old testament law! Rowe links to a Reason Magazine article about the group, which contains this quote (my emphasis):

"The Christian goal for the world," Recon theologian David Chilton has explained, is "the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics." Scripturally based law would be enforced by the state with a stern rod in these republics. And not just any scriptural law, either, but a hardline-originalist version of Old Testament law--the point at which even most fundamentalists agree things start to get "scary." American evangelicals have tended to hold that the bloodthirsty pre-Talmudic Mosaic code, with its quick resort to capital punishment, its flogging and stoning and countenancing of slavery, was mostly if not entirely superseded by the milder precepts of the New Testament (the "dispensationalist" view, as it's called). Not so, say the Reconstructionists. They reckon only a relative few dietary and ritualistic observances were overthrown.

So when Exodus 21:15-17 prescribes that cursing or striking a parent is to be punished by execution, that's fine with Gary North. "When people curse their parents, it unquestionably is a capital crime," he writes. "The integrity of the family must be maintained by the threat of death." Likewise with blasphemy, dealt with summarily in Leviticus 24:16: "And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him."

And people thought the Federal Marriage Ammendment was bad!

Seriously though, I'll say this once to you, David Chilton: Don't you dare put those words in my mouth. I do not, do not want Christianity reduced to another version of the Taliban, and, were we in a different era, I'd be tempted to take that statement as an attack on my honor and challenge you to a duel. The establishment of Bible-based tyranny is most emphatically not what Christianity is about. Clear?

Another quote from the same article:

On the link between reason and liberty: "Reason itself is not an objective `given' but is itself a divinely created instrument employed by the unregenerate to further their attack on God." The "appeal to reason as final arbiter" must be rejected; "if man is permitted autonomy in one sphere he will soon claim autonomy in all spheres....We therefore deny every expression of human autonomy--liberal, conservative or libertarian." Thus affirmed Andrew Sandlin, in the January Chalcedon Report.

I'm almost speechless at this. Let me correct his doctrine: God gave man a free will. He did not put armed guards and barbed-wire fences around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Put another way, a man is not moral just because he's never been given the chance to do wrong. (I believe I'm badly mangling someone else's words here, but I can't find the actual quote.) Therefore man needs autonomy to be truly moral. He has to have the ability to choose between right and wrong, or else morality is meaningless.

::shudder::

You may be wondering how a group that calls itself "Christian Libertarianism" could say "We therefore deny every expression of human autonomy." That's a pretty good question. Sandlin states elsewhere:

In the sphere of civil authority, it means the state may not impose any law not expressed in or deduced from Scripture. It means no warrant exists for the state's regulation of the economy (beyond the assurance of just weights and measures). It means the state may not tax citizens to furnish education, welfare, or health benefits. Holy Scripture alone marks out civil and criminal laws. It does not create the impression that additional law or regulation is necessary or permissible; indeed, it conveys the opposite impression (Dt. 4:2). Even the judiciary must operate within the bounds of biblical revelation (Dt. 1:13-18). The civil magistrate is bound to enforce the inscripturated law of God apposite to the civil sphere--and nothing beyond...

Thus, the state must punish murder (Ex. 21:12), theft (Ex. 22:1-4), idolatry (Ex. 22:20), and other sins that the Scriptures explicitly requires it to punish. Since we may deduce from Scripture that abortion is murder (see Ex. 21:22, 23), that copyright infringement is theft, and that the public worship of the Earth by New Age advocates is idolatry, the state may suppress these crimes.

So, apparently, the libertarianism side comes from the "and nothing beyond" part.

Let us hear the conclusion of the matter: the state is the wrong instrument for spreading any form of Christianity, and it should not be used to enforce "Christian" values. If the government ever follows after this line of thinking, it will become no better than the Taliban and other Islamist governments that have held their people back for centuries.

To you non-Christians: Please, please, please understand that these men, Chilton and Sandlin, are on the lunatic fringe of Christianity, and don't judge us all by them.

Posted by Blog Jones at August 5, 2004 02:06 AM | Category: Religion

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