This is the second article in a series about the biblical view of government and how Christians should relate to it. For more, follow the RELATED tags within the article.
Two Modern Views of Politics
Moving past the more basic understanding of the role of government which we explored in our last article, we might begin to ask whether Christians ought to have a conservative or progressive outlook when it comes to the role of government on more minute details. To answer this question, it would be helpful to examine what a conservative and progressive outlook actually are at root. The names themselves suggest a policy of conserving traditional political and social values or progressing to something perceived as better.
These viewpoints are represented in their early formation, according to conservative political analyst Yuval Levin in his book The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left, by the 18th century political theorists Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine respectively. The grounding of these perspectives seems to have been their views of how government actually originates and evolves over time.
RELATED: A BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW OF GOVERNMENT PART 1 – THE ORIGIN AND ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
Where Paine saw states as tending toward corruption from their original purpose to guarantee the rights of an equal people, Burke saw societies as building over time toward a more perfect system—though small repairs could be made as needed. Though it wouldn’t be improper today to argue that the progressive seems to be looking forward to a perfect “eschaton” while the conservative looks back to a blissful Eden, it is worth noting that this is in some senses a reversal of how Burke and Paine, those founts from which our modern right and left flow, saw civilization. Paine was a “radical” in the most traditional sense of the word—one who sought to bring civilization back to its hypothetical anarchist foundations so that something new which respected the equal rights of all men could be created. Conversely, Burke was in a sense the real progressive since his argument was that we are where we are because society has evolved through a kind of natural selection where what was ineffective in older times fell away like a useless vestigial organ.
Indeed, Burke was something of a political Darwinist. From his point of view, Paine was seeking to go back to the social equivalent of a one-celled organism and forego the evolutionary advances we have made. For Burke, even a revolution which seeks to level the stratas of society will eventually result in someone ruling, and it will undoubtedly be the wrong kind of someone—someone not of the ruling class which social development has formed. In sum, Burke bases his view of society on evolutionary principles; Paine on universal truths. What they have in common with the contemporary political positions which derived from their debate is their outlook on tradition. Burke values tradition whereas Paine views it as oppressive and worth throwing off.
Another way to understand left and right is by reflecting upon which two forces they see in conflict. The conservative sees the world as a struggle between order and chaos whereas the liberal sees it as a struggle between oppressor and oppressed (particularly in the case of more radical leftists like Karl Marx). In our modern age, we could place these filters on the issues of gay marriage and police relations with minority communities. The conservative sees gay marriage through the lens of the dichotomy of a traditional order and a liberalizing chaos which threatens to rip apart the foundation of civilized society. The liberal sees the opposing sides as a privileged class attempting to oppress an underprivileged class by hoarding rights and benefits for themselves. On the issue of police relations with minority communities, the right sees police as the enforcers of moral order and those whom they use violence against as agents of chaos and crime seeking to disrupt civilized society. In contrast, the left sees these same parties as the enforcement wing of an oppressive class holding down an oppressed class of people.
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Though the progressive dichotomy of oppressor/oppressed may resonate at points with scripture (recall that Mary’s announcement of the gospel included praising God because, “He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble” [Luke 1:52, NIV].), it is not ultimately adequate because it, like the conservative model, is predicated on separating society into two opposing classes of people—one of which must be reacted to with force if justice is to be done. More than that, both models, though perhaps valid in certain circumstances, define the good on the basis of either tradition (privileging the ruling class) or progress (privileging the oppressed class) instead of on the basis of universal values and the unified nature of humanity—a humanity unified both in our sin and in the solution to our sin in Christ.
Progressivism is perhaps even more open to this danger since it often bases justice on the revenge instinct and is constantly looking to overthrow some newly theorized ancient aristocracy. Burke saw this clearly when he wrote that, “their principles always go to the extreme . . . [they will] push for the more perfect, which cannot be attained without tearing to pieces the whole contexture of the commonwealth” (Levin, p. 133). Paine himself should have learned this lesson after narrowly escaping an execution in a French jail on the charge of not being sufficiently radical.
Paine was undoubtedly correct in his critique of Burke’s traditionalism when he wrote against, “associating [precedents] with a superstitious reverence for ancient things, as monks show relics and call them holy” (Paine, The Rights of Man. Kindle edition). But Burke was equally correct when he noted that a revolution, once institutionalized, will tend toward an even greater authoritarianism than what it replaced:
“The very same vice assumes a new body. The spirit transmigrates; and, far from losing its principle of life by the change of its appearance, it is renovated in its new organs with a fresh vigor of juvenile activity . . . You are terrifying yourselves with ghosts and apparitions, whilst your house is the haunt of robbers.” (Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. Kindle edition).
Though by no means an entirely satisfactory Christian alternative, one might also examine economist Arnold Kling’s libertarian dichotomy of freedom and coercion, which seeks to limit force and expand freedom, detailed in his essay “The Three Languages of Politics.”
In the next article, we’ll discuss how Christians have related to the state in American in the last hundred or so years and note some biblical suggestions that need to be taken into account if we are to move forward with a better approach.
NEXT: A BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW OF GOVERNMENT PART 3 – HOW SHOULD CHRISTIANS RELATE TO THE STATE?