Is Christianity Theocratic?

Danny Jenkins raised an interesting point in his response to the Badiou quote about identity politics and capitalistic territorialization I posted last week. His comment was that the Hauerwasian system, “refuses to allow the Christian narrative to capitulate to a standard of rationality foreign to it.” In other words, for Hauerwas (and others of like mind) the narrative of the church is prior to and more fundamental than any narrative “the world” has on offer, which in the west is primarily the narrative of the secular.

I agree with Danny’s appraisal of the “Hauerwasian system,” and because I agree with it I find the relationship between Christianity and the wider public sphere to be a most interesting issue. Because America is a secular nation it is assumed that there is something prior to and more fundamental than any particular religious tradition that allows diverse groups of people to come together and achieve a common good. In the case of the West, that something prior is “rationality.” In his book, Democracy and Tradition, Jeffrey Stout argues that,

Central to democratic thought as I understand it is the idea of a body of citizens who reason with one another about the ethical issues that divide them, especially when deliberating on the justice or decency of political arrangements. It follows that one thing a democratic people had better have in common is a form of ethical discourse, a way of exchanging reasons about ethical and political topics. The democratic practice of giving and asking for ethical reasons, I argue, is where the life of democracy principally resides.

~ Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2003), p. 6.

Key here for Stout is that we, as a diverse members of a democratic society, need to come together and reason with one another about the ethical issues that shape our political life together. There are two important things to note in Stout’s argument:

First, unlike other liberal democratic theorists like John Rawls and Richard Rorty, Stout believes that particular ethical convictions, which are derived from particular socio-linguistic traditions, ought to play a part in America’s democratic deliberation. In this regard, Stout is acknowledging that a person’s conception of the good is, perhaps more than anything else, shaped by their religious convictions. Furthermore, he is acknowledging the merit of “traditionalists” like MacIntyre, Hauerwas, and Milbank who argue that each particular tradition has its own unique rationality inherent to the tradition itself.

Second, despite giving this nod to what Stout refers to as the “New Traditionalism,” he maintains that there there is a form of reasoning prior to and more fundamental than these particular religious traditions. Thus, while seemingly affirming the argument of the Hauerwasian system — that ethical convictions are not derived from universal reason but from particular traditions — Stout goes on to posit a base-level rationality that is large enough to encompass all other traditioned particularities.

Stout’s positing of such a base-level rationality is seen most clearly in his chapter addressing the claims of John Milbank. Milbank, who rejects the narrative of a secularity more fundamental than Christianity, does so on the basis that the secular narrative inherently works to police the narrative of Christianity into a posture of submission. In response to this Stout counters that,

[Secularism] entails neither the denial of theological assumptions nor the expulsion of theological expression from the public sphere. And it leaves believers free to view both the state and democratic political culture as domains standing ultimately under divine judgment and authority. That believers view the political sphere in this way does not entail that others will, of course. But this just means that the age of theocracy is over, not that the anti-Christ has taken control of the political sphere (Democracy and Tradition, 93).

But what is Stout here advocating other than the basic separation of church and state? In the land of religious freedom all are welcome, and even encouraged, to worship in their own manner, so long as they don’t expect any one else to have to share in their religious convictions… of course. And this is where Stout really belies his ideological convictions, for by adding “of course” he is essentially saying “duh!” It is just common sense that no one should have to accept as reality that God is in control. But what this means is that, even though you can believe what you want, it will not have real purchase in the political sphere, at least as a discourse-shaping narrative. Rather, the political sphere requires a narrative that supersedes all religious and traditional particularities, a proposition that, for the radical Christian, is unacceptable. Radical Christianity must reject the “common sense” of Stout’s democratic deliberation, because it requires a subordination of the Christian narrative to the narrative of the state.

Stout claims that this subordiation of the Chrisitan narrative to the narrative of the state does not mean the anti-Christ has taken control. Instead, he argues, it simply means we’ve moved beyond the age of Theocracy. However, I’m wondering if there is a difference. If we have to subordinate our narrative to that of the state or some other form of rationality, thus relegating Christian conviction to the realm of the private, are we not abdicating Christ from the public sphere? Is this not anti-Christ?

It seems that Christian convictions require that we refuse to be just one voice among many within a neutral or secular public sphere. We must refuse a rationality or narrative that is prior to or more fundamental than Christianity. If this makes us Theocratic, then so be it.

Beyond the Narrative? Part 1: The Problem of Joining Hands

When I was in seminary I began a thesis that I never finished. It was going to be on the nature of the socio-linguistic boundary(ies) between the Church and the World specifically within the theology of Stanley Hauerwas. The central question of the thesis was how it was that we communicate the gospel with people outside of our tradition. Put simply, the thesis was on a Haurwasian understanding of evangelism. The problem goes like this: If communication of Christian truth claims requires participation the socio-linguistic tradition of the church (which, among other things, would include significant epistemic assumptions about the reality of God, sin, and redemption) — and if the gospel is something radically different from the ways of the world (meaning, it would seem like foolishness to those who do not share the aforementioned assumptions) — then how can it be communicated? Here is the issue put in Hauerwas’ own words:

Rather than disavowing politics, the pacifist must be the most political of animals exactly because politics understood as the process of discovering the goods we have in common is the only alternative to violence (Against the Nations, p. 7).

It is true that I do not think there is in principle any way to ensure that the Gospel can be made intelligible to someone who is not a Christian, but that does not mean that there is nothing we have to say to each other (Wilderness Wanderings, p. 6).

So my question was simply this: How? If we must work together with those outside of our narrative tradition to find the goods we have in common, and if there is no way in principle to intelligibly communicate the truth of the gospel with such a person, and if we further presuppose that the gospel is integral to our conception of the good, then how do we do find these goods we have in common? If Hauerwas is right, how can we work to build a better world with people who are not Christians?

In the end, and for several good reasons, I abandoned the thesis, but I am again visiting the question due to my reading of Eugene McCarraher. In a couple of different places (here and here) McCarraher argues that “we shouldn’t be chary about joining hands with the disembedded of other traditions.” While I appreciate and want to be enthusiastic about what McCarraher is calling us to here, my Hauerwasian tendencies trigger misgivings about jumping on board. In Resident Aliens Hauerwas (and Will Willimon) assert that,

Big words like “peace” and “justice,” slogans the church adopts under the presumption that, even if people do not know what “Jesus Christ is Lord” means, they will know what peace and justice means, are words awaiting content. The church really does not know what these words mean apart from the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth.

So the question is, if when taking McCarraher’s cue we begin to join hands with those of other traditions who also want to build a world not made in the image of mammon, how do “we” provide content to our use of words like labor, economy, and justice?

In Defense of Young Boys

A rather cheeky post has recently appeared on Danny Jenkins’ “Musing on the Theo-Political,” entitled “What Stanley Hauerwas Does to Young Boys.” The post consisted entirely of a quote from Halden’s post about why he isn’t going to vote, wherein he argues that voting is merely a choice between two terrible options that have been bequeathed to us by our benevolent corporate behemoths. Of course, Halden never mentions Hauerwas in this post, but I can see the point “Paul” was trying to make. A cursory read of Haurewas’ work could certainly lead one to believe that our best hope as Christians in America is to foresake politics and retreat into our sectarian enclaves. This is an argument that some make (you can check out critiques of this non-approach to politics by John Stackhouse and Slovoj Zizek) but I think it naive to attribute this passive sectarianism to Hauerwas. If any one were to spend actual time reading Hauerwas they would discover that his maxim, “The primary task of the church is to be the church,” is not a call for withdrawal, but a call for us to attend carefully to our own identity in order that we may serve the world on the terms of Christianity rather than on the world’s own terms. Hauerwas’ politics is not a politics of weakness or withdrawal, it is a politics carefully and intentionally Christian. Even Jeffrey Stout would agree.

This, of course, does not dismiss that fact that some people who read Hauerwas find themselves in a position where they reject the idea of voting (even if Hauerwas himself does not. Check out the comment on Halden’s post by Melissa Florer-Bixler). But what are the reasons for such non-participation. I think Halden’s point was manifold: He doesn’t vote because 1) the choice is either between a giant douche or a turd-sandwich (thanks South Park), 2) elections are ultimately determined by corporate plutocrats, and 3) voting functions as a legitimating ideology that serves the purposes of plutocracy under the guise of democracy. I think, to a degree, each of these points has merit, especially the latter two.