How I Became a Libertarian
I became conscious of politics when I entered the ninth grade. I was a member of my high school’s speech and debate team specializing in extemporaneous speeches on current events. Each week I read most of the major periodicals, newspapers, and policy journals in order to get a handle on topics ranging from George W. Bush’s campaign platform to the civil conflict in Zimbabwe. I found that the more I learned about politics and policy the more I became aware of a cognitive dissonance between my politics and my theology. The principles that I advocated as a Christian came increasingly in conflict with conservative politics.
I should first note that this tension, which I’ve expressed as a tension between my duties as a Christian and a citizen, is a fault line within broader conservatism. Modern American conservatism is an amalgamation of classical liberalism and evangelical populism. Classic liberalism (or libertarianism to use its modern label) as formulated by Adam Smith enshrines the free market, individual rights, and is skeptical of interventionist government. Evangelical populism (or social conservatism) seeks to enforce communal norms that are constructed from Biblical proscriptions. Perhaps you can already see the source of my cognitive dissonance.
These two streams of modern conservatism come into conflict over the role of the State. Libertarians believe that State action is at best inefficient and at worst in violation of individual rights. Social conservatives, on the other hand, have no problem with State intervention. For many on the Religious Right, the question is a matter of how rather than whether the State should intervene. The social conservative believes that the State is a legitimate vehicle for enforcing moral conformity. (I would also argue that the social liberal is simply the mirror image of his right-wing opponent, but that argument deserves its own post.) Returning to my own personal experience, I found myself giving a debate speech declaring the evils of government intervention in the economy in one breath and in the next arguing for stricter government regulation of marriage.
Now, I am an expert at compartmentalizing contradictions – I find it disturbingly easy to spend a Sunday morning in hypocritical worship without repenting of known sin – but this tension nagged at me all through college. Most people that I knew gave no evidence of having even considered the question. A number of my acquaintances resolved the dilemma for themselves by advocating for some form of dominionism whereby the state effectively becomes an extension of the church. Even prior to becoming a libertarian, I could not follow this path; I was uncomfortable with the Christian reconstructionist’s lofty view of the state.
I eventually recognized that I had a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of morality. In my mind I had been equating morality with moral behavior. See, the most government can ever hope to legislate is conformity, adherence to laws and regulations [though a cursory review of our war on drugs should raise big questions regarding governments efficacy at enforcing conformity]. Government, even in the most repressive societies, cannot legislate our motivations or our beliefs.
I then realized that the source of the tension between my political self and my theological self was a clash of definitions. What did it mean to be moral? Or to put it in Biblical parlance, what did it mean to be righteous? In politics I was supporting a definition of morality which was synonymous with conformity. Government would prevent people from acting in a certain manner and promote moral ways of behaving. Obedience to law was equivalent with morality. But my theology told me something very different. Christ’s righteousness was given, not earned. Righteousness certainly was not equivalent with moral behavior; that is the path of the legalist. The legalist tells us that if we can get someone to behave in a certain manner they will be moral. But Christ taught that righteousness is heart-centered rather than behavior-centered.
This longstanding tension relaxed as I merged my political and theological thinking. Government cannot legislate morality because the State can do nothing more than regulate external behavior. No matter how many laws that we pass which prohibit vice, our country becomes no more moral in God’s eyes. For example, simply preventing homosexuals from marrying does not somehow make America more pleasing to God. Government legislation can only hope to discourage actual homosexual acts. It cannot prevent homosexuality in the heart. I do believe that homosexuality is a sin before God, but using the government to prevent external manifestations of sin does nothing to satisfy God’s standard of holiness. Government cannot make a sinful heart righteous – only the gracious offer of redemption at the Cross can do that. By confusing righteousness with external conformity we have reflected poorly on the gospel. From our pulpits we loudly proclaim salvation by faith and not by works, but in our politics we whisper, “behave in x manner rather than y in order to be moral and thus more pleasing to God.” We have become political legalists.
The conflict over homosexuals’ right to marry exemplifies the damage that we have caused. In California, Proposition 8 excluded same-sex couples from the legal rights of marriage. Now, in a narrow sense I would defend Proposition 8 from the judicial end-runs of its opponents, but I wish that Proposition 8 had never been passed and that evangelicals had not been complicit in its passage. As believers we should not be afraid of giving offense for the gospel’s sake. Certainly, those who do not believe in Christ will not take kindly to being confronted with their sin. But this principle does not give Christians carte blanche for giving offense. We must strive to give offense only because we preach Christ, not because of our methods or manner. But do we communicate Christ’s love by denying civil rights to homosexuals? Is Christ magnified when we make homosexuals second-class citizens?
The root problem with our opposition to homosexual marriage is not that we believe homosexuality is wrong. The fundamental problem with our opposition to homosexual marriage is that we have confused the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. We are trying to use the State to delineate the Church. But when we combine Church and State we run the risk of blending the two. Thus we have made marriage, a biblical covenant between two individuals and God, something to be regulated and defined by civil government. Today, it is the State that marries us, not the minister.
This little example of blending illustrates a far bigger problem; I believe that we have come to equate American citizenship with heavenly citizenship. Now it is true that American Christians are citizens of both kingdoms, but the requirements for each must remain distinct. That seems so obvious it sounds silly, but when we conflate the kingdoms we blur the distinctions between the two. Want to be a full citizen of the United States? Well you’d better not be a homosexual (we won’t let you marry) or an atheist (we won’t let you hold office). Blurring the lines between the kingdoms of God and man ignores Christ’s proclamation, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Do we not then err when we attempt to make it so?
I became a libertarian because I realized that our rights and responsibilities as Christians are different from our rights and responsibilities as Americans. Being a libertarian gives me the freedom to fully embrace both identities. I can defend the civil right of homosexuals to marry while simultaneously preaching to them their sin and need of a Savior. I can vote for a politician while realizing that no amount of legislation, no matter how effective, can make our nation more pleasing to God. I can evangelize the lost while fully aware that as the gospel changes hearts it will make us better citizens.
But when we wrongly define Biblical morality or blend church and state we distort the gospel. Our faith in Christ transcends the kingdom of man. Like the Apostle Paul we eschew hope in “earthly things” and proclaim that “our [pre-eminent] citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Two Cheers for your Christ and Culture in paradox ideology. A right ordering of otherwordly matters with worldly matters makes a good bit of common and biblical sense, and what I love about this political ordering is that we can be at peace with Christians who are libertarians, liberals, socialists, or communitarians. So while I find libertarianism quite abhorrent (it is too inviting to racism, injustice, and narcissism for my taste), the 2 Kingdoms thinking has lead me to embrace a form of local communitarianism.
Therefore, when someone looks at a current controversy–homosexuality–or area of need and asks, “Where is the Christian witness?” the answer is not to be couched solely in terms of the actions of individuals, clergy, congregations, denominations, the Religious Right, and so on, as if Christ deploys his church only in these modes. The answer instead will be: Here, and here, and here: indeed, everywhere there is significant, useful action by Christians on behalf of shalom. In other words, thinking about diffs btwn the city of man and the city of God allows for Christian communists, Christians moderates, and even the dreaded Pat Robertsons to relate their faith to the complex issue of human sexuality.
And yet, this beautiful dichotomy between our allegiances doesn’t quite seem “natural.” It’s too based on the Enlightenment distinctions between the sacred and the profane and our notions of individualism. So while I think your solution out of the homosexual debate works–especially as a form of religious freedom (a brilliant line taken by the Episcopalians) I’m ok with people deciding as a society how to define their communities. I can understand the desire for those on the religious right to try to create a fictitious Christian America with 2nd tear stats for homosexuals. While, I’m rater fond of the “right” of gays to marry, I think its wise to admit that our “secular faith” formulation may not conform to the lived religious experience of Christians on the left and the right who ask WWJD and come to vastly different conclusions.
*I should concede that liberalism, soclialism, and my in vogue communitarianism are also in their own ways “too inviting to racism, injustice, and narcissim”…
Sorry, I believe that you are confused both politically and theologically. The motivation for prohibition, for example, was not to Christianize society, but to protect women and children. Also, it is not “Christ’s righteousness” that is at issue when deciding how to help people become better citizens or produce a more moral society, but the kind of uprightness spoken of throughout Scripture. It’s a quality that could be used to describe Naaman as well as Job, Cornelius or Peter or both the Ethiopian eunuch and Phillip. Uprightness should be a quality cultivated by saved and unsaved alike and to the extent possible, encouraged by society.
Ben, I figured you’d be close to the same page! I’ll give your communitarian heresy a pass for once…(-; I do wonder though if the tension between individual and community is similar to our imagined dichtomy between kingdom of man and kingdom of God. To parse between the two poles is to miss the point.
Dad, I wish you were right, but support for Prohibition went hand in hand with proclamations of preserving “Christian civilization” and such. Take Sam Small for example, the evangelist who wrote Bob Jones College’s creed on the back of an envelope:
I just don’t see much of eternal value in morality without Christ. Certainly, life is easier/better/superior/etc. when lived in accordance with Biblical standards of behavior, but “living Biblically” without Christ [oxymoronic, I know] does not redeem the individual or their society. We exist in this world solely to proclaim the righteousness of God, not to somehow make depraved men better men.
But government isn’t about eternity; it’s about the present, and there are plenty of reasons to desire that present government be good and society, moral. We want morality and goodness for our neighbors and family, not because those things justify individuals before God but because they are good things. Of course with regard to specific laws we have to weigh other valuable things, such as the rule of law, fairness, etc., but against your general point: just because government can’t justify men doesn’t mean we wash our hands of it.
Besides, standard libertarianism does seek to “legislate morality,” just differently from “social conservatives.” It asserts the superior moral status and capability of the individual and the harm of government. And your argument isn’t that much different from Small’s. Small says that enacting a certain law will promote the Gospel; you say that not enacting a certain law will promote the Gospel. That suggests to me that your political philosophy isn’t so much libertarian as pragmatic. From what you say it seems you like the (supposed) effects of libertarian policy more than you embrace its fundamental beliefs about man and society. Suppose we had conclusive evidence that libertarianism harms the spread of the Gospel and causes needless offense to unbelievers. Would you still call yourself a libertarian?
Sam Small was bipolar — not a very good authority. I can quote Wikipedia too:
“Libertarianism is a term adopted by a broad spectrum of political philosophies which advocate the maximization of individual liberty and the minimization or even abolition of the state. Libertarians embrace viewpoints across that spectrum, ranging from pro-property to anti-property, from minarchist to openly anarchist.”
How you can reconcile that with Biblical Christianity is a puzzle to me. I read in Rom. 13:4: “For [the state] is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.”
I’m not an anarchist; I do believe that government has a role in society and is divinely ordained. And you are right to note that we shouldn’t wash our hands of government in toto. But I am reacting against folks in the Religious Right and Left who have made it their goal to use government as the means for justifying or redeeming America.
I think you’re right. As I conceive of it, libertarianism (or its inverse, populism/progressivism) is a means rather than an end. Libertarianism is, I believe, the best vehicle for my end, a Christ-honoring engagement in politics. If it could be shown that libertarianism did more harm than help to the cause of Christ then I’d be compelled to give it up.
I don’t think that it’s beyond the pale to compare libertarianism to capitalism in the sense that both ideas are empty vessels which we fill with meaning from our ideology. This is why libertarianism is a veritable Baskin-Robbins of flavors; choose from among anarcho-socialist libertarians, Christian libertarians, or Ayn Randian Objectivist Libertarians with a capital “L”. (-:
Whatever Sam Small’s mental status, his comments are run-of-the-mill for fundamentalists at the time. If I dug around in my old Billy Sunday research I could point to many similar statements. In the early twentieth century fundamentalism had strong ties with small “p” progressivism, which I’ll define here as the idea of the State as an engine for moral improvement.
You have touched on something I’m still working out (hopefully with adequate fear and trembling). (0: But I don’t think that Romans 13 is a silver bullet. I’ll turn to a book review that references your question:
I haven’t read Olree yet, but it sounds like I need to.
Although I side with Austin here (always glad to have my son take the correct position ;^), it’s not Sam Small that was bi-polar but his erstwhile evangelistic ally, Sam Jones. (Some contemporary noted that Sam Jones was small, and Sam Small was tall.)
Every father should be so fortunate…(-;
I find this post very interesting and have been clicking through commentaries on my Logos software to see if any theological scholar deals with the Romans passage in a way that would be relevant to this discussion. I will say that 1 Peter should impact this debate in some way. 1 Peter 2:13-17, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.” The reason that I would prefer interaction with this text over Romans 13 is because Romans seems to be specifically dealing with capital punishment, whereas 1 Peter is much more generic.
What is intriging about this passage in I Peter is the given motivation for obedience to the State. In a broad sense we subject ourselves to the State “for the Lord’s sake,” not for the sake of the institution itself. We have an obligation to the State only insofar as our obedience honors the Lord. Think of how this would resonate with Christians in the early church. They read I Peter about subjecting themselves to the emperor and then are asked to bow before a deified Augustus or to sacrifice to the current ruler. They refuse, because to so submit to the emperor does not honor God, and many are persecuted as a result.
Then there is something that is intriguing for the purposes of this post. “For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people.” It appears that Peter is addressing a specific situation. These “foolish people” were dissing Christians as not being obedient to the emperor or his governors. So Peter is trying to correct the “ignorance” of these foolish people by encouraging the Christians to give the lie to their accusations of disobedience to Rome.
This is not hard to believe considering how Romans viewed Judea at the time or a Christianity that they still often linked to Judea. Judea was a rebellious province. Emperors typically had to station at least a full legion in Judea to keep the peace and to discourage revolts. Indeed, it is possible that Peter was writing this letter just a few years after the First Jewish-Roman War of 66-73. Peter may have been writing this from the metaphorical shadow of Masada. Gives it some real umph, eh?
So I am tempted, pending further study, to say that the context of this passage in I Peter shows that the author is answering a particular charge against the early Church. Thus his reference to whom is “evil” and “good” may take on a very specific meaning. Is it here Peter’s main intent to give the State carte blanche authority to regulate all forms of morality or is he primarily discouraging believers from supporting revolt against divinely-ordained government authority?
I agree with Austin that even if external morality does not save someone eternally, it is still temporally better than no morality at all. I’d also assert that external morality does have eternal meaning, even though it can do nothing to save eternally. I can’t state that any better than this section of the Westminster Confession, which is perfectly clear that external morality does nothing to save, but that external morality is better than external immorality:
“Works done by unregenerate men, although for the matter of them they may be things which God commands; and of good use both to themselves and others: yet, because they proceed not from an heart purified by faith; nor are done in a right manner, according to the Word; nor to a right end, the glory of God, they are therefore sinful and cannot please God, or make a man meet to receive grace from God: and yet, their neglect of them is more sinful and displeasing unto God.”
I don’t disagree with you or Austin. I do believe that morality is preferable to the alternative. I’d class morality as evidence of God’s common grace which He bestows on believers and unbelievers alike. So we can see evidence of God’s grace all around us in a fallen world and among fallen people. One of my earliest posts was an outgrowth of thinking about common grace.
The more pertinent question is whether or not legislating morality ought to be a function of the State. On that matter I first question whether the State should legislate morality. Even if the first is a maybe, I also question whether the State can effectively legislate morality. I meant for this post to examine the first question.
But what would the State /not/ legislating morality look like? What are amoral laws? Laws against homosexual unions make a moral judgment, but laws allowing them don’t make any such judgments?
I think the First Question should rather be, Can the State /avoid/ legislating morality (I would argue in light of the Romans 13 definition of government, it can’t), and the Second Question is then, what morality does the State legislate?
Kellen, your question ought to be fodder for a second post. Whereas in this post I attempted to define the negative, what the State shouldn’t do, a second post is needed to define the positive, what the State should do.
In that post I’d hope to make a comparison and contrast between rights and morals. That’ll require a great deal of definitional parsing, but I do not believe that the two ideas are synonymous. I believe that the proper role of government is to protect individual rights. Now what those rights are is definitely open to suggestion, but as a believer I would first attempt to root individual rights in Scripture before attempting to define extrarevelational natural law.
My apologies to Sam Small for my mistake. The point I was trying to make is that Prohibition was a great success in protecting women and children from domestic violence. Since “we the people” are responsible for the policies of our government, we have a burden on us, that the Apostle Paul did not have to bear, to ensure through our votes that our government fulfills its God given role to reward the good and punish the evil. Of course what is possible depends on reaching a political consensus with those who do not share our faith, but do share a desire to protect the weakest members of our society.
Getting back to your original issue of denying marital status to homosexuals. Here is an issue where we still have to ability to build a political consensus and protect children from the idea that homosexual marriage should be a normal practice in our society. If the government of Sodom had outlawed the public practice of homosexuality it may not have produced a single new believer in Jehovah, but maybe God’s wrath would have been averted. A libertarian political philosophy weakens our society by helping to destroy the necessary political consensus, opens the flood gates of evil and courts the wrath of God.
An essential basis for disagreement I see in the comments is whether or not one is methodologically an individualist. For libertarians, talking of what “society” or “government” wants or does is useless practically because neither societies nor governments make choices–people within them do. This sounds anodyne, but is in fact a crucial distinction.
It seems incredibly odd and culturally-bound to me to suggest that God judges on the basis of a human construct called “society” or a “nation-state” rather than the individual (though I’m sure you can make a Biblical argument for it). If I can be judged on the basis of my country, how about my state, my county, my town, my subdivision? In what way can I be said to be responsible for all these people who in various ways can be put into a group with me?
And for all the talk of engaging in political action to effect the good, there’s a questionable glossing over of the means to the desired end. Change through government requires violence and coercion. Even if God does judge based on groups and not individuals, can one really imagine him pleased at all the “moral” behavior conducted in front of a gun’s barrel?
And while we’re quoting lions of the faith, here’s one from CS Lewis:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”