Being 'other cheeky': moral hazard and the thought of Stanley Hauerwas.

AuthorPolet, Jeffrey
PositionEssay

In the fall of 1899 itinerant preacher and faith-healer John Alexander Dowie purchased 6,600 acres of land along the shores of Lake Michigan just north of Chicago. Placing the church at the center of a city configured to look like the Union Jack, Dowie established a community based upon the rule of God through His representative leader. Dowie wanted to create a community that would guarantee employment and "health-care" (usually administered via Dowie's healing touch) to all its citizens so long as those citizens were born-again Christians, a requirement also for everyone with whom they did business. Because of his elect status and thaumaturgic powers, Dowie's rule over the city included dictating to all citizens everything from how they should vote in presidential elections to whom they should marry. Rather than granting clear titles to purchasers of land in the city, Dowie provided 1,100 year leases (100 years to the return of Christ, plus another 1,000 for the subsequent millennium) that Dowie could revoke at any time if he saw fit to do so. Dowie had believed the kingdom of God was now present but began to succumb to the temptations frequently attendant to the belief that one has ushered in a new age, including a laying-on-of-hands that became increasingly amorous. By 1903, in part because of Dowie's refusal to have business dealings with anyone who was not a member of the elect, the economy of the community began to deteriorate. After two to three years of initial prosperity many residents of Dowie's city, having donated all of their resources to Dowie's church, became dependent on state-administered charity. By 1906 the theocracy of Zion, Illinois, had crumbled. (1)

The city of Zion plays a powerful metaphorical role in Judeo-Christian history, for it is the realm, of perfection (Psalm 50:2) and the place where all live in perfect obedience to the perfect law, where "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (Isaiah 2:4). Zion operates as a metaphor of the relationship between God's chosen people and the surrounding world. It can be the place to which all nations come, or it can be the city that, though separate from the world, radiates its law. In the former instance, Zion keeps to itself while waiting for the world to see the wisdom of its ways. In the latter case, Zion seeks to expand its law of perfection to the surrounding world. At its core, the emphasis on communal perfection seeks to quell the religious anxiety generated by a faith that is demanding, uncertain, and absolutist in its claims.

This intimate mutual penetration of theological reflection with political order constitutes a type of political theology that can operate theocratically. Since the publication of Carl Schmitt's Political Theology in 1922 the concept of political theology has held bad connotations for political scientists. Schmitt largely used the concept to undergird a particular conception of legitimacy that was critical of liberal institutions, but arguably would lead to the totalitarianism of the Nazi state. In Schmitt's rendering, political theology was about authority, and the modern state was a secularization of Christian theology. (2) Schmitt believed politically liberal states to be especially problematic, for they undermined any metaphysics of truth. He wrote: "Just as liberalism discusses and negotiates every political detail, so it also wants to dissolve metaphysical truth in a discussion. The essence of liberalism is negotiation, a cautious half measure, in the hope that the definitive dispute, the decisive bloody battle, can be transformed into a parliamentary debate and permit the decision to be suspended forever in an everlasting discussion." (3)

Some contemporary American theologians, neither familiar with Schmitt nor, one assumes, particularly hospitable to his arguments, have nonetheless engaged in analogous theological criticisms of the liberal project, while at the same time developing a concept of the Church as a separate polity (Zion) that is perfectionist in intent and effect. Foremost among these is Stanley Hauerwas, who just prior to the events of 9/11 was hailed by Time magazine in a series of articles featuring "America's Best" in various fields as America's top theologian and one of its most influential ethical thinkers. In this article I will outline some of the basic contours of Hauerwas's theology, develop their political significance, and respond to the challenge Hauerwas presents. What I hope to establish is that in his emphasis on the doctrine of sanctification, to the exclusion of other doctrines, Hauerwas's ethics fail on one basic Christian principle: loving one's neighbor. In this article I want to focus on his ethical thinking, and particularly his arguments concerning the church as an alternate polity, the uses of violence, and his notion of authority.

Hauerwas developed his theological inclinations in an American context where, as he might say, the object of theological reflection is America itself. The Social Gospel writers of the early part of the twentieth century turned the biblical idea of the Kingdom of God into progressivist politics. Reinhold Niebuhr chastened progressivist optimism with reflections on the tragic and ironic character of American politics, grounded as it is in the ever-present reality of human sinfulness. Many contemporary Christians either identify America as a Christian nation or use Christian morality to support a democratic ethos. All these, Hauerwas believes, make the primary mistake of subordinating Christianity to politics and taking their citizenship in the nation to be more fundamental than their citizenship in the Kingdom of God. (4) He is especially dismissive of contemporary Christians who all-too-easily engage politics seeing no conflict between their beliefs and such engagement. Any such interrelation between the political realm and the church Hauerwas rejects as "Constantinianism." (5) According to Hauerwas, Constantinianism involves the efforts of the church to sanctify state-based politics, which by definition are violent, and thus contrary to the very nature of the church. It also involves efforts by the state to enlist the church into its projects, often as a tool of legitimization. Hauerwas believes one cannot honor both God and Caesar. (6) Any Christian endorsement of state-based politics must necessarily lead to an endorsement of politics at its worst. (7) Hauerwas hedges this position by arguing that Christians ought to be "discriminating about this or that state or society," (8) but he gives no rationale for why Christians ought to so discriminate and provides no criteria by which they can discriminate. The only thing that can be said for sure of Haeurwas's thinking is that he regards liberal democracy as a particularly bad form of government. (9)

Hauerwas's analysis may or may not stand on the historical accuracy of his idea of Constantinianism, but it is in any case a remarkably blunt instrument of analysis, and a tendentious one at that. Hauerwas requires a narrative of church history that sees the early church as insular and directed toward its internal perfection, resulting ultimately in its persecution. Hauerwas frequently champions the virtues of martyrdom. For him, the pristine purity of the early church was disrupted by the rise to power of Constantine, which resulted in individuals joining the church not out of faith but out of expediency. Furthermore, faith lost its critical edge, since being a Christian no longer required sacrifice, which is the essence of Christianity, and also because the faith began to contaminate itself with the virus of political violence. I doubt, however, that such a telling of history--an attempt to rescue the pre-Nicene church from the corruption of Constantinianism--can stand up to critical scrutiny. (10) Already by A.D. 250 the church had become more practical and more political. (11) The increase in the number of Christians in the early fourth century made the promotion of Christianity under Constantine almost inevitable. (12) Indeed, Fox argues there emerged within late third century church leadership a profound wariness of the perfectionist strain, particularly as manifested in the actions of the desert fathers. As a result, many Christian writers in the larger urban areas began to reflect more on the practical use of authority, given that, inter alia, the behaviors and teachings of the perfectionists tended to make the lives of average believers untenable and the ordering of communal life impossible. Combined with the problems besetting Roman civilization--plague, economic instability, raids, and problems in the imperial household--Christianity began to offer a significant alternative to Roman cultic practices. (13) In other words, as Christianity became more successful, the pressure to structure itself along authoritarian lines and to cooperate with the state increased as well. When Constantine came to power, therefore, he did not impose Christianity as an official state religion but, rather, offered to Christians certain legal privileges they had not previously enjoyed, such as the restoration of property lost through the Diocletian persecutions, (14) and created greater and more stable church unity through the defining of orthodoxy.

Hauerwas's reading of history allows him to posit the reality of a perfectionist church which offers itself as an alternative polity to the world. "The church," Hauerwas repeatedly enjoins, "does not have a social ethic; it is a social ethic." "The world" is a culture of unbelief, hatred, and violence. The church is a gathering of people constituted by the death and resurrection of Christ in such a way that they lead lives so altered by the sanctifying power of the cross that they live by the law of forgiveness and the perfection of virtue. They are ruled by the Sermon on the Mount, and, since the church...

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