Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea (22 page)

Progressive Christians also tend to want to protect women who are raped and get pregnant as a result. At present, the number of such cases is roughly twenty-five thousand per year! This is an astonishingly large number and should make us pause to ask whether the state, by banning abortions or making them hard to obtain, should force tens of thousands of women a year to bear the children of their rapists—or have to try to find and finance unsafe and often deadly back-alley abortions. Progressive Christians tend not to want the state to force women into such horrible predicaments. The consequence of that is requiring that there be safe, cheap, and readily available facilities for terminating such pregnancies all over the country, as well as morning-after pills at rape crisis centers.

The point is simple: Progressive Christians care about life and health, and in the case of abortion tend to prefer prevention whenever possible and safe, inexpensive facilities whenever necessary.

Jimmy Carter, in
Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis
, offers a clear and powerful description of progressive Christian
values. A progressive evangelical Christian, Carter delivers a spirited defense of progressive Christianity and an attack on the dangers of fundamentalism and its political role. Carter argues forcefully that being a Christian has led him to the conclusion that government should work to keep a strong wall between church and state, to respect science and religion as separate domains and to support science, to promote tolerance, to advance the cause of women, to help the poor, to preserve the environment, to avoid preemptive war and abide by just war principles, to avoid torture, to abolish the death penalty, to stop testing nuclear weapons, to ban the sale of assault weapons, to promote sex education and family planning, and to support stem-cell research.

This is the Christianity of the America that people around the world, of all religions, came to love and respect—until recently. It is the Christianity that stands for peace and hope and prosperity for all. It is the Christianity that cares about people everywhere, that respects human dignity, that deplores human oppression. It is the Christianity that goes beyond mere tolerance to embrace people of goodwill of all religions, or of none. As Carter explains, Christian values are currently under attack in the name of Christianity.

Throughout American history, progressive Christians have championed the expansion of American freedoms. America needs progressive Christians to return to their great political heritage, to stem the fundamentalist tide, and to make freedom mean freedom again.

Fundamentalist Christians are politically conservative. Why? Why couldn’t they have their religious views but be politically
progressive, or independent? How do their religious views relate to their politics? How are they distinct from progressive Christians? What do fundamentalist Christians mean by “freedom” and “liberty,” and how does that meaning fit with what these terms mean to right-wing political leaders?

There is a single answer to all these questions: strict father religion.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all have both strict and nurturant versions, which differ as to whether God is a strict father or a nurturant parent. In fundamentalist Christianity, God is a strict father. There is a strict good-evil divide in the world, where God is good and Satan is evil. God is the ultimate and absolute moral authority who issues commandments specifying what is right and wrong, and morality is obedience to these commandments. Going to heaven is the reward for obedience; going to hell is the punishment for disobedience.

The Bible, the word of God, is literally true and provides instruction for how to live. Everyone is born a sinner and would go to hell, except for Jesus’ offer of redemption. Those who take him as savior are redeemed—Jesus pays off the moral debt for their sins and they are as if they were “born again.” Now, if they obey, they go to heaven and achieve eternal happiness in God’s presence; otherwise, they go to hell and undergo eternal suffering in alienation from God. In short, this is a religion based around the idea of individual responsibility, where each person is responsible for his or her own ultimate salvation. Obedience to the word of God takes discipline, and those without that discipline will perish in hell, and deserve to. Remember that “character” in this view is the capacity to be obedient to the moral law, to measure the effects of one’s actions against what is prescribed by the strict father.

Strict father morality assumes that there is a clear division between right and wrong actions, and that there are rules (or laws or commandments) that determine which actions are right and which are wrong. Such rules mention kinds of agents and objects. The categories of agents and objects must have clear divisions as well, so that the commandments will either apply to them or not. If you have a rule that says women must wear dresses, you have to have criteria for what is a woman and what is a dress. Those criteria are essences—properties that make something the kind of thing it is. Strict father morality requires some version of the folk theory of essences.

Since fundamentalism takes God as a strict father, it too must assume a folk theory of essences. The right actions fit God’s commandments; the wrong ones violate them. It is God who determines what is good. God is therefore the essence of goodness itself, and what He does must be good. Since God is all-powerful, His purpose in the world is God’s plan. The world is thus given a teleology.

Here is some of the reasoning that comes out of the folk theories of essence and teleology when God is brought into this picture.

Women can have children and men cannot. It is therefore part of the essence of women to have children. Since God made men and women, it must have been part of God’s plan for women to have children. Therefore, a woman who chooses to have an abortion is acting against her essence and in violation of God’s plan.

Moreover, in fundamentalist Christianity, the soul—not the body—is the essence of a person. Thus, a person whose body dies can live on through eternity, because the soul can be separated from the body. Thus, the soul is not material. Absolute categories of right and wrong behavior make possible a clear distinction between heaven and hell.

These ideas, taken as absolute truth, explain part of the fervor over abortion and stem-cell research. Suppose you believe in the soul, and you believe that the soul is within, and animates, that is, gives life to, the person. Since a fetus is animated in the woman’s womb, by this reasoning, it must have a soul. Since categories defined by essences are absolute and don’t change, it follows, if you believe in essences, that the baby as born must have been a baby with a soul—not a mere fetus—all the way back to conception. The same must apply to a blastocyst, the hollow sphere containing only stem cells that stem-cell research is performed on. It too must be a baby—even though it has only stem cells and no bone cells, skin cells, nerve cells, organ cells, brain cells, or any other kind of cell. If God creates each person and places a unique soul within each fertilized egg at conception—for His purpose, which we cannot know—then abortion and stem-cell research are not only baby killing, but they also thwart God’s plan in creating each of those souls. People who are trying to end abortion and stem-cell research therefore see themselves as serving God’s plan.

Serving God’s plan is not a light matter if you believe that only those who serve God’s plan get to go to heaven and experience eternal bliss; all others go to hell and experience eternal pain and torture.

We can now see what the fuss over evolution is about. It is not just about some scientific subject matter or other for schools that happens to contradict fundamentalist religion. It is rather about who we are, given that we are largely defined by our deepest assumptions about the world: what we understand God to be (if there is one), what is God’s plan for you (if He has one), and whether you will go to heaven or hell (if they exist) for all eternity.

Evolution says that we evolved through stages from lower animals, and that the process was not governed by any purpose at all. It denies that who we are as human beings had anything to do with God’s plan. It denies teleology—that God even had a plan.
Because evolution says that species can develop into other species, it denies essence, which is unchanging. Evolution also denies absolute categorization, which is necessary not only for fundamentalist religion but also for strict father morality, which determines cultural values. If you identify yourself essentially as a fundamentalist Christian, then evolution denies your very identity!

What does all this have to do with Freedom? Everything.

In fundamentalist religion, heaven is the ultimate freedom—from pain, suffering, and privation. “Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last.” You get there by acting according to your essence and in accord with God’s plan.

Pope Benedict XVI has written extensively about religion and freedom from the perspective of Catholic fundamentalism. Essence and teleology, he notes, have causal force. When you act against what you most essentially are, when you act against what you were meant to do, it is like swimming upstream or walking uphill. You are going against the natural force of existence, you are taking on a burden that restricts your freedom. So a woman who has an abortion is acting against her essence and has given up her freedom. She has also taken away the fetus’s freedom to live. So, the pope would argue, she has acted against freedom in two ways.

In addition, he links freedom and truth. Since God’s word is truth, when you act against God’s word you are acting against truth and the force of reality—again imposing upon yourself the burden of running up against reality, which limits your freedom.

Benedict XVI, like many fundamentalists, likes to rail against the classical Enlightenment view of freedom as the autonomy that comes from reason. Reason, in the Enlightenment view, is
our essence, what makes us human beings. Because we all have reason, which is universal, we do not need to follow the dictates of external authorities like the king or the church. Morality, it is argued, follows from universal reason. In this view, reason alone gives us morality and hence makes us moral and autonomous—not in need of religion.

Benedict XVI, like most Protestant fundamentalists, assumes that morality and moral norms can come only from religion. Freedom cannot come from reason alone but requires religious morality. Here are some typical quotations:

Truth here is God’s truth, the truth set forth by religion. Freedom here is strict father freedom, requiring obedience to a moral authority—God. Since the church is the true interpreter of God’s word, one of Benedict XVI’s basic claims follows: You are most free when you are following the dogma of the church.

The Protestant fundamentalist version of this is that God made you (gave you an essence) and has a plan for you. You discover that plan by reading the Bible, going to church, and following the interpretations provided by your minister. If you go against your essence and God’s plan, you will not only have difficulties on earth, but you will not get into heaven and will suffer eternal torture. You will be most free if you act according to your essence and follow God’s plan for you.

Evangelical fundamentalist Christians believe it is their mission to convert people to their version of religion—to spread the “good news” about Jesus’ offer of redemption. They believe that only they are the true “Christians,” that Christians are better than non-Christians, that only Christians are going to heaven, that human law should be consistent with God’s law, that the word of God is true and right, that the teachings of their church represent God’s law, that social norms should fit God’s law, and that, in a Christian nation, the power of the state should uphold God’s law! They tend, therefore, to be social conservatives, who apply strict father morality to social life.

We are now in a position to answer the question asked above: What does fundamentalist Christianity have to do with right-wing politics? Adherents to both use strict father morality:

• Both have a clear division between right and wrong, good and evil. In fundamentalist Christianity, wrong is
  personified by the devil and evil spirits, and in hundreds of churches rituals to exorcise the devil take place. Conservatives have political devils—Communists, Islamic terrorists, and liberals, who are the worst of all since they undermine strict father morality itself. Both have the view that, in the words of George W. Bush, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.”
  

• Both see morality as obedience to a moral authority, ultimately God, but on earth a minister or the president—if he has the right moral views.
  

• Both see discipline as central to morality and the market as the way for disciplined, moral people to be rewarded. Both believe that undisciplined, immoral people do not deserve to be rewarded but should be punished—with poverty (conservatives) and with everlasting hell (fundamentalist Christians).
  

• Both see individual responsibility—not social responsibility—as central. For fundamentalists, each individual is to be judged by God on the basis of his own acts; everyone has individual responsibility. For economic conservatives, everyone has individual economic responsibility.
  

• Both have a notion of redemption. For economic conservatives, it lies in the market; there is always an opportunity to get rich. For fundamentalists, it lies in being born again, taking Christ as your savior, having your sins washed away and getting a new chance at everlasting life.
  

• In both, the defense and promulgation of the strict father worldview itself are the highest moral priorities. The worldview must be defended against all criticism, and it must be spread as widely as possible—both at home and abroad. Both are on evangelical missions to spread the “good news” and the truth of their strict father worldview.
  

• This highest priority, to defend and promulgate the strict father worldview, creates culture wars both at home and abroad. The danger in the United States to strict father morality is nurturant morality. Since strict and nurturant values are mutually inconsistent on most issues, the flourishing of progressive values is viewed as an attack on both conservative and fundamentalist values. Progressivism is thus seen as an enemy to be wiped out—both politically and religiously.
  

• Both identify with a literal, “originalist” reading of the founding documents—the Constitution and the Bible—as indicating the intentions of the Founding Fathers and God the Father, creators, respectively, of the nation and the world and the moral authorities we should follow today by reading their words with their original meaning.
  

• Since both see morality as obedience to a moral authority, with an absolute right and wrong, they mistake nurturant morality—based on empathy and responsibility for oneself and others—as having no morality at all. Both therefore attack progressives as “relativists” who place no constraints on moral behavior.
  

• Both believe that freedom is not absolute but presupposes a social order. That order arises from the internal discipline individuals need to obey commandments or laws. That discipline, after one is born again, permits one to remain spiritually free: free of sin and hence free to go to heaven and free from the torments of hell. In the market, that discipline allows one to gain the freedoms that money and property can bring.
  

• Correspondingly, both believe that government social programs take away the individual discipline needed to be both moral and prosperous.
  

• Both believe that morality derives from religion.
  

• Fundamentalists believe that their religion is the only true religion, that the Bible is literally true, and their reading of the Bible is literal truth. It follows that proselytizing is truth-telling, educating others as to the true nature of things, and that fundamentalist religion is therefore an essential part of education—the most important part of education. Conservatives similarly believe that of political and economic conservatism.
  

• “Freedom
  of
  religion” therefore could not possibly mean “freedom
  from
  religion.” It can mean only the “freedom of religion to proselytize”—to tell its truths aloud in all public places and to try as hard as possible to bring others to recognize that truth.
  

• Since both fundamentalist religion and conservative politics are based on strict father morality, both understand that “traditional family values” (that is, strict father values) form the basis of conservative politics and fundamentalist Christianity. That’s what holds them together.