Earlier I defended Mark Noll's decision not to vote for President against Chuck Colson's charges that Noll is shirking his Christian obligations. I've received some thoughtful objections to my invocation of Hitler-Mussolini in the course of that defense. Professor John O'Callaghan asks "Isn’t Colson’s point easier to make because neither George Bush nor John Kerry is the moral and political equivalent of Hitler or Mussolini? The more political rhetoric on both sides notwithstanding, are we really living in anything like Nazi German or Fascist Italy?" (His own helpful essay is the subject of this earlier post.) And reader Patrick O'Hannigan writes:
Did you really mean to answer Colson's substantive point by painting with an
entirely hypothetical brush, or are you implying that the "moral conflict
many pro-life progressives are facing" really is on the order of Hitler vs.
Mussolini? The first approach is weak; the second dishonest.
Read Colson's argument again: he alludes to a search for the best people we
can find to lead us. In what scenario would that yield a choice between
Hitler and Mussolini? None that I can think of. Even in purely historical
terms, Hitler and Mussolini shared the stage with Churchill and Roosevelt,
who were manifestly better men, in spite of their considerable flaws.
Wondering what Colson would say to Noll if different candidates were
involved is the rhetorical equivalent of a parlor game: by following Alice
down the rabbit hole to Wonderland, it implicitly concedes that Colson has
the stronger argument in the reality we already know.
I don't read Colson's argument so narrowly -- he's not telling Noll that Christians should vote in light of the candidates' merits in this particular election. Rather, he seems to cast voting as a blanket obligation. He plainly states that "voting is not an option for Christians," but a "biblical duty." His foundation for this assertion is not convincing. Colson's characterization of American Christians as God's "instruments for appointing leaders" is suspect, especially in light of his supporting assertion that "Just like Samuel in the Old Testament, we are commissioned to find the very best people we can who are best able to lead us." Samuel received direct revelation from God that Saul (and later David) were to lead Israel. As a one-person appointments committee, he anointed them. Deal done.
How is this biblical cherry-picking helpful to figuring out a Christian's voting obligations in 21st century America? Certainly it shows that God acts in human history, but it does not show that the Christian's most effective option for serving as an instrument of God's purpose is to support one of two candidates offered up every four years by secular political parties, as though God has designated either the Democrat or Republican each time around, and we simply need to decipher which one. (If the obligation stems from the duty to minimize harm/evil, then third-party candidates are not viable options, I presume, for they present no realistic chance of being elected. Besides, God would never back a certain loser, right?) I agree that Christians should work to elect the best leaders possible, but that work won't always result in an election-day choice that all Christians can embrace.
Even if Colson's conception of civic obligation can be narrowed to the Kerry-Bush choice, I think it's a non-starter. If we're unable to construct a blanket obligation for Christians to vote, how can we construct that obligation in this election? If there's one thing that the discussion on Mirror of Justice has evidenced, it's that reasonable, thoughtful Christians can disagree passionately about the moral status of the Bush and Kerry candidacies. Further, the moral failings of each candidate's agenda do not necessarily lend themselves to ranking in a way that makes a morally problematic candidate palatable. ("Disregard of the international community is bad, lax environmental protection is really bad, but abortion is really really bad, so I'll vote for Bush.") I certainly was not intending to equate Bush-Kerry with Hitler-Mussolini, but if we can't discern an obligation to choose between the latter, I don't think there's an obligation to choose between the former.
Rob
Evangelical leader Chuck Colson has criticized Mark Noll for espousing a "none of the above" approach to the election. Colson argues that Noll's position:
is dead wrong and damaging to democracy. It’s the utopian notion which assumes divine perfection in fallen humans. His assumption that we can support only candidates who have perfect scores according to our reading of the Bible makes me wonder how he votes at all. And if that’s the standard, all of us should stop voting.
But that’s exactly what the fundamentalist movement did in the early part of the twentieth century, the movement Mark Noll so correctly criticizes. Their error was allowing perfectionism to get in the way of their responsibility to act for the common good. It’s an error we can’t afford to repeat—not this year, not ever.
Voting is not an option for Christians. It’s a biblical duty, because by voting we carry out God’s agency; we are His instruments for appointing leaders. Just like Samuel in the Old Testament, we are commissioned to find the very best people we can who are best able to lead us. Not to vote, or to turn down both presidential candidates because they’re not perfect on a biblical score sheet, is a dereliction of biblical responsibility.
Read the rest here. (Thanks to CT for the lead.)
I'm wondering, would Colson insist on a Christian's duty to vote regardless of the options? Hitler versus Mussolini? It's an easy case for Colson to make now, because he's a big fan of Bush's, but were he to face the moral conflict that many pro-life progressives are facing, would it be so easy for him?
Rob
One obvious conclusion to draw from this election debate is that the nuanced worldviews of Catholic moral and social teaching do not find an especially welcoming home in a two-party system. The Democratic and Republican parties are able to divide the spoils of our enormously diverse citizenry into overbroad and misleading categories, offering fixed agendas on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Pro-life Democrats are forced to lend support to the "mainstream"-ing of abortion and start-up of the embryonic stem cell assembly line, and Common Good Republicans have to narrow their conceptions of "common" and "good" to justify embracing a corporate, devolutionary, and us-versus-them agenda. If the political landscape was populated by an array of parties, battling it out for hearts and minds, not in a zero-sum contest of blue state / red state polarization, but as part of a system where coalition building and intercommunity dialogue were an essential part of politics, would not that be fertile ground for the entry of policy positions that are not amenable to either/or classification?
So instead of holding our noses and voting for one or the other, or staying home entirely (which will be attributed in all likelihood to apathy, not principled objection), is there something to be said for casting a principled vote in favor of a multi-party system? Especially for those of us who are not in contested states, wouldn't a vote for Nader (or other third-party candidate) represent a step in the right direction, even if the particular candidate may not be a substantive improvement on Bush or Kerry?
Rob
Friday, October 29, 2004
Readers might be interested to know that in an email, Mark Noll clarified that his thoughts on the election (see earlier post) could best be understood as a "Lament for not having a Christian Democrat tradition in the U.S." Perhaps another indication of the void to be filled by the Seamless Garment Party?
Rob
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Mark Noll (see below) is not alone. Another one of my favorite Christian thinkers, Alasdair MacIntyre, is also taking the "none of the above" approach, and he defends his decision in terms of obligation:
When offered a choice between two politically intolerable alternatives, it is important to choose neither. And when that choice is presented in rival arguments and debates that exclude from public consideration any other set of possibilities, it becomes a duty to withdraw from those arguments and debates, so as to resist the imposition of this false choice by those who have arrogated to themselves the power of framing the alternatives. These are propositions which in the abstract may seem to invite easy agreement. But, when they find application to the coming presidential election, they are likely to be rejected out of hand. For it has become an ingrained piece of received wisdom that voting is one mark of a good citizen, not voting a sign of irresponsibility. But the only vote worth casting in November is a vote that no one will be able to cast, a vote against a system that presents one with a choice between Bush's conservatism and Kerry's liberalism, those two partners in ideological debate, both of whom need the other as a target.
Why should we reject both? Not primarily because they give us wrong answers, but because they answer the wrong questions. What then are the right political questions? One of them is: What do we owe our children? And the answer is that we owe them the best chance that we can give them of protection and fostering from the moment of conception onwards. And we can only achieve that if we give them the best chance that we can both of a flourishing family life, in which the work of their parents is fairly and adequately rewarded, and of an education which will enable them to flourish. These two sentences, if fully spelled out, amount to a politics. It is a politics that requires us to be pro-life, not only in doing whatever is most effective in reducing the number of abortions, but also in providing healthcare for expectant mothers, in facilitating adoptions, in providing aid for single-parent families and for grandparents who have taken parental responsibility for their grandchildren. And it is a politics that requires us to make as a minimal economic demand the provision of meaningful work that provides a fair and adequate wage for every working parent, a wage sufficient to keep a family well above the poverty line.
Read the rest here. (Thanks to reader Randy Heinig and Midwestern Mugwump for the lead.)
Rob
Monday, October 25, 2004
Mark Noll, one of my favorite Christian thinkers, has laid out an alternative approach to this election:
As has been the case for the past few presidential elections, on Election Day I will almost certainly cast my vote once again for none of the above. Here is why:
Seven issues seem to me to be paramount at the national level: race, the value of life, taxes, trade, medicine, religious freedom and the international rule of law. In my mind, each of these issues has a strong moral dimension. My position on each is related to how I understand the traditional Christian faith that grounds my existence. Yet neither of the major parties is making a serious effort to consider this particular combination of concerns or even anything remotely resembling it.
In searching for a party that is working for something close to my convictions, I am not necessarily looking for a platform supported by overtly expressed religious beliefs. It would be enough to find candidates promoting such positions by reference to broad social goals and general patterns of American democratic tradition. In fact, because each of these issues is of vital national concern for people of all faiths (and none), I am eager to find public voices willing to defend convictions similar to my own in generic social terms rather than with specifically religious arguments.
My disillusionment with the major parties and their candidates comes from the fact that I do not see them willing to consider the political coherence of this combination of convictions or willing to reason about why their positions should be accepted—much less willing to break away from narrow partisanship to act for the public good. Broad principles and particular interests have never in the history of the republic been more confusedly mixed than they are today.
Read the rest at The Christian Century. (Thanks to Christianity Today for the lead.) Perhaps the Seamless Garment Party will bring Noll back to the voting booth in 2008?
Rob
