My current project looks to draw insights from Martin Luther King Jr.'s theological claims by which to better critique the presumptions underlying the predominant narrative of the modern legal profession. The core of that insight flows from King's belief in the inescapably social nature of the human person.
The accessibility of King’s anthropological claim is magnified by the fact that King did not require agreement “all the way down” in order to join in the struggle to see the moral implications of the anthropological claim lived out. King worked out those implications within a particular worldview, and the theological and philosophical sources of King’s worldview are not as widely accessible as the resulting claims themselves. This does not make the sources marginal to King, for his moral claims could not have been formed in a vacuum, apart from those sources. But King did not ask his listeners to embrace all of his sources (though many did); he asked listeners to embrace the moral claims themselves. Whether or not someone in the 1960s would have shared King’s admiration for Walter Rauschenbusch’s interpretation of the Old Testament prophets, for example, they could have understood, appreciated, and (in most cases) affirmed King’s resulting exhortation to resist Sheriff Bull Connor’s violent suppression of peaceful protests in Birmingham. In this regard, King’s moral claims were embodied in action.
To illustrate Christians’ tendency to pay only lip service to justice, he told a story about visiting an imaginary city where no one wore shoes even though it was cold and snowy. He asks a local resident why no one wore them:
“But what is the matter? Don’t you believe in shoes?”
“Believe in shoes, my friend! I should say we do. That is the first article of our creed, shoes. They are indispensable to the well-being of humanity.”
“Well, then, why don’t you wear them?” said I, bewildered.
“Ah,” said he, “that is just it. Why don’t we?”
After I checked in the hotel I met a gentleman who wanted to show me around the city . . . [and pointed to a huge brick structure] “You see that?” said he. “That is one of our outstanding shoe manufacturing establishments!”
“A what?” I asked in amazement. “You mean you make shoes there?”
“Well, not exactly,” said he, “we talk about making shoes there, and believe me, we have got one of the most brilliant young fellows you have ever heard. He talks more thrillingly and convincingly every week on the subject of shoes. . . . Just yesterday he moved the people profoundly with his exposition of the necessity of shoe wearing. Many broke down and wept. It was really wonderful!”
“But why don’t you wear them?” said I, insistently.
“Ah,” said he, “that is just it. Why don’t we?”
In tracing King’s intellectual legacy, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that his was a theology of action. He was not interested primarily in theology as a theoretical inquiry or systematic explication. King’s passion was a rigorous exploration of theology as applied. History’s narrative did not call for his cognitive assent; it called for his active participation. In most situations, King’s moral worldview was discernible primarily through the courses of conduct he embarked on directly or recommended to his audience; he did not spend much time in his ministry debating the fine points of philosophical or theological theory. King cared less about how a person arrived at her commitment to justice as long as they arrived at it somehow. Because action follows from commitment, the path of commitment matters greatly to the actor herself, but King never espoused a particular path as a litmus test for participating in the struggle for justice. The protest march photos of King locked arm in arm with leaders from various religious and political traditions bear witness to this fact.
By the same token, lawyers are not hired to opine on prevailing currents in academic thought; if their worldview is going to matter, it has to matter in the world of concrete action items. For example, the mammoth (and now defunct) energy futures trading company, Enron, focused relentlessly on share price – to the exclusion of any more fulsome measure of corporate well-being and accountability. This narrow conception of self-interest stands in tension with a variety of moral truth claims and traditions. From whatever perspective Enron’s lawyers would have approached the problem, though, it was important for them to flag for management the concern that the company was neglecting its broader responsibility to constituents. The lawyer’s moral framework is both more efficacious and more accessible to the extent that it expresses itself in the world of action. King is a powerful model on that front.
Friday, January 6, 2012
My student Phil Steger offered the following response to my question about the impact of civil unions on marriage:
It is possible that an increase of civil unions may actually strengthen the institution of marriage by distinguishing contractual partnerships made for mutual benefit from sacramental unions that bear witness to divine reality and provide a "school of love" (to borrow St. Benedict's term) through which two people can labor toward holiness. People can then make a clear and conscious choice between the two, based on their actual intent and motive for joining their life with another person.
This, to me, is the key distinction between civil unions and marriage. Both civil unions and marriages can provide a stable framework for having and raising children. And both civil unions and marriages can also be childless. The sociological argument for marriage--it's best for children and the social order--is important, but it is not the heart of the meaning and reality of marriage, at least as illuminated by revelation and tradition.
In the Bible, the structure of marriage and its role in creating or contributing to the social order are somewhat fluid. What is consistent in the Bible, as well as the Apostolic and Patristic sources, is marriage a potent sign of God's love and union with his people. It encourages our faith in the biblical promise that we are each created for perfect union in God, by showing us examples of how two people can grow deeply in union with each other, even in our fallen state. It also provides a training ground of self-giving and self-denial for cultivating the practices and dispositions to prepare us for our destiny of union in God. It resembles the Eucharist and the Liturgy in these ways: as living signs of spiritual reality and as "arenas" in which to practice living according to that reality.
There is no question that the potential for children and family are the natural outgrowth of this union. But this potential doesn't become actual in every marriage. The sacramental union, on the other hand, is actually present in every marriage, though its fullness remains a potentiality requiring commitment and effort and grace to develop. Neither the actuality, nor even the potential, for this sacramental union is ever present in civil unions, even though the potential for children and family are.
I question whether our anxious concern for the sociology of marriage is obscuring our faithful witness to its sacramentality, which might do more to undermine marriage then civil unions. I think if we Catholics were to begin there, our encounters with both civil unions, same or opposite sex, and same-sex marriage, would cause us less fear and anxiety over the fate of marriage. It might also equip us with greater discernment about the essential truths of marriage that we want to preserve and protect and how best to do so.
