Liberty as a human good

I know lots of people are vexed over current restrictions on our lives.  For myself, the frustrations fall into a number of categories: that the rules seem arbitrary; that there seems very little evidence base for many of them; that they show a basic misunderstanding of most of the elements of life they are intended to regulate; that they change in unpredictable fashion for no very obvious reason; that they are inconsistent; that they have been imposed without due scrutiny in Parliament...

I could go on, but I guess that makes it clear where I stand.

I know that we will all have different perspectives on this, and many people will feel that the rules are basically justified even if the detail isn't great; others will feel there should be no rules at all, or perhaps just voluntary guidelines.  I get it.  I have to keep reminding myself that although I try to be informed I am really no expert.  Probably neither are most of you.  So my opinion is just that, and there is no reason it should carry a huge amount of weight, and I won't offer any further comment on it.

Where I do want to comment is at the intersection of church and society, and therefore of theology and politics.  Like many people, pastors have been scrambling to understand the new regulations (and given the constantly moving target, this is an ongoing task).  We've been asking each other questions about how the 'rule of six' affects people arriving at worship services; we've been looking for loopholes that would enable our homegroups to meet for fellowship.  On the whole, what we've found is that the regs make it extremely difficult for us to do anything approaching 'normal church'.

So here's the thing: what is a homegroup?  Well, it's an attempt to create community, to share life, in the particular context of the church.  But community and life-sharing are not activities unique to the church.  In fact, in its community and fellowship the church, in so far as it understands itself, will be aware that it is just being human.  Christ is the Creator, and the Lord of the Church.  In the church, he brings his human creation back to itself, back to normality.  So the church's activities are, in the specific context of the community of faith, just being human.  Which means that we need to realise that if we're being restricted from running our homegroups - and assuming we're not being particularly targeted, which we're not - then something fundamentally human is being restricted.  I think our response then needs to be not looking for loopholes to try to maintain our particular activities, but speaking up for the common human need for community and togetherness.  We need to think more broadly than 'government is getting in the way of our programmes and structures' to see that government is getting in the way of being human.  The liberty to come together as people is a human good.

None of this is to prejudge the question of whether and to what extent government is currently justified in restricting that liberty.  People will have different views on that.  I get it.  I just think we need to consider those views in the broader context.

Theologically, I've seen a lot of people rolling out Romans 13 to argue that we must submit to the state - until or unless the state particularly targets Christians to prevent their witness (in which case, Acts 4:19 kicks in).  I think that represents a truncated view of the biblical stance on the state - it is, perhaps, biblicism, in the sense that it does not take into account the whole of God's revelation in Holy Scripture or the way in which the church has wrestled with the question of the state over the centuries.  In this context, I want to point out that it tends to limit the church's interventions on questions of liberty to those which directly affect us and our activities.  What about a wider, creational concern for humankind?  Does Romans 13 mean we can never protest an unjust decree?  Our theological forebears thought it just to part a king from his head over the question of liberty - and whilst I'm not sure they were right, I don't think we can just quote Romans 13 to say they were wrong.

Again, I want to stress that I'm not saying you ought to come down on one side or the other in terms of the particular justice of the current regulations.  I guess my view is clear, but I know my limitations and I don't expect everyone to agree with me.  All I'm really asking is that we have the conversation in an expanded context.

Towards a Christian Liberalism

Taking up my own challenge, I've been thinking a bit about how one might construct a theological basis for political liberalism.  Obviously this won't be of much interest to those who see no need for such a basis.  And I should say that I am not quite sure I would claim this as my own view.  It is just some thoughts in process.

1.  The departure point for all Christian thinking about politics is 'Jesus is Lord'.  This is both a factual statement - he simply does rule over all things, whether anyone acknowledges it or not - and a polemical statement - he, and only he, truly rules.

2.  As both a factual and a polemical statement, 'Jesus is Lord' is a positive statement with a negative implication.  The positive statement is to do with Christ: he really reigns and rules.  The negative statement is to do with everyone and everything else: they do not reign and rule (in the same sense).  So 'Jesus is Lord' is both a description, advanced in the face of opposition, of Christ's sovereignty, and a delimitation of the spheres of all other powers.

3.  If Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not.  Caesar can be and must be honoured and obeyed, but this is for the Lord's sake, not Caesar's.  We should be clear here that 'Caesar' for us today includes both demos and despotes, the people and the politicians.  Caesar does not have ultimate sovereignty.  The 'will of the people' (whatever that means) cannot convey or carry such sovereignty.

4.  In particular, Caesar is not Lord over the minds and consciences of people.  Since Jesus is Lord over all, and over each individual, nobody else is Lord.  This does not mean overthrowing all order - Caesar is still to be obeyed in his sphere, family order is still to be followed, in the workplace there will always be hierarchy - but these things are dramatically relativised.  As soon as they step over into areas of conscience, they transgress.

5.  Since Jesus really rules, any attempt by human beings to put his rule into practice through the political sphere is tantamount to blasphemy.  It must include somewhere within it the idea that he does not currently rule, that he is not sovereign, and that he needs us to establish his rule for him.  But he does really rule; it is unnecessary and even sinful to try to bring in his rule through political power.

6.  Since the Jesus who is Lord is the Creator, there is a common good which can be served by politicians.  Even amongst people with wildly differing views of what 'the good' is, there will be sufficient common humanity (which exists after the image of Christ...) for leaders to be able to identify and strive towards some goals which are genuinely for the good of all, and for which good arguments can be made.  So within the limited sphere allowed to human leadership, there is positive good to be done.

7.  Since the Jesus who is Lord is a Servant, Christian leaders should seek to serve - and in particular to serve those who oppose them.  Therefore Christians should be at the forefront of developments for the good and freedom of those with whom they disagree.

Possibly more to come...

Liberalism is about disagreeing

Poor old Tim Farron.  A couple of days into his new job, and already he is under attack for holding orthodox Christian beliefs.  Specifically, he is accused of holding illiberal views on homosexuality, something which is deemed ironic for a leader of the Liberal Democrats.

But this is what liberalism is all about.  Tim Farron has his Christian faith, and appears in general to accept the ethical conclusions that flow from that.  It is fair enough to ask whether you want someone with those convictions representing you, but before anyone leaps to conclusions it is worth asking 'what does Tim Farron do next?'  Does he try to legislate his convictions?  Does he advocate that anyone who disagrees with him should be pilloried and driven from public life?

No, he doesn't.  Because he is a liberal, and liberalism is about what happens when you disagree.  It is about working out what the common good looks like when we don't have a common worldview.  As such, it seems to me that it will be an increasingly important part of our political landscape going forward.  And Tim Farron, as someone who holds a minority worldview, could be well placed to revive liberalism's fortunes after the crash at the end of the coalition.

As an aside, I think personally this is very difficult.  I flinch when I read Farron quoted as saying 'this is my private faith' - really?  It is your private faith that Jesus is Lord of all the universe and all people in it?  But then, I don't know how exactly I would tackle this.  I'd like to see the interface between Christianity and liberalism worked through a bit more, but then that was hardly likely in the Guardian...

Those who are accusing Tim Farron of illiberalism should show where in his behaviour he has been illiberal; instead they have simply decided that anyone who doesn't agree with the majority opinion on sexuality or faith is inherently anti-liberal.  So there's the real irony: there is nothing more illiberal than insisting that a particular set of views, particularly minority views, is beyond the pale in public life, and yet this is being done in the name of liberalism.

Government, Freedom, Democracy

This is a brief thought relating to the current proposals for House of Lords reform which have been brought forward by HM Government.  The plan, basically, is to move from a mostly appointed upper house to a mostly elected upper house.  I won't comment on the way the appointments system has been blatantly abused by successive governments, except to say that, well, it has been blatantly abused.  What I do want to do is offer some pondering on the point of democracy.

It seems to me that the proposed reforms are predicated on the assumption that 'democratic'='good'.  I would want to unpick that assumption a little bit, and ask 'if democratic=good, then what is it good for?'  In other words, why is democracy good, and is it good in all circumstances?

I suppose the answer will depend on what you think government is for.  I basically want two things from a governmental system.  I want it to preserve, and ideally further, liberty, and I want it to offer responsible and accountable government.  It is worth mentioning straight up that these two goals are not necessarily 100% compatible, and there may well be some tension between them.  It is also worth putting in some definitions.  By 'liberty' I mean the absence of restraint on personal belief and behaviour.  Obviously at some point liberty has to be curtailed in order to preserve liberty; i.e. my freedom has to stop at the point at which it critically endangers another's freedom.  By 'responsible and accountable', I mean being forced to behave in a way which, if brought into the light, will stand up to scrutiny.  The virtue of responsible and accountable government is simply that it impedes the tendency of government to become its own special interest group, governing only for its own good rather than the common good.

I would argue that democracy is good if, and in so far as, it fosters these two priorities in government.  I would further argue that in fact the relationship between democracy, liberty, and accountability is actually quite ambiguous.  On the one hand, it can be assumed that democracy presents a very direct form of accountability; the government is literally scrutinised by the electorate, who have the ability to throw them out if they don't like what they see.  Government is responsible to the electorate.  However, we need to recognise that in practice governments need only to please a larger number than they displease.  That is to say, democracy does not prevent governments from acting in the interests of a small group rather than in the common interest of all; it simply means that the small group must be large enough to outnumber all the other groups.  And in fact this is likely to mean that democratically elected governments are more likely to act in the interests only of a particular group, because this is the best way to ensure the loyalty of that group.  The other guys probably wouldn't have voted for you whatever you did, so why care about their interests?

On the liberty front, the impact of democracy is even more problematic.  If we had a populace who, as a whole, valued liberty very highly, then presumably democracy would mean that governments which threatened liberty would be swiftly removed.  But in fact we have a society that is fragmented into different sections, each of which would be happy to see the liberty of others impinged upon in order to further their own sectional interests.  It is therefore not necessarily in the interests of those in government to preserve liberty for all.  In fact, democracy allows government to hide behind the rhetoric of the 'vox populi' to argue that because 51% want it, the people as a whole want it.  This kind of argument makes slaves of the 49%, but who cares?  So long as you please the majority, you can tyrannise the rest.

Now, I'm not dead against democracy.  I think we'd be better off under an enlightened despotism, but I don't think despotism tends to be enlightened, and you always have the problem of who will take over.  We need to have elected representatives who will hold government to account.  But I think there are good reasons not to have a wholly democratic system.  Within limits, democracy can foster liberty and accountability.  What it cannot provide is the necessary technical know-how to govern well.  To that end, an appointed revising chamber seems to me to be a great idea, so long as appointments are controlled and principled.  Democracy also cannot provide a symbol of permanence and allegiance, which to my mind is the role in the British system of the Monarchy.  Moreover, democracy is unable to provide governments who will be thinking about the long term, common good of society rather than the short term need to appeal to just enough people to get re-elected.

There being three kinds of government among men, absolute monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, and all these having their particular conveniences and inconveniences, the experience and wisdom of your ancestors hath so moulded this out of a mixture of these as to give this kingdom (as far as human prudence can provide) the conveniences of all three, without the inconveniences of any one, as long as the balance hangs even between the three estates, and they run jointly on in their proper channel (begetting verdure and fertility in the meadows on both sides) and the overflowing of either on either side raise no deluge or inundation.  The ill of absolute monarchy is tyranny, the ill of aristocracy is faction and division, the ills of democracy are tumults, violence and licentiousness. The good of monarchy is the uniting a nation under one head to resist invasion from abroad and insurrection at home ; the good of aristocracy is the conjunction of counsel in the ablest persons of a state for the public benefit ; the good of democracy is liberty, and the courage and industry which liberty begets.

Locke on target

Just as a postscript to my last post, it's interesting (to me, although probably to very few other people) that John Locke, the father of political liberalism, bases his liberalism on the truth that God the Creator is sovereign Lord over his creatures. He doesn't put it quite like that, but in his argument against absolute monarchy, Locke makes the point that human beings are "all the Workmanship of one Omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker... they are his property, whose Workmanship they are, made to last during his, and not another's, pleasure". (2nd Treatise on Gov't, section 6). It being the 17th century, and Locke being an Englishman, the language of property comes to him quite naturally. His argument is that since everyone belongs to God alone (and not therefore to any other human being), no human being can have absolute or abitrary power over another. (Particularly, no human being can have power to take another's life: but the principle is then enlarged). To claim absolute power over another is to make free with God's property.

The great thing about reading political theory from the 17th century is that you get to see the USA being founded on such theory. Very rarely does a political theory get put into practice! But Locke's theory did in the USA (with a bit of Rousseau mixed in, but that can't be helped). That's why the American government is so limited, and so self-limiting in its system of checks and balances. It's also why the idea of being "one nation under God", although a relatively recent addition, is implicit from the very beginning of the US.

Question: in the absence of God, is there any good foundation for a system of civil liberties?