The Blue Voice

Friday, November 04, 2005

The fundis, natural law and the "reality-based" world

One thing I've never quite understood about the fundamentalist religious perspective has to do with the concept of "natural law". I once saw a comment that fundamentalists did not apply the "just war" doctrine to thinking about war because they reject the concept of natural law. That comment came back to me when I saw this column at the Southern Baptist Convention website: Homosexuality in theological perspective, part 4 by Albert Mohler SBC.net 11/03/05.

My trusty 2006 Encyclopedia Britannica defines natural law as "a system of right or justice held to be common to all humans and derived from nature rather than from the rules of society."

Historically, concepts of natural law were very important in the development of democratic ideas, in particular the tradition that influenced American revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson. I suspect that's one of the things that bothers the fundis about the whole idea.

But perhaps even more, natural law is an important basis for rational thought in the context of Christian theology.

So what does Mohler have to say? As you may have already guessed, he thinks that all this natural law kind of thinking is one way that good Christians can slip into the sinful pit of thinking that sexuality is a normal and healthy part of life. Even the (gasp, choke) gay variety.

Sometimes I just get so sick of these priggish moralists who claim to know exactly what Almighty God wants for "the family". The family in America in 1830 was something radically different from the American family today. And it bears only a distant relationship to the dominant form of the family in Judea at the time of Jesus.

Jesus, of course, didn't draw back from challenging the injustices of "the family" as it existed in his time and place. On the contrary, he made a point of doing so, in particular so far as it subjected women to an extreme dependence of the caprices of their husbands. Which is, uh, pretty much the opposite of what the Christian Right stands for.

Mohler says that evangelical (conservative Protestant) Christians who use "natural law" arguments - even to argue that homosexuality is "unnatural" and sinful - are making a big mistake. Because they are trying to convince people based on reason and good sense. Mohler is quite concerned about the implications of such an approach:

Therefore, we speak about homosexuality because we speak on the basis of divinely revealed truth. Our own ideas and conceptions of homosexuality are not authoritative - our duty is to understand the mind and intention of God.

You know, it's one thing to talk about Christian moral standards of how to relate to our fellow human beings. But anyone who thinks they have tapped into the "mind of God" is a scamster or an idiot, or just plain whacko. The Christian concept of "humility" seems to have slipped off their scale of values altogether.

Using natural law arguments, according to Mohler, puts the Christian in the position of dealing with the "reality-based" world:

My warning on this issue is two-fold. First is the matter of theological principle. To revert to natural law reasoning is to retreat from the high ground of the Christian truth claim. In order to meet secular demands, the Church would shift its argument from the unassailable ground of Holy Scripture to the contested terrain of nature and the cosmos.

This actually tells us quite a lot about the perspective applied by the Christian Right to political and social issues. Being privileged with direct knowledge of the mind of God, they are ready to ignore grubby reality and insist on shoving their own crackpot interpretations of Scripture down the throats of everyone else.

My theory is that God actually does speak to a lot of these people. But he's speaking in ancient Hebrew and they don't have the first clue what he's trying to tell them.

His second warning about the dangers of natural law/rational/reality-based arguments is that Christians - the tiny minority of the world's population who believe that people like Mohler understand the mind of God - are foolish to think that the heathen masses (including their fellow Christians who aren't among the Truly Saved) would respond to sensible arguments:

The cultural elites and generations raised in the aftermath of the sexual revolution are no more moved by natural law arguments than by explicitly Christian assertions. Natural law reasoning is no more welcome in Congress or among the media than a recitation of the Ten Commandments. Furthermore, there is no common understanding in elite circles as to what the natural law would require. A reflection on the congressional hearings for the confirmations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas should make this reality abundantly clear. Natural law arguments are not culturally compelling.

Sorting out whatever meaning their is in that quote and translating it into a reality-based form would seem to require psychology more than theology. It seems he expects his readers to take it as self-evident that those "raised in the aftermath of the sexual revolution" are, I don't know, screwed up somehow. Deep Fundamentalism can be more obscure than the Kabbalah, at times.

Mohler stresses that the very concept of Christians trying to relate to their fellow citizens on a respectful and reality-based foundation can quickly put them on the road to Hail. Or something:

Evangelicals should not hesitate to illustrate arguments from Scripture with allusions to nature and the natural order. But the order of ethical reasoning is critical: Evangelicals can turn to nature as illustration after basing the moral argument on Scripture. At its best, the evangelical temptation to turn to natural law reasoning is an attempt in a difficult cultural context to establish a moral consensus. But this strategy will not succeed. At its worst, this temptation represents a repudiation of the Gospel and an abdication of evangelical faith. (my emphasis)

Anyone who believes the pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo the Christian Right uses to push "intelligent design" onto the degenerate heathen majority is just being scammed, pure and simple. Mohler gives us a good glimpse here of the viewpoint that leads the Christian Right to an outright hostility to science in more and more cases.

With an article like Mohler's, even though it strays into cryptic formulations at times, we don't even have to "read between the lines" to get some real insight into their real perspective. We just have to pay close attention. For instance:

But the issue of homosexuality affords a unique opportunity for the confessing church to bear witness to particular grace as well - to give witness to the Gospel as the only means of salvation and of Jesus Christ as the sole and sufficient Savior. Salvation and repentance must be preached to homosexuals - and to heterosexuals as well. East of Eden, not one of us has come before God as sexually pure and whole, even if we have never committed an illicit sexual act, much less a homosexual act. (my emphasis)

There are lots of things in the world, some of them actually evil, that the fundis could obsess about. But their extreme emphasis on opposing abortion and stigmatizing gays and lesbians has a big sexual component to it. You don't have to be a Freudian to recognize that. You just have watch and listen a bit.

For those individuals who walk around worrying that they are sexually impure "even if we have never committed an illicit sexual act", there is no set of political victories and no amount of social authoritarianism that could ever satisfy their drive for more.

Which fits in quite well with Mohler's insistence on relying on faith-based arguments and rejecting the idea of relying on reason and good sense. If you're driven by irrational fears that you can't face, it's makes sense that you could be obsessed with the irrational.

It's important not to generalize too much from individual examples like this, valuable as they often are. Because one of the distinguishing characteristics of Christian fundamentalism is its often-desperate insistence on the logic and rationality of the core fundi creed.

And it's not like everyone who attends a fundamentalist church is totally sexually uptight. After all, "illicit" sex can be much more fun than the "licit" kind. (Is "licit" a word?) They're probably less like to use birth control, though. I mean, if you take a condom with you on a date, that would mean you were planning to sin. It's not so bad if you can say afterwards, "We didn't mean to Do It. It just happened!"

Not so bad, except for the increased risk of pregnancy and STDs and stuff. I'm all for the kind that "just happens". I just think it makes sense to "just be prepared". And then enjoy the illiciticity. Or liciticity. Or whatever.

If you feel in need of continuing theological guidance from Mohler, you can follow his blog at http://www.albertmohler.com/.

posted at 1:15:00 AM by Bruce Miller

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