Why Many Christians Accept Secular Jurisprudence

-- By JackSherrick - 21 Feb 2021

Introduction

In 1524, German peasants waged war against the aristocracy. The peasant demanded legal advantages that the aristocracy had deprived them. During the conflict, the peasants sought the support of the father of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther. Luther's opposition to the oppression of the Catholic Church suggested to the peasants that he would take a similar stance against the aristocracy's political oppression. However, rather than give the peasants his blessing, Luther penned a scathing letter condemning the peasant's plight and beseeching them to acquiesce to aristocratic rule. Luther agreed with many of the peasant's demands but nevertheless instructed the peasants to "suffer to the end, and leave the case to Him (God). "

Idea

Luther's position is representative of the outlook many Christians hold today. Many Christians are willing to subject themselves to secular laws that do not align with their religious laws because they put little stock in the quality of their temporal lives relative to the eternal wellbeing of their souls. They also have a belief that original sin has placed a low ceiling on the degree of justice that can possibly be achieved on earth. Regardless of how "good" a law is, the corrupt nature of the human condition precludes the law from having much of a positive impact. Instead, there is a prevailing belief in the that positive change is best achieved on an individual rather than institutional level. As a brief caveat, this essay is not seeking to paint all Christians with a broad brush. Many Christian organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference seek to radically restructure society through legal means and do not hold the fatalistic or dismissive attitudes towards legal change that I describe in this essay.

Expected Life Utility

Many Christians view their life on earth as merely a blip in the eternal timeline of their existence. This makes sense if you assume that your soul has an eternal lifespan. (Average life span on earth/eternal life span of the soul ≈ 0). The following equation seeks to explain how those who believe in the eternity of their existence would seek to optimize their expected life utility.

y=β_1 X_1+ β_2 X_2+ ε where y = expected utility over span of entire existence; X_1 = temporal utility; X_2 = post-temporal utility; β_1 < ∞; and β_2 = ∞.

Assuming this equation dictates behavior of certain populations of religious adherents, a rational actor has little reason to do anything to improve their temporal condition. If post-temporal utility is infinity, why care at all about earthly affairs unless it impacts your post-temporal expected utility? The only concern is to ensure that sign on X_2 is positive and not negative, everything else is utterly insignificant in the grand scheme of things. This sort of thinking would justify Luther's command to "suffer to the end and leave the case to Him." The expected life utility would also predict Luther's stance on the Peasant's War because Luther believed that the Peasant's efforts to achieve reform were condemning them to an eternity in hell. The risk/reward tradeoff is so imbalanced that enduring existing structures is the most rational choice under the model.

Miracle Motif

The miracle motif is a belief held by many Christians that the best way to improve society is to "love one another" and to add more people to the church. The state of society is not dependent upon secular laws or institutions, but upon the character of the individuals that compose society. Emerson and Smith first analyzed the miracle motif and found that it contributes to white evangelical Christians' opposition to radical social change. The miracle motif allows people to disassociate the distinction between a whole and its elements. The rationale is that a country is made up of states that are made up of counties that are made up of cities that are made up of neighborhoods that are made up of families, that are made up of individuals. Therefore, the best way to improve the country would be to improve the individual. This line of thinking eliminates the distinction between individual and group action. Arnold's Folklore of Capitalism dispels the notion that an organization is merely the sum of the individuals that compose its membership. Arnold lays out laws of political dynamics that describe the unique qualities of organizations that are resistant to the changing character of the individuals that compose their membership. Failure to understand this nuance instill a belief that change can only be accomplished from the bottom up.

Original Sin

I worked in construction this past summer and would frequently exchange world-views with my foreman Jim, a devout Lutheran. One day, we were discussing America's military strength and I suggested reducing military spending as a means of preventing future wars. Jim gave me a perplexed look and responded, "why would I try to stop war? I don't try to stop the sun from coming up?" Many Christians view the human condition as a depraved state devoid of significant potential for improvement. Original sin has marred temporal existence beyond repair and any attempt to reach the prelapsarian heights of Eden is an exercise in futility. Not only does such an endeavor have an impossible goal, it borders on the sort of pride exhibited by those builders of the tower of Babel who sought to be equal to God. This sort of attitude invites disengagement from legal reform. The courts nominal quest for justice serves an unachievable purpose. A belief in original sin plays a role in the promulgation of the miracle motif. Widespread reforms are seen as fruitless but change is possible on an individual scale.

Conclusion

This analysis is intended to provide helpful heuristic framework to understand some Christians' psychological relationship to secular law. It is not intended to be a hatchet job on Christian thinking nor an exoneration of the behaviors that arise out of this sort of thinking. This analysis could be further nuanced by considering factors such as political ideology and racial attitudes or by extrapolating my argument onto other faiths. While many Christians may have a fatalistic and unengaged attitude towards secular law, they still have outsized political influence in America. White Christians compose only 43 percent of the American public yet they make up 55 percent of American voters. This indicates that fatalistic attitudes may not necessarily depressed turnout.

"Acceptance of secular jurisprudence" and "fatalism" are not in any sense the same but they are more than once conflated in this draft, so one obvious improvement is to be clear about the difference. Making clear that the lunchtime conversation of one Christian is not "what Christians think" let alone "the Christian view of _X_" would be similarly useful. "Fatalism" could be some variant of a "Christian" (meaning in this essay, so far as I can tell, "Protestant") view of Fate, but perhaps not.

I don't understand the point of the mathematical expression of the fact that life is short and eternity is a long time. There's no hypothesis of the uniform nature of utility across the domain boundaries of time and eternity that would make this work. The "heuristic" isn't particularly sensitive to any numerical values you could put in it, so it all feels like excess precision and unnecessary Greek typesetting. If this is needed, why?

Which brings us to the larger why. From Jesus' comment about rendering to Caesar and God, to Augustine's two cities, to the revision of the Roman law by Justinian and Tribonian, the Christianity of the late ancient Mediterranean fully absorbed and represented in all aspects the dualism of divine and secular law that you are trying, from a perspective beginning 1,000 or 1,500 years later, to explain. From the historian's point of view, nothing can be more conducive to misunderstanding than picking the story up in the middle. Indeed, the famous and—for the Church—highly objectionable argument given by Gibbon in the 15th chapter of his Decline and Fall is that Christianity succeeded precisely because of the dualism that allowed the Emperors to be at once the heads of both Church and State, and to be of two bodies in doing so.

So what is gained by leaving historical analysis behind, and hypothesizing that Christian understandings of the division between secular and divine law are newly made in each generation, if not in each lunchtime, by the untutored but economically rational speculations of individual Christian workers? Why would such a perspective, assuming it has explained its raison d'etre to its own satisfaction, want to take on a view from Marx, who by his nature will be indigestible to an ahistoical approach? I understand what is said here better than I understand why it is said, which might be the best route to the overall improvement of the present draft. What is the reader actually supposed to get from it that justifies the jettisoning of what others would begin from?

Thoughts on how to improve this essay in the next draft

Linking psychological attitudes towards behavior, as Weber does in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

I could discuss Brown as a counterargument wherein religious belief motivates one to actively oppose secular jurisprudence rather than acquiesce to it. Someone mentioned on the pad that there seems to be a correlation between being an activist leader and having strong religious beliefs.(e.g. Brown, King, Malcolm X). I agree but believe this correlation is only present in activist leaders, not necessarily in the less ardent supporters of a movement.

Also, I could introduce some Marx. I'm familiar with his quote "religion is the opium of the people" but I haven't read Marx's writings on religion.

A contemporary and somewhat ridiculous version of Luther's message to the peasants that they should "leave the case to God."

Remove the caveats, don't be so direct in discussing additional ideas that could be taken from this theory

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