What, exactly, constitutes a ‘firm and settled will’?

Polly Toynbee is up in arms again today, attacking those religious elements of the House of Lords which might seek to delay or block Lord Falconer’s assisted dying bill. Her problem is not that opposition to the bill exists per se, but the nature of the opposition that she sees as coming from religious communities. What really gets her goat is the fact that such opposition is the result of a belief system in which (in her words) “only God can decide the time of our coming and our going.”

What is interesting is that this language – the idea that only God can decide someone’s fate – has been decidedly absent from the current debate. Few, if any, appeals to the sovereignty of God have been made in order to explain why we shouldn’t interfere in life and death. For Toynbee, this is all a matter of subterfuge – Christians have simply been hiding their faith-based concern for God’s pre-eminence under a cloud of secular rhetoric.

Such an attitude completely fails, however, to get to the heart of what is going on when some Christians (certainly not all, for there are plenty of Christians who would support Lord Falconer’s bill) voice opposition to assisted dying. Rarely, in my opinion, is such an attitude borne of a concern for God’s sovereignty over life and death (after all, the vast majority of Christians have no problem interfering in ‘fate’ when it comes to extending someone’s life). Rather, this is an attitude borne of a very real concern for some of the most vulnerable individuals within our communities.

For many Christians, the biggest concern that would arise were the assisted dying bill to be passed into law, is that those who are nearing the final stages of a terminal disease might wish to end their life, not because they think that to be the best option for them personally, but because they feel it would be the best option for others. That however much a terminally ill patient might want to remain alive, the thought of running up debts for their families, or being an emotional and physical burden, would compel them to seek an early death. For Christians and non-Christians alike, this would doubtless be an abject failure of the system.

Lord Falconer’s response to this suggestion (see the debate between him and Rev. Giles Fraser here) is that the bill protects against such a failure, by requiring two doctors to establish that the patient’s wish to die comes from a ‘firm and settled will’. If a patient was seeking death on the grounds that they felt their death would be a reprieve for others, he implies that they would inevitably fail the test of a firm and settled will.

Regardless of the difficulties in a system where doctors (completely untrained in the art of psychological analysis) are required to make such judgements, Lord Falconer’s response fails to acknowledge a key reality of the human condition – that we are capable of self-sacrifice. One can very easily “will” something that they do not want to happen, if they believe that there is something greater to be gained. And particularly if they believe the happiness of their loved ones is at stake. There are countless martyrs throughout history who had a ‘firm and settled will’ to die, whilst still very much wanting to live.

There is a reason why Christians have tended, by and large, to be more alive to this concern than other members of the public. Because against a secular liberalism focused on the principle of autonomy above all things, a central tenet of the Christian creed is the belief that humans can will the ‘wrong’ thing. That there is a disparity between what we conceive to be right and what is actually right. And, even when borne of the greatest of intentions, it can never be right that the most vulnerable in our society feel compelled to alleviate us of their burden.

Christian voices do not have a monopoly on truth when it comes to issues raised in the public sphere, but neither should they be ignored – and especially on an issue such as care for the dying. In perhaps no other sector has the Christian contribution been so instrumental as in the development of the modern hospice movement, while Christian clergy have sat and ministered to the dying for centuries. Their concerns are not abstract or irrelevant. They know what they’re talking about and, what’s more, they should be listened to with respect.

Post-liberalism, national identity and the City of God

It won’t have escaped anyone’s notice that, in Europe at least, political parties devoted to protecting national interests are resurgent. The great liberal project of post-nationalism seems to have failed. We are, according to many commentators, emerging into a post-liberal world – a world which adopts, reforms, and critiques many of the central tenets of both the social and economic liberalisms of the past century.

It is this revision of social and cultural liberalism has been particularly evident in the recent political climate. The rise of UKIP has given voice to concerns which previously lay dormant. And foremost among these is issues of national identity.

The concern, according to academics such as David Goodhart, is that a liberal and progressive disregard for heritage, tradition and cultural roots can leave people feeling cut adrift. If community ties are lost in the scramble for individual autonomy, then the members of that community inevitably lose the sense of identity that comes with solidarity. It is this loss of identity that has led to a renewed focus on nationhood, and a social movement to the traditionally conservative heartlands of ‘flag, faith and family,’ now occupied by Blue Labour.

Nowhere is this line of thinking clearer than when it comes to immigration. While there are practical concerns about our ability to cope with mass immigration in a time of limited resources, there is also a set of ideological concerns that run independently of the practical. Popular concerns about the potential for immigration to dilute our national heritage and weaken social bonds fall into this latter category, and UKIP has reacted quickest to exploit them. If the multiculturalism encouraged by open borders is part of the problem, they argue, then closed-border nationalism is part of the solution.

Of particular interest is how Christian groups have responded to this line of ideological thinking. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many have been quick to endorse this renewed focus on tradition and the roots of British culture. Religious communities, particularly Christianity, have long felt persecuted by the secularizing tendencies of European liberalism. By re-engaging with the ideas of community and statehood, there is undoubtedly a hope that Christianity would be able to flourish once more, appreciated as an intrinsic part of British identity.

But are Christianity and this type of insular nationalism really compatible ideologies? Can we really reconcile a worldview that accords intrinsic value to every individual as created in the image of God, with a worldview that preaches the doctrine of “looking after our own”?

Many would argue that they are compatible: that Christianity is a-political and open to a number of expressions in the political life; that there’s nothing unchristian about prioritising those with whom we share certain national bonds. Just like a parent can give preferential treatment to their own children, without questioning the validity or importance of other children, so can a state prioritise its own citizens, without questioning the intrinsic worth of those who come from other countries.

There is undoubtedly some validity here. From a purely practical perspective, the state must prioritise those members of the democracy that elected it. Self-interest is, after all, what makes democracy function. But overtly insular, nationalist sentiments should make us distinctly uncomfortable at a time when ebola – a disease that nobody, frankly, gave a shit about when it was considered an “African” problem – is causing such panic after it infected a couple of white Europeans. Or at a time when politicians have had to argue that the Islamic State poses a terror threat in the UK in order to convince the British public that the mass slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis is a problem we should do something about. We might be able to rationalise the nationalist doctrine in practical terms, emphasising the importance of a shared identity for social cohesion, but the ideological undercurrent that invariably accompanies such practicality – the easy slip from ‘prioritising’ to ‘valuing’ – should give Christians, of all people, real cause for concern.

Then, of course, there’s Jesus. The Jesus who answers the questions “Who is my neighbour? Who are my family?” with the most radical and far-reaching inclusiveness. There’s Paul, for whom the central message of faith is that Good News has come to everyone – rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and master. The Christian vision is of a polity that transcends familial, political, national and social boundaries. The City of God is for every tribe, every culture, every identity. To be a Christian, it seems, is to embrace multiculturalism.

The problem with a nationalist ideology, from a Christian perspective, is that it draws an arbitrary line in the sand. Christ tells us that our neighbour is whoever we come into contact with, but nationalism tries to define who my neighbour should be. It tries to define who I have a social responsibility to. In a globalised economy this is particularly important, for whether I realise it or not, I interact with people all over the world on a daily basis – albeit indirectly. What food I choose to buy, where I choose to invest my money, even how I dispose of my waste – my choosing whether to act ethically has a radical impact on individuals I will never meet. But when we think in terms of “looking after our own”, we fail to see those interactions as a locus of neighbourly responsibility. Ethical action in this regard is thought to be given in charity, not because the other demands something of me.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that Christian’s can’t advocate control of immigration. It doesn’t mean Christian’s can’t be patriotic. But we should be wary of the slip from practical concerns into the ideological. It is a very short journey from giving higher priority to those with whom we share a national identity, to giving a higher value. And when we mourn the death of a British child whom we never knew, but remain indifferent to the daily massacres in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, we just might have got our priorities wrong.

Richard Dawkins and his ‘Elementary Moral Philosophy’

Richard Dawkins can be an absolute twit at times. Particularly on twitter.

In previous postings, he’s made dodgy comments about the lack of Muslim Nobel laureates, condoned ‘mild’ paedophilia, and insinuated that date rape was somehow ‘mild’.

His latest tweets about the advisability of aborting babies with Downs Syndrome follows a similar vein of idiocy. For anyone who missed the latest furore, here’s the offending tweet:

@InYourFaceNYer Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) August 20, 2014

So far, so very Dawkins. But what followed made it a bit more interesting. There was, of course, the customary denial that he’d suggested the very thing we could all see in black and white. But there were also some hints of explanation as to why he’d suggested that bringing a baby with DS to full-term would be immoral. One tweet was particularly enlightening:

@InYourFaceNYer People on that spectrum have a great deal to contribute, Maybe even an enhanced ability in some respects. DS not enhanced.

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) August 20, 2014

Dawkins here seems to suggest that his moral rule about aborting Downs babies wouldn’t apply to babies with autism because those with autism are more likely to contribute to society. Those with Downs aren’t similarly ‘enhanced’.

Dawkins clealy sees human value as tied up with human utility. This isn’t to say that he sees useless people as worthless, but that he sees useful people as worth more. In other tweets Dawkins does pay lip service to the potential suffering of a child with Downs, and suggests that this is the basis for his moral argument. Yet I would argue that his tweet about autism gets us much closer to the heart of the issue. After all, protesting the potential suffering of a being that otherwise wouldn’t exist is surely a philosophical non-starter. Add to this the fact that many individuals with Downs Syndrome are able to lead happy and fulfilling lives, despite any limitations (a fact that Dawkins would surely be aware of, being a geneticist and all), and the ‘abort babies with Downs to alleviate their suffering’ argument has all the depth of a child’s paddling pool.

No, Dawkins’ biggest concern seems to be that a baby with Downs would be a drain on resources – on a personal and a social level – without offering anything back. He is rationally weighing what he understands to be the positives and the negatives of bringing a baby with Downs Syndrome into the world, and cooly concluding that the “moral” course of action involves abortion. As he points out in a later tweet to his followers:

I do not for one moment apologise for approaching moral philosophic questions in a logical way. There's a place for emotion & this isn't it.

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) August 20, 2014

For Dawkins, morality is simply the product of a logical and rational thought process – it is nothing more than a weighing up of positives and negatives. Emotional reactions – compassion, love and friendship – have no place in his “elementary moral philosophy”.

There are two ways of responding to Dawkins. The first is to reject the notion that individuals with Downs don’t contribute to our society, or to their parents, as pig-ignorant and mis-guided. This has nothing to do with the ethics of abortion itself, and is no comment on my part about a parents right to choose termination if they feel this to be the right path. But Dawkins clearly needs to climb out of his ivory tower and actually get to know some individuals with Downs Syndrome – because nobody who has a friend with Downs would ever make the same suggestion he did.

This is completely correct and right. But there’s also a sense in which making arguments from utility ends up playing Dawkins at his own game. And it’s a very dangerous game.

What concerns me most about Dawkins’ argument isn’t the fact that he’s ignorant. What concerns me most is that his argument is symptomatic of a wider social trend towards emotional detachment in our moral decision making. Our society has a tendency to believe that the scientific method of logical, abstract deduction from a priori principles is the only way of making moral decisions. Our emotions are an unnecessary appendage, clouding our judgement and limiting our faculties of discernment.

For Dawkins, morality is little more than a numbers game, concerned with the maximisation of human happiness and productivity, and the minimisation of human suffering. Emotions stop us seeing the bigger picture, and can lead us to prioritise one particular aspect of humanity to the expense of the universal whole. But what Dawkins fails to recognise is the need to balance this macroscopic picture, with the microscopic face of the individuals who are affected by our decisions. Because at the end of the day, there is no purely rational reason to feel a responsibility or duty towards another man or woman. We act because feelings of fellowship, an emotional identification with the other, compels us. I don’t deny for a second that emotions can cloud our judgement. I appreciate that what feels right and what is right are not tautologous. But our emotions also remind us of who we’re dealing with. It is our compassion that brings us to a place where moral discourse can happen, not a rational analysis of faceless statistics. We might argue about how best to help the homeless, about when it is right to give, and when it’s best to hold back. But we only have that argument because both feel compelled to help.

When a mother feels that it is right for her to bring her Downs Syndrome child to full term, she is not acting in an irrational, or indeed immoral, way. Her emotional connection with her unborn child is acting as the foundation of her rationality – her desire to protect and nurture her child leads her to a logical conclusion. When we try and argue otherwise – when we suggest that emotion has no place in morality – we undermine the very foundations of moral discourse.

This was David Hume’s greatest insight. While Kant and others argued for emotional detachment as a prerequisite for moral decision making, Hume argued that our moral reasoning is, by its very nature a ‘slave to our passions’. We are not, and we can never be, reduced to machines. We may trick ourselves into thinking that it is reason alone that guides us in our moral decision making – that it is reason alone which compels us to care for the poor and the needy – but we are simply ignorant of our own motivations. To argue that compassion has no place in morality, or a feeling of duty, or feelings of love or hope or charity, is an attempt to replace true moral reasoning with crude mathematics. And it’s an attempt that fails to understand the most basic principles of the human condition.

Ethical Capitalism and Augustinian Realism

Can Capitalism really be ethical?

A lot of people certainly seem to think so at the moment. As the IMF calls for a more inclusive form of Global capitalism, the Governor of the Bank of England recently called for the City Banks to rediscover a spirit of social obligation to the wider society in which they exist. David Cameron hit the headlines a couple of years ago when he promised to make Capitalism ‘work for everyone’, and Ed Miliband said something very similar when he set out the ways in which he disagreed with his Marxist father.

The promise that capitalism can work for the greater good isn’t one to be dismissed glibly. As part of my job, I spend quite a bit of time looking into the various Corporate Responsibility initiatives of some of the biggest corporations in the world, and some of the projects currently being undertaken are truly astounding. Did you know, for example, that the bank Standard Chartered has committed to raising $100 million by 2020 for a programme called Seeing is Believing that they set up with the aim of eradicating preventable blindness in developing countries? Or that Microsoft donates almost $900 million a year in cash and software to non-profits around the world? That companies driven by capitalist interests can do good is beyond dispute. The question in my mind is whether capitalism, as a system, can be trusted to foster a more equitable society.

In reality, my instinct tells me that it can’t. Of all the explanations of why that is, one of the simplest elucidations that I’ve come across is given by the theologian John Milbank in his enormous work Theology and Social Theory. Milbank argues that:

The balance of supply and demand alone is supposed to generate equivalence, but in practice this means that those who are richer and more powerful will only exchange under conditions where they can extract some marginal advantage in the form of profit.

If every exchange is unequally weighted in favour of the more powerful, and if the accumulation of capital is itself the accumulation of a form of power, then Milbank argues that wealth will inevitably accumulate at one end of society. The rich will continue to extract more and more from every exchange, while the poor, forced to accept an unfavourable rate of exchange by the coercive power of necessity, will become relatively poorer as the wealth gap grows.

The argument of the now infamous Fench economist Thomas Pikkety takes a slightly different, and perhaps slightly more rigorous line. Where Milbank pontificates from an armchair, Pikkety actually looks at some statistics. But their conclusions are the same. If the returns on capital really do outstrip the returns on wage growth, then, Pikkety argues, capitalism inevitably remains a system of ogliarchy in which wealth disparity is forever destined to grow – saving for the intervention of another catestrophic war or moment of revolution.

I’m not entirely sure why we’re surprised. Capitalism is a reliable system, not because it creates a particularly stable siciety, or because it looks after the interests of all, but because it rests on that most reliable of all human instincts – self-interest. The pursuit of personal gain, inevitably at the expense of others, is the founding doctrine of capitalism. It’s right there a the beginning, woven into the writings of Adam Smith.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.

Capitalism rests on the notion that a baker would want me to source my bread from her, rather than from someone else. I appeal to her self-interest, rather than her compassion, in order to get the best deal for myself.

Of course, Smith famously believed that market forces would balance themselves out, as though guided by an invisible hand. He believed that anyone acting in their own interest will naturally come to a position that is also in the interests of their society. But Smith lived in a world of localised communities – a world yet to be dominated by the global, state-less, corporate behemoth. A small community offers enormous checks against an “excess” of self-interest. If I rip-off the butcher, the baker will refuse to do business with me. If I exploit my employees, the community will ostracise me. In a globalised world, with a huge surplus workforce desperate for employment, and companies big enough to hide practices that they don’t want to see the light, there are few inherent balances against the excesses of self-interest. Smith’s invisible hand just doesn’t exist.

The thing is, as much as I dislike a system of inherent inequality founded on cut-throat competition and selfish ambition, I can’t think of a better one. Capitalism works because it operates in the real world, not a dreamworld where taxi’s run on love and good-will. If there’s one thing that characterises the human race, it’s not collective strength in the face of adversity or any of the things that Hollywood blockbusters would have us believe. It’s self-preservation and self-promotion. Global Capitalism might create wage slaves in developing companies, destroy native habitats and exploits resources (literally) like there’s no tomorrow to worry about, but there’s a limited amount that the Western world is willing to do about it. While we care, sometimes passionately, there’s very few of us (and I include myself in this) who would be prepared to suffer the steps necessary to realise a world that was truly and sustainably equal.

Because terrible though it’s excesses can be, the incentive of the free market also drives the sort of innovations that mean cancer survival rates are currently double what they were thirty years ago. It is capitalism that has created the drugs and treatments that offer hope to the millions suffering from HIV in the developing world; that has given us technology that we so take for granted; that has improved infrastructure and services beyond anything that Adam Smith could have dreamed about. As a good friend of mine once said, “I dislike capitalism, but I like dental anaesthetics more.” Competition drives innovation and progress in a way that no other system can match.

There are two temptations when it comes to scrutinising systems like Capitalism. One is to attempt to undermine the entire system, and advocate some utopian alternative. But in a world that inevitably lends itself to the pursuit of self interest, this is a foolhardy enterprise. A system which assumes the pursuit of self-interest is surely less likely to be caught out by its inevitable expression, and better arranged to take advantage of it. The other temptation is of course to accept the structures as given, focus on the benefits, and turn a blind eye to the consequences (or even deny they exist altogether).

The reality is that we inevitably inhabit a system defined by selfish interests. Individuals might be capable of great acts of charity, generosity and kindness, but these cannot be assumed. That’s why those who advocate cutting taxes so as to allow greater freedom to donate charitably are living in a dreamworld.

If we inevitably inhabit a system founded on self-interest, then we must inevitably operate within such a system. There can be no sudden rolling out of measures that fatally undermine the free market or that endanger the innovation that comes with competition. But that doesn’t mean the state can’t play the role of Smith’s invisible hand – turning the self interest of the individual to the benefit of all.

Sometimes that will mean regulation, such as the imposing of a national minimum wage linked the basic cost of living. Sometimes that will mean incentivising socially responsible behaviour and encouraging initiatives around corporate responsibility, whether through tax breaks or public commendation. And sometimes it will mean playing dirty, to bring low companies that accumulate too much power and influence, or that seek to stifle competition.

Some might argue that what I’ve described would entail a system very like the one we have at the moment. And to an extent they’d be right. But a government that understands its role to be one that lies in tension with the demands of big businesses, that sees itself as tasked with the responsibility of negating the excesses of capitalism – this is something we’re fast moving away from. The current government is one of deregulation; of big society and a small state. It is a government that is not only terrified of being seen to interfere in the free market, but that is actively encouraging the encroachment of neo-liberal structures on our last remaining publicly-owned services.

As the state shrinks, it might well be that the economy grows. But so does the power and influence of self-interested capitalists. And in this globalised economy, where the natural checks and balances against self-interest are minimal, it is surely foolhardy to advocate a system devoid of regulatory power. In this fallen and broken world, just governance lies, not in laissez-faire politics, but in negotiating a tension between the interests of the state and the interests of big business.

You might come to this point and wonder where Augustine fits into this. But the reality is he informs the entire worldview. It is Augustine’s political realism that identifies love of self as the fundamental basis of what he calls the ‘earthly city’. It is Augustine who identifies a fundamental tension between the duty of the legislature to the state and to the interests of the individual. And it is Augustine who understands a key role of the state to be the incentivisation of peace over the human predisposition to conflict, in much the same way as I have suggested the state has a duty to incentivise socially responsible activity.

Because at the end of the day, Standard Chartered is trying to eradicate blindness in third world markets because that is where 95% of its customers are based. Microsoft donates software to non-profits because it reinforces their dominance over Apple in the private and charitable sectors.

But that doesn’t stop these measures being great things to do.

Everyone tries to claim Augustine as one of there own. Catholics and Protestants fight over where his allegiances would lie, were he alive today. To try and speculate on what he might think about Capitalism would be a ridiculous piece of self-centred hubris that only the foolish would attempt.

But stuff it, I think he probably would agree with me. I don’t think he’d have much time for the current government, with their easy capitulation to the demands of The City and big business, but neither do I think he’d buy into the notion that a genuine working alternative to a system based on the love of self is possible in a fallen and broken world. The best we can do is to elect a government committed to negating the excesses of self-interest that inevitably arise when operating within the Capitalist system.

All of which means that when it comes to election day on May 7th 2015, you should cast your vote for the only party committed to treading the careful balancing act that is required to even begin to talk about an “ethical” capitalism.

Because that’s what Augustine would do.

Probably.

“Neither Male Nor Female” (Marriage and Gender Part III)

Part II of this blog post can be found here.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks trying to craft the perfect riposte to the theological arguments that are regularly arrayed against gay marriage and in favour of gender complementarity. I even transcribed an interview with ex-Bishop of Durham Tom Wright, and wrote responses to each of his points in turn. But in the end, my responses, and my entire blog piece, felt hollow.

I think this is largely because my argument was entirely negative. Wright brought several pieces of Scripture to his argument against gay marriage, and my initial desire was to show that you didn’t have to interpret these passages in the way he had. I still hold to the points I made. I do think that reading Genesis 2 as establishing a fundamental complementary dualism between ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ is stretching the point, and I see no reason to exclude gay couples from embodying the sacramental aspect of marriage that provides an analogy for the relationship between Christ and the Church. But I also think that negative arguments like this are unlikely to have any great effect. They invariably tend to towards the tedious, are unlikely to make anyone rethink their position, and don’t really contribute to a dialogue. It is positive arguments – arguing for theological truths rather than against what I believe to be misguided interpretations – that are most likely to win the day.

As such, to conclude my little trilogy of blogs on the issues surrounding gay marriage and the notion of compementarity, I want to offer nothing more than a short reflection on a passage of Scripture. This passage is, for me, not only one of the most brilliant things that St. Paul ever wrote, but one of the most important statements ever made regarding human identity. It comes from his letter to the Galatians.

In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. [Galatians 3:26-28]

One of the points I’ve repeatedly returned to in discussions of gender and sexuality is the idea of a fundamental complementarity between the sexes. The word fundamental is here very important. One can identify a set of complementary tendencies between the sexes without identifying an inherent complementarity between a single man and a single woman. But this identification of a ‘tendency’ doesn’t lend itself to the traditional Christian arguments against gay marriage that I have previously outlined. For the Christian argument to stand, gender complementarity needs to be an essential feature of every marriage. It might not express itself in the traditional ways, but it must always be present, sitting just below the surface.

In this understanding, ‘maleness’ and ‘femaleness’ are much deeper realities than the purely physical. They are conceived as spiritual, holistic realities, that go the very heart of our being; that define who we are in some fundamental and unchangeable way. They are conceived, to use the Aristotelean term, as part of our very substance.

Aristotelian philosophy makes a key distinction between what Aristotle calls something’s “substance” and what he sees as an “accident”. Substance is the very essence of a thing – it is the “chairness” of a chair, the core identity. Accidents are the properties that are not fundamental to that essence – so the colour of the chair, or the material that it’s made of. And while maybe we’ve dropped the language and philosophical structure, I think this distinction between substance and accident is one that is very useful for understanding how we naturally approach the world around us, and particularly other people.

Aristotle himself thought there were fundamental differences between men and women. But then he also thought there were fundamental differences between those whom he thought of as ‘natural’ slaves, and those who were naturally free. In recent history, there have been those in the West who thought they could identify fundamental differences between black race groups and white, and there are still plenty around the world who think there exists fundamental differences between those of certain ethnic, social and religious identities. Indeed, the history of human society seems to suggest that we humans have a natural desire and impulse to categorise “the other”. This isn’t unexpected, given that we rely on universalisable terms for communication. But history also warns us of the dangers that occur when we come to see those categories as somehow definitive.

Today in the West, it is gender that, more than any other human category, is seen as definitive. It is gender that is conceived of as fundamentally substantive. This isn’t something that is confined to Christian culture (although Christian tradition has certainly provided many of the roots), but is something that spans secular culture as well. While notions of race, nationality and social status have generally come to be seen as accidents of physical and cultural heritage, we have retained and even reinforced the idea that gender forms an integral part of our substantive being. Gender in western thought has become an issue, not simply of physical nature, but of metaphysics. It has come to be seen as a fundamental aspect of the human soul.

But Paul’s words to the Galatians tell a different story. It is not religious inheritance, not social status, and not gender that defines us in our innermost being. What defines us is our relationship to Christ. The only status that is substantive is that we are loved as a child of God. This is the Gospel.

This doesn’t mean that I think gender is unimportant, although some theologians have certainly taken that view. The 4th Century theologian Gregory of Nyssa took a similar line to the one I’ve taken above, and concluded that gender was ultimately a meaningless construct. In eternity, he believed, all people would be genderless.

But I think that such a position is flawed because it fails to recognise the formative nature of our accidental characteristics. Just because something is not fundamental to our being, doesn’t meant that it is not important to our identity. I am male, and that is something that has been integral to my development as an unique individual. But I’m also fairly short of stature, and however much I’d like to think otherwise, that too has been an essentially formative accident of my life. If, when one day I die, I awake in the green fields of a renewed heaven and a new earth, I fully expect that I’ll still be male. But I’ll also probably still be short. I’ll just be okay with it.

Gender, race, nationality, sexuality, ability. All these categories and more contribute to the rich diversity of our world, as the basis on which we are able to express our unique individuality. Take them away and the world is a lesser place. But none of these categories are ultimately definitive. None of them are the foundations of our being – not according to Paul. And that, more than any other reason, is why I refuse to read a fundamental complementarity – which would mean the establishing of a fundamental substantive difference – into the Genesis account of the creation of humanity. And that is why I disagree with those who would seek to ban gay marriage on these grounds.

There are, of course, a number of other arguments that can be brought against gay marriage, but these will have to be fought on different grounds to the ones that I have established here. What I have tried to show with these three blog posts is two things. Firstly, that there are genuine reasons why Christians are opposed to gay marriage that can’t be dismissed as simple homophobia. When the different sides of the argument resort to name calling and mud slinging, we miss out on the chance for genuine constructive dialogue about both the nature of marriage and the nature of the human condition. But the second thing I’ve tried to show is that I believe the traditional Christian position to be deeply flawed – rooted as it is in a complementarian understanding of gender that I believe to be implicitly sexist, empirically false and theologically misguided. Many Christians will disagree with me on the latter point, but I hope that those who often disparage Christianity on the basis of its perceived anti-gay marriage stance will come to understand why it is that I propose the former.

The Church’s attitude to gay marriage will be the defining feature of 21st Century Christianity in the eyes of my generation. And the Church has to get its response right if it’s to grow and flourish over the coming twenty years. That doesn’t mean everyone simply agrees with my position, but it does mean Christians need to think very seriously about the arguments involved. It means Christians refuse to buy in to the rhetoric that is often promulgated by the anti-gay lobby, recognising that for thousands of gay men and women in loving, committed relationships, being unable to refer to their partner as husband or wife is something that is deeply upsetting. It means Christians read up on the Christian literature on both sides of the debate, and that they accept the existence of different positions within the Christian framework. It means separating theological convictions from the perfectly natural (but deeply misguided) unease that comes with anything that has historically been perceived as unusual, and learning to dispel these prejudices and pray against them.

Above all, however, it means learning to love, unconditionally and without reservation. As Christ did – with actions rather than just words.

Mars, Venus and Gender Norms (Marriage and Gender Part II)

Part I of this blog post can be found here

In my last post on the subject, I argued that Christian opposition to gay marriage is rooted, at least in part, in a heteronormative view of the world that identifies a fundamental complementarity between women and men. If this is so, then the obvious question to ask is whether this view of gender is a valid one.

On closer inspection, however, this single question of validity quickly dissolves into three closely related but seperate questions, each looking at the validity of such a belief from a different angle. These angles can be summed up as follows:

1) Is this heteronormative understanding of gender politically desirable?
2) Is this heteronormative understanding of gender empirically supported?
3) Is this heteronormative understanding of gender theologically sound?

Like all issues relating to fundamental beliefs about the nature of the human condition, none of these make for particularly easy questions to answer. Over the last three thousand years, various individuals have argued for every conceivable position, and there’s no silver bullet that I can think of that points in any particular direction. Nevertheless, I want to have a stab at formulating and defining my own position, because I think that these are questions that have enormous repercussions for not only our understanding of sexuality, but for how we treat and appropriate gender within Christian and secular society at large.

It’s worth saying from the beginning that this blog post will only properly deal with the first two of these three questions, leaving the rather thorny theological issues aside for one minute, to be picked up at a later date. I should also probably come clean right now and admit that I come at these questions with my mind already firmly made up. None of these three questions will be given a balanced and fair interrogation under the illusion of objective analysis, mainly because this would be an incredibly long-winded way of making the points I want to get across. To all three I will answer firmly in the negative, and while some may disagree with me, I hope I will be able to give a good account of why it is that I give such an answer.

I should also point out that I come to answer these questions in full appreciation of the hypocrisy that I practice on a daily basis. To argue on the one hand, as I will, that coarse heteronormative gender stereotypes should have no place in our rational discourse, and then with the other hand to dismiss half the world’s population as irrational whenever my fiancée and I have a disagreement – that is not something that I am particularly proud of. All I can say is that I’m working hard on disentangling myself from the curly-haired eleven year old who used to call his brother a ‘big girls blouse’ every time he got upset, and that I genuinely do believe what I write, even if I fail to live it out on a regular basis.

And so to the first question.

When I ask whether a heteronormative understanding of gender that identifies men and women as complementary halves of a whole is politically desirable, I am asking whether we should support this perspective practically as a useful and constructive framework for understanding gender, even before we get to questions about whether it has any basis in fact. Does a complementarian understanding of gender help us move forward as a society, particularly in the area of equality?

In my previous blog post, I suggested that this perspective had served a useful purpose for a time, by acting as a bridge between traditional perspectives on gender and a more nuanced egalitarian perspective. It enabled Christian and secular society alike to celebrate the different social roles of men and women, while affirming fundamental equality, and enabled Christian theology to reappropriate traditionally feminine aspects of the Divine nature.

But my answer to this question remains a firm ‘nein!’. As I understand it, a worldview that sees gender as the embodiment of fundamental differences is the worldview of an inevitably patriarchal society. To argue that men and women are fundamentally distinct even in the midst of their equality comes dangerously close to the ‘all animals are equal but…’ of Animal Farm’s pigs. ‘Separate but equal’ may have been forged as a response to a more explicit patriarchy, but it is cut from the same cloth as the worldview that has kept women in the kitchen and men in the office for pretty much all of history. Such a view can only ever paper over the cracks in the Church’s attitude towards gender equality, because at the end of the day it inevitably sees men and women as inhabiting fundamentally different roles within society.

Even if I was open to the notion of a fundamental difference between the genders then, of some innate complementarity between the sexes, I would be tempted to reject it as doctrine on these practical grounds. Because it is an idea that is too ripe for abuse and misuse – too easy to twist into a doctrine of male superiority in all the things that men want to be superior at. Sexism is not something confined to the past, but is still a very present reality in all walks of life. And perpetuating the idea that women and men are fundamentally different in their natures only plays into the hands of those who think that a man’s place is in the boardroom, while a woman’s is in the kitchen.

The question of whether this view of complementarity is empirically supported is in some ways a much easier question to answer. Because if this heteronormative view of the world is empirically valid, then the obvious question to ask is exactly where this complementarity of genders can be seen to exist. And as far as I can see there are only two plausible sources to which we might appeal. The first is the emotional attributes of the respective genders (by which I mean dispositions and inclinations), and the second is their physical attributes. However neither of these sources, I think, is capable of sustaining the notion of a fundamental complementarity in marriage.

With regards to the emotions, the case is sometimes made that men and women have different dispositions, in very real and practical terms, and that these differences are fundamental to their natures without affecting their equal standing. Women have an innate disposition for being caring and compassionate, while men are disposed toward decisiveness and a firm hand. Women are creative, while men think analytically. Women prefer the orderliness of the kitchen, while men prefer the chaos of the hunt. Women nurture, men lead; women heal, men kill; women comfort, men challenge. These might seem like crass generalisations (which they are), but this is surely where a complementarian worldview rooted in disposition leads: to the assigning of fundamental emotional differences between the sexes.

The problem, of course, is that we all know women who embody traits and dispositions that have traditionally been understood as masculine, and men for whom the reverse is true. Women who are decisive leaders and highly logical thinkers, as well as women who spurn what they perceive as a feminine ‘softness’. There are even women who (whisper it) don’t actually like babies. And there are plenty of men who act with compassion and care, just as there are men who abhor violence in any form and men who go weak at the knees at the sound of a newborn child.

To understand these masculine and feminine traits as somehow ‘fundamental’ to the genders is simply nonsensical. Yes, there is probably a greater proportion of men than women who embody certain masculine traits, but this is a surely a general trend, not a fundamental disposition. To argue otherwise is to label those women who embody traditionally masculine tendencies and those men who embody traditionally feminine tendencies as somehow wrong – as ill-formed and ill-created.

It’s worth acknowledging here that there are certain differences in the experiences of the sexes – moments unique to each gender – that can be intensely formative to their emotional development. Child-birth is an obvious example of an experience that can profoundly affect the dispositions and attitudes of those who experience it, but even here I fail to see how this experience is in any way fundamental to female nature. To make that claim would be an insult to women the world over. It might be a uniquely female experience, but child-birth is by no means universal to women, and it surely affects different individuals in different ways.

A slightly different line is needed when it comes to the physical natures of the genders. Without being crass, there certainly are definite physical differences between the male and female bodies. And yet if this is all that complementarily has to root itself in – physical differences relating to the production of children and the like – then its a fairly basic and rudimentary complementarity that has no bearing on the social roles of men and women. Nor should it have much of a bearing on the complementarily of men and women in marriage, unless we’re going to make the physical act of reproduction a fundamental aspect of marriage itself (which is where Catholics get let somewhat off the hook, even if they find themselves caught on another line).

It’s also worth pointing out that there are many in this world who don’t fit comfortably into a binary understanding of physical gender – particularly those who exhibit male and female sex characteristics from birth. Although fairly rare, their presence is a reality that should not be ignored. If we insist on making gender somehow fundamental to our natures, then where does this leave them? Trapped in gender limbo for all eternity?

In the end, I fail to see how we can honestly maintain the belief in a fundamental complimentarity between the sexes that is anything more than skin deep. We’ve been raised to think that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but in these days of greater gender equality and freedom, these coarse stereotypes simply don’t add up. Hormonal differences and social influences may contribute to different tendencies in the emotional disposition of men and women, encouraging masculine traits in men and feminine traits in women, but there is nothing fundamental about a tendency. The cross-over is enormous, and there is a huge variety of other external factors that can influence us in similar ways.

To finish, I want to be careful here and clarify what I am not saying. I’m not saying that we need to do away with the concepts of masculinity and femininity altogether. Rather, I’m saying that we need to hold them with an open hand, recognising that they are by no means ‘fundamental’ to their respective genders. Neither am I saying men should deny their masculinity, or that women should deny their femininity in the name of some bland and boring gender homogeny. Rather, I am suggesting that we need to embrace the enormous variety in our expressions of gender, and to stop demanding that men and women conform to our heteronormative constructions. And however much we protest, a position that sees a fundamental complementarity between the genders inevitably demands such conformity.

I’ll return to the issue of gay marriage more thoroughly in my next post, but for now let me say that I fail to see any secular reason for arguing that marriage should be exclusively reserved for heterosexual couples. From an empirical perspective, heterosexual marriage fails to provide assurance of any complementarity apart from the physical act of reproduction – and even here there are plenty of heterosexual couples who struggle. Ultimately, there is no basis for claiming that men and women are a naturally occurring yin and yang – two halves of a whole. And nor should we expect them to be.

Part III of this blog post can be found here

Faith, Doubt and Nietzsche’s Dark Night of the Soul

As I write this, I haven’t posted a blog for over a month, which I’m sure is fairly standard practice for very amateur bloggers. There’s a number of reasons for this, a primary one being the fact I picked up Hilary Mantell’s outrageously good ‘Wolf Hall’ and ‘Bringing Up The Bodies’ books and found that I couldn’t actually put them down. But a second reason is because I didn’t really know what to write. I started this blog wanting to write about theology and society, but recently I’ve found myself wanting to write more and more about politics, liberalism and other ‘secular’ topics – topics that I’m even less qualified to talk about than theology. And the reason for this isn’t particularly hard to fathom, as I’ve spent the last month going through one of my frequent periods of existential doubt. As such, I’ve found it a lot easier to write and think about topics that don’t require me to confront the frailty of my own faith in any great detail.

I actually came very close to walking away from faith altogether at some point in my second year of university. Having my assurances swept out from under my feet was something that took a serious toll on my religious resolve. If the bible could not be relied upon as an infallible witness, then I struggled to find a sure foundation for faith. If my “experiences” of God could be analysed and dissected, then I failed to see how I could ever find any assurance again. If other people at other times had been so convinced of beliefs that I believe to be false that they were willing to give their life, then it was difficult to see how I could lay any claim to ‘the truth’.

If it weren’t for the fact that ‘coming out’ as a non-Christian would have been too difficult and painful a process to bear, I would probably have packed the whole thing in long ago.

Over time, I did come back to faith. Not in an old but a new way; no longer with unyielding assurance, but in tentative hesitancy and no great deal of confusion. Doubt became a part of my religious framework, and the rebuilding process of faith had to begin from a position of virtual agnosticism. As part of this process, I learnt to value my faith as a part of my identity, rather than something I simply believed. I came to see Christian belief as a framework for social justice, as well as a source of ethical action. I found value in the beauty of the Christian message, as well as in its truth. And I came to see the Christian story as a narrative that enables us to make sense of the world, as well as a historical account of Divine Action. In short, I committed to the idea of Christ, as well as the person. I found reasons to have faith that would sustain me, even in those moments that I doubted the veracity of the Christian story. I decided that I believed, knowing full well that I was standing very much in the air.

I know that many people will find this quite difficult to understand. Christians and Atheists alike might accuse me of lacking integrity; of tricking myself into valuing something I don’t really believe. But I’m not saying that I don’t believe in God. I’m saying I’m not sure, and that I doubt I ever will be. And that during the long, dark nights of the soul, I need reasons to cling to faith.

The idea that someone could need to cling to faith is a fairly widely derided one. High minded liberals of vastly superior intellect peer down their noses at those who are weak-minded enough to need such a crutch to get through the day. In particular vogue at the moment is the notion that this beautiful earth provides such a wonderful existence that it is churlish to fabricate some tedious fiction about life after death in order to escape it. The Magic of Reality is more than enough, Dawkins would surely say.

This is an important contemporary suggestion, which seems to be rooted in some bizarrely inverted appropriation of Karl Marx. Marx argued that religion was a fiction that alienated the working class from the poverty of their true existence, thus preventing them from revolution and the redemption of the established social order. But in the minds of many of those coming from the liberal end of philosophy, religion has become an unnecessary hang-over of the past that prevents us from truly appreciating the wonders of the world. It is an entirely unnecessary fiction, because the world is rosy enough without it. Human existence is already full of beauty and meaning, and without the need for tall tales.

Except I don’t buy it.

In the five minutes it’s taken you to read this far, 73 children have died from preventable diseases. 450 acres of rainforest have been destroyed, and this is showing no signs of slowing down. In the Democratic Republic of Congo alone, at least 4 women have been raped, with recent reports suggesting the numbers could be much higher.

The world is not rosy or bright. Thousands of human beings of every age are butchered every day through war and violence. The global capitalist system that has given us the luxury of our technologies and our health care has decimated the developing world. Our pesticides have toxified the water, our trawlers have ruined fishstocks and we live with the constant knowledge that someday, somewhere, someone is going to push the big red button.

This world is not wonderful for the 1.3 billion who live in extreme poverty. I can’t imagine its particularly wonderful for the 50% who live on less than $2.50 a day either. The momentary anarchies of human history and nature may have been kind to Little England and the rolling hills of Surrey, but for the majority the world is a cruel and desperate place. Life without God is not a new dawn, but a dark and empty night. The death of God does not give us new perspective, but rips hope out of existence. To claim that this world is bright with meaning and purpose is an ignorance of the highest order.

Friedrich Nietzsche, an individual often paraded as the paradigm of liberal atheism, recognised this danger. For Nietzsche feared as much as celebrated the death of God. He feared that society would tear itself apart once confronted by the meaninglessness of existence. Some might survive that existential despair through their blessed incapacity for self-reflection, but others would be driven mad by it. Society, Nietzsche feared, would become suicidal if it were to recognise the futility of its endeavours and the utter meaninglessness of its existence.

Social progression, for Nietzsche then, was not simply a matter of shrugging off the old God and walking away free. Although he believed it had crippled the weak, Nietzsche makes it clear in the third essay of the Genealogy of Morality that he believes Christianity to have served an essential role in human history. Christianity was a poison that kept society alive, even as it weakened it, by imbuing life with a sense of meaning and purpose and staving off the existential despair of nihilism. And that role had to continue. Overcoming the death of God meant weaving new narratives to give human lives new purpose and new meaning. It meant creating new gods, as Heidegger later put it.

Of course, we saw the sort of gods that Heidegger advocated in the rise of National Socialism. Others have tried to deify human history and the inevitability of social progress, although this god too was brought crashing to earth with the wars of the 20th century. Others still have taken up the gods of individual self-fulfillment and hedonism, searching for their own personal meaning through whatever means they can find and choosing to ignore the untold misery of their fellow men and women.

And then there are those of us who have refused to surrender to the death of God. Who insist that the Christian narrative retold is the true locus of existential meaning.

This is why I cling to my faith. Because faith gives me a hope that this life isn’t an empty shell. I don’t believe in God because I want to escape this world, but because I need the hope that there is redemption at the end of all things. I don’t believe because eschatology absolves me of responsibility, but because hope of that redemption imbues me with a sense of purpose and a faith that my efforts are not in vain. Without God, and without the promise of redemption – not for me, but for the whole of the created order – life would be meaningless.

Of course, my own life would continue to be fairly rosy. But I need more for this earth than for me to have a pleasant existence.

In short, I need hope.

Human Rights and Human Narrative

One of the reasons I started this blog was because I wanted to study political as much as religious perspectives. After all, the perspectivism of Nietzsche – recognising that we start from propositions and perspectives, rather than simply reasoning to them – is as relevant in the political realm as it is in the theological. And the secular world is often just as unwilling to acknowledge this fact as the religious world is. Just yesterday I listened to a debate in which the philosopher Arif Ahmed claimed that we should not talk of ‘different worldviews’, but rather one legitimate worldview (that of the logical empiricist), and a lot of nonsense. His central point was that until empirical evidence leads us to a certain conclusion we are to suspend our judgement, particularly when it comes to something as important as belief in a Divine Being.

When we stop and think about it, however, there plenty of instances of beliefs we hold as fundamental, that are not rooted in logical or empirical thinking. Beliefs that form the foundations rather than the conclusions of rational political discourse. I’ve spent the last few months dipping in and out of History and Illusion in Politics by the political philosopher Raymond Geuss, who highlights numerous examples of this perspectivism that are particularly worth exploring, especially with a theo-political agenda. What I want to explore here, however, is the concept of human rights.

When Martin Luther King famously proclaimed that “we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal”, he wasn’t proclaiming a law of nature discoverable using scientific methodology, but making a scientifically unfounded assertion that nevertheless helps us make sense of the world. Indeed, from an empirical perspective it would seem that all men (and women) are patently not created equal. When we think of the extent of social and physical inequality that exists in the world, it seems remarkably strange to identify the equality of humanity as a self-evident truth.

But King is expressing a deep conviction that is both meta-physical and meta-sociological. The statement ‘all are created equal’ is the precondition and premise from which he begins to reflect on the human condition, not the conclusion which he draws from observations about humanity. It is quite simply a faith statement – the presupposition from which rational discourse can begin, rather than its conclusion. So too the talk of “inherent dignity” and “inalienable rights” in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – assertions that are given without foundation or justification.

Rather than the scientific recognition of an empirically observed natural state, beliefs about human rights and the fundamental equality of humanity arise from the imposition of a human narrative. Rather than scientific empiricism, the central considerations in talk of ‘inalienable rights’ are ones of aesthetics and utility. Does this narrative help us make sense of the world? Does this narrative reveal something that we subjectively feel to be true? Is this narrative beautiful?

One of the most interesting aspects of human rights discourse, however, is that it is a fundamentally theological narrative, rooted in Christian proclamations about the universal fatherhood of God. It is theology that gives the concept of human rights its coherence, through facilitating the assigning of an innate value to each human subject that lies outside of the subjective valuations of society. When stripped of its theological framework, talk of inalienable rights and intrinsic value become brute assertions with little rhyme or reason. They can still stand as perspectives in their own right, but they become difficult perspectives to maintain.

This theological root is part of the reason why philosophers like Geuss have rejected the notion of fundamental human rights as nonsensical. While a theist might be able to preserve talk of ‘inalienable rights’ and the equality of humanity, Geuss feels that such a notion is untenable from a secular worldview. For him, human rights are a relic of a theopolitical worldview and cannot provide the foundations for a progressive humanist society in the future, because they themselves lack any stable foundation for themselves.

And yet, if we give up on human rights, where does that leave us? If we refuse to assign an intrinsic value to the most forsaken and unloved in this world, do we lose or gain humanity? If we cannot accede to the equality of humankind, on the basis of a lack of empirical evidence or rationale, then how can we ever condemn corruption and exploitation?

My point is this. The stories we tell each other matter. The narratives by which we make sense of our world matter. If we wait for empirical evidence to lead us down every road we might find ourselves waiting at crossroads, unable to commit to something that is fundamental to who we are. I’m not saying that the narrative of Christian theology is “just” a story, or that all the narratives we tell ourselves are good and right – the narratives of nationalism and tribalism, for example, are powerful fictions that cause untold misery around the world (failing to recognise this was, I think, Heidegger’s greatest folly). What I am saying, is that we all subscribe to such narratives as a way of understanding the world around us. When we try to deny these narratives a place in our lives – when we suspend all judgment and commitment until the empirical evidence lies before us – we deny a part of our selves.

Friedrich Nietzsche, for all his numerous faults, understood this better than anyone. He understood that science’s relentless drive to render all human nature as basic mechanics would come at the expense of human being. He understood that it is our stories, narratives and perspectives that give human life meaning; that it is our faiths and hopes and loves that make the lives we live intelligible. He may well have detested modern perceptions of human rights and equality, but that is because he thought he could write a better story, one more conducive to human betterment, than because of a lack of empirical evidence.

Creationism and Social Progress

I was planning on posting ‘Gay Marriage and Gender Part II’ today, but on a final read through I decided that it was perhaps a little limited on the charitable front. I’ll post it in some form at some point soon, but it’s difficult working out how to approach it. I started writing this series because I was fed up at how polarised debates like the one about gay marriage tend to be, with people on either side resorting to name calling and hyperbole as standard. But at the end of the day, it’s very easy to find yourself resorting to these very same tactics in an effort to make your point clearly.

The fact is that debates like this are polarising. For some, gay marriage is an issue of basic human rights and equality. For others, its a question about the very will of the Creator. When traditional religious and progressive humanist views collide in the public sphere, there’s little room for a ‘balanced’ approach. What’s at stake is something absolutely fundamental – a foundational belief that informs their respective worldviews. Undermine that foundation and you pull the rug out from under their feet.

This helps explain the debate that continues to rage in American over six-day creationism. The fact is that there should be no debate. There’s plenty of room for a discussion about the driving force of the evolutionary process, or about the very origins of life, but any suggestion that the universe is only 6,000 years is, frankly, a ridiculous and laughable suggestion. This doesn’t mean that anyone who believes in six-day creation is ridiculous or laughable, as such a belief doesn’t prevent an individual from holding incredibly intelligent and insightful views about other issues. But it is a completely unjustifiable belief by any modern standard of science.

And yet a Gallup poll in 2012 suggested that 46% of the population of the USA are convinced that the world was created by God in the last 10,000 years. 46% of the population of the most powerful country in the world is utterly wrong about one of the most fundamental aspects of modern science. Which leaves a question about how those of us who know better confront this ignorance. Do we sweep it under the rug and ignore it? Shut our eyes and sing loudly? Or do we engage with it, as some ‘science guy’ tried to do in a debate that was streamed to nearly a million Americans the other day, much to the chagrin of those who think that such issues shouldn’t be allowed to see the light of day for fear of giving them some kind of scientific validity?

The reality is that there’s very little we can do. Deeply conservative Christian interest groups who hold a strong view on the inerrancy of scripture hold a political and social influence in the USA that is unheard of anywhere else in the western world. And this strong belief in the inerrancy of Scripture necessitates a rejection of evolution in favour of six-day creationism, whatever the evidence put forward by scientists. As long as these fundamental beliefs lie at the heart of American Christianity, science cannot win and evolution will not be accepted, because there is no evidence that can fight against The Word of God.

For proper change to occur, seismic shifts have to occur in the way that this 46% of Americans hold to their foundational beliefs. Debating “science” in an auditorium won’t convince anyone – what is needed first is a genuine dialogue about how Christians should appropriate the Scriptures. Until change happens on that front, scientists will be banging their heads against a brick wall. And until those of us who recognise the validity of evolution recognise where the “creationists” are coming from, we’ll never be able to have a productive conversation.

My point is this. People don’t believe crazy things like six-day creationism for no reason. Their views are entirely coherent given their foundational beliefs. And people don’t hold to traditional beliefs about marriage for no reason either, which is what I tried to show in my previous post. But rather than engage with a critique of the foundations of these beliefs; rather than engage in constructive dialogue that listens as well as preaches, the vast majority of ‘liberals’ in the public sphere attempt to simply impose their progressive views on people who don’t share their foundations. They forget that social attitudes have changed beyond recognition in the last twenty years, and that for some these attitudes are still changing. They become intolerant of those who they believe to be intolerant. And they reinforce a tribal, ‘us-versus-them’ mentality in those who hold to traditional beliefs.

Shouting matches might be easy, but they are counter-productive. What is required is patience and grace. Education rather than condemnation.

Gay Marriage and the Church (Marriage and Gender Part I)

About six months ago, the ever-candid Giles Fraser was involved in a very revealing twitter exchange about gay marriage. It started when he rather controversially (to say the least) suggested that homophobia was a motive shared between those who participated in violent assaults against gay men and those who opposed gay marriage. 

And then this happened:

@anthonyjsmith Yes.

— Giles Fraser (@giles_fraser) May 20, 2013

Now I’m quite a fan of Giles – I think he’s a welcome voice for liberal, socially-oriented Christianity in a media world so often dominated by talk of conservatives and fundamentalists. His presence as a Guardian writer and Radio 4 regular serves to highlight the breadth of opinion and perspectives within the Church, and this is a fact to be celebrated rather than commiserated, regardless of individual theological or political positions. I find myself agreeing with him on many issues, and despite his somewhat polemical and confrontational style, I have to admit that he’s one of my favourite commentators on Christian and religious thought (we also share a great love for Nietzsche, on whom he’s written a rather good book).

On the issue of gay marriage and Christian theology, however, I think Giles Fraser has shot himself in the foot. To brand all Christian opposition to gay marriage as ‘homophobic’ is not only rather dismissive of Christians who have genuinely wrestled with their beliefs about homosexuality; it is also incredibly counter-productive when it comes to actively engaging with the Church on this issue. Because while homophobia can undeniably feature in the Christian rhetoric surrounding gay marriage, there’s another, much subtler line of thinking that I think is just as important in shaping views on marriage, and that is far more powerful as an argument.

The fact is that opposition to gay marriage (from the theologically informed side of the church at least) seems to have little, practically, to do with Christian hostility to homosexuality itself. There are, of course, Christians who insist on proclaiming the Bible’s (rather limited) condemnation of same-sex relations from proverbial street corners, but as Steve Chalke has pointed out, this becomes a little hypocritical when it comes from the vast majority of Christians who think women should be able to speak up in church, or leave their hair uncovered, in apparent contravention of other New Testament injunctions. Few Christians will now publicly condemn same-sex relationships per se or voice opposition to the principles of civil partnerships, and the Church has very actively sought to poisition its opposition to same-sex marriage as a defence of marriage, rather than an attack on homosexuality.

The fact that theological opposition to homosexual marriage has little to do with homophobia, or even opposition to homosexuality, can be seen most clearly in the Church of England’s carefully worded response to the government consultation of 2012, released in June of that year. In it, the Church of England claims to support “greater legal rights for same-sex couples”, and welcomes provision for the previous inequalities that had existed “between heterosexual and same-sex partnerships.” Perhaps even more surprisingly, the statement also claims that questions about active homosexual relationships within the church were “a continuing theological and ethical debate” that had no bearing on their opposition to same-sex marriage.

In this statement at least, the Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage has nothing to do with homophobia. And if those of us who are in favour of same-sex marriage are to respond to it, whether that be from theological, ethical or political grounds, we have to appreciate this fact. Simple mud-slinging will never contribute to what is actually a much more difficult and nuanced discussion than many proponents of same-sex marriage seem to have realised.

The Church of England statement makes it quite clear where their principle opposition to same-sex marriage lies in the following clause:

“We believe that redefining marriage to include same-sex relationships will entail a dilution in the meaning of marriage for everyone by excluding the fundamental complementarity of men and women from the social and legal definition of marriage.“

This notion has cropped up and time and again in conversations about same-sex marriage, only nobody seems to have given it due focus – the idea that in marriage, men and women are created to form two complementary halves of a whole. It’s an idea that has been around for centuries, but its one that has become particularly prominent in recent decades.

In many ways the reasons for the re-emergence of a theological focus on complementarity are positive. As the Church has sought to move away from the explicit patriarchy that has dominated practically the entire history of its theological discourse, a complementary understanding of gender has allowed it to celebrate the traditionally-conceived differences between the sexes without creating natural hierarchies. Drawing on the secular ‘men are from Mars, women are from Venus’ ideas of the late 90’s, complementarianism (as it has come to be known) enabled a theology of ‘different but equal’, that created further foundations to support gender equality within the church. In its more nuanced forms this complementarity even allowed for a reappropriation of the feminine aspects of God that patriarchy had forgotten, by positioning men and women as embodying complementary aspects of the Divine nature.

It is this complementarianism that I belive lies right at the heart of Christian opposition to same-sex marriage. The idea that women and men are intended to come together as two halves of a Divinely ordained whole is an idea that inevitably excludes two men or two women coming together in the same way. And it is important to note that this a legitimate conclusion to come to if you hold to a complementarian worldview.

It is this heteronormative framework which forms much of the battleground on which the gay marriage debate must be fought. I’m not saying that homophobia doesn’t exist or feature in gay marriage discussion, inside and outside the church, or that it shouldn’t be shot down whenever it rears its ugly head. But if we are to have genuine dialogue and an open discussion, and if the traditional Christian position is to be properly understood, our understanding of gender has to take at least some of the stage. Until that happens, conversations about gay marriage are going to continuously miss each other in the middle, and progress will inevitably be limited. 

So Giles Fraser is wrong. A complementarian worldview can be accused of being many things – implicitly sexist, misguided or out of touch with reality to name a few – but it is not simple homophobia. To label it as such is to miss out on the chance for genuine theologically informed discourse on an issue that, whether we like it or not, is coming to define the perceptions of Christian faith among younger generations.

Part II of this blog can be found here