Concern for the poor is an essential part of being a Christian. Yet, Christians often don’t know how to effectively engage people who are in poverty, often coming from social and ethnic backgrounds very different from them. The temptation is to substitute reason with emotion and to offer transactional systems of care instead of the arduous task of encounter.
More damaging is the attitude of many to bureaucratize and institutionalize approaches to poverty out of a frustration with their inability to find solutions. Although historically those in need could count on neighbors, local churches and other civic associations in times of need, it seems that now that sense of local responsibility is lacking. The idea that closeness to the task at hand embodies a larger responsibility for those who find themselves closer suffers every time structures of care that bypass basic communities not only exist but thrive.
It has been a long time since Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about an American culture where a strong local ethos of responsibility made America exceptional. Over time, our society has incrementally transferred responsibility toward larger structures of care and a welfare system based on the primacy of the state over other communities. In the process, our minds have acquiesced to that understanding, even if only implicitly. But how can we turn the tide? Marvin Olasky states, “The crisis of the modern welfare state is a crisis of government, but it is more than that. Too many private charities and foundations dispense aid based on what feels good rather than what works; they end up providing, instead of points of light, alternative shades of darkness.” A renewal of the mind and the heart of those attempting to help others is essential to turn the tide of the collectivization of “compassion.”
The FVI has developed a workshop in effective compassion to revive the principles that attended the birth of systems of care in early American life while adapting these ideas to the present conditions of our society.
Recommended Readings
For the Least of These: A Biblical Answer to Poverty, Anne R. Bradley & Art Linsley, Editors.
Renewing American Compassion by Marvin Olasky
Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help (and How to Reverse It) by Robert D. Lupton.
From Dependence to Dignity: How to Alleviate Poverty through Church-Centered Microfinance by Brian Fikkert and Russell Mask.
As the financial capital markets gradually recover from their pandemic-induced weakness, equal attention should be focused on the recovery of another kind of capital. Social capital—the capacity of people to cooperate toward common ends—has long been faltering and concerted effort will be necessary to shore it up.
Although the term only came into common usage in the 1990s, the concept of social capital has a long history. When the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s, he was astounded by the level of social capital. “Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations,” he wrote. “They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive.” Tocqueville observed that, whereas projects aimed at the common good tended to be organized in France by government and in England by the elite, in America people from every background and status contributed to the general welfare. “I have often admired,” he reflected, “the extreme skill with which the inhabitants of the United States succeed in proposing a common object for the exertions of a great many men and in inducing them voluntarily to pursue it.”
This characteristic of American life, he went on to say, was especially important in a democratic society, because otherwise individuals would be powerless to accomplish projects and tackle problems confronting communities. Lacking the individual wealth or political power of European aristocracy, Americans were reliant on the ability to link up with others in the tasks necessary to create a flourishing nation.
There is ample evidence that this capacity—social capital—has been declining in the United States for some time. The Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam has been writing about it for some time: His 2000 Book, Bowling Alone, captures the idea in its title and his subsequent work has added to his case. Americans, he demonstrates, used to participate in associations—such as bowling leagues, labor unions, parent-teacher associations, and countless others—in high numbers; now they “bowl alone.”
Why this happened and how to restore social capital remain unsettled questions, but there are a lot of theories. One important factor is doubtless the decline of functional family life. As the first and most effective training ground for the virtues of social cooperation, the family is an indispensable generator of social capital.
Without strong families, children tend to grow up without one key element in the production of social capital: a sense of belonging. The Marriage and Family Research Institute has created an Index of Belonging to measure this critical ingredient of social life. Using 2008 numbers, it found that only 45 percent of American teenagers had “spent their childhood with an intact family, with both their birth mother and their biological father legally married to one another since before or around the time of the teenager’s birth.” Levels of belonging and rejection also differed substantially across regions, localities, and ethnic and racial groups. The breakdown of family life, initiated by the rejection of parents by each other, destroys the stable emotional environment within which children experience a sense of belonging.
This failure has massive ripple effects. In a forthcoming study, economists Barry and Maryann Keating describe social capital as “the capabilities embodied in individuals and employed by choice or habit to benefit society as a whole. In this sense, social capital is a subset of human capital, not merely an amorphous substance floating around in the atmosphere of certain communities.” In other words, even though social capital is naturally created in properly functioning communities, it is not automatic. It also requires the cooperation of people who are other-centered rather than narcissistic. “Conventional human capital—education and skills—can be acquired independently from cooperative skills,” the Keatings write. “However, to maintain the present stock of social capital, groups of individuals must choose to participate and accept the norms, disciplines, and objectives of particular autonomous organizations.”
There is no better place to learn to “accept norms, disciplines, and objectives” of an association of individuals than in a family. In fact, it is extraordinarily difficult to learn this at all without the formation that takes place in the home. Thus, any long-term and comprehensive solution to the problem of social capital must include a renewal of family life.
Even so, we must also do our best to improve our “social capital stock,” no matter the overall state of the family. This will involve recreating the role of the family within other institutions. Returning to Tocqueville’s and Putnam’s associational society is one good strategy. Participate in political organizations, yes, but even more importantly participate in non-political associations. Join athletic leagues, hobby groups, religious societies, and charitable organizations. Learn to commit to a goal, to cooperate and compromise with others who may have different views, to subordinate individual preferences and whims to the good of the group.
Nearly two hundred years ago, Tocqueville warned of the consequences of declining social capital. If people living in democratic societies “never acquired the habit of forming associations in ordinary life,” he predicted, “civilization itself would be endangered.” A people that lacked the wherewithal to achieve great things by “united exertions,” he concluded, “would soon relapse into barbarism.”
The conflation of narrative with ideology triggered by an actual event can be explosive, and is not useful in leading us to greater understanding. Take for example the protests going on after the awful Minneapolis incident. People are protesting and to some extent these protests can serve a positive cause, the cause of creating awareness of the need to reform where that reform is actually necessary. However, protests engulfed by a given narrative and a certain ideology need to be analyzed in view of that narrative, not merely accepted as if they by definition they convey the full scope of a problem.
If we accept a narrative like that of The Atlantic writer Ta-Nehesi Coates, for example, the Minneapolis incident is simply archetypal of an America where whites are lethally oppressive of blacks. Whites are on a hunting spree intent on, as he says in his now famous Between the World and Me, the “shackling” and “destruction” of “black bodies….” It happens, if we follow his logic, that white vigilantism is a common experience, as some other authors also insist upon. Vigilantism becomes es a truism that often must be accepted as a fact of life without appeal to facts—only by way of narrative and ideology.
Now, how can that narrative explain the fact that white-on-black homicides are much rarer than black-on-white homicides? If 60% of whites with all that power the narrative assumes they have, living in a systematically racist society where they are the oppressors and we are the victims, are more often the homicide victims of the oppressed victims, who are 13% of the population, how is that consistent with the narrative?
Could it be that the narrative is false and our present problems need a different explanation? According to data from the National Crime Victimization, in 2018 there were 547,948 acts of violence by blacks against whites (15.3% of crimes), and whites committed 59,565 acts of violence against blacks (10.6% of crimes). Violence is violence, regardless of the ethnicity, and we should strive to reduce all violence. But how can it be that way if the narrative tells us that the victimizers are the pale ones? Isn’t it possible that the narrative informed by ideology is incorrect? Can we at least envision a different explanation?
September 2019 Issue – U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics
If we insist on narratives of victimization we will tear this nation apart. That is not what we need, it is unnecessary, and it will eventuate disaster. There is a better way! False theories of victimization engender contrary false theories of victimization. What if whites begin to blame the Black Lives Matter movement for influencing the behavior of people in cases such as, for example, the four individuals in Chicago who for hours tortured a disabled white man in 2017 while yelling “F*** white people” and “F*** Donald Trump”? These incidents have many layers and antecedent influences and to simply box them within narratives of racial victimology will lead us only to disaster.
It is primarily in the hands of those with a public voice to reject these false narratives.
Recent crises have reignited discussion and debate about America’s urban cultures. The coronavirus pandemic, it’s been widely observed, hit cities much harder than rural or suburban areas. Rioting and protests have bogged down, closed down, defaced, or even destroyed parts of some of our cities. These crises have raised questions about the health—medical, economic, and spiritual—of city life. Has the centuries-long trend toward urbanization been a big mistake?
Some may be inclined to think so. One of the great debates in the early years of the United States was between those who envisioned a nation of small farmers and craftsmen, and those who advocated a modern economy composed of commerce and industry, which would give rise to great cities. The first group, led by Thomas Jefferson, believed that individual landowning and the production of most of what one needed for one’s own sustenance fostered the independence of outlook that was necessary to preserve a republican government. The second group, led by Alexander Hamilton, held that moral and economic progress could only be achieved by the cooperation of large numbers of people and that the future greatness of the country depended on government policy that promoted trade and industrial development. The debate had many facets, including the federalist structure of government, but the basic divide between the desirability of an agrarian versus an urban society was one important element.
Both sides of the debate have continued to have their advocates and both tendencies have influenced the development of the country, but it’s clear at this point that Hamilton has largely come out on top. Populations around the country and around the world have continued to “vote with their feet” and chosen to inhabit cities—the bigger the better. The twentieth century witnessed a trend remarkable for its consistency across geography and time: As nations developed economically (got richer), people moved from rural to urban areas. In 2007, for the first time in human history, more people lived in cities than outside of them. It’s estimated that, by 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities. If that is the case, then it’s vitally important that we continue to improve our capacity to live together productively and peacefully in our ever-swelling metropolises.
Although the problems confronting every generation have their own unique characteristics, we can learn much from past struggles. American cities have been in crisis before and they have found the resources for renewal. One outstanding urban reformer who offers wisdom for our own times is Jane Jacobs.
Jacobs loved her city, New York. But in the 1950s, she saw its vibrant neighborhoods disintegrating under the pressures of suburbanization and the “urban renewal”—a misnomer in Jacobs’ view—of city planners such as Robert Moses. Jacobs’ magnum opus, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, was her attempt to describe the features that enabled cities to thrive, and the forces that caused them to decline. The book has been almost continuously in print since its publication in 1961 and has been enormously influential in reversing much of what had been conventional wisdom in urban planning.
Death and Life is a long, complex book that defies simplification. Jacobs rightly recognizes that cites are complicated and its problems multifactorial and thus solutions must be multipronged. Still, there are a few timeless and universally applicable principles that we can glean from her account.
Jacobs relentlessly emphasizes the important of diversity. This is not necessarily the diversity celebrated today—ethnic, racial, religious. That kind of diversity is a side effect rather than a cause of flourishing cities. The diversity that is necessary for lively cities is multiplicity of uses. A city neighborhood, Jacobs insists, much include many different types of economic functions: high-density residential, low-density residential, commercial, professional, industrial, and so on.
What this diversity ensures is the constant presence in the neighborhood of the most important resource the city possesses: people. Crime-ridden, abandoned, and ugly parts of cities are not the effect of too many people, Jacobs points out; they are the result of too few. Where people are present—walking to work, exercising, pushing baby strollers, going to school, eating lunch, looking out windows—crime remains in check and the neighborhood both feels and in fact is safe. To achieve this constant presence, diversity of uses is necessary. If a neighborhood has large stretches of retail business only, that area will be densely populated during operating hours but all-but-abandoned at other times of the day and night. If, instead, a neighborhood comprises homes of single people and families, around the clock industries, professional offices, bars and nightclubs, schools and government offices, then activity will be nonstop.
Jacobs was no libertarian. She believed government had an important role to play in the management of city life. But she was also highly critical of government ineptitude and the hubris of public officials who believed that they could generate urban renewal by imposing massive planning regimes. Mixed-use neighborhoods—one of Jacobs’ keys to vibrant cities—were discouraged or even prohibited by government zoning regulations. Government building projects such as public housing and highways often ran roughshod over neighborhoods that were fundamentally healthy even if they lacked the panache or the politically connected clientele of wealthier areas.
This presentation only skims the surface of Jacobs’ insights concerning the elements necessary for urban renewal, but one principle is already clear: Free and responsible people are at the center of any solution. “Vital cities,” Jacobs averred, “have marvelous innate abilities for understanding, communicating, contriving, and inventing what is required to combat their difficulties.” It is the task of government to unleash these innate abilities. Sophisticated government planning and massive public spending are more likely to make problems worse than better. Municipal, state, and federal officials and lawmakers should focus on removing the barriers to choice in education, residence, and economic activity such as building, selling, and offering services. Greater freedom for urban dwellers will make for happier, more productive citizens and livelier, more life-giving cities.
What is justice? Is it a proxy for a particular policy prescription? Is it a given ideological vision of society? Is it a synonym for ideology? The classical notions of justice built as they are upon a Christian anthropology refuse to see it as a restriction or expansion of other criteria. Justice is not confined to the realms of the modern philosophies insisting on political action. Unfortunately, we have a tendency of seeing justice as a placeholder for egalitarian platforms, the expansion of autonomy, the protection of ownership, or the egalitarianism of political platforms.
The scenario complicates when we introduce the concept of “social justice.” The loss of the traditional understanding of justice has given way to most confusing ideas regarding the demands of justice. At its most basic understanding justice pertains to what is owed to another and is satisfied when the one owed receives what is his, suum cuique. Justice is a virtue, inasmuch as the trait exist in an individual person who exhibits the habit of giving to each his own—when referring to the virtue in persons we call it commutative justice. Justice primarily exist in individual persons, but it can be also expressed in the law of a community, when, aligned with right reason, the law becomes a guarantor of that exercise of giving to each his own. When justice pertains to the relationship of an individual to a community—community being a united group of persons for a common purpose—it is called distributive justice. In the latter, there are two sets of obligations, namely, obligations of individuals toward the community and of the community toward individuals.
Modern theology calls distributive justice, social justice. It is rather unfortunate as, in my view, the traditional rendering avoids the merger of social justice with political platforms and political ideologies. People hear social justice and they think they heard socialism—both as a good or bad term.
Our first duty as we confront the troubling times we are experiencing today is to make a firm resolve to render to each his due. To place our hearts at the service of justice is to place our whole being at its service. To know what is just, however, we must know what is good first. Both the objective norms of morality coming from special revelation and those flowing from the natural law assist us in discovering what is good for man qua man and for man in community. There are both objective absolute or exceptionless norms as well as prudential norms that must govern interactions between two people, a person and society, and society as a whole.
Sincerity or law are not enough. A man who is in the habit of aligning with the moral law and the natural law is better prepared when prudence calls to make decisions where there exist alternative courses of action. A person who, ignoring these norms, appeals to a secular political program will certainly fail, despite claims of acting justly. The temptation to seek justice by any means, even by inflicting unjust treatment on others if necessary is always there, as the base inclinations of our appetites incline us all to get what we demand on any terms of our liking.
The “social justice” that Christians ought to pursue is not the social justice of the socialist ideology or the partisan plan of a radicalized group. Claims of pursuing justice can at times become an excuse for anger, retribution, control, or the disregard of moral norms. That is why the radical sees justice as the ultimate end and prudence as cowardice. Justice must be tempered and supplemented with such things as empathy, prudence, solidarity, love, mercy, and forgiveness. This is why in his book, Social Justice Isn’t What You Think It Is, the great Michael Novak argues that social justice is “a habit of the heart embodied in individual persons” that inaugurates “a set of new habits and abilities that need to be learned, perfected, and passed on to new generations — new virtues with very powerful social consequences.”
Justice is a habit but so is tyranny. As Dostoevsky said, “Tyranny is a habit; once rooted, it grows like a disease. I am firmly of the opinion that the best man in the world can grow coarse and insensitive from habit to the point where he becomes indistinguishable from a wild beast.” He was then referring to Marxism. Ideologies can talk about justice when they are really meaning power or revenge, embodied in a narrative of history and of action that justifies evil and brutalizes our conscience.
That is why we must resist the temptation of seeing justice as an ideology. An ideology is a system of ideas that stimulate action. The most mobilizing ideologies indeed speak about justice and narrowly construe its parameters—depriving its meaning as a habit and making it a postulate within a narrative. The most successful ideologies are about the triumph of the will, not about the cultivation of virtue, they stimulate the mouth to shouting, turn protests into mobs, use images as weapons, and often bathe the streets in blood. All in the name of justice.
Take the Black Lives Matter organization. One of their affirmations, among others, is revealing: “We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.” Within that short affirmation there is a statement about justice with an ideological center: blacks are being systematically targeted for death. There is a large white supremacy network whose intention is to destroy blacks. It is an “us” against “them”, “oppressed” and “oppressor” racialized dialectic.
Blacks need liberation and BLM adds: “We are a collective of liberators who believe in an inclusive and spacious movement. We also believe that in order to win and bring as many people with us along the way, we must move beyond the narrow nationalism that is all too prevalent in Black communities. We must ensure we are building a movement that brings all of us to the front.”
So, they see themselves as a vanguard of liberators forming a worldwide movement or front. The creation of fronts historically refers to Marxist movements for justice. Justice is here very specifically expressed in a collectivist fashion of specific collective action for collective liberation against a collective race. This has all the features of an ideology and it stifles conscience. It creates its own end, its own indictment, its own morality, its own perceived enemy. It incites you to look upon a certain group of others as your enemies! These ideologies use injustice even gleefully to channel pain upon an ideological target. In the process, like it was with fascism, it speaks of lofty goals such as unity, humanity, peace, love, harmony, dignity and, yes, justice, social justice. The ultimate aim however is the destruction of the other.
What is justice? Is it a proxy for a particular policy prescription? Is it a given ideological vision of society? Is it a synonym for ideology? The classical notions of justice built as they are upon a Christian anthropology refuse to see it as a restriction or expansion of other criteria. Justice is not confined to the realms of the modern philosophies insisting on political action. Unfortunately, we have a tendency of seeing justice as a placeholder for egalitarian platforms, the expansion of autonomy, the protection of ownership, or the egalitarianism of political platforms.
The scenario complicates when we introduce the concept of “social justice.” The loss of the traditional understanding of justice has given way to most confusing ideas regarding the demands of justice. At its most basic understanding justice pertains to what is owed to another and is satisfied when the one owed receives what is his, suum cuique. Justice is a virtue, inasmuch as the trait exist in an individual person who exhibits the habit of giving to each his own—when referring to the virtue in persons we call it commutative justice. Justice primarily exist in individual persons, but it can be also expressed in the law of a community, when, aligned with right reason, the law becomes a guarantor of that exercise of giving to each his own. When justice pertains to the relationship of an individual to a community—community being a united group of persons for a common purpose—it is called distributive justice. In the latter, there are two sets of obligations, namely, obligations of individuals toward the community and of the community toward individuals.
Modern theology calls distributive justice, social justice. It is rather unfortunate as, in my view, the traditional rendering avoids the merger of social justice with political platforms and political ideologies. People hear social justice and they think they heard socialism—both as a good or bad term.
Our first duty as we confront the troubling times we are experiencing today is to make a firm resolve to render to each his due. To place our hearts at the service of justice is to place our whole being at its service. To know what is just, however, we must know what is good first. Both the objective norms of morality coming from special revelation and those flowing from the natural law assist us in discovering what is good for man qua man and for man in community. There are both objective absolute or exceptionless norms as well as prudential norms that must govern interactions between two people, a person and society, and society as a whole.
Sincerity or law are not enough. A man who is in the habit of aligning with the moral law and the natural law is better prepared when prudence calls to make decisions where there exist alternative courses of action. A person who, ignoring these norms, appeals to a secular political program will certainly fail, despite claims of acting justly. The temptation to seek justice by any means, even by inflicting unjust treatment on others if necessary is always there, as the base inclinations of our appetites incline us all to get what we demand on any terms of our liking.
The “social justice” that Christians ought to pursue is not the social justice of the socialist ideology or the partisan plan of a radicalized group. Claims of pursuing justice can at times become an excuse for anger, retribution, control, or the disregard of moral norms. That is why the radical sees justice as the ultimate end and prudence as cowardice. Justice must be tempered and supplemented with such things as empathy, prudence, solidarity, love, mercy, and forgiveness. This is why in his book, Social Justice Isn’t What You Think It Is, the great Michael Novak argues that social justice is “a habit of the heart embodied in individual persons” that inaugurates “a set of new habits and abilities that need to be learned, perfected, and passed on to new generations — new virtues with very powerful social consequences.”
Justice is a habit but so is tyranny. As Dostoevsky said, “Tyranny is a habit; once rooted, it grows like a disease. I am firmly of the opinion that the best man in the world can grow coarse and insensitive from habit to the point where he becomes indistinguishable from a wild beast.” He was then referring to Marxism. Ideologies can talk about justice when they are really meaning power or revenge, embodied in a narrative of history and of action that justifies evil and brutalizes our conscience.
That is why we must resist the temptation of seeing justice as an ideology. An ideology is a system of ideas that stimulate action. The most mobilizing ideologies indeed speak about justice and narrowly construe its parameters—depriving its meaning as a habit and making it a postulate within a narrative. The most successful ideologies are about the triumph of the will, not about the cultivation of virtue, they stimulate the mouth to shouting, turn protests into mobs, use images as weapons, and often bathe the streets in blood. All in the name of justice.
Take the Black Lives Matter organization. One of their affirmations, among others, is revealing: “We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.” Within that short affirmation there is a statement about justice with an ideological center: blacks are being systematically targeted for death. There is a large white supremacy network whose intention is to destroy blacks. It is an “us” against “them”, “oppressed” and “oppressor” racalized dialectic.
Blacks need liberation and BLM adds: “We are a collective of liberators who believe in an inclusive and spacious movement. We also believe that in order to win and bring as many people with us along the way, we must move beyond the narrow nationalism that is all too prevalent in Black communities. We must ensure we are building a movement that brings all of us to the front.”
Ideology has an advantage over other constructs: it gives you a simple plan, a clear target, an assured comfort that we have identified the error and we can now extirpate it. But there are, as said previously, consequences. Very powerful social consequences. Authentic social justice is not social because it is political or pertains to governmental policy or initiative. It is social because it inclines the person towards the common good. The free and responsible actions of men who have made space in their soul for justice is what we call “social justice.”
People change over time. It is inevitable, you won’t be able to help it because experience and time does that to people. You will either become a better person, more admired, and more successful or you will slowly become the opposite, and all your wonderful goals will slip out of reach. Are you changing into the person you want to be?
Virtues Work is a clear, informative and entertaining book that explains what the virtues are, the tremendous benefit they offer you, and how to use them easily in daily life. Its lessons and practical tips will be extremely helpful in shaping your life.
Virtues are habits that develop the good within us. They consist of universally admired behaviors such as courage, hope, and prudence. These habits produce a richer, fuller life. Virtues Work lays out a simple, effective program that gently guides you to using the virtues more often.
Virtues Work is concise and clear. It solidifies virtues with:
Engaging anecdotes
Easy-to-follow, practical tips
Brief “How to Use” sections
Tools to stop habits that work against your goals
Virtues Work is available at Amazon, barnesandnoble.com and other book sellers. The preferred way of ordering is through Virtueswork.com. When ordering through virtueswork.com 10% of the book’s gross sales will be donated to non-profits that promote virtues education.
About the Author
Alexander Cummings has an MBA from Yale University and worked as a marketing consultant on corporate values programs for Fortune 100 and multinational corporations. He brings his insights from those experiences to the personal level in Virtues Work, a book that will change your habits and how you look at work and your life.
One of the tenets at the heart of the American Founding was that property rights and freedom are strongly linked. In his Appeal to the Justice and Interests of the People of Great Britain, Arthur Lee of Virginia declared, “The right of property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive a people of this, is in fact to deprive them of their liberty.” The founders understood that, without robust protection of private property, rhetoric about liberty rang hollow.
Some people view property rights as a tool of privilege, a scheme to favor the rich over the poor. The opposite is true. Secure property rights are the way by which poor people gain independence and self-reliance. Hernando de Soto’s well-known exploration of the obstacles to economic progress in less-developed countries, The Mystery of Capital, observes that many poor people in those nations are as intelligent, innovative, and hard-working as successful people in developed nations. What the poor lack is the legal accoutrements of prosperity—first and foremost, title to their property, on which foundation they can build and pass on wealth.
Those who are wealthy and well-connected have the wherewithal to subvert and manipulate property law to their own ends; those who are marginalized rarely do. A celebrated example is the case that led to the Supreme Court’s Kelo decision in 2005. As told in the book Little Pink House and a film by the same name, the story involves the attempt by a group of homeowners, led by Susette Kelo, to defend their properties against an eminent domain seizure by the city of New London, Connecticut. The city was acquiring the properties for the purpose of enabling a new private development. In other words, the city was using its eminent domain powers to take land from some (less wealthy and well-connected) individuals and give it to an influential corporation. As might be expected, libertarian groups filed amicus briefs on behalf of Kelo, but African-American organizations such as the NAACP also joined the cause, pointing out that eminent domain had often been used as a weapon against poor and minority neighborhoods.
As these examples make clear, property rights are not only about economic wellbeing. They are entwined with every aspect of life—the guarantee of “every other right,” as Arthur Lee put it. Holding the rights to one’s home is not merely about enjoying the economic security of what is often one’s largest financial asset. It is also about having the space and freedom to flourish as a person. Ownership provides stability to family life and solidity to a community.
Similarly, ownership of a business is not merely a source of income for an entrepreneur. It is an expression and testament to his or her creativity, dedication, and vocation. It provides meaning to the individual and serves the common good through supplying the needs of the market.
The nineteenth-century Italian priest and philosopher Antonio Rosmini called private property a “sphere around the person.” No one else, he wrote, “can enter this sphere, and no one can separate from the person that which is inherent in him as a result of the connection between him and what is his own.” Rosmini believed that violation of property rights was a violation of personal dignity and thus morally objectionable. Pope John Paul II affirmed the importance of property for all in his 1991 encyclical letter, Centesimus Annus: “A person who is deprived of something he can call ‘his own,’ and of the possibility of earning a living through his own initiative, comes to depend on the social machine and on those who control it. This makes it much more difficult for him to recognize his dignity as a person, and hinders progress towards the building up of an authentic human community.”
While property rights are indispensable to a just and thriving society, they are not absolute. As western nations under the influence of Christianity gradually came to understand, to hold persons in bondage as property is a contradiction of the human dignity that property rights are supposed to uphold. Property rights are preserved within the context of the rule of law, which defines and constrains those rights, ensuring that they are not used as a means of violence against the rights of others. Property rights are also embedded in particular cultures and legal systems and thus their character will vary somewhat from place to place. Finally, property rights, like all rights, entail obligations. The owner of property has a responsibility, above and beyond any legal requirement, to use his possessions to the benefit rather than the detriment of himself and others.
With these qualifications understood, the poor and vulnerable and those who care about them should be the most vigorous defenders of the right to property. Such a right provides a legal hedge against those who would exploit vulnerability to their own ends.
Personal freedom and property rights rise and fall together. In the words of James Madison, one of the authors of our Constitution, “persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act… These rights cannot well be separated.”
Among the legal conflicts stirred up by the ongoing pandemic is one over the status of churches and religious gatherings. President Donald Trump recently called churches “essential” and urged states to permit them to reopen. Meanwhile, a federal court in Maryland turned back a challenge to that state’s stay-at-home order on behalf of religious groups seeking to override a limitation on gatherings of more than ten people.
There is a complex array of issues at play in these disputes: constitutional, legal, political, and medical questions are all mixed together in a confusing stew of facts, principles, and opinions. It’s difficult to sort out, and reasonable people of good will may reach different conclusions on the various specific cases that have been and continue to be contested. Religious liberty and the church-state question have been thorny problems in American politics and culture for centuries and the current dispute is just another chapter in that long story. In that sense, this debate is probably unavoidable and unending.
On one thing, however, Americans ought to be united: Religion is important—even essential—to the welfare of the country, and therefore policy should always lean toward religious liberty and support for religious institutions. That was the view enshrined in the First Amendment and we would do well to respect it.
To some, the claim that religion is essential may seem too strong. While religion plays an important role in the lives of many people and it may have beneficial societal effects, they would say, it’s possible to fashion and maintain a good social order without it.
America’s founders would disagree. George Washington said, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” Strong words. “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion,” John Adams warned. “Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.” So thought our country’s first two presidents, men who were also among the most important figures in the birth of the nation and its political structure.
Their study of history and their observation of human experience led Washington and Adams to conclude that a thriving, free society could not endure without a virtuous citizenry. Virtue, in turn, could not survive without religion. Worship of God gave rise to morality, and morality provided a brake on destructive human tendencies. Law could not replace religion in this task.
Their views were shared widely by other founders, including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. Madison’s defense of free exercise and no establishment was one of the key factors in the adoption of the First Amendment. He advocated a division between church and state not because he feared religion, but because he feared thestate. Religion, for Madison, was “the duty which we owe to our Creator,” and he thought it too important to be meddled with by self-interested politicians.
As secularism has advanced in recent decades, the founders’ views have ceased to be the consensus, at least within elite America. But they continue to be true, as sociological scholarship attests. Patrick Fagan of the Marriage and Religion Research Institute has been collecting and interpreting data on religion’s sociological impact since the 1980s. He has consistently found overwhelming evidence for religion’s positive effect, primarily because “the strength of the family unit is intertwined with the practice of religion.” Regular churchgoers are more likely to be married, less likely to be divorced or single, and more likely to manifest high levels of satisfaction in marriage. Frequent practice of religion also “helps poor persons move out of poverty. Regular church attendance, for example, is particularly instrumental in helping young people to escape the poverty of inner-city life.” Regular religious practice “inoculates individuals against a host of social problems, including suicide, drug abuse, out-of-wedlock births, crime, and divorce.” It “encourages such beneficial effects on mental health as less depression, more self-esteem, and greater family and marital happiness.” Finally, religious practice “is good for personal physical health: It increases longevity, improves one’s chances of recovery from illness, and lessens the incidence of many killer diseases.”
None of this is to say, of course, that religion is a guarantee of happiness, health, or prosperity. It is instead to say that the evidence shows that the Founders were right: In general, and in the aggregate, religion fosters virtue and virtue supports societal stability. If this is true, then government should view religious institutions as allies rather than enemies. It should do everything in its power to promote rather than impede the free exercise of religion. It should ensure that laws and regulations do not deliberately or inadvertently hinder that practice. And its public statements should recognize that people of faith are not a threat to the health and welfare of the nation; they are instead the most reliable source of functional families, which are in turn the most effective generator of charitable volunteers, politically involved citizens, and economically productive workers.
Religion is an indispensable support, said George Washington. Washington, D.C.—and state capitals across the country—should see it the same way.
A faithful Christian ought to be motivated by his faith and bring its injunctions to bare in every aspect of his life. The task of forming one’s social stance on the substance of faith is not an easy task, as we are not bereft of varied influences within a social ethos informed at times by contrary worldviews. It is quite easy to believe that what we pass as our view is based on a faith-understanding when in reality is our politics or our ideology. Prayerful study and calm reasoning are necessary to know the difference. Let me offer a few ideas that can positively inform our response.
1. First and foremost we must reaffirm that only a renewed commitment to Christ and his teachings can bring about ultimate human reconciliation. Our faith in Christ is paramount to offer a response. If we allow sentiment and ideology to drive our response we sin.
2. To firmly acknowledge injustice where injustice is rather apparent. There is no doubt that a great injustice was perpetrated against a civilian already under custody.
3. To calmly analyze the situation without falling prey to emotionalism. It is very tempting to analyze with rationalizations and fall for canned racial narratives. Some agenda-driven people easily go from the particular to the general, from an assessment here to an indictment there. These people are all over the political landscape. We are susceptible to be used by ideologues and we must not let that happen.
4. To support anyone fighting for peace and protesting peacefully, whether one agrees or disagrees with the substance of the protest. Conversely, to decry and reject the use of violence and looting. These acts are themselves unjust. Read Romans 3:7-8:
“Someone might argue, “If my falsehood enhances God’s truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?” Why not say—as some slanderously claim that we say—“Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is just!”
It is clear that a good cause, a just cause, admits only a godly response. Injustice breeds injustice and we end with unjust outcomes. We cannot merely agree to say we “reject” but “understand” the evil reaction. This has become a way to wink at evil. The condemnation of the evil-doer is just even if one can allege that their reaction was due to injustice. No, an unjust reaction is as unjust as the action. You are going to need courage because some will attack you for taking that stance.
5. Forcefully call for a legal remedy and for reform where needed. The great divide in America is between those who see incidents of racial injustice as demonstrative of the intrinsic evil of our society and those who–as Christians should affirm– believe that by tackling injustice where it arises we are contributing to the betterment of a society worth fighting for.
6. Reaffirm true Christian anthropology. We must insist as Christians that each person is unique and unrepeatable, made in the image and likeness of God. The imago Dei is embedded in the fabric of every being and race or ethnicity have no place at the center of human identity. We have been fooled to believe that insisting on “diversity” is the answer. Instead, the answer is in the universal commonality of human dignity from which an authentic appreciation of difference arises.
7. To reaffirm the moral precepts of the natural law which affirm human dignity. A focus on human dignity can serve in the pursuit of justice. It is not a mere legalistic question concerning the social construct of human law. No, it pertains to the natural law, the first grace of God, written in our hearts. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., appealed to the natural and eternal law in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, he was not appealing merely to a private judgment or sentiment or to a legal technicality. Instead, he appealed to a public order, as just human laws are but a participation in the eternal law of God. The natural law then is a supra-public law that ought to guide our minds as Christians.
Recently, a politician’s words gave occasion to pondering on the meaning of identity using the now infamous phrase “you ain’t black.” His words are not unique to him but a reflection of a double standard where ethnic identity is tied to political affiliation or ideology. This connection affects also questions of poverty, where the poor and those who want to help also are expected to toe a certain line. It appears that what is primary is an ideological goal and various causes are merely instrumental toward the said ideological end.
There is a history of ideologues, mostly but not exclusively of the left, immersing themselves into causes. Since the late 1800s, for example, Progressives were at the forefront of otherwise commendable causes but not intent on amending or reforming the system. Instead, they saw the cause as useful toward the end of destroying capitalism—the only true goal for ideologues using Marxist readings of history. Causes are mere emblems showcasing the inherent alienations in the capitalist system. The causes are the proximate instrumental end, but the total transformation of the system is the ultimate end.
Progressives were involved in the abolitionist, women’s rights, universal suffrage, unionization, civil rights, social work, workers’ rights, gay rights, the sexual liberation, and now in the gender ideology. These involvements were not attempting at making the present order better, although in their conception each was a positive step toward the all-encompassing end but attempts at destroying it and bring about a new one. Their aim was to create liberation fronts that would increase the consciousness of those seen as “oppressed” by forces inherent in the class structure of the social order.
Having placed this framework, let us discuss the politician’s words and the larger ideological understanding that informs the words and ties blackness to the support of a given political party or ideology. To insult a black person whose political allegiances are on the Progressive sphere would be racist and abhorrent because that stance advances their ideology. However, when the insult is proffered against a black conservative or black libertarian or even one who wants to debate whether or not he is to align with Progressivism, is not seen as offensive, as supporting that individual does not advance the Progressive ideological goal. After all, in the Progressive understanding of what is a priority, individual affronts or needs are not at the center—as classes move history. Each person is but a drop within the great wave of revolution. In fact, it might be advisable to attack a drop who seen as nonconforming.
A similar situation occurs when a black person does not place ethnic identity as primary, at the core of his individual identity. To deny centrality to the core collectivist understanding of identity for a person of an “oppressed” group is to deny the importance of his ethnic identity—thus worthy of excoriation and isolation. Class consciousness takes precedence over individual consciousness.
That is a clever use of the straw man fallacy but perfectly consistent with the Progressive view of society, parasitic as it is of the Marxist understanding of history. What blacks whose ideology is not of the left say, especially those akin to the natural law tradition, is that race or ethnicity are not at the heart of identity. The individuality of every human being comes first and the elements of identity intrinsic to their humanity take precedence over social constructs. We are human beings—male or female—and that sexual identity is primary and intrinsic. Further, before sin enters the scenario, we are given each other in the biblical narrative—taken as a pre-historical anthropology, not as a religious account. Marriage and the family are the most basic and important communities, communities of love and life which are natural spontaneous orders, not mere social constructs.
One thing is to discuss the relative place of ethnic identity as a social construct within the constellation of “identities,” or better, “identifiers” that make up our social being and another thing is to deny that one is black. Often, people who deny ethnic identity as the primary identifier say that they are Americans, instead of African Americans. That also is a discussion of the relative place of ethnic ancestry vis a vis other identifier, such as national identity. It is not a negation of the anyone’s ethnic (say cultural) heritage. The idea that one’s blackness or African ancestry must be affirmed at every turn is a linguistic subset of the false narrative of Afrocentrism placing blacks as in eternal Diaspora, foreigners in the American exile, and not rightful members of the only society they have ever known, America. If one perceives the collective identity and destiny of blacks through that prism, insulting some nonconforming members is a duty.
One thing is to discuss the relative place of ethnic identity as a social construct within the constellation of “identities,” or better, “identifiers” that make up our social being and another thing is to deny that one is black. Often, people who deny ethnic identity as the primary identifier say that they are Americans, instead of African Americans. That also is a discussion of the relative place of ethnic ancestry vis a vis other identifier, such as national identity. It is not a negation of the anyone’s ethnic (say cultural) heritage. The idea that one’s blackness or African ancestry must be affirmed at every turn is a linguistic subset of the false narrative of Afrocentrism placing blacks as in eternal Diaspora, foreigners in the American exile, and not rightful members of the only society they have ever known, America. If one perceives the collective identity and destiny of blacks through that prism, insulting some nonconforming members is a duty.
However, what black conservatives and other non-Progressives affirm is that their identity is not determined by ethnic self-appointed gatekeepers of blackness. Each person stands sui generis as an individual in the midst—not apart from—any group. His individuality is injected with a history and a culture, but such is thus not exhaustively. As our individuality as persons does not disappear, there flows from such magnificent personalist anthropology an intellectual diversity that enriches the group. Such anthropology, however, is anathema for the Progressive. That we have a right to affirm who we are as Americans and as black people and we have a right to dissent from the political majority within the community and from the theories of race advocated by others remains a truth that we shall not surrender. We concede to no one the right to determine who we are as individuals or to shape for us what it means to belong.
