Secular Faith: How Culture Has Trumped Religion in American Politics
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Secular Faith: How Culture Has Trumped Religion in American Politics
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Overview
Mark A. Smith provocatively argues that religion is not nearly the unchanging conservative influence in American politics that we have come to think it is. In fact, in the long run, religion is best understood as responding to changing political and cultural values rather than shaping them. Smith makes his case by charting five contentious issues in America’s history: slavery, divorce, homosexuality, abortion, and women’s rights. For each, he shows how the political views of even the most conservative Christians evolved in the same direction as the rest of society—perhaps not as swiftly, but always on the same arc. During periods of cultural transition, Christian leaders do resist prevailing values and behaviors, but those same leaders inevitably acquiesce—often by reinterpreting the Bible—if their positions become no longer tenable. Secular ideas and influences thereby shape the ways Christians read and interpret their scriptures.
So powerful are the cultural and societal norms surrounding us that Christians in America today hold more in common morally and politically with their atheist neighbors than with the Christians of earlier centuries. In fact, the strongest predictors of people’s moral beliefs are not their religious commitments or lack thereof but rather when and where they were born. A thoroughly researched and ultimately hopeful book on the prospects for political harmony, Secular Faith demonstrates how, over the long run, boundaries of secular and religious cultures converge.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226275376 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 12/22/2022 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
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Read an Excerpt
Secular Faith
How Culture Has Trumped Religion in American Politics
By Mark A. Smith
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2015 The University of ChicagoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-27537-6
CHAPTER 1
Strategies of Adaptation
When I was accepted into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, my parents nearly choked upon seeing the price tag. My father's income as a pharmacist, combined with my mother's earnings as a legal secretary and church organist, could not possibly cover the enormous costs for tuition, fees, and room and board, especially since my parents were already paying most of my brother's college bills. What was a middle-class family like mine to do? Short of winning the lottery, we took the only course available to us: we applied for loans and other forms of financial aid.
Back when I went to college, students borrowed from banks rather than directly from the government. As a bright-eyed student signing the loan paperwork, I did not for a moment pause to consider whether, by paying interest to a bank, I was participating in an immoral transaction. Believing that the bank's actions were normal and proper, I took it for granted that the loans would include interest. Even as an eighteen-year-old, I understood that banks are profit-seeking businesses, not charities, and that they earn money by charging interest. Like any rational consumer, I would have preferred lower interest rates, just as I would rather pay six rather than twelve dollars to see a movie. But it never crossed my mind to question the very concept of interest. Without it, how could someone like me borrow the hefty sum required for my student loans?
My parents, too, found nothing unusual or unethical about the bank collecting interest from me, and they would have dismissed as ludicrous any suggestion that the government should prohibit the transaction. Indeed, they had followed a well-traveled path to the middle class by using bank loans like mine. Few Americans could afford to pay cash for a house or even a car,
and the Smiths of Pickerington, Ohio, were no different. My parents accepted interest as the price one pays to finance major purchases, and I — just like everyone else in America — accepted this assumption without much thought.
How is this story relevant to the larger themes of this book? To grasp the story's significance, we must recognize that people living in earlier times and other places, including ancient Israel, did not always share our society's beliefs about the propriety and necessity of interest. Several biblical passages condemned the practice of collecting interest and led generations of Jews and Christians to call it sinful. In Exodus 22:25 and Leviticus 25:35–37, Moses relayed God's command that Israelites not charge interest to any of their neighbors who had fallen into poverty. Deuteronomy 23:20 expanded this rule, stating, "You may charge a foreigner interest, but you may not charge your brother interest." Among later Old Testament books, Ezekiel 18:5–9 forbade collecting interest from anyone, regardless of the person's nationality or economic status, and Psalms 15:5 said that a righteous person "does not put out his money at interest."
Statements against charging interest continued in the New Testament. Luke 6:34–35 presupposed lending without interest as the requirement for ethical behavior — a standard, Jesus said, that even sinners meet. Jesus asked people to go even further, for true generosity requires lending without expecting repayment at all. The New Testament mentioned interest in one other place, the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14–30. In that parable, the master rebuked his third servant, who buried the master's talent (a unit of currency in the Roman Empire) instead of working to multiply it as the first two servants did. The master seemed to approve earning interest when he cried out, "You ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest."
When contemplating these passages from the Old and New Testaments, what should a Christian conclude about the morality of interest? If Christians restrict themselves to the literal meaning of the verses, several interpretations seem possible, the first of which, following Ezekiel 18:5–9, Psalms 15:5, and Luke 6:34–35, judges harshly any attempt to charge interest. Alternatively, Christians could read the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14–30 to indicate the acceptability of moneylending at interest. Although parables create a wider range of interpretive possibilities than do direct commands, Christians could conclude that the code of conduct implied in Matthew clarifies or overturns the Bible's other standards regarding interest. Between these two categorical interpretations, Christians could infer that God permits lenders to collect interest only from certain people, such as foreigners (Deuteronomy 23:19–20) or anyone who is not poor (Exodus 22:24 and Leviticus 25:35–37).
For the first fifteen centuries of Christianity, strong voices in the Church, including theologians, popes, and ecumenical councils, found no ambiguity in these verses and took a hard line against interest. St. Jerome and many other writers explained that the Hebrew prophets and Jesus had generalized the understanding of "brother" such that Moses's protections for Jews now applied to Gentiles as well. Hence, lenders could not demand interest from anyone, foreigners included, despite appearances to the contrary in Deuteronomy. In 1139 the Second Lateran Council placed a heavy penalty, extending through life and a bit beyond death, on anyone making a living by charging interest: they should be "held infamous throughout their whole lives and, unless they repent, be deprived of a Christian burial." Other ecumenical councils and papal decrees expanded these themes. St. Thomas Aquinas appealed to both natural and divine law to undercut the concept of interest, fashioning a philosophical argument about the nature and definitions of money, selling, and renting to explain why interest was unnatural and thus impermissible.
But the financial needs of merchants and manufacturers were changing, which put pressure on traditional beliefs about the immorality of charging interest. Despite the Church's history of clear and authoritative statements, some theologians eventually responded to this pressure by allowing exceptions for certain financial dealings. Through one such transaction, which was similar to a modern mortgage or annuity, the borrower paid the lender each year a certain amount of money or an equivalent value in goods. While these practices initially raised the ire of Church authorities, over time many theologians creatively shifted definitions to conclude that lenders were not assessing interest even when the total value of the borrowers' payments exceeded the original loan. In certain periods and regions, secular rulers allowed Jews to earn interest openly, though Christian leaders usually refused to sanction this exception.
Even without lending by Jews, who often faced persecution and expulsion, and whose small and scattered numbers prevented them from meeting the full demand for credit, Christians could sometimes obtain short-term and long-term loans in other ways. During the late Middle Ages international merchants increasingly used bills of exchange through which they redeemed payments from banks in one country, at a future date, at banks in another country. Bankers did not explicitly charge interest but profited by using a deflated exchange rate to calculate repayment for the loans, and many theologians held that this process did not amount to collecting interest. By stating that "an infinite number of decent Christians" were using bills of exchange and that he could not countenance a rule that would "damn the whole world," the Spanish theologian Martín de Azpilcueta acknowledged that the Church's traditional opposition to interest must be modified by generously defining what did and did not qualify.
The increasingly popular "triple contract" demonstrates even more clearly that theological understandings gradually accommodated common business practices. As commercial society expanded during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, individuals who needed additional capital for their businesses often turned to outside investors. The first part of a triple contract specified a passive investor's contribution, the second part insured the passive partner against loss, and the third — of special relevance here — guaranteed a particular rate of return. These contracts frequently promised 5 percent per year, leading to centuries of controversy over whether the investors were, in fact, flouting long-established doctrines by collecting interest. Many Church authorities answered yes, and during the Reformation popes continued to issue strict decrees forbidding interest. Yet the theologians who involved themselves in the details of lending softened the Church's teachings by approving the fixed rate of return in the triple contract. Martin Luther followed his Catholic counterparts by endorsing interest rates of 5 percent and 6 percent, along with 8 percent for investments based on land holdings, and John Calvin established 5 percent as the maximum interest rate in Geneva.
By accepting modest interest rates, these theologians contributed to an evolution in the definitions of key terms. The English word usury derives from the Latin usura and the medieval Latin usaria, both simply meaning "interest." The Church's original positions, then, referred to lenders demanding any interest at all from borrowers, and the practical questions required determining which types of financial exchanges constituted interest and thus violated the edicts. As Christian writers and society at large began embracing the triple contract and other kinds of investments, usury gradually came to refer only to charging exorbitant interest. Anyone who consults a modern English dictionary will find usury defined in this narrow sense. Like the faded dye of an old garment, the term's current meaning preserves only a trace of the Church's formerly stark denunciation of interest.
Contemporary attitudes toward moneylending thus reveal the full extent to which Christians accommodated an important underpinning of modern economies. Christian leaders no longer make fine distinctions about whether bills of exchange, mortgages and annuities, and the triple contract include interest, for those distinctions are pointless when people view interest as morally permissible. In fact, the Catholic Church now unapologetically earns interest from its own investments, and so do Protestant institutions. Individual Christians rarely stop to consider whether God approves the interest they collect as depositors and investors or pay as borrowers. Members of most other religious groups in America, and people unaffiliated with any religion, act in a similar manner. Regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof, Americans almost always treat interest the same way I did with my college loans: they unconsciously accept it as a central component of a modern economy.
This societal consensus on interest affects our contemporary politics. From the Middle Ages to as late as the seventeenth century, European rulers often responded to the perceived immorality of interest payments by outlawing them. In contemporary America, by contrast, interest seldom becomes a political controversy. When the subject does reach the political agenda, the discussion focuses only on whether people are paying exorbitant rates (for example, to payday lenders), not the mere existence of interest. Thus an issue that theoretically could incite a prolonged moral and political struggle — in short, a culture war — instead creates only an occasional skirmish. Because Americans have reached a consensus about the acceptability of interest, any Christian leaders who called for banning it would sound hopelessly naïve about basic economics.
Religious Leaders as Political Advocates
Clearly, Christians over several centuries changed their beliefs about the morality of collecting interest, thereby recasting the politics of whether and how to regulate the practice. An educated observer might assume that this is an isolated case, perhaps reflecting people's need for borrowing and lending in any economy that advances beyond the subsistence level. A shift in the Christian response to interest would then represent a unique development that teaches no broader lessons about the interplay of religion, morality, and politics. Yet the research presented in this book shows that many other issues, both historical and contemporary, underwent similar metamorphoses that transformed the scope and meaning of the culture war. For a wide range of issues, I document a clear evolution of American values and practices, religious beliefs and doctrines, and political activism and public policy. Affecting not just the periphery but the core of American politics, moral evolution redefined the political issues that have attracted the most concern from religious groups.
What patterns do these issues follow as they unfold over decades or centuries? The processes of moral evolution begin with the relationship between religious leaders and their constituencies. Consider the case of Protestant ministers, who provide leadership to their congregations and sometimes their local communities. In principle ministers can take stands on political issues, if they so choose, in sermons or other forums. Scholarly research based on interviews with pastors, however, finds that they hesitate to express from the pulpit political opinions that significant segments of their congregations oppose. This reticence should not surprise anyone familiar with religious trends in America today. In a country with many different churches, denominations, and religious traditions, and where people choose which religious community, if any, to devote their time, money, and energy, clergy who espouse divisive political views risk alienating some of the laity. Pastors are all too aware that members who object to the political messages they hear from the pulpit may reduce their rates of giving or attendance and may even exit the church altogether. In the words of one minister who explained why he did not clearly address a controversial issue affecting the local community, "I guess I'm afraid that if I'm too clear, everyone will leave."
Besides potentially causing a mass exodus from the church, pastors who make unpopular political statements could also endanger their own employment and careers. Achieving success in the ministry, just like any other profession, requires hard work, personal convictions, and obeying certain norms, one of which says that clergy should avoid offending their parishioners. Mark Driscoll, the influential and sometimes polarizing founder of a megachurch in Seattle, laments the fact that congregations can sometimes oust clergy who become too outspoken. "In most churches," Driscoll observes, "the sermons are short, the pastor doesn't get to say anything controversial, and if he does, he's quickly no longer the pastor." Driscoll might have exaggerated slightly to make his point, but he accurately conveyed that pastors depend on continuing support from their congregations. Indeed, Driscoll himself eventually resigned his post while facing a litany of charges, though these involved his managerial style rather than any political statements.
What can pastors do when they disagree with some or most of their members on a political issue? Must they become hypocrites who say things they do not believe? Pastors can often manage these difficult situations by simply remaining silent on the relevant subject. During the civil rights movement, for example, white clergy sympathetic to the cause commonly kept quiet unless they had backing from their congregations. Ministers who differ with parts of their congregations can also choose to work outside the formal church setting for their favored causes. When they do make political statements to their congregations, pastors face incentives to stay within the broad range their members would find acceptable.
Similar agreement between leaders and members occurs at a denominational level. At annual conventions or other venues, leaders can pass resolutions or write documents that commit the denomination to a particular political statement. If these decision-making bodies include representatives from different states and regions, leaders stay abreast of the range of opinions in the denomination. Absent rough agreement among various members and congregations, leaders may choose not to put the denomination on the record one way or another. By contrast, when a stance under consideration enjoys widespread assent, leaders can adopt it without jeopardizing the ties binding the group together. In this way formal denominational positions usually reflect the sentiments prevailing in the membership at that time. The turmoil that arises when denominations take stands many of their members resist, which occurred in earlier decades when mainline denominations began ordaining gay ministers and bishops, shows why leaders work so hard to find common ground.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Secular Faith by Mark A. Smith. Copyright © 2015 The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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Table of Contents
PrefaceChapter 1 Strategies of Adaptation
Chapter 2 Slavery
Chapter 3 Divorce
Chapter 4 Homosexuality
Chapter 5 Abortion
Chapter 6 Women’s Rights
Chapter 7 Religion, Politics, and Morality
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index