Over at the Heidelbog in a post called Good News from a Surprising Source?, R. Scott Clark is singing the praises of the Justice Department for suing a school district who won’t grant a muslim teacher unpaid leave to go on a religious trip. He thinks that this bodes well for Sabbath-keeping Christians, because it is ostensibly a move toward “religious liberty.” He says,
…it may also yield benefits to Christians who want to work but who also want to observe a weekly sabbath. If the courts rule that Muslims have a right to take unpaid leave to go on a Hajj then might not Christians also be granted the right to take unpaid leave to observe the Sabbath?
However, I would like to know how the threat of State violence against someone who has not taken an eye or a tooth (Matt. 5:38-42)–that is, who has not harmed the person or property of anyone else–is justifiable on his espoused system of Christian ethics. Violence is the only tool the government has in its toolbox. If the State said to Employer Joe, “You must give Christian Jim unpaid leave on Sundays,” and Employer Joe responded, “Thank you for your advice, but I would prefer not to follow it–I think I will let Christian Jim go, and hire Pagan Sally, instead” — if that scenario were to play out, the State would sue Employer Joe (just like it is suing the school district). And if Employer Joe kept responding, “Thanks, but no thanks,” eventually men with guns and other weapons will show up to haul him off to jail. And if he responds to the arrival of the men with guns with, “Thank you for the offer, but I would prefer not to live in a metal cage,” then it may very well be the last thing he ever says.
The sixth commandment not only prohibits murder, but it prohibits murder by proxy. Christians are not at liberty to hire anyone to damage another person or another person’s property. As I see it, using the State to initiate force against a civilly innocent person–even if it benefits us–is still a violation of the sixth commandment.
Now I am not accusing R. Scott Clark of violating the sixth commandment. After all, he did not ask the State Department to sue the school district. But he thinks the initiation of force is appropriate here. Even if there is some genius answer to the problem of the sixth commandment in this situation, how does Clark’s position square with the NT emphasis on the role of suffering in the Christian life? I will never forget the sharp wit of the Wittenberg Door magazine when it described Joseph Smith (who died in a “blaze of glory,” shooting at people from his jail cell) as the first martyr to die with a gun in his hand. Using (or condoning) the State’s initiation of force against a civilly innocent person strikes me as the same kind of martyrdom as Joseph Smith — suffering with the government guns blazing on our behalf.
Clark has recently described his political philosophy as tending toward “free market, social conservative, libertarianism.” Perhaps he should just leave that last adjective out. And maybe the first one, too. The Reformed confessions give him all the latitude he needs to oppose those things. I would just urge him to consider whether endorsing the initiation of force against a civilly innocent person (even if by proxy) is “free market” or “libertarian” in any sense of those terms.
But that brings up another troubling point from Clark’s post. He seems to think that we have a free market that is simply too free. He says,
Did the founders envision that an employer would have a right to require employees to work 7 days a week? Probably not. Did the founders envision the sort of no-holds barred market capitalism that has developed in the modern period? Probably not. Did they imagine that there would be conflict between religious liberty and commercial interests? I don’t know but a society necessarily expresses some hierarchy of values in legislation and court rulings and those rulings and laws occur on some basis.
First, I would really like to know where this “no-holds barred market capitalism” is. As far as I can tell, we have not had a “no-holds barred” market for over 200 years. The government started interfering in the market very early on via taxes, tarrifs, protectionism, etc. Perhaps Clark simply means that he doesn’t like the values that are expressed by the contemporary American market. Fine. I don’t like them, either. But I don’t believe the solution is government violence. I don’t believe that at all. And the fact that he applauds the State’s threat of the initiation of force against civilly innocent people for ostensibly good ends certainly can’t be marshaled as support for this pretended “no-holds barred market capitalism,” either.
Second, if the founders didn‘t imagine that there would conflict between religious liberty and commercial interests, then they had simply forgotten their American history. If that’s the case, we shouldn’t be too hard on them. Many of us do that. The fact is, the antinomian (read: antilegal) controversy in “puritan” New England had an element of commercial interests. Some of the followers of Anne Hutchinson were various kinds of business owners. As I noted above, the term “antinomian,” in the seventeenth century, didn’t usually mean a rejection of the third use of the law; it usually meant an opposition to legalism. That is not to say that Hutchinson’s commercial followers did not reject the standard, “puritan” view of the 4th commandment. Maybe some did. But in any case, there were tensions between commercial interests and religious liberty almost 150 years before the founders inked the Constitution.
One more thing: I should note in closing that it is interesting that in Clark’s example, the Justice Department is suing a school district–another branch of the civil government. It is kind of like one shark preparing to eat another shark.
