Mondays with Marilynne: "Let the Poore be Mainteined"

President Obama presented Marilynne Robinson with the National Humanities Medal in 2013.

“Well, what is a Christian, after all? Can we say that most of us are defined by the belief that Jesus Christ made the most gracious gift of his life and death for our redemption? Then what does he deserve from us? He said we are to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek. Granted, these are difficult teachings. But does our most gracious Lord deserve to have his name associated with concealed weapons and stand-your-ground laws, things that fly in the face of his teaching and example? Does he say anywhere that we exist primarily to drive an economy and flourish in it? He says precisely the opposite. Surely we all know this. I suspect that the association of Christianity with positions that would not survive a glance at the Gospels or the Epistles is opportunistic, and that if the actual Christians raised these questions those whose real commitments are to money and hostility and potential violence would drop the pretense and walk away.” --Marilynne Robinson, qtd. by Robert Long, The American Conservative, 10/15/2013

Last week on Groupthink, we introduced a new series, “Mondays with Marilynne.” In the series introduction, we took a quick look at Robinson’s faith, literature values, and cultural impact. I referred a few times, in fact, to Robinson’s most famous fan, the President of the United States. 

When President Obama presented the National Humanities Medal in 2013, he addressed the recipients: “Your writings have changed me--I think for the better.” Then, turning directly to Robinson, he said, “I believe that Marilynne.” Since then, Obama has quoted Robinson in his weekly addresses and, most movingly, in his eulogy for the Reverend Clementa Pinckney (an important and deeply Christian sermon in itself).

While Robinson’s novels are not political manifestos, and people of all political persuasions have found great beauty and meaning in her words, it is worth spending some time this week looking over her political convictions and their relationship to her Christian faith.

Marilynne Robinson is nothing if not politically vocal. While she is well known in the world of American literature, fewer people know that, as political philosopher Peter Lawler so rightly notes, “Robinson is quite the theologian, historian and essayist, and she has devoted herself to recovering--pretty much on her own and against every grain--our authentic Puritan/Calvinist tradition [in American civic discourse].”* 

Robinson’s unique political vision is rooted in a sophisticated reading of the Bible, Calvinist theology, and the Protestant heritage of the United States. She does not hesitate to draw from the Christian gospel implications for policy on social services, income disparity, racial justice, gun control, and military spending, to name a few of the issues she has weighed in on over the years.

Robert Long of The American Conservative (whose coverage of Robinson’s work I highly recommend in spite of any ideological disagreements we might have), traces the roots of Robinson’s social thought to Calvin’s statement in The Institutes of the Christian Religion that “the image of God by which [your neighbor] is recommended to you deserves your surrender of yourself and all you possess.” In fact, she even traces the origins of liberal democracy to what many today consider an unlikely source: the Pentateuch.

“Only the tradition of Moses integrated civil law into the religious mythos, the sacred narrative,” she writes in her essay “Open Thy Hand Wide: Moses and the Origins of American Liberalism”. “For this reason it has the singular inflection of an attentive, passionate--and singular--divine voice. In what other body of law could compliance be urged with the phrase ‘for you know the heart of the stranger’?” (When I Was a Child I Read Books, 71).

Robinson is no biblical literalist. She shows a perfectly rational awareness of the many shortcomings of our forebears in faith. She does not “think we should stone witches.” But, in Robinson’s own words again, “if you choose to value one or two verses in Leviticus over the enormous, passionate calls for social justice that you find right through the Old Testament, that’s primitive.” 

(Here, Robinson addresses the true motives of those on the far right who believe they can safely ignore the biblical imperative to care for the orphan and widow while tossing about a few favorite verses in argument against abortion or gay marriage, but her words should be equally stinging to that portion of the progressive community that dismisses out of hand the possibility that religion could have anything to contribute to the common good.)

For Robinson, the centrality of law in Israel’s traditions and the development of a “rule of law” in Western culture are both results of a “high valuation of life in the world and in community,” a valuation we may acquire from a faithful reading of our religious traditions. Such a valuation will lead most naturally to a policy of liberalism in the oldest sense of the word--open-handedness, the willingness to “Give to everyone who begs from you, and … not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you” (Matthew 5:42).

Since she enjoys an enormous audience, which includes a fair number of conservative Christians, Robinson often receives criticism for her political statements. For instance, one of my colleagues who attended Calvin College's Festival of Faith and Writing a few years ago tells me she had to field a question from an audience member who said her speech "could have been ghost-written by Bill Moyers and aired on PBS," a fact which apparently destroyed her credibility with much of the assembled audience.

Robinson reportedly answered, "I don't recognize any other obligation than to say what it is true."

*Peter Lawler, "Tocqueville and Robinson in Defense of the Puritans' Sunday," Society 45.2 (September 2009), 445.

Pope Francis and Ecological Repentance: A Review of Laudato si'

I had no idea.

I mean, I knew there was a problem, don’t get me wrong, but to me environmental issues were primarily something to be debated. Over time I came to realize that it was good to recycle when possible, and energy efficient cars were good (primarily for my wallet, but they help the environment too), and I picked up the odd piece of litter, but I knew that the earth was really gonna be just fine. I mean, it always has, and there are all those laws being put into place and debates being held, surely that will turn things around.

So when I was asked to write a piece on the Pope’s Encyclical addressing environmental issues, I agreed, but I wasn’t really excited about it. (I was not familiar with the term “Encyclical” coming into this, so for those of you who are in that same boat it’s basically a letter from the Pope or a Bishop that’s meant to circulate throughout the Catholic Church, somewhere between the length of a long essay and a book) “The environment is important and all…but don’t you want me to write on the atonement or hell or something exciting like that?” I set about the task of reading the Pope’s encyclical with the intention of sparing whoever might read this from having to read the real thing (it’s just over 100 pages).

My goal started changing very quickly.

The writing isn’t stuffy or inaccessible, it doesn’t have an especially holy tone to it. I was finding myself thoroughly enjoying myself as I was reading it. The piece is informative, convicting, concerning, and encouraging all at once. I no longer want to distill it down into 1000 words so you don’t have to read it, I want to tell you to read it. Do yourself and the world a favor and read it.

I honestly didn’t understand what the current environmental situation is. Pope Francis presents the best of science to demonstrate that while things are by no means hopeless, things are far bleaker than I had thought. We have to do something different. We have to repent.

That’s an interesting thought isn’t it?

When we talk about repenting in the church we usually think about lying or looking at pornography. We don’t usually think about needing to repent of the way we treat the earth. But according to Pope Francis, if we don’t change we are going to destroy our home. Isn’t that what repentance is? Changing our minds about something. Doing something different.

What does that repentance look like? This is where I especially appreciated Pope Francis’ perspective. I’ve heard plenty of debates over what technology does or doesn’t hurt the environment and what new regulations will really make a difference, but Francis rejects regulation and technology as the way forward (though he does not reject them as an aid). The problem is not primarily with our technology but with our humanity, or rather our lack of it. We have treated our home as if we own it, as if we can do whatever we want to it. We’ve cut down forests, polluted our air and waters in the name of the dollar. We’ve raped the earth in the name of profit.

Our greed, our carelessness and waste and our selfishness are destroying the planet. We all contribute to this, from when I choose to throw out my paper rather than recycling it; to the major corporation that destroys an entire ecosystem to lower its overhead costs. When we neglect and harm the earth, whether in big or small ways, we sin against our home, ourselves, and our Creator.

The reality is that taking care of the earth is an incredibly human thing to do. When we care for the earth rather than destroying it, we are living out our humanity more fully.  Caring for the environment is truly humanitarian in nature. This is because those who are most harshly affected by the damage done to the earth are almost always the poor and disenfranchised, the least of these that are so important to Jesus, those that we are commanded to care for.

How is this true? Let’s take for example the polluting of our oceans. This has adversely affected the fishing industry in major nations due to the fact that it’s killing off the fish. Among the affluent some may take a serious hit on profits or even lose their jobs, but most will ultimately recover. In small villages where fishing provides the only means of work for the majority of people already living in poverty, this is a devastating blow that many will never recover from. The task of caring for the earth is also the task of caring for humanity.

It is not enough however to simply care for the earth as if it were a resource to be exploited. The earth is a gift, something precious and beautiful in its own right. Pope Francis identifies with St. Francis of Assisi when he identified the animals as brothers and sisters. This wasn’t simply an overly romantic view of the world, it was a way of life for St. Francis. He treated nature with respect and dignity thanking sister sun for the light that it gives and brother pig for providing us with meat. The earth is not ours to be exploited, but ours to tend to and care for as we use the blessings that it gives us. If we cannot change our minds here, we will never move past our own greed.

So, what is the way forward? Repent. Change. Do something different. Start by reading Pope Francis’ encyclical (you can read it for free here). Read the rest of this series this week on Groupthink. Find ways to make changes in your life, not just to plant a tree (though that is good) but to free yourself from the bonds of greed and consumerism.

“Replace consumption with sacrifice, greed with generosity, wastefulness with a spirit of sharing, an asceticism which “entails learning to give, and not simply to give up. It is a way of loving, of moving gradually away from what I want to what God’s world needs. It is liberation from fear, greed and compulsion.” --Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew