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.

Marriage and the Church: A Mainline Response

This post is part of Groupthink’s conversation on the questions Obergefell v. Hodges. The first essay in this series was written by Logann Merritt. The second, a moderate evangelical response by Marshall Johns, may be found here. Christoph’s essay below responds from a mainline Protestant point of view.

As a life-long resident of rural Missouri, last week was not a good week to be on Facebook. For days on end, I found my newsfeed flooded with links to vitriolic conservative articles with titles like “The Roots of Marriage’s Redefinition,” “The Supreme Court and Religious Liberty: Reason for Concern,” and “Why Homosexuality is Not a Sin Like Any Other.” These responses from my conservative coreligionists were disheartening, but predictable.

Equally predictable were the debates that followed in the comment threads for these posts. The conservative line usually boiled down to some variation of the old bumper sticker cliche: “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” The progressive response was essentially, “Yes, but isn’t religion supposed to be about acceptance and love and not judging others?”

Groupthink’s own Logann Merritt used one variation of the latter argument in his own response, “Same Sex Marriage and the Christian Church.” Merritt quite correctly points out the hypocrisy of those who insist we must toe the line on Scripture’s statements on homosexuality, but not on other matters of marriage and sexuality addressed in sacred writ.** He points to the need for a hermeneutic that reads Scripture through Jesus-lenses, Jesus “the embodiment of the God of love.”

While I find myself in substantial agreement with Merritt’s main principles, I believe he is mistaken to assume that biblical interpretation is the only pertinent factor informing conservative Christians’ view of gay marriage and same-sex sexual activity in general. The same assumption is present in Matthew Vines’ best-seller, God and the Gay Christian. In spite of Vines’ excellent treatment of the six biblical passages referencing same-sex sexual behavior, he still fails to move beyond the questions of hermeneutics to a thoroughgoing examination of the history, culture, and socialization process which informs American Christians’ views of sex and sexuality.

Merritt takes an important step in the right direction, though, when he states that he doesn’t believe same-sex relationships are sinful “unless these relationships bring harm and destruction to the people in them, which could just as easily be said of heterosexual relationships.”

In most moderate to progressive evangelical discourse, examination of Scripture gives way to the conclusion that gay and lesbian relationships are acceptable to God provided they are committed, monogamous relationships based on Christian love and mutuality. This is a step in the right direction, but, in my view, does not go far enough in developing a coherent and authentically Christ-like sexual ethics.

The most important step for Christians right now is to move beyond a monogamy-promiscuity model of thinking about sexuality (with all the debates about “sexual purity” that come with it) and toward a model which prioritizes the health and wellbeing of individuals and relationships. I believe that monogamous marriage and celibacy (for those who are called to it and accept it willingly) are beautiful expressions of sexuality in the Church, but I am not willing to label all sexual acts or sexualities outside those contexts as sinful a priori. I would also stress that wedding bands do not in themselves give all sexual acts between those who wear them God’s stamp of approval. Charity, consent, and reverence for the image of God in the other person are all essential elements of authentically Christian sexual acts. The sacrament of marriage affirms, but does not magically confer those elements.

If Christianity hopes to survive in a culture that is growing increasingly aware of humanity’s amazing diversity of sexual expressions and gender identities, then the first step for Christians is to reexamine not simply the “rules” governing sex to which we have historically held, but the very principles at the heart of our ethics, principles I am sure Logann alludes to when he urges a hermeneutic with Jesus at the center.

So what does Obergefell v. Hodges mean for progressive Christians? Perhaps that our culture is heading in the right direction, but still falls far short of full-bodied Christian charity.

**As an aside, I found myself a bit irritated that Merritt repeatedly uses the inclusive abbreviation "LGBTQ*" when he really only discusses matters addressing the "LG" part of the equation.