KEY WORDS: RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, MORALITY, GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION, CHURCH AND STATE, GOD AS EXCLUSIVE MORAL STANDARDS GIVER, SLAVERY, BISHOP STRINGFELLOW, ROBERT E. LEE, WHITE SUPREMACY, CALVIN, EXECUTING HERETICS, HERESY, BLASPHEMY, PERSECUTION, ARBITRARY MORAL STANDARDS

Mostly as responses to our book (In Freedom We Trust, Prometheus Books 2012; co-authored by my son, Michael E. Buckner; hereafter, IFWT), I’ve had a number of exchanges with theists (mostly American Christians, but with a few Europeans and non-Christians as well) over the last few years.

The responses vary, but most include two basic claims I’ve heard long before the book was published:

1. Secularism makes true, reliable moral standards impossible; and
2. The neutrality required for secularism and real protection of religious liberty denies theists the religious liberty they deserve (a liberty that effectively requires denying others’ theirs).

The two complaints overlap but I’ll respond to them in two separate essays, starting here with the morality bits.

While I’ll address both of these basic complaints, it is worth noting that at least most of these correspondents have agreed with me on some important matters—that religious beliefs and non-beliefs are neither of them monolithic, that religious liberty really is valuable, that consensus is desirable, and more. My focus in these two essays is on the disagreements, but the unity matters, too. Most American Christians seem to understand that secularism is in their best interests, too, even if they miss some major points.

As I write here about these exchanges, I’ll collapse a number of real correspondents into one fictional one I’ll call “Matthew” (not the real name of any of them).

As mentioned before in these pages, one of the most common apologetic shticks offered by theists, especially Christian theists, is that they claim to have the corner on the morality market. There are many variations on these “morality plays,” but the basic assertions are:

1. Moral standards can only be meaningful if they come from an objective, external, eternal “Source.”
2. Without these divine external standards, humanity is left with mere arbitrary rules, “morals” written to protect the strong and control the weak—rules that ultimately are the equivalent of preferring chocolate to vanilla. And,
3. Because there is an all-knowing, all-powerful God behind human moral standards, those standards endure forever.

There are in fact a variety of logical and historical problems with these claims, but the most overwhelming counterargument is that the claims do not comport with the known history of moral or ethical human standards and behavior. The behavior part is often “answered” with some variation on “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven,” an assertion regarding not how changeable the standards are but about how broken the ones trying to meet the standards are. That human beings fail to meet ethical standards of any sort with consistency is true but unremarkable and beside the point. Christian standards, not just sinners, change dramatically over time and space. The best—but still inadequate—defense Christians offer for these changes is that the changes are in human understanding of God’s eternal, unchanging standards.

Think of “Matthew” as a professional, obviously intelligent, and apparently pretty well (if narrowly)-educated man, a firm but polite debater. Remember that, in what I write here, Matthew is a fictional composite, representing several different people, described here in the singular as a matter of ease in describing this. “He” wanted to probe how I thought religious liberty could be protected without depriving Christians like him of his freedom to pray when he wanted to and related matters. We didn’t really usually get very far, in my opinion, on that central issue, because he could not stand outside his religion and analyze matters reasonably (he sometimes accused me of being similarly trapped in circular arguments, but that dispute is unlikely to be worth recounting).

At first only as a sidelight argument, but ultimately as directly relevant to religious liberty, I tried to press him regarding his confidence that the eternal God he believes in is a reliable source for moral understanding. This wound up, after many iterations, getting reduced to one question from me:

“I argue that values and moral standards, for Christians and everyone else, come from long cultural (and biological) evolution, over many thousands of generations of human beings. You believe instead that such values and morals come from God. But Christians, historically and currently, plainly do not share common moral standards and values with other Christians. Christians presumably pray to a common deity and rely on common sacred texts, so why don’t they [you] reach common conclusions?”

There are bad possible answers (“God is all powerful and can change His mind if He wants to” or “God sets forth unchanging standards but cannot communicate well enough with mere humans for them to understand,” or “Some Christians don’t use the correct hermeneutics when reading the Bible”—all of which I was prepared to rebut). Either because he would not or could not grasp what I was asking him, or because he knew there are no good answers, Matthew never really answered my question. I honestly don’t think there is a good answer. As background I should describe some of what frequently led up to that question.

Me to Matthew: The beginning of morality (when he had asked me for a definition) is very likely tied up with ideas like Luke 6:31: “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” That is usually considered the Christian summation of the idea, along with Matthew 22:39: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” But such precepts are, of course, close to universal culturally and have been around much longer than Judaism and Christianity or the Bible; different variations have been used in different ways. And no god is needed to come up with such reciprocity-based morality nor to enforce it. Moral standards are, I think, those that promote human justice and happiness and minimize human pain. I certainly don’t mean that such a formulation is sufficient to permit judging of whether a specific act is moral, because it’s often far more complex—but it’s a start. Some Christians—though not all—define moral as doing what God wants you to do; some define a failure to worship or believe as immoral (and obviously I disagree with that). When there is morality involved, all of us must make choices with only our own understanding of whatever standard we strive to meet as a guide.

Christians believe the standards come to them from God, either in sacred texts or though some other form of divine revelation. During the long history of slavery and of religious persecution (opposition to liberty of conscience), the “golden rule” was generally considered true—so why didn’t it end slavery or religious persecution?

Christians have reached very different moral conclusions than those reached by earlier Christians who had the same access (same words, same power to pray) to divine guidance as modern ones (maybe unless you’re a Latter Day Saint [Mormon] and do believe in more recent scriptures). If cultural evolution is not what changed Christians (as I think it was), then what has changed them? I want to try a thought experiment, or really two of them, where, I think, you and I agree with each other but disagree with specific Christians of the past, and explore why.

A. Bishop Thornton Stringfellow of Virginia, in 1860, wrote The Bible Argument: Slavery in the Light of Divine Revelation, in which he noted:

If slavery be thus sinful, it behooves all Christians who are involved in the sin, to repent in dust and ashes, and wash their hands of it, without consulting with flesh and blood. Sin in the sight of God is something which God in his word makes known to be wrong, either by preceptive prohibition, by principles of moral fitness, or examples of inspired men, contained in the sacred volume. When these furnish no law to condemn human conduct, there is no transgression. Christians should produce a “thus saith the Lord,” both for what they condemn as sinful, and for what they approve as lawful, in the sight of heaven.

It is to be hoped, that on a question of such vital importance as this to the peace and safety of our common country, as well as to the welfare of the church, we shall be seen cleaving to the Bible, and taking all our decisions about this matter, from its inspired pages. With men from the North, I have observed for many years a palpable ignorance of the Divine will, in reference to the institution of slavery.

Stringfellow added as a note in brackets at the end of his essay:

It is or ought to be known to all men, that African slavery in the United States originated in, and is perpetuated by a social and political necessity, and that its continuance is demanded equally by the highest interests of both races. … The guardianship and control of the black race, by the white, in this Union, is an indispensable Christian duty, to which we must as yet look, if we would secure the well-being of both races.

Another and far more famous Southerner who wrote on the connection of Christianity and slavery was General Robert E. Lee:

Lee told a New York Herald reporter, in the midst of arguing in favor of somehow removing black people from the South (“disposed of,” in his words), “that unless some humane course is adopted, based on wisdom and Christian principles, you do a gross wrong and injustice to the whole negro race in setting them free. And it is only this consideration that has led the wisdom, intelligence and Christianity of the South to support and defend the institution up to this time.”

Before either Stringfellow or Lee advanced this moral argument, the then recent Governor of South Carolina, James Henry Hammond (1807-1864) wrote two open letters in 1845 to the famous British abolitionist, Thomas Clarkston, with detailed biblical support for slavery on moral grounds.

(Ed): I reject Bishop Stringfellow’s conclusion (and Governor Hammond’s and General Lee’s as well) because I reject the Bible as divinely inspired or prescribed (so what it does or does not mean is morally irrelevant to me) and because, to me, treating others as I want to be treated means no one can own another nor is it acceptable to conclude that “race” is a basis for differential treatment. I know, as Hammond, Stringfellow, and Lee did not, that biologists have demonstrated conclusively that race is a social construct, not a biologically meaningful distinction. I acknowledge that my own moral choice is heavily affected by cultural and knowledge evolution since 1860, including knowledge that makes it far more reasonable to reject biblical Christianity altogether. Stringfellow’s Bible included “Do unto others… ,” but that did not convince him (or Lee or Hammond) that their support for race-based slavery was immoral. They had the power to pray and to read the Bible and to think, yet they concluded that slavery is not merely moral but is ordained by God. The difference between Stringfellow’s or the others’ conclusion and my own can be explained, I think, only by non-Christian ideas or conclusions. More: see In Freedom We Trust, pp. 151-157.

(Matthew): no answer; instead declared that the real question would be how Hammond or Stringfellow or Lee would think and write now (though he didn’t seem to realize it, that supported my claim, not his).

B. Should heretics, who can allegedly lead innocent people to lose their eternal happy futures, be allowed to live, allowed to spread their “dangerous” blasphemies? The most infamous example of a non-Catholic deadly response to this question came from John Calvin, at whose behest Michael Servetus was burned, using green wood, in a horrific death in 1553. Modern Christians, including I think most of even the most ardent Calvinists, decry that as immoral, as a misreading of the Bible. They argue that the problem is improper hermeneutics—a failure to grasp the “right” interpretation tools. (Here’s an example, one that denounces Calvin’s errors enthusiastically). But why didn’t 16th century Christians like Calvin have access to and use these “superior” methods? This is of course at the very heart of religious freedom and of the need for secularism, because if anyone declares someone else’s views as blasphemous and doing so can get the “blasphemer” punished, religious expression is curtailed. How can a modern Christian permit religious freedom when a Calvin could vigorously and with deadly force oppose such freedom? (Ed): Heretics and blasphemers, by whatever definition, must be granted freedom. IF eternal damnation is the price for misunderstanding what God wants and IF someone like Servetus was in fact leading innocent souls to such eternal torture, then Calvin’s reasoning is seemingly logical: such heresy must be stopped at all costs. But who can judge and how? In IFWT, see especially pp. 177-183. Secularism (American style) is the only way forward. He who has an alternative is welcome to explain it.

(Matthew): no answer; instead again declared that the real question would be how Calvin would think and write now (though he didn’t seem to realize it, that supported my claim, not his).

Matthew continued to engage in tautologies/circular logic in re the Christian basis for morality—an inability or unwillingness to answer my questions, instead restating his claims in a different way. This was the core basis of my conclusion that I could not get anywhere with theists like Matthew. If we could put Thornton Stringfellow, “Matthew,” and John Calvin in a room (one where somehow each is still in his era in his own head), and ask each about the conclusions of the other two, there is little doubt that all three would assert something quite similar to this, as Matthew did: “These evils happened because good Christians turned away from the Source. It is because the mass of individuals within the Church turn away from seeking the united understanding He laid upon the one international body spoken of in the Creed (or Bible) and turn instead to the very principle all you other so-called Christians (or secular humanists) describe: ‘only our own understanding of whatever standard we strive to meet as a guide.’ This same principle which caused baptized people to abuse Christian teaching through the centuries is causing other baptized people to reject it entirely. There are only two choices: either we stand by the Creed (or Bible) we have been assured of, which means to seek the one Gospel as it was understood by the one international Church, or we go down the path of individualism and interpret it all, or reject it all, each based on our own individual understanding. The first leads to unity, the second divides people from God.” Matthew did not grasp (perhaps could not?) that I was not asking him to defend his interpretation of “Christian teaching,” but to come to grips with the real problem that what one Christian in one era or place considers “evil” is devoutly considered “The Truth” in another.

He also seems wholly unaware of the other, related problem with his approach—the idea that individuals following their own interpretations cannot match the united word of the church. But, how is the word of a god or a church to be understood, if not by individuals? Is there in fact an alternative to this? I was merely asserting that Christians everywhere, in different eras and places, have prayed to the same, allegedly eternal God, read the same, allegedly divinely written or inspired words, relied on their church or leaders, and come to startlingly different conclusions about values (justice, moral choices, codes for how we treat each other, etc.). This is true not just about burning heretics or owning other humans but about abortion, racism, anti-Semitism, the status of women (including whether women can be priests or bishops), gay marriage, methods of baptism, and on and on. The only hypothesis that really explains this wide variation is cultural evolution: over many hundreds of generations, extending far back before the start of Judaism or Christianity, people gradually changed their minds and affected others’ values as they did so. Matthew plainly rejected that hypothesis in favor of a tautology, of just renaming the problem: “Christians must seek unity.” But he did not answer my question: if not cultural evolution, what caused Calvin, Stringfellow, and Matthew to reach such different ideas of the unity of gospel teaching? What did Stringfellow have that Matthew did not or vice versa? I was not asking was Stringfellow wrong—I was asking how can Matthew, Calvin, or Stringfellow know whose version to choose? If I could not learn even a possible answer to this, I said, we could go no further. (I did not, from any of the “Matthews”)—and we did not.)

The two historical moral conclusions I cited—in re slavery and executing heretics—are of course just representative of hundreds of moral matters that Christians have differed on and still do, and the question on all such matters is not just “who is right,” but “how can anyone tell who is right?” And this includes the problem that a future Christian or leader or church will reject even the moral teachings on which Christians have now reached consensus. Absent an effective answer, the best supported conclusion is the inevitable relativism that comes with cultural evolution. If anyone, Christian or otherwise, reading this thinks Matthew could have replied better, please email me— ebuckner@atheists.org –and let me know.