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On Being the
Church in America:
A Critique of American Empire and its Ideology of Democracy
by
Robert Canaan Harris
[Mr. Harris is an ordained minister in the Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ) and studying in the STM program at Yale Divinity
School. This essay was written for a Seminar in Political Theology in
the spring semester of 2006 at YDS taught by Joe R. Jones, then Visiting
Professor of Theology. Numbers in brackets refer to Endnotes at the end
of the essay. Used by permission. Copyright©Robert Canaan Harris.
Posted here 2/24/07.]
Many in the church in our time are confused about their most
basic self-understanding and identity: am I first and last an American
who happens also to be a Christian, or am I first and last a Christian
who happens also to be an American? – Joe R.Jones[1]
Venerating “democracy” as the keystone of American civil religion,
many American Christians promote a democratic ideology as vital to their
vision of a just global society.[2] “Many Americans have always
sensed that this country has a transcendent mission,” explains David
Brooks, “if not a theological one.”[3] In contrast, other
Christians dispute democracy’s claims for theological legitimacy
as incongruous with the church’s vocation to be the church; recognizing
the identification of democracy with a transcendent mission to represent
a theologically reckless, even blasphemous, point of view.[4] Examining
both positions, this paper will conclude that if the church is to have
a credible public witness it must extricate itself from any compromising
entanglements with democratic ideology.
Following this premise, this paper will examine the theological rationale
behind democratic ideology, ultimately arguing against democracy’s
claims in making the case that the church must resist collusion with the
state. Next, this paper will scrutinize select “political”
biblical texts and historical accounts of the early church in order to
determine how these authoritative narratives identify the church as a
distinct political body in all times and places. Finally, this paper will
inquire into how the church as political body, through its distinctive
witness and practice, is the vessel of transformation for the world.
FAITH IN EMPIRE
Every single empire, in its official discourse, has said that
it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that
it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and
that it uses force only as a last resort. – Edward
Said[5]
Not all social theorists agree on what is meant by democracy. Often used
as a slogan for policies of political pragmatism, there is in fact a tremendous
divide between the rhetoric of democracy and the social circumstances
of people under democratic rule. Democracy in the United States, for example,
is widely recognized to be suffering a legitimation crisis.[6] Nevertheless,
in the contemporary milieu, democracy has become the watchword for the
primary sociopolitical construct that organizes the government of nation-states.[7]
The democratic regime being implemented around the world is not majority
rule, argues Max Stackhouse, but rather a specific tradition of pluralist
democracy derived from Reformed Protestant influences. Gestated in the
American political landscape, this tradition “recognizes two realities:
1) that all people live under a common, universal, moral law …;
and 2) that we all have a spiritual capacity to form associations of commitment
– societies of cooperation beyond family and political arrangements.”[8]
The first principle, what Karl Barth recognized as “a commonly acknowledged
law, giving equal protection for all,” is thought to be rooted in
the Christian understanding of divine justification.[9] The second principle,
declaring the inviolability of human associations, intends to establish
a means for people to shape the structure of society by recognizing an
organic, self-correcting framework underlying representative democratic
government.[10]
Ideally, such an organic government of associations would be regulated
by those chosen from the leadership of these organizations and responsible
to their constituencies, resulting in the “progressive self-regulation”
of these autonomous societies.[11] However it is considered to be the
consequence of human “selfishness and confined generosity”[12]
that some governing authority is necessary to prevent what Thomas Hobbes
described as “the war of all against all” in which people
pursuing personal self-interest will seek to use others as means to their
private ends.[13] “This was the cause of men’s uniting themselves
in politic societies,” alleged John Locke, for “all men were
naturally in that state … till they make of themselves members of
some politic society.”[14] Hence, in order to maintain civility
among the various associated bodies, it is necessary for each person and
voluntary group to surrender absolute authority to the coercive power
of the governing state.[15]
Civility, therefore, depends upon a paradigm in which individuals representing
the many voluntary associations contributing to the organization of the
state cede their autonomy and that of the institutions with which they
affiliate – including religious institutions - to the authority
of the state.[16] Granted a monopoly on coercive authority, the state
thus becomes responsible to mediate conflicts within society without preference
to any constituent group. This implicit agreement between individuals
and the state is understood to be a sort of “social contract”
in that citizens cede ultimate authority to the state in exchange for
a guarantee of “equal rights,” or impartial treatment by the
state.[17]
Such an arrangement is predicated upon a strict separation of the powers
of church and state, as the authority of the state by definition requires
that the power of all associations be domesticated to the state’s
agenda.[18] With each citizen claiming equal rights under a common law,
associations may now hold at best a secondary jurisdiction over individual
lives.[19] For faith-based communities, it is this very separation of
powers that has expanded the authority of the state by ascribing to itself
responsibility for the “political,” while limiting the church
to what is “spiritual.” This interpretation was systematized
in the work of Ernst Troeltsch, who taught that the church was a voluntary
association “incapable of substantial social impact” and that
the only influential role that churches might play in modern society would
be through “a residue of Christian ideas that had become integral
features of a broader … civilizational ethic.”[20] The church
thus becomes chaplain to the state, adopting the language and values of
the state as normative and compromising a distinctively Christian witness
so as to appear reliable to the state.[21]
Proscribing the temporal relevance of the church through social contract
serves to effectively legitimate the authority of the established state;
for now that the church has been sidelined to a “spiritual”
function, only the state retains the temporal authority to exercise influence
in the world.[22] Accordingly, many political theorists advocate the tight
policing of this separation in order that that church and state can fulfill
their “proper” function. Yet inevitably, “as the state
itself becomes guarantor of rights,” concludes Cavanaugh, “human
rights become tied, in bitter irony, to the security of the state.”[23]
It seems Alexis de Tocqueville was prescient when he wrote: “it
is safe to foresee that trust in common opinion will become a sort of
religion, with the majority as its prophet.”[24] For, according
to Stackhouse, it is today indisputable that “theologically and
ecclesiologically rooted democracy has now been transposed into …
the commitments people live for, die for, and, in rare but occasionally
necessary circumstances, kill for.”[25] “America is the indispensable
nation,” Madeline Albright once said; and as Cavanaugh interprets:
“When a nation becomes an end in itself it will resort to whatever
means are necessary to protect its vital interests, which are assumed
to be the interests of all.”[26]
Indeed, the deity to whom America’s national symbols pay tribute
is not the God of Abraham and of the Christian church, but a god that
demands that people submit their personal and faith commitments to the
faceless apparatus of the “omnipotent” state. For despite
the origin of America’s civil religion in the Reformed tradition,
merely claiming a particular church heritage in no way enshrines a state
as the bearer of true value.[27] As Alisdair MacIntyre cautions, “the
modern nation state is a dangerous and unmanageable institution …
which from time to time invites one to lay down one’s life on its
behalf. [This] is like being asked to lay down one’s life for the
telephone company.”[28]
According to the biblical understanding, the state is a power or a principality
that should serve the authority of Christ: for “whether thrones,
or dominions, or rulers, or powers – all things have been created
through him and for him.”[29] As Barth interprets, the ideal state
“should serve the Person and the Work of Jesus Christ, and therefore
the justification of the sinner” by upholding the “commonly
acknowledged law giving equal protection for all.”[30] But in fact,
rather than the state serving this proposed role in service to Christ’s
church, instead the church is regularly conscripted into the service of
the state.
The church declares its allegiance to the state when it acquiesces to
the state’s monopoly on coercion by “handing over the bodies
of Christians to the armed forces” and by “agreeing to stay
out of the fabricated realm of the political.”[31] The authority
of the nation-state is acknowledged to be an irrefutable fact of existence,
to which the work of the church must be adapted. Yet the world does not
establish the norm for the biblical perspective. This same concern, as
Haddon Wilmer interprets, was at the core of Barth’s criticism of
German Christians. Barth was concerned “that they took Hitler as
dominant fact, to which Jesus the Savior was to be adopted as a flexible,
subordinate metaphor.”[32]
“Nation-states are fetishes,” writes Cavanaugh. “They
have power because people will kill and die – and sometimes torture
– for them.”[33] Doubtless it is only natural for the state
to bear some resemblance to the kingdom of God; this is to be expected,
as the state exists as an earthly counterpart to the heavenly City.[34]
But to cede to the state ultimate authority, to kill or die for the state,
would be a tragic misinterpretation of the allegory.[35]
John Howard Yoder draws this contrast in refusing “the identification
of the church’s mission and the meaning of history with the function
of the state in organizing sinful society. It is clear in the New Testament,”
he continues, “that the meaning of history is not what the state
will achieve in the way of a progressively more tolerable ordering of
society but what the church achieves through evangelism and through the
leavening process.”[36] This does not advocate a withdrawal from
society; instead Yoder is suggesting that, rather than working to control
secular power by indirect influence, the church must claim its own authority
in opposition to the authority of the nation-state.
Confronting these powers means first and foremost to challenge the narrative
of empire’s propaganda. Described in Rev. 18:23 as the “sorcery”
by which “all nations were deceived,” the propaganda of empire
is constantly piped into our homes via radio, television, and internet
and thus is quite a difficult narrative to contradict.[37] Yet “by
being trained through Jesus’ story,” claims Hauerwas, “we
have the means to name and prevent those powers from claiming our lives
as their own.”[38] Challenging the dominant narrative in this way
requires a paradigm shift that needs more than sterile “values”:
it can only occur through concrete practices in the formative community
of the church.[39]
AN ALTERNATIVE CITIZENSHIP
American Protestantism … must necessarily and inevitably
abandon its historic association – its guilty association –
with the radical individualism which has so dominated its thought and
organization and way of life in the United States. The accommodation of
Protestantism to these American religious notions has impaired the responsibility
of the Protestant churches to undertake any critical stance in relation
to the nation and to American society. – William Stringfellow[40]
The church in the Untied States has so accommodated itself to the dominant
culture that it has become nearly impossible to transcend its value system
so as to see the church from the church’s perspective. “All
our categories,” claims Hauerwas, “have been set by the church’s
establishment as a necessary part of Western civilization.”[41]
To all appearances the powers and principalities of this age – meaning
the United States’ military-industrial complex in particular - are
the strongest authorities in the world. Undoubtedly the United States
of America, with $400 billion in annual military expenditure, has an unprecedented
destructive capability.[42] Considering this context, it seems inevitable
that to accomplish anything in this world requires an appeal to the “higher
authority” of the United States.[43]
Yet despite all appearances to the contrary, the church teaches that true
authority belongs to God and that the church as the body of Christ is
the primary agent of God’s work in the world. In fact, the instruments
that God chooses - the proclamation of the word of God and the sacraments
of God’s grace - are the sole prerogatives of the church. “The
word appears weak and improbable, just as the other means of grace –
water, bread, and wine – appear weak and unlikely vehicles of God’s
grace,” explains Haemig. “Yet [the church] believes that the
means God has chosen are strong – stronger than the principalities
and powers of this age.”[44] In truth, much of the church in the
United States is now functionally held captive to the dominant culture,
operating as if empire alone holds the power to do justice in this world.
Consequently, if the church in America would presume to have any legitimacy
it must resist empire’s propaganda - according to the biblical witness
- and reclaim the church’s authority as a distinct political body.[45]
Considering the church’s captivity in an alien culture, it is evident
that claiming this identity requires the steadfast commitment of the church
community.[46] Moreover, this understanding of the church is rooted not
in some petty ideology but in the profound foundation of biblical authority.[47]
A Christian political theology, therefore, is deeply rooted in the biblical
narrative. Sketching the outline of this theology, it is fitting to begin
with a summary analysis of certain “political” texts from
the New Testament. These are not proof texts; rather they are among the
few New Testament scriptures that directly address the question of how
Christians should engage the powers of secular government.
A living manifesto for a church in conflict with empire, the New Testament
can be read in every age as a design for the eschatological community
of the church and as the liturgical antidote to empire’s propaganda.
Jesus phrased what he called the first and greatest commandment of the
New Testament in the words of an ancient hymn: “‘Hear, O Israel:
the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with
all your strength.”[48] Christians interpret this to mean that all
of life must be surrendered to God’s service. For some, this commandment
in itself proves adequate to answer the question of how Christians should
relate to the governing establishment; for if full allegiance is owed
to God then it would seem that no one else has any legitimate claim to
authority.
Jesus offered a more explicit political ethic when he said, in settling
a dispute among his disciples: “You know that among the Gentiles
those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their
great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever
wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes
to be first among you must be slave of all.”[49] Luke’s version
is slightly different: “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them;
and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But it is not
so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest
and the leader like the one who serves.”[50] Contrasting his way
of exercising authority with that of the worldly authorities, Jesus here
defines the Christian relationship to power as one that refuses to play
the game of domination.
While recognizing that government authorities are called “benefactors,”
Jesus asks of his disciples simply that they do something else. “A
Christianity faithful to its origins does not seek cultural and the consequent
social power,” interprets George Lindbeck. “Ambitions of this
kind are forbidden to the servants of a crucified Messiah.”[51]
Christians are not called to supplant the state by wresting power away
from every tyrant. Instead, by refusing to play the game, Christians follow
the example of the one who “disarmed the rulers and authorities
and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.”[52]
Perhaps the principalities, as instituted by God, will still function
as “God’s ministers.”[53] Yet as Jose Bonino interprets,
“in the cross and resurrection of the true King their absolutism
and injustice have been successfully challenged and exposed.”[54]
One other gospel text bears mention for this discussion: the story from
Mark in which Jesus is confronted by a question about paying taxes. Using
a coin as an object lesson, Jesus asks, “Whose head is this, and
whose title?” They answered, “The emperor’s.”
Jesus said to them, “Give to the emperor the things that are the
emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”[55]
Henry David Thoreau’s interpretation of this text was that Jesus
left his inquisitors “no wiser than before as to which was which,
for they did not wish to know.”[56] For, as seen in light of the
great commandment of Mark 12:29, can it legitimately be said that anything
belongs to the emperor?[57] Indeed, Jesus’ response to this case
is reminiscent of a Zen koan in its baffling incomprehensibility.
While the gospel texts are most authoritative for Christians, the letters
of Paul, as the earliest written accounts of the faith, are also a reliable
portrayal of the early church.[58] Yet in all of his letters, only one
brief text considers the Christian’s relationship to the ruling
powers.[59] In Romans 13, Paul writes, “Let every person be subject
to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God,
and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore
whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who
resist will incur judgment.”[60] There is little mistaking the meaning
of this text: Christians should obey the rule of law in their societies
as it is instituted by God. This constraint can be ignored, as Ogletree
argues, “only … where we judge the society’s normative
framework to be functionally idolatrous.”[61] For as Milton claimed:
“an evil and faulty thing, since it is disorderly, cannot possibly
be ordained.”[62]
In contrast to Paul, however, many early Christians counseled a total
rejection of empire’s pretensions to authority. The Apocalypse of
John, for instance, presents an alternative narrative for anyone living
under the domination of empire: for while empire advertises its omnipotence,
Revelation declares empire to be demonic.[63] Examining biblical texts
to construct an ethic of compromise, Gamwell is yet unable to avoid the
conclusion that Revelation demands “fundamental conflict with the
political order insofar as Rome required its subjects to recognize the
absolute supremacy of political rule and, in this sense, to worship the
emperor.”[64] Declaring Christians subject to a single authority,
Revelation reveals any pretension to authority on the part of earthly
powers to be false; thereby making a tangible prophetic counterproposal
to the state’s claims to loyalty.[65]
In addition to the New Testament witness, the tradition of the early church
can allow people today to observe how the church can be constituted as
an authentic political community. All evidence suggests that the ancient
church understood that allegiance to Christ trumped allegiance to Caesar.[66]
Facing competing demands for loyalty, early Christians recognized that
even seemingly irrelevant actions could hold extraordinary significance
in God’s sight. Thus when Polycarp was arrested and brought before
the ruling magistrate, he refused to pledge allegiance to the emperor
knowing that this would sign his death warrant. Legend remembers that
the crowds at his death condemned him as the “destroyer of our gods,
who is teaching the multitudes to abstain from sacrificing to them or
worshipping them.”[67] Could it be that Christian faith demands
such a radical allegiance to God that just to be the church can threaten
the very cohesion of empire?
ON BEING THE CHURCH
I’m not mad at liberals who want to perform some procedural
form of democracy. What I am upset about are Christians who think that
is their primary task in the world in which we find ourselves. And I want
them to remember that our first task is to be the church of Jesus Christ,
that’s our politics. – Stanley Hauerwas[68]
Recognizing that the New Testament and the tradition of the early church
describe the church as a political body, it is fitting to inquire as to
how the church as body politic realizes its uncompromising witness and
distinctive practices as a crucible of change in the world. Some Christians,
assuming the church is functionally impotent in addressing social and
economic matters, cede total responsibility for these concerns to the
state; while others appropriate funds coerced through government taxation
to sponsor church charities.[69] Neither option is faithful to a vision
of the church that, as Jones argues, “does not exist for itself
- it finds itself and fulfills its calling … when it exists for
the world.”[70]
Just as the first commandment is to worship God; the first task of the
church, as Hauerwas acknowledges, is to be the church.[71] “Without
the church the world would have no history,” claims Hauerwas,[72]
and lest he be misunderstood, R.R. Reno interprets: “Without the
density-conferring work of God in the identity-forming practices of the
church worldly life is ethereal and weightless.”[73] The church’s
primary role coincides with the first commandment in Mark 12:29-30: “you
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul,
and with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
Secondly, the church has a biblically mandated responsibility to the neighbor
which constitutes a mission to the entire human family.[74] However, in
witnessing to the secular world in word and action, the church must be
careful not to subsume its distinct identity to the project of the nation-state;
recognizing, as MacIntyre reminds us, that the “state as a bearer
of values always imperils those values.”[75] As the very rationale
of the state is premised upon the exercise of coercive violence, if the
church wishes to serve with integrity it must avoid collaboration with
the machinations of empire at all costs. “The modern nation state
is founded on violence” explains Cavanaugh. “If the church
is going to resist violence, it has to emerge from its privatization and
have a political voice, one that seeks not to regain state power but to
speak truthfully about it.”[76]
The church is called to work in the world, but only according to its own
distinct values and practices. The church’s obligation is to share
the biblical story and to live according to this story; to be the church
and not the state; to be citizens of the world, not representatives of
empire. The church’s work is not to petition the state to adopt
human rights, but to establish justice as the body of Christ by unmasking
the idolatry of the state.
How does the church do it? How does the church as peacemaker witness to
a world dominated by an empire that knows only the language of violence
and coercion? Barth suggests that “as human members of Christ’s
body we are able to serve as God’s agents to redeem creation by
taking human responsibility and dominion over the powers rather than ceding
authority to them.”[77] This necessitates not only an understanding
of the world as created, fallen, and redeemed by Christ but a spiritual
empowerment to challenge the powers and principalities and submit them
to their proper responsibility.
In a story about a poor Brazilian community confronting government authorities
about the unjust distribution of milk, Bruce Bradshaw demonstrates how
the powers can be called to account. Representatives were selected to
speak to the people in power, but:
In typical fashion, the people in power separated themselves from
the powers by blaming the problem on someone else. (This blame perpetuates
the idea that the powers exist apart from the people in power because
no one in power takes responsibility for the behavior of the powers. This
reasoning gives the powers an autonomous existence). Yet eventually, a
public official was influenced to attend a meeting. The public meeting
began, and the people quickly began expressing their frustrations. …
And after they were done, he said, “Beginning next week, we will
begin distributing the milk tickets. I will keep checking with you to
make sure the milk is reaching the people.”[78]
This example illustrates how the powers grow unwieldy precisely because
no one takes responsibility for them. Human responsibility, therefore,
serves as the instrument of their redemption; for, in this anecdote, “the
people, by meeting the powers, redeemed them.”[79]
By proclaiming and enacting an alternate story, the church
engages in practices that are ultimately of far greater consequence than
the state’s methods of coercion. The challenge, however, is to continue
living according to the church’s story even when this clashes with
the state’s demands. Most importantly, as Cavanaugh advises, “the
churches should not defer to the president the decision on what constitutes
a just war and what does not. If the church decides that a war is unjust,
Christians should refuse to fight it.”[80]
Conscientious objection is but one of the many distinctive
practices by which the church can disentangle itself from the state. “To
be the church” means that Christians are immersed in a community
practicing diverse activities that witness to the unique identity of the
church while denouncing the idolatry of the empire. Such practices include
prayer, liturgy, repentance, evangelism, withholding taxes, civil disobedience,
excommunication, and martyrdom, and are effective in that they testify
to the reality of God’s government.[81]
The practice of prayer is paramount in that it points
the church toward God’s purposes, professing that the coming reign
is in God’s plan and not by human design. Whenever the church is
confronted by the world’s anxieties, prayer reminds the church of
its eschatological orientation. As Barth discovered of the first stanzas
of the Lord’s Prayer, “the one who prays to the Father cannot
but look for the kingdom to come.”[82]
Liturgy - including the administration of the sacraments
and the proclamation of the word - is the church’s “counter-politics”
to the politics of empire.[83] As Augustine saw, the liturgy is “true
politics” in that it is the public performance of the true eschatological
City of God in the midst of another City which is passing away.[84] The
story of the church is thus told as counterpropaganda to empire’s
dominant narrative.
Repentance is necessary for Christians who have collaborated
with the nation-state in violence and injustice.[85] “Christians
can atone for their complicity with violence in the past by refusing to
be complicit with state violence now” concludes Cavanaugh.[86] Repentance
can also include making direct reparation for sin: for example, Barth
taught that the church should accept communist appropriations as penance
for past misdeeds.[87]
Evangelism is the call made upon the church in the Great
Commission, when Jesus said to his disciples after his resurrection: “Go
therefore and make disciples of all nations.”[88] Evangelism is
thus the church’s mandate to go out into the world. However, evangelism
is not necessarily verbal; instead, as Stringfellow construes it, “evangelism
consists of loving another human being in a way which represents to him
the care of God for his particular life.”[89] Evangelism is thus
an act of radical welcome, transcending the boundaries of “all nations,”
in a politics quite different from the politics of the world.
By withholding taxes that sponsor the violence of the
state, penitent Christians can refuse being made complicit in empire’s
atrocities. This and other acts of civil disobedience - nonviolent by
definition - have as their premise that to be obedient to God is to refuse
complicity with illegitimate authority: “The purpose of the sit-ins,”
explains Yoder, “is not to coerce the ‘adversary’ but
to communicate to him, to ‘get through to him’; the boycott
is not a weapon but a refusal to cooperate with wrong practices; the ‘demonstrations’
are just that: efforts to point people’s awareness to moral issues.”[90]
Excommunication, in particular the withholding of communion,
was traditionally used by the church to discipline malevolent government
authorities.[91] For example, when the emperor Theodosius’ troops
massacred civilians in Thessalonica, Bishop Ambrose refused the emperor
communion until he made public penance in the streets of Milan.[92] Thomas
Aquinas formalized this position, teaching that “the church has
the authority to excommunicate rulers and absolve their subjects from
obedience to them.”[93] The ban on communion has since been used
as the discipline of last resort, from Calvin’s correction of wayward
church members to Archbishop Romero’s calling criminal elites to
account.
More recently, the potential impact of this practice could be recognized
in a public letter by poet Sharon Olds to First Lady Laura Bush rejecting
her invitation to the National Book Festival of September 2005. She writes:
Dear Mrs. Bush: I am writing to let you know why I am not able to
accept your kind invitation. … I tried to see my way clear to attend
the festival in order to bear witness … against this undeclared
and devastating war. But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with
you. What kept coming to the fore of my mind is that I would be taking
food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration
that unleashed this war and wills its continuation. … I thought
of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of
the candles, and I could not stomach it. Sincerely, Sharon Olds[94]
Olds’ revulsion at sitting at table with this representative of
empire is in the spirit of the church’s practice of excommunication
and illustrates that the church does not require an established disciplinary
framework in order to issue such a ban. Indeed, there is nothing to prohibit
churches in the United States from shaking off the constraints of civil
religion and making a public witness by refusing communion to American
soldiers and officials.
Martyrdom is the church’s ultimate witness to God’s
victory over the unjust power structures of the world. “A martyr
is one who lives imaginatively as if death does not exist,” writes
Cavanaugh.[95] However, martyrdom does not depend upon the intention of
the person killed – “for then indeed,” concludes Cavanaugh,
“only God would be able to judge – but whether or not those
with eyes to see are able to discern the body of Christ, crucified and
glorified, in the body broken by the violence of the world.”[96]
Martyrdom’s witness thus demands recognition by a body of people
who see through the biblical lens.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, if the church is to have a credible public witness it must
disengage from compromising entanglements with the civil religion of American-style
democracy. Following this premise, this paper analyzed democracy’s
claims of theological legitimacy to prove that the church must extricate
itself from complicity in democracy’s pretensions. Next, this paper
studied key “political” texts and accounts of the early church
so as to identify the church as a distinct political body. Finally, this
paper inquired into how the church as body politic can use its uncompromising
witness and practices to effect change.
As the power of empire is predicated on everyone acquiescing to the state’s
use of violence, the authentic church refuses to participate in the cult
of democracy. Though some characterize this position as a “utopian
dream of Eucharistic anarchism,”[97] it is the conclusion of this
paper that the church must reject any compromise with empire’s claim
to power. Instead, the church defines itself as a political body in its
own right, capable of working to effect change without relying on the
state to administer peace and justice.
Constituted by biblical authority as a distinct political body, church
members know their identity as citizens, not of empire’s democracy,
but of the kingdom of God.[98] The church as body politic has no designs
on empire’s coercive power; instead the church is called to be an
alternative society, unmasking the idolatry of the state. For it is only
by cultivating its own distinctive practices that the church can expose
the lies of empire and be a catalyst for change in the world. In the end,
all that is necessary is to be the church.
Endnotes
[1] Joe R. Jones, On Being the Church of Jesus Christ in Tumultuous
Times (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2005), xxi.
[2] “Indicative of this new Christian appreciation of the value
of democracy,” writes John de Gruchy, “is the fact that Catholic
social teaching, after centuries of hostility and ambivalence, is now
strongly in favor of democracy as the best form of political governance”
(See The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, ed. Peter
Scott and William T. Cavanaugh (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 443).
[3] See E.J. Dionne Jr., Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Kayla M. Drogosz, eds.
One Electorate Under God: A Dialogue on Religion and American Politics
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press, 2004), 7, 55. It was this
same “instinctive belief,” Brooks continues, “that led
George W. Bush to respond so ambitiously to the events of September 11
and that led most Americans to support him” (Ibid., 70).
[4] “The American vanity as a nation,” William Stringfellow
explains, “has, since the origins of America, been Babylonian, boasting,
through Presidents, often through Pharisees within the churches, through
folk religion, and in other ways, that America is Jerusalem. This is neither
an innocuous nor a benign claim; it is the essence of the doctrine of
the Antichrist” (William Stringfellow, An Ethic for Christians
and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers,
2004), 114).
[5] Edward Said, “Preface to Orientalism,” Al-Ahram,
August 2003, 7-13.
[6] Jurgen Habermas identifies the ‘legitimation crisis’ as
the key problem of advanced capitalism in which a society’s declared
values are at odds with its economic realities. See Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation
Crisis, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), 68-75.
[7] “In 1945, there were about two dozen lonely democracies in the
world. Today there are one-hundred and twenty-two,” (George W. Bush,
“State of the Union Address,” January 31, 2006).
[8] See Max Stackhouse, “Public Theology and Democratic Society,”
in The Church’s Public Role: Retrospect and Prospect, ed.
Dieter T. Hessel (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1993), 65. Robert Bellah
defines this tradition as America’s “civil religion,”
describing its predominant value as “individualism … rooted
in the dissenting Protestant view that the individual stands alone before
God and that the church is a voluntary association formed by individual
believers” (See Dionne, 64-65). Derived from certain interpretations
of Calvin’s teaching, this particular tradition understood the civil
government to be the means by which God’s kingdom could be established
on earth. “In effect, the state was to convert society in accordance
with a model prescribed by the church,” clarifies Mary Jane Haemig.
“Puritan New England followed this model, and this model still influences
many groups … in contemporary America.” See Mary Jane Haemig,
“The Confessional Basis of Lutheran Thinking on Church-State Issues”
in Church and State: Lutheran Perspectives, eds. John R. Stumpe
and Robert W. Tuttle (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 12.
[9] In all, Barth found 12 analogies of the kingdom of God in “the
external, relative, and provisional existence of the civil community.”
However, Barth cautioned that interpreting them required “Christian,
spiritual, and prophetic knowledge on every side” (Scott and Cavanaugh,
131).
[10] This principle, also derived from Reformed Protestant teaching, was
implemented in the Swiss city-states under Calvin, and methodically delineated
by Johannes Althusius in 1614. “Politics,” Althusius surmised,
“is the art of associating men for the purpose of establishing,
cultivating, and conserving life among them” (Johannes Althusius,
Politics, tr. Frederick. S. Carney (Boston: Beacon, 1964), 12).
Whenever human associations have been encouraged according to this principle,
argues Stackhouse, “we have seen the reorganization also of the
ordinary structures of living – not only familial and political,
but economic, cultural, educational, and technological – in a pluralistic,
democratic direction” (Hessel, 66).
[11] Once people have learned to discipline themselves, this premise suggests,
they will no longer need the state. However, as William Cavanaugh argues,
the “predictable outcome of such a scheme … is that, in order
to adequately coordinate the common good, the state will find it necessary
to build such strong controls of the intermediate associations into the
system that meaningful participation and autonomy for the groups will
be squelched” (See William T. Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist:
Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ (Malden, MA: Blackwell,
1998), 195).
[12] In David Hume’s diagnosis, “it is only from the selfishness
and confined generosity of men ... that justice derives its origin”
(David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), 495).
[13] “This theory,” writes Reinhold Niebuhr, “assumed
a mythical ‘state of nature’ before the rise of civil society
… for Thomas Hobbes the state of nature meant the ‘war of
all against all’” (Reinhold Niebuhr, Reinhold Niebuhr
on Politics, ed. Harry R. Davis and Robert C. Good (New York: Scribner,
1960), 103). A contrary position is proposed by Karl Marx, who argues
that “both the rights and the principles governing the relations
of civil society, and the state itself, were rooted in and means of stabilizing
the production relations and thus the class relations of a given social
order” (Stephen Lukes, Marxism and Morality (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1985), 29-30).
[14] John Locke, Second Treatise (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2003), 106. For Locke, religious belief was purely a matter of
individual conscience: the state need not coerce religious beliefs because
the church - as another voluntary association under the jurisdiction of
the state - holds no political authority. When Locke’s idea’s
were enshrined in England’s Toleration Act of 1689, writes Cavanaugh,
“Catholics were explicitly excluded from the Act, precisely because
they had as yet refused to interiorize the church and transfer their ultimate
loyalty to the sovereign” (See Cavanaugh, 191-192).
[15] The governing state, in Max Weber’s analysis, is defined as
“a human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the
legitimate use of force within a given territory” (Ibid., 6).
[16] Needless to say, but many would contest this premise, claiming that
the church constitutes an extraordinary case. For, as Haemig discerns,
“the church is not simply a group of people who decide to gather
(a voluntary organization); it is an assembly called together by the Holy
Spirit” (Haemig, 4).
[17] Social contract theory, as put forward by such theorists as Hobbes,
Locke, and Rousseau, establishes a framework within which “every
individual concludes an agreement with the strictly secular authority
to ensure his safety, for the protection of which he relinquishes all
rights and powers” (See Hannah Arendt, “Civil Disobedience,”
in Crises of the Republic (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch,
1972), 86). Jeffrey Stout attempts to update the social contract by drawing
on Nicholas Wolterstorff’s conception of a “consocial model
of discursive sociality” (See Jeffery Stout, Democracy and Tradition
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 74). However, as Cavanaugh
interprets: “Many variations on the concept of social contract exist,
but all agree that peace depends at the very minimum on individuals surrendering
the right to use violence to the state, the impersonal center of sovereignty”
(Cavanaugh, 6).
[18] The first two articles of the First Amendment are therefore “articles
of peace” which perform the state’s role of subsuming conflict
by excluding religious difference from the political arena (Ibid., 9).
[19] While individuals once vested authority in various local institutions,
by subsuming the authority of all subsidiary associations unto itself,
the state now commands a direct relationship with each individual as the
sole guarantor of “rights,” thus installing the state as the
official determinant and arbiter of virtue.
[20] See Thomas Ogletree, The World Calling: the Church’s Witness
in Politics and Society (Louisville: WJK Press, 2004), 14, 13. For
this civilizational ethic, elucidates Haemig, the “civil law becomes
a sort of gospel, promising a version of salvation” (Haemig, 12).
[21] “At this point, Christian social ethics involves various forms
of ‘compromise’ with the reigning civilizational ethic,”
writes Ogletree, for “in most cases, the reigning civilizational
ethic offers the only promising basis for the promotion of common grounds
of understanding” (Ogletree, 40). Moreover, Ogletree suggests that
“Christians must forego the public advocacy of notions distinctive
to their own traditions where those notions are fundamentally incompatible
with a public ethic” (Ibid., 39). Defining this public ethic, Ogletree
explains that “in the American context this civilizational ethic
consists chiefly in principles of liberal democracy … [and] also
embraces capitalist values” (Ibid., 40).
[22] “At what price,” asks Stringfellow, “is this alleged
harmony accomplished if in fact the doctrine upon which it rests requires
of religious folk a profession, in effect, of atheism?” (William
Stringfellow, A Private and Public Faith (Eugene, OR: Wipf and
Stock, 1999), 30-31).
[23] Cavanaugh, 193. For as Cavanaugh interprets: “once the church
has been individualized and eliminated as Christ’s body in the world,
only the state is left to impersonate God” (Ibid.). Marx makes similar
observations on rights and the state, writing that “if the state
is the guarantor of rights, then those rights must be abrogated as soon
as they interfere with the security of the state” (Ibid., 192).
[24] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Harper
Perennial, 1988), 436. “Men by no means have found the way to live
in independence,” continues de Tocqueville, rather, they “have
only succeeded in the difficult task of giving slavery a new face. [Yet]
for myself … I am no better inclined to pass my head under the yoke
because a million men hold it for me” (Ibid.).
[25] Stackhouse, 69. People also torture for these commitments, as current
events sadly remind us.
[26] William T. Cavanaugh, “Liturgy as Politics: An Interview with
William Cavanaugh” Christian Century, 13 December 2005,
30.
[27] America’s Calvinist origins, as Bellah interprets, are evident
in public policy today; for instance, due to the Reformed emphasis on
individual responsibility, “America accepts as natural a degree
of income polarization and poverty level that would be unacceptable in
any other Atlantic society” (Dionne, 64-65).
[28] Cavanaugh, 195.
[29] See Col. 1:16, NRSV. Consider also Ephesians: “For our struggle
is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against
the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against
the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12,
NRSV).
[30] See Karl Barth, Church and State (London: SCM, 1939), 29.
[31] Cavanaugh, 7-9. “What this looks like in practice,” recognizes
Cavanaugh “is the case of the bishop … who can speak a word
to the conscience of the Catholic soldier, but cannot override the soldier’s
orders from his army superior to torture his fellow Christians”
(Ibid., 9).
[32] Scott and Cavanaugh, 132. German Christians of the 1930’s exalted
Hitler for bringing recovery to Germany and insisted that all the Protestant
churches combine forces in a national renewal under his guidance. “It
was this scenario,” Wilmer continues, “that prompted Barth’s
notorious “Nein”; for the condition of the church
in German society was such that “a distinction needed to be drawn,
saying No to false connections of church and political movement, of faith
in God and national belonging” (Ibid., 128).
[33] Cavanaugh, 196.
[34] According to Barth, “the existence of the state is an allegory,
a correspondence and an analogue to the kingdom of God which the church
preaches and believes in,” (Scott and Cavanaugh, 131). The state
thus claims a spiritual power over persons, explaining why “people
who have been deeply influenced by these traditions have an almost sacred
view of constitutional government and of human rights” (Hessel,
69).
[35] “The story of America,” claims Stanley Hauerwas, “can
tempt Christians to lose our own story and in the process to fail to notice
the god we worship is no longer the God of Israel” (Stanley Hauerwas,
“On Being a Christian and an American,” in A Better Hope
(Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2002), 29.
[36] John Howard Yoder, The Royal Priesthood, ed. M.G. Cartwright
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1994), 163.
[37] As reported in The Nation, the entire American media establishment
is owned by a cartel of a few large corporations. What they purvey, including
the “news,” is “propaganda, commercial or political.”
Mark Miller suggests that these entities “are ultimately hostile
to the welfare of the people. Whereas we need to know the truth about
such corporations, they often have an interest in suppressing it (as do
their advertisers),” (Mark Crispin Miller, “Big Media,”
The Nation, 7 January 2002).
[38] Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Towards a Constructive
Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
1981), 50.
[39] “Without considered attention to concrete practices in a church
… political freedom is bereft,” writes William Werpehowski.
“It is left with a set of Christian ‘values’ that it
would seek to embody in political life; risk[ing] an all too easy Christian
accreditation of American democratic institutions” (Scott and Cavanaugh,
192).
[40] Stringfellow, Public and Private Faith, 31.
[41] Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom (Nashville: Abingdon,
1991), 10.
[42] The United States commands the most formidable military force in
history. “Even if all the other states in the world put all their
military resources together they would not be able to mount a credible
threat to the US,” write Sardar and Davies. “Not surprisingly,
the US spends more on defense than any other country in history …
$400 billion [annual budget] - half of all the military spending in the
world” (Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies, Why Do People
Hate America? (New York: The Disinformation Company, 2002), 111).
[43] The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. is often cited as an example
of a church leader who chose to work in collaboration with the government
to serve the purposes of justice. Indeed, after years of struggle against
government tactics - including surveillance, imprisonment, and worse -
the government of the United States did recognize King’s leadership
for a time. However, it could be argued that King was palatable to the
US government only as a tolerable alternative to Black political movements
that advocated ideologies of “self-defense,” such as the Nation
of Islam. After his vocal opposition to the war in Vietnam, King was abandoned
by his allies in government and by most of the Black establishment. In
the end, King confessed to a profound disappointment in his efforts to
work within the established order, calling the United States “the
most hypocritical government since the world began.” See James H.
Cone, Martin and Malcolm in America: A Dream or a Nightmare (Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 306.
[44] Haemig, 6.
[45] Paul corrected the Colossians over a similar affliction: “If
with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do
you live as if you still belonged to the world?” (Colossians 2:20,
NRSV).
[46] Stout would suggest that the American nation-state itself can be
a community of character: he claims that he is “still identifying
with that community, even as I express my alienation from it” (see
Stout, 299). However, in light of the particular history of the United
States – genocide, slavery, Hiroshima, Vietnam, Iraq, etc. - it
is germane to recall MacIntyre’s reminder that “modern nation
states simply are not the kind of community through which true virtues
can be fostered and the common good achieved” (Scott and Cavanaugh,
195).
[47] “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy
and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental
spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ” (Col. 2:8,
NRSV).
[48] Mark 12:29-30, NRSV. An elaborate rendition of Deut. 6:4-5.
[49] Mark 10:42-44, NRSV. Also Mark 9:35: “Whoever wants to be first
must be last of all and servant of all” (NRSV).
[50] Luke 22:25-26, NRSV.
[51] Hessel, 15.
[52] Colossians 2:15, NRSV.
[53] Barth urged “a proper partnership” of church and state,
“in order that both serve together the one Lord, who has not let
the state exempt itself from his service even when it crucifies the Lord”
(Barth, 16).
[54] Jose Miguez Bonino, Toward a Christian Political Ethics
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 98-99.
[55] Mark 12:16-17, NRSV. See also Matt. 22:19-22.
[56] As quoted in Franklin Gamwell, Politics as a Christian Vocation:
Faith and Democracy Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005), 7.
[57] In Oliver O’Donovan’s judgment, this passage, in fact
“allows us to rule out the view that Jesus assigned Roman government
a certain uncontested sphere of secular right” (See Cavanaugh, 190-191).
[58] Christopher Rowland writes that while the synoptic Gospels, James,
and Revelation all share “that indomitable, uncompromising spirit
which sets itself against the values of the present age,” the letters
of Paul reveal the necessity for some in the early church, especially
in urban contexts, to compromise with governing authorities without forsaking
their call to a radical counter-cultural identity. See Scott and Cavanaugh,
32.
[59] “It is noteworthy,” remarks Gamwell, “that the
early verses of Romans 13 contain Paul’s only clear statement about
political responsibility. That he did not otherwise address the subject
at least suggest that active attention to the justice or injustice of
the social order did not, on his view, belong to the distinctive task
of Christians within the divine plan” (Gamwell, 9).
[60] Romans 13:1-2, NRSV.
[61] Ogletree, 40.
[62] Scott and Cavanaugh, 31.
[63] For a more detailed analysis of Revelation’s Babylon as actualized
in the United States, see Canaan Harris, “Chanting Down Babylon:
An Ethic for Exorcising America” (paper submitted to Adela Yarbro
Collins, Yale Divinity School, 16 December 2005).
[64] Gamwell, 11.
[65] “The state’s claim to loyalty is expressed above all
in the claim upon citizens that they may and indeed must kill in wartime”
(Stanley Hauerwas, Dispatches from the Front (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1994), 106.
[66] “The picture we have of early Christianity from the sources
is a ‘sectarian’ picture which sits uncomfortably with all
that we hold dear,” writes Rowland. “For all their protestations
of loyalty to the emperor, they refused to conform to the demands of empire.
Allegiance to the resurrected Christ meant that in any conflict of loyalty
the nation-state had to take second place” (Scott and Cavanaugh,
33).
[67] See Ibid. Asked to burn incense to the emperor and swear allegiance
to him, Polycarp refused; recognizing, as Rowland interprets, that “this
odd bit of compromise with the old order is nothing less than being marked
by the Beast” (Ibid.).
[68] Stanley Hauerwas, “An Interview with Stanley Hauerwas,”
by Dan Rhoades, The Other Journal, fall 2005 [online]; available
at http://www.theotherjournal.com/article.php?id=25; accessed May 3, 2006.
[69] “Its blood money,” suggested Rev. Cynthia Hale of so-called
“faith-based” funding in a roundtable discussion at Yale Divinity
School on November 10, 2005. According to Hale, “faith-based”
funding is money diverted from welfare programs for the poor: money that
would otherwise go toward social programs is now diverted to a hierarchy
of organizations sympathetic to the civil religion to be used according
to preferential agendas; i.e. these “faith-based” groups are
given carte blanche to screen potential clients for social services according
to the organization’s own culturally conceived standards of morality.
[70] Joe R. Jones, A Grammar of Christian Faith (Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 29.
[71] To “let the church be the church,” a slogan associated
with Hauerwas, “has caught on among those who find the ‘social
gospel’ of Christian liberalism thin” (Stout, 158).
[72] Stanley Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church,
World, and Living in Between (Durham, NC: Labyrinth, 1998), 61.
[73] “We have political, economic, ethnic, familial commitments,
to be sure,” Reno continues, “but the sum of the whole is
less than the parts, and as consequence we have little ballast against
the storms of violence and fear that sweep across our lives. However,
if we are formed by the church … we have a place to stand against
the supposed “necessities” of life (preservation of one’s
life, protection of one’s property, defense of one’s own kind)
that give evil its seeming cogency and force” (Scott and Cavanaugh,
309).
[74] See the second half of the great commandment in Mark 12:31: “You
shall love your neighbor as yourself” (NRSV). A good “neighbor,”
as defined in Luke 10:25-37, is one who shows mercy to strangers.
[75] Cavanaugh, 195.
[76] Christian Century, 28.
[77] See Scott and Cavanaugh, 126.
[78] Bruce Bradshaw, Bridging the Gap: Evangelism, Development, and
Shalom (Monrovia, CA: World Vision International, 1993), 147.
[79] Ibid., 148. In this regard, the special circumstance of the modern
corporation functioning as an “artificial person” may bear
further analysis, for this legal fiction functions to deter human attempts
to claim authority over these powers by removing individual culpability
for corporate decision-making.
[80] Christian Century, 30. Christian pacifists, obviously, would argue
that all war is unjust.
[81] It is perhaps ironic that, in criticizing Hauerwas, Stout suggests
several practices by which the church can act as a distinct political
body in the world: “[Hauerwas] has advocated neither the withholding
of taxes that finance the military, nor participation in costly acts of
civil disobedience, nor refusal of communion to soldiers and their commanders”
(Stout, 159).
[82] See Scott and Cavanaugh, 133.
[83] This proposition is derived from Cavanaugh’s claim that “the
Eucharist is the church’s ‘counter-politics’ to the
politics of torture.” Explains Cavanaugh: “While torture is
an anti-liturgy for the realization of the state’s power on the
bodies of others, Eucharist is the liturgical realization of Christ’s
suffering and redemptive body in the bodies of his followers” (Cavanaugh,
205).
[84] Ibid., 14.
[85] “If it is tempting to suppose that remote proximity abolishes
responsibility for the killing,” warns Stringfellow, “it must
be remembered that the use of apparently anonymous automated weapons exposes
the common and equal culpability for slaughter of those who pull the trigger
and those who press the button with those who manufacture the means and
those who pay the taxes” (Stringfellow, Ethic for Christians, 73).
[86] Christian Century, 28.
[87] As Willmer construes, “After 1945, like his Czech colleague
J. Hromadka, Barth thought Christians should accept communist appropriations
as an historical penitence” (Scott and Cavanaugh, 126).
[88] Matthew 28:18-20, NRSV.
[89] Stringfellow, Public and Private Faith, 54. “Evangelism,”
elaborates Stringfellow, “is the event in which a Christian confronts
another [person] in a way which assures the other … that the new
life which he observes in the Christian is vouchsafed for him also”
(Ibid.).
[90] John Howard Yoder, For the Nations (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1997), 101.
[91] “Excommunication (Lat. ex, out of, and communicatio, communion
– exclusion from the communion), the principal and severest censure,
is a medicinal, spiritual penalty that deprives the guilty Christian of
all participation in ecclesiastical society” (“Excommunication,”
Catholic Encyclopedia [online]; available from http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05678a.htm;
accessed April 28, 2006).
[92] Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church, 4th
ed. (New York: Scribner, 1985), 160.
[93] Cavanaugh, 196.
[94] Sharon Olds, “No Thanks, Mrs. Bush,” The Nation,
10 October 2005, 5.
[95] Cavanaugh, 65. As Cavanaugh stresses, “The dangerous memory
associated with the body of a martyr - preeminently located in the Eucharist
– is what forms and identifies a community as the body of Christ
in ongoing conflict with worldly power” (Ibid., 68).
[96] Ibid., 64. “It is not the heroism of the individual which is
most significant, but rather the naming of the martyr by those who recognize
Christ in the martyr’s life and death” (Ibid.)
.
[97] Stout uses this phrase to dismiss the ecclesiology of theologians
like MacIntyre, Hauerwas, and Cavanaugh, describing their position as
a “theology of resentment”. See Stout, 92-117.
[98] See Scott and Cavanaugh, 314.
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