What’s the sounder method for thinking through Christian ethics? It starts with the image of the person as revealed in Scripture and the practice of churches over the centuries. It asks what demands such a creature can rightly make of any government, and what duties he owes it.

All through this series I’ve been writing at The Stream over the past year and a half, which soon will form a book, I’ve struggled to articulate the correct way for Christians to form their consciences as citizens in a modern, post-Christian context. As it draws to a close, after surveying thousands of years of history, both Testaments of scripture, the growth of authoritative Church tradition, and the profound political changes wrought on the West by the Christian view of the person, is there a simple message to sum it all up?
The answer is yes. There is a message, and better still, a method for any principled person to use when considering complex moral issues. First the message:
Freedom in the sense we take for granted, based on individual rights, only arose in the West, and only the Christian West. That’s not an accident. The Christian roots of our regime of ordered liberty are no mere primitive “phase” that we can grow out of, or a skin we can shed as we grow. No, the Christian view of the person is the soil where liberty sprouted. It feeds our liberty, and it keeps it alive. Yank the tree out of the soil, and the leaves will stay green for a while, but it’s as good as dead already. That’s the stage where we are today, still staring at the leaves as the tree gasps for its life. It never “outgrows” its need for water and nutrients.
The only sane way to think about politics in the tradition of our Christian ancestors, the ones who created this system of freedom, is to consider first the human person as revealed to us by God in both Testaments, and then think through the implications of that human dignity for life in society.
The Phony Logic of Progressive Christians
Too few people today remember how to do that. Instead they do something else. By describing their faulty mode of reasoning I can reveal the Method promised above, the rational calculus you can use yourself in any new situation, on each political question as it arises, to arrive at your own faithful answers.
Since our argument here has centered on the question of using violence in self-defense, either against individual aggressors or the institutionalized violence of some tyrannical state, let’s unfold the Method in that context. What are the political implications of Jesus’ injunction to “turn the other cheek”?
The manner in which Progressive Christians habitually answer such questions can best be described as follows:

Read the passage of Scripture. Do not check on how previous generations of Christians have interpreted it, much less what past authorities of your own church tradition say. Also do not explore its connections to the Old Testament. No, read it as if it had been published this morning, and you’re the first person to think about it.
In order to be as “radically” and authentically Christian as possible, do not consider interpretations of it that can be reconciled with Old Testament precedents, or the dictates of reason. Those are “compromise” positions, which dilute the stark extremity of Jesus’ demands.
Instead, imagine the most counter-intuitive and impractical possible reading of the text. Experience the self-satisfaction that comes from embracing this interpretation. Go forth and impose it on others, shaming them if necessary if they won’t be as “radically” Christian as you are now.
Rinse and repeat.

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Written by Jeffrey A. Tucker |
Monday, January 17, 2022
What historian Phil Magness has discovered, with newly unearthed emails, comes not as a shock to any of us but it is satisfying to see the confirmation of what we suspected. It seemed at the time that the effort to attack and destroy both the GBD [Great Barrington Declaration] and its authors was coordinated from the top. Here at last is the proof that our intuition was not crazy. 

Those weeks following the release of the Great Barrington Declaration did feel odd.
On the good side, medical doctors, scientists, public health workers, and citizens all over the world were thrilled that three top scholars in fields of public health and epidemiology had spoken out against lockdowns and for a reasoned approach to Covid. They eagerly signed the document.
Yes, there were some attempts to sabotage it too, with fake names and so on, which should have been a clue about what was coming. The fakes were deleted in days and new methods of confirming signatures were deployed.
The document, on the one hand, said nothing controversial. The right way to deal with this pandemic, it said, was to focus on those who could face severe outcomes from disease – a very plain point and nothing new. There was nothing to be gained by locking down the whole of society because of a pathogen with such a huge differential in its demographic impact.
The virus would have to become endemic in any case (including the realization of “herd immunity,” which is not a “strategy” but a descriptive term widely accepted in epidemiology) and certainly would not be stopped by destroying peoples’ lives and liberties.
The hope of the Declaration was simply that journalists would pay attention to a different point of view and a debate would begin on the unprecedented experiment in lockdowns. Perhaps science could prevail, even in this climate.
On the bad side, and at the very same time, following the release, the attacks began pouring in, and they were brutal, structured to destroy. The three main signers – Sunetra Gupta (Oxford), Martin Kulldorff (Harvard), and Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford) – made the statement as a matter of principle. It was also born of frustration with the prevailing narrative.
Mostly this declaration was intended as an educational effort. But the authors were being called vicious names and treated like heretics that should be burned. There certainly was no civil debate; quite the contrary.
It was all quite shocking given that the Declaration was a statement concerning what almost everyone in these professional circles believed earlier in the year. They were merely stating the consensus based on science and experience. Nothing more. Even on March 2, 2020, 850 scientists signed a letter to the White House warning against lockdowns, closures, and travel restrictions. It was sponsored by Yale University. Today it reads nearly like a first draft of the Great Barrington Declaration. Indeed on that same day, Fauci wrote to a Washington Post reporter: “The epidemic will gradually decline and stop on its own without a vaccine.”
But following the March 13-16, 2020 lockdowns, the orthodoxy had evidently changed. And suddenly. The signers of the GBD had declined to change with it. Thus did they endure astonishingly brutal smears. What felt odd at the time was the sheer intensity of the attacks, as well as their dogmatism and ferocity. These attacks also had a strong political flavor that had little regard for science.
Already by the summer, it was very clear that the lockdowns had not achieved what they were supposed to achieve. Two weeks had stretched into many months, and the data on cases and deaths were uncorrelated with the “mitigation measures” that had been imposed on the country and the world. Meanwhile, millions had missed cancer screenings, schools and churches had been shut, public health was in a state of crisis, and small businesses and communities were fighting to stay alive.
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There may be considerable overlap between the American political right and the Christian church in moral values, especially in matters like abortion, sexual morality, euthanasia, and the like. But at the end of the day we serve Christ, not any party or social movement; for such things are temporal and of human origin, and therefore are never free of sin, whereas God’s kingdom which the church represents (albeit imperfectly) endures forever and is of his Spirit.

The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) saw controversy recently due to David French’s invitation to participate in an upcoming General Assembly seminar. That immediate controversy I elide here, for prudence commends dropping the matter with the Administrative Committee’s decision to cancel the entire seminar as unhelpful. But controversies are often helpful in revealing auxiliary matters of import, some of which are arguably more important than the immediate controversy itself.
One such matter in the recent controversy that merits comment is the readiness with which our church’s affairs were discussed in political organs. The affairs of the PCA are ecclesiastical in nature, not related to the wider culture and its civil politics. They are, in short, none of the business of outlets such as The Federalist, and their commenting on them (as here) is blamable on various grounds.
If the people doing so are members of our church, then they are violating the principle that our affairs should not be discussed before unbelievers. In cases of apparent fault we are to handle our affairs internally:
When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? . . . So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? (1 Cor. 6:1, 4-6)
Discussing our affairs in outlets concerned primarily with culture and politics exposes us to ridicule by unbelievers (no doubt a large readership of such outlets), who are only too ready to find apparent confirmation for their unbelief. We shouldn’t be giving infidels occasion to justify their unbelief, and so no believer should discuss the church’s affairs in an outlet that does not have an explicit, credible Christian character.
If the people doing so are not members of our church, then they are prying where they have no business and doing us a real disservice. Ask yourself, dear reader, what someone who reads an outlet like The Federalist is likely to think about us when he reads a statement like this:
If the PCA knew this [i.e., various concerns about French] and invited him anyway, shame on them. And if they somehow didn’t know because their heads are buried that far in the sand — unlikely, especially considering the PCA’s leftward decline, but I repeat myself — double shame.
Probably he will think that we are a feckless institution of questionable honesty that has compromised with the wider culture and which is not, as such, worthy of a serious consideration as a reliable moral authority. Whatever its intentions, that article exposed us to opprobrium that has proved unjustified given that the event was promptly canceled after an enormous backlash from many in the denomination (inc. some whole presbyteries). But the harm to our reputation has already been sown in many minds, for the taint of “leftward decline” is not easily shed in many quarters of the very sensitive and reactionary conservative movement in this country, and no one is better for that harm to our reputation—except Satan, who is keen on discrediting faithful churches, of which the PCA is full.
Now I assert all this because the church has a spiritual, other-worldly character, and because her independence on that point is transgressed when outsiders discuss our affairs in their own forums. The PCA is not a wing of any party or platform, and when a political publication of any stripe meddles in our affairs they are implying they have some legitimate concern in them, that we should hold their line and only approve things that they approve. Nonsense. We shall determine whom we associate with or not, and on the basis of our own moral-doctrinal and ecclesiastical criteria, not those of any political movement.
In brief, if you’re a believer and reading this, please do not discuss church affairs in non-Christian forums, and repent if you have been in the habit of doing so. And recognize that when politicians or journalists discuss our internal affairs, they are disregarding the true nature of the church and infringing upon her independence. They are implying that we are somehow allied with or subordinate to them, a part of their ‘base,’ and that as such they have a legitimate interest in our affairs. They don’t, and even if their concerns are understandable or their values are largely the same as ours, there is still wrong in them directly commenting upon our doings or exposing us to ridicule.
Now this is prescient especially because it serves to rebut a mistaken impression that many people have that this ‘spirituality of the church’ I have asserted here is simply a convenient fiction.[1] There are people who say that the ‘spirituality of the church’ is just a dodge to justify a sinful status quo, a thing behind which the church shelters lest she offend the powerful. In the 1800s this allegedly meant the Southern churches refused to denounce domestic slavery as an institution, for fear lest they so offend the planter aristocracy as to be rendered of no account.[2] Today it purportedly means the church declines to support various ‘social justice’ causes which are associated with the political left because of various selfish concerns.
But actually the church’s spiritual independence means that she is to be aloof not merely from leftwing causes, but also from being a direct subservient entity of the political right. Even where the right is in the right, it is not proper for her to act like she can use the church as a subordinate, nor for the church to allow herself to be regarded as such. This is so because the church is Christ’s institutional embassy on Earth. Her loyalty is to him alone, and only to any other thing insofar as he commands it. (E.g., he commands us to honor and pay taxes even to pagan empires like Rome, Rom. 13:1-7, for this is in the best interests of his people.)
An ambassador can only serve the interests of his lawful sovereign, doing otherwise being rank disloyalty. He does not take the part of any faction of the foreign country where he serves, and only involves himself in the affairs of that place with a view toward advancing his sovereign’s interests, and at his explicit instruction. Believers are spiritual sojourners and pilgrims in every earthly nation they inhabit (Heb. 11:13; 1 Pet. 2:11-12), and in all places they are Christ’s representatives, beholden to do his will and not that of others.
There may be considerable overlap between the American political right and the Christian church in moral values, especially in matters like abortion, sexual morality, euthanasia, and the like. But at the end of the day we serve Christ, not any party or social movement; for such things are temporal and of human origin, and therefore are never free of sin, whereas God’s kingdom which the church represents (albeit imperfectly) endures forever and is of his Spirit (Dan. 2:36-45; Rom. 14:15; Heb. 12:28). Then too, from a practical standpoint, political movements so much emphasize the things of this life as to drive out concern for eternity and Christ’s kingdom (Matt. 13:22), which has not come in its fullness (Lk. 17:20-21) and is not a thing of this world (Jn. 18:36). Once wed politics and piety and politics becomes your piety.
For that reason the church must resist at every turn all people who attempt to meddle in her affairs. Our Lord is a jealous God (Deut. 4:24; 5:9) who will share his glory with no other (Isa. 42:8), and who declined to intervene in domestic squabbles (Lk. 12:13-14) or outrages (13:1), but instead found in them occasions to instruct people morally (12:15-21) and to urge them to repent (13:2-5). As his embassy on Earth, his church must take care lest the politics of this life cause her to forget her mission and her loyalty to him. That means she must insist on her right to be free of the interference of those who would have us do their bidding, just as Christ refused all overtures that mistakenly regarded him as an earthly king (Jn. 6:15) or interfered with his redemptive mission (7:1-14).
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks/Simpsonville (Greenville Co.), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 

[1] Some idea of the doctrine of the church’s spiritual nature and independence can be gleaned in my article here.
[2] Keyword “as an institution.” The churches did defend slavery in theory, and appealed to scripture in so doing. But there is a difference between defending slavery in theory and doing so as it was actually practiced. The churches also criticized Southern slavery as it was actually practiced, as Eugene Genovese recounts in his A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White South, though we could naturally wish they had done so much more effectively than was actually the case.

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