One For The Horror File
From The Australian
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story…5006784,00.html
“Church Leader Rues the Price of Libertarian Philosophies”
by Jill Rowbotham
REBUKING “a nation whose love affair with personal freedom has borne unpleasant fruit”, the Anglican archbishop of Sydney yesterday condemned its culture as “resource-rich and relationship-poor”.
Addressing the annual diocesan synod, or parliament, the Most Reverend Peter Jensen also targeted the leading political parties, which had “embraced the economic freedom which they see as essential to our prosperity”.
“They do not see that economic freedom trumps the social conservatism – or better, the Biblical principles – which sustains our values,” he said.
“Worse, within all parties there remain some attached to the old, failed libertarian philosophies of the past decades, which have delivered to us gambling without end, abortion without limit, alcohol without discipline, sex without love, work without shared time off, families without children, children without parenting, suburbs without community, divorce without accountability, men without women, women without men, and speech without constraint.”
Dr Jensen said “the generation which embraced the libertarian choice of personal freedom in preference to lasting relationships” had forgotten “that human beings may declare themselves to be free, but that we cannot declare ourselves to be good”.
“We see a nation which has manifestly failed its indigenous people in recent decades through a sort of libertarian paternalism,” he said.
“We may be grateful for recent government action on abuses, but what are the human values which will enable us to think of the long-term future?
“Supremely, our national problems are spiritual. Supremely, our nation needs the message of God’s word.”
The archbishop conceded the Sydney church’s “mission” to convert 10 per cent of the population in the decade from 2002 had made “no general breakthrough yet”.
He said 5000 adult members had been added to the church since 2002, the clergy had increased by 18 per cent and donations at the plate had risen from about $38million to $56million – all causes for rejoicing.
But he said the “easier things” had been done. Now it was time to use his new plan, Connect 09, to put the Bible in every Sydney household in 2009.
He said the Catholic church’s World Youth Day next year would “raise the level of awareness of Jesus in the community and increase a sense of interest in him. We must be prepared to build on that.”
Part of the problem, he said, was dated buildings, some “merely museums to a lost form of religion”, and what was required was a place that felt like home: “If that requires a drum kit in the corner and power cords all over the floor, so be it.”
“The Horror File Resurrected”
by Andrew Russell
The Philosopher Ayn Rand once had a folder filled with newspaper clippings that utterly appalled her, entitled “The Horror File.” I recently encountered a newspaper article that fits right into that file. Jill Rowbotham’s article in The Australian, entitled “Church Leader Rues the Price of Libertarian Philosophies” conveys the views of the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, the Most Reverend Peter Jensen. These views are, for lack of a better word, utterly appalling.
Its strange that Jensen has actually taken a stand on something, since the Anglican Church has never been an ideologically consistent Church . They claim to be both Catholic and Protestant. They claim to be open to both faith and reason. They claim to be a comprehensive worldview yet open to the spiritual journeys of individuals. They claim to be sensible yet are the embodiment of the logical fallacy of “via media” (i.e. moderation in everything is good). But then again one can hardly consider a faith whose origin was in the need for a King’s divorce to be sincere. Regardless, Jensen has taken a stand, and this stand is so wonderfully clear that it allows me to declare that Jensen (I cannot say that the entire Anglican Communion shares his views because it is decentralized) is an enemy of liberty. Not only that but, unsurprisingly, he is a misanthrope, a hater of modernity, a raving mystic and hence I cannot refrain from pronouncing the proper judgement. Peter Jensen is, by any rational standard, either supremely idiotic or blackly evil.
Jensen describes Australia as having a “love affair with personal freedom,” obviously implying that to him personal freedom is a bad thing. The goes on to moan that Australia’s problems are “spiritual” and other massively irrational points. Allow me to explain. For one, he condemns how both major parties have allegedly “embraced the economic freedom which they see as essential to our prosperity.” For one, both major parties advocate a mixed economy, although yes both have conceded that freedom (i.e. capitalism) is the ultimate source of wealth. However it is a stretch to say they have “embraced” capitalism overall. What is more disturbing is the implication that Jensen does not see that economic freedom is essential to our prosperity! Anyone with even slight familiarity with economics knows that it is overwhelmingly the conclusion of economic science that markets are essential for prosperity (even academics have settled on a “mostly-market” economy). The only alternative to economic freedom is socialism, and its an empirical fact that socialism fails miserably, cannot be as efficient as capitalism, cannot fix this by replicating market prices, and ends in mass murder. It is an empirical fact that markets work, that even the poorest under a market system is better off in absolute terms, that they unleash human creative potential and that they cannot be matched. I find it hard to believe that Jensen made this mistake innocently.
What Jensen does get right about capitalism is that “economic freedom trumps social conservatism.” Capitalism, in the classical liberal sense of the term (i.e. our usage), is the most dynamic system ever seen. It renders many traditions useless. And what traditions does Jensen want to defend from Capitalism? “The biblical principles- which sustains our values.” It is correct that biblical principles are incompatible with Capitalism. Regardless of the conservatives, and those unfortunately apologistic members of the libertarian community who insist otherwise, Capitalism is premised on “there is nothing inherently wrong with self-interest.” The bible on the other hand pours scorn over self-interest, saying it is improper to live ones life for oneself (ultimately), and that humans exist to serve God. The bible declares self-interest inherently evil. The bible declares one’s moral duty is to others, that men must “love one another” as Christ loved all men (allegedly, this implies we must love unconditionally, universally and unceasingly, i.e we must devalue love by giving it to everyone). In other words, the self can only be a means to the service of god and the service of others. In Jensen’s world, individuals are slaves.
What is the list of sins that Jensen ascribes to libertarian philosophies? “Gambling without end” (as if Gambling, in and of itself, is evil (if Jensen intended the “without end” to mean “beyond a certain point” then he should have specified that point)), “abortion without limit” (what limit? blank out. If Jensen is pro-life, he is in favor of the life of the fetus, over the life of the mother), “alcohol without discipline” (umm, didnt he ever read the parts in libertarian philosophy about individual responsibility? They are there too, if he cared to look), “sex without love” (from someone who considers “love without sex” to be a beautiful, pure emotion of the spirit, detatched from the physical, I wouldnt take any moral advice), “families without children” (so women have a duty to breed? for whose sake? blank out), “divorce without accountability” (you mean like Henry the Eighth?), “men without women” and “women without men” (so being in a heterosexual couple is a duty? Blank out the evidence in favor of a significant biological component in sexuality) and “speech without constraint” (there goes a fundamental right of the human being, a vital engine of encouraging debate and discussion and reason, and the values of the enlightenment). If this is not bad enough, Jensen accuses the “homelands” policy on indigenous Australians (which is a product of postmodernist collectivism rather than libertarianism and has been condemned by libertarians for decades, see for example Helen Hughes of the CIS) as being “libertarian paternalism,” which as a concept is a bleedingly obvious contradiction in terms.
Additionally, of “the generation which embraced libertarian choice of personal freedom in preference to lasting relationships” (oh, so we cannot as individuals choose to engage in lasting relationships?), he declares they are guilty of forgetting that “human beings may declare themselves to be free, but that we cannot declare ourselves to be good.” Of course we cannot, in Jensen’s worldview, because according to Jensen (and all consistent Christians), all humanity is morally evil, owing to that black stain on our souls called “Original Sin,” which says we are guilty of a crime committed by an alleged ancestor called “Adam,” who despite at the time of committing said crime, did not have any knowlege of good and evil (said knowlege was only acquired after Adam ate the fruit of the tree of knowlege of good and evil). In other words, we are guilty of something we did not do, this moral status is genetically inherited, and the original perpetrator of said crime against God had no mens rea in the first place! In Christian theology, all of humanity is put on trial for a crime, a trial in which we are in advance declared guilty, and a trial that violates every basic tenet of Anglo-Australian-American Jurisprudence! Ayn Rand was in no way overstating it when she branded Original Sin a “slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms.”
Finally, Jensen’s denunciation of Australia as “relationship poor” owing to its libertarianism is nothing less than a restatement of the Marxist thesis that the economic base determines society, and the Clive-Hamiltonian thesis that economic growth takes us away from “the true sources of joy” (obstensibly ‘enriching social bonds’). There is nothing new, and nothing that hasn’t been rebutted, about this argument. Economic progress, such as labor-saving devices, free up time to spend with friends and family, not the other way around. In simpler times, the mere struggle to survive was backbreaking and exhausting. There was no free time at all. Jensen must be utterly delusional about social history.
I can only conclude this by calling on all libertarians, not just those of my philosophical persuasion (Objectivist) but all who stand for the enlightenment values of life, liberty, property, individual happiness on this earth, reason, and free and open debate in the marketplace of ideas (in other words, Enlightenment Modernists) to intellectually and (if neccesary) morally repudiate Jensen’s premodern antienlightenment misanthropy with full force. Although it is very difficult to declare Jensen intellectually dishonest a priori, his position as expressed certainly places upon him a heavy burden to prove his own intellectual honesty. If he cannot prove it, then he must be recognized as the evader he is and fully morally denounced by all who cherish the political and philosophical heritage of the enlightenment. Peter Jensen’s “biblical principles” are truly toxic, anathema to all we hold dear, and the moral cannibalism they represent cannot be bargained with.
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Andrew;
Was your grandfather called Charlie, you remind me of his thinking and I just have to ask. He was a guy I greatly admired.
Jim,
Yes, my paternal grandfather was called Charles (Charlie). Im surprised you knew that. Although personally Id rather keep my family out of this, since I speak for myself as an individual.
“embraced the economic freedom which they see as essential to our prosperity”.
“They do not see that economic freedom trumps the social conservatism – or better, the Biblical principles – which sustains our values,” he said.
Seems to be good evidence that through economic freedom you gain social freedom.
Too bad that its precisely the fact economic freedom grants social freedom thats pissing Jensen off.
Some of the things he is talking about is reminiscent of Islamofascism, but Christian with a swirl of Marxism.
Jensen is an insult to Christians.
Andrew, I’m hardly surprised that a prominent leader of any organised religion is anti-liberty. Freedom threatens their power base, their raison d’être. His blatant attack on free speech is surprising though, normally his kind is more careful, appealing more to the natural social conservative in most people, the “When I was young…” voice we all hear ourselves use on time to time.
His rant sounds that of a man clutching at straws, forced to be ever more controversial in order to simply be paid any attention.
This doesn’t surprise me. The Anglican Church in England is now avowedly socialist, Luddite and hostile to individual freedom. Fortunately it is an irrelevance in the modern world.
Have you sent your writing to anyone, Andrew?
Dan,
Ive posted it on Objectivist Living as well but I havent sent it to anyone else. Who would you recommend? Id like to spread this little hatchet job as far as possible.
The Bishop is confused.
“Personal freedom”
“economic freedom”
“libertarian paternalism”
How can he reconcile the first two with the last in an actual philosophy or principle he is attacking?
If he is attacking both libertarianism and parternalism, he is attacking two opposing positions and doesn’t like the competition that his church faces. He has no reasoned argument in this case.
I read this article in the paper yesterday and was fairly amazed at its content.
I liked your rebuttal Andrew. You’re definitely “preaching to the choir” so to speak (to me anyway).
For Jensen to have these opinions in his job must indicate a deliberate absence of mental focus and thought.
I was born and raised an Anglican (not one anymore) but I did notice a great deal of left wing, socialist, collectivist ideology within the church.
I think it’s interesting to note a someone like Jensen can hold a high up position in the church heirachy.
I’ve never seen a socialist church, but I’ve never seen a church that doesn’t advocate socialism.
As an unorthodox Christian, let me defend the Bible. Jesus thought the best commandment was “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” NOT more than yourself (altruism), nor less than yourself (paternalism).
Furthermore, Jensen was describing his version of a better world, but I never read anywhere that he wants to control the armed forces to compel people to become christians. As a Christian and a Libertarian, I want maximum personal freedom, so I can choose high moral standards for myself, and live as righteous a life as I choose. I can develop much stronger moral muscles if there is a lot of temptation to resist! I can hope that there will be benefits to this, and that my friends and neighbours will see these benefits, and be impressed.
I, and Judaism, agree that Original sin is a flawed concept throughout, but my version of Christianity doesn’t need it.
As for churches that don’t advocate socialism, go to America! They have lots of ‘Success’ Churches which focus on money and material progress.
Nicholas,
Loving yourself more than others does not imply paternalism, it implies egoism. Second, he manifestly regarded self-love as at best amoral (“Love your neighbour as you love yourself” i.e. self love is unavoidable, so it is not good), and clearly regarded love of others as morally worthier (even though he doesnt, in that statement, say that one has to put others above the self).
As for Jensen, he is protesting freedom of choice. What is the opposite to free choice? Coercion.
Its good to see you reject Original Sin, but how can Christianity survive without it? If there is no original sin, you do not need to accept Christ to get into heaven, you just need to live a good life.
*jaw drops*
No you would need to lead a Perfect Life! A good life doesn’t do it! (Be ye therefore perfect). The Jews had, and still have, a secret doctrine in Kabbalism, and one of the tenets of Kabbalism is Gilgul, i.e. reincarnation. This was inspired by chapter five of Deuteronomy, where Moses simultaneously implies that the people before him are new people, AND that they are the same souls who had stood with him at Mount Sinai, and made the Covenant, 40 years before. The Rabbies interpreted this as proof of rebirth.
As for Grace and atonement, there are two covenants. The Covenant of Sinai is still active, OR you can use the faster ‘Grace’ version, where Jesus and friends, who have made their way back to Heaven permanently, will help you to escape Karmic entanglements and get to the top quicker!
Jesus therefore becomes a perfect example, and a type of parole officer.
Whilst we don’t need Jesus to get back to Heaven, the way can be shorter if we accept his help.
Andrew,
The “Golden Rule” does not imply self love is unworthy.
I think it is phrased properly as “love one another as I have loved you”.
That is, you should care for yourself and others in a worthy (i.e to Christians, God-like) fashion.
Religions and their doctrines rarely need defending. Their institutions and dogma often need to be criticised because they have less then divine inspiration.
As for Churches promoting politics, I beleive all world religions are fairly uninstrucutive. The only instructive thing that a libertarian may say is that morality is personal and morality requires free choice and immorality cannot be legislated out of existence.
Do the success Churches believe in nationalising morality?
The success churches were just interested in encouraging people to get rich, though I hope they would have drawn the line at selling slaves.
To get rich is glorius.
LOL yeah, hey what can you say. This belongs in the horror file alright. The guy’s little rant is such an intellectual mush you hardly know where to begin.
Andrew, this is a seriously good post. Your points are economically yet elegantly made. I would like to see it published somewhere. (Send it to Policy or Quadrant).
Anyway, I have a little theory that I’d like you to consider.
The Christian religions have long had trouble reconciling devotion to God with self interest. This has been reflected in attitudes to things like vanity (thus leading to disapproval of makeup, certain clothing, hair styles, etc) as well as achieving wealth.
One of the big splits in the church, dating from the 16th Century, arose from the writings of Calvin. While there is some doubt about whether they interpreted him correctly, many non-Catholic churches used Calvinism to justify support for hard work, frugality and the honest pursuit of riches. Indeed, the USA would not be what it is but for that interpretation.
The Anglican church was never been Calvinist or forgot its origins as a Catholic church that just happened to prefer loyalty to the King above Rome.
In that context, Jensen’s comments could be interpreted as simply a continuation of the 400 year old Catholic versus Calvinist split, updated a little for modern times.
What do you think?
Peter Saunders did an excellent presentation at the Liberty & Society conference last weekend where he showed how welfare payments to single parents have made it easier to split up. Whereas 50 years ago parents would have made the effort to stick together for the children’s sake, now they can justify it to themselves because the government effectively subsidises break-ups through their middle-class welfare programs. It’s easy for people to blame capitalism/individualism/whatever for a divorce rate of 50%, but things become a little less certain when you realise the government is inadvertently encouraging the trend.
David, being devoted to God IS the perfect exanple of enlightened self-interest! What sort of life would you lead if God declares you Universal Enemy Number One! Think about it.
Mark,
As for post 18, I was not attacking the “golden rule,” rather I was attacking “love your neighbour as you love yourself,” which is a different doctrine. And this does imply self-love is morally worthless (but not evil, its amoral) wheras love of one’s neighbour is morally good.
David,
Regarding post 22, the Calvinist work ethic is not “work to make yourself happy,” rather it is “the necessity of constant labor in a person’s calling as a sign of personal salvation” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritan_work_ethic). In other words, the end of the work is not self-interest. One must work as some sort of duty to show one has been saved. That is very, very different from the profit motive (“Work for happiness in THIS world!”). And theologically speaking, Jensen is a Calvinist.
So long as you love yourself as much as you love your neighbour, then loving your neighbour is good. I suspect that this only applies to average neighbours- if Mugabe bought a house next door to you, the moral course would be to not invite him around for tea. You should also keep the context of the message in mind- Jesus wanted them to stop being racists, so he connected this commandment to a parable, which we know as the Good Samaritan. When we take the whole context into account, we can see an anti-race message in it.
Sorry!!! ‘Anti-race’ in the last sentence should be ‘anti-racism’.
What if you’re a masochist?
Then your neighbour is in deep trouble!
These people have little consistency as Andrew pointed out, and not just now. Remember when Peter Hollingworth was Archbishop of Brisbane, and criticized the Hawke government over its failure in the ‘no child shall live in poverty’ area.
Hawke threw a tantrum and attacked, referring to his statement (ironically) as unchristian. Hollingworth backed down. He lacked the moral courage to stand up his principles.
Are these people divided or what.
What future for Anglicanism?
I’m glad Peter Jensen believes that ‘we can’t declare ourselves to be good’. So maybe you can drop the ‘Most Reverend’ handle you stinking hypocrite.
As a representative of perhaps the longest-running fraud in the history of the world, Jensen rings hollow in criticising the personal choices of others.
A belief system which holds that mere belief is more important than evidence of facts or reason, is intellectually mendacious at best, and positively dishonest at worst. These intellectual defects then go on to become major moral defects once believers become involved in using violence or the threat of violence to force others to comply with their belief system.
This of course is what the Christian religion has been doing from the moment Constantine legalised it in 324 AD, right to the present day: the extermination of the old non-Christian religions of Europe, the extermination of non-complying Christian religions, the Crusades, the rapacity of the mediaeval papacy, the shameful repression of Galileo, the mass murders of Christians in the religious wars of the Reformation, the large-scale murders of witches, the rape of South America, conniving with the Nazis mass-murderers, the persecution of the mentally ill throughout the centuries, the murder, torture and imprisonment of homosexuals, prostitutes, and polygamists, the censorship of literature, the constant opposition to the growth of factual knowledge, preaching hatred of sex, and of course that old staple of the church – indoctrinating children.
Remember, all these Christian crimes and abuses didn’t stop because the church started thinking it was wrong to adhere to falsehood and to propagate ignorant irrational abusive nonsense. If they stopped, it was because the churches lost much of the political power they had to commit these abuses; and because with the rise of science as the preferred form of knowledge about ‘life, the universe and everything’, moral standards in general have risen far higher than that of the extremely morally flawed, vindictive, jealous, murderous, and plain illogical God of the Bible.
In railing against the personal freedoms he would forcibly repress if he could, Jensen blames ‘libertarian’ developments. As a libertarian, I must say I was completely unaware we had passed through a libertarian phase any time in the recent past. The facts speak to the contrary: the last thirty years have been a period of unprecedented governmental regulation of every field of personal, social and economic life that he mentions: family law, de facto relationships law, child support law, divorce, gambling, abortion (subsidised by the state), and so on: the opposite of liberty. When the state actively subsidises dysfunctional, irresponsible and anti-social behaviour, you get more of it.
Jensen has merely displayed more of the traditional clerical failure to be concerned to get the facts straight in the first place, which flows seamlessly into the Marxist belief system with the same characteristics: hostiliy to capitalism, moral bombast unsupported by evidence or reason, ever-readiness to go on a mission to forcibly improve others, and a history of human rights abuses. It doesn’t seem to occur to Jensen that the problems he is concerned about may be the outcome of too much governmental intervention rather than too little. Liberty also entails the liability to take responsibility for your own actions, which is the basis of all true morality, and the lack of which Jensen decries.
In any event, just because you don’t like someone’s behaviour, doesn’t justify you in urging for them to be imprisoned for doing it. But if people are not to be free to decide how to live their lives, what is the alternative?
As for the notion of morality coming from Biblical principles, either Jensen has never read the Bible (seems unlikely since he’s an Archbishop), or he is being deliberately dishonest, or unspeakably stupid. There is no other possible explanation. Are we supposed to think that God’s cute trick of murdering large numbers of innocent people for crimes they did not commit is somehow morally exemplary? No? How about volunteering your children for gang-rape, getting a father to carry out a mock execution on his child just to ‘test’ the father, stonings to death, killing people for gathering firewood on Sunday? We are supposed to get our morality from these? No?
How about the New Testament? The whole idea is that God wanted to punish the indefinite generations of the whole human race with eternal torture for a trivial crime – eating a fruit, big deal – which they did not commit, and which he himself knowingly set up in the first place, (and the Anglican church admits that the person who did commit the original crime never existed anyway) so God created someone who was without any fault, and then murdered him, and blamed everyone else.
‘Garbage in, garbage out’. The facts matter. If you start with false factual premises, not only your intellectual conclusions will be wrong, but your ethical conclusions will tend to be affected by the factual error and be false too. In starting with scripture, instead of rationally looking at evidence of facts and discarding beliefs as more evidence disproves them, the Christian religion is hopelessly intellectually and morally compromised from the very beginning. Add to that its own institutional vested interests in ignorance, and it is easy to see why the church has been, and still is, involved in so many serious abuses so often, so much, and so long.
Jensen condemns the Australian people’s ‘love affair with personal freedom’ (I wish there was more evidence for it). He should instead be condemning the church’s age-old love affair with ignorance, prejudice and repression.
Jensen’s lament over the lack of more religion-motivated violation of other people’s lives, freedom and property should be dismissed for the self-interested drivel that it is.
Justin;
The various stories in the bible were written by others long after the alleged events took place and probably contain a lot of imagined and apocryphal information. The wrongs of the past are in the past but should be remembered as examples of what can happen when the principle of separation of church and state are abandoned.
Anyway, with Gods directives to the jews when they wanted a king it seems pretty clear he was or maybe still is an anarchist. If he were an anarchist, then the good arch bishop is barking up the wrong tree in criticizing libertarians.
God as an anarchist ? He’s a dictator who demands worship, issues arbitrary judgements, sends people to the gulag, tortures people..
He’s at best an anarcho-dictatoralist…
Although there’s really 3 of him, so perhaps we’re living in an anarcho-tri-dictatorship.
Good article Andrew. Perhaps your best. I look forward to more like this…
My only quibble is that you seem to reject the idea of a consistent christian libertarian. I don’t think that’s fair. While some elements of the Bible are obviously fascist/socialist/anti-reason, it is not necessary to accept the whole bible to be a christian. It is possible to believe that God created humans with free will and that he wants us to be able to make choices free from violence/coercion. I certainly welcome the contributions of nicholas gray and steve clancy in the Australian libertarian movement and I suggest that christians can embrace libertarian philosophy without rejecting their version of spirituality.
The idea that Christians believe what is written in the bible is easily and readily falsified by a simple survey of Christians using selected texts from the Bible. The exception perhaps being Christian fundamentalists. Like all systems of thought Christianity has evolved and matured with time. The limitation it suffers is that the defining work is a closed text and it’s evolution occurs to a large extent within it’s oral traditions. For instance most Christians today would regard the owning of slaves to be an un-Christian thing to do even though such a notion is not stated in the Bible. When I see the multiplicity of laws in our own time I can in some ways appreciate (but not agree with) that desire to halt the creation of doctrine that effectively froze the Bible at a given point in the distant past.
Christians can abandon socialist thinking and adopt liberal humanist philosophy and retain the best from the Christian tradition. Peter Jensen does not speak for the Christians friends that I know.
Yes, Gib, GOD didn’t want the Israelites to have a King over them, and seems to have preferred Judges. These Judges arose as the times called for them, and then subsided back into the community. quite a good example!
As for God being demanding, the basic premise is that God created the world. If you grant that, then the Creator (and owner) can set his own conditions for the use of His property. Owners as Lords is an Anarcho-Capitalist ideal. separation of Church and State is a Christian ideal, and Christianity went wrong when it was embraced by the State, and embraced the State.
Socialism has many elements. The part about wanting to help other people is an element I do support. I do not believe in forcing people to conform to my standards of niceness and goodness, and Socialist parties do, and that is where I draw the line. So long as the Churches keep espousing Voluntary work, and good neighbourness, I can and will support them.
John,
Thanks for your approval. This article was admittedly an angrily-written rant (stylistically). I used that style rather than my usual style, which is (according to some) often too academic.
As for “consistent Christian Libertarian,” the problem is first defining Christianity. Certainly there are people who call themselves Christians that can be Libertarians, however many other Christians would deny that these Libertarian Christians are Christians etc. So then what makes Christian, let alone consistent Christian, is almost impossible to pinpoint.
You are correct that one doesn’t need to accept the bible as wholly literally true in order to subscribe to the idea that Yeshua of Nazareth was a manifestation of a divinity. However, then the question is what parts of the bible are literal and what parts are metaphorical, etc. etc.
So as such, when I say consistent Christian, I generally pick out the most ‘generally accepted’ points of Christian theology (fall of man and original sin, salvation via sacrifice of Jesus, Gospel as true but rest of bible allegorical, etc) and I think if someone takes all of these and believes in them perfectly consistently, then yes they cannot endorse libertarianism as morally good. At best they can call it amoral.
But as Nicholas stated, he is not an orthodox Christian. As such my critique of Christianity probably would not apply to him.
And in addition, I do believe that the libertarian movement should be a broad tent, as long as people are foward and clear about their philosophical justification for liberty. I may be an Objectivist but I do not believe that “anyone that is not an Objectivist is an enemy of freedom.” However, I do believe that the philosophy I subscribe to is the correct one, and that its moral defense of self-interest is absolutely essential for libertarians to win.
And may I point out that it was Ayn Rand Herself Who had one of Her heroes say something like, “You see, man is a social animal, though not as they put it.” That’s not an exact quote from Atlas Shrugged, but having a social life does not make one automatically a Statist.
At the same time, the political label is Libertarian, not libertine. Just because I don’t want the State to dictate our actions, that does not mean that I think it is morally right to do anything just because it might give me pleasure. I think endless pleasure-seeking is not in my own long-term best interests. I do agree that self-interest is a good point, and i like to think of my own long-term self-interest.
It’s true that I’m not an orthodox Christian (I pointed out to my Pastor that Paul was wrong- Adam must have been made mortal, since it was his exile from the Tree of Life that caused his aging. Pastor nonplussed), but many of the Christian positions make good sense (Chastity by both partners before marriage, and fidelity within it, are the best ways to avoid STDs, etc.)
Hi Nicholas,
If there were a God that created the world, then I agree he could set his own conditions for use of his property. However, he’d have to let the tennants choose freely whether to come or go.
I didn’t choose to come here, and he’s not letting me leave! (Unless you consider the choice as between staying here for a while longer, going to another one of his properties in the clouds, or to a third place that he sublets to a real bastard). He could at least show us the tennancy agreement for this place for a start…
Yes, separation of Church and State is good for Christians on average because there are so many branches of Christianity. Any sect that really got its hooks into government would be happy, but the other sects wouldn’t. Neither would (are) non Christians.
Of course, helping other people is a good thing people should do, but not be forced to do. It’s also a good thing to remind people to do it. Pity that churches have all that other baggage along with them.
Hi Andrew, I listened to and read the Presidential Address by Peter Jensen, and in particular his comments about personal freedom and Libertarianism. I think to some extent there is a misunderstanding of terms used by each group. Having a foot in both the Christian and libertarian camps, I think I can provide a translation.
I have great respect for Peter Jensen. At all times, I have found his talks of high quality, clear and engaging. However, I was as surprised as any libertarian to hear Dr Jensen talk about, “the generation which embraced the libertarian choice of personal freedom …” and, “within all parties there remain some attached to the old, failed libertarian philosophies of the past decades … ” I was wondering, when on earth did this embrace of libertarianism occur? Growth in the size of government in Australia persists. I imagine most libertarians would consider success a relatively far off dream.
I think Peter Jensen has misused the term _libertarian_. Perhaps a more correct term to use would be _libertine_. Have another read of his address and I think this will make sense. Perhaps he used the word libertarian because people who are libertines would also describe themselves as libertarian.
I take it that when Peter Jensen was denouncing _personal freedom_, he was not denouncing a free market economy or freedom from aggression. What I take it he was referring to was personal freedom from God to determine what is right and wrong, to make up the rules for life without regard for God, a form of extreme subjectivism if you like. For the Objectivist, this is something like a denial of objective values.
His references to personal freedom also links in with his comments about libertarianism. I think with both words/phrases he is talking about the same thing.
Please remember that the same words do not always mean the same things in different contexts. As a libertarian, I think it is wise to understand and win over, rather than dismiss and condemn.
Danny,
Thanks for providing that ‘translation.’ I appreciate the effort, however I disagree with you. His diocese has a very strong history of advocating both social conservatism and economic socialism (i.e. less freedom). He is not a silly man, and I simply cannot believe he made an innocent mistake regarding the distinction between libertine (a matter of personal lifestyle) and libertarian (a political position). He has displayed too much political knowlege for me to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Also, I would like to add that “making up the rules for life without regard for god” is not subjectivism. Moral subjectivism is to say that you (quite literally) make morality by whim, i.e. “it is good because I say it is good.” In Christian theology, the only being in a position to do this is God (God can make it OK for Abraham to sacrifice his own son, up until the point God says “no, do not do it any more”). John Robbins, author of “Without A Prayer” (a Calvinist ‘rebuttal’ of Objectivism) argues this point, saying that there is no natural morality, only divine whim. This means that if anything is morally subjectivist, Christianity is morally subjectivist, the difference is in which subject makes morality (god or people).
Objectivity means putting empirical reality above dogma, above rationalist first principles and mystical faith.
I agree that words can mean different things in different contexts. I simply think that Jensen cannot be interpreted in a more gentle fashion. His words speak for themselves. And yes, I do agree that understanding and gentle persuasion is a better tactic than moral condemnation (I am an Open System Objectivist, not a “denounce any disagreement at all” type Objectivist). After all, no one was led to the good by being told they are evil. However, persuation and rational discussion only work on people who are open to reason (I mean in broad terms here, people can disagree with me on technical epistemology and still be open to reason as I am using the term). Jensen is manifestly not open to reason.
GIB!
If you read some of my other comments, you’l know that my unorthodoxy encompasses reincarnation (Part of the Kabbalah). So I think you DID choose to come here!
As for letting you leave, where could you go that wasn’t created by God? The Ultimate landlord would still be there!
Hi Andrew, let me provide you with an example of another place where Peter Jensen uses the word ‘libertarianism’ and, in one case, defines what he means.
In the Diocesan Women’s Day Address on 9 August 2003 Peter Jensen defined libertarianism as, “the belief that to be mature I must be autonomous, I must run my own life without interference from God or anyone else.” That is, he defined it as the libertine form of libertarian.
In other places one can infer that he is using this definition. In his Presidential Address 2006 Peter Jensen speaks of “the libertarian position which has done untold harm, during the forty years that it has been the ruling philosophy.” Surely he is not talking about the last forty years of limited government is he? Rather, I think he is referring to the ‘live as you want to live’ world view that can be seen in the culture in the breakdown of the family.
Please have another read and I think you will agree that this is what he means when he uses the word ‘libertarian’. I for one thinks he is misusing the word.
Nicholas,
Yes, I was referencing the standard Christian God…
Hmm, reincarnation. I suppose that would equate to me signing a tenancy agreement, but forgetting I’d done so, and when I ask the landlord for a copy to prove it, he ignores my calls…
And, yes, there’s nowhere you can go to escape God – so it’s not a free market! It’s a dictatorship that you can’t leave.
Christopher Hitchens calls this idea the “celestial North Korea”.
Slightly off-topic, but I believe that contrary to being an enemy of religion, libertarianism is the political philosophy which best guarantees the freedom of religious minorities (including my own) as well as Christians. I know from reading Radicals for Capitalism that there has long been a body of conservative Christian libertarians in US, but I wonder why there doesn’t seem to have been a similar adoption of libertarian ideas amongst Christians and other faiths in Australia and the UK?
Part of the reason may be that ‘libertarian’ has been conflated with ‘libertine’; and also that some libertarians have a hostility towards religion which they see as anti-rational, etc.
Danny,
The definition provided by Jensen in that speech can refer to multiple ideas.
First, if he defines libertarianism as “running my own life without interference from God or other people,” alot depends on what he means by “interference.” If Jensen, by “interference,” means or includes coercion, then he is referring to political libertarianism.
If he is looking at moral libertarianism, then he must be defining libertarianism as “choosing one’s own moral principles independently of society or church” then that can refer to multiple moralities, not merely “libertinism.” Libertinism means someone that is basically an amoralist, whose character is devoid of moral restraints. And yes, Jensen’s definition of libertarianism, when interpreted as a moral definition, includes libertinism. However, it would include Kantianism (which demands people form their moral maxims independently from society or god under the “Formula of Autonomy” aka the third formulation of the Categorical Imperative). It would include Objectivism (which is explicitly atheist and considers independent reasoning a virtue). It would include any morality based on what L. Kholberg referred to as Stage Six moral reasoning (i.e. moral reasoning based on universal moral principles).
If I take Jensen’s statement as a moral one, then Jensen basically says any morality which is NOT based on religion or society is libertarianism. Since Jensen is condemning libertarian morality, then Jensen is saying that the only legitimate (in his eyes) sources of ethics are God and Society.
Hence, even if I would accept your position that Jensen is arguing a moral argument rather than a political one, his moral argument reaches a similarly monstrous conclusion. If the only sources of morality are God and Society, then the enlightenment project (which aimed for a rational, natural morality) is dead. Second, if individuals exist for the sake of society or the sake of God then that means the good society is socialist and/or theocratic (Jensen would make it both, given his Church’s stances). So in other words, if Jensen’s argument is primarily moral, like you allege, then he is STILL preaching statism!
Amir,
You are correct that Libertarianism guarantees freedom for individuals to choose their faith. Indeed, the puritans fled to America to escape religious persecution. However, religious groups now are not merely seeking to be left alone. Rather, many of them seek to enforce their beliefs at gunpoint.
Yes, there is some conflation of “libertarian” with “libertine.” This is often a smear tactic.
And as a libertarian that is hostile towards religion, I think Jensen’s words speak for themselves. The man is either an idiot or an Ellsworth Toohey (i.e. power-lusting fascist). He is anti-rational. If Jensen thinks that morality can only come from God or Society then he rules individual reason out of ethics. Jensen’s political advocacy has been consistently statist.
Truly, Jensen is complete and utter poison.
Danny, if Jensen is misuing the term libertarian and defining it in an ambiguous manner as you suggest, then he is doing it deliberately in order to discredit a political philosophy that undermines his authority. It is rather textbook stuff from an authoritarian:
1. Claim that your opposition are already in the ascendency
2. Misprepresent their political beliefs
3. Manipulate the language of discourse in your favour
To believe that Jensen is doig these things naively is to be both a nave and a puppet.
Maybe seminary should contain some economics and maths if they are to deal with social welfare and social services?