Christianity Today has reprinted a 1995 interview with the late William F. Buckley, Jr., in which he dispenses some timeless advice for Christian activists. An excerpt:
YOU BELIEVE THAT THERE IS A PLACE FOR RELIGIOUS CONVICTION TO INFORM POLICIES. WHAT PRINCIPLES SHOULD GUIDE CHRISTIAN ACTIVISTS AS THEY TRY TO INFLUENCE LEGISLATION?
Thomas Aquinas once was asked, "If the public view was that a famine was imminent, would you be justified in charging injurious prices for your grain, knowing that a relief wagon of grain was coming?" Thomas said yes, you would, but it would be wrong. A Christian would not do that.
Certain things which the market authorizes simply in terms of law are unchristian and ought not to be done. The big issue today has to do with the fidelity of marriages. The tendency now to leave your wife because you have an infatuation with a younger woman of tenderer flesh is an enormous temptation. It's carnal, and it's also easy to justify with all the solipsistic reasoning that we hear today. That is about the gravest offense that a human being can commit, to throw away a wife.
Comments (6)
As one of the key intellectuals who sought an increased role of religion in America, Buckley was responsible for undermining the best of the pro-Capitalism foundations of the GOP. He set the country back many decades and dealt a huge blow to Capitalism and free-market ideas.
February 29, 2008 11:12 AM | Comment Permalink
Of all the saints, Aquinas must be the one I dislike the most. He came up with the disaster that is Natural Law - the trick of false reasoning that turns an argument from status quo into an argument from divine decree. Over the centuries that nasty piece of poor thinking has been used in support of slavery, racism, segregation and oppression, and in opposition to all forms of equal rights - and this was not in deviation from his intentions, as he wrote several works himself specifically justifying slavery as a moral and natural right.
The idea of Natural Law was around long before him, but it was Aquinas who formalised it into the power to rationalise any position by declaring 'natural' and 'right' to be equivilent, and conversly for 'unnatural' to be seen as morally unacceptable. Ideas which remain deeply ingrained into the culture (How often has FRC condemned gay marriage as 'unnatural'?) dispite a lack of any type of logic to justify it, and the frequent use of distinctly unnatural technologies in all fields.
March 1, 2008 4:46 PM | Comment Permalink
The tendency now to leave your wife because you have an infatuation with a younger woman of tenderer flesh is an enormous temptation. It's carnal, and it's also easy to justify with all the solipsistic reasoning that we hear today. That is about the gravest offense that a human being can commit, to throw away a wife.
Seems that not many of the more prominent conservatives (Reagan, Thompson, McCain, Gingrich, Guiliani,....) agree with Buckley on this.
March 3, 2008 4:00 PM | Comment Permalink
The CT interviewer tries to get push Buckley in a theocratic direction. Buckley isn't going there. For him "throwing away a wife" is both "unchristian" and "authorized in terms of law." Later he says, "Well, I don't believe in a theocratic state."
(I have to ask: do atheists and agnostics have higher, comparable, or lower divorce rates than believers?)
Check out Buckley on Falwell:
http://www.nationalreview.com/buckley/buckley091801.shtml
March 4, 2008 9:29 AM | Comment Permalink
"(I have to ask: do atheists and agnostics have higher, comparable, or lower divorce rates than believers?)"
Lower, by the only study on the topic I know of, but the cause wasn't identified. Its probably not religion directly, but a shared correlation with something - perhaps education, perhaps age at marriage.
March 13, 2008 7:53 PM | Comment Permalink
"WHAT WARNINGS WOULD YOU HAVE FOR THE LEADERS OF THE CHRISTIAN COALITION AND OTHER EVANGELICAL ORGANIZATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS SPEAKING OUT ON SOCIAL ISSUES?
What frightens people most about the Religious Right is the rhetoric that is sometimes used. There ought to be some thought given, for example, as to how you formulate your antihomosexual position: it should be more pastoral than vitriolic.
Now, I haven't entirely figured out a way to do it, and I haven't given it as much thought as I should have. But I have found myself consciously, in the last several years, avoiding just plain old-fashioned gay bashing. In the first place, it is unchristian, and in the second place, it just doesn't work. It doesn't persuade anybody of anything."
What Mr. Buckley fails to understand here is that the anti-gay rhetoric of the Christian Right is not based on the Bible or Christianity, but rather on simple prejudice and hatred for the different. The Bible is only an excuse, not the cause. It is used to give cover to darker human impulses.
March 26, 2008 4:15 PM | Comment Permalink