Religion and Politics Don't Mix

Exclusive to STR

December 1, 2006

. . . but not necessarily for all the reasons that some would think.

It is objected by some market anarchists that religion is opposed to freedom and its vehicle is the state and vice versa. However, reality shows quite a different story.

For one thing, many churches today--in particular, Christian churches--forbid dealing with politics directly or running for office. They are strictly apolitical in many regards. And how great would it be if every community forbade its members from directly endorsing political candidates or running for office!

Since religion around the world is often transmitted through family, religious families, whether professed anti-statists or not, speak loudly through their actions as having respect for familial and religious laws rather than state laws. Where interaction with family, extended family, and friends is the greatest, some tacit understanding of the incompatibility of universal laws as handed down by God with those of democracy, as is the case with Somali tribes, who respect cultural law over democratic law.

I've seen this with my own family. Out in Ohio , my dad's side of the family all live around each other. They look after each other's kids, give them odd jobs such as mowing each other's lawns, invite each other to all their birthday parties, weddings, and other celebrations. They're Catholic, and they lay down the rules for being civil and dealing with each other.

I'm not Catholic, nor am I religious. I have my own objections to religion, though I do believe, at the very least, in a deist conception of God as Thomas Paine outlines in his profession of faith. But what people such as my Ohio relatives have is a wonderful thing, and a natural antidote to the state--that of simply allowing family and society to flourish where the state does not stick its greedy hands. I'm sure not one of my relatives is an anarchist or an economist, but they are all expert economists on themselves as demonstrated through their actions.

Ludwig von Mises said that it was perfectly logical for the Bolshevists to try and break up families in the Soviet Union , and he was right. To the extent that a man is devoted to his family, he cannot be devoted to the state.

When Joseph Stalin (a man who murdered and induced to starvation more Russians before World War II broke out than all the German citizens Hitler killed) died, many of the older Russians who survived his purges were grateful for his death and hated him. But millions of children openly grieved and cried at his funeral. Why? Because Stalin knew that he had to get to the children while they were young to worship and revere him, and he was largely successful. And yet this was an atheist regime.

Now I'm not trying to bash atheism. I also realize that Russia then had the religion of statolatry and Marxism. But that's my point. Whatever atheism's merits and flaws, plenty of people hold this view and don't cause anyone else any problems. It's when atheism uses the state as a vehicle for its transmission (among other uses) that it's bad.

That's true of absolutely anything except the doctrine of individualism and freedom itself. Yet, even libertarianism has taken hold as a part of the corrupt political process in the Libertarian Party.

Doing recreational drugs isn't good for you, morally or physically. It's a perfectly legitimate effort to abstain from them and instruct others to do the same. That is, it is through voluntary means. Through state means this effort has been one of the most destructive, criminal, and wasteful domestic enterprises our government has undertaken. It 'works' at stopping drug use, but only in the sense that cancer works. And it creates a whole new class of bureaucrats, politicians, civil servants, and government hired experts and economists who want to uphold these laws.

Even when the government assumes tasks which are in and of themselves perfectly legitimate, such as mail delivery, it only constantly raises the price of service, outlaws competition that threatens them with better service (such as the Boy Scouts), and gives worse and worse services. It was only a few years ago that they even started making self-adhering stamps, when glue has existed for a long, long time.

It can be objected that religion offers a collectivist creed, as fellow libertarian Francois Tremblay has. The problem is that religion itself is such a deeply personal thing for each person that historically this has proven very true.

This isn't to say that what was good religion got corrupted as bad religion, since, as I understand the argument, there is no responsible way to use religion, just as libertarians often say there is no responsible use of state power. And I'm in agreement about this view to a large extent. But the problem is that you cannot uniquely attribute to religion, but to ideology itself, the problem of corruption.

It is ideas that determine history, as Mises stated. The worst despots are no match for them. Like Stalin, they recognize the importance of cultivating ideological favor for their governments. Religion itself is just a human institution, whether a supernatural being exists or not. It can be directed towards many different ends. My family uses it in very moral and wholesome means. Henry VIII or Bloody Mary did in quite another, to use extreme examples.

The struggle of the state and freedom is not that of religion versus the individual, but of the individual versus the state in all its forms.

Tremblay brings up an awfully peculiar objection to Christian anarchy--namely, that Christians, like statists, believe in one law or doctrine to be imposed upon all.

But statists do not believe this and do not adhere to this, since any state necessarily makes for two laws: Law for the state and law for the citizens. The state may steal anything it wants, but outlaws private theft. It outlaws murder, yet organizes it on a colossal scale.

Libertarianism itself is a universal ethic, since it sets out the right of each person, stemming from ownership over himself, to act voluntarily and dispose of his property however he wishes, so long as he does not physically violate another's right to do the same. It is this ethic which sets out that it is wrong for the state to steal because it is just as wrong for me to steal, and it is wrong for the state to extort because it is just as wrong for me to. It is doctrinal, certainly, though not an article of faith or dogmatic.

The problem with religionists when they accept the state is not that of a universal ethic, but a belief in different rights and ethics for different classes of people. But once we understand that this is the problem, religion falls by the wayside.

Tremblay's next objection is that Christianity and the government teach that might makes right, comparing God's power with that of the state. But this is to anthropomorphize God as if he is a physical being that can be coerced and coerce others. Ludwig von Mises, an agonistic and brilliant Austrian economist, says in Human Action that since we live in a world of ceaseless change, weakness, and the consequences of our actions are dictated by the laws of economics, we necessarily cannot know what the plans of such an unlike being as an omnipotent and omniscient one could be--one that presumably has no perceived uneasiness or needs which it must make use of scarce or economic means to satisfy.

To try and conceive of how such a being would act is totally beyond the scope of science, and even Christians acknowledge that the Lord works in mysterious ways, and his ways are a mystery. Christians necessarily must acknowledge that law is universal because only one law is compatible with God. Many, if not most, Christians do not act or preach this, claiming that God says women, blacks, Jews, or whatever people are inferior. But this is not a problem for religion any more than it is necessarily one for atheism if an atheist hates women, blacks, or Jews. This is a problem of individualist ideology versus collectivist ideology. Even if every religion on earth preached hatred for these or any other groups or religions, remove religion from the mix, and people still have prejudices and anti-individualism to hold on to.

The rest of my criticisms of Tremblay's critiques of religion and the state fall into place from here, so I will not spend too much time on them. He attacks religion for having a class of people who interpret and clarify the law, but this is precisely what we will need in a stateless society! If Catholics want to live by Catholic law, Jews by Hasidic, Protestants by Protestant, it is freedom, and not the state, that facilitates this best. And when law is made by voluntary agreement and contract, the great benefit of this is that no one who did not consent to it will have the police power threatening them to obey it.

Under such a framework, religion is perfectly legitimate, libertarian, and individualist. Think of the Amish, who have all but entirely seceded from the state, which wishes to further and further try and regulate them. They have their laws, many of which I would never adhere to and I don't understand. But the benefit of freedom is that they cannot impose their laws onto me.

I'm not claiming Tremblay is against freedom by being against religion. Far from it; I am demonstrating that it is the ideology of praxeology and individualism as opposed to collectivism which is at stake, and that the dichotomy of religion and freedom is a false and counter-productive one. It removes from the debate the fundamental issue at stake, and that religion and freedom are not only mutually compatible, but often reinforcing on one another.

There is nothing different, in this sense, about the community values and regulations that an Amish community may enforce than what all the tenants of an apartment building must agree to when they sign a contract with their landlord. They must comply with his regulations, but only if they desire to live there. It's respect for private property that makes this beneficial state of affairs present, just as private property would strengthen religious bonds between people who may disregard state laws. As an institution, private property reinforces religious tradition and is religion's great benefactor.

The threat of collectivism and statism is always present. This is a problem of the inner disposition of each person and their readiness to accept these creeds. We saw this in Mao's China and the Soviet Union . These were a people susceptible to collectivism and to following the premiere's orders, and religion wasn't the impetus.

Tremblay further objects to the portion in the Bible in which Paul says that we must follow the government's dictates, for God establishes them as an authority. As an anarchist, I hate the state and without qualification reject this passage's validity. The problem for Tremblay, however, is that all Christians must necessarily reconcile differing and contradictory moral codes in the Bible.

What we can uniquely attribute to a Christian who believes in the state because of this and one who doesn't is a willingness to ignore economic and moral law as deduced from the axiom of action and non-aggression. Thomas Woods, author of Church and Market, certainly isn't guilty of this, and is a great libertarian and defender of the individual against the state's arbitrary dictates.

Finally, the fact is that, historically, religion has had massive effects for and against the state. Murray Rothbard, a professed atheist and Mr. Libertarian, not only professed a universal ethic as a rejection of the state, but was influenced by religionists and respected, among others, the resistance against the state that grew out of Christians in early American history as well as that of the medieval scholastics, to whom all libertarians owe an intellectual debt.

While I join Francois Tremblay as a fellow libertarian in condemning all collectivist creeds advanced by religion, we must not make enemies where they don't exist. In doing so, we not only divert energy and attention from the real ones, but we confuse and distort the issue of where and how to be vigilant against the state's usurpations.