Freedom And Decency

My church’s little “cultural issues” discussion group has picked the readings for our next get together, and I thought I’d use this space as my notebook for my thoughts.

Freedom and Decency — David Hart (from First Things)

Hart, and Eastern Orthodox theologian, sets out to define whether or not we, as Christians, are engaged in a cultural war with a rapid deteriorating society, and if we are, what we should do about it. The first problem, he surmises, is that our government, thanks to society’s worship of the modern liberal idea of choice, can no longer define decency through censorship. He looks wistfully back to the “good old days” when the Hays Office controlled Hollywood and the Post Office could prosecute those who sent illicit material in the mail. But the Hays Office and code were nothing more than a think veneer of decency, and Hart even admits as much:

Consider one of the more obvious cases of commercial standards abandoned, that of cinema. For all the ponderous parochialism of the old motion picture code, it did at the very least demand of screenwriters the kind of delicate technique necessary to communicate certain things to mature viewers without giving any hint of their meaning to the children also watching. Thus films had to be written by adults, and the best films required writers of some considerable skill. After all, everyone of a certain age in the audience was well aware of what things occurred between men and women in private. They understood, therefore, what may have happened between Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman when the camera cut away to the watchtower?s revolving beam of light; what had failed to happen when Spencer Tracy quietly slipped out of Katharine Hepburn?s apartment, neglecting to take his hat with him; what it was that Katharine Hepburn was both relieved and offended to discover had not happened when, on the previous evening, her inebriation had required Jimmy Stewart to carry her to her bed; what Bogart and Bacall were really discussing under the veil of their equestrian metaphors; why Glenn Ford was treating Rita Hayworth with at once such tenderness and such malice; and what Barbara Stanwyck was implying when she wrapped her arms around Fred MacMurray?s neck and murmured, ?But, darling, we are at Niagara Falls.?

This was a better circumstance because the indecency was hidden, just a bit, from the audience. It doesn’t seem to matter that the clever writers are still writing about “indecent” acts — just the fact that we can’t see them makes all the difference. What’s even more interesting about this argument is that Hart later alludes to Plato’s cave, but in this circumstance, aren’t we all still stuck looking at the shadows on the wall? Sure, the images are pure and clean, but what they allude to isn’t. It’s just an illusion of decency. And is that really any better?

The idea of a “censorship office” has another potential pitfall, one that Hart doesn’t discuss — the door of censorship can swing both ways. One man’s decency is another man’s perversion, and think for a moment if the head of the “censorship office” decides that certain religious narratives are “indecent” — perhaps not in the lewd sense of the word, but just plain old unacceptable. Hart does, however, realize that what Americans really treasure is choice — the ability to decide for themselves what is indecent. Again, one man’s decency is another’s perversion. Part of his point is well-taken:

This is the crucial issue, I think: not what we understand decency to be, but what we mean when we speak of freedom. It is a curious condition of late Western modernity that, for so many of us, the highest ideal of the good society is simply democracy as such, and then within democracy varying alloys of capitalism, the welfare state, regionalism, federalism, individualism, and so on. And what we habitually understand democratic liberty to be?what we take, that is, as our most exalted model of freedom?is merely the unobstructed power of choice. The consequence of this, manifestly, is that we tend to elevate what should at best be regarded as the moral life?s minimal condition to the status of its highest expression, and in the process reduce the very concept of freedom to one of purely libertarian or voluntarist spontaneity. We have come to believe?more or less unreflectively?that the will necessarily becomes more free the more it is emancipated from whatever constraints it suffers; which means that, over the course of time, even our most revered moral traditions can come to seem onerous nuisances that we must shed if we are to secure our ?rights.? At the very last, any constraint at all comes to seem an intolerable bondage. But it was not ever thus.

But, he seems to forget his history. Many conservative (and non-conservative) Christians see the pilgrams from England as heroes — they left their home and went into harm’s way to find religious freedom — no, religious choice. Again, Hart finds a door that swings both ways. Choice is a liberty we have, and it is at the very foundation of our constitutional government. And Hart begins to blur he lines between our constitutional system, and Christian faith:

And yet?and I would not even go so far as to call this a paradox?freedom is possible only through constraints. True freedom, at least according to one venerable definition, is the realization of a complex nature in its proper good (that is, in both its natural and supernatural ends); it is the freedom of a thing to flourish, to become ever more fully what it is.

Part of our leap of faith as Christians is giving over ourselves to God. We switch one master for another, and in that, we have freedom (in the theology sense). But we make that leap willingly, and happily. To expect a non-believer to give up their liberty of choice as a stepping stone to greater freedom is a stretch. And I believe most Americans understand the complex nature of freedom — what political theorists call liberty. Citizens do give up certain “freedoms” to live in a civilized society. But we can’t expect them to give up choice because we as Christians operate under that same freedom. Freedom of choice defines behavior broader than just the indecent.

And here’s where I come to my greatest agreement/disagreement with Hart:

And if we insist on being moderns, or Americans, or democrats, or consumers first, rather than Christians, Jews, and virtuous pagans above all, whose spiritual loyalties transcend all other associations, and if we allow ourselves to believe that true freedom is anything other than the liberation and perfection of a definite nature in conformity with the highest Good?with God Himself, that is?then we will always be divided against ourselves, and will be to some degree accomplices of those very forces whose defeat we think we desire. Indeed, we cannot really affect the course of the nation at all, or even properly imagine what kind of political or social future we should want, so long as we fail to remember (and to fashion our lives according to the knowledge) that we exist only because there is One who has called us from nothingness to be what He desires us to be, not simply what we would like to make ourselves, and that we shall truly be free?and know what freedom is?only when we have no choices left.

He’s right, but we aren’t going to teach people this by taking away their political freedom. Decency laws won’t change people’s hearts. We as Christians need to models for a Godly lifestyle, but unfortunately, we fail miserably time and again. Only by working from the inside out can we expect to affect any cultural change.