Yesterday we discussed whether or not religion can be coerced, concluding that religious coercion is wrong, counter-productive, and impossible. What about morality, which is often lumped together with religion. Can morality be coerced? The answer is a little more complicated.
In his Law & Liberty essay that we discussed yesterday, Jacob Williams drew on an essay by Bowling Green political philosopher Kevin Vallier entitled The Fusionist Manifesto, dealing with the relationship between liberty and virtue.
Vallier is dealing mainly with debates among contemporary conservatives. The postliberals blame our cultural dysfunctions on an excess of liberty inculcated by “liberal democracy.” The libertarians believe there isn’t enough liberty, that individuals are held back by the virtue signaling of government, culture, and elites.
Vallier begins:
Fusionism—once the intellectual core of American conservatism—today faces a profound crisis. Initially conceived as a harmonious union of liberty and virtue, designed to reconcile free markets with moral order, it now teeters precariously between competing extremes. On one side, the New Right increasingly advocates for state-imposed virtue; on the other, libertarians have split into right-wing populists and progressive cosmopolitans. Many have declared fusionism obsolete—a relic ill-equipped to address contemporary political challenges like immigration.
Vallier deals with the objections from both sides and proposes a “new fusionism” shaped by the findings of contemporary social science and political thought. But he defends the “core claim” of fusionism: “Liberty and virtue reinforce one another.”
He does so with three strategies for “rebooting” fusionism:
(1) the Virtue of Justice Strategy, which casts liberty as a requirement of justice. [The virtue of justice demands that the worth and dignity of the individual be respected, which includes respecting the individual’s liberty.]
(2) the Ruler’s Burden Strategy, which stresses the corrupting effects of state coercion on those who coerce. [“Excessive governmental power corrupts those who wield it. . . .Wielding unchecked power can distort moral character, creating pride, moral blindness, and a loss of empathy. Tyranny corrupts the ruler’s soul through a cycle of moral decay and insatiable desire.”]
(3) the Moral Ecology Strategy, the standard fusionist strategy that stresses that virtue naturally developed within voluntary associations and market interactions. [“True virtue arises organically from dynamic interactions within voluntary associations, local communities, and market processes rather than through state coercion.”]
By framing the issues in this way, lovers of virtue can see that virtue includes the promotion of liberty. And lovers of liberty can see that freedom requires the ordering principle of virtue. Both sides can come together in a new “fusionism.”
Both libertarians and fusionists would deny that virtue can be coerced. As classic thinkers on the subject have concluded, virtue requires freedom. Forcing someone to do a good deed takes away its moral significance. If the government makes me give money to a poor person against my will, I deserve no credit for doing so. But if I do it freely, I have practiced the virtue of generosity.
The government agent who forces me to give my money to poor person is not acting morally either. Forcing me to do it imposes no sacrifice on the part of the government agent, who is using me for the government’s ends.
On the family level, a parent can’t force a child to be moral. A mother can make her son clean his room, but she can’t force him to do so with a spirit of helpfulness and love of family. But if he cleans his room without being asked, of his own free will, the mother will not only be surprised, she will appreciate what a good boy she has raised.
Up to a point, this analysis holds. But, once again, Luther can help us see the issue more deeply. There is both an inner and an outer dimension to good works. External compliance with a law, legal or moral, can be coerced. The internal state of the heart–that is, the moral condition of the soul–cannot be altered by force.
The mother can force her child to clean his room, resulting in a good outcome for the family, though his bad attitude remains a problem. The police can coerce us by threat of punishment to obey the traffic laws, resulting in the good outcome of greater public safety, even if inside we are bad citizens who want to drive recklessly. Getting at the interior depths of the soul, however, requires something beyond coercion.
Lutheran theology teaches that there are three uses of the law. First is the “curb.” This controls external behavior, preventing our sinful nature from erupting so as to make society or any kind of human relationships impossible. Fear of punishment, social pressure, and, yes, coercion can keep us in line.
This, in fact, is the very purpose of temporal government: to restrain wrongdoing, to punish evildoers, and to protect those who do what is right. (See Roman 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:13-14.) So the government should uphold external compliance to the moral law. And Christians are right to insist that the government act morally (since the moral law is above the state) and to work for morality in the public square (since unborn children, families, and the disadvantaged need the state’s protection).
The second use of the law is as a “mirror,” to show us our sin. The law can awaken guilt and shame, reaching us on the inside so that we do not want to do what is morally wrong. This works to a certain degree even on the secular level, forming the conscience and our responsibility so that we can police ourselves, so to speak. When that happens, we act morally out of liberty. But the Holy Spirit does not stop at awakening guilt and forming a sensitive conscience. The second use of the law, properly, shows us our need for the gospel of free forgiveness that comes by God’s grace through the atoning work of Jesus Christ. The law creates not just guilt but repentance, and the gospel creates faith. Coercion cannot create repentance or faith.
The third use of the law is as a “guide,” to show us how we should behave. Faith bears fruit in love, so, to one extent or another in this life, Christians have an internal motivation to act morally: to please God and to love our neighbor. The Christian child can learn to clean his room to please God by pleasing his mother, and to do so out of love for his family. The Christian driver can obey the traffic laws freely, in light of the God-given vocation of citizenship and out of love for the other drivers. Coercion cannot make us love our neighbors any more than it can make us love God.
Image by Waldryano from Pixabay
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