Rendering unto God and Caesar: Reflections on the Republican Platform

From the Republican Party Platform:

We are the party of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Declaration sets forth the fundamental precepts of American government: That God bestows certain inalienable rights on every individual, thus producing human equality; that government exists first and foremost to protect those inalienable rights; that man-made law must be consistent with God-given, natural rights; and that if God-given, natural, inalienable rights come in conflict with government, court, or human-granted rights, God-given, natural, inalienable rights always prevail; that there is a moral law recognized as “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”; and that American government is to operate with the consent of the governed. We are also the party of the Constitution, the greatest political document ever written. It is the solemn compact built upon principles of the Declaration that enshrines our God-given individual rights and ensures that all Americans stand equal before the law, defines the purposes and limits of government, and is the blueprint for ordered liberty that makes the United States the world’s freest and most prosperous nation   

I assume that Michael Pence, or for that matter Ted Cruz, has no trouble embracing this part of the Republican Party platform, which clearly subordinates any laws passed by legislatures or any other governmental institution to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God."  We could, of course, get into long debates about the difference between the "laws of nature," which could be Aristotelian, and non-dependent on any belief in God, in contrast to subordination to "Nature's God," which sound more in Revelation and divine sovereignty than in Reason.  In any event, we have a clear hierarchy of norms, with Divine commands at the top and everything else beneath.


We might compare the Republican platform, in this respect, to the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran:

Article 2The Islamic Republic is a system based on belief in:

•    1.the One God (as stated in the phrase "There is no god except Allah"), His exclusive sovereignty and the right to legislate, and the necessity of submission to His commands;
•    2.Divine revelation and its fundamental role in setting forth the laws;...

From a purely analytic perspective, it is hard to tell the difference between the Republicans and the Iranians.  The same can be said,incidentally, of those ultra-Orthodox Jews who would look to the Torah and other Jewish materials to structure the law of Israel.

What can Donald Trump possibly make of this?  Whatever else one might think of the Platform, it seems to accept the notion of "individual rights" as limits against an overreaching government.  (That may well be a difference worth noting between the Republican Platform and the Iranian Constitution.)  But Trump seems to have no recognition of individual rights that are Dworkinian trumps (so to speak) against the state.  The admirer of strong-men dictators who almost literally can't wait to order waterboarding (or worse, such as retaliation against the families of those deemed by Trump and Chris Christie to be "terrorists") surely can't take seriously the proposition that even the least of us, made, after all, in the image of God, have rights against the state (or, for that matter, that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eyes of a needle than for a rip man to enter into the kingdom of Heaven.  Can anyone imagine Donald Trump spending his time and sharing the last meal with a condemned criminal about to be executed the next morning, as Tim Kaine, a serious Catholic, did?). To valorize the state is to commit the sin of idolatry, by placing the all-powerful state in the place of a formerly all-powerful God (who may or may not be just, but that's the subject of yet another theological argument).  Of course, Trump may want to cite Romans 13:1 on magistrates being chosen by God and, therefore to suggest, that his political success, including potential election, would be quite literally providential.  

I do not mean to be simply snarky about the Republican tip of the hat to theocracy.  There is obviously something to be said for the idea of a limited state, and it is certainly the case that many have looked to religious sources for a sense of what those limits are.  

The fact is that three of the four candidates, Hillary Clinton, Tim Kaine, and Mike Pence, are genuinely religious by any conventional measures.  She is a serious Methodist, and has been so since she was young.  Her oft-rerated  "slogan," "Do all the good you can...." is usually attributed to John Wesley and is the foundation of Methodist intervention in the world, including anti-slavery.  [Again, if I can try to anticipate some of the comments, I hope that none of you are so completely obtuse as to deny the reality of Clinton's religious beliefs and commitments.  Anyone doing so simply reveals the utter ignorance of her actual biography.]  Kaine, by all accounts, is a serious "social justice Catholic" who served as a missionary in Central America, and Pence is a former Catholic who apparently became aborn-again Evangelical because he wanted a closer relationship with God.  And, of course, he has emphasized that his primary identity is as a Christian.  (Let him try to explain how a serious Christian can hook up with Donald Trump, but that's another matter.)  

Should we be heartened or disheartened by the religiosity of three of the four candidates?  I define myself as a "secular Jew," with an emphasis on "secular," and I would be delighted if religion played less of a role in the lives of most Americans.    Christopher Hitchens certainly wouldn't be heartened.  But I can't imagine his being overly cheered by the fact that Trump felt no political duty to make any bow to religion in his speech.  I don't recall that he even bothered to end with the now ritual request for God's blessing on the U.S.  One did hear the Rolling Stones  and the importance of settling for getting what you need rather than wishing for what you want.   More suitable, I think, would have been "Sympathy for the Devil."