Duke Divinity Call & Response Blog

Bishop Willimon seems to follow Buckley in determining that Rand's work can be disposed because of her atheism. But might that be precisely the value for us? In a society where the words Christian and Conservative are often (and disturbingly) used together or even interchangeably, might Rand as a thinker about the role of government lead us to stronger conviction about our role in society as Christians? If a Randian government didn't care for the poor (this isn't a struggle to imagine, right?), then might we as Christians who had thought about Rand consider that our vocation to provide health care, education, and social justice is not just a quaint tradition, but in fact the reason for being of those who follow Jesus?

Put differently, it is possible to agree with Rand that government should not be concerned with social justice but also to be ultimately concerned with creating social justice in our communities.

Not only possible, in fact, but perhaps faithful. Should I as a Christian carry around pictures of Rand like some objectivist messiah? No, thank you. But if others do, and win the day, then my church's struggle for relevance will be over. No more proto-establishment for us: we'll rally to again be the primary source of health care, education, and social justice (perhaps we could start by redirecting our internal energy to embrace the Baptist hospitals and Methodist colleges and Presbyterian relief centers again) because it's what Jesus told us to do.

I finally read Atlas Shrugged earlier this year on the advice of a respected colleague, and while there is much that is dark and disturbing, it was nonetheless powerful. And that dark place can be a great place to start for talking about how God brings light into the world and how we shall steward that light.

I really wish someone on the Right could explain to me how it is possible to claim that the US Constitution and the US Government is "based upon Christian principles" and the US is a Christian nation while at the same time demanding that the US Government has no business carrying out the Bible's teaching and commands when it comes to the treatment of the poor and needy.

How can admire people like the Pauls and Ayn Rand who proudly and unashanedly stated that Jesus and Christianity is EVIL?

Though I am not sure that I qualify as "on the Right", the answer is simple. Render unto Caesar, et. al.

It is the vocation of Christians to carry out the teachings of Jesus. The Government is a poor and inefficient caregiver.

I understand that Ayn Rand was an atheist, but what does that have to do with the Christian Church. Rand provided social commentary on the secular world and prescribed an imperfect solution to fix some its wrongs. You can't discredit her political philosophy on the basis of her atheism alone.

I've met plenty progressive Christians who are fascinated with the life and times of Che Guevara who, like Rand, was a staunch atheist. Of course this is not what draws them to Che, rather his perceived crusades for "social justice" in Latin & South America.

Whether or not Che was actually a social justice crusader is certainly open for debate, just as whether or not Rand's political and economic philosophy are what America really needs.

I certainly understand that God calls us--Christians, as individuals and as a community--to help the less fortunate--clothe the naked, feed the hungry, etc. However, at no point in his ministry do I recall Jesus ever saying the government of a particular region should be responsible for these activities.

When you criticize Republican leaders for quoting Ayn Rand, why not provide us with details about each candidates' charitable contributions and what various outreach programs they may be involved in either within their home church or local community.

Finally, it's hard to construct a strong, persuasive argument when all the examples you use single out one group of people. Obviously, you lean to the Left of the modern Republican Party. The foils in your narrative all belong to the Republican Party. Therefore, your narrative comes off as an attack on the Republican Party, Republican and conservatives and not as a message of "Good News & great joy."

and the very same people who claim the "government is an inefficient caregiver" find it wonderfully efficient at waging war, and also would trust the care of the poor to the hands of those that see no biblical focus upon doing just that. shame on you and your selfishness

I would disagree with you. I believe we should help people as Christians and I do believe me, probably more than others. I believe it is the church and Christians that should be doing this on a more personal basis with the individuals that need help because they can give this help with guidance from God on how to do it. They can also witness to individuals to the hope and the reason for their generoisty, the hope that we get from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I would agree with Ayn Rand that the government should not be the ones making sure there are no poor because they do not have the leadership of the Holy Spirit and quite frankly they do stupid things that only promote people who don't work, people who feel entitleed and people who don't get married because that would hurt their benefits.

If you call yourself Christian then you must vote for the politicians who most closely follow the teachings of Christ.

Feeding, clothing and giving shelter to the poor? Isn't that what Christ was talking about? Loving your neighbor?

Rendering unto the government is what Christ said. Can't you also read the signs of the times? Don't you know that your every action is judged from Sunday morning to Saturday night. Voting to cut SSI and Medicare? Is that Christian? Keeping health care the province of employed while unemployment is high, is that the action that Christ would take?

"Not everyone who says to me "Lord Lord" will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many on that day will say "Lord Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?" Then I will tell them plainly, "I never knew you, Away from me, you evildoers".

You can not separate love of neighbor from love of God in any way.

I too agree that as Christians, it is primarily our job to care for the poor, the sick, the outcast. This is one HUGE function of the Church, and how we live out the Gospel. There is no question that as the Church we must be out in front, caring for the people around us. So, I would agree with all who say that the church must do this, and do it first. We cannot rely on the government, but must act as we are called to act, in love and service to people.

However, we as the Church are not simply called to feed and care for people as individuals, we are also called to stand with poor, oppressed, and downtrodden people against people, systems, and governments that hinder or hurt them. So, even though I believe that the church must be working to make sure that people have food, health care, etc, I also believe that the church must stand up for anyone that is hurting. This for me means making sure everyone has access to basic health care and food. It is inexcusable, for me, to be a part of a country where someone can die due to lack of food and health care when we have the level of wealth that we have. So, I will use my small voice in our large democracy to stand with those who are hurting, and I think this is the job of the church as well.

After all, it is not our job as the church to try and get the government to become more Christian, but to see that the church stands with those we are called to stand with: The Poor, the Hurting, The Outcast, the Oppressed.

I agree that as Christians we should help the poor. The Bible is not explicit about how that can and should be done. Who is to say that as taxpayers we cannot advocate for help from the government in accomplish this since most of our government expenditures result from some group lobbying our representatives. I would rather my dollars go to help a hungry child than to making a bomb to kill innocent civilians including children.

Altruism should not be forced, but rather out of the free will of a moral people.

To make the statement, "I would rather my dollars go to help a hungry child thank to making a bomb to kill innocent civilians including children," is highly reductive.

while i disagree with so many things ayn rand's philosophies support, i think she has hit the nail on the head of a truth that we as christians stand fully behind. we worship God simply because of who he is, because he's good, because he is worthy of it. you see that in we the living, the way kira 'hero-worships' leo (you see the same thing played out in just about all her books with the main female and male characters). she's against charity and anything remotely like that (along the lines of 'why give the poor leeches what they don't deserve') but then you see the way dominique responds to roark in the fountainhead. only instead of the worthy object being God, it's man-made-into-god.

anyway, i wrote about this a while ago, it's sort of long-winded but i explain better here if anyone wants to look: http://lovetothenations.blogspot.com/2010/03/almost-right.html

thanks for the article, good reading it!

but for the entirety of her philosophy is Rand a useless model for public life. The sort of moral nihilism she advocates was almost dead and gone before she brought it back to life. Then it was again almost dead and gone before the tea party re-embraced it. It will again fade into obscurity only to be reborn in some or another egocentric Narcissus.

Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Anthem, The Virtue of Selfishness opened the doors to free thinking after the dogmatic intellectual and spiritual confines of my childhood Southern Baptist faith. I was raised to be fiercely independent and self-sufficient; Rand's moral objectivism gave me a moral compass absent God and was the basis for my atheism for 20 years after I walked away from God at 17.

Irrespective of the corporate and social issues raised by Bishop Willomon and others who have responded to his post, there is an important and crucial personal consideration here. The problem with moral objectivism is that there is no system for redemption.

When all you have is your own rational mind as the sole source of morality where does one go with one's failures? I did not understand when I read Rand as a teenager that she was a romanticist more than she was a philosopher. Who can live up to the standards of John Galt?

In her fiction, her heroes were perfect. In my real life, I was anything but. My failures, my rationalizations of those failures ended up in the gunny sack on my back that carried the ever-increasing burden of guilt because there is no redemptive process in moral objectivism.

Part of what eventually drove me back to asking old questions about God again was the weight of my failures. Part of what drove me back to ask old questions about God was simply being the father of two young sons who were not learning right from wrong by their moral objectivist father. I had no system to teach them as I had learned. Part of what drove me back to asking old questions about God was my deeply altruistic love for my wife and my two young sons. Altruism, for the Randite, is the greatest "sin." In her terms, being a husband and father were causing me to sin greatly and often.

In the end, looking for moral support to be a better father, this exhausted and weary atheist found The United Methodist Church. There I found grace. There I found the Wesleyan quadrilateral that did not require me to check my brain at the front door of the church. But mostly I found grace, and love, and acceptance, and a place to belong and to question as I came to believe.

I eventually found God, and then the Holy Spirit. Sometime later I even came to know Jesus Christ, divine and human. And grace continued to work to the point that I was ordained an elder in full connection with The United Methodist Church this past May.

So while there are interesting discussions to be held in the political, sociologic, and economic worlds about Ayn Rand, don't forget that her powerful images can alter the path of individual lives. Let this serve notice that the grace of Jesus Christ is the only power capable of "altaring" these lives altered toward radical self-sufficiency and quid pro quo human relationships and economics. The grace of Jesus Christ was ultimately the source of freedom I long sought. Ayn Rand was simply just an author of another system that "freedom" ultimately only imprisons and oppresses.

I am grateful that Jesus Christ set this captive free.

Blessings of grace and freedom to you all.

In this article and in many of the comments, "atheism" is used as shorthand for "self-interested monster who has no sense of responsibility to the rest of humanity." Interesting that atheists are actually more likely to be the liberal types who vote for social policies that lift up the poor, and Rand is the hero to the Tea Party types screeching that the U.S. is a Christian nation. Yeah, we atheists know that we're the most hated religious category in the U.S. But that says more about the prejudices of the religious than it does about us.

Mr. Willimon:

William Buckley Jr. was not an anti-Randian, as you state. Buckley once made the comment that if Rand had a religious element to her thought, he would be a Randian.

"We have God and therefore we are better, more caring people" is getting really old. We're in the soup kitchens, too, Will. We're on the front lines, fighting for social justice, and loving the least among us. Wake up.

I'm not sure where Christians get the idea that the state has no part in caring for the poor or marginalized. It certainly isn't from scripture, where a righteous king (who in a monarchy _is_ the state) is one who upholds the rights of the widow, orphan and stranger. All you have to do is look at the royal psalms and see what the king is praised for. Let your politics be shaped by scripture not tradition, whether of the left or the right.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I can't believe that even conservative, evangelical Christians have fallen head over heals in love with Rand. As evidenced in some of these responses they do not see how Christianity connects with economics or social commentary. It is mind blowing that we have this kind of dissociative disorder in the church.

Granted, there is no place in the Bible that overtly says “People should turn to the government for help.” However, the following notions come from a Biblical point of view:

1. In the Bible, the ancient Hebrews didn’t have a separation of church/temple and state. If the Temple helped people, it was also the state. Moreover, the prophets (Amos, Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc.) were calling on both the citizens of Israel/Judah AND their powers that be (the temple/state) to repent; i.e., to turn from their selfish, idolatrous ways and to instead follow God by providing for the poor and the aliens (immigrants, visitors, etc.) in their midst.

2. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire and when the various nations in Europe adopted State Churches, they were effectively theocracies and in such a situation, appealing to the government is akin to appealing to the Church.

3. To the extent that the U.S. is a “Christian nation” (we have a high % of people who are Christians and who go to church) many of us consider paying taxes as a part of our Christian stewardship. We tithe to our churches and we pay taxes too in order to effectively help people in need. That said, the average church-goer doesn’t tithe, instead they only give 2.4% of their income to their church. And, many millionaires pay less in taxes (tax rate) than people far poorer than them. And… unfortunately, a massive % of our tax dollars go toward supporting an obscenely over-funded Defense Department. We pay more toward our military than nearly all of the rest of the nations in the world do for theirs — combined.

4. There is simply no way for the churches in the U.S. to adequately provide for all of the needs in our nation. The vast majority of the budgets for most churches go toward staff salaries and they simply don’t have enough funding to provide for all of the social work, addiction recovery, transition from prison, food assistance, rent assistance, utility assistance, and health care for all of our nation’s poor and struggling citizens. The Preamble for the U.S. Constitution states that our government is created to provide for the common good of the commonwealth. That is a Biblical vision and intention.

5. For more of my thoughts on these matters, see this blog of mine on Patheos: http://www.patheos.com/community/mainlineportal/2011/11/07/food-for-the-...

Peace.

Roger Wolsey, author, "Kissing Fish: christianity for people who don’t like christianity"

A just and healthy society is built on mutuality and reciprocity. Mutuality among other things regards other persons as worthy of the dignity you desire. Reciprocity involves everyone receiving what they need out of a relationship (even commercial exchanges).

Simply put, Rand's perspective devalues both of these principles as something less than personal strength, and thus her vision would lead to unjust and dysfunctional society.

The government's responsibility for the general welfare arises both in the constitution and in the fact that all have access to support it. The church chooses welfare as a measure of its social responsibility. To say the church should take care of the vulnerable is a matter of faith commitment. To say government should exercise responsibility for the general welfare is to recognize that government exists as the embodiment of the will of everyone in this democracy - a democracy which must continually remember its founding principles of mutuality and reciprocity in order to remain sustainable.

To paraphrase the New Testament, we all are our brothers' keepers, and some are called by God to be Good Samaritans. Or, as I once told the Fl Senate's chief of staff, Faith will take care of the poor if you just pass a law that requires everyone to attend a house of worship. She said, "I get your point."

With Advent's anticipation of the Messiah!

Reading this thread as a Canadian who does not really understand the political dynamics of the u.s. I liked what Dr. Willimon said because i think that from a personal standpoint we must be wary of any philosophy that simply and un-critically exalts the powerful over and against the weak. Like street people should just get jobs, or new immigrants should stop being leeches of society. Many marginalized people are not simply leeches or users but are the result of broken homes, mental illness etc.
The truth and yea beauty of the gospel, is that even the teen mom who is on the margins in many ways can know the presence and fullness of Christ. Any ideology that wants to promote the powerful and revile the weak is anti-Christian.

To Mr. Wolsey:
Constitution aside, how is it that Christians and churches are permitted the "pass" of staff and other institutional needs? I submit they/we are not. If we were to be church in the world without accepting our institutional passes, the world just might wake long enough to see what's going on. Tim Tebow (and I'm not a fan either of his team or the way he expresses his faith) has done more in the last week to raise dialogue about what it means to be Christian than the rest of us combined. It's about being and loving as God that matters; all else I think is expensive commentary.

Preach, Bishop. Thank you for taking the mantle of the prophets.

I think we as Christians must be careful when using phrases like "social justice." I have heard abortionists use this phrase in defense of a woman's right to choose. If you vote for a party that condones abortion, I say shame on You. Vote pro-life and give of your own personal resources to aid the poor. If you do not have the right to life, you do not have any "rights" at all.

As someone once asked me, if an atheist math teacher says that 2 + 2=4, does that make it incorrect? In the same sense, one shouldn't disregard all of Rand's philosophy because she did not see Christ in the same light as a Christian.

With all due respect, I think you are missing many of the major points of Ayn Rand. In an ideal Rand world, every single individual would live up to their highest potential in life. Can you imagine a society where every single person truly wanted to make themselves the best they could possibly be? That does not seem like a bad place to me.

According to Rand, every person should have a purpose in their life. Once they know their purpose, their life should be full of actions that accomplish their purpose. As I look at many Christians I have known through my life, many have never had any true purpose. More sadly, they have squandered the gift even they would agree God gave them... Life.

With regards to governments role in helping the poor, is it really helping people by providing just enough to keep them in a terrible position? Also, should we really feel good about what we give to the government since it is not of your free will to do so? I don't remember Christ espousing that you should hold a gun to someone else's head to do something to help others.

There are many significant questions that Rand raises in her novels. To simply dismiss her works because you do not agree with her thoughts on religion is simple minded. If you read and dismissed The Fountainhead in a day, I seriously doubt you gave it much thought.

All the best,

Micah