Russell Moore: The Ugly American?
I have been sitting on another one of Russell Moore’s screeds, “Don’t Pretend the Ugandan Homosexuality Law Is Christian,” published two months ago. While sympathetic to what he is trying to say, there was a disturbing aspect in what he does say, or in the imperious moralism in which he says it.
Unleashing the violence of state-ordained execution, imprisonment, and surveillance on gay and lesbian Ugandans is a condemnable act of authoritarianism and a violation of the self-evident and unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.1
American Evangelicals have had a long history of conflating Christianity with Americanism. For where does Scriptures advocate an unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness?
Moreover, even the supposed unalienable rights to life and liberty are subject to laws in whose violation, those rights can be justly denied, so long as their denial is premised upon a proper due process and the laws are legislated by the demos, circumscribed by jurist interpretation (and misinterpretation) of their constitutional charter.
But Christian Scriptures do not expressly advocate for any particular form of political structure. Even the various ecclesiastical streams elicit a variety of monarchial, oligarchic, and democratic structures. Moreover, the seminal lesson, implicit in the Old Testament history of the Hebrews, and explicitly summarized in the New Testament, is the futility of external regulations, structures, and other contrivances to ultimately curtain and contain what ails human societies. It is another lesson lost on current generations of Protestant Evangelicals.
Ugandans have the right to govern themselves in accordance with their own cultural understandings, ethical mores, and circumstances. And as attested in Afghanistan, Iraq, post-Soviet Russia, and China, one cannot supervene a socioeconomic and political structure upon a populace whose cultural understandings and mores are incongruent with that structure.
Considering the number of ethnic tribes within Uganda, a democratic polity may merely result, as it has, in factionalism and civil war, like the one next door. A one-party authoritarian state may be the lesser of civic evils.
Will Americans ever learn?
After being compelled to surrender their imperial pretensions after WW2, which had caused untold misery to and resentment among the various populaces in their colonies, Westerners are again showing their arrogance through cultural imperialism as demonstrated by the latest incident in Malaysia.
But the West in 2023 is not in the same geopolitical position as it was in 1900, when the various European and American imperial powers ruled over eighty percent of the world’s landmass and population. China, especially, and Russia are quite willing alternatives to Western assistance. And numerous nation states (India, Saudi Arabia, Brazil) are likewise insisting upon their independence.
Moreover, as foreigners observe the perverse decadence and insanity which permeates the West nowadays, can any Christian representative from the West carry any moral authority? “Physician, heal thyself.”
Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is Russell Moore
Moreover, Paul specifically notes in his letter that the church does not have judgment over outsiders. The local church should remove a sexually immoral person—if finally unrepentant—from membership in their community, but this does not mean they should stop associating with those who do the same things on the outside: “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?” (1 Cor. 5:12).
It is deliciously ironic, even delightfully amusing, how oblivious one finds the hypocrite to his own hypocrisy. Within the same 2,000 word screed in which Moore declares that the church ought not to judge those outside the church vis-à-vis same-sex relations (“the world is not accountable to the church”), he judges the policy of a foreign government (“repulsion at the Ugandan state violence”), which makes no pretentions of being a Christian theocratic state, as “a condemnable act of authoritarianism.”
To the best of my knowledge, the current government in Uganda is the duly legal authority (exousia) of that country. Moreover, I suspect that these anti-homosexual laws represent the general will of the Ugandan people, as alarming as that may be to this Christian representative from a nation wherein perverse decadence and insanity prevails.
To cite such passages of the old-covenant civil law as a mandate for a civil state outside that covenant is a misinterpretation that doesn’t fit with any historic, apostolic teaching of Christianity.
While Russell Moore rightly scorns the application of Mosaic law among the nations whose ancestors did not sign up to that Covenant at Sinai, he inadvertently applies the Christian covenant to polities and peoples who likewise do not sign up to the Covenant at Calvary, or, worse, applies the American ethic/ethos to polities and peoples who likewise did not sign up to the Covenant at Philadelphia.
Moreover, in condemning these laws, Moore implicitly condemns the God, in whom He purports to believe. For if such laws are “a condemnable act of authoritarianism” when instituted by humanity, they would likewise be a “a condemnable act of authoritarianism” when instituted by deity. The laws against homosexual practice under Mosaic law (Leviticus 20:13, 18:22) were part and parcel of a social covenant whose telos was first and foremost explicitly intended to fashion the “Good Society” upon this earth, one recognized as such by their surrounding neighbours.
See, I have taught you statutes and ordinances just as the LORD my God has commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land that you are about to enter and possess. Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding in the sight of the peoples, who will hear of all these statutes and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” For what nation is great enough to have a god as near to them as the LORD our God is to us whenever we call on Him? And what nation is great enough to have righteous statutes and ordinances like this entire law I set before you today?
– Deuteronomy 4:5–8
The ethos of the Mosaic covenant/constitution was that of coercive justice by largely external means in order to maintain social order and attain the “Good Society” through fidelity to those 613+ mitzvot as natural cause-and-effect (re: metaethical consequentialism). In this, the Mosaic civic order is in essence not unlike any other jurisdiction, even if substantively different in the particulars.
Paul declared “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good” (Rom 7:12) of which the Leviticus proscription was part. The seminal and universal lesson to be learnt from this failed civic experiment (“But God found fault with the people” – Hebrews 8:8) is the insufficiency of external regulations and political contrivances (such as in present-day America) to fashion the Good Society. A free and eager consent (via faith) on the part of the populace becomes necessary. Yet, at no time, did Paul repudiate the goodness of those laws engrafted on tablets of stone, in of themselves, just their intrinsic effectuality in light of the condition of common humanity.
Is the criminalization of “homosexual acts” a violation of the human right of a homosexual to identify as a homosexual? Is the criminalization of “pedophiliac acts” a violation of the human right of a “minor attracted person” to identify as a “minor attracted person.” Is the criminalization of bestiality a violation of a human right of a furry to identify as a furry? Wherein is the difference without devolving into arbitrary caprice.
Herein, Moore becomes a wasteland of juridical incoherence if he attempts to rationally differentiate the first from the latter two examples. What makes an adult having sex with a seventeen year old different from one having sex with a sixteen or fifteen or fourteen or whatever. For a good psychological and social purpose, we arbitrate an age of consent. Even the pederast society of ancient Athens felt compelled to make regulations concerning the practice (Solonic laws, Aeschine’s Against Timarchus).
These issues are worthy of more gracious consideration than appealing to the unthinking and self-serving mantras of the Woke who will invariably turn on any Christian panderer in the end.
Perhaps, a catty thing to say. But “not everything that’s a sin is a crime” becomes deliciously ironic coming from a person from a nation which instituted Prohibition a little over a century ago. Hypocrisy, be thy name.
Christianity and Uganda’s Anti-Homosexual Laws
Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world; if it were, My servants would fight to prevent My arrest by the Jews. But now My kingdom is not of this realm.”
– John 18:36
The ethic/ethos underlying the ethical and prudential counsels of the Christian Covenant were never purposed for the governance of the kingdoms of this world. Indeed, a political theorist would (or should) quickly conclude that the Christian ethic/ethos would result in social anarchy from within and conquest from without as evil persons would merely exploit Christianity’s ethic/ethos of grace. So. Let us leave the ethos/ethic of the Christian covenant out of this.
What, as a Christian, might I advise if such advice was even solicited. First, that their government has the God-given legal authority to institute the laws as they have (Romans 13:1) without the dubious and disrespectful moralistic condemnation from a person emerging from a society which is likewise devolving into perverse decadence and insanity (i.e., Canadian recent euthanasia laws).
Based on history, such laws prove ultimately ineffectual. They tend to be applied inconsistently, haphazardly, unequally (Britain’s Buggery laws), and often with political motivations (i.e., Alan Turing). A “morality police” is extremely intrusive into the lives of individuals, not only causing resentment, but requiring a large bureaucracy to do it right.
After a society has experienced significant moral decline, “morality police” will result in the undermining of the political legitimacy of the regime. (The office of Roman censor was discontinued in the late 1st century, resurrected briefly under Domitian, 81–96 AD, considered to be resurrected by Decius in 250 AD but dissuaded otherwise.) As a pragmatic matter, the cost is greater than any benefit.
I fully believe as a Christian and lifelong student of history that overcoming homosexual addictions and attractions is definitely possible. But it is more difficult than is presently conceived and certainly cannot be achieved in behaviorist conversion therapy sessions, especially if the person is not consensually and fully committed. Indeed, it is nigh impossible without full consensual commitment.
Dedicated consent, not grating coercion.
Russell Moore, “Don’t Pretend the Ugandan Homosexuality Law Is Christian,” Moore to the Point, June 1, 2023, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2023/may-web-only/uganda-anti-lgbtq-ted-cruz-russell-moore-biblical-sin-crime.html.