John Mark Reynolds and Houston Baptist University

As many of you know, I worked for Robert Sloan as a writer while I was doing my doctoral work at Baylor and then as a director of strategic planning and associate provost at Houston Baptist University.  Those jobs changed my life.  They gave me a vocation.  I have not doubted my calling since it came to me so clearly during those years.

I felt that I had to leave HBU in order to be closer to my parents (for a variety of reasons, mostly a debilitating health condition which has troubled my mother) and found an opportunity at Union University.  Though it was extraordinarily difficult to leave (and I struggled with an outpouring of emotion almost daily), I looked forward with anticipation to learning from David Dockery just as I did from Robert Sloan.  God has been gracious.  Union has been a good place for me.

The years at HBU were tremendously satisfying.  In God’s providence, we put together a strong ten year plan for the university, reformed the core curriculum (in a rigorous, traditional sense), established an honors college, and brought about substantial growth in both the physical aspect of the campus and in the student body.

Change happens.  I left for Union.  Paul Bonicelli (once a key part of establishing Patrick Henry College, too) moved on to an executive vice presidency at Regent University (where he is already doing good things).  And now John Mark Reynolds assumes the title of provost at HBU.  He has exactly the right sensibility about academic content for an institution that seeks to be a truly classical Christian liberal arts university.  I look forward with great anticipation to seeing him establish the same kind of loving and scholarly association at HBU that he brought into being at Biola in the form of the Torrey Institute.

I should add that I hope John Mark does not merely take his gifts to HBU, while Biola loses them.  Rather, I echo his hope that the work at Biola goes on while a new one takes root at HBU.  Let the good work multiply rather than simply transferring.

HBU has dared much these past several years.  It is my prayer that God will bring greater things of it than any of us have dreamed or intended.

Al Regnery, the Future of The American Spectator, and Me

In 2002, I was a recent graduate of the University of Houston’s law school and had previously received a master’s degree in public administration from the highly regarded program at the University of Georgia.  In my eagerness to do something like Christian political advocacy, I found a job with the Georgia Family Council in Atlanta.

Under the tutelage of one of the best guys in the conservative movement, Randy Hicks, I was busy learning how to influence things at a big state capitol, but I was terribly frustrated.  It wasn’t the work so much as my own sense that I had things to say and no way to get the ideas out into the culture.  I was stymied.

That same period was probably the low point for The American Spectator (TAS).  They were trying to come back from the failed attempt by George Gilder to make the magazine into a slick new conservative version of Forbes + Wired.  After reading a piece at the website that got some fact wrong about the late Paul Coverdell, I emailed the editor and apparently caught Wlady Pleszcyznki at his desk.  We traded a few messages and somehow I ended up sending him a piece I’d written.  That was the beginning of a whole new way of life for me.  Over the next few years, I wrote something like 30 pieces for the website and had a  couple published in the magazine.  Without the start the Spectator gave me, I don’t know that I would have had any of the wonderful opportunities that have followed in the years since.  For example, I seriously doubt that I would have ever written The End of Secularism or the forthcoming Political Thought: A Student’s Guide without the encouragement toward writing that TAS provided.  The magazine prides itself on launching careers.  It did so with me.

I still remember that the first couple of checks (or at least the first ones I remember) I received from TAS were signed by Al Regnery, the son of Henry Regnery who founded the legendary conservative publishing company. He appeared to be the man chosen to rescue the publication from its precipitous fall after hitting a giant peak during the Clinton years.  I know very little of the internal dynamics of The American Spectator, but it seemed to me that it could only be good to have a man like Al Regnery on board.  Recently, I heard Regnery is leaving after losing some sort of argument with the magazine’s board.  The news has stimulated memories.

For years after becoming a regular freelance contributor, I received invitations to attend annual pig roasts put on by the magazine.  In either 2008 or 2009, I finally resolved to go.  The event was held at a property owned by Regnery somewhere out in the sticks of Virginia.

My expectations ahead of the event were all wrong.  For example, I don’t know if the Regnery’s are wealthy, but I assumed so based on the many big sellers the company has published.  Accordingly, I expected a mansion of some kind with rolling green hills and a manicured lawn.  I thought I would see people dressed very nicely and having witty conversations.  Instead, I struggled to find the property in the backwoods.  When I finally did, I realized I would need to figure out the parking situation and tucked my rental car into some shady alcove.  I walked up to a ramshackle structure where a grizzled man sat upon a white bucket.  His hair was unruly.  His face was unshaven.  He wore a weathered aqua knit shirt, old shorts, and a pair of clogs of some kind.  Could it be?  Was it . . .?  ”I’m Al Regnery,” he said, as he extended his hand.  ”I’m Hunter Baker,” I replied and began to explain my identity.  ”I know who you are,” he said, which pleased me.

As usual with parties, I was on-time which meant that I was very early.  I made small talk with two men roasting a large pig over a fire as people slowly began to arrive.  The scene was very rustic.  Friends showed up and we chatted.  It took me nearly an hour to stop flinching at the nearly continuous sound of gunfire.  The real action at the roast centered on the guests trying out a variety of firearms.  I’m a good conservative, but my interest in the second amendment of the constitution has typically been more a point of principle (a way of backing up the social contract) than a way of life.

By that time, my contributions to TAS were much diminished.  Part of it was that I became less interested in political pugilism and more interested in a level of abstraction a little higher than immediate political disputes.  Of course, that may have been a self-defensive reaction to the Bush presidency’s miserable entanglement with Iraq and subsequent loss of majorities in both houses of Congress.

The Regnery story indicates that he had different ideas about the necessary direction of the magazine than did the editorial staff and the board.  I don’t know what his ideas were, but it is a terribly difficult time to be in the business of punditry.  The American Spectator was the kind of publication you could read with delicious pleasure on a Sunday afternoon.  It featured witty and satirical conservative opinion pieces.  Fifteen years ago, such magazines were unusual finds.  People could remember when they first got their hands on a National Review or an American Spectator.  Discovering them was like joining a club.  How I recall my own thrill at reading NR many years ago or in finding First Things in the mid-1990′s.

But now, there is no shortage of conservative opinion on the web.  It can be found in many places and can be further broken down into many of varieties of conservatism, each designed to please a particular niche.  Best of all (for readers, at least), it is generally free.  National Review was quicker to master the internet space (in large part due to Jonah Goldberg’s influence and personallity), while The American Spectator struggled to be reborn as a going concern at the beginning of the millennium.  TAS was behind.  And while it had had a Tyrrell as its own sort of Buckley in the print period, it never had a Goldberg.

I don’t know what the future holds for TAS or for Regnery, but I wish them both well and am thankful for the opportunities they have given me.  (Indeed, I still contribute the occasional blog item.)  We need publications of TAS’s type, especially if they are able to bring together people of insight, talent, and influence.  The odds of making a profit or covering the costs with subscription or ad fees are long, but the chances of making a positive contribution to the broader culture are significant.

Better and Worse Ideas about Government Spending

We are hearing a great deal at the moment about government austerity, especially in Europe, as various states attempt to deal with massive budget crises resulting from a combination of low growth, bad demographics, and overly rich welfare programs.  European Central Bank president Mario Draghi recently gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal in which he made things quite clear:

WSJ: Austerity means different things, what’s good and what’s bad austerity?

 

Draghi: In the European context tax rates are high and government expenditure is focused on current expenditure. A “good” consolidation is one where taxes are lower and the lower government expenditure is on infrastructures and other investments.

 

WSJ: Bad austerity?

 

Draghi: The bad consolidation is actually the easier one to get, because one could produce good numbers by raising taxes and cutting capital expenditure, which is much easier to do than cutting current expenditure. That’s the easy way in a sense, but it’s not a good way. It depresses potential growth.

Draghi’s insight is one American policymakers need to understand.  If the government is spending a great deal of money simply to put dollars in people’s pockets, pay salaries, etc., then we are not getting nearly the good we could obtain with better government spending AND we go bust trying to afford it.  The superior situation is one in which you can keep taxes low and government spending is on items that last and have the potential to spur growth into the future.  

For example, consider the difference between a government paying for things like the interstate highway system or the Tennessee Valley Authority mechanisms of energy generation versus a government that sends out a lot of entitlement checks.  The first government will see substantial returns over the long run.  The second one is mostly just poorer at the end of the year.  

In America, we used to have a government of the first type, but we increasingly have a government of the second type.  I opposed the president’s nearly $1 trillion stimulus package, but it would have been a lot easier to swallow if it had been aimed at some truly valuable investment such as reinforcing America’s physical infrastructure (highways, electrical grid, etc.) rather than simply trying to push out cash as quickly as possible.

Is It Hyperbolic to Say the HHS Mandate Is a Type of “Rape of the Soul?”

The LA Times blog referred to my friend Ben Mitchell and his fellow panelists at the hearing on the HHS mandate as “hyperbolic.”  Mitchell, in particular, employed Roger Williams’ famous comparison of violations of religious liberty with “the rape of the soul.”  

It is interesting to note that religious people, of a variety of persuasions, tend to naturally understand how serious a problem the HHS mandate presents.  What the department did, deliberately and with full knowledge of the consequences, was to create a very real and urgent crisis for institutions with a religious identity (especially the Catholic ones).  We could call this kind of crisis a “God and Caesar crisis” in which an individual or a community must choose between obeying God or obeying the coercive force of government.  ”Rape” is not an absurd metaphor to employ when we are talking about the use of raw power to force an action against conviction.  

Now, it is obvious that religious belief cannot command a blank check, but the old standard was essentially that religious belief (and action) would remain undisturbed as long as it did not pose a threat to the peace and safety of the community.  It should be obvious that declining to fund contraceptives in an insurance policy is far from an affirmative threat to either peace or safety.  After all, there are many low cost ways to obtain contraceptives and no one is forced to work for a religious employer.  The coercion being employed is what is hyperbolic.  No one should be forced into a God and Caesar crisis with so little regard for the alternatives and so little regard for conscience.

A Rather Practical Little Girl

Grace was reading one of the Frog and Toad stories to me. They were trying to fly a kite. Frog had Toad run with the kite, run while jumping up and down, and run while jumping up and down while holding the kite over his head. Each time, the little birds mocked Toad. Finally, Frog insisted that Toad try again doing all of the above plus shouting, “UP! UP! KITE!” And it worked!

She finished reading, turned to me and said, “I don’t think the shouting is what did it. Probably some wind came up or something.”

The End of Secularism and the HHS Mandate

The primary point of my first book, The End of Secularism, was to demonstrate that secularism doesn’t do what it claims to do, which is to solve the problem of religious difference.  As I look at the  administration’s attempt to mandate that religious employers pay for contraceptive products, I see that they have confirmed one of my charges in the book.

I wrote that secularists claim that they are occupying a neutral position in the public square, but in reality they are simply another group of contenders working to implement a vision of community life with which they are comfortable.  And guess what?  They are not comfortable with many of the fundamental beliefs of Christians.  Regrettably, many secularists are also statists.  Thus, their discomfort with Christian beliefs results in direct challenges to them in the form of mandatory public policy.

Collectivism is often very appealing to Christians who want to do good for their neighbors.  Unfortunately, collectivism is frequently a fellow-traveler of aggressive secularism with little respect for religious liberty.  The veil has slipped.  I hope we do not too quickly forget what was revealed in that moment.  Collectivism gives.  But it also takes.  And what it takes is very often precious and irreplaceable.

God and Children

We were driving to school one day when my six year old daughter Grace expressed the great frustration of her life: “God knows everything. He knows I got a sled for Christmas. Why doesn’t he make it snow?”

As I tried to formulate a response, her nine year old brother replied with some annoyance in his voice: “Grace, he’s NOT your slave!”

Rationality and the Gay Marriage Question

Before I begin, I will make an upfront admission that I can certainly understand the reasons why a significant number of people believe gay marriage should be affirmed by the state.  John Stuart Mill’s arguments regarding liberty make enough sense to cause me to look skeptically at any action or policy of the government which would infringe on human freedom without a corresponding argument for restricting a harm.

However, I am extremely troubled by the recent trend of courts finding legal policies against gay marriage irrational and only supportable as a matter of religious belief.  It seems to me that there are ways one could find that the traditional view of marriage is rational.  I am focused on this issue because I was taught in law school that the court would essentially never overturn any law for failure to meet rational-basis scrutiny.  The fact that courts are now overturning laws on exactly that basis leads me to believe that jurists think there is no rational way to think marriage should be confined to male-female pairings.  That way of thinking is, I believe, very dangerous to the notions of self-government and republicanism.

Thinking in terms of what is rational and what is not, I would like to set forth what I think should be considered a rational account of why marriage should remain a male-female arrangement.  My own view might be different in important ways from this one, but I am trying to present something that is non-religious in nature and which I think should be capable of being accepted as rational by any person.  Note:  “rational” does not mean that it convinces you.  It merely means that you could see the argument as a position a person could hold without being, basically, crazy.

So, here is one rational account of why marriage should be confined to opposite sex couples.  As you read, keep in mind that you need only find the account rational (i.e. not crazy) rather than truly persuasive.

 

Men and women are obviously complementary in nature.  This is not a matter of holy writ.  Without the man and the woman, it is not possible to produce children.  Without the ability to produce children, the political community has no future whatsoever.  It will die out like the Shakers, who chose celibacy.  This interest in the future is clearly a political interest since the political community emerges from families.  Families form villages.  Villages form towns.  Towns grow into cities.  And so on.  Male-female marriage is the basis of the political community.  For that reason, it is obviously rational for the political community to take an interest in affirming, sustaining, and protecting male-female marriage.  

Same-sex pairings are not procreative.  The answer will come back that many heterosexual marriages are not procreative.  That is true, but the marriage is still rooted in the complementarity of the sexes and the complementary sex act.  The man and woman share an intimate relationship based on the way their bodies are made to fit together.  You could say God made this design.  You could say it emerged from evolution.  Regardless, it is clear that the male sex organ and the female sex organ work in harmony in a way that the male sex organ and a non-sexual male organ do not.  This biological fact is the reason for the long existence of marriage between men and women.  Marriage would not exist without it.  

Homosexuality was once considered a disorder.  Looking back on those who thought so, can we say with great confidence that their conclusion was invidious or irrational?  Or was it to some degree a reasonable position to take considering that the desire to engage in sexual stimulation (not intercourse as that is impossible) with members of the same sex is highly atypical for human beings and, biologically speaking, does not make sense?  And there is little question of that.  Biologically speaking, the act of a man attempting to have sex with a man or a woman having sex with a woman makes no sense at all.  

There are a number of atypical behaviors to which some human beings appear to be predisposed.  We do not need to make a list, but I am sure we can agree that such behaviors exist.  Our reaction to these atypical behaviors is mostly to accept without having to positively affirm.  

Given these realities, it is not surprising at all that the history of marriage has been the history of men and women marrying each other.  Marriage is a direct consequence of the biological complementarity of the sexes.  While we should not positively inhibit same-sex pairings, we should not give those pairings the same status as male-female marriage.

Based on what has been written above, is it clearly irrational for the government to favor the traditional and biologically sensible form of marriage?  One might characterize these remarks as insensitive or unpleasant or out of fashion, but would it be fair to say that they are irrational?  One may easily disagree, but would you regard these remarks in the class of comments claiming the moon is made of green cheese?  Could you not easily say, “I disagree with what this person has said, but it is a rational  reason to oppose gay marriage.  If I have a vote on the matter, I will cast my vote against this position.”  To do THAT, to cast a vote in favor of gay marriage, is a fundamentally different exercise than to do what courts have done by simply ruling that the person or institution opposing gay marriage is irrational.

What we are talking about is a few different arguments, some stronger and some weaker, in contest over a social innovation with potentially large consequences (frankly, we just don’t know what they might be).  I do not see what many courts see, which is one highly logical and rational argument squaring off against one that is irrational, superstitious, and religious.  If the standard is merely that laws confining marriage to opposite sex couples merely need be considered rational by some low standard of rationality, then it seems to me that the courts have decided wrongly.

The courts do not have the privilege of filling the law with content.  Marriage laws are already very full of content.  The content is centered around men and women marrying.  There is a very simple way of changing that content.  It involves making arguments in the public square and voting.  Such a process is the natural course of democracy and has the advantage of not turning a group of lawyers into sages capable of determining the moral (or rational) content of law.

The Hubris of the Secular Statist

The Department of Health and Human Services has determined that religious institutions (including Catholic ones) must include coverage for contraceptive services in the care insurance they provide to employees.  This is not a big deal, we have been told, because Catholic churches will be exempted, and the organizations adversely affected will be given a year to make their peace with the situation.  

Let that sink in for a minute.  You’re a Catholic organization.  You have just been purposefully placed on a collision course between your God and Caesar.  But it’s okay.  Caesar is going to give you a year to stop being so upset.

The amazing thing here is that some official came to this conclusion and our president (the president of a nation which has religious liberty for one of its greatest achievements) has placed his imprimatur of approval upon the measure.  Their reasoning is as follows:  Many women who work for Catholic organizations are not Catholic or do not agree with the official teaching of the church regarding birth control.  Many of these women feel they would like to employ birth control.  According to our modern day Caesar, the answer is simple.  Citizens want birth control.  The organizations which employ them will provide that birth control.  Note that the answer is not to have the government provide the birth control or to subsidize the birth control or HEAVEN FORBID to have the women buy their own birth control.  No, Caesar simply walks up to the pope and says, “I don’t care what church teaching is.  If you want to live in my society, here is what you are going to do.”

The political calculation, I suppose, is that there aren’t that many really serious Catholics and no one will understand why they are upset.  I hope that calculation is wrong and that many Americans, like myself, will see that the secular government is running roughshod over legitimate religious convictions without so much as an “I’m sorry!” yelled halfheartedly out the back window. 

The hubris on display is incredible.  This is a test of our national character.  Do we prefer religious freedom to a state which dictates to us or do we just want our welfare?  

And note the jarring contrast with the left-wing jurisprudence which is deconstructing marriage.  I can understand the impetus for freedom which is pushing toward a more expansive view of marriage to include same sex couples.  I cannot understand how essentially the same group of persons think the state should be able to dictate something like practices regarding birth control to religious organizations.

The Reversal of Proposition 8: A Dangerous Precedent

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has acted to reverse the democratic decision of the people of California to confine marriage to its traditional parameters of a man and a woman.  In making this decision, the court decided that it could overturn the will of the people of California on the basis of what is known in legal circles as “the rational basis standard.”

When evaluating the violation of fundamental rights, the court has often used a standard of “strict scrutiny” in cases involving racial or religious discrimination.  By that standard, the petitioner frequently wins.  In cases of gender discrimination, the court has relied on a kind of intermediate scrutiny.

The rational basis standard is a different bird.  We were taught (as have been law students for a long time) that under the rational basis standard, the government would almost always win because the burden of establishing irrationality is so high.  My liberal New York Jewish law professor taught us that the court would only find a state action irrational if it did something like declare that everyone must wear one green shoe on Tuesday.

The Ninth Circuit has now effectively said that to believe marriage is a matter for a man and a woman is to be so irrational as to declare that everyone must wear one green shoe on Tuesday.

Now, I understand that many readers may favor expanding marriage to include same sex unions.  And there are reasons to support that move.  But the case is not so overwhelmingly strong as to render the opposite conclusion nonsensical.

This is an important case.  If a handful of individuals can declare a particular point of view completely irrational (a democratically expressed view), then we are not a republic.  We are an oligarchy.