Faith tends to subvert legal order

Fordham Law Review

Volumn 66, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 1089-1099

  Shaffer, Thomas L ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME   (United States)

^b Notre Dame Legal Aid Clinic   (United States)

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EID: 1842786350     PISSN: 0015704X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. John F. Kavanaugh, S.J., The Word Encountered 68 (1996).
2. My daughter Mary and I attempted to describe this distinction biblically in the last chapter of our book American Lawyers and Their Communities (1991). We suggest there what I depend on here, in making this second distinction - that is, that, for modern "first-world" people, idolatry is not the worship of trees and little dolls, but of what we care about. Id. at 209-17. As Walter Brueggemann says: "It is a mark of discernment and maturity to strip life down to one compelling loyalty, to be freed of all the others that turn out to be idolatrous." Walter Brueggeman, The Threat of Life: Sermons on Pain and Weakness 92 (1996).
3. My daughter Mary and I attempted to describe this distinction biblically in the last chapter of our book American Lawyers and Their Communities (1991). We suggest there what I depend on here, in making this second distinction - that is, that, for modern "first-world" people, idolatry is not the worship of trees and little dolls, but of what we care about. Id. at 209-17. As Walter Brueggemann says: "It is a mark of discernment and maturity to strip life down to one compelling loyalty, to be freed of all the others that turn out to be idolatrous." Walter Brueggeman, The Threat of Life: Sermons on Pain and Weakness 92 (1996).
4. My daughter Mary and I attempted to describe this distinction biblically in the last chapter of our book American Lawyers and Their Communities (1991). We suggest there what I depend on here, in making this second distinction - that is, that, for modern "first-world" people, idolatry is not the worship of trees and little dolls, but of what we care about. Id. at 209-17. As Walter Brueggemann says: "It is a mark of discernment and maturity to strip life down to one compelling loyalty, to be freed of all the others that turn out to be idolatrous." Walter Brueggeman, The Threat of Life: Sermons on Pain and Weakness 92 (1996).
5. William R. Estep, The Anabaptist Story 12 (1984).
6. Id. at 8-17.
7. Id. My sources, in addition to Estep, supra note 3, are J. Denny Weaver, Becoming Anabaptist (1987); John Howard Yoder, Gospel Renewal and the Roots of Nonviolence, Faith and Freedom, Dec. 1995, at 5, along with other material from to Yoder's work, cited infra; J. Lawrence Burkholder, Nonresistance, Nonviolent Resistance, and Power, in Kingdom, Cross, and Community 131 (John Richard Burkholder & Calvin Redekop eds., 1976); and Ronald J. Sider, Christian Ethics and the Good News of the Kingdom: Doing Christian Ethics in an Eschatalogical Key, in Terry L. Brensinger & E. Morris Sider, Within the Perfection of Christ 13 (1990).
8. Id. My sources, in addition to Estep, supra note 3, are J. Denny Weaver, Becoming Anabaptist (1987); John Howard Yoder, Gospel Renewal and the Roots of Nonviolence, Faith and Freedom, Dec. 1995, at 5, along with other material from to Yoder's work, cited infra; J. Lawrence Burkholder, Nonresistance, Nonviolent Resistance, and Power, in Kingdom, Cross, and Community 131 (John Richard Burkholder & Calvin Redekop eds., 1976); and Ronald J. Sider, Christian Ethics and the Good News of the Kingdom: Doing Christian Ethics in an Eschatalogical Key, in Terry L. Brensinger & E. Morris Sider, Within the Perfection of Christ 13 (1990).
9. Id. My sources, in addition to Estep, supra note 3, are J. Denny Weaver, Becoming Anabaptist (1987); John Howard Yoder, Gospel Renewal and the Roots of Nonviolence, Faith and Freedom, Dec. 1995, at 5, along with other material from to Yoder's work, cited infra; J. Lawrence Burkholder, Nonresistance, Nonviolent Resistance, and Power, in Kingdom, Cross, and Community 131 (John Richard Burkholder & Calvin Redekop eds., 1976); and Ronald J. Sider, Christian Ethics and the Good News of the Kingdom: Doing Christian Ethics in an Eschatalogical Key, in Terry L. Brensinger & E. Morris Sider, Within the Perfection of Christ 13 (1990).
10. Id. My sources, in addition to Estep, supra note 3, are J. Denny Weaver, Becoming Anabaptist (1987); John Howard Yoder, Gospel Renewal and the Roots of Nonviolence, Faith and Freedom, Dec. 1995, at 5, along with other material from to Yoder's work, cited infra; J. Lawrence Burkholder, Nonresistance, Nonviolent Resistance, and Power, in Kingdom, Cross, and Community 131 (John Richard Burkholder & Calvin Redekop eds., 1976); and Ronald J. Sider, Christian Ethics and the Good News of the Kingdom: Doing Christian Ethics in an Eschatalogical Key, in Terry L. Brensinger & E. Morris Sider, Within the Perfection of Christ 13 (1990).
11. Id. My sources, in addition to Estep, supra note 3, are J. Denny Weaver, Becoming Anabaptist (1987); John Howard Yoder, Gospel Renewal and the Roots of Nonviolence, Faith and Freedom, Dec. 1995, at 5, along with other material from to Yoder's work, cited infra; J. Lawrence Burkholder, Nonresistance, Nonviolent Resistance, and Power, in Kingdom, Cross, and Community 131 (John Richard Burkholder & Calvin Redekop eds., 1976); and Ronald J. Sider, Christian Ethics and the Good News of the Kingdom: Doing Christian Ethics in an Eschatalogical Key, in Terry L. Brensinger & E. Morris Sider, Within the Perfection of Christ 13 (1990).
12. Id. My sources, in addition to Estep, supra note 3, are J. Denny Weaver, Becoming Anabaptist (1987); John Howard Yoder, Gospel Renewal and the Roots of Nonviolence, Faith and Freedom, Dec. 1995, at 5, along with other material from to Yoder's work, cited infra; J. Lawrence Burkholder, Nonresistance, Nonviolent Resistance, and Power, in Kingdom, Cross, and Community 131 (John Richard Burkholder & Calvin Redekop eds., 1976); and Ronald J. Sider, Christian Ethics and the Good News of the Kingdom: Doing Christian Ethics in an Eschatalogical Key, in Terry L. Brensinger & E. Morris Sider, Within the Perfection of Christ 13 (1990).
13. The late Lutheran theologian Helmut Thielicke implied this as the politics of the "magisterial" Reformation, and, in retrospect, had what I take to be mainline Lutheran doubts about it: "Perhaps, as we think back on the past millennium, we never wanted anything like a Christian culture and Christian states in which everybody was automatically dumped into the big sack of Christendom and included as a matter of course among the possessors of baptismal certificates simply by being born and by the operation of ecclesiastical custom, even though they had no personal relationship whatever to Jesus of Nazareth. And perhaps we owe it to the goodness of God that all this crumbled away in our hands and continues to do so." Christ and the Meaning of Life 61 (John W. Doberstein trans. 1962); see also David M. Smolin, A House Divided? Anabaptist and Lutheran Perspectives on the Sword, 47 J. Legal Educ. 28, 29-31 (1997). There is fruitful disagreement between Christian theologians who regard the legal enterprise as alien (although not always hostile) to their communal loyalties, and those who regard the legal enterprise as capable of significant change - between, that is, the theology of the believers' church, the descendants of the sixteenth century Anabaptists, and both Marxist Christian theory and the theology of liberation. John Howard Yoder focused the disagreement on the primordial creation (or calling) of a believing community: The form of liberation in the biblical witness . . . the creation of a confessing community which is viable without or against the force of the state, and does not glorify that power structure even by the effort to topple it. The content of liberation in the biblical witness is not the 'nation-state' or the 'class-state' brotherhood engineered after the take-over but the covenantal peoplehood already existing because God has given it, and sure of its future because of the Name ('identity') of God, not because of a coming campaign. . . . [P]ilgrim peoplehood is projected by the Bible as the shape of salvation in any age. John Howard Yoder, Liberating Comes First: Exodus Precedes Sinai 9-10 (1972).
14. The late Lutheran theologian Helmut Thielicke implied this as the politics of the "magisterial" Reformation, and, in retrospect, had what I take to be mainline Lutheran doubts about it: "Perhaps, as we think back on the past millennium, we never wanted anything like a Christian culture and Christian states in which everybody was automatically dumped into the big sack of Christendom and included as a matter of course among the possessors of baptismal certificates simply by being born and by the operation of ecclesiastical custom, even though they had no personal relationship whatever to Jesus of Nazareth. And perhaps we owe it to the goodness of God that all this crumbled away in our hands and continues to do so." Christ and the Meaning of Life 61 (John W. Doberstein trans. 1962); see also David M. Smolin, A House Divided? Anabaptist and Lutheran Perspectives on the Sword, 47 J. Legal Educ. 28, 29-31 (1997). There is fruitful disagreement between Christian theologians who regard the legal enterprise as alien (although not always hostile) to their communal loyalties, and those who regard the legal enterprise as capable of significant change - between, that is, the theology of the believers' church, the descendants of the sixteenth century Anabaptists, and both Marxist Christian theory and the theology of liberation. John Howard Yoder focused the disagreement on the primordial creation (or calling) of a believing community: The form of liberation in the biblical witness . . . the creation of a confessing community which is viable without or against the force of the state, and does not glorify that power structure even by the effort to topple it. The content of liberation in the biblical witness is not the 'nation-state' or the 'class-state' brotherhood engineered after the take-over but the covenantal peoplehood already existing because God has given it, and sure of its future because of the Name ('identity') of God, not because of a coming campaign. . . . [P]ilgrim peoplehood is projected by the Bible as the shape of salvation in any age. John Howard Yoder, Liberating Comes First: Exodus Precedes Sinai 9-10 (1972).
15. The late Lutheran theologian Helmut Thielicke implied this as the politics of the "magisterial" Reformation, and, in retrospect, had what I take to be mainline Lutheran doubts about it: "Perhaps, as we think back on the past millennium, we never wanted anything like a Christian culture and Christian states in which everybody was automatically dumped into the big sack of Christendom and included as a matter of course among the possessors of baptismal certificates simply by being born and by the operation of ecclesiastical custom, even though they had no personal relationship whatever to Jesus of Nazareth. And perhaps we owe it to the goodness of God that all this crumbled away in our hands and continues to do so." Christ and the Meaning of Life 61 (John W. Doberstein trans. 1962); see also David M. Smolin, A House Divided? Anabaptist and Lutheran Perspectives on the Sword, 47 J. Legal Educ. 28, 29-31 (1997). There is fruitful disagreement between Christian theologians who regard the legal enterprise as alien (although not always hostile) to their communal loyalties, and those who regard the legal enterprise as capable of significant change - between, that is, the theology of the believers' church, the descendants of the sixteenth century Anabaptists, and both Marxist Christian theory and the theology of liberation. John Howard Yoder focused the disagreement on the primordial creation (or calling) of a believing community: The form of liberation in the biblical witness . . . the creation of a confessing community which is viable without or against the force of the state, and does not glorify that power structure even by the effort to topple it. The content of liberation in the biblical witness is not the 'nation-state' or the 'class-state' brotherhood engineered after the take-over but the covenantal peoplehood already existing because God has given it, and sure of its future because of the Name ('identity') of God, not because of a coming campaign. . . . [P]ilgrim peoplehood is projected by the Bible as the shape of salvation in any age. John Howard Yoder, Liberating Comes First: Exodus Precedes Sinai 9-10 (1972).
16. Estep, supra note 3, at 47.
17. Smolin, supra note 6, at 31-32, describes some of it. My friend and teacher, Robert E. Rodes, Jr., points out that some of these persecutors probably regarded the Anabaptists as child abusers: The fate of an infant who died in infancy, unbaptized, was limbo in Catholic theology, hell in Protestant theology. But Rodes is enough of a liberation theologian to see that rationale as supportive of an ideology of oppression. The Anabaptists at the time also saw it that way. Melchior Rinck, in a letter written circa 1530, said, "[B]oth the work-saints [Roman Catholics] and the scribes [magisterial reformers] strive so mightily concerning infant baptism . . . not . . . out of love for the children, for they are precisely the ones who consume the bread that belongs to the children and to the poor orphans, and fatten themselves on it . . . . " Translated and quoted in John Howard Yoder, The Legacy of Michael Sattler 136 (1973).
18. Smolin, supra note 6, at 31-32, describes some of it. My friend and teacher, Robert E. Rodes, Jr., points out that some of these persecutors probably regarded the Anabaptists as child abusers: The fate of an infant who died in infancy, unbaptized, was limbo in Catholic theology, hell in Protestant theology. But Rodes is enough of a liberation theologian to see that rationale as supportive of an ideology of oppression. The Anabaptists at the time also saw it that way. Melchior Rinck, in a letter written circa 1530, said, "[B]oth the work-saints [Roman Catholics] and the scribes [magisterial reformers] strive so mightily concerning infant baptism . . . not . . . out of love for the children, for they are precisely the ones who consume the bread that belongs to the children and to the poor orphans, and fatten themselves on it . . . . " Translated and quoted in John Howard Yoder, The Legacy of Michael Sattler 136 (1973).
19. Professor Eugene W. Harper of the Fordham University Law Faculty pointed out that Dr. King invoked an argument against unjust law that resembled that of St. Thomas Aquinas, which is to say that Dr. King's Christian witness was not Anabaptist in the sense I am describing here. That would be true as well, I suppose, of Gandhi. I invoke both as analogues, to make the argument that their exercise of faith tended to subvert legal order. It would be interesting to explore the differences they would have had with the Anabaptists on the moral authority of legal order, but that is not my purpose here. It makes my point to say that the tendency of religious witness in all three cases - the effect of it - the way it was seen by the managers of the law - was subversion of legal order. Religious witness subverts not only legal order, but also the order of organized religion to the extent organized religion supports legal order. A recent minor theme in the resurgence of interest in religion in America has been religious judgment on the Roman Catholic Church's failure to maintain a clear witness against social injustice. Such a passionate servant of fairness as Len Deighton's Bernie Samson is thus moved to say, "[E]very dedicated Catholic I know says he's lapsed." Len Deighton, Hope 258 (1995). Recent instances that echo for me the ironic observation of my late friend Bill Lewers: Rembert G. Weakland, "Economic Justice for All" Ten Years Later, America, Mar. 22, 1997, at 8; Denis Murphy, Wanted: Both Democracy and Theology of Liberation, America, Mar. 29, 1997, at 4; Moises Sandoval, An "Old Prophet" Rattles the Status Quo, Nat'l Cath. Rep., Dec. 27, 1996, at 18 (referring to Archbishop Patricio Flores). It is possible to lay the neglect of social justice among Christians at the door of academic theology. Luke Timothy Johnson, a respected academic theologian, thus speaks of his discipline as being "less about God than about the politics of identity or linguistic halls of mirrors. . . . Even those who seek to retrieve the theological enterprise find themselves in the infinite regress apparently demanded by academic rigor." Luke Timonthy Johnson, Explaining God Away, Commonweal, Dec. 20, 1996, at 18. (Thank God that no such observation could be made about legal academics.) My friend and teacher John Howard Yoder would, I think, join Professor Johnson more as an ally than a critic. See, for examples of Yoder's steady argument, within academic theology, for what Johnson seems to find missing, The Christian Witness to the State (1964), and Nevertheless: The Varieties of Religious Pacifism (1971). Yoder's most systematic and relatively popular works are The Politics of Jesus (1972) (2d ed. 1994), and The Priestly Kingdom (1984).
20. Professor Eugene W. Harper of the Fordham University Law Faculty pointed out that Dr. King invoked an argument against unjust law that resembled that of St. Thomas Aquinas, which is to say that Dr. King's Christian witness was not Anabaptist in the sense I am describing here. That would be true as well, I suppose, of Gandhi. I invoke both as analogues, to make the argument that their exercise of faith tended to subvert legal order. It would be interesting to explore the differences they would have had with the Anabaptists on the moral authority of legal order, but that is not my purpose here. It makes my point to say that the tendency of religious witness in all three cases - the effect of it - the way it was seen by the managers of the law - was subversion of legal order. Religious witness subverts not only legal order, but also the order of organized religion to the extent organized religion supports legal order. A recent minor theme in the resurgence of interest in religion in America has been religious judgment on the Roman Catholic Church's failure to maintain a clear witness against social injustice. Such a passionate servant of fairness as Len Deighton's Bernie Samson is thus moved to say, "[E]very dedicated Catholic I know says he's lapsed." Len Deighton, Hope 258 (1995). Recent instances that echo for me the ironic observation of my late friend Bill Lewers: Rembert G. Weakland, "Economic Justice for All" Ten Years Later, America, Mar. 22, 1997, at 8; Denis Murphy, Wanted: Both Democracy and Theology of Liberation, America, Mar. 29, 1997, at 4; Moises Sandoval, An "Old Prophet" Rattles the Status Quo, Nat'l Cath. Rep., Dec. 27, 1996, at 18 (referring to Archbishop Patricio Flores). It is possible to lay the neglect of social justice among Christians at the door of academic theology. Luke Timothy Johnson, a respected academic theologian, thus speaks of his discipline as being "less about God than about the politics of identity or linguistic halls of mirrors. . . . Even those who seek to retrieve the theological enterprise find themselves in the infinite regress apparently demanded by academic rigor." Luke Timonthy Johnson, Explaining God Away, Commonweal, Dec. 20, 1996, at 18. (Thank God that no such observation could be made about legal academics.) My friend and teacher John Howard Yoder would, I think, join Professor Johnson more as an ally than a critic. See, for examples of Yoder's steady argument, within academic theology, for what Johnson seems to find missing, The Christian Witness to the State (1964), and Nevertheless: The Varieties of Religious Pacifism (1971). Yoder's most systematic and relatively popular works are The Politics of Jesus (1972) (2d ed. 1994), and The Priestly Kingdom (1984).
21. Professor Eugene W. Harper of the Fordham University Law Faculty pointed out that Dr. King invoked an argument against unjust law that resembled that of St. Thomas Aquinas, which is to say that Dr. King's Christian witness was not Anabaptist in the sense I am describing here. That would be true as well, I suppose, of Gandhi. I invoke both as analogues, to make the argument that their exercise of faith tended to subvert legal order. It would be interesting to explore the differences they would have had with the Anabaptists on the moral authority of legal order, but that is not my purpose here. It makes my point to say that the tendency of religious witness in all three cases - the effect of it - the way it was seen by the managers of the law - was subversion of legal order. Religious witness subverts not only legal order, but also the order of organized religion to the extent organized religion supports legal order. A recent minor theme in the resurgence of interest in religion in America has been religious judgment on the Roman Catholic Church's failure to maintain a clear witness against social injustice. Such a passionate servant of fairness as Len Deighton's Bernie Samson is thus moved to say, "[E]very dedicated Catholic I know says he's lapsed." Len Deighton, Hope 258 (1995). Recent instances that echo for me the ironic observation of my late friend Bill Lewers: Rembert G. Weakland, "Economic Justice for All" Ten Years Later, America, Mar. 22, 1997, at 8; Denis Murphy, Wanted: Both Democracy and Theology of Liberation, America, Mar. 29, 1997, at 4; Moises Sandoval, An "Old Prophet" Rattles the Status Quo, Nat'l Cath. Rep., Dec. 27, 1996, at 18 (referring to Archbishop Patricio Flores). It is possible to lay the neglect of social justice among Christians at the door of academic theology. Luke Timothy Johnson, a respected academic theologian, thus speaks of his discipline as being "less about God than about the politics of identity or linguistic halls of mirrors. . . . Even those who seek to retrieve the theological enterprise find themselves in the infinite regress apparently demanded by academic rigor." Luke Timonthy Johnson, Explaining God Away, Commonweal, Dec. 20, 1996, at 18. (Thank God that no such observation could be made about legal academics.) My friend and teacher John Howard Yoder would, I think, join Professor Johnson more as an ally than a critic. See, for examples of Yoder's steady argument, within academic theology, for what Johnson seems to find missing, The Christian Witness to the State (1964), and Nevertheless: The Varieties of Religious Pacifism (1971). Yoder's most systematic and relatively popular works are The Politics of Jesus (1972) (2d ed. 1994), and The Priestly Kingdom (1984).
22. Professor Eugene W. Harper of the Fordham University Law Faculty pointed out that Dr. King invoked an argument against unjust law that resembled that of St. Thomas Aquinas, which is to say that Dr. King's Christian witness was not Anabaptist in the sense I am describing here. That would be true as well, I suppose, of Gandhi. I invoke both as analogues, to make the argument that their exercise of faith tended to subvert legal order. It would be interesting to explore the differences they would have had with the Anabaptists on the moral authority of legal order, but that is not my purpose here. It makes my point to say that the tendency of religious witness in all three cases - the effect of it - the way it was seen by the managers of the law - was subversion of legal order. Religious witness subverts not only legal order, but also the order of organized religion to the extent organized religion supports legal order. A recent minor theme in the resurgence of interest in religion in America has been religious judgment on the Roman Catholic Church's failure to maintain a clear witness against social injustice. Such a passionate servant of fairness as Len Deighton's Bernie Samson is thus moved to say, "[E]very dedicated Catholic I know says he's lapsed." Len Deighton, Hope 258 (1995). Recent instances that echo for me the ironic observation of my late friend Bill Lewers: Rembert G. Weakland, "Economic Justice for All" Ten Years Later, America, Mar. 22, 1997, at 8; Denis Murphy, Wanted: Both Democracy and Theology of Liberation, America, Mar. 29, 1997, at 4; Moises Sandoval, An "Old Prophet" Rattles the Status Quo, Nat'l Cath. Rep., Dec. 27, 1996, at 18 (referring to Archbishop Patricio Flores). It is possible to lay the neglect of social justice among Christians at the door of academic theology. Luke Timothy Johnson, a respected academic theologian, thus speaks of his discipline as being "less about God than about the politics of identity or linguistic halls of mirrors. . . . Even those who seek to retrieve the theological enterprise find themselves in the infinite regress apparently demanded by academic rigor." Luke Timonthy Johnson, Explaining God Away, Commonweal, Dec. 20, 1996, at 18. (Thank God that no such observation could be made about legal academics.) My friend and teacher John Howard Yoder would, I think, join Professor Johnson more as an ally than a critic. See, for examples of Yoder's steady argument, within academic theology, for what Johnson seems to find missing, The Christian Witness to the State (1964), and Nevertheless: The Varieties of Religious Pacifism (1971). Yoder's most systematic and relatively popular works are The Politics of Jesus (1972) (2d ed. 1994), and The Priestly Kingdom (1984).
23. Professor Eugene W. Harper of the Fordham University Law Faculty pointed out that Dr. King invoked an argument against unjust law that resembled that of St. Thomas Aquinas, which is to say that Dr. King's Christian witness was not Anabaptist in the sense I am describing here. That would be true as well, I suppose, of Gandhi. I invoke both as analogues, to make the argument that their exercise of faith tended to subvert legal order. It would be interesting to explore the differences they would have had with the Anabaptists on the moral authority of legal order, but that is not my purpose here. It makes my point to say that the tendency of religious witness in all three cases - the effect of it - the way it was seen by the managers of the law - was subversion of legal order. Religious witness subverts not only legal order, but also the order of organized religion to the extent organized religion supports legal order. A recent minor theme in the resurgence of interest in religion in America has been religious judgment on the Roman Catholic Church's failure to maintain a clear witness against social injustice. Such a passionate servant of fairness as Len Deighton's Bernie Samson is thus moved to say, "[E]very dedicated Catholic I know says he's lapsed." Len Deighton, Hope 258 (1995). Recent instances that echo for me the ironic observation of my late friend Bill Lewers: Rembert G. Weakland, "Economic Justice for All" Ten Years Later, America, Mar. 22, 1997, at 8; Denis Murphy, Wanted: Both Democracy and Theology of Liberation, America, Mar. 29, 1997, at 4; Moises Sandoval, An "Old Prophet" Rattles the Status Quo, Nat'l Cath. Rep., Dec. 27, 1996, at 18 (referring to Archbishop Patricio Flores). It is possible to lay the neglect of social justice among Christians at the door of academic theology. Luke Timothy Johnson, a respected academic theologian, thus speaks of his discipline as being "less about God than about the politics of identity or linguistic halls of mirrors. . . . Even those who seek to retrieve the theological enterprise find themselves in the infinite regress apparently demanded by academic rigor." Luke Timonthy Johnson, Explaining God Away, Commonweal, Dec. 20, 1996, at 18. (Thank God that no such observation could be made about legal academics.) My friend and teacher John Howard Yoder would, I think, join Professor Johnson more as an ally than a critic. See, for examples of Yoder's steady argument, within academic theology, for what Johnson seems to find missing, The Christian Witness to the State (1964), and Nevertheless: The Varieties of Religious Pacifism (1971). Yoder's most systematic and relatively popular works are The Politics of Jesus (1972) (2d ed. 1994), and The Priestly Kingdom (1984).
24. Professor Eugene W. Harper of the Fordham University Law Faculty pointed out that Dr. King invoked an argument against unjust law that resembled that of St. Thomas Aquinas, which is to say that Dr. King's Christian witness was not Anabaptist in the sense I am describing here. That would be true as well, I suppose, of Gandhi. I invoke both as analogues, to make the argument that their exercise of faith tended to subvert legal order. It would be interesting to explore the differences they would have had with the Anabaptists on the moral authority of legal order, but that is not my purpose here. It makes my point to say that the tendency of religious witness in all three cases - the effect of it - the way it was seen by the managers of the law - was subversion of legal order. Religious witness subverts not only legal order, but also the order of organized religion to the extent organized religion supports legal order. A recent minor theme in the resurgence of interest in religion in America has been religious judgment on the Roman Catholic Church's failure to maintain a clear witness against social injustice. Such a passionate servant of fairness as Len Deighton's Bernie Samson is thus moved to say, "[E]very dedicated Catholic I know says he's lapsed." Len Deighton, Hope 258 (1995). Recent instances that echo for me the ironic observation of my late friend Bill Lewers: Rembert G. Weakland, "Economic Justice for All" Ten Years Later, America, Mar. 22, 1997, at 8; Denis Murphy, Wanted: Both Democracy and Theology of Liberation, America, Mar. 29, 1997, at 4; Moises Sandoval, An "Old Prophet" Rattles the Status Quo, Nat'l Cath. Rep., Dec. 27, 1996, at 18 (referring to Archbishop Patricio Flores). It is possible to lay the neglect of social justice among Christians at the door of academic theology. Luke Timothy Johnson, a respected academic theologian, thus speaks of his discipline as being "less about God than about the politics of identity or linguistic halls of mirrors. . . . Even those who seek to retrieve the theological enterprise find themselves in the infinite regress apparently demanded by academic rigor." Luke Timonthy Johnson, Explaining God Away, Commonweal, Dec. 20, 1996, at 18. (Thank God that no such observation could be made about legal academics.) My friend and teacher John Howard Yoder would, I think, join Professor Johnson more as an ally than a critic. See, for examples of Yoder's steady argument, within academic theology, for what Johnson seems to find missing, The Christian Witness to the State (1964), and Nevertheless: The Varieties of Religious Pacifism (1971). Yoder's most systematic and relatively popular works are The Politics of Jesus (1972) (2d ed. 1994), and The Priestly Kingdom (1984).
25. Professor Eugene W. Harper of the Fordham University Law Faculty pointed out that Dr. King invoked an argument against unjust law that resembled that of St. Thomas Aquinas, which is to say that Dr. King's Christian witness was not Anabaptist in the sense I am describing here. That would be true as well, I suppose, of Gandhi. I invoke both as analogues, to make the argument that their exercise of faith tended to subvert legal order. It would be interesting to explore the differences they would have had with the Anabaptists on the moral authority of legal order, but that is not my purpose here. It makes my point to say that the tendency of religious witness in all three cases - the effect of it - the way it was seen by the managers of the law - was subversion of legal order. Religious witness subverts not only legal order, but also the order of organized religion to the extent organized religion supports legal order. A recent minor theme in the resurgence of interest in religion in America has been religious judgment on the Roman Catholic Church's failure to maintain a clear witness against social injustice. Such a passionate servant of fairness as Len Deighton's Bernie Samson is thus moved to say, "[E]very dedicated Catholic I know says he's lapsed." Len Deighton, Hope 258 (1995). Recent instances that echo for me the ironic observation of my late friend Bill Lewers: Rembert G. Weakland, "Economic Justice for All" Ten Years Later, America, Mar. 22, 1997, at 8; Denis Murphy, Wanted: Both Democracy and Theology of Liberation, America, Mar. 29, 1997, at 4; Moises Sandoval, An "Old Prophet" Rattles the Status Quo, Nat'l Cath. Rep., Dec. 27, 1996, at 18 (referring to Archbishop Patricio Flores). It is possible to lay the neglect of social justice among Christians at the door of academic theology. Luke Timothy Johnson, a respected academic theologian, thus speaks of his discipline as being "less about God than about the politics of identity or linguistic halls of mirrors. . . . Even those who seek to retrieve the theological enterprise find themselves in the infinite regress apparently demanded by academic rigor." Luke Timonthy Johnson, Explaining God Away, Commonweal, Dec. 20, 1996, at 18. (Thank God that no such observation could be made about legal academics.) My friend and teacher John Howard Yoder would, I think, join Professor Johnson more as an ally than a critic. See, for examples of Yoder's steady argument, within academic theology, for what Johnson seems to find missing, The Christian Witness to the State (1964), and Nevertheless: The Varieties of Religious Pacifism (1971). Yoder's most systematic and relatively popular works are The Politics of Jesus (1972) (2d ed. 1994), and The Priestly Kingdom (1984).
26. Professor Eugene W. Harper of the Fordham University Law Faculty pointed out that Dr. King invoked an argument against unjust law that resembled that of St. Thomas Aquinas, which is to say that Dr. King's Christian witness was not Anabaptist in the sense I am describing here. That would be true as well, I suppose, of Gandhi. I invoke both as analogues, to make the argument that their exercise of faith tended to subvert legal order. It would be interesting to explore the differences they would have had with the Anabaptists on the moral authority of legal order, but that is not my purpose here. It makes my point to say that the tendency of religious witness in all three cases - the effect of it - the way it was seen by the managers of the law - was subversion of legal order. Religious witness subverts not only legal order, but also the order of organized religion to the extent organized religion supports legal order. A recent minor theme in the resurgence of interest in religion in America has been religious judgment on the Roman Catholic Church's failure to maintain a clear witness against social injustice. Such a passionate servant of fairness as Len Deighton's Bernie Samson is thus moved to say, "[E]very dedicated Catholic I know says he's lapsed." Len Deighton, Hope 258 (1995). Recent instances that echo for me the ironic observation of my late friend Bill Lewers: Rembert G. Weakland, "Economic Justice for All" Ten Years Later, America, Mar. 22, 1997, at 8; Denis Murphy, Wanted: Both Democracy and Theology of Liberation, America, Mar. 29, 1997, at 4; Moises Sandoval, An "Old Prophet" Rattles the Status Quo, Nat'l Cath. Rep., Dec. 27, 1996, at 18 (referring to Archbishop Patricio Flores). It is possible to lay the neglect of social justice among Christians at the door of academic theology. Luke Timothy Johnson, a respected academic theologian, thus speaks of his discipline as being "less about God than about the politics of identity or linguistic halls of mirrors. . . . Even those who seek to retrieve the theological enterprise find themselves in the infinite regress apparently demanded by academic rigor." Luke Timonthy Johnson, Explaining God Away, Commonweal, Dec. 20, 1996, at 18. (Thank God that no such observation could be made about legal academics.) My friend and teacher John Howard Yoder would, I think, join Professor Johnson more as an ally than a critic. See, for examples of Yoder's steady argument, within academic theology, for what Johnson seems to find missing, The Christian Witness to the State (1964), and Nevertheless: The Varieties of Religious Pacifism (1971). Yoder's most systematic and relatively popular works are The Politics of Jesus (1972) (2d ed. 1994), and The Priestly Kingdom (1984).
27. Professor Eugene W. Harper of the Fordham University Law Faculty pointed out that Dr. King invoked an argument against unjust law that resembled that of St. Thomas Aquinas, which is to say that Dr. King's Christian witness was not Anabaptist in the sense I am describing here. That would be true as well, I suppose, of Gandhi. I invoke both as analogues, to make the argument that their exercise of faith tended to subvert legal order. It would be interesting to explore the differences they would have had with the Anabaptists on the moral authority of legal order, but that is not my purpose here. It makes my point to say that the tendency of religious witness in all three cases - the effect of it - the way it was seen by the managers of the law - was subversion of legal order. Religious witness subverts not only legal order, but also the order of organized religion to the extent organized religion supports legal order. A recent minor theme in the resurgence of interest in religion in America has been religious judgment on the Roman Catholic Church's failure to maintain a clear witness against social injustice. Such a passionate servant of fairness as Len Deighton's Bernie Samson is thus moved to say, "[E]very dedicated Catholic I know says he's lapsed." Len Deighton, Hope 258 (1995). Recent instances that echo for me the ironic observation of my late friend Bill Lewers: Rembert G. Weakland, "Economic Justice for All" Ten Years Later, America, Mar. 22, 1997, at 8; Denis Murphy, Wanted: Both Democracy and Theology of Liberation, America, Mar. 29, 1997, at 4; Moises Sandoval, An "Old Prophet" Rattles the Status Quo, Nat'l Cath. Rep., Dec. 27, 1996, at 18 (referring to Archbishop Patricio Flores). It is possible to lay the neglect of social justice among Christians at the door of academic theology. Luke Timothy Johnson, a respected academic theologian, thus speaks of his discipline as being "less about God than about the politics of identity or linguistic halls of mirrors. . . . Even those who seek to retrieve the theological enterprise find themselves in the infinite regress apparently demanded by academic rigor." Luke Timonthy Johnson, Explaining God Away, Commonweal, Dec. 20, 1996, at 18. (Thank God that no such observation could be made about legal academics.) My friend and teacher John Howard Yoder would, I think, join Professor Johnson more as an ally than a critic. See, for examples of Yoder's steady argument, within academic theology, for what Johnson seems to find missing, The Christian Witness to the State (1964), and Nevertheless: The Varieties of Religious Pacifism (1971). Yoder's most systematic and relatively popular works are The Politics of Jesus (1972) (2d ed. 1994), and The Priestly Kingdom (1984).
28. Her believers' church does not suppose, to quote Robert E. Rodes, Jr., that it is "an . . . exclusive location of liberating events." Robert E. Rodes, Jr., Law and Liberation 4 (1986). Rosemary Radford Ruether, suggests that "seeking the peace of the city," even as a lawyer, is not limited to the inoffensive but can be prophetic - both in its confrontation of the law and in its confrontation of modern organized religion: The prophetic paradigm not only criticized unjust and oppressive power but also criticized the use of religion to sacralize such oppressive power. This shift in the social location of religion is the root of the Marxist critique of religion. Both the prophets and the gospels decry the use of law or ritual . . . without regard to social concern for justice and mercy. . . . It is a self-criticism that aims at the renewal of the ethical content of religious practice. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Feminist Spirituality and Historical Religion, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Mar. 1986, at 5, The mainline church preserves a theology (an ecclesiology) that limits what it is willing to do, so that "seeking the peace of the city" is not in theory (whatever it is in practice in modern nation-states) sub-cultural. In the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, for example: "[E]arthly progress must be carefully distinguished from the growth of Christ's kingdom, to the extent that the former can contribute to the better ordering of human society, it is of vital concern to the Kingdom of God." Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, at para. 39 (1965). My colleague Brian E. Daley, S.J., speaks thus of Christians "bringing justice, mutual reverence, and peaceful unity to the world." Brian E. Daley, Judgment Day or Jubilee? Approaching the Millennium, America, May 31, 1997, at 20. He concludes a careful discussion of Jewish and Christian apocalypticism: "Jesus is struggling with us, promising to come again in glory, but calling us to share now in his labor of loving and healing this fragile and sinful world." Id. at 21. The critical question, then, as I see it, and as I think my friend the Mennonite legal-aid lawyer would, is the forum and the process for deciding what Christians are called to do at particular times and places in a nation's history.
29. Her believers' church does not suppose, to quote Robert E. Rodes, Jr., that it is "an . . . exclusive location of liberating events." Robert E. Rodes, Jr., Law and Liberation 4 (1986). Rosemary Radford Ruether, suggests that "seeking the peace of the city," even as a lawyer, is not limited to the inoffensive but can be prophetic - both in its confrontation of the law and in its confrontation of modern organized religion: The prophetic paradigm not only criticized unjust and oppressive power but also criticized the use of religion to sacralize such oppressive power. This shift in the social location of religion is the root of the Marxist critique of religion. Both the prophets and the gospels decry the use of law or ritual . . . without regard to social concern for justice and mercy. . . . It is a self-criticism that aims at the renewal of the ethical content of religious practice. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Feminist Spirituality and Historical Religion, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Mar. 1986, at 5, The mainline church preserves a theology (an ecclesiology) that limits what it is willing to do, so that "seeking the peace of the city" is not in theory (whatever it is in practice in modern nation-states) sub-cultural. In the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, for example: "[E]arthly progress must be carefully distinguished from the growth of Christ's kingdom, to the extent that the former can contribute to the better ordering of human society, it is of vital concern to the Kingdom of God." Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, at para. 39 (1965). My colleague Brian E. Daley, S.J., speaks thus of Christians "bringing justice, mutual reverence, and peaceful unity to the world." Brian E. Daley, Judgment Day or Jubilee? Approaching the Millennium, America, May 31, 1997, at 20. He concludes a careful discussion of Jewish and Christian apocalypticism: "Jesus is struggling with us, promising to come again in glory, but calling us to share now in his labor of loving and healing this fragile and sinful world." Id. at 21. The critical question, then, as I see it, and as I think my friend the Mennonite legal-aid lawyer would, is the forum and the process for deciding what Christians are called to do at particular times and places in a nation's history.
30. Her believers' church does not suppose, to quote Robert E. Rodes, Jr., that it is "an . . . exclusive location of liberating events." Robert E. Rodes, Jr., Law and Liberation 4 (1986). Rosemary Radford Ruether, suggests that "seeking the peace of the city," even as a lawyer, is not limited to the inoffensive but can be prophetic - both in its confrontation of the law and in its confrontation of modern organized religion: The prophetic paradigm not only criticized unjust and oppressive power but also criticized the use of religion to sacralize such oppressive power. This shift in the social location of religion is the root of the Marxist critique of religion. Both the prophets and the gospels decry the use of law or ritual . . . without regard to social concern for justice and mercy. . . . It is a self-criticism that aims at the renewal of the ethical content of religious practice. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Feminist Spirituality and Historical Religion, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Mar. 1986, at 5, The mainline church preserves a theology (an ecclesiology) that limits what it is willing to do, so that "seeking the peace of the city" is not in theory (whatever it is in practice in modern nation-states) sub-cultural. In the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, for example: "[E]arthly progress must be carefully distinguished from the growth of Christ's kingdom, to the extent that the former can contribute to the better ordering of human society, it is of vital concern to the Kingdom of God." Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, at para. 39 (1965). My colleague Brian E. Daley, S.J., speaks thus of Christians "bringing justice, mutual reverence, and peaceful unity to the world." Brian E. Daley, Judgment Day or Jubilee? Approaching the Millennium, America, May 31, 1997, at 20. He concludes a careful discussion of Jewish and Christian apocalypticism: "Jesus is struggling with us, promising to come again in glory, but calling us to share now in his labor of loving and healing this fragile and sinful world." Id. at 21. The critical question, then, as I see it, and as I think my friend the Mennonite legal-aid lawyer would, is the forum and the process for deciding what Christians are called to do at particular times and places in a nation's history.
31. Her believers' church does not suppose, to quote Robert E. Rodes, Jr., that it is "an . . . exclusive location of liberating events." Robert E. Rodes, Jr., Law and Liberation 4 (1986). Rosemary Radford Ruether, suggests that "seeking the peace of the city," even as a lawyer, is not limited to the inoffensive but can be prophetic - both in its confrontation of the law and in its confrontation of modern organized religion: The prophetic paradigm not only criticized unjust and oppressive power but also criticized the use of religion to sacralize such oppressive power. This shift in the social location of religion is the root of the Marxist critique of religion. Both the prophets and the gospels decry the use of law or ritual . . . without regard to social concern for justice and mercy. . . . It is a self-criticism that aims at the renewal of the ethical content of religious practice. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Feminist Spirituality and Historical Religion, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Mar. 1986, at 5, The mainline church preserves a theology (an ecclesiology) that limits what it is willing to do, so that "seeking the peace of the city" is not in theory (whatever it is in practice in modern nation-states) sub-cultural. In the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, for example: "[E]arthly progress must be carefully distinguished from the growth of Christ's kingdom, to the extent that the former can contribute to the better ordering of human society, it is of vital concern to the Kingdom of God." Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, at para. 39 (1965). My colleague Brian E. Daley, S.J., speaks thus of Christians "bringing justice, mutual reverence, and peaceful unity to the world." Brian E. Daley, Judgment Day or Jubilee? Approaching the Millennium, America, May 31, 1997, at 20. He concludes a careful discussion of Jewish and Christian apocalypticism: "Jesus is struggling with us, promising to come again in glory, but calling us to share now in his labor of loving and healing this fragile and sinful world." Id. at 21. The critical question, then, as I see it, and as I think my friend the Mennonite legal-aid lawyer would, is the forum and the process for deciding what Christians are called to do at particular times and places in a nation's history.
32. Sider, supra note 5, at 27-28. Sider identifies the prophetic witness of the believers' church, which is to be distinguished from its "sectarian" attempt to preserve its integrity within a legal order it regards as legitimate - even divinely decreed - but alien to its purposes. A secular analogue that might help illustrate the latter half of that distinction is the way women in Victorian fiction coped in unfortunate marriages. Consider, for example, a comparison of the principal female characters in George Eliot's Middlemarch: Rosamond consents to male domination and pretends in a devious way to obey her husband, but she is not subordinate. The more admirable wife in the story, Dorothea Brooke, is subordinate to her husband Causabon, and to the conventions of Victorian marriage, but retains her integrity and, within her integrity, develops the virtues subordination requires. The effect of her practice of these virtues, as it turns out, is to subvert Causabon's vain project. George Eliot, Middlemarch (Mod. Libr. ed. 1994).
33. Sider, supra note 5, at 27-28. Sider identifies the prophetic witness of the believers' church, which is to be distinguished from its "sectarian" attempt to preserve its integrity within a legal order it regards as legitimate - even divinely decreed - but alien to its purposes. A secular analogue that might help illustrate the latter half of that distinction is the way women in Victorian fiction coped in unfortunate marriages. Consider, for example, a comparison of the principal female characters in George Eliot's Middlemarch: Rosamond consents to male domination and pretends in a devious way to obey her husband, but she is not subordinate. The more admirable wife in the story, Dorothea Brooke, is subordinate to her husband Causabon, and to the conventions of Victorian marriage, but retains her integrity and, within her integrity, develops the virtues subordination requires. The effect of her practice of these virtues, as it turns out, is to subvert Causabon's vain project. George Eliot, Middlemarch (Mod. Libr. ed. 1994).
34. Lawrence Kushner, God Was in This Place & I, I Did Not Know 91-92 (1991).
35. The theological beginning of Anabaptism is probably the Schleitheim declaration of 1527; that was also a religious (ecclesiological) beginning, in that, after Schleitheim, the believers' church was openly separate - with separate congregations and separate pastors. Burkholder and Weaver fix the religious beginning 22 years earlier, on January 21, 1525. The council in Zurich had ordered the baptism of all babies within eight days of birth. The radical reformers promptly held a meeting - relatively public, apparently - at which a group of adults were, one by one, baptized. This ceremony took place in the home of Anna Mantz; her son George was the first Anabaptist martyr - killed by public authority, in her presence, shortly after and because of the baptisms. Burkholder, supra note 5, at 36, 50; Weaver, supra note 5, at 47. The radical reformers, as part of the doctrine of discipleship (following Jesus's example), taught that such suffering was a consequence of faith - even a test of it - notably because such actions as the forming of new congregations, and baptizing adults, invited the scrutiny of the law.
36. The theological beginning of Anabaptism is probably the Schleitheim declaration of 1527; that was also a religious (ecclesiological) beginning, in that, after Schleitheim, the believers' church was openly separate - with separate congregations and separate pastors. Burkholder and Weaver fix the religious beginning 22 years earlier, on January 21, 1525. The council in Zurich had ordered the baptism of all babies within eight days of birth. The radical reformers promptly held a meeting - relatively public, apparently - at which a group of adults were, one by one, baptized. This ceremony took place in the home of Anna Mantz; her son George was the first Anabaptist martyr - killed by public authority, in her presence, shortly after and because of the baptisms. Burkholder, supra note 5, at 36, 50; Weaver, supra note 5, at 47. The radical reformers, as part of the doctrine of discipleship (following Jesus's example), taught that such suffering was a consequence of faith - even a test of it - notably because such actions as the forming of new congregations, and baptizing adults, invited the scrutiny of the law.
37. David R. Blumenthal, God at the Center 19 (1988).
38. Id.
39. John Howard Yoder, Ethics and Eschatology, 6 Ex Auditu 120, 123 (1990). A similar argument, from a somewhat more mainline Protestant perspective, is in James Wm. McClendon, Jr., Ethics: Systematic Theology, ch. 8 (1986).
40. John Howard Yoder, Ethics and Eschatology, 6 Ex Auditu 120, 123 (1990). A similar argument, from a somewhat more mainline Protestant perspective, is in James Wm. McClendon, Jr., Ethics: Systematic Theology, ch. 8 (1986).
41. Walter Brueggemann, Psalms 9-10: A Counter to Conventional Social Reality, in The Psalms: The Life of Faith 227, nn.21 & 22 (Patrick D. Miller ed., 1995). I mention lawyers here not as an aside but as a clear example of the ruling class in bureaucratic capitalism. The organized American Bar has, of late, come to announce an ideology of "professionalism" as its way to keep American lawyers from not being accountable to the wider society: Professionalism, to the extent it has meaning beyond that claim, is defended, as are other elements of the bureaucratic ruling class, by the appeal to expertise. "Experts are addicts," though, as LeCarre's Gerald Westerby put it, "They are servants of whatever system hires them. They perpetuate it. When we are tortured, we shall be tortured by experts. When we are hanged, experts will hang us . . . . When the world is destroyed, it will be destroyed not by its madmen but by the sanity of its experts." John LeCarre, Russia House 207 (1989). "These are the sort of bureaucratic pen-pushers," Bernie Samson said, "who think a peace treaty is more important than a peace." Deighton, supra note 9, at 269. William May gives the point ethical focus in his Notes on the Ethics of Doctors and Lawyers (1977). My friend and teacher Bob Rodes remembers a talk at Notre Dame in which Father Gustavo Gutierrez characterized such piety as, "Our Father Who art in heaven - stay there!"
42. Walter Brueggemann, Psalms 9-10: A Counter to Conventional Social Reality, in The Psalms: The Life of Faith 227, nn.21 & 22 (Patrick D. Miller ed., 1995). I mention lawyers here not as an aside but as a clear example of the ruling class in bureaucratic capitalism. The organized American Bar has, of late, come to announce an ideology of "professionalism" as its way to keep American lawyers from not being accountable to the wider society: Professionalism, to the extent it has meaning beyond that claim, is defended, as are other elements of the bureaucratic ruling class, by the appeal to expertise. "Experts are addicts," though, as LeCarre's Gerald Westerby put it, "They are servants of whatever system hires them. They perpetuate it. When we are tortured, we shall be tortured by experts. When we are hanged, experts will hang us . . . . When the world is destroyed, it will be destroyed not by its madmen but by the sanity of its experts." John LeCarre, Russia House 207 (1989). "These are the sort of bureaucratic pen-pushers," Bernie Samson said, "who think a peace treaty is more important than a peace." Deighton, supra note 9, at 269. William May gives the point ethical focus in his Notes on the Ethics of Doctors and Lawyers (1977). My friend and teacher Bob Rodes remembers a talk at Notre Dame in which Father Gustavo Gutierrez characterized such piety as, "Our Father Who art in heaven - stay there!"
43. Walter Brueggemann, Psalms 9-10: A Counter to Conventional Social Reality, in The Psalms: The Life of Faith 227, nn.21 & 22 (Patrick D. Miller ed., 1995). I mention lawyers here not as an aside but as a clear example of the ruling class in bureaucratic capitalism. The organized American Bar has, of late, come to announce an ideology of "professionalism" as its way to keep American lawyers from not being accountable to the wider society: Professionalism, to the extent it has meaning beyond that claim, is defended, as are other elements of the bureaucratic ruling class, by the appeal to expertise. "Experts are addicts," though, as LeCarre's Gerald Westerby put it, "They are servants of whatever system hires them. They perpetuate it. When we are tortured, we shall be tortured by experts. When we are hanged, experts will hang us . . . . When the world is destroyed, it will be destroyed not by its madmen but by the sanity of its experts." John LeCarre, Russia House 207 (1989). "These are the sort of bureaucratic pen-pushers," Bernie Samson said, "who think a peace treaty is more important than a peace." Deighton, supra note 9, at 269. William May gives the point ethical focus in his Notes on the Ethics of Doctors and Lawyers (1977). My friend and teacher Bob Rodes remembers a talk at Notre Dame in which Father Gustavo Gutierrez characterized such piety as, "Our Father Who art in heaven - stay there!"
44. Id.
45. Justo L. Gonzalez, Faith and Wealth 230 (1990). have lately undertaken to represent debtors and tenants in the systems American law maintains for summary eviction and the garnishment of the wages of the working poor. I have learned not to doubt the contemporary force of Gonzalez's characterization. It is to the advantage of the ruling class to create the principle that people are born into a legal order as well as into a culture, even though, in fact: The "state" of the jurists is linked, despite its "ideological nature," to an objective reality, just as the most fantastic dream is still based on reality. . . . [The ruling class] has never . . . lost sight of the fact that class society is . . . the battlefield of a bitter class war, where the machinery of state represents a very powerful weapon. On this battlefield, relations do not appear to be in the least . . . a minimal limitation of the freedom of the personality indispensable to human coexistence. Evgeny B. Pashukanis, Law and Marxism: A General Theory 148-50 (1929) (Chris Arthur ed., Barbara Einhorn trans., Pluto Press 1989); see also Catharine A. MacKinnon, "Freedom from Unreal Loyalties": On Fidelity in Constitutional Interpretation, 65 Fordham L. Rev. 1773 (1997) (arguing that fidelity to American constitutional law has meaning only when such an assumption is examined and in some real sense found to be valid).
46. Justo L. Gonzalez, Faith and Wealth 230 (1990). have lately undertaken to represent debtors and tenants in the systems American law maintains for summary eviction and the garnishment of the wages of the working poor. I have learned not to doubt the contemporary force of Gonzalez's characterization. It is to the advantage of the ruling class to create the principle that people are born into a legal order as well as into a culture, even though, in fact: The "state" of the jurists is linked, despite its "ideological nature," to an objective reality, just as the most fantastic dream is still based on reality. . . . [The ruling class] has never . . . lost sight of the fact that class society is . . . the battlefield of a bitter class war, where the machinery of state represents a very powerful weapon. On this battlefield, relations do not appear to be in the least . . . a minimal limitation of the freedom of the personality indispensable to human coexistence. Evgeny B. Pashukanis, Law and Marxism: A General Theory 148-50 (1929) (Chris Arthur ed., Barbara Einhorn trans., Pluto Press 1989); see also Catharine A. MacKinnon, "Freedom from Unreal Loyalties": On Fidelity in Constitutional Interpretation, 65 Fordham L. Rev. 1773 (1997) (arguing that fidelity to American constitutional law has meaning only when such an assumption is examined and in some real sense found to be valid).
47. Justo L. Gonzalez, Faith and Wealth 230 (1990). have lately undertaken to represent debtors and tenants in the systems American law maintains for summary eviction and the garnishment of the wages of the working poor. I have learned not to doubt the contemporary force of Gonzalez's characterization. It is to the advantage of the ruling class to create the principle that people are born into a legal order as well as into a culture, even though, in fact: The "state" of the jurists is linked, despite its "ideological nature," to an objective reality, just as the most fantastic dream is still based on reality. . . . [The ruling class] has never . . . lost sight of the fact that class society is . . . the battlefield of a bitter class war, where the machinery of state represents a very powerful weapon. On this battlefield, relations do not appear to be in the least . . . a minimal limitation of the freedom of the personality indispensable to human coexistence. Evgeny B. Pashukanis, Law and Marxism: A General Theory 148-50 (1929) (Chris Arthur ed.,
48. Jose Porfirio Miranda, Marx and the Bible: A Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression 204-05 (John Eagleson trans., 1974). According to Miranda, the object is "to break definitively with all law and with all the human civilization that is supported by the law." Id.; see also Hugh Collins, Marxism and Law (1982); Charles C. West, Marxist Ethics, in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics 368 (James F. Childress & John Macquarrie eds., 1986).
49. Jose Porfirio Miranda, Marx and the Bible: A Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression 204-05 (John Eagleson trans., 1974). According to Miranda, the object is "to break definitively with all law and with all the human civilization that is supported by the law." Id.; see also Hugh Collins, Marxism and Law (1982); Charles C. West, Marxist Ethics, in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics 368 (James F. Childress & John Macquarrie eds., 1986).
50. Jose Porfirio Miranda, Marx and the Bible: A Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression 204-05 (John Eagleson trans., 1974). According to Miranda, the object is "to break definitively with all law and with all the human civilization that is supported by the law." Id.; see also Hugh Collins, Marxism and Law (1982); Charles C. West, Marxist Ethics, in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics 368 (James F. Childress & John Macquarrie eds., 1986).
51. Jose Porfirio Miranda, Marx and the Bible: A Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression 204-05 (John Eagleson trans., 1974). According to Miranda, the object is "to break definitively with all law and with all the human civilization that is supported by the law." Id.; see also Hugh Collins, Marxism and Law (1982); Charles C. West, Marxist Ethics, in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics 368 (James F. Childress & John Macquarrie eds., 1986).
52. Brueggemann, supra note 17, at 220.
53. See id. at 221 (interpreting the quoted verse).
54. I emphasize Marxist analysis. It is difficult for a believer to follow the other half of Marxist ideology - its teleology, its theory of how things will end up. Jews and Christians do not envision a classless social order as the goal of their faith.
55. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Genesis: The Beginning of Desire 203 (1995).
56. Albert Vorspan, Giants of Justice (1960).
57. III The Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah) 173-74 (1949).
58. Brueggemann, supra note 17, at 233 n.32.
59. Id.