On Voting As Moral Endorsement
Stephen Wolfe has an excellent piece at Mere Orthodoxy on the consequentialist theory of voting. He challenges the assumption that voting for a candidate is an endorsement of their moral life, and that it is necessarily hypocritical to tolerate immorality for a candidate in a given situation, but not another. His demonstration that the assumption of endorsement is misplaced is strong, but ultimately fails to convince in his conclusion. His principle is,
Voting for a candidate is an endorsement of the candidate’s moral life as it pertains to his external conformity to civil righteousness sufficient to qualify the candidate for civil office, qualifications judged by the likely preponderance of good or bad in the long-term consequences of his term in office determined by his political actions after mediated through the institutional constraints of his office and the checks and balances of other institutions.
The candidate’s ability to enact policies, the details of those policies, and the bearing of the candidate’s morality on those policy enactments are the only endorsement of the candidate’s moral life made by voting. Wolfe in his conclusion states, “And as I argued above, a moral standard as a first condition for vote-worthiness is arbitrary, unless it is shown to be relevant to good civil outcomes resulting from civil actions in a particular time, place, and set of circumstances mediated through particular political institutions…”
On ‘The Best Thing About’ Rock
U2 has long been my favorite band. They have been able to innovate and adapt, while consistently remaining true to their roots and maintaining friendships among the band members. Their 2014 album Songs of Innocence, despite the criticism on how it was released through iTunes, was an artistic masterpiece. It captured the grunge, punk feel of their youth even as it showed the maturation of 35 years in their reflection upon that era in Ireland.
In December the band is releasing a new album, Songs of Experience, as a companion to Songs of Innocence. While Innocence focused on their youth during the Troubles, Experience will be shaped by expressions of affection to those closest to the band. They released a single from the album early, “You’re The Best Thing About Me,” which is supposed to be representative of the album’s feel.
And it is awful.
On The Branding and Selling of Christianity
The rise of Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) in the late 1960s, and its cultural ascent in the early 1990s, represented a massive capitulation to the broader culture, though not in the ways its initial critics imagined. During the worship wars…
On Counting Baptists
In a previous post I reflected on Philip Jenkins’ work showing that Baptists are the only Christian denomination not growing globally. His followup today at the Anxious Bench deserves highlighting. If religious group X is well known in a society,…
On Baptists in the Global South
Philip Jenkins has a fascinating article at the Christian Century on Christianity in the Global South. Christians living in the Global South are the largest demographic of every Protestant tradition, except for Baptists. Part of Jenkins’ explanation points to the…
