Full Contact Christianity

I’ve been advocating for a while for an angle of approach that I refer to as theopoetics. I’ve elaborated on that in other places, so I won’t repeat it here.

I was surprised and delighted to find that my friend Bob Hitching has independently coined the term logospoetics, and is in the process of elaborating his project. There’s substantial overlap between us, and we have a lot to talk about. In the meantime, check out what he has so far.

I am responding here to a particular sort of free-market conservative. Not everybody in those circles thinks in the way I’m going to harpoon here, but a number of folks do, and I’m writing to urge them to think things through a little better. And what better way to do that than to tell a story? So pour yourself a mug of cocoa and pull up a chair. Our journey together begins in a desolate place….

Let us imagine a vast and uninhabited tract of land, backside of nowhere, inhospitable and generally of no use to anyone–the sort of place that, despite its nonexistence, is the perfect setting for a thought experiment. This particular spot is might be populated exclusively by an exceptionally perky roadrunner, an exceptionally bedraggled coyote, and a film crew that markets tales of their hijinks to young children. Now other than the film crew, this land is really of use to nobody….

…except that an enterprising young fellow on the film crew noticed signs that, were he to dig a really big hole in the ground, he might be able to pull good-sized quantities of coal out of it for the next century or so. Having recently come into a fairly large inheritance, this young fellow, one Phineas Edgerton Farrow III, proceeded to buy the land and do exactly that. The hole needed miners, and miners need houses and a bank and a grocery store and a saloon. The opportunity brought miners and their families, and families meant children, and children meant a school, complete with playground and a ball field out back, and before you know it, Phineas had a whole town going. He owned all of it, but he was a decent sort and a good judge of character, so his rents were decent and he handled things fairly enough and hired competent people who did the same. Folks were generally happy with him. 

One day, Phineas was down in the mine on an inspection tour when they had a cave-in. A canny old miner named Joseph saw it coming a few seconds before everybody else and snatched Phineas to safety. Grateful to the man who saved his life, Phineas asked Joseph how he could repay him. Joseph allowed as how a bowling alley and some parks for the kids might be a nice addition to the town. Phineas did all that and more, and a couple years later when Joseph got hurt and couldn’t work in the mine anymore, Phineas moved the old man into his own house and had his staff take care of him. Phineas and Joseph had breakfast together every morning, and supper together every night, and Joseph found ways to occupy his time umpiring baseball games for the children and such. For his part, Phineas never forgot that one of his miners had saved his life, and he continued to find ways to make life in his town a delight to live in. So the school band had new uniforms every year, and the parks were well-maintained, the school baseball team was well-coached, and like that. It cost a little more, but the price of coal was good, and he was making plenty of money. He didn’t mind using it to bless the people he cared about. In short, Phineas’ mining town was the sort of place where a union organizer couldn’t even get started. 

And so Phineas found that by the early part of middle age, he had it all, except that he’d never taken the time to find a wife to share it with. Turning his attention to the task, he shortly wooed and won a terrific young lady. A little while after the wedding, old Joseph died, and a little while after that, Phineas and his new wife had occasion to redecorate Joseph’s old room as a nursery. A few months later, a son was born: Phineas Edgerton Farrow IV, affectionately known as “Phin” to the whole town as a kid. As he grew into a young man, Phin was less affectionately known as “Sharkey” to old miners who would not have recognized a Lord of the Rings reference if someone dropped it into their story right in front of them, but who knew a predatory gleam in the eye when they saw it. 

As is the way of things, middle-aged Phineas Farrow became old Phineas Farrow and in due time both he and Mrs. Farrow died, leaving Sharkey as their sole heir, and so a Farrow arose who knew not Joseph. Young Sharkey had known for some years that his father was wasting money on unnecessary amenities and otherwise failing to maximize the profit-making potential of his holdings. Being the only employer and sole property-owner for miles in every direction, he was not slow to take advantage of his monopolies. Prices and rents rose; wages fell, and the town shortly became the sort of place where a union organizer is the kind of fellow people might want to know. 

***

There’s a certain sort of conservative who is happy to say that Sharkey may, in specific instances, be committing sins by ‘grinding the faces of the poor,’ but is content to leave that matter between him and God. This conservative fellow will maintain that Sharkey leveraging his monopoly on jobs to force his workers to accept lower wages is not, in itself, wrong, and no governmental or economic actor should be intervening in his right to do as he wills with his property. This same fellow–I am not making this up–will also say that if the miners resort to collective bargaining, they are guilty of extortion.

And so we are presented with the ridiculous spectacle of a “conservative” who would permit Sharkey to take full advantage of his virtual monopoly on jobs, but wouldn’t permit the miners to exploit their virtual monopoly on the labor supply. Why is it permissible, if regrettable, in the one case, and high rebellion against God in the other? 

But let’s go further. Suppose I’m a miner in Sharkey’s town. Everybody agrees that I’m allowed to negotiate my own wages, and withhold my labor if the pay’s not high enough to suit me, right? And we all agree that I don’t have to go about this silently — I’m allowed to chat with my next-door neighbor about my reasons for what I’m doing. I’m even allowed to suggest that he do the same. In fact, I’m allowed to have that conversation with everybody in town, am I not? And if we agree together that we’re all going to stay out of the mine until the pay’s back at acceptable levels, then…I’m a union organizer and this is a strike, and our “conservative” interlocutor is going to call me a commie. But where have I done anything that violates God’s law? 

This is a “conservatism” that–to borrow Dabney’s phrase–conserves nothing.