Yes, my title is Why Evangelicals Don't Like Austrian Political Economy But Should.
The subtitle is Observations of an Evangelical Who Worked for Both Jerry Falwell and Representative Ron Paul.
But there's another subtitle though, another possible subtitle, and that is Adventures of a Paulite in Falwell Land.
That's more catchy.
But my background really constitutes part of my observations.
So I want to go through that just for a minute. My entire nearly 30-year academic career has been
within the evangelical community. First at Grove City College, where I taught political science
for a while, and I guess the real question is why did I leave there? Does that question my sanity?
I went from Grove City College to Liberty University, which was founded by Jerry Falwell,
Well, was there quite a while and most of the time there was chairman of the government
department there at Liberty University and then just a couple of years ago went to Bryan
College in Tennessee which is also an evangelical college. I also worked for the Ron Paul campaign
on the full time staff for a few months in 2008 and some of the experiences I had with
that campaign touched the evangelical community. In fact, one of them, and I won't spend much
time on this, involved bringing Representative Paul to speak at Liberty University in front
of 10,000 people in convocation. I had left Liberty by then, so I was not employed by
them, but I was employed to bring him there, and I did that. And I think the really interesting
The funny thing about that incident, that activity, was that I found out later that the Chancellor of Liberty University, who was Jerry Falwell's son now,
Jerry Falwell had died a short time earlier, had warned the audience in an earlier convocation that we're going to have a speaker, he's a Republican,
I agree with a lot of the things he stands for, so be polite, but don't be enthusiastic.
And I observed the audience there. They were not very enthusiastic for the most part.
They were sometimes, though, and I'll touch upon that.
So my career really forms part of my observations.
My analysis here will be largely confined to that part of evangelicalism, generally known as the Christian right.
Some evangelicals might distance themselves from people like Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson or James Dobson, to name a few, and yet still fall into the category of the Christian right because of both theology and political views.
With apologies to my Roman Catholic colleagues, I also will confine my analysis to Protestant evangelicalism, which some defines the only type of evangelicalism,
And in so doing, I'll point to the obvious, namely that there are significant, if not fundamental, differences between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism,
the most important of which is their views of Scripture. That plays prominently in this analysis, by the way.
This is important because evangelicals base much of their thinking on, at least they say this, on the Bible,
not natural law, not tradition, not natural rites, not the pronouncements of the Church,
Evangelicalism would certainly be defined minimally, and most of the time in the 20th century has been defined minimally, including the pre-existing fundamentalist movement, by a few doctrines.
And these doctrines I will list as the inerrancy and authority of the scriptures, that's the paramount one, the deity of Jesus Christ, the virgin birth, substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
There are some others, but those are some of the key ones.
We'll deal with a few other doctrines that have not been so common or agreed upon among evangelicals and which actually contribute to the antithesis toward Austrianism later.
By this standard, there is a certain unity among otherwise diverse groups, such as Southern Baptists, and there are millions of them, Independent Baptists, Charismatics, Pentecostals, some Presbyterian groups, and at least one major branch of Lutherans, the Missouri Senate branch, among others.
Furthermore, there are individuals who identify with evangelicalism, scattered within the so-called mainline Protestant denominations.
though the denominations themselves would not be considered part of Evangelicalism.
But most interesting and I think important for this presentation are some of the recent,
and I do emphasize recent, non-theological, strictly speaking, non-theological concepts
which have been adopted pretty much uniformly among Evangelicals.
This I call applied Evangelicalism.
applied evangelicalism. 1. Political conservatism, somewhat vaguely defined but with some of
the gaps filled in. 2. The social issues are of paramount importance, that is the immorality
of abortion, the immorality of gay marriage and so forth. 3. Certain behaviors are immoral
and should be regulated or perhaps even outlawed by governments such as alcohol use, drug use,
4. Free market economics is good, but a caveat to that, very few evangelicals have a grasp
of what free market economics is, or about that later. In fact, a somewhat telling detail
of the evangelical invasion, if you will, of free market economics is the total lack
of any commentary on monetary policy. There's almost nothing out there by evangelicals regarding
monetary policy, which means that they either usually implicitly or explicitly accept the
existence of, if not the efficacy of, the Federal Reserve system. Now this is of course
a major deviation from Austrian economics. It's very tempting to argue that were it not
not for Ron Paul and later his 2008 presidential bid, combined with the 2008-10 recession,
or whatever you want to call it, evangelicals would still be silent, connoting either agreement
with or ignorance of, or both, the rule of the Fed.
Now there's now a greater spotlight on monetary policy, of course, and the Fed, but it remains
to be seen, and I think this is really crucial, it remains to be seen whether evangelicals
Evangelicals have a stated reverence for the Constitution of the Founding Fathers. However,
I would say that is usually combined with a fairly abysmal knowledge of what the Constitution
actually says. A problem of course shared by many Americans, but it's a distinct problem,
6. Evangelicals typically say they stand for a strong defense, but it is of course questionable
exactly what they mean by that. Sometimes it would seem that what they mean is a far-flung
military presence and fairly extensive use of military force, especially in the Middle
The United States is morally obligated to support Israel with a very recent corollary to the
War on Terror, which seems to be linked in the minds of many evangelicals anyway as much
What's to protecting Israel as avenging America and preventing Islamic terrorism sometimes
seems to me, at least my observations are, seems like a war on Islam of sorts.
Now Austrianism very quickly, most everybody in this room, maybe everybody in this room
is Austrian, so I don't think we need to do a whole lot of definition there.
I want to focus on some of the, again, some of the applied Austrianism that will contrast
The Applied Evangelicalism, limited government, free markets, sound money, non-interventionism in foreign affairs, non-regulation or non-criminalization of most if not all social behaviors such as drug use, alcohol use, tobacco use, and so forth.
Non-interventionism, by the way, in foreign affairs, just for the record, should not be equated, certainly in the minds of evangelicals it wouldn't be, with pacifism, certainly not with categorical pacifism, nor should it be seen at least by most Austrians as advocating a quote-unquote weak defense, defense being defined literally and narrowly as defending one's country from actual foreign attack, not intervening in other countries to overthrow bad regimes or establish western-style democracy.
Austrianism on the surface, it would appear at first glance that evangelicals would find
A lot of common cause with Austrian political economy, but they don't.
So the question is, why do they not?
Why do they not do this?
This is the crucial question in the paper.
I can say this, speaking as an evangelical Austrian, I can say, and I'll get into this
Protestant Christianity is quite amiable toward Austrianism if, and this is the crucial if
for evangelicals, if the data from the scriptures, which evangelicals say they follow wholeheartedly,
is considered carefully and seriously much of current evangelicalism to the contrary
notwithstanding.
There is the problem.
Now, what are the reasons that Austrians and Evangelicals don't seem to get along?
First, Austrianism is closely associated with libertarianism in the minds of Evangelicals,
and Evangelicals are deeply suspicious of what is perceived to be a libertine philosophy.
This I think is largely due to Evangelical misunderstanding.
First, there are two misunderstandings.
First, what may appear to be libertarianism may, at least in some cases, simply be federalism.
In other words, the fact that the national government is not regulating something, why?
Because the Constitution prohibits such exercise of federal power, does not necessarily mean
that a state government cannot do that, although we're not speaking about the propriety of
The Legality of Doing It
I think a lot of Evangelicals don't see this.
They want the Federal Government to do everything.
Everything that is bad.
They want to use the power of the Federal Government
to bring about what they consider to be good or right in many cases,
ignoring the ethical importance of the jurisdictional question.
But the second problem here I think is this.
Evangelicals really often fail to understand their own data from the Bible. To a very great extent, while the Bible may judge some behavior as sin, it does not necessarily also define it as a crime. That is something to be legislated or regulated. In short, not all sins are crimes in the Bible. In fact, many are not.
And by the way, I would just point you, if you're not very familiar with evangelical literature,
to an individual who has been very influential in my life, and that is Dr. Greg Bonnason, late Dr. Greg Bonnason.
He was a philosopher. His Ph.D. advisor in California was John Hospers, the famous libertarian.
And in fact, Dr. Greg Bonson once said that he considered himself to be almost a libertarian, but he was a big proponent of this biblical idea, not all sins are crimes.
And that is, I think, crucial for evangelicals to understand, but they frequently ignore it.
If they followed their own epistemology, the Scriptures, they would not ignore it.
Of course, anyone familiar with the Bible could argue that this is not always the case.
There may arguably, depending on biblical hermeneutics, be some biblically-defining
sins that might be interpreted as biblically-defining crimes.
At least some such cases there could be congruence for different reasons between the Bible and
Austrianism, such as laws about murder, kidnapping, theft.
With others, there might be controversy.
We're not going to deal here with controversial sin crimes.
There's overwhelming agreement among all ideologies in America that these are outside the boundaries of government, regardless of what the Bible might say today, so there's no use in getting into those.
Some of the sins but not crimes in the Bible, and in fact in some evangelical circles, maybe not even sins, depending on the specific behavior, might be alcohol use, drug use, pornography, tobacco use, gambling.
Abortion is a touchy one, though. Abortion is unique and, of course, is seen that way by evangelicals because of the argument that a human being is involved.
The main point here is that there are many behaviors which might be immoral, according to the Scriptures, or non-ideal, or perhaps injurious, or maybe none of these,
depending on whether one comes from the fundamentalistic branch of evangelicalism or the more, quote-unquote, reformed branch,
According to the Bible, that law should not regulate, and most Evangelicals simply do not see this. Substantial freedom may not always be pretty, on the societal level of course, Evangelicals are free to regulate these things to an extent within their own societies, their own churches, but it is not necessarily unbiblical according to the Bible itself.
Second big reason why Austrian evangelicals don't get along. Evangelicals have scant history, very scant history, of a truly Christian philosophy of either government or economics, except in isolated cases involving mostly scholars from the reformed branch of evangelicalism, who constitute a distinct minority today.
In medieval times, there were pockets of such understanding and application.
This, however, I'm sorry, this was pre-Protestant, proto-Protestant, whatever you want to call it.
With the Protestant Reformation came a more coherent understanding of politics,
forming one root of modern evangelicalism, especially in the form of the development of ideas like the rule of law,
constitutionalism and resistance to tyranny, resistance to tyrants, the writings of the Huguenots in France, for example,
and the Reformers in England and Scotland, and so forth.
However, in modern evangelicalism, especially with the rise of some of the frontier denominations I call them,
and the rise of dispensationalism, which is a particular theology within evangelicalism, both in the 19th century,
and then fundamentalism, which is more of a 20th century development,
The Christian-based economic theory, again with a few isolated exceptions, has been even less developed, except for the modern generalities, we like free enterprise, whatever that means, there's the problem.
By the end of the 19th century, many evangelicals had become avid followers of populists and of, for instance, three-time Democratic presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan,
Holding to some views that Austrians would appreciate, such as his anti-imperialism, was both a fundamentalist and an economic interventionist,
sometimes of a fairly extreme sort for his day, such as his support for the nationalization of railroads,
although he looked at that in his mind as being partly precipitated by earlier government meddling in the railroad industry.
While he had reservations about Wilson's Fed, he advocated government manipulation of the currency, of course, we know. He was a silver man, and even willing to go pay for money around, of course.
He actually considered himself a Jeffersonian. He actually called himself a Jeffersonian, but that's very odd when you compare that label he gave himself and his actual practices.
Although, to be fair, he was both anti-big business and anti-big government, too.
He was much more in favor of letting states deal with things than he was the federal government,
but that's another story.
But evangelicals' infatuation with economic intervention did not end with Brian, continued
as at least symbolized by many subsequent presidents who were evangelicals, either real
or Pretend Evangelicals and Interventionists like Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and FDR.
Even today, there is a relatively strong minority within Evangelicalism which supports variations
of quote Christian Socialism. Interestingly, while the Christian Left eschews economic liberty,
it is normally non-interventionists on foreign policy and pro-personal liberty.
The Christian Right is the opposite, generally speaking. It's only a very tiny part of evangelicalism, a group called the Christian Reconstructionists, a very small movement within evangelicalism that are fairly consistent, generally very consistent, free market, economics, non-interventionist or foreign policy, although the one thing that Austrians would sometimes disagree with, of course, is their view
This special lack of consistent economic thinking within evangelicalism, and I think the works
of Mark Knoll are good to look at on this, and only partial development of a consistent
political philosophy has certainly made evangelicals easy prey to faulty or truncated ideas and
and also susceptible to attachment to outside ideas espoused by alien organizations such
as the Republican Party.
Talk about that in a minute.
So the third problem, another factor is evangelical mistrust of Austrianism is its relatively
recent attachment to the National Republican Party.
Now I call this relatively recent.
In my research, I perceive that this did not really begin to happen until 1988.
In 1980, of course, the Evangelicals were big supporters of Ronald Reagan.
But I think it was Ronald Reagan and not so much the Republican Party in 1980.
It was a reaction.
They were not being proactive, they were being reactive to their betrayal by Evangelical
Jimmy Carter.
So they went with Ronald Reagan.
Why?
And does that mean they really were on board with everything Ronald Reagan talked about? No, by this time, Evangelicals had discovered the so-called social issues like abortion, and that was one thing that Ronald Reagan, of course, focused on among Evangelicals.
They attached themselves to Ronald Reagan, I think, because of the social issues. They didn't really care about the other issues strongly, in my opinion.
This is a very, I think, significant problem in Evangelicalism. Evangelicalism by 1988, I think, had firmly cast its lot with the Republican Party.
This led to an increasingly noticeable parroting of the Christian right, by the Christian right, of the prevailing Republican Party agenda issues.
Now, a fourth problem. In the area of foreign affairs, Evangelicals have more or less attached themselves to the fortunes of the neoconservative movement, the new neoconservative movement.
I call them the neo-neoconservatives.
There was an earlier neoconservative movement that was less interested in foreign adventurism.
I think now we have a different story.
There's a new neo-evangelical movement that is.
The fact that Pat Robertson, now you know who Pat Robertson is,
hitched his wagon to Rudy Giuliani in the 2008 elections,
The one Republican who had virtually nothing in common with Evangelicals at all but who staked himself out as the anti-terrorism candidate demonstrates this infatuation, this attachment to the new neo-cons.
Now very specifically, what is the problem here that Evangelicals have gotten into? I think two sub-problems.
1. Their ignorance of just war theory.
I don't know how many are really evangelicals in here, but the evangelical community seems to be devoid, almost completely devoid of any knowledge that there is such a thing as just war theory.
You find very little literature coming out of the evangelical community except, again, for some of the reformed scholars, on just war theory.
Just War Theory
Now if they don't have that, what do they have to tell them when war is right or wrong?
Now I might add here that for evangelicals who believe the Bible is the key, just war
theory has a foundation in the scriptures itself.
In the book of Deuteronomy and the Old Testament, chapter 20, read it at your leisure.
The second problem is Israel.
Now this is a distinctly theological problem.
This may be the linchpin of Evangelical foreign policy, which seems surprising to most non-Evangelicals.
It's almost a tentative modern Evangelicalism that Evangelicals must support Israel no matter
what.
This is part of their theology.
This is part of the dispensationalist theology.
They must support the modern nation state of Israel because they claim from their interpretation
of scriptures that this modern nation state is a fulfillment of prophecy of the Bible
and that God will curse those who curse Israel and bless those who bless Israel.
Now it might surprise a lot of evangelicals to know that there is a minority report
on the role of Israel, the place of Israel in the modern world.
Again, this is an internecine squabble among evangelicals.
The minority report is this.
It is based on different but reasonable and well-established interpretation of the Scriptures
And it says that the church, all those who have faith in Jesus Christ, is the new Israel, the new Israel, the church is the new Israel, not the modern nation state of Israel.
Now you see, if you bought that interpretation, that would pull the rug out from under a lot of what evangelicals hold to in the area of war, and it would undermine their attachment, I think, to neoconservatism.
My conclusion. Can Austrians and Evangelicals get along?
Well, actually my answer is pretty simple on the surface of it.
If Evangelicals follow their own stated epistemology,
in other words, if they read their Bibles seriously,
not borrow other people's interpretations,
but if they read their Bibles seriously
and take the interpretations that are plain and simple from the scriptures,
Austrians, I think, would be very pleasantly surprised with the outcome.
That's not what's happening, I would submit to you.
That is not what's happening.
A couple of things just in passing here at the end that I think are not helpful.
Not helpful.
First of all, evangelicals already distrust libertarianism.
They distrust what they perceive as hyperlibertarianism.
Caringism. That doesn't mean they're interpreting it correctly, by the way, but they still distrust it. An open and vociferous harangue of evangelicals to the effect that since not all sins are crimes, which is true, then sin is just fine, does not score points with evangelicals. Evangelicals might say this, they might say this, I don't want Big Brother looking at anyone's bedroom windows either. At the same time, I don't need to be told by those in the bedroom what they're doing, and no matter what
What it is, it's just fine and I have to accept it in some moral sense, see there's the problem.
I think evangelicalism can accept the idea and does accept, would accept the idea if
shown from scripture, which if they read scripture they'd see, not all sins are crimes.
The second non-starter I think is this, the notion, and again I think this is a misunderstanding
The notion that government is evil per se, that all government is evil per se. Evangelicalism does accept the idea that government should be limited, and it can, I think, accept the idea that government is a necessary evil.
Notice I said a necessary evil. That is, it is necessary because of sinful human nature, and it's evil or potentially evil because of sinful human nature. The same reason.
This is no different from what the supporters and the non-supporters of the U.S. Constitution in the 1700s talked about.
It's also no different, I think, than chapter 13 of the book of Romans in the Bible.
So in conclusion, in final conclusion, I reiterate, if evangelicals followed their own data from their own scriptures, their own state of epistemology,
I believe that the outcome would be something that would be very closely aligned with Austrianism.