Politics, Providence, and Power
One of the key insights in Aaron Renn’s new essay, “The Problem with the Evangelical Elite,” is that Evangelicals do not have a doctrine of vocation that includes or speaks to elites. As he says, Tim Keller’s Every Good Endeavor, the most popular Evangelical book on the topic,
“offers no example of a person in a recognizably elite position engaging in structuring and ordering activity. Of the book’s many examples, none involves a positive portrayal of a person engaged in elite activity who uses the central power of his role to direct, shape, reorder, or restructure some element of society. Instead, Keller gives examples of elites behaving badly, or people abandoning high-powered positions in search of fulfillment or more ethical work… Evangelicalism needs a theology of vocation that comprehends the exercise of power—that validates and valorizes people who reform public policy, invent new technologies, become presidents of elite universities, acquire major media properties or foundations, organize research teams, or serve as Supreme Court justices.”
Again, I think this is maybe the most important of Renn’s marching orders provided. It will take some work to figure out exactly how to influence Evangelicals in this way, to reshape their theology. As an initial stab at further understanding the problem, we can see that part of what hampers Evangelical thought on this front is a lack of a political and providential understanding of vocation.
In his Autobiography, Ben Franklin says that Mather’s Bonifacius (1710) gave him “a Turn of Thinking that had an Influence on some of the principal future Events of my Life.” Mather’s Essays to Do Good (alternative title), his call for “Heroical Goodness,” probably inspired the young Franklin’s first pen name, Silence Dogood.
The emphasis in Mather’s text is not simply on discovering vocation for personal fulfillment, nor on evangelism. He does not treat evangelism until the appendix. Rather, the impetus is creative and constructive.
In typical Puritan fashion, Mather begins with self-examination (and familial examination), with internal work, preparation for action, but quickly shifts to external examination. Readers are instructed to not merely form themselves to do good, but to form societies for doing good. They were to look out on the world and ask whether “there was any remarkable disorder” that needed correcting. Individuals and institutions alike were to ask themselves whether they had any proposal “for the further advantage, assistance, and usefulness of this society,” meaning the institution itself or society writ large. Improvement was not limited to personal contemplation but constructive institutional and social action.
The vocations addressed by Mather are ministers, physicians, lawyers, schoolmasters, and “wealthy gentlemen.” In other words, in early eighteenth-century America, the elites, with ministers still arguably occupying the top social position at the time and exercising influence over governance, control of curriculum, and unrivaled sway over public opinion. There was only one newspaper in Boston in 1710, and it was only six years old. There would be three papers in Boston by 1721, which outpaced the rest of the country, and much of what they printed were sermons from the clergy.
Often schoolmasters or tutors were future ministers. A gap year (or a few) between college and pulpit was common. Remember too that while educational neglect had been a crime for some time in New England, only the elite went to college at Harvard or Yale which even then were cost prohibitive and based class rank on social status. Recent graduates often served as schoolmasters or tutors to help prepare elite children for the next phase in the pipeline. And contrary to popular belief, the pipeline did not exclusively lead to the pulpit. On average, only half of Harvard’s graduates took the cloth in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The rest became lawyers, doctors, or merchants. College graduates were, by definition, elite. In the mid-eighteenth century, Harvard’s student body was less than 150, and the typical graduating class had 20-40 students.
Lawyers, even then, were, as Tocqueville said, the natural aristocracy. The predominant profession of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was law. As a man of science, Mather held physicians in high regard, though they had not yet attained the status they hold today. Even a few decades later their status had increased. Think of Benjamin Rush who helped Franklin found the University of Pennsylvania. Then there’s the monied class or merchants. Think of John Hancock. While not the ideal Puritan profession, since the late-seventeenth-century, merchants had come to dominate much of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. The famous Brattle Street Church that at first created some tensions in Boston society, was basically a merchant founded church.
The point is that other than politicians or governors themselves, Mather hits every elite position. (By that time, the governor of the colony was a royal appointee, so perhaps that had something to do with it. Those who served in the General Court had other jobs, like state senators today.) But, as alluded to earlier, Mather does not neglect the individual or the parent or the child. His is a whole society approach.
Mather’s standard for elite vocations is high. Lawyers, for example, are expected to be pious scholars, but more than that, to render their services to the “Cause of Christianity.” This is more than just sharing the gospel with your fellow first year associate at the firm. This is the maintenance of Christendom. Indeed, Mather says that among the top priorities of his day was the spread of Protestantism across Europe. Any “Popish Nation” that converted would not only find a “Glorious Liberty” but surely “double their Wealth immediately.”
Lawyers are to be a “blessing to the world,” to be a “blessing to your Neighbourhood,” and the “felicity of your Countreys.” This is Christian public service, a social vision of the vocation. Lawyers, like other elite vocations, are to reform society and suppress disorder. Again, in Mather’s account, lawyers are not just lawyers, but leaders in society dutybound to and capable of shaping it.
Politics
Part of what we’ve lost, it seems to me, in our approach to vocation is the background assumption of hierarchy and mutual dependence. That is, the socio-political context of vocation. I wrote recently at Christ Over All that politics is simply the ordering of vocations.
As Leland Ryken argued a long time ago, the Puritan emphasis on work and vocation was status conscious. Every man was encouraged to act according to and within the responsibilities of his station. It was not that there was no social mobility, but contentment with one’s vocation position was advised. In each station, men were to care for what and who God had placed under their command and influence. The cobbler cares for his family and apprentices. The merchant cares for his wards and servants. The success and honor of a vocation is in some sense dependent on how well dependents are cared for and how well the next generation is prepared to step into the same vocation. More than that, the honor of every man is linked to his contribution to society according to his station.
You also find, in earlier treatments of society and politics, that authors begin at the top of the hierarchy and work their way down. This is true, for example, of Winthrop’s Model of Christian Charity (1630). It’s really a sermon about hierarchy. God orders the whole, all the disparities and differences of talent and vocation for the good of the whole. Everyone plays their part, everyone is knit together as one body, et cetera. Some at the top command others or are charged with the well-being and prosperity of others, and some only have purview over their family. If you have a political and hierarchical view of how vocations fit together, everything becomes weightier. Think of the colonial context. If you were the only minister, doctor, or lawyer in town your sense of purpose and calling, and the social importance of it, becomes stronger. People depend on you and you shape the life of society. You are essential personnel.
Providence
There is no hereditary aristocracy in Winthrop’s formula but there is a sense of providential placement and natural calling. William Perkins similarly approached vocational calling as being demonstrable from natural ability and other external signs according to providence. A sense of being born into or for a vocation is powerful, a particular role in society, is something we no longer think or talk about. There is neither a sense of providence nor destiny in our discussion of vocation. This must influence how we think about our profession and purpose.
The absence of the political, hierarchical, and providential is part of what separates contemporary Evangelical thinking on vocation from that of past Protestants. Within the providential heading, we should include not simply postmillennial eschatology but the belief that God rewards men materially. Consider this passage from Mather:
“The men who give themselves up to Good Devices, and who take a due Notice of their Opportunities to Do Good, usually find a strange Growth of their Opportunities. The Gracious and Faithful Providence of the Glorious Lord, Grants this Recompence unto His Diligent Servants, that He will Multiply their Opportunities to be Serviceable. And when Ingenious men, have a little used themselves unto Contrivances, in this or that way of Pursuing the best Intentions, their Ingenuity will sensibly improve, and there will be more of Exquisiteness, more of Expansion, in their Diffusive Applications.”
If you do good, if you are diligent—Weber says diligence is Franklin’s central ethic— God will reward you with greater opportunities to do more. “Ingenuity” is expected in order to improve the opportunities given by God for maximum effectiveness. Honoring God in your vocation (ordinarily) brings blessing and reward. This isn’t prosperity gospel stuff, its just old American Protestantism. Mather said plenty, like other writers on vocation including his grandfather, John Cotton, about humility and enduring suffering. Calamity should always prompt self-examination. Just as righteousness brings reward so does sin bring punishment.
At the same time, the doctrine of providence is big enough to comprehend what the Psalms teach, viz., that something the wicked prosper and the good suffer. The point is simply that a providential doctrine of vocation also teaches that, in generally, industrious stewardship of your talents brings reward and greater opportunities, and that this is an inducement to do good. I don’t hear Evangelicals talk this way about vocation. For a host of reason, a sense of Protestant providentialism needs to be recovered.
Power
Another thing Evangelicals don’t do is talk about power except negatively. There is no sense that gaining power or prestige or position is good—another clear oversight and part of why Evangelicals don’t have a doctrine of vocation that speaks to elites. Power, of course, is nothing else than the ability to accomplish goals. That Evangelicals don’t have a positive ethic of power exposes that they have no positive vision or goals for society. Again, the Evangelical spirit is one of managing decline.
The idea that someone should pursue power or status to wield it for good is suspected, almost treated as an oxymoron. Insert the Lord Acton quote. It is treated as a worldly ambition, and, as James Davison Hunter pointed out, the Evangelical ethic has been avoidance of worldliness.
Part of this may have to do with popular Evangelical eschatology wherein the role of the Christian, at best, is managing decline. But the impact of eschatology, in my opinion, can be overblown. The homeless, sojourner ethic and adoption at scale isn’t dependent on eschatology. It’s a mood that mitigates against both a sense of societal ownership, and concomitant duty, and the prospect of long-term betterment of the same. All gains are short term. Why build a cathedral?
The Evangelical mood is easily contrasted with the WASP ethic which was, in its own way, hierarchical, political, providential, and not at all averse to power. The aristocratic assumption of the right to rule—in many ways a hereditary right—cannot be replaced at will. That same assumption of the right and power to shape and reshape the world requires unique confidence, one that comes from the fact of wielding power for centuries, but one that also produces a culture of philanthropy and patronage. But what Evangelicals can do is readopt an approach to vocation that is political and providential. It is highly advisable that they start thinking about power now too in case they ever accidentally get some again.
Postscript
Renn notes in his essay, as others have, that Roman Catholics and Jews hold more positions of power today than Evangelicals (or Protestants generally). All that I will impress on Evangelicals here is that this should shock them, especially as it pertains to Roman Catholics. It’s an historic reversal of posture. Part of the legacy of Protestantism, from Luther on, was the removal of the secular-sacred vocational divide. Laymen were just as holy (“priests”) in their work as clergy.
As I’ve described before, the Protestant social type was an industrious, pious laymen ambitious to save Christendom, reforming both church and state. This orientation tended, in some ways, to the demotion of clerical social status, though not absolutely, as the case of New England shows. In turn, the elevation of other vocations resulted. What is strange is that Roman Catholics are now more successful in getting their people into elite, non-clerical positions. Obviously, the status of their clergy took a hit in America in the sex abuse scandals, and Rome itself is not what it was geopolitically in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But this does not explain this reversal. From what I can tell, the teaching on vocation from papal encyclicals remains as it always was, that is focused on women, holy orders, missions, and celibacy. Clearly, Roman Catholics are interested in elite formation and recruitment, and punching above their weight, as they have for a while. But it’s not because of some massive doctrinal shift. Maybe it is, in part, because Evangelicals have never been elite and have sat on the sidelines for a long time.
Image: Benjamin Franklin at work on a printing press in a painting published by the Detroit Publishing Company in c. 1914. Wikimedia Commons.
