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The Freedom State or the State of Freedom?
Those who want a Christian America ignore Christian ideas of freedom
“DeSantis calls it the Freedom State,” a friend from Florida recently moaned to me, “but that’s Orwellian. He’s taking freedoms away. It is frightening.”
I remembered a quote from Orwell’s 1984, the slogan of the authoritarian political party of the fictional state of Oceania:
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
The slogan is an example of “doublethink,” a purposefully contradictory public speech intended to cloud critical thinking and give the government control over people’s minds.
This short conversation occurred at an event I recently hosted in southern Georgia. We weren’t far from the Florida border. The meeting was grounded in progressive Christianity, especially intended to re-imagine faith in a southern context. A good number of Floridians — including my co-host, Brian McLaren — were present. Most of these attendees were mostly politically and spiritually shell-shocked by the re-election of Ron DeSantis to a second term as Florida’s governor.
And, for the most part, that’s what they wanted to talk about: Mr. DeSantis, his Christian authoritarianism, and the erosion of women’s rights, voting rights, the rights of LGBTQ people, book banning, and academic freedom.
All of this is worrisome. But the limitations on colleges and universities are, perhaps, the most draconian. A Florida statute has defined state universities as “agencies of the state which belong to and are part of the executive branch of state government.” In short, Ron DeSantis is in total control of them.
New tenure reviews are intrusive and harassing. The state has launched a full-on crusade to turn its universities into right-wing institutions (the University of Florida recently hired former senator Ben Sasse — who has long played political footsie with Christian Reconstruction — as its new president in a highly secretive and controversial process). One of the first acts of DeSantis’ new term requires professors to report themselves to a new state list compiling every teacher or class that mentions diversity or racism. It isn’t yet clear what DeSantis will do with this information — but most Florida professors do not believe that he’ll use it to advance academic freedom.
But freedom is DeSantis’ slogan, a key part of his political brand. And, in the final ad of the campaign season, his campaign specially linked “freedom” to white Christian nationalism.
There’s nothing particularly new in linking freedom to Christianity. Indeed, freedom is one of the most significant theological themes in the biblical tradition. In the Hebrew scriptures, God creates the world in and for perfect freedom. When freedom is abused, violence, sin, and slavery result — and the quest for liberation begins. The Bible’s greatest stories are those of freedom and the restoration of God’s intention for humanity to live fully, liberated from injustice, oppression, and even death.
In the New Testament, Jesus teaches on freedom. During his first sermon, Jesus announced that God anointed him to preach liberty to captives and the oppressed. Throughout his ministry, he offered instructions regarding freedom from debt, freedom from sin, freedom from slavery, and freedom from deception. “You shall know the truth,” Jesus said, “and the truth shall set you free.”
But the kind of freedom and liberation that is central to the biblical narratives is not the sort of freedom on display in Florida. DeSantis stands in line with Oceania doublethink. He promises freedom for only certain people — his voters, white Christians, people considered “real Americans” — while explicitly limiting freedoms of those on the margins (Black people, LGBTQ people) or those he deems his enemies (Democrats and women) or those who are expendable (teachers and other intellectuals). Indeed, using the logic of Orwell, the freedoms of African-Americans, the LBGTQ community, the opposing political party, women, and those troublesome authors and academics are the “slavery” of “woke-ism” from which real Floridians need to be saved by God’s anointed fighter — Ron DeSantis: “Freedom is slavery.” But Ron — and only Ron — will liberate you so you can do anything you want.
And Florida will be the freest state of all.
* * * * *
This is not what Christian theology teaches about freedom. White Christian nationalists believe that America was founded as a Christian — and overtly Protestant — nation and to spread the light of freedom throughout the world.
When the first European Christians arrived in North America, the most influential Protestant theological treatise on freedom was Martin Luther’s 1520 work, On the Freedom of a Christian. The treatise begins with two propositions:
A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.
A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all.
At first glance, this may seem as intellectually chaotic as Orwell’s “Freedom is slavery.” In reality, it is an example of theological paradox — two things that are completely true and must be held in tension for the entire truth to emerge.
For Luther, freedom involves two truths. The first truth: Christ restored complete freedom to humankind through the work of the cross. Jesus’ sacrifice liberates humanity, and those who grasp this (through faith) are utterly, completely free — as God intended — from every constraint to do as they please and live fully.
And there’s the issue: What do free people please to do?
If one is spiritually free, what do you do with freedom? Luther supposedly quipped to his students who fretted over this, “Do you want to steal a pig? Make faces at the duke? Seduce your neighbor’s wife?”
Of course, a free person can do any of these things. But would a genuinely liberated person want to do any of them? Thus, the second truth: Personal freedom exists within a community of other free people — and thus, a Christian who knows true liberation freely chooses to submit his or her freedom to ensure the freedom of others. Only through the welfare of one’s neighbor can divine liberty be known and experienced, and that liberty is the basis of a faithful and genuinely fraternal society.
It isn’t a contradiction, it is a moral choice of self-giving love in imitation of that which Jesus did.
Luther’s vision — complete freedom exists in tandem with complete neighborly love — has shaped Protestant notions of liberty for the last 500 years. That includes ideas of freedom operative at the time of the American Revolution. The truth of human freedom cannot be either grasped or practiced without the paradox in total. Individual freedom and communal liberation are, of necessity, intertwined. (As an aside: these ideas of freedom would form a significant part of the theological arguments around slavery in the nineteenth century.)
There are, of course, many problems with Christian nationalism. But Florida gives us an example of one of its most significant theological flaws — at its core is a fundamentally heretical notion of freedom.
Using Luther’s maxim, it is obvious that Ron DeSantis is working only from the first proposition:
A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.
Yet DeSantis ignores the second:
A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all.
Without the pair, however, there is no Christian freedom. There’s only power — and a kind of demonic authoritarianism. Orwell’s twisted and contradictory “freedom is slavery” political agenda.
Standing alone, the first proposition winds up in a kind of radical individualistic cowboy culture (see Kristen Kobes DuMez’s Jesus and John Wayne) that gives the most powerful people — those with the most grievance, guns, or money — unfettered privileges while limiting the freedom of everyone they scapegoat, fear, or hate.
But Christian freedom is a both-and. To choose one over the other negates the whole: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” This isn’t a confusing slogan. It is perfectly clear: True liberty freely gives itself to true service. Christian freedom is ultimately freedom for others. Not for ourselves (after all, God gives the gift of freedom to us), and not from others. We receive the gift of divine liberty for the benefit of our neighbors and creation.
We don’t really need a “freedom state.” But we should re-examine the state of freedom to which we aspire spiritually and socially.
Once again, we need to embrace that wise axiom — “Freedom is not free.” Ensuring the liberty of all is the only way to guarantee true liberation for ourselves. We need to strive for love of neighbor always and everywhere in that ever-paradoxical quest to know our total freedom in the image of God.
And whatever “Florida freedom” is, please don’t call it Christian.
Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.
― Abraham Lincoln
INSPIRATION
I talk to the students in jail about freedom, how in America
we obsess over it, write it over flags on T-shirts, spread
it around under eagles. It has something to do with guns
and fireworks, Harley-Davidsons, New Hampshire, living free
until you’re dead. I tell the students I think the people
fetishizing freedom don’t mean it. . .
— Jill McDonough, from “Freedom.” Please read the entire poem HERE
(For all children who wondered about the tragic event of April 4, 1968 at Memphis.)
My children, my children, remember the day
When the Drum Major of Freedom's parade went away.
Stop crying now little children and listen
And you will know for the future what really did happen. . .
The Drum Major was down in Memphis that day
Helping the workers to win a raise in pay
When an evil assassin's bullet
Snuffed his bright young life away.
That's why we were all so saddened that day
When the life of the Drum Major was taken away.
Who will come forward to stand in his stead?
Who'll be the Drum Major in the Freedom parade?
— Margaret Burroughs, from “The Drum Major of the Freedom Parade.” Please read the entire poem HERE.
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Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.
― Virginia Woolf
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I'm gay. I survived high school in the liberal SF Bay Ares because a brave and loving teacher, also gay, tool me under her wing and promised, it gets better. Then she got fired for suspicion of being gay. This was in 1963, Chasten Buttigied said this "Don't Say Gay" law is going to cause suicices and he is right. As for the attacks on the universities. that is the second thing the Nazis did. First they got rid of all the journalists. Please keep writing about this.
I am reading a great history book at the moment. “Freedom’s Dominion A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power” by Jefferson Cowie
He argues that in the US freedom serves as an ideological scaffold for all our various forms of domination : taking land, enslaving black people, mob violence, Jim Crow, convict labor, resistance to voting rights and school integration
I think our evangelical churches reflect this belief.
I feel we are far more akin to the Romans in the Gospels than the early Jesus people
Thank for continuing to speak out Diana