Solve Jon Shields’ “marriage problem” without back to before

This is to comment on “Religion (Faith) and the Marriage Problem,” by Jon A. Shields, National Affairs, No. 40, Summer 2019, Page 129. Beforehand, let me say that religion’s appropriation of the word “faith” inspired me to write “trust-in and commitment-to” to express myself.

Introduction

In his focus on one civic problem, marriage failure, with no imagination for remedy beyond going back to public imposition of the mysterious Christian factions, Jon Shields unintentionally makes our case. We imagine reform to an education system for human integrity or fidelity to the-objective-truth. Thereby, develop individual benefits for the living people. Specifically, we propose to encourage fellow citizens to activate the preamble to the U.S. Constitution (the U.S. preamble), under the-objective-truth. That is, the ineluctable evidence on which truth is measured.

We’ll detail the reform after reviewing responses to Shields’ article.

Before introducing his own thoughts, Shields expresses personal opinion by weaving pertinent scholarly work into the propriety of a well-respected thinker, James Q. Wilson (d. 2012). If nothing else, Shields convinced me to read more Wilson books. I only read The Moral Sense (1993, ed. 1997). Quoting Wilson, “I wrote this book to help people recover the confidence with which they once spoke about virtue and morality.” Wilson did not articulate the-objective-truth.

What Wilson overlooked

Regarding crime, character, and marriage, Wilson expressed that philosophical tensions between Aristotle and Locke were essential to “ordered liberty,” a proprietary term. Neither Wilson nor Shields distinguished freedom-from oppression as essential to liberty-to develop human integrity during an individual’s lifetime.

Wilson, unlike Tocqueville (and it seems Shields agrees with Tocqueville) did not think Christianity was essential to the American [republican] democracy. Indeed, it is the people’s representatives, especially Congress and the US Supreme Court who impose religion on the people. In 2019 it seems Judeo-Christianity or Judeo-Catholicism is dictated:  Consider the make-up of the U.S. Supreme Court. However, many fellow citizens “do not receive communion or become born again.” “Following Aristotle, Wilson believed that moral virtue develops primarily through a process of habituation, not through religious conviction or philosophical wisdom.” Virtue is discovered through fidelity to the-objective-truth.

Civic self-discipline rather than religious solutions

Wilson advocated non-religious solutions. For example, the “broken-window” theory that unrepaired crime-evidence begs crime. But while violent crime has fallen since 1994, divorce incidence increased. Perhaps Wilson “correctly saw evidence of religion's weakness in the face of marital breakdown.” Apparently Shields does not accept religion’s falsehoods as innate weakness.

But the weakness rests with abandonment by “elites who are essential to bringing about dramatic cultural change,” not in the nature of religion itself. Elites abandoned the 19^th century Christianity that encouraged an “ethos of self-control” [for] an “ethos of self-expression,” lessening well-being for “the poor and working class.” Shields misses the point: Elites use religion to advantage, never making it personal.

Shields on religious awakenings

Wilson wrote to conserve self-restraint but [correctly] did not attribute its practice in the 19^th century to American, factional Protestantism. Thus, he was more moderate than his left v right competing contemporaries realized. Yet, reforming marriage may require a religious revival like the Great Awakenings (1790-1840 and 1850-early 1900s).

Non-elite American Christianities, unlike European sects, nourish divorce, harming children. Shields explains an aspect Wilson overlooked: American Christianity accommodates divorce. In comparing with other countries, the assessment “America is among the most religious Western nations” may not be true since the majority religion, American Christianity, is so factional and tenuous. Shields points out that children are the victims but does not explore causative Christian doctrine. American accommodation is not new:  “With certainty . . . we know that divorce was far more common in the New England colonies than in Great Britain” and grew to 50 times more in proportion to population. Explanations include materialism, emotionalism, and a political creed of individuality founded in the Declaration of Independence. “There are almost certainly powerful and complex links between America's political ideals, consumerism, and modern marriage culture.”

Partially a class phenomenon

Shields cites but does not explore “The consumerist culture and philosophical heritage of Britain, after all, is comparatively more like America's than any other Western democracy.” Perhaps “Britain [has] the enduring influence of Catholic doctrines” whereas colonial Americans ‘allowed divorce [for] adultery and desertion, following . . . Luther and Calvin.” By 1860, chronic drunkenness was added. A hundred years later, divorce was not a U.S. political issue except in states with Catholic influence. Catholic power is waning for example with easier annulment. Mormons have low divorce rates due to the “eternal marriage” doctrine and Muslims perhaps even lower. Evangelicals seem distracted from divorce civics, but focused on prayer, Bible-reading, and “Christian Right” rhetoric. Perhaps that is because their socioeconomics tends to be lower. Mainline Protestants seem immune from these trends because they are higher class. Yet secular citizens are also involved in “America’s marriage problem.”

So far, American individualism may not be a help (but reform seems available)

American exceptionalism focuses on the individual, who can leave associations if they are not satisfying. There’s hope if a better standard of satisfaction can be established. Now, just as the American can move to another church, or another state, he or she may end a marriage if satisfaction has waned. An individual’s relationship with Jesus is personal (despite Jesus’ claim of fidelity to the elect), and fellow church members mildly express constraint. That is, believers don’t often call each other heretics. Yet listing sex offenders is not a new practice. Otherwise, whichever Christianity makes the individual feel good is OK: Trinity for one and Unity for another, transubstantiation for one and remembrance for another. Thereby, prosperity and spirituality are appetites modern Christianity embraces. It’s OK to create $22 trillion debt for “posterity” even though children and grandchildren are included. The Bible is thumped so as to support personal preferences. An exception is Mormons, “chosen people” who are constrained: no alcohol, 10% tithe, mission, and permanent association. Perhaps this explains Utah’s relatively stable demographics. Beyond pro-life action, Christianity seeks family legislation for its own more than for the nation. “Like other Americans, Christians are part of a rights-oriented culture.” In other words, they invented “identity politics” and defined “atheist” long ago.

Basic information, encouragement, and coaching for self-discipline more than “education”

As Shields returned to Wilson’s ideas, “elites were indispensable to cultural change,” both in the Great Awakenings and in modern American liberalism. Higher education encouraged “sufficient self-control and regard for others.” But not enough concern to share self-discipline incentives, such as work to save for financial security. Conservative Christianity cannot inspire self-control, because prayers assign responsibility to Jesus. Christianity is scarcely represented by elites, “especially the film industry, advertising, entertainment, media, and arts.” Christian reform to solve the marriage failure would have to come from the lower classes. “If religion's main moral virtue is that it helps alcoholics and other dysfunctional Americans become respectable citizens, what can it offer to Harvard professors like [neoconservative] Wilson and other members of the highly functional elite?” Self-discipline respecting the-objective-truth would work for Harvard professors, too.

Children are the victims of divorce, illegitimacy, and fatherless households. Child poverty has risen along with crime rates and drug abuse since the 1960s.

Wilson reasoned without the-objective-truth

Wilson would not want to go back to before. Quoting him, “For two centuries we have . . . supplanted revelation with reason. Most of us will continue to enjoy those benefits for centuries to come." Unlike libertarians for liberty or progressives for equality, Wilson worked for balance: “liberty and virtue, diversity and community, or democracy and rights.” The old system of incentives for marriage has been dismantled by unintended political consequences and cannot be restored. The-objective-truth responds to neither reason nor revelation. However, policy can change the consequences of the-objective-truth. For example, armed with false intelligence, Bush II invaded Iraq.

The standard for self-discipline applies to all classes

Marriage can be approved and encouraged for its benefits. “As Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher have shown, marriage makes us happier, wealthier, and healthier.” Marriage may add a decade to a man’s life. “Divorce often harms children without improving the happiness of adults.” An ethos of self-discipline can be encouraged for individual well-being more than for either satisfaction of appetites or conformance to divine rules.

Shields erroneously claims encouragement would need to focus on the lower class, because they tend to live in the moment. “Edward Banfield observed the working-class man ‘is little disposed toward either self-improvement or self-expression; ‘getting ahead' and ‘enlarging one's horizon' have relatively little attraction for him.’" Meanwhile, according to Ross Douthat, “Harvard students discipline their appetites for the sake of their fabulous futures.” The lower-class individual cannot imagine a future worth constraining present satisfaction. That does not imply that encouraging self-discipline is not a worthy government function for all classes of citizens. Moreover, when fidelity to the-objective-truth is the standard, self-discipline is needed among all economic classes.

Fellow citizens accept HIPEA for personal benefit

“Given the present-orientation of many poor Americans, any successful effort to strengthen marriage requires more immediate and powerful inducements.” Contraception, ending marriage penalties, increasing child-tax credit (why? to encourage fatherhood?), and training men for jobs---incremental and expensive changes and perhaps not reforms. “Wilson quietly suggested a need for a religious solution in his conclusion to The Marriage Problem, observing that the cultural restoration of marriage is ‘not something that can be done by a public policy.’" However, encouraging acceptance of HIPEA rather than seeking “higher power” can be a public policy.

The U.S. preamble’s proposition under the-objective-truth

We perceive that public collaboration, communication, and connection to establish the U.S. preamble’s proposition, under the-objective-truth, offers a solution to the marriage problem. This approach addresses the education disparity Shields points to in his article. It offers children an achievable better future Shields did not suggest. Let me explain.

An infant’s task among conflicting humankind

Humankind explores, and no individual can master every discovery. Yet each newborn may develop himself or herself unto a responsible human life.

Humankind slowly discovers actual reality and how to benefit from the discovery. For example, it seems obvious to a child that the sun rises each morning, traverses across the sky, and sets each evening. But he or she may or may not learn that the earth rotates on its axis, un-hiding the sun each morning, continuing the rotation after it hides the sun each evening. Humankind may reform its education system so as to change “may learn” to “will learn” basic knowledge. Further, this change must cover all aspects of human knowledge. To accomplish the educational reform requires two adult commitments to children.

First, adults must, as discovery progresses, continually revise common language so that children are not positioned to unlearn false impressions. In this case, the word “sunrise” must be obsoleted for “sun-un-hiding” or better. The Merriam-Webster first definition of “dawn” must be changed from “the first appearance of light in the morning followed by sunrise” to “the first appearance of light in the morning followed by the sun’s un-hiding,” or better. Second, adults must encourage and coach children to take charge of their individual transition from feral infant to young adult with comprehension and intent to live a fulfilling human lifetime.

This second adult reform recognizes that the human being has the individual power, the individual energy, and the individual authority (HIPEA) to potentially accept the-objective-truth as it is discovered. The-objective-truth is the ineluctable evidence by which truth is measured. In freedom, the individual may use HIPEA to reject the-objective-truth---for example, may think crime pays. Some people never discover HIPEA. Approving HIPEA is a major part of the reformed education system. Humankind owes every human the opportunity to choose fidelity to the-objective-truth.

The individual choice to use HIPEA to learn and use the-objective-truth is fidelity. Fidelity is the key to individual happiness and civic integrity. Civic integrity is living a lifetime approving, encouraging, and supporting fellow citizens to accept responsible human liberty.

In civic integrity, the individual neither initiates nor tolerates harm either to or from any human being. Intolerance is expressed verbally or in writing when there is no physical attack; otherwise, intolerance is delivered with the necessary strength in defense.

Addressing the marriage problem, human life begins with the viable ovum perhaps to be fertilized with a viable spermatozoon. It takes about a quarter century for the human who accepts HIPEA to develop the understanding and intent to develop integrity before death, during perhaps an additional half century. During the first quarter century, the dignified and equal individual needs a dedicated heterosexual couple to encourage and coach him or her in development of integrity and fidelity to the-objective-truth. Further, the couple maintains the support for life. The most fundamental fidelities are 1) the mom to her viable ova, 2) the man to the woman and her ova, in other words, to the family, and 3) the family to the spouses’ grandchildren. A better future is available when courting heterosexual couples perceive commitments to their grandchildren.

These considerations offer a viable solution to the marriage problem. Thereby, fellow citizens who choose novel family compositions may know their obligations to preserve the dignities and equities of gametes, especially the ovum, and beyond.



Copyright©2019 by Phillip R. Beaver. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted for the publication of all or portions of this paper as long as this complete copyright notice is included.