The Proletariat of God

A couple of weeks ago, I posted an essay about a speech Barack Obama gave on religion in democracy. Posted here is another paragraph of that speech, where Barack Obama gives us an exposition of what the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac means theologically, and what it means (by contrast) politically. His distinction is very indicative:

"We all know the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham is ordered by God to offer up his only son, and without argument, he takes Isaac to the mountaintop, binds him to an altar, and raises his knife, prepared to act as God has commanded. Of course, in the end God sends down an angel to intercede at the very last minute, and Abraham passes God’s test of devotion. But it’s fair to say that if any of us leaving this church saw Abraham on a roof of a building raising his knife, we would, at the very least, call the police and expect the Department of Children and Family Services to take Isaac away from Abraham."

Abraham will have arrived at that place, on the roof of a building (or mountain), raising a knife to his son, by remaining silent, Kierkegaard says. He will have allowed himself to speak of any other possible thing: "He can say everything, but one thing he cannot say, and if he cannot say that—that is, say it in such a way that the other understands it—then he is not speaking." In other words, if the one thing Abraham cannot speak to Sarah, or to Eliezer, or to Isaac himself is the one thing that could eliminate the terrifying void of anxiety and fear he faces in violating universal ethics: "I'm going to kill my son because God is telling me to," then everything else he could say enacts nothing of any substance. Nothing else can reduce his anxiety except the one thing he cannot say. Kierkegaard says, "At every moment, Abraham can stop; he can repent of the whole thing as a spiritual trial; then he can speak out, and everybody will be able to understand him—but then he is no longer Abraham." But that is precisely where we approach Abraham's experience without feeling his fear and anxiety. We know killing your son is supposed to be wrong, so we believe that God would never have really let Abraham go through with it. But if Abraham knows that, then his entire experience is absurd and immoral.


Barack Obama here is focused on that moment where Abraham's anxiety is eliminated, just as most of us are. He says "of course." Of course God intercedes. Of course Abraham does not violate the universal. Of course the test of devotion would never have included this. That is the "of course" of a member of the civic religion, who believes only in the values of faith that can be universalized. He appeals to our desire to tame God, to believe that God has a belief system, that he has rules. To Barack Obama, one individual encountering God himself above the universal is the highest abnegation of the civic religion. To us, there should be no scintilla of our faith that is not particular, that does not express the audacity of hoping for true communion with God no matter what anyone else values.

This is why Barack Obama is right about democracy and right about religion. We cannot bring faith in a God who transcends everything we hold in common as good and noble into the congregation of democracy. We cannot create laws to express the anxiety of God calling us into a relationship that defies all reason or force of law. An absurd leap, the kind a person makes when falling in love, or that a woman makes if she risks her own life to give birth to a child, or that any Christian makes in believing a man rose from the dead, has no place in democracy. In the midst of the temptations we face, where the vicissitudes of a relationship with a God who inhabits us with a spirit we cannot fathom clash with the ossified ethical structures of society, our best chance at imitating Christ remains a willingness to be terrified. We must be terrified by the prospect of an all-loving God asking us to depict his love against all we are asked to hold dear by that grasp at control we call 'society'. That terror has no place in this society, and so we really are left with a choice. Will we believe in a suffering Christ, believe in a resurrected Christ, against the lack of value suffering holds in American life, or against any proof that resurrection of the dead actually happens? Will we defy the most deeply cherished values of American society because God has invited us to? Or will we be looking up from the open doors of the church, calling the police, because a man is about to murder his son?