CS Lewis and the Christian Society

C.S. Lewis

I have mentioned that one of the main sources of calm I have found during these stressful times is C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, explaining why we should not worry too much about the future. And that, in turn, got me to thinking about his book that I read in college, Mere Christianity.  Both works focus on individual, rather than social, morality and make clear that social morality is merely a means to individual morality.

Nonetheless, Lewis gave some outlines of what a Christian society might look like, making clear that these are mere generalities, and that there is room for a wide range of particulars:

Christianity has not, and does not profess to have, a detailed political programme for applying "Do as you would be done by" to a particular society at a particular moment.. . .  [T]he New Testament, without going into details, gives us a pretty clear hint of what a fully Christian society would be like. . .  It tells us that there are to be no passengers or parasites: if man does not work, he ought not to eat. Every one is to work with his own hands, and what is more, every one's work is to produce something good: there will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and then of sillier advertisements to persuade us to buy them. And there is to be no "swank" or "side," no putting on airs. To that extent a Christian society would be what we now call Leftist. On the other hand, it is always insisting on obedience—obedience (and outward marks of respect) from all of us to properly appointed magistrates, from children to parents, and (I am afraid this is going to be very unpopular) from wives to husbands. Thirdly, it is to be a cheerful society: full of singing and rejoicing, and regarding worry or anxiety as wrong. Courtesy is one of the Christian virtues; and the New Testament hates what it calls "busybodies."* 

Still, following Lewis's comments on individual morality, one can see how it might scale up to larger society.  (I limit myself to those two works; there may be others as well). To do so, I have applied a simple rule. To the extent individual morality governs an internal state of mind, there is no real way to apply it on a society-wide basis.  But when individual morality manifests itself in outward actions, we can imagine what it would look like on a social scale in what Lewis would consider a Christian society.  By all means, feel free to disagree with Lewis on any particular.  He himself admitted that most people will not like all aspects of a Christian society.

Charity

In commenting on a Christian society, Lewis says that one purpose of work is to be able to give to charity and aid people in need.  He then moves to individual morality -- that it might be best to have a society with no poor so there is no need for charity, but in the meantime everyone should give enough to feel pinched.  I will also add that any society in anything approaching the real world will have room for charity.  Let us suppose Lewis's Christian society achieves something like a society with no poor -- everyone of able body and mind works for a living, all jobs pay a living wage, and people have simple needs and tastes and do not bankrupt themselves with vices and extravagance.  Still there will be people who are unable to work due to physical and mental incapacity, feeble old people, sick people, natural disasters, and people experiencing individual misfortunes such as death of a breadwinner, serious illness, a house burning down, etc, etc.  The need for charity can be reduced, but it will never be eliminated.

Sex and Marriage

Lewis makes the rule clear -- no sex outside a lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual marriage.  He somewhat wavers on whether divorce can never be justified, or whether it can be allowed in extreme circumstances, sort of like amputating a limb. Divorce would not necessarily be illegal in a Christian society.  Moral suasion is often more effective than legal prohibition, after all.  But it would be an extremely rare, scandalous occurrence.  When a marriage seems to fail, family, friends, the clergy, and marriage counselors would all intervene to save it.

Lewis also discusses the matter of propriety -- how much flesh can be shown, and what can be talked about in polite society.  He sees no hard and fast rule here, except that there should be a hard and fast rule.  In other words, clothing may show more flesh or less, but it should never be provocative.**  Speech may be restrained or direct, but it should never be prurient.  The standards of propriety may be arbitrary and culture-bound, but everyone should follow them so as not to cause lust or discomfort.  Lewis does not address another matter -- how much Christians should rely on internal constraints in interactions between men and women, and how much on external constraints, such a chaperones.  Are these matters of chastity or mere propriety?  My guess is that Lewis would see them as matters of propriety, and that different Christian societies might have vastly different ideas about how much unchaperoned association to allow between men and women.

Another point that one can glean is that propriety will not be limited to individual interactions, but will pervade the whole culture. Clothing, art, entertainment and the like will follow the standard of propriety refrain from anything intended to provoke lust. On the other hand, presumably a Christian society will not be a Taliban society.  It will not require women to wear burkas or ban all interaction between the sexes.  In other words, clothing and art will show something of the female shape, and the society will have an aesthetic of what is an attractive female figure.  The aesthetic alone will not be seen as provocative, but it will shape what men see as sexually attractive.  And (here is the real point, emphasized in the Screwtape Letters) a Christian society's ideal of the female figure will be something like woman's natural shape and will not have corsets or fad diets or other attempts to shape the female body into something other than what it actually is.***

As for same-sex attraction, Lewis sees it as a perversion and would expect a Christian society to see it in those terms.  But the attraction is not, in itself, a sin to be repented, but a disorder to be treated.  Which leads to the next subject.

Psychotherapy

Lewis's comments on this subject were some of his most interesting and insightful. Strangely enough, it also reminds me of some of the most interesting and revealing parts of my Shakespeare study group.  We tend to assume that seeming mental processes in material terms is a modern phenomenon and that until the last few hundred years people maintained a strict body-soul dualism.  Not true.  People have been seeing mental processes in material terms at least since the ancient Greeks, and this viewpoint has infused Christian thinking as well.  If anything, we would tend to see these older viewpoints as too crudely materialistic.  They saw, for instance, the stomach as the seat of anger or the spleen as the seat of laughter.  They would also see mood disorders as a form of physical illness caused by an imbalance in the humors, and recognized that personality had a strong genetic component. In short, Sigmund Freud was simply rediscovering something that people had known for a long time -- that much of our mental process is out of our control, and what what might be called the soul or the free will is really only a small part of the mind.

Lewis also has no trouble with this.  He used it to offer the best explanation I have seen for why Christians should not judge other people, even though God is allowed to judge us. Because we do not understand anyone else's full circumstances, including the psychological material people inherited and all the biological circumstances that contribute to their personality. What matters, from a theological viewpoint, is what use we make of the psychological material we have.

When a neurotic who has a pathological horror of cats forces himself to pick up a cat for some good reason, it is quite possible that in God's eyes he has shown more courage than a healthy man may have shown in winning the V.C. [Victoria Cross]. When a man who has been perverted from his youth and taught that cruelty is the right thing does dome tiny little kindness, or refrains from some cruelty he might have committed, and thereby, perhaps, risks being sneered at by his companions, he may, in God's eyes, be doing more than you and I would do if we gave up life itself for a friend.

Nonetheless, Lewis says, although bad psychological material is not a sin but merely a misfortune, it is good to seek to improve one's psychological material through therapy, if needed.  Presumably this would scale up from the individual to the larger society.  A Christian society would support psychotherapy in whatever the best form available was. It would encourage people who are unable to overcome their fears or compulsions by moral effort alone to seek professional help (presumably including medication, if indicated).  It would not see any shame in seeking such help, anymore than there would be shame in seeking help for a physical malady.  If anything would be seen as shameful, it would be refusing such help when available and continuing to live with a fear or compulsion that inhibits one's moral duties.  (That might even be seen as a sin).  Nor would the clergy see any shame in admitting if someone seeking pastoral guidance was beyond their skills and referring them for professional therapy.  Which leads to another issue.

Churches and clergy

Obviously churches and the clergy would have major influence in a Christian society.  When Lewis says such a society would demand respect for authority, he mentions the magistrates, children to parents, and wives to husbands. Presumably he would include other authority figures as well, such as employers, teachers, and, of course, the clergy.

C.S. Lewis was an Anglican, and while he did not believe that his church had any monopoly on truth, he clearly did believe that it had valuable things to teach that other churches would do well to take as a guide.  In the Screwtape Letters, he endorsed the parish organization over the congregational organization.  In other words, he approves of centralized churches in which people automatically go to the church that is geographically closest, in the belief that this can bring together people of many different viewpoints and outlooks.  Choosing a congregation based on shared likes and dislikes can encourage a dangerous groupthink, and also a sense of self-righteousness and hostility toward outsiders.

Lewis ignores the extent to which people of similar outlooks and tastes tend to sort geographically, but let that go.  The next and obvious danger is that people within the parish will form factions and resentments within their particular church over differing approaches to worship. That is presumably where the clergy come in.  Lewis approved of the Anglican Church having "high" and "low" versions, and even more of having "high" and "low" churchmen worship side by side in different forms.  One role of the clergy would be preach against becoming too focused on outward forms.  The clergy would explain that their services were not magic rituals that had to be done just right to be effective.  Instead, so long as the doctrine is sound, outward forms are of little importance and should not be grounds for conflict.  If you wish people to respect your religious scruples, you should show the same respect for theirs.  You may consider other people's religious scruples strange, or even silly.  Others may see your religious scruples the same way. Follow the outward form that your Christian conscience demands and allow others to do the same.  Do not try to make adopt your outward forms.

Of course, the clergy would do other things, such as lead prayers, conduct sacraments, offer moral guidance, and teach doctrine.  And, probably more problematically, their service would necessarily take one form or another and probably cause resentment because people would see the form as endorsement or at least favoritism.  Nonetheless, this appears to be Lewis's main criticism of the churches of his day (and maybe historically as well).  And the best way to overcome it is presumably for the clergy the preach the spirit of tolerance and individualism in religious form.

Individualism

Nor does Lewis appear to limit this spirit of individualism and tolerance to matters of religion. One gathers that he would see it as a broad guiding principle.  On issues of morality (including sex and "propriety"), a Christian society would be rigid.  On morally neutral matters, it would allow a broad scope toward individuality.  It would accept that people would have a wide range of interests and tastes and see this as part of people's God-given nature and therefore a thing to be respected.  Again, Lewis does not address this directly, but one gathers that Lewis's concept of a Christian society would generally a wide range of hobbies, so long as they were not sinful, and positively encourage people to pursue passions such as collecting stamps, building model airplanes, or walking through the countryside.  It would also encourage creative and artistic expression.

Lewis approves of such things because they show a certain humility and self-forgetfulness.  But there would be an important caveat here.  Hobbies of this type may be innocently indulged, but they should not become the center of one's life and crowd out important obligations -- religious, familiar, social, employment, charitable, etc.  

One great piece of mischief has been done by the modern restriction of the word Temperance to the question of drink. It helps people to forget that you can be just as intemperate about lots of other things. A man who makes his golf or his motor-bicycle the centre of his life, or a woman who devotes all her thoughts to clothes or bridge or her dog, is being just as "intemperate" as someone who gets drunk every evening.

So any hobby is acceptable so long as it is not inherently sinful and is pursued temperately.  This seems a sound principle.

 Government

Lewis says that a Christian society would demand obedience and the outward marks of respect to "the duly appointed magistrates."  This means that a Christian society would have duly appointed magistrates.  In other words, it would have a government.  

What sort of government? Lewis says very little on this subject, except that it would not be a theocracy, at least in the sense that the clergy would not govern and the technocratic details of governing would not be confused with theology.**** But we might consider it theocratic in the sense that "all economists and statesmen should be Christians" and should endeavor to govern in a Christian manner. I assume that Lewis does not so much mean a test act as that in a society in which everyone is a good Christian, that would included everyone in government.

Lewis would presumably expect a Christian society to have a very low crime rate, but we are fallen individuals in a fallen world, so expecting a crime rate of zero would probably be unrealistic. So a Christian society would have a criminal justice system, probably not all that different from any other criminal justice system. One might think that a Christian criminal justice system would focus on reform and reconciliation over punishment, but Lewis appears to consider punishment to be part or reform and reconciliation. At least, when he gives advice to individuals on how to love even your enemy as you love yourself, he argues that loving yourself does not mean denying or downplaying your own sinfulness, so you are not obliged to deny or downplay other people's sins. And if you offend seriously enough, you should submit to punishment, so others can be punished as well. And a Christian criminal justice system might or might not include capital punishment. Lewis dismisses the whole concern of "Thou shalt not kill" as only banning murder, so a Christian judge can sentence a criminal to death. Nor is Lewis a pacifist. If a Christian society has hostile neighbors, it would have an army, not too different from any other army, and would use it if necessary.

Finally, although Lewis does not address this directly, same principles of individual conscience and tolerance would apply in government as in other aspects of life. People would recognize that different people, acting in their best Christian conscience, might nonetheless disagree on the best way to address a social problem. So members of a Christian government would not accuse each other of bad faith, just because they disagreed. This might imply an elective government, although Lewis never addresses the issue directly. But in any event, the society would believe in the immortality of the soul and see that as ultimately making individuals more important than societies. Lewis has called that the critical distinction between democracy and totalitarianism.

Some disturbing possibilities

Lewis says that if any of us saw a Christian society, we would all like parts of it, but very few of us would like all of it. No doubt people from my general political outlook would find it repressive in matters of sex and family. although we would like its egalitarianism in economic matters, and its respect for individualism and personal conscience.  On the whole, the foregoing description does not sound so bad to me. But there are a few things Lewis suggests in the Screwtape Letters that sound quite disturbing.  Admittedly, Lewis says not to take everything Screwtape says at face value.  The devil is a liar, after all. And Lewis does not address most of these issues in Mere Christianity, so maybe he disagrees with Screwtape here.  But the full implications of some of the things Screwtape says are quite disturbing.  More on that in future posts.

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*He also questions whether it would allow lending money at interest, but disclaims knowledge to reach a firm opinion.
**Lewis does not address another matter -- can a society's concept of modesty depend on context?  I our society swim wear, an to a lesser extent other athletic clothing, show flesh that would be totally immodest in a different context.  We might consider shorts acceptable in some social contexts but not others. We would consider a mini-skirt the same length as shorts as immodest in a way that shorts are not a a below-the knee skirt slit up the side as positively scandalous.  Or among the Japanese whole families or even strangers bathe together in the nude without any sense of immodesty, but would consider nudity immodest in other contexts as immodest.
***Lewis does not comment on birth control, saying that as a bachelor he might not be the best placed, but the general tone of his work seems to disapprove.  
****I am told that Lewis has gone on record as calling theocracy the worst form of government.  Presumably he regarded Communism as a sub-category of theocracy -- a defensible viewpoint.