Identity Politics and the Invisible Economy

Background

Most of the information for this missive comes from a recently published book “American Awakening – Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time” by Joshua Mitchell.  Mitchell is professor of Political Theory at Georgetown University.  He is an academic and his writing reflects that.  So if you want to look into his book, prepare yourself for a slog through 18^th and 19^th century political theory. But he has some very salient points that are worth considering.

Note of clarification:  In his argument Mitchell uses the term “innocents” as his juxtaposition to transgressors.  I don’t agree with the term because in God’s realm there are no “innocents”.  We all fall short of His glory.  But it is Mitchell’s book and so for the sake of argument I used his terminology.

America’s Prosperity

A couple of months ago I did an essay on American prosperity and I broached the question of whether or not the country could manage a prosperity in which the wealthy were getting wealthier and the middle class was diminishing.  I was naïve in limiting my perspective to economics.  But I have also mentioned in the past that I believe all things have a spiritual element to varying degrees. So I decided to dedicate the next two posts to the spiritual or invisible paradigm of the American dilemma.

America is a unique country.  Compared to the rest of the world we are not that old as a nation.  Secondly, we were settled by a group of people yearning for independence.  A consequence of this nouveau-nation and its independent citizenry is that we have a tendency to mix or confuse “state” with “nation”.  We identify closely with our state because we live within its boundaries.  Our state is displayed prominently on our birth certificate, our driver’s license, our license plates and most of us pay taxes at a state level.  We even have our own state flags.

But we are citizens of the United States, a nation.  We have a common government, serve in a national military, have a national anthem and American flag and pay taxes nationally.  Herein lies some of the confusion.  Citizens of other countries identify primarily with their nation and are far more nationalistic than the U.S.  Even though Europe is part of the European Union, the residents closely identify with the country of birth.  Their languages identify them.  Their traditions and culture remain a part of them even if they leave their country of origin.  They have strong lineage in the country they grew up in.  And if they ever do leave, they tend to settle with their own “kind”.

The word nation comes from the Latin “natio” which means birth.  It connotes a birthright, an inheritance and a certain relationship to its people. The lack of this particular identity, or legacy, in the U.S. is what motivates Americans to dedicate so much time researching their past.  Where did they come from?  What is my real nationality?  What is my identity?

Settlers of American came to this country from different nations as adventurers and explorers.  But once on these shores, through their shared effort to build a new country, the became Americans.  A new DNA was formed and with came a country of forward thinkers, quick to adopt and adapt to whatever is new.  But a natural outgrowth of that spirit is that we tend to move beyond our past. Always moving forward easily leaving things behind.  For Americans this instability makes our way of life more fragile and more easily undone.

At the same time American’s quest for the material and prosperity is part of our collective conscious.  It is what drove our forebearers to risk their lives for a foreign land.  We built this country one brick and one railroad tie at a time.  This why we clutch “things” closely but hold nothing for very long.  Unfortunately, Christianity is suffering as a result of this attitude.

With the exception of Harvard (1639) most all of the other major colleges and universities (Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia) were originally established in the 18^th century.  All were religious institutions.  They were the spiritual engines that supplied America with its theologians, pastors and churches.  Today not one of these colleges and universities resembles institutions of the Christian faith.  The Christian church has mirrored that decline and continues to do so.

Two Economies

I offer this as a foundation for our country’s current condition. As a culture we are now in a situation where we live in a country of two invisible economies, a Material (Secular) Economy on one side and an Invisible (Spiritual) Economy on the other. The material is represented by money, time and the material. The invisible by transgression and innocence. Only the material has a definitive balance of payments. In the material, suffering requires material recompense; the score must somehow be settled. In the invisible there is no recordable balance of payments. In this economy God is the only arbiter or judge. He ultimately settles all accounts. For Christians Jesus came into this world, but never as a payment that shows up in material records. He came as the ultimate payment and sacrifice in the invisible economy. In the invisible, innocents suffer but we do not know why. Good people die and bad people live. Not only do we not know why, we are helpless to settle the score.

In the material we look for society to pass judgement and somehow settle the debt.  A transgression occurs at “Sandy Hook Elementary” and we want payment; by changing gun laws.  Because of the transgression of Slavery we want to count the cost.  We want some type of reparation hoping that might balance the scales of justice.  But in the end, those scales never get balanced because in the material economy payments are always insufficient.  Who are due the reparations?  How much is due?  The answers are elusive and in the end we are never satisfied with the answer.

In the realm of Identity Politics what is missing in the material economy is a cleansing authority that is capable of settling accounts.  “Identity politics is concerned with the invisible economy of transgression and innocence but seeks to understand that invisible economy in terms of the relationship between visible groups”.  Lacking the authority in the material always causes them to revert back to seeking justice in the invisible. Transgressors become payments for transgressions because innocents are deemed helpless victims. We are in continually in need of a cleansing act, a sacrificial lamb.  That scapegoat only exists in the Invisible.  So, in the material economy we are continually looking for innocents who have been transgressed upon. It seems there will never be a shortage of transgressors.  But that may change.

Next time we examine Identity Politics and the Material Economy

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