Rob Scovell
Rob Scovell is a graduate of Edinburgh University with degrees in Astrophysics, Theology, and Mathematical Modelling. His interests are in political analysis and in bridging the illusory gap between Faith and Science. He is a classical liberal in a world where that position is under attack from both left- and right-wing Identitarians.
A church in Masterton was recently blasted on Twitter for using the slogan “All Lives Matter”. It was described as “Tone Deaf”, despite being 100% theologically correct. But why was it correct, and why are the detractors wrong?
Christian theology asserts unequivocally that every single human life matters: this is the concept of intrinsic value. A human life has value simply due to the fact that it is a human life. This is why murder is wrong. This is why abortion is wrong. This is why euthanasia is wrong. It is also why it is wrong for a policeman to snuff out the life of a man in the process of arresting him.
There is no reason for an atheist to accept the intrinsic value of a human being, indeed, the majority of those who hold an atheistic ideology do not. Instead they hold to a social concept of human value. A human being only has value in the context of society. This is how a pro-choice person can argue that an unborn baby is not yet a person. The social value of the baby is lower than that of the mother, whose freedom of agency is considered to be more important than the baby’s right to life. It is obviously possible for an atheist to hold to a principle of intrinsic value but that position does not necessarily follow from an atheist ideology.
The Marxist ideology behind Black Lives Matter is predicated on a hierarchical model of social value and describes a programme to invert the hierarchy. The Marxist racial analysis asserts an immutable hierarchy based on the concept of ‘whiteness’, a concept that goes beyond mere skin colour and extends into cultural norms and institutions associated with descendants of the original peoples of western Europe. The social class analysis of earlier Marxists has been updated and applied to racial groups, after the failure of Marxists to capture the full support of the working classes. The Marxist racial analysis asserts that ‘whiteness’ gives rise to a social and economic hierarchy in which white people have the highest social value and black people have the lowest social value. This analysis fails to account for individual human agency, individual differences, and cultural differences that give rise to different social outcomes.
The Marxist racial analysis is the basis for the Marxist racial programme of inverting the posited racial hierarchy so that white people’s social value is diminished while black people’s social value is raised up. It is a zero sum game. Demands to ‘take the knee’ and apologise for ‘white privilege’ are aimed at inverting the posited social pyramid.
This zero sum game has been played with disastrous results throughout history. It was played in Germany in the 1930s, and indeed, some of the characterisations of ‘whiteness’ resemble characterisations of ‘Jewishness’ from that time. It was played in the Balkans in the 1990s. It has been played in Rwanda and the Congos between the Hutus and the Tutsis.
It is an extremely dangerous game, which is why we desperately need to apply the principle that “All Lives Matter”. Notions of relative social value between different human beings are incredibly dangerous. Without an understanding of the intrinsic value of every human life, we are doomed to a future of ever-increasing conflict.
The classical liberal concept of the equal dignity of each individual person has its roots in Christian theology but modern ‘classical liberalism’ has cut itself off from its roots, and therein lies another problem. Without a theological grounding, even an individualistic ideology can easily move to a position of social value as opposed to intrinsic value. Current ‘classical liberalism’, far from recognising intrinsic human value, all too often assigns a social value based on a person’s economic value. A person’s economic value is important: a healthy, self-responsible human being will make sure that they provide enough economic value to others such that they are not leaching off the hard work of others. However, a human being without the ability to be (or become) of economic value still has intrinsic value as a person.
Even modern conservatism, if it has no sound theological roots, falls into the trap of applying social value to individuals and denying them intrinsic value. Conservatives value order and stability and can devalue those who seem to bring disorder and drama into the world. This is the one flaw of the kind of conservatism represented by Jordan B Peterson, despite its many strengths. His book, Twelve Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, maps out a very worthwhile journey from chaos to order in one’s own life and has much to commend it, but it can also impose a massive burden on those who feel themselves overwhelmed by the chaos in their lives.
In order to make the principle “All Lives Matter” work consistently and solidly, and not just be a reactive slogan against racial Marxism, we need to go beyond politics and into Christian theology: a human being is a created being, made in the image of his or her Creator. It was this theology that ended slavery and gave life to the civil rights struggles of the last century. We need to embed this in our societal understanding of the individual human being if we are not to end up going down the same destructive pathways that humanity frequently goes down.
Our stance of “All Lives Matter” must not exclude those we deem have no economic value, or who we think are agents of chaos. Jesus Christ preached a message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins and Christian theology recognises that the human condition is fallen and not perfectible. Not one of us can lay claim to any kind of superior intrinsic value, even if we acquire social value according to whatever social criteria we are subject to. The intrinsic value of a human being is not destroyed by anything they do or are as long as repentance is an option for them. The messages coming from the “Black Lives Matter” movement suggest that there is something irredeemable about ‘whiteness’. We cannot accept those messages but we must make sure that “All Lives Matter” applies strictly to all and includes the concepts of forgiveness and redemption.