Sphere sovereignty & public life

Jonathan Chaplin’s inaugural address as Senior Fellow of the
Work Research Foundation
November 2006
Redeemer University College, Ontario, Canada

T

he principle of sphere sovereignty is the most familiar and most influential idea associated with the neocalvinist social movement emerging in the Netherlands in the nineteenth- and early twentieth- centuries, especially under the remarkable and combative leadership of the theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper. It was forged out of a series of concrete political struggles waged by various wings of that movement for independence from what they experienced as an intolerant liberal ecclesial and political establishment.

Later it was exported to North America with waves of Dutch Calvinist immigrants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Post-war Dutch immigrants to Canada proved to be particularly tenacious defenders of the principle and invoked it as they launched a wide range of social, political, educational and industrial organizations many of which are still thriving today, even though their understanding of sphere sovereignty and the priority they place on it has inevitably undergone change over the years. The principle remains influential in American neocalvinist circles, and there is evidence of a revival of Kuyperianism in such circles and in other orthodox Protestant communities. In 1998 on the centenary of Kuyper’s influential Stone Lectures at Princeton two major conferences were held in the USA, and another is being planned at Princeton Theological Seminary in 2007. A noteworthy development of recent years is also the growing interest in Kuyperian social thought among American Catholic social thinkers, who rightly find in the principle of sphere sovereignty clear echoes of the complementary Catholic principle of subsidiarity.

But in spite of this growing curiosity about sphere sovereignty, why would anyone beyond those circles be particularly interested, at the start of the twenty-first century, in an idea of apparently arcane provenance, operative within a still relatively small constituency of Christians – many of them members of one small-ish Reformed denomination? Let me answer this question in two stages: first, I’ll try to position sphere sovereignty as a distinctive and fruitful response from within the modern European Christian social movement to major societal developments crystallizing in the late nineteenth century. Having done so, I’ll elaborate briefly on its concrete meaning. Second, I’ll attempt to situate neocalvinist social theory in relation to some dominant recent trends in Canadian political thought and practice, illustrating along the way its concrete relevance in relation to two broad public policy issues, the health of the family and the social role of business corporations.

First, then, I want to point to the societal and ideological context in mid- to late nineteenth-century Europe in which the principle social activists and thinkers, as well as others, to be characterized by two simultaneous and interconnected threats: on the one hand, the threat of an individualistic fragmentation of core social institutions, driven by a rampant and socially irresponsible industrial capitalism; and, on the other, the threat of an overweening bureaucratic state, driven by the monopolizing impulses of French revolutionary liberalism and state socialism. Like its more influential counterpart in the Catholic social movement, the neocalvinist movement responded to these challenges by vigorously re- affirming the indispensable role of communities situated between the individual and the state – families, schools, villages and neighbourhoods, labour organizations, businesses, and of course churches - and working to shore them up against these two pressures. Other social and political movements responded similarly, and the result was a flowering of distinctly pluralistic social theories with various ideological leanings in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Sphere sovereignty, then, did not drop from the sky into the neocalvinist movement of that time, nor did it leap straight out of the pages of Calvin’s writings into the lap of Abraham Kuyper. It was, rather, a recognisably Calvinian response to the unique circumstances and challenges of modern European capitalism and secularism – which is why it resonated so effectively with Reformed people who were directly experiencing those challenges. Perhaps the key distinctive of the neocalvinist (and Catholic) responses to these circumstances was their appeal to a divinely created design underlying social institutions, a design calling for a wide distribution of social authorities across different kinds of community, each with a unique mandate to fulfil a specific social function, and which should neither dominate nor be dominated by others. “Sphere sovereignty,” then, was the neocalvinist language for confessing within that historical context a deep biblical truth: that all sovereignty originates ultimately in God and is only delegated to human beings in their diverse social spheres for particular and limited purposes. Hence Kuyper’s celebrated broadsides against the doctrines of both state sovereignty and popular sovereignty. Sphere sovereignty also appeals to another profound biblical truth, that humans are not autarchic individuals who enter into cooperative relationships only for self-interested instrumental purposes, but are naturally social - inclined and fitted by creation to participate in a multiplicity of purposive communities, apart from which their flourishing is stunted.

But it is equally important to stress that sphere sovereignty, in its original formulation by Kuyper, went hand in hand with a parallel emphasis: an organic conception of society in which each distinct type of social sphere, and each individual, were construed as bound together in strong reciprocal ties of interdependency and mutual obligation. Today we would be more likely to speak instead of a complex social ecology or social networks in which communities and individuals subsist and apart from which they struggle to sustain themselves and deploy their gifts and callings.

Let me add that in the translation of sphere sovereignty into a North American context dominated by liberalism, this emphasis on the complex social ecology within which properly independent spheres subsist has sometimes been neglected and needs to be reclaimed. I think this neglect is also related to a second misconception. Sphere sovereignty has in the minds of some North Americans – as also occurred for some Dutch Calvinists in the inter-war period – been reduced merely to a doctrine of the limited state, where the predominant emphasis is on the boundaries between spheres and their entitlement to legal of sphere sovereignty was first articulated. That context seemed, to a growing number of Christian protection against government intrusion. And the somewhat infelicitous juridical term “sovereignty” plays into that misconception. Sphere sovereignty certainly does imply a limited state and ample legal latitude for independent social initiative. But to confine or reduce it to that is to put the cart before the horse: the deeper impulse behind sphere sovereignty is a positive affirmation of a particular pattern of social pluriformity as essential to full humanness.

So the first task of anyone wanting to put sphere sovereignty to use is to investigate what that particular pattern is. And this involves answering two questions, though they really need to be addressed simultaneously. The first question is: what irreducible, irreplaceable human social purposes do communities like families, or business corporations, or states, fulfil towards the realization of truly human society? Following Roy Clouser, I’ll call this irreducible social purpose a “structural purpose.” Whereas a particular community or institution may perform a wide variety of diverse functions, one – or perhaps more than one - will often stand out as definitive, as essential to the structure of that community. So, for example, a labour union might offer health insurance schemes for its members, or even a workout room. These are valuable purposes, but they are ancillary. The structural purpose of a labour union – and here I’m adapting a useful definition coined by Ray Pennings - is to promote solidarity among employees as they contribute to the just stewardship of human resources within a producer community.

That’s the first question. Having identified the distinctness of particular communities, their unique structural purpose, the second question is: what forms of interconnectedness do these communities need in order to fulfil their unique social roles? For example, in what ways are families or corporations or labour unions constitutively interdependent with other types of community or institution or networks, such as neighbourhoods, churches, voluntary associations, schools, governments, product or capital markets, trade corridors, and many more? And what reciprocal obligations does this interdependence give rise to?

For example, we’re all aware of an increasing tendency for families, and households generally, to retreat in on themselves and disengage from neighbourhood, voluntary or public service. This can occur because of externally imposed pressures to earn a minimum income, or a self-imposed preoccupation with paid work for the purposes of maximising consumption, or internal family collapse. But whatever the cause, this retreat is a serious breakdown in a vital part of our complex social ecology, and it requires a variety of remedies to address it.

Or, consider the implications of the term “socially responsible enterprise.” This is a useful term so long as it does not piously imply that running a business is not itself fulfilling an essential social responsibility. Let me propose that the structural purpose of a business corporation is: “the efficient production and delivery of socially needed goods and services by a producer community” (or, as John Paul II puts it, a “society of persons”). A business corporation which meets this definition, which is structured as a producer community - and not just as a “nexus of contracts,” to cite a standard definition from corporate law texts – and which supplies quality goods and services meeting some humanly important need, is already fulfilling a vital social function merely by being itself. But we can also widen the scope of the term “socially responsible enterprise” beyond these internal tasks, towards a full recognition of the embeddedness of all economic activity within a social ecology – and, we should add, a natural ecology. Take just one familiar example - the huge recent expansion of massive out- of-town retail outlets such as Wal-Mart, among others. This has too often occurred at the direct expense of main street or neighbourhood stores which are sometimes the only accessible stores for those without cars or who cannot drive - the elderly and disabled, for example. While massive retailers like Wal-Mart have no doubt put plenty of cheap consumer products in the hands of individual households (it has in mine, I admit), they have also at times inflicted deep and perhaps permanent damage to the social ecologies of many neighbourhoods and small towns.

So the insistence on the distinctness of social spheres must go hand in hand with a recognition of their mutual interdependency. To blend Calvinist and Catholic language, sphere sovereignty and solidarity are inseparable.

Now so far I have only hinted at what the role of the state might be in relation to sphere sovereignty and solidarity. I’ve opted to spell out the wider societal meaning of sphere sovereignty at some length before zeroing in on its specifically political, governmental application. Let me offer two brief propositions on this. First, the state will find itself responsible both for protecting and supporting the sovereignty of other spheres, and for acting to safeguard the wider social ecology in which sovereign spheres function. This is because, on the neocalvinist view, the state’s unique sphere sovereignty, its irreducible structural purpose, is to administer just interrelationships among persons and spheres, insofar as these fall within the public realm – to promote “public justice,” a term which plays a similar role in neo-Calvinist thought to that played by the term “common good” in Catholic thought. And this will involve activities of various kinds: first, policing the boundaries between spheres to prevent one from inadvertently undermining or intentionally dominating another; second, supporting social spheres, such as marriage and family, whose failure to fulfil a unique function could seriously damage the fabric of public life (that’s one way to formulate the Catholic principle of subsidiarity); third, stimulating, or if necessary directly providing, the complex infrastructure needed to sustain and enhance cooperative and just public interactions – anything from transit systems to a stable currency to immunization programs to market regulation.

This reading of the sphere sovereignty of the state equally resists both the minimal state conception of libertarianism and the expansive state conception of social democracy and progressivist liberalism (on which more in a moment). It points to an active state which is fully prepared and empowered to fulfil its irreplaceable role as guardian of the public good, and yet a restrained state ready to defer to other irreducible social authorities in their own sovereign spheres of functioning. But here is a vital observation: the general principle of sphere sovereignty itself does not inform us what the unique functions or exact boundaries of the different spheres are; nor does it disclose the complex interdependencies in which they stand; and nor does it advise us straightforwardly what the scope of their public interactions may be which merit some state activity. The answers to those questions depend on a background social ontology assumed by the general principle, an ontology which characterises what communities like families and corporations actually are, what are their “natures.”

Of course on these questions there is deep disagreement today, both beyond but also within the Christian community, especially on the nature of marriage and the family and the social role of the corporation. Appeals to sphere sovereignty do not resolve such disputes, but I do think the principle provides a clarifying framework for determining what is at issue in them. For example, it insists that in the debate over the legal status of same-sex partnerships, the question cannot be reduced to whether or not yet another extension of homogeneous individual rights by the state is merited in this case. Rather, participants in the debate must confront the question whether marriage, and family, have an enduring structural character that must be reckoned with before courts or legislators rush to judgement on the so- called “rights” question (which is what recently happened in Canada). And on the question of the public-legal regulation of businesses, a sphere sovereignty approach urges that the issue not be defined as and so reduced to merely the issue of what will maximize productivity or profitability under the admittedly very chill winds of global competition. External, financially-defined success in the currently skewed structure of some existing capital and product markets cannot be allowed to trump core internal corporate norms, such as fair treatment of diverse stakeholders within and beyond the producer community, ecological stewardship, or just contractual conditions.

Let me finally briefly attempt to position the wider social vision in which sphere sovereignty is located more specifically in relation to the current Canadian political landscape. Earlier I said that sphere sovereignty, along with other pluralist theories, emerged as a response to the two-pronged threats of individualism and statism in the nineteenth century Europe. I think we can see recurrences of these same threats today, and so it’s not surprising that there should be a revival of pluralism in our time. This presents a strategic opportunity to put the principle of sphere sovereignty critically to work again in our own public policy debates. Let me sum up the social ontology underlying sphere sovereignty as a “differentiated communitarianism.” It is communitarian in its insistence that individual persons are constituted and sustained only within communal contexts, and in its repudiation of individualistic variants of liberalism which see inter-personal linkages as essentially contractual in nature, or which see the goal of the fulfilment of individually chosen ends as trumping obligations arising from communal memberships. Yet it resists versions of communitarianism which posit some single, all-embracing community – typically the state or the nation – as having moral and perhaps political primacy over other social bonds. It insists instead on the moral equivalence of a plurality of differentiated communities, each with an irreducible purpose not to be conflated with or subordinated to those of other communities.

Now, with the demise of the older organic conservatism associated with the Red Tory tradition, and the original social democratic tradition of the NDP, the ideological field seems now to be largely dominated by two species of liberalism. On the one hand there is the progressivist egalitarian liberalism currently shaping the direction of the Liberal party, with its recent past in Trudeau and its possible future in Ignatieff, and of which the current NDP is now perhaps only a more radical echo. This strand of liberalism professes a strong commitment both to individual freedom and to social justice. Now I think that some policies flowing from such a vision can certainly be consistent with implications flowing from sphere sovereignty. First, sphere sovereignty also recognizes the “sovereignty of the personal sphere,” to adapt one of Kuyper’s own terms. Neocalvinism was always strongly in favour of individual freedoms such as freedom of religion and conscience, of speech, movement, and of civil rights such as the right to a fair trial. It was also motivated from its inception by a deep outrage at social injustice, whether in education or the economy. But for today’s progressivist liberalism, social justice is to be realized primarily by empowering individuals, through a variety of public policies, to participate more fully in areas of social, economic and cultural life from which they are seen as being excluded. This is not an adequate overall policy strategy. But insofar as this strand of liberalism recognises that you can’t empower individuals without also protecting and supporting the communities on which they depend - their families, schools, voluntary associations, neighbourhoods, ethnic community organizations – then there will likely be a practical convergence with a sphere sovereignty approach in certain areas of public policy. For instance, I would expect adherents to sphere sovereignty to be equally motivated as progressive liberals to address the continuing scandal of child poverty in Canada. On the other hand, they are likely to favour a more complex package of proposals which reckon with the multifaceted causes of poverty – poverty is not just lack of adequate financial resources – and which support the differentiated responsibilities of diverse social institutions in addressing poverty, of which the state is only one.

But today’s progressivist liberalism, here and in the USA and increasingly in Europe as well, seems to want to do much more than merely play a supportive role to independent communities. It increasingly seems intent on refashioning some of the institutions of civil society – especially those deemed to be “traditional” - in the image of a uniform national community of freestanding individuals equipped with maximum scope for personal choice, whether in consumption or in sexuality. The irony here is obvious: a movement dedicated to promoting an ever- expanding realm of individuality, and at the same time promoting respect for cultural plurality, now seems headed towards a liberal nationalist variant of communitarianism in which the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is taken to embody the binding essential values of a homogeneous Canadian nation.

The second main variant of liberalism is a conservative version of neo-liberalism, championed from Mulroney through the Calgary school to at least the younger Stephen Harper. This strand of liberalism places primacy on removing as many barriers to individual economic exchange as possible, on the twin assumptions that maximising individual freedom is the principal goal of the state, and that the most important kind of freedom for human society is economic. A sphere sovereignty response to this position again needs to be vigorous but nuanced. Where a bloated public sector or misplaced government regulation of businesses, especially smaller and medium-sized ones, or markets – the Wheat Board has come in for attack here – where these interventions materially obstruct business in fulfilling its unique function as defined earlier, then there is undoubtedly a prima facie case for reasserting the sphere sovereignty of business. And the protection of wide possibilities for open market exchanges among independent persons and corporations is a vital condition for a system which quite properly trusts non-government actors to be the principal source of economic initiative and coordination. But where governments one-sidedly pursue a goal of maximising individual economic exchange as the definitive purpose of economic life and the only route to economic success, then they are bound to neglect their duties as guardians of the public dimensions of the complex social ecology I spoke of earlier. They will fail to do public justice in the economy. And if they do fail, then economic failure will also be the long-term result and the cost will likely fall disproportionately on those with fewest economic resources, at home and abroad.

So I suggest, then, that a social and political vision informed by the principle of sphere sovereignty and balanced by that of solidarity is actually very well-equipped to discern the strengths and weaknesses of these and other contemporary political trends. And those informed by such a social vision should find themselves well-positioned not only to cooperate strategically with those of other political persuasions on selected public policies, but also to propose innovative ways forward where existing public policy directions seem to have run out of steam or met with failure.

Writer: Dr Jonathan Chaplin is the Director of the newly established Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics (KLICE), based at Tyndale House in Cambridge, England. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Work Research Foundation in Hamilton, Ontario, and a member of the Christian Labour Association of Canada. Prior to his appointment at KLICE, Dr Chaplin was on faculty at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. From 1999-2006 he was Associate Professor of Political Theory at ICS, holding the Dooyeweerd Chair in Social and Political Philosophy from 2004-6, and serving as Academic Dean from 2005-6.

Dr Chaplin’s research interests are in Christian political theory and political theology, especially Christian conceptions of the nature and role of the state. He has edited or co-edited three books in Christian political thought and published a range of articles on topics including the nature of the state, liberalism, law and religion, civil society, pluralism, democracy, and contemporary political theology. Dr Chaplin is currently editing a book on the role of religious faiths in American foreign policy, and working on a book presenting a Christian perspective on the state.

Every day The Salvation Army enters the intersection of faith and the city. Next month The Salvation Army Ethics Centre will consider what that intersection looks like at the Faith and the City Symposium. The special guest for the weekend is Dr Jonathan Chaplin, director of the Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics at Tyndale House in Cambridge, England, and a specialist in Christian political thought.

The Faith and the City Symposium will bring together people who are engaged with these issues and under Dr Chaplin’s leadership they will grapple with the everyday challenges of living faith in the living organism of the city. There will be opportunity to hear Dr Chaplin’s thoughts and to participate in round-table discussions. Click here for more information, or to register for the symposium.

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