ON A COLD January day in 2010, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens felt so strongly about the dangers of corruption that he delivered a rare oral dissent in the Citizens United case. Decrying the majority’s “crabbed view of corruption” that focused on quid pro quo arrangements exclusively, Justice Stevens countered, “There are threats of corruption that are far more destructive to democratic society than the odd bribe. Yet the majority’s understanding of corruption would leave lawmakers impotent to address all but the most discrete abuses.”
In retrospect, the striking thing from that winter morning was not so much the existence of Steven’s oral dissent (though notable), but the basic agreement on all sides. No one on the court contested the idea that corruption poses a threat to “democratic society.” The majority and the minority simply split on whether the specific practice at issue constituted a form of corruption.
Ten years later, we cannot take the same presupposition for granted. Instead of identifying corruption as a danger to the republic, we are all too ready to treat it as an inescapable part of American life. Indeed, the rationalizations have now become as predictable as they are depressing: It may be distasteful, but both sides do it. It is a necessary evil. Get over it.
Although this resignation may seem like a justified self-protection mechanism, Christians cannot succumb to the temptation to normalize political corruption as an inevitable and therefore acceptable outgrowth of organized civic life. Such a claim runs counter to Christians’ theological accounts of the role government is designed to serve.
Admittedly, the role of government has been a contested theological question for Christians, with views ranging from Eusebius’ justification of Christendom in the fourth century to the Radical Reformation’s strict separation of church and state to contemporary Christian anarchists’ opposition to the state as a whole. None of these interpretations, however, yields any basis for an apathetic response to political corruption.
On the contrary, the one unifying feature between these views is the notion that the nature and purpose of government is intricately linked to humanity’s proclivity for sin after the Fall. In this context, political corruption is a theological concern because it threatens to destroy a valuable resource for pilgrims navigating a sinful world.
After all, Christians have identified two essential functions for government in a postlapsarian state. First, following the apostle Paul’s conviction that temporal authorities “are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4), major figures such as Augustine and Luther have argued that government is necessary to restrain sinful impulses, creating and enforcing laws that limit harmful conduct. Second, given government’s ability to form its citizens, Aquinas and others have added the responsibility not simply to prohibit vice but also to promote virtue.
Together, these two functions put government at the service of the common good, in the Christian approach. Corruption contradicts this vision, turning the vehicle of public trust into a means of private gain.
Consequently, U.S. Christians cannot treat political corruption as an unfortunate but unavoidable feature of government today, but must instead condemn its growing influence. Failing to do so will mean not simply that our system of government has succumbed to corruption, but that our tradition has as well.
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