Time for a new Magna Carta
The present American Chief Justice hailed the 800-year-old Magna Carta as ‘the greatest Constitutional document’.
The 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta is being celebrated with great pride as a landmark of constitutional significance. Its discontents are broadly located to the time of Robin Hood, Richard the Lion Heart, his heartless brother King John (a title never given to a king again), the revolt of the landed nobility at Runnymede in 2015 and 39 clauses of the Magna Carta, which was re-written in 1297. Its text is irrelevant — its myth greater than itself. The present American Chief Justice Roberts hailed it as “the greatest Constitutional document of all times”, relying on it in a case of judges soliciting campaign funds. Professor Vincent of East Anglia calls it “a load of tripe, but ... a very useful myth”. Born out of the discontent of the barons, it provoked John’s fatal dysentery even if the Pope annulled it at John’s request. How should we look at the events at Runnymede where John capitulated to a plethora of feudal demands? History in context? The greatest gift of common law history? Or hot air filled with undeserved myth carried over the centuries? The English were less successful with its invocations than is thought. The Americans used the Magna Carta to legitimise their cause against the English. Indian courts have referred to it with reverence. The English believe that their record of constitutional governance surpasses that of all other civilisations known to history.
Historical events are not made by history but by historians. Significant at its time, Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon belongs to metaphor. Was the Battle of Buxar more significant than Plassey? Is Gandhi a myth or a person? There is a mixture of humbug and make- believe in how we appropriate the memory of past events. This is no less true of myths and metaphors of governance. Once consecrated, there is a quiescent acceptance of them as sacrosanct. Living as we do in an interpreted world, we allow ourselves to uncritically accept both what is and what is not. Political idioms of law and governance have a beguiling emotional presence, axiomatically gifted to all mankind across time and space.
Call something “magna”, repeat it as a “charter”, and you have a basis for abstracting the document from the annals of forgotten history. True, the Magna Carta did require trial by one’s peers. But this did not prevent the infamous Star Chamber of the 17th century. If the other supposed gift of the Magna Carta was to curb the prerogative power of the king. This failed with the Bates (1606) Proclamations (1611), and the much contested Ship Money (1628) cases. It certainly did not prevent cutting of one king’s head, without crowning another. Nor did it prevent Britannia, which ruled the waves, from committing brazen violations even against her own people. Or prevent America from slaughtering all the Red Indians of America from coast to coast. E.P. Thompson rightly found the Rule of Law double edged, with some uses amidst vast abuses.
English law has always been celebrated with pomp as costume drama, of which the Magna Carta is a part. The consecration of the Great Charter perjured history at the expense of truth. But this is how the myths and masks of all law and governance are created, giving all the appearance of at least, half truth. The Scandinavian Realists were right in portraying law as magic. Its magical qualities are meant to impress, ensnare, subordinate and control. Why appeal to the Magna Carta? To enhance the magic to claim antiquity for it? No system of law and governance is without magic. Is not the Indian dharmasastra, a Magna Carta for Brahmins to legitimate the caste system? Seeing through the magic, Ambedkar burnt the Manu Smriti and communist countries attacked a rights based philosophy of acquisitive individualism.
I am not being a spoilsport to dampen the 800th birthday of a document, which has been passed down to us as celebrity. There is little point in asking what it did for them? Or even what it can do for us now? It now represents a legacy of the West (especially England) to mankind. The official reason for denying independence to India and granting it to Canada and Australian was because Indians had not caught up with the “white” nations. Today that prescriptive legacy has become a proselyting imperative for all nations who are required to have liberal Constitutions, democracy and bills of rights based on international covenants. This new civic “religion” is enforced by military force and conditionalities required by the IMF, World Bank and others for loans or even the right to trade. Congratulations, Magna Carta.
What should be the Magna Carta for more than half the contemporary world which is poor, hungry, repressed and systematically deprived? After enshrining a bill of rights “Magna Carta” in India’s Constitution, Ambedkar rightly warned that India is entering into a life of contradiction: liberty without equality, votes without food. The Magna Carta of the 21st century has to be egalitarian, with social justice for all. Global forces will prevent its fulfilment in my lifetime. Today, socio-economics are writ on water to be achieved subject to just savings (Rawls). Not Obama’s “yes-we-can”, but “if-we-can”. We need a new Magna Carta for today’s world as priority. Or will we have to wait for the millennial celebration of the old Magna Carta in 2215 CE? Evangelicals are starting to change their minds about gay marriage. In recent months, three large evangelical churches — EastLakeCommunity Church in Seattle, Washington, GracePointe Church in Nashville, Tennessee, and City Church in San Francisco, California — have announced that they no longer believe all same-sex relationships are sinful. Leading evangelical ethicist David Gushee changed his position on the issue in a landmark speech last fall, and celebrated pastor Campolo did the same in a statement on his website earlier this month.
This new pro-gay movement among evangelicals is still a minority, and staunch conservatives have been pushing back. But bit by bit, the number of American evangelicals who support marriage equality continues to rise.
A new poll released by evangelical research firm LifeWay Research in April demonstrated this shift. True, it showed that 66 percent of American evangelicals, fundamentalists and born-again believers say that same-sex relationships go against God’s will. While that is a super- majority, it is a substantial decline from just three years ago, when the same poll found that 82 percent held this view.
In part, that shift can be explained by the same forces that have changed much of the rest of American society. More evangelicals have openly gay friends and loved ones and, according to LifeWay, those who do are nearly twice as likely to support marriage equality as those who don’t.
But relationships alone are rarely sufficient to change conservative Christians’ minds on issues that are both political and theological. After all, evangelicals have based their opposition to gay rights on the Bible since the LGBT movement began. For years, even many sympathetic Christians have felt unable to embrace the LGBT community because of Scripture.
But while the Bible doesn’t change, interpretations of it can. Today evangelicals have access to stronger theological arguments for same-sex relationships than ever before. A representative example is New Testament scholar James Brownson’s book Bible, Gender, Sexuality, which is making a deep impact among theologians and biblical scholars.
Add in the decline of the “ex-gay” movement, and the door opens further for long-term change. Exodus International, the largest organization promoting the idea that gay people can change their sexual orientation, apologized for the harm it had caused and closed its doors in 2013. Its former president even called for a ban on reparative therapy earlier this year.
Some evangelicals remain reluctant to acknowledge the reality of sexual orientation, but their numbers are on the wane. The new answer many are proffering — lifelong celibacy for all gay people — seems both practically and theologically unsustainable.
Churches are being forced to grapple more deeply with the human consequences of their beliefs, particularly because teenagers are coming out at younger ages than they have before. That’s leading still more to reconsider their interpretation of Scripture, as Southern Baptist Pastor Danny Cortez publicly did last year after his teenage son came out to him as gay.
In my case, when I came out to my dad five and a half years ago, he was distraught. All he’d ever heard on the issue was that the Bible condemned homosexuality in no uncertain terms. But rather than rejecting the Bible or rejecting me, he ended up changing his interpretation of several passages in Scripture. Today, he’s both a fully committed evangelical Christian and a vocal ally of the LGBT community.
These changes aren’t rapid, nor do they erase the significant harm many conservative faith communities continue to cause in LGBT people’s lives. But along with the Supreme Court’s ruling Friday to legalize marriage equality nationwide, this slow religious shift does provide many gay Christians with a much-needed hope.
It gives them hope that, not only does their government now treat them equally, but, one day, their families and churches will, too.