Sorry to everyone anxiously awaiting my next post, I decided to let this notion bake a little more. I'll try to be less glib about post forecasting in future.
So the question on the table is, why don't the ELCA's Social Statements have more of an impact, at least for members of the ELCA? Since I was already in mind of Dr. Burtness, I started thinking of the question as framed by the introductory Ethics courses I'd taken. There are a few generally recognized approaches to ethical issues, so let's look at them and see how helpful ELCA-style Social Statements are in light of these approaches. I'll take them one at a time:
Virtue Ethics
Virtue (or Character) Ethics is an approach to ethical issues based on acquiring a habit of virtue. That is, one becomes virtuous by doing as well as you can until being virtuous becomes second nature and even more virtuous living is possible. Likewise one's ability to judge the right course of action is improved the more you do good. If you're confused about a proper course of action, you probably wouldn't have as much trouble if you were in better moral shape. There's a lot of esoteric discussion about this approach (Aristotle is recognized as its originator), but there is wide popular support as well (think of the WWJD phenomenon). Quite a lot of ELCA Lutheranism is constitutionally opposed to this kind of thinking about ethics however; try starting a conversation about the Third Use of the Law in the Luther Seminary cafeteria if you don't believe me. I think there is much to be said for this approach as long as it's recognized that being habitually virtuous doesn't make one righteous before God or justify the sinner, but many view any discussion along those lines by Christians as at least on a slippery slope to preaching works righteousness.
In any case, a Social Statement would have limited value from a virtue ethics perspective, as according to this view the expertise necessary to deal with the big ethical issues comes from living out an ethical life, or in a more limited way, from emulating those who are more virtuous. In the ELCA's case, the Social Statements we write are short on practical directives (I believe in part to avoid offending people by telling them what to do), and while it's common for statements to have sidebars detailing a situation someone might find him or herself in related to the issue in question, I can't recall one where the subject of the example was presented as someone to emulate. Neither can I recall an example where someone makes a decision or acts beyond the posing of the question.
Deontological Ethics
The root for the first part of this term is the Greek word deon, meaning duty. The main idea here is that there are certain rules for moral behavior that ought not be violated, and that these are more or less clear to everyone. For the Christian, these rules would be represented by, but not limited to, the Ten Commandments. On the other hand, what is neither prohibited nor commanded can be assumed to be permitted: that is, one doesn't need to worry about moral content in the mundane details of life outside of one's ethical duty.
As for how this ethical approach would receive the idea of hashing out social statements in assembly, I doubt it would be favorably: "So you guys read a report, and on that basis you take a vote on what's right or wrong this year? That's different.*" From a deontological perspective, a discussion of an ethical issue properly consists of what is commanded and what is prohibited, and people with this tendency can be roused to action if a Social Statement at odds with their principles is being considered. However, since ELCA Social Statements tend to avoid explicit commands and rules, they are mainly viewed as safe to ignore.
Situation Ethics
This ethical approach concerns itself primarily with the context of the decision to be made, usually in reference to an all-important principle. For example: Joseph Fletcher, the Episcopal priest who coined the term "Situation Ethics", declared "Love" to be the overriding principle, so for him the question to be asked for any ethical dilemma was how, in the given situation, love could best be served. Ethical rules can be employed and consulted, but in this view they take on the flavor of "guidelines" or "rules of thumb", since everything should be subordinated to the facts of the situation and the principle in question.
ELCA-style Social Statements would seem to be a poor fit from this perspective; contextual realities can be discussed (as in the previously mentioned sidebars), but at such a distance from any deciding subject, a Social Statement would be of limited help in assessing an actual extreme situation or setting it next to the principle in question (that is, if the Social Statement and the deciding subject were to agree on principles!).
Teleological Ethics
The Greek root for the first part of "Teleological" is telos, meaning end or goal. In this ethical perspective, we should act in a way that would produce the best end, and this is usually decided with some difficulty, as it requires some deliberate thought and a bit of predicting the future. There is also the matter of choosing proper ends to judge the results of your actions against. So in teleological reasoning, especially of the Christian variety, you will often find "natural law" discussions about what the proper end is of a given part of creation or institution. For example, Catholic teaching on sexuality relies heavily on natural law arguments: what is the purpose of our sexual organs? What is marriage and what is it for? After reasoning to a proper context and role of sexual expression, rules are then decided for those who are unable to achieve the ideal. Another feature of this form of ethical reasoning is its all-encompassing nature: mundane actions can have consequences with moral content, and just about any action could have been done better, with more forward thought involved, and producing better results. So we are in a position of constantly weighing relative goods, or at times choosing the lesser evil. Most of the time, we aren't afforded such a clear choice as what is "the right thing to do" or "the wrong thing."
This form of reasoning is perfectly suited to the the crafting of Social Statements as we have them in the ELCA: long discussions about what our values are and how we fulfill them, discussions about how the topic of the statement has far-reaching implications, and how Christians can best respond to those issues. I would go so far as to say that production of such statements are a natural outgrowth of this ethical perspective: this kind of analysis is hard work, and to do that work on behalf of others who don't have the resources and/or ability to put it together on their own would enable many others to make more ethical decisions, which would be an end worth achieving.
The problem is, most people don't think about ethics this way, and I doubt that the ELCA wishes to establish one ethical paradigm as normative (though reading through the Genetics document, there are claims along those lines; more on that later). If I had to guess, I'd say most people, even in the ELCA, look at ethical problems from a deontological perspective, and look at the specific directives/recommendations of any Statement in question, deciding whether to approve them on that basis: if the document doesn't have directives/prohibitions that that person agrees with, the document is inoffensive at best and unacceptable at worst. That audience of readers who are aware of the documents, share the teleological perspective of ethics and don't think they already have the issue figured out by themselves is a small one, and so the potential benefit from the work of those who write our Social Statements remains low.
For those in the Assembly who don't share that perspective, the institutional bias seems to be to vote in favor of adopting the document unless there is a flaw so egregious as to disqualify it from consideration. This has led, even with sizeable majorities voting for the documents, to many people feeling dissatisfied and unheard: these same people may approve documents they view as inoffensive enough, but which don't represent their perspective.
What's the solution to this? I really don't know. As I've said, the genre of the Social Statement naturally lends itself to a teleologically-minded treatment of the subject, and I'm not sure that there's a more intellectually inclusive way of doing it. Encouraging the statement of more concrete, generally-applicable commands and prohibitions would certainly garner more attention for the documents, but that doesn't look like a direction anyone wants to go. At the moment, I'm pinning my hopes on some people in the Communal Discernment Task Force having similar thoughts and coming up with some great new paradigm-shifting ideas, but I'm not counting on that. I just wanted to get this (now slightly more than) half-baked notion about what the current status of Social Statements is in the ELCA at large before I tackled the proposed Genetics statement.
And there is a lot to talk about in that document! In an effort to not embarrass myself further, I promise to start blogging about it "soon". If you want to be sure to catch these posts as they come, click the subscribe link below.
*"That's Different" is the highest expression of disapprobation available in the native rural Minnesotan dialect; feel free to adjust for regional differences.
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