Moral Accountability and Nonvoluntary Participation in Social Sin

Abstract

This chapter argues that the work of Judith Butler can be used productively to intervene at the intersection of one of themost pressing questions in Christian ethics and theology today: how we understand individual moral accountability and right action within the context of social sin. I proceed by outlining debates among Christian ethicists who seek to explain how accountability for sin, traditionally understood as voluntary, is possible within social structures that influence free choice. I describe Butler’s reception within Christian feminist ethics, before arguing that her notion of the social “I” can help us think through the moral accountability of nonvoluntary participation in evil structures. I then explore expressions of public grief and practices of assembly as contexts for right action within social sin. My thesis throughout is that Butler’s concept of a social self makes accountability possible even as one participates nonvoluntarily in evil, and it helps us imagine how we might judge right choices and work toward justice in that context. Sin is an important category when thinking about justice, but it is often misunderstood. It is invoked incorrectly to shame and to name people as fundamentally broken. When correctly engaged, sin as a category should label a relationship as broken, not a person. As a category, sin is ultimately hopeful: it presumes that healed relationships of justice and love are possible, that thingsmight be otherwise, that we are capable of loving God and others, that our interconnection is the means of our flourishing, and that we are each worthy of God’s offer of love. Retrieving this category of sin from its misuse, and reflecting on it with Butler’s work, I hope to show how Christian moral theology can advance the causes of love and justice with practices of grieving and assembly in the context of the social, structural sin that does so much harm.