When Autonomy Becomes Sovereign

Church Capture, Constitutional Governance and the Fracturing of Alliance - Unalienable Rights, Secular Humanism, and the Lessons of History

Abstract

This Article examines a recent public reframing of the Christian Nativity by clergy content on the Instagram location page associated with the Church of England. The clergy content cast Mary as the “main character” of the Christmas story, inferring she possessed the power to abort Jesus. This recast provides a revealing case study of a broader theological and jurisprudential shift. Drawing on constitutional theory, natural law, Christian theology, and historical precedent, the Article argues that such framing reflects the ascendancy of a secular progressive humanist worldview grounded in radical personal autonomy rather than unalienable rights.

The Article situates this development within a larger pattern observable in both modern constitutional jurisprudence and twentieth-century church history, particularly the “Positive Christianity” movement in 1930s Germany. It demonstrates that when religious institutions retain their outward forms while surrendering inviolable moral standards—especially concerning the sanctity of human life—they become susceptible to ideological capture and moral disarmament. The Article further shows that these same anthropological shifts increasingly bear upon international law and transatlantic relations, as alliances once grounded in shared civilizational values strain under diverging conceptions of human dignity, freedom, and moral authority.

In this Article the author contends that the erosion of unalienable principles in theology mirrors—and reinforces—the erosion of constitutional limits in law and governance. Because constitutional orders and international alliances alike presuppose a shared moral anthropology, the collapse of inviolable standards within churches and courts has consequences that extend beyond domestic governance to the stability of the postwar international order.  The Article concludes that the preservation of both religious integrity and constitutional liberty depends upon recovering an objective moral anthropology in which human life possesses intrinsic value independent of will, power, or preference.

Table of Contents

Part I. Introduction

Part II. Empirical Evidence of Ecclesial Alignment with Progressive Secular Moral Frameworks

·       Abortion: From Inviolable Moral Wrong to Autonomous Moral Judgment

·       Sexual Ethics: Doctrinal Adaptation to Contemporary Leftist Norms

·       Why It Matters

Part III. The Worldviews Underlying Cultural Shift

·       The Unalienable Worldview

·       The Alienable Worldview

Part IV. Understanding Institutional Shifts toward Alignment with Progressive Secular Moral Frameworks  - Supreme Court Jurisprudence as an Expression of Competing Legal Worldviews 

·       Judicial Activism and the Alienable Worldview

o   Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857): The Alienability of Personhood.

o   Roe v. Wade (1973): Autonomy as a Source of Constitutional Liberty

o   Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992): The Sovereignty of the Will

o   Obergefell v. Hodges (2015): Institutional Redefinition Through Expressive Identity

·       Judicial Restraint and the Unalienable Worldview

o   Washington v. Glucksberg (1997): Objective Limits and Historical Methodology

o   Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022): Rejection of Judicial Moral Creation

·       Synthesis

·       Empirical Convergence with Progressive Public Opinion

Part V. Relevance to the Christmas Claim Recasting Christmas as Autonomy

·       How the Claim Fails at the Pastoral Level

·       From Unalienable Life to Alienable Autonomy - The Worldview Substitution at Work

Part VI. Ideological Accommodation Then and Now: From Progressive Moral Frameworks to “Positive Christianity”

·       Moral Authority Relocated: From Revelation to the Spirit of the Age

·       Conditional Human Worth: Different Criteria, Identical Logic

·       Sexual Ethics and the Eclipse of Creation Order

·       Institutional Incentives and the Preservation of Form

·       Barmen, Bonhoeffer, and the Line That Must Not Be Crossed

·       Law, Theology, and the Consequences of Abandoning Inviolable Standards

·       Why the Christmas Reframing Is a Warning Sign

Part VII. Civilizational Premises and the Fragility of the Transatlantic Alliance

·       Shared Values as the True Infrastructure of Alliances

·       Jurisprudential Drift and Civilizational Divergence

·       The Church–Court Parallel and Its International Implications

·       Comparative European Jurisprudence and the Fracturing of Moral Consensus

·       A Historical Caution Revisited

·       Implications for International Law and Diplomacy

Part VIII. A Final Synthesis: Christmas, Constitutional Order, and the Future of a Shared Civilization                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Part I. Introduction

Christmas has long occupied a singular place in Western moral and constitutional Truth. It proclaims not a religious festival, but a metaphysical claim: Two thousand years ago, Jesus humbly came to set us free.  Born in Bethlehem, wrapped in swaddling cloths, and laid in a manger, God entered history in human flesh. He came to die in our place, willingly bearing the punishment our sins deserve. By taking on a vulnerable human life, God affirmed the inherent dignity of every human being—created in His image—from the earliest stage of existence to the last. That claim harmonized naturally with the American Constitution Framer’s understanding of unalienable rights—rights that exist prior to government because they are grounded in an objective moral order, including the truth that all life holds inherent value and worthiness because it is made in the image of God.

Recent developments, however, suggest a profound inversion. Clergy content on the Instagram location page associated with the Church of England contends that the “main character” of the Christmas story is not Jesus Christ, but Mary—inferring she possessed the power to abort Him and chose not to do so. While presented as pastoral reflection, this reframing exposes a deeper transformation: the displacement of incarnation by autonomy, and of divine gift by human authorization.

I argue in this article that such reframing is not an isolated misstep but part of a broader ideological realignment. Historic churches increasingly adopt the moral grammar of secular progressive humanism—particularly its elevation of personal autonomy over objective moral truth—while retaining the symbols and authority of religious tradition. This same worldview seeks to reshape modern constitutional jurisprudence, most notably around abortion, assisted-suicide, sexual behavior, and marriage, where conduct once universally condemned is now jurisprudentially recharacterized as fundamental liberty – and in matters of free speech and religious conscience, where liberty once universally protected as fundamental is now recharacterized as dangerous conduct. Beyond domestic policy concerns, such theological and jurisprudential drift creates geopolitical tension with consequences for Western Civilization as we know it.

The danger of this convergence is not abstract. History offers a stark warning in the form of the “Positive Christianity” movement of 1930s Germany, where churches retained Christian form while surrendering Christian substance, thereby facilitating moral catastrophe.  I contend in this article that the same structural mechanics—though not the same immediate outcomes—are again visible today.  Indeed, the anthropological shifts analyzed here increasingly bear upon international law and transatlantic relations, as alliances once grounded in shared civilizational values strain under diverging conceptions of human dignity, freedom, and moral authority. The erosion of unalienable principles in theology mirrors—and reinforces—the erosion of constitutional limits in law, diminishing good governance under the Rule of Law. Because constitutional orders and international alliances alike presuppose a shared moral anthropology, the collapse of inviolable standards within churches and government institutions has consequences that extend beyond domestic governance to the stability of the postwar international order.

Part II. Empirical Evidence of Ecclesial Alignment with Progressive Secular Moral Frameworks

Before turning to the specific pastoral and theological claims at issue in the reframing of Christmas found in clergy content on the Instagram location page associated with the Church of England, it is necessary to situate that episode within a broader and well-documented institutional context. The shift toward autonomy-centered moral reasoning observed in the Nativity framing does not arise in isolation. Rather, it reflects a measurable and sustained alignment between historic Christian bodies and progressive secular moral frameworks—particularly on questions of human life, sexuality, and moral authority.

Abortion: From Inviolable Moral Wrong to Autonomous Moral Judgment

Across the Church of England and multiple U.S. mainline Protestant denominations, official statements on abortion increasingly adopt the language of personal moral authority rather than categorical moral proscription.

The Church of England, while continuing to employ the rhetoric of “strong opposition” to abortion in principle, has developed Synod materials that expressly resist a categorical pro-life position.  Official guidance affirms that abortion is a “great moral evil,” yet simultaneously recognizes circumstances in which abortion may be considered “morally preferable,” framing the decision as a tragic but permissible choice rather than as intrinsically wrong conduct.  The operative morally relative logic is not inviolability, but proportionality and individual discernment.

The Episcopal Church (USA) has, for decades, adopted formal resolutions opposing legal restrictions on abortion and consistently framing abortion within a rights-based paradigm. General Convention resolutions affirm a woman’s “right to choose” and oppose legislation restricting abortion access, emphasizing personal decision-making authority and opposing state life-protecting involvement.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) has since 1970 maintained that abortion is an individual ethical decision that “should not be restricted by law.” Its official policy statements repeatedly locate authority in subjective individual autonomy rather than in objective moral standards governing the protection of unborn life.

The United Methodist Church, through its Social Principles, affirms its morally-relative support for “the legal option of abortion” in certain circumstances. Although expressed in pastoral language, the underlying framework treats abortion as a morally legitimate expression of autonomous choice subject to contextual balancing.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) explicitly seeks to move “beyond” traditional pro-life/pro-choice categories, centering a deliberative framework emphasizing accompaniment, discernment, and individual conscience. In practice, this morally-relative approach functions as autonomy-plus-affirmation, with few principled limits grounded in the intrinsic value of unborn human life.

Sexual Ethics: Doctrinal Adaptation to Contemporary Leftist Norms

The same pattern appears in the domain of sexual ethics.

The Church of England’s Living in Love and Faith process documents an ongoing institutional movement toward the normalization and liturgical blessing of same-sex relationships through the authorization of “Prayers of Love and Faith,” alongside proposed revisions to clergy discipline requirements.  Sociologically, this represents a classic case of doctrinal adaptation to modernity, in which inherited moral Truth and teaching are recalibrated to align with prevailing cultural norms concerning sexuality and identity.

In the United States, the trend is even more pronounced. Mainline Protestant denominations—including the Episcopal Church, PC(USA), ELCA, and segments of the United Methodist Church—have formally revised doctrine and practice to affirm same-sex relationships, ordination, and marriage. These changes are not merely textual; they are empirically measurable in clergy beliefs, seminary instruction, and enforcement practices.

The direction of change is consistent and asymmetrical: historic moral Truth constraints yield, while autonomy-based affirmations expand. 

Why It Matters

Terms such as “moral authority,” “choice,” “discernment,” and “should not be restricted by law” are not theologically neutral. They are hallmark concepts of leftist-modern political anthropology, grounded in the sovereignty of the will and the primacy of self-definition. When this language becomes the church’s operating grammar for questions of life and death, the church is no longer merely pastoring people in difficulty. It is catechizing a rival subjective creed—one fundamentally at odds with objective Truth.

Part III. The Worldviews Underlying Cultural Shift

As the above discussed changes influence law and public policy, it is helpful to briefly review the cultural shift by analyzing its underlying worldviews.

The Unalienable Worldview

Under what I’ve described elsewhere as an Unalienable Worldview, the legitimacy of authority—whether civil, ecclesial, or moral—is premised on the existence of objective and absolute truths that stand outside individual preference, institutional power, or historical contingency. In constitutional jurisprudence, this conviction is traditionally captured by the maxim that we are governed by laws, not men. In theological discourse, it is expressed by the claim that doctrine and moral teaching are received from God rather than invented. In ecclesial sociology, it manifests in the understanding that the Church is accountable to Truth not of its own making, but from God.

Across these domains, the core proposition is the same: to determine whether a legal rule, doctrinal claim, or moral judgment is valid, one must possess a standard external to the judgment itself by which it can be evaluated. Without such a standard, authority collapses into mere assertion.

William Blackstone articulated this principle in the legal sphere when he observed that a judicial opinion later recognized as erroneous was never law in the first place. That conclusion presupposes the existence of a higher measure of law against which judicial reasoning may be assessed. As Herb Titus has noted, Blackstone’s position is intelligible only if one assumes the reality of an objective standard—ultimately grounded in divine revelation—external to human will and institutional decree. The same logic applies in theology: a doctrinal error corrected by the Church was never true doctrine, precisely because truth is not generated by ecclesial proclamation but measured against a transcendent standard.

From the perspective of the Unalienable Worldview, objective transcendent truth is worthy of serving as an authoritative standard because it corresponds to reality and conforms to the fundamental laws of logic. Whether the subject is human life, moral obligation, or institutional authority, truth is understood as something that is, not something that is negotiated, evolved, or conferred.

Historically, this conception of objective higher law predominated throughout Western legal, theological, and moral traditions. Over time, however, particularly with the rise of post-“Enlightenment” and Darwinian modes of thought, this framework was increasingly displaced by philosophies that sought to marginalize divine authority in favor of human-centered accounts of meaning and ethics. In jurisprudence, this shift elevated autonomy over natural law; in theology, it encouraged doctrinal revisionism; and in ecclesial life, it fostered adaptive morally-relative reasoning responsive primarily to cultural change desired by those elites in charge.

The Alienable Worldview

In contrast stands what I call an Alienable Worldview, which rejects the existence of a binding, objective moral order in favor of a subjective, human-centered, morally-relative framework. Within this worldview, law, doctrine, and moral norms are not received from a reliable trustworthy external source but are instead deemed into existence by contemporary actors—whether judges, theologians, synods, or cultural elites.

In constitutional jurisprudence, this worldview manifests in the assertion of evolving rights untethered from historical grounding or objective moral limits. In theological discourse, it appears in the reconfiguration of doctrine to align with prevailing cultural sensibilities. In ecclesial sociology, it is reflected in the relocation of moral authority from Scripture and tradition to individual conscience, communal discernment, or lived experience.

Viewed through this relativistic lens, liberty is not understood as freedom ordered toward truth, but as license from constraint, defined by circumstance, personal preference, or expressive autonomy. Moral judgments are rendered provisional and context-dependent, and institutional authority becomes responsive primarily to social pressure rather than transcendent obligation.

Accordingly, law and doctrine lose their character as objective standards and are instead treated as “temporally and spatially conditioned phenomena,” subject to revision as cultural elites desire norms to evolve. What once functioned as a measure of right and wrong becomes a mirror of contemporary desire. In this framework, neither law nor theology possesses inherent moral authority; both are instruments for facilitating autonomy rather than for conforming human conduct to an objective moral order.

Part IV. Understanding Institutional Shifts toward Alignment with Progressive Secular Moral Frameworks  - Supreme Court Jurisprudence as an Expression of Competing Legal Worldviews 

Thus, it is clear that the distinction between an Unalienable Worldview and an Alienable Worldview is not confined to theological discourse or ecclesial sociology. It is reflected with particular clarity in the internal logic, methodological commitments, and moral anthropology of the U.S. Supreme Court’s constitutional jurisprudence. A series of landmark decisions—spanning questions of personhood, life, liberty, and sexual ethics—illustrate the extent to which the Court has alternately understood law as the recognition of objective limits grounded in historical truth and moral reality, or as an instrument for the construction of rights derived from autonomous will.

Judicial Activism and the Alienable Worldview

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857): The Alienability of Personhood

In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Court held that some American human life was not worthy of constitutional protection, based on the person’s skin color. Personhood and legal protection were rendered contingent upon political recognition rather than inherent in human nature.

The jurisprudential significance of Dred Scott lies not merely in its outcome, but in its premise that the Court possessed authority to define the scope of humanity itself. Under this reasoning, human dignity was not treated as an objective and antecedent reality, but as an alienable legal status subject to judicial determination. In this respect, Dred Scott exemplifies a legal worldview in which rights are neither pre-political nor unalienable, but instead are conferred—or withheld—by institutional power.

Roe v. Wade (1973): Autonomy as a Source of Constitutional Liberty

The structural logic of Roe v. Wade mirrors that of Dred Scott.  In Roe, the Court, as in Dred Scott, found some American human life unworthy of Constitutional protection, creating a liberty right to kill an unborn child. That liberty interest was not anchored in constitutional text, historical practice, or objective moral constraint, but instead emerged from activist Justices deeming the destruction of unborn human life a legally permissible choice.

As in Dred Scott, the Court did not identify a preexisting legal or moral reality; rather, it effectively constructed a right through judicial reasoning that treated human life as conditional and defeasible. The result was the alienation of a class of human beings from legal protection—not by racial classification, but by developmental stage.

Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992): The Sovereignty of the Will

Planned Parenthood v. Casey represents a further development in the Court’s autonomy-centered jurisprudence.¹⁸ While nominally reaffirming Roe, Casey reformulated the constitutional basis for abortion rights in explicitly philosophical terms, defining liberty as “the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

This articulation marked a decisive shift from law as the recognition of objective limits to law as the protection of morally-relative subjective self-definition. Moral authority was no longer located in history, tradition, or any external normative standard, but in the self-authorizing individual. Under this framework, constitutional liberty was no longer constrained by objective truths about human life but was instead grounded in existential autonomy.

Obergefell v. Hodges (2015): Institutional Redefinition Through Expressive Identity

The reasoning of Casey found further expression in Obergefell v. Hodges, where the Court redefined civil marriage to include same-sex relationships. Marriage was no longer treated as a pre-political institution with inherent structural features oriented toward procreation and family formation. Instead, it was reconceptualized as a vehicle for personal identity, emotional fulfillment, and expressive autonomy.

Notably, the opinion frequently employed passive constructions—suggesting that the meaning of marriage “has evolved” or “has changed”—thereby obscuring the Court’s active role in redefining the institution. This rhetorical pattern reflects a broader jurisprudential posture in which historically grounded moral categories are treated as fluid and contingent, subject to judicial revision in light of the judge’s idea of evolving social norms.

Judicial Restraint and the Unalienable Worldview

Washington v. Glucksberg (1997): Objective Limits and Historical Methodology

In Washington v. Glucksberg, the Court rejected the assertion of a constitutional right to assisted suicide. Rather than deriving liberty from abstract autonomy, the Court grounded its analysis in the Constitution’s text, the Nation’s history, legal tradition, and longstanding commitment to the intrinsic value of human life. The Court articulated a methodological requirement grounded in truth that asserted fundamental rights be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”

This approach reflects a legal worldview in which law operates within objective moral boundaries rather than creating them. Human life is treated as inherently worthy of protection, and judicial authority is constrained by historical and moral reality.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022): Rejection of Judicial Moral Creation

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Court explicitly repudiated the autonomy-based reasoning of Roe and Casey, holding that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Significantly, the Court acknowledged that those earlier decisions were not merely incorrect in application, but flawed in principle insofar as they claimed judicial authority to resolve contested moral questions absent constitutional grounding.

Echoing Blackstonian principles, Dobbs reaffirmed that erroneous judicial opinions do not become law by virtue of their longevity. Instead, constitutional interpretation must be measured against standards external to judicial preference, including constitutional text, history, and the objective reality of human life.

Synthesis

Taken together, these cases reveal a consistent jurisprudential divide. Decisions such as Dred Scott, Roe, Casey, and Obergefell reflect an Alienable Worldview in which human dignity and personhood are conditional, rights are generated through judicial assertion, and moral authority is relocated from objective reality to individual autonomy.

By contrast, Glucksberg and Dobbs exemplify an Unalienable Worldview, characterized by the inherent worth of human life, liberty constrained by objective moral limits; and a judicial role limited to the recognition, rather than creation, of law.

Thus, the same worldview tension evident in contemporary ecclesial debates over life and sexuality appears with equal clarity in constitutional law and governance. In both contexts, the pattern of change is consistent and asymmetrical: historically grounded moral constraints recede, while autonomy-based claims expand—reflecting not merely doctrinal evolution, but a fundamental shift in the underlying conception of law, liberty, and moral authority.

And so, again it is clear the shift toward autonomy-centered amoral reasoning observed in the Nativity framing does not arise in isolation. Just as it reflects a measurable and sustained alignment between historic Church bodies and progressive secular amoral frameworks, we see the same worldview tension in law and public policy—especially concerning issues related to human life, sexuality, and moral authority.

Whether activist elites seek change in church doctrine or law and public policy, the direction of change is consistent and asymmetrical: the unalienable worldview and historic moral constraints yield, while the alienable worldview and autonomy-based affirmations expand. 

Empirical Convergence with Progressive Public Opinion

Large-scale social-science data corroborate these institutional realignments.

Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Studies consistently demonstrate that members and leaders of mainline Protestant denominations hold views on abortion legality and LGBT issues far closer to those of the broader left-leaning public than to historic Christian orthodoxy or evangelical Protestant positions. On many measures, mainline attitudes are statistically indistinguishable from secular progressive humanists.

Pew also documents long-term religious switching and secularization dynamics, including the rapid growth of the religiously unaffiliated (“nones”). These trends exert institutional pressure on legacy churches to rebrand themselves as “spiritually meaningful but morally progressive” in order to maintain cultural relevance and institutional viability.

Notably, observers across the ideological spectrum acknowledge this convergence. Left-leaning scholars and journalists frequently celebrate it as evidence that religious institutions are “updating” faith to modern justice claims. Conservative critics describe the same phenomenon as capitulation to untruth and the spirit of the age. What neither side seriously disputes is the data: the moral distance between historic Christian teaching and contemporary mainline institutional positions has grown markedly—and in one direction only.

Part V. Relevance to the Christmas Claim Recasting Christmas as Autonomy

The above evidentiary record illuminates why the clergy content reframing the Nativity on the Instagram location page associated with the Church of England is not an isolated rhetorical misstep. It is the predictable outgrowth of a deeper transformation in moral anthropology. Once autonomy becomes the organizing principle of moral reasoning—whether in abortion, sexuality, or human identity—it inevitably reshapes how even the most foundational Christian narratives are interpreted.

It is against this background that the reframing the Nativity on the Instagram location page associated with the Church of England must be evaluated.

How the Claim Fails at the Pastoral Level

The Church of England clip at issue contends—explicitly or implicitly—that Mary is the “main character” of the Christmas story because she possessed the power to abort Jesus and chose not to do so.

Even if offered with the stated pastoral aim of affirming women or highlighting Mary’s courage, this framing is pastorally clumsy in ways that merit careful attention before one even reaches the deeper constitutional or jurisprudential implications.

First, it introduces into the Nativity narrative a conceptual framework entirely foreign to the text itself. The Gospel accounts do not present Mary as weighing morally equivalent options, one of which is the intentional destruction of her child. Rather, they present a young woman confronted by divine initiative and responding in faith. Her words—“Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word”—are not the language of sovereign self-authorship, but of trust, obedience, and submission to God’s purposes. To recast that moment as a paradigmatic exercise of reproductive choice is to read the story backward through modern categories that the text neither assumes nor endorses.

Second, this framing risks pastoral harm by re-centering Christmas on an act of violence narrowly averted, rather than on the joy and wonder of divine incarnation. Christmas has historically been proclaimed as good news precisely because it announces life entering the world—light breaking into darkness, hope displacing despair. Introducing abortion into that proclamation, and making it the moral hinge of the story, needlessly draws congregants into one of the most painful and morally charged controversies of modern life at the very moment when the Church traditionally calls them to worship, adoration, and reverent awe.

Third, the framing subtly reorients moral formation in an unhelpful direction. Pastoral teaching shapes the moral instincts of the faithful not only by what it condemns, but by what it foregrounds. When Mary’s faithfulness is explained primarily in terms of her declining to exercise a presumed power to kill her child, the implicit lesson is that the morally decisive feature of pregnancy is control over life rather than reverence for it. That lesson sits uneasily with the Christian tradition’s longstanding insistence that human life possesses intrinsic worth and moral significance precisely because it is given, not chosen.

Fourth, the framing is pastorally clumsy because it confuses affirmation with catechesis. In an effort to speak into contemporary cultural conversations, it allows those conversations to dictate the terms of theological reflection. Instead of helping believers interpret their lives through the lens of the Gospel, it invites them to interpret the Gospel through the lens of modern autonomy. In doing so, it diminishes the Church’s ability to offer a distinct moral and spiritual vision—one capable of comforting the afflicted without adopting the assumptions of the age.

Finally—and most tellingly—this framing relocates the moral center of Christmas away from God’s act of entering history and toward human authority over dependent life. The decisive moral fact becomes not that God created life with purpose and dignity, but that a human agent temporarily possessed the power to terminate that life and chose restraint. Even if unintended, this rhetorical move subtly but unmistakably shifts the story’s gravity from incarnation to authorization, from divine gift to human control.

In short, in addition to the deeper worldview and constitutional governance concerns that follow, the claim falters at the pastoral level. It does not clarify the meaning of Christmas; it distracts from it. It does not elevate Mary’s faith; it reframes that faith in categories foreign to the Christian story itself. And in doing so, it inadvertently mirrors the very autonomy-centered logic that has so profoundly reshaped modern moral and legal discourse—setting the stage for the broader analysis that must now follow.

From Unalienable Life to Alienable Autonomy - The Worldview Substitution at Work

At the core of present cultural tensions lies a fundamental worldview substitution—one that increasingly seeks to reshape modern constitutional jurisprudence and contemporary ecclesial teaching. This substitution does not concern policy preferences or pastoral tone, but first principles: the source of human dignity, the locus of moral authority, and ultimately the identity of the sovereign to whom allegiance is owed.

Under an Unalienable Worldview, underlying historic Christianity and the American constitutional order, human life is understood as created by God rather than conferred by the state or the individual. Because life is created in the image of God, it possesses objective and intrinsic value independent of circumstance, development, or preference. Institutions charged with authority—whether government or church—exist to recognize and protect that value, not to redefine it. From this premise follows a moral absolute: the intentional killing of innocent human life is always wrong and therefore can never constitute a legitimate right. Moral truth, under this worldview, is discovered rather than invented, and liberty operates within moral reality rather than standing above it. Sovereignty, in this understanding, does not reside in human will, but in divine order.

The alternative Alienable Worldview proceeds from radically different premises. Under this framework, the value of human life is contingent rather than intrinsic, dependent upon conditions such as choice, capacity, or morally-relative social judgment. Moral authority shifts from objective reality to individual preference and subjective self-definition. Autonomy becomes the highest good, functioning as the ultimate source of moral legitimacy. As a consequence, conduct once universally prohibited—such as abortion or assisted suicide—is rhetorically re-characterized as a protected right. This shift does not merely soften moral norms; it reverses them. What was once condemned as wrongful conduct becomes protected liberty, and what was once an object of protection becomes an object of control. In jurisprudential terms, sovereignty quietly migrates from moral reality to personal will.

This is precisely the move effected by the United States Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, where the joint opinion famously declared that “at the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” That sentence is not constitutional interpretation. It is secular humanist anthropology. It rejects the Framers’ premise that rights are unalienable because they are grounded in an objective moral order and replaces it with the proposition that meaning, value, and even life itself derive their legitimacy from individual self-definition.

When clergy echo this logic, framing the Incarnation through the lens of reproductive autonomy, they are no longer teaching or preaching Christianity. They are baptizing Casey. More precisely, they are enthroning Casey’s conception of autonomy as a rival sovereign. In Christian theology, sovereignty belongs to God alone. The Incarnation proclaims that God enters history as life itself, thereby affirming that human worth is bestowed, not chosen. To reinterpret that event through the grammar of autonomy is to transfer ultimate moral authority from God to the self. Autonomy does not merely supplement theology; it supplants it.

Here the connection to the Barmen Declaration of 1934 becomes unavoidable. Barmen rejected as false doctrine the claim that the Church could acknowledge “other events and powers, figures and truths” as sources of revelation or authority alongside the Word of God. Its central concern was not partisan politics but sovereignty. Once the Church permits an external authority—whether state, culture, or autonomous self—to define moral reality, it has already surrendered its theological ground. The elevation of autonomy to the role of final moral arbiter is precisely the recognition of an “other lord” that Barmen condemned.

This is why the present framing cannot be dismissed as a benign pastoral adaptation. It constitutes a confession of allegiance. Where Christianity proclaims, “Not my will, but Yours be done,” autonomy-centered theology proclaims, “My will defines what may be.” The former recognizes a sovereign; the latter installs one. The result is not simply doctrinal drift, but a change of gods—one whose consequences reverberate through theology, law, and the constitutional order alike.

Part VI. Ideological Accommodation Then and Now: From Progressive Moral Frameworks to “Positive Christianity”

The empirical record set forth in Part II does more than demonstrate doctrinal drift or cultural influence. When viewed through a historical lens, it reveals a pattern of institutional accommodation that closely mirrors one of the most consequential church failures of the twentieth century: the rise of “Positive Christianity” in Germany during the 1930s.

The symmetry is not rhetorical. It is structural, anthropological, and jurisprudential.

Moral Authority Relocated: From Revelation to the Spirit of the Age

Positive Christianity did not initially reject Christianity’s symbols, liturgy, or ecclesial structures. Rather, it sought to reinterpret Christianity so that it would harmonize with elitist authorities desires for modern cultural and political imperatives. Scripture remained formally authoritative, but its meaning was increasingly mediated through contemporary ideological commitments. As Karl Barth observed at the time, the decisive error was not political naïveté but theological surrender—the replacement of divine revelation with “other lords.”

Modern ecclesial accommodation follows the same pattern. As documented in Part II, official denominational materials now frame abortion and sexual ethics in terms of personal moral authority, discernment, and choice, while resisting categorical moral prohibitions and opposing legal constraints. This shift mirrors the German Christian insistence that doctrine must be reinterpreted in light of “lived experience,” national destiny, and modern insight.

In both cases, the Church ceases to ask what is true and instead asks what must be affirmed to remain credible.

Conditional Human Worth: Different Criteria, Identical Logic

The abortion frameworks adopted by the Church of England and U.S. mainline denominations are especially revealing. When official documents describe abortion as potentially “morally preferable,” or insist that it “should not be restricted by law,” they implicitly deny that unborn human life possesses inviolable sacred worth. Value becomes contingent and morally relative—dependent on circumstances, burdens, or autonomous judgment.

Positive Christianity employed different criteria—race, health, productivity—but the logic was identical. As Robert Ericksen demonstrates, many German Protestant leaders did not begin by endorsing atrocity; they began by accepting a conditional anthropology in which human worth was evaluated instrumentally rather than ontologically. Once that premise was conceded, the Church had no principled ground on which to resist what followed.

As Klaus Scholder documents in his definitive history of the German Church Struggle, the decisive failure occurred when churches abandoned the belief that human dignity rests on divine creation rather than social utility. The catastrophe that followed was not an aberration, but a consequence.

Sexual Ethics and the Eclipse of Creation Order

The same accommodation is evident in sexual ethics. As previously discussed, the Church of England’s Living in Love and Faith process and the widespread revision of sexual doctrine among U.S. mainline denominations reflect a consistent move away from appeals to creation order and toward moral reasoning grounded in experience, identity, and social affirmation.

Positive Christianity followed the same trajectory. Traditional Christian teaching on creation, human nature, and moral limits was reinterpreted as historically conditioned and therefore revisable. As Doris Bergen notes, this reinterpretation allowed Christianity to appear continuous while undergoing substantive moral inversion.

In both contexts, theology becomes reactive rather than declarative—its authority derived from relevance rather than revelation.

Institutional Incentives and the Preservation of Form

The Pew data discussed earlier help explain why this pattern recurs. German churches in the 1930s faced cultural marginalization and political pressure; aligning with National Socialism promised institutional survival and public relevance. Contemporary churches face declining attendance, elite hostility toward traditional moral claims, and rapid secularization; aligning with progressive moral frameworks promises the same.

In both cases, continuity of form masked discontinuity of substance. Churches remained open. Clergy retained authority. Scripture was read. Liturgy continued. This is why Positive Christianity proved so effective—and so dangerous. It did not appear revolutionary. It appeared organic.

Barmen, Bonhoeffer, and the Line That Must Not Be Crossed

The Confessing Church recognized that the true danger was not persecution but theological capture. As noted previously, the Barmen Declaration of 1934 explicitly rejected the claim that the Church could recognize “other events and powers, figures and truths” as sources of revelation alongside the Word of God.

Bonhoeffer understood the implications with tragic clarity. A church that blesses injustice in the name of relevance, he warned, does not merely fail, it becomes complicit. His warning was not limited to totalitarian regimes. It applies wherever churches abandon inviolable moral standards to accommodate prevailing ideology.

Law, Theology, and the Consequences of Abandoning Inviolable Standards

The constitutional parallels are unmistakable. Just as Positive Christianity hollowed out the Church’s resistance to tyranny, secular humanist jurisprudence hollowed out the Constitution’s protection of life by transforming prohibited conduct into protected autonomy. In Roe, and Casey, the Court did not merely misread history; it used an Alienable Worldview to replace an objective moral framework with radical subjectivism.

As demonstrated earlier, this same error appeared in Dred Scott, where the Court claimed to protect property rights while in reality denying the personhood of an entire class of human beings.  In each instance, human worth was conditioned on arbitrary characteristics—race in one case, developmental stage in another.

By contrast, in Washington v. Glucksberg, the Court correctly used an Unalienable Worldview lens, grounding its analysis in constitutional text, history, tradition, and the intrinsic value of human life.  And in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Court finally corrected Roe’s fatal errors, restoring the Constitution to its proper role and returning the question of abortion to the people and their elected representatives.

The lesson across law and theology is the same: when inviolable standards are abandoned, power rushes in to fill the void – and when good people do something, evil can be overcome.

Why the Christmas Reframing Is a Warning Sign

Seen in this integrated light, the clergy content reframing Christmas on the Instagram location page associated with the Church of England is not an isolated rhetorical misstep. It is a symptom of a deeper anthropological shift.

Once autonomy becomes the governing principle on the value of human life and sexual ethics, it inevitably migrates into theology and biblical interpretation. The Incarnation itself becomes intelligible only through the lens of choice and control. God’s act is displaced by human authorization.

That is precisely how Positive Christianity functioned—by allowing the spirit of the age to determine what Christianity must mean now.

Part VII. Civilizational Premises and the Fragility of the Transatlantic Alliance

The theological and jurisprudential shifts traced in the preceding Parts are not confined to domestic law or ecclesial teaching. They bear directly on the stability of the postwar international order—particularly the transatlantic alliance between the United States and Europe. This is because alliances, like constitutions, presuppose more than shared interests. They presuppose a shared moral anthropology: a common understanding of the human person, the source of rights, and the limits of power.

This reality has recently reentered diplomatic discourse at the highest levels. In December 2025, the U.S. Secretary of State described the U.S.–Europe relationship as grounded in “a shared culture, civilization, a shared experience and shared values and principles on things like human rights, on freedom, on liberty, on democracy.” At the same time, he warned that this foundation is increasingly at risk due to what he characterized as Europe’s “civilizational erosion,” including democratic deficits and growing restrictions on freedom of expression.

The Secretary of State’s framing reflects a classical understanding of international relations that predates contemporary partisan divides: alliances endure only so long as the moral premises that undergird them remain intelligible and shared.

Shared Values as the True Infrastructure of Alliances

From the perspective of international law, NATO and related transatlantic institutions have never been merely transactional defense arrangements. They were founded in the aftermath of World War II as explicit rejections of totalitarianism and as affirmations of a shared civilizational commitment to human dignity, political liberty, and the rule of law. These commitments were not culturally neutral. They rested on a conception of rights as inherent to the human person rather than granted by the state—a conception historically shaped by natural law and Judeo-Christian moral reasoning.

In this sense, the alliance presupposed what I have described above as an Unalienable Worldview. Human rights were understood as grounded in objective moral reality. Freedom of expression was protected not because it was useful, but because truth could not be subordinated to power. Democratic governance was legitimate precisely because it operated within moral limits it did not create.

Once these premises erode, the alliance’s legal architecture may persist, but its normative cohesion weakens.

Jurisprudential Drift and Civilizational Divergence

The concerns articulated by the Secretary of State regarding freedom of expression are particularly salient when viewed alongside the jurisprudential developments discussed earlier in this Article. In both Europe and the United States, courts and regulatory regimes increasingly ground rights not in intrinsic human dignity, but in autonomy, identity, and elitist-determined evolving consensus. Speech once protected as a natural liberty is increasingly conditioned on conformity to approved narratives. Bioethical norms once anchored in the inviolability of life are reinterpreted through proportionality and choice.

From an international-law perspective, this shift matters because it alters the meaning of shared commitments. When “human rights,” “freedom,” or “democracy” are no longer anchored in a common anthropology, they become contested terms rather than shared foundations. What appears to be agreement at the level of treaty language masks divergence at the level of moral substance.

In this respect, the Secretary of State’s warning that NATO risks becoming merely a “straight up defense agreement” is not hyperbole. It is a recognition that security cooperation without civilizational coherence is inherently fragile. Military obligations can be enforced; moral solidarity cannot.

The Church–Court Parallel and Its International Implications

The parallel between ecclesial accommodation and jurisprudential drift examined earlier helps explain why this divergence is accelerating. When churches reinterpret foundational narratives—such as the Incarnation—through the lens of autonomy, they reinforce the same anthropology that reshapes constitutional law and regulatory policy. The effect is cumulative. Moral categories once assumed to be fixed become negotiable. Rights become contingent. Truth becomes managerial.

For international relations, this means that transatlantic disagreements increasingly concern not merely policy, but first principles. Disputes over speech regulation, bioethics, religious liberty, and parental rights are not peripheral; they reveal competing answers to the question of what it means to be human and who may define that meaning.

Comparative European Jurisprudence and the Fracturing of Moral Consensus

The relevance of this analysis is underscored by contemporary European free-expression jurisprudence. The European Court of Human Rights has long affirmed that freedom of expression constitutes one of the “essential foundations of a democratic society.”  At the same time, its recent case law reflects an increasing willingness to condition speech protections on elitist-determined considerations of dignity, offense, and social harmony—concepts whose content is often defined by evolving elitist consensus rather than objective principle.

In Handyside v. United Kingdom, the Court famously held that freedom of expression protects not only information or ideas that are favorably received, but also those that “offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population.” That formulation presupposed a robust commitment to truth-seeking and moral agency. More recent decisions, however, have narrowed that protection by expanding the margin of appreciation afforded to states regulating speech deemed by those holding power as harmful, hateful, or destabilizing.

For example, in Perinçek v. Switzerland, the Court upheld restrictions on speech in the name of protecting collective memory and social peace, even while acknowledging tensions with traditional free-expression principles. In Vejdeland v. Sweden, it sustained criminal sanctions for speech characterized as degrading to protected groups, emphasizing the prevention of harm over the protection of dissenting expression.

These developments do not amount to censorship in the crude sense. They are more subtle—and therefore more consequential. They reflect a jurisprudential shift in which freedom is no longer treated as an inherent human right grounded in dignity, but as a contingent interest balanced against morally relative evolving social priorities. This is the same alienable logic identified earlier in abortion jurisprudence and ecclesial teaching: rights endure only so long as they comport with prevailing elitist moral judgments.

From an international-law perspective, this matters profoundly. When the United States and Europe invoke shared commitments to “freedom,” “human rights,” or “democracy,” they increasingly mean different things. The divergence is not merely cultural; it is anthropological. One side continues—at least intermittently—to ground rights in intrinsic human worth, while the other increasingly grounds them in elitist managed consensus and proportionality. History suggests that such divergence cannot be indefinitely papered over by institutional inertia

A Historical Caution Revisited

The lesson of the twentieth century, explored earlier through the lens of Positive Christianity, is that civilizational collapse rarely begins with military defeat. It begins with moral disarmament—the abandonment of inviolable standards in favor of adaptive relevance. Once that occurs, institutions remain, but their capacity to resist coercion diminishes.

The postwar international order was consciously designed to avoid that fate by rooting peace in a shared moral vision. To the extent that vision dissolves, the order itself becomes vulnerable—not to immediate overthrow, but to hollowing from within.

Implications for International Law and Diplomacy

For secular international-law scholars, the relevance of this analysis lies not in theological agreement, but in analytical clarity. International law cannot function sustainably without shared assumptions about human dignity and moral limits. When those assumptions fracture, legal commitments lose their stabilizing force.

The Secretary of State’s remarks thus function less as a policy manifesto than as a diagnostic signal. They suggest that the durability of the transatlantic alliance depends not only on deterrence and capability, but on whether the West still shares a coherent understanding of freedom, truth, and the human person.

Part VIII. A Final Synthesis: Christmas, Constitutional Order, and the Future of a Shared Civilization

This Article has traced a single, unbroken line through theology, constitutional law, and international relations: the line between a civilization grounded in unalienable human dignity and one reorganized around alienable autonomy. That line now runs not only through churches and courts, but through the foundations of the transatlantic alliance itself. Christmas stands at the beginning of that line. It proclaims that the Creator of the world came to earth in human flesh, to die in our place, willingly bearing the punishment our sins deserve. By taking on a vulnerable human life in the womb, God affirmed the inherent dignity of every human being at all stages of life. This anthropology once anchored Western moral reasoning, Christian theology, and constitutional law alike. It also supplied the moral infrastructure of the postwar international order.

The American constitutional tradition presupposed this same anthropology. The Framers did not understand rights as creations of will—whether judicial, legislative, or personal—but as unalienable because they are grounded in an objective moral order from God. When courts abandoned that premise in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, replacing unalienable rights with radical autonomy, constitutional limits eroded. When the Court corrected course in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, it did so by returning to Truth via text, history, tradition, and the intrinsic value of human life. (See also, Washington v. Glucksberg).

The Church now confronts an analogous test. When clergy reinterpret the Incarnation through the lens of reproductive autonomy, they do more than adopt contemporary pastoral language. They enthrone autonomy as a rival sovereign. As the Barmen Declaration warned in 1934, the Church cannot acknowledge “other events and powers, figures and truths” as sources of authority alongside the Word of God. To do so is not development, but surrender. Once sovereignty migrates from God to the autonomous self, neither doctrine nor moral limits remain secure.

Part VII demonstrated that this same shift now bears directly on international relations. Alliances endure not merely because of shared threats, but because of shared moral premises. NATO and the broader transatlantic order were founded on a common understanding of human dignity, freedom of expression, and the limits of state power. When those premises fracture, the alliance risks becoming what the Secretary of State warned against: a purely transactional defense arrangement, hollowed of its civilizational coherence.

History teaches that civilizations rarely collapse from external attack alone. They weaken first by abandoning the moral premises that justify their own survival. The German Church Struggle demonstrated how quickly institutions lose the capacity to resist coercion once they surrender inviolable standards in the name of relevance. The same lesson applies to constitutional orders and international alliances.

The postwar West was built on the conviction that some truths are not negotiable: that human life has inherent worth, that conscience cannot be coerced, that speech cannot be reduced to permission, and that power must answer to moral reality. When those convictions erode—whether through courts, churches, or cultural accommodation—the structures that depend on them remain but hollowed.

Christmas stands as a rebuke to that erosion. It proclaims that dignity is not conferred by autonomy, recognized by courts, or granted by states. It is given. A society that forgets that truth—in its theology, its law, or its diplomacy—will eventually forget why any human being must be protected at all.

Foundations matter.

Worldviews matter.

And without the unalienable dignity of human life, neither church, nor constitution, nor alliance long survives.

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The author gratefully acknowledges the use of AI-assisted drafting tools (i.e., OpenAI’s ChatGPT) in the preparation of this Issue Brief. All ideas, structural decisions, analysis, and final edits are solely the author’s own, and the author bears full responsibility for the content.