The last year of the bimonthly magazine MicroMega edited by philosopher Paolo Flores d’Arcais seems to be a veritable cultural testament before the handover to his colleague Cinzia Sciuto. As part of this legacy, the fourth issue entitled ‘Against the family. Criticism of an (anti)social institution' (4/2024).

The 192-page volume sets itself “the ambitious goal of dismantling the mythology surrounding the family” (p.3) and presenting its “dark sides”, which make it a theatre of violence, oppression and control and an instrument of consolidation of a “system of structural injustices”, with a “disintegrating effect on the public sphere” (p.4).

The ultimate aim is to enhance, rather, the public collective dimension of life and to build a society “in which each individual is free from the shackles of the family, free to realise himself” (p.4).

 

 

 

 

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Is it possible to criticise the distortions of the family without necessarily destroying it? Is it possible to avoid the opposition between family and society? This issue of MicroMega uses the tools of anthropology, sociology, philosophy and even literary art and film to try to achieve its goal of unravelling and destroying. There are three main focuses in this issue: the relationship between nature and culture, between state and market, and between parents and children.

 

Is there a universal model of family?

Telmo Pievani, philosopher of science and champion of atheist thought in Italy, opens the volume with a critique of the slogan of the ‘natural family’, according to which there is an ideal family model given by nature and universally valid. The nature investigated, however, belies this datum, showing rather many types of models. Our species is rather the result of a “biocultural mixture” in which nature and culture are indivisible and cannot by themselves define a standard. Our evolution as a species is ambivalent and therefore allows us to be both supportive and violent at the same time.

Is there any truth in these statements? Certainly, we cannot find the standard of the family in biology, nor in its cultural mixes. To a purely sociological or anthropological analysis, the family has taken and takes the most diverse forms in the most diverse cultures, and many of these have generated and generate experiences of oppression and violence.

The Word of God does not extol the slogan of the ‘natural family’ as nature has been defaced by sin. Rather, the family is described as “an original and permanent institution constituted by God at the creation of man and woman (Gen.1-2)” (cf. Dictionary of Evangelical Theology, p. 269) and which, because of its disobedience to the divine mandate, has been defaced.

The foundational structures of the family and the differentiations within it are therefore established by the Creator and not by nature or culture and are described in revelation even before its deviations. The Bible provides us with a catalogue of deviations that are there to constantly confirm the goodness of the original divine plan that we have abandoned, the human failure to realise it, and the need for redemption in Christ to restore and renew it.

 

Family as a way of perpetuating injustice?

On the relationship between the state and the market, several authors question the negative and unjust effects that families have on political and economic structures: familistic dynamics in inappropriate contexts, concentration of assets that perpetrate inequalities, difficulties in constructing a shared social identity. All this underlines how the family when idolised becomes an obstacle to the lives not only of its own members but also of the wider community.

However, this once again leads us to the response of the gospel. Christ does not promote the destruction of families, as Francesco Remotti argues on p. 25, or their dissolution into any aggregative type that simply satisfies a need to “live together”, nor does the gospel promote the expropriation of the family’s economic, care or educational responsibilities to place them in the hands of the state (another great idol).

Only if families recognise their own status and creationary role will they be able to protect and promote the real interest of their members and at the same time surpass it to achieve the interest of the community. They will also promote the development of the other spheres of society so that they can exercise their own tasks without interference and make an enormous contribution to the flourishing and prosperity of the society of which they are members.

Furthermore, in the context of the local church, families in solidarity will strive to provide for the spiritual and material needs of those who cannot enjoy the support of their families of origin. The local church becomes for those who are in Christ the family par excellence where also widowers, orphans and foreigners find their place, relief and space for personal growth.

 

Family as a system that abuses children?

On the relationship between parents and children, MicroMega’s main criticism is directed at a proprietary vision, whereby children serve exclusively the interests of their parents and their family unit, and are denied the right to be active subjects capable of making decisions about their own bodies, having their own privacy, and enjoying freedom of conscience and religion. Another legislative intervention is called for.

We proclaim the redemption of family: the individual and the community are not in opposition but fruitfully committed to mutual prosperity

Although it is legitimate to legislate to limit parental abuse of children, the gospel goes much deeper and wants to reach the heart. Children are not property, but a gift from God, which must be recognised and valued in its uniqueness and distinction from their parents, and which must be helped to flourish in its entirety by exercising parental responsibility first and foremost as something to be accountable to God.

The child will in turn be a treasure far beyond himself and family boundaries. The Christian family cannot be the bearer of a private, anti-social attitude. Assuming responsibility for the care, upbringing and education of one’s children always also holds together the growth and good of the community of which one is a part, so that the gospel of Christ may be faithfully witnessed, lived and proclaimed.

 

The gospel goes beyond ideological ‘solutions’

The sociological, anthropological, pedagogical readings offered by MicroMega are, therefore, extremely limited. They make a phenomenological reading and erect it as a standard of judgement. If “it makes no sense to seek in ‘nature’ a foundation for our moral and social convictions” about a natural family (p.8), why should we seek in it to support the destruction of the family? MicroMega’s ideology thinks to address the problems of families through the abolition by decree of the family as such.

An evangelical culture offers a different key to looking realistically at the family: to recognise its goodness as a divine creation, to observe and denounce its deformations and falsifications generated by sin, but also to proclaim and promote its redemption through the work of Christ so that the individual and the community are not in opposition but fruitfully committed to mutual prosperity.

Lucia Stelluti, pedagogist in Rome. She serves as vice president of the Italian Evangelical Alliance.

This article was first published by Loci Communes, a magazine in Italy. Translated and re-published with permission.