Privacy

Privacy is one of the most highly prized values. We regard having time and space to ourselves as both a need and, increasingly, a right. This includes freedom from any outside force that would deny or diminish our rightful privacy. Although privacy is not as basic as the need for air to breathe, food to eat and opportunity to sleep, we want the freedom, at least temporarily, to avoid contact with other human beings and to be secure from coercion by those who wish to falsely impose on us. Privacy is related to solitude, as well as to secrecy, integrity and identity, but is not identical with these. There are four particular ways in which privacy can be invaded in other than physical ways, namely, intrusion into a person’s private activities or affairs, public disclosure of embarrassing facts, publicity that places a person in a false light, and appropriation of someone’s name or likeness for another’s advantage.

Why do we have such a concern for privacy? Negatively we may be wishing to escape from the demanding or oppressive presence of others, whether this takes place informally or in more public ways. Positively we may wish to be on our own to care for ourselves, to engage in various interests, to meditate or to keep company with God. In an age of increasing institutional, political and electronic intrusion in our lives, the issue of privacy has become more central, and there is considerable discussion about ways in which it can be protected and legislated. The degree to which it is possible is dependent on a number of variables. These include the group and population density, residential patterns and housing size, rates of interaction and the nature of relationships, division of labor and separation of roles. It is also affected by such factors as the scheduling and pace of life, amount of noise and movement, intrusion of technology (such as the telephone) and bureaucracy.

How and Where Did a Concern for Privacy Arise?

Many anthropologists have sought to determine how important privacy was in preindustrial societies. The answer is clear. Although in such societies most things were done in groups and relationships were highly valued, people sometimes felt trapped in or overwhelmed by the company of others and felt the need to withdraw for a while. They reached a point at which they just did not wish to keep on talking, perform a particular task or share a secret. The bottom line is a fear of unwanted intrusion or of offensive exposure and the desire to escape from this. In such societies, however, privacy was less of an issue than in our societies today: since a public sector hardly existed, there was no thought of private rights over against public authorities. Even in more developed preindustrial societies, in which there was a recognition of both private and public spheres, such rights did not formally exist.

These kinds of rights began to emerge in classical Greece, where the social elite sought immunity from the obligations and punishments imposed on their slaves, and there were partial attempts at providing a political shield for weaker individuals requiring protection from the harsher consequences of the prevailing order. In the Old Testament responsibility for this was given a stronger religious and moral base and was increasingly viewed as an individual as well as a corporate affair. The prophetic insistence on the individual’s as well as the group’s relationship with God, despite the mediating role of the priests in connection with sacrifices, highlighted a realm of private behavior on which even the ruler and administrators could not intrude.

The Reformation’s rejection of the confessional in favor of direct communion between the individual and God and the Anabaptists’ creation of voluntary-based rather than state-dependent churches led to the broadening of individual and corporate privacy. This was also helped by the gradual extension of property rights in various European countries. Ultimately these led to the development of both social acknowledgment of the importance of privacy and legal protection against its invasion. A general right to privacy was not legislated in the United States by the Supreme Court until 1965. During the last two centuries the growth of individualism, a concern for personal rights and the power of new technology to gather data on people or increase surveillance over them have increased the demand and need for privacy.

How Do We Distinguish Between Proper and Improper Privacy?

For the reasons mentioned above, it is important to have regular time and space to ourselves and to be protected from coercive invasions of these. This is the case in the family, in schools, in the workplace and in Christian communities. Children and teenagers need privacy as much as adults. Certain activities, such as engaging in sex or relating to God, require privacy. Even in a jail this must be permitted. Consider the freedom the anti-Nazi theologian and activist Dietrich Bonhoeffer exercised in a cell a few feet square and within the constraints of a prison schedule: the private reflections and prayers that came out of that situation have challenged and stimulated two generations of readers.

Fortunately no set of conditions, however constraining, can fully determine privacy. There is also an opposite problem today. We live in a world in which many people are either afraid of being alone or think that people spending time on their own are simply wasting it. Many parents feel anxious when their children are doing nothing, even though it is highly important for them to be on their own from time to time and simply sit free from activities and responsibilities. Often in families and groups, including some Christian communities, there is a failure to recognize the importance of private times and inner space. This includes the freedom to keep some secrets and the necessity of maintaining confidences. Overt or covert attempts to pry them out of people or share them inappropriately with others are inexcusable. So too is the intrusion of the press upon private celebrations or tragedies in the name of public interest.

But how do we know when we have crossed the line into behavior that is overly privatized or protective, in which privacy becomes pathological rather than healthy? This takes place when behavior is premised on an individualistic definition of human nature rather than on the biblical idea of the individual in community. Allowing each individual to decide what is public without any reference to others is as great a mistake as allowing the state to determine what is or is not permissible in private. For example, allowing children a bed of their own may be a wise thing to do (even if it is a only recent child-rearing practice), but does every child need his or her own room or, as in the majority of American homes now, personal television set and, increasingly, telephone and computer? Can it be right to design rooms and houses, as is so often done now, to provide maximum privacy at the expense of encouraging shared living: doors are hung to screen most of the room entered through them, and exteriors of houses are built so that all one can see is several blank garage doors and a living room used only on formal occasions? Is it in accord with a biblical understanding of community that many Christians in small groups hold back from sharing the most pressing tensions, challenges and decisions they are facing? How long can we tolerate the growing tendency for people to opt out of concern for or involvement in public life in favor of pursuing their private ends?

When it comes to providing protection for privacy, however, the problem is increasingly the reverse. As a result of computerized technology, workplace scrutiny, insurance monitoring and sales documentation, private information has increasingly become more public, outstripping legal and institutional efforts to keep these in balance with basic personal and group freedoms. There is also the problem of unapproved sharing of data banks and of credit and census information. This is particularly worrisome when marketing specialists integrate data from magazine subscriptions, credit-card operations and arts supporters into superlists or market files such as People Finder or catalogues like the Direct Marketing List Source. This is also troubling when government agencies synthesize personal data through information gathered by health, welfare, taxation and other sources. Electronic surveillance, both audio and video, has become increasingly sophisticated, all the way from simply registering how often people use the phone or how long they are on it to installing phone taps and observing actions through a camera.

When other basic human freedoms are placed in jeopardy by too narrow a focus on protecting ourselves, invasions of privacy occur at other levels. For example, it is now possible for someone to be under surveillance—though not by any one organization—throughout most of the day. There are cameras to catch speeders on freeways as they travel to work, camcorders in many parking garages keeping an eye on security, computers monitoring the speed of transactions in workplaces, store and credit-card receipts from lunchtime purchases or discount club memberships itemizing everything a person buys and digital machines recording every phone call at home. Once ZIP codes have their promised extra four numbers, marketers and agencies will be able to zero in on the particular side of the street on which we live, on selected floors on high-rise apartments, on many of the habits of small groups and even individuals.

How Do We Strike a Balance Between Privacy and Society?

In the Bible we read of Jesus withdrawing for times alone (Luke 5:16; Luke 9:28)—generally after an exhausting occasion (Mark 6:46) or before an important decision (Luke 6:12-16). But we also see him taking part in community with his disciples (Matthew 15:16-17; Mark 4:10). He commends private prayer by individuals (Matthew 6:6); yet at times the disciples drew aside privately as a group (Luke 9:18). Privacy can be a communal as well as individual experience. There are guidelines in Jesus’ practice here that we can profitably emulate, both in our individual lives and in our intentional small groups and house churches. At the outset we see that a concern for privacy should always be balanced by a concern for community. We should have an equal concern for the quality of both. As Henri Nouwen points out in his book Reaching Out, what we learn from solitude gives us the personal and spiritual resources for extending hospitality to one another in our Christian communities and to the stranger in our neighborhoods, cities and wider civic realm. The reverse is also true, for what we gain through our experience of community and through our involvement in public affairs enhances the depth of our privacy.

Ironically, if we do not strike the right balance between privacy and the rest of life, we become more isolated from one another, resulting in greater social fragmentation. This, in turn, calls for a greater degree of social organization and personal intrusion to enable a society to function. In other words, too much of a stress on privacy ultimately tends to subvert rather than enhance it. The end result is not very different from what happens when we become too dependent on another person or institution: their privacy tends to be invaded, or they just surrender it. Only a delicate balance between the private and public realms—in families and friendships, in clubs and congregations, in neighborhoods and cities—provides the basis for a proper development of both individuals and their communities, both smaller and larger.

» See also: Architecture, Urban

» See also: Community

» See also: Home

» See also: Individual

» See also: Rights

» See also: Secrets

References and Resources

D. A. Marchand, The Politics of Privacy, Computers, and Criminal Justice Records: Controlling the Social Costs of Technological Change (Arlington, Va.: Vanamere Press, 1980); J. McInnes, The New Pilgrims (Sydney: Albatross, 1980); B. Moore Jr., Privacy: Studies in Social and Cultural History (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1984); “Privacy,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1968) 12:480-87; J. Smith, Managing Privacy: Information Technology and Corporate America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

—Robert Banks