Changing the Culture from Above or Below?

Last updated on: May 7, 2025 at 8:26 am By Gene Veith

Is culture changed primarily from below, by masses of people transforming their thinking and behavior, or from above, as a small number of elites exert their influence over everyone else? Both secularists and Christians have been debating which tactic is the best strategy.

Last week we blogged about Antonio Gramsci, who urged his fellow Communists to switch from trying to mobilize the working class to taking over institutions so as to create a revolution from the top down.

The Left took that advice. Today they dominate our elite institutions–universities, the arts, journalism, the media, to name a few–and their biggest revolutions have been in overthrowing the traditional family (as in the sexual revolution, feminism, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, transgenderism, the raising of children by the state, etc.)

Although Gramsci’s ideas were heretical from the perspective of orthodox Marxism, he did describe how Communism actually worked in practice. In the countries that went Communist, there was no withering away of the state, as Marx predicted. Rather, the countries were ruled by party strongmen who installed an elite corps of nomenklaturato impose state control of all of life.

That the base of today’s Democratic party is no longer the working class, but affluent, university-educated professionals, leaving the working class to the Republicans thus makes perfect sense.

It turns out, a similar debate over tactics has been churning among Christians who would like to change the culture in a more Christian-friendly direction.

I came across an article in First Things by one of my former students who is now a formidable Christian (and Lutheran) thinker, John Ehrett. In his article Colson’s Last Word, Ehrett tells about how a book by James Davison Hunter fell into his hands that belonged to former Nixon-operative turned Christian activist Charles Colson. The book, in which Hunter urged the top-down approach, was filled with marginal notes from Colson, who favored the bottom-up approach, resulting in a kind of debate between them.

Ehrett’s account of that debate and his own contributions to it are worth reading, but I want to make some points of my own. I’ll let Ehrett explain Hunter’s position:

In 2010, James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World landed like a bombshell among Christian intellectuals. It is difficult to do justice to the scale and sophistication of Hunter’s argument, but at bottom To Change the World argued for a new “Christian strategy.”

In Hunter’s telling, the possibility of Christian social transformation had far less to do with “worldview” than with “culture,” a social matrix of values and assumptions that “often seems eerily independent of majority opinion.” That matrix was shaped by influential people “operating in common purpose within institutions at the high-prestige centers of cultural production.” These elites, Hunter argued, tended to form tight networks that exercised creative power in ways unavailable to those outside the inner rings. The decline of Western Christian influence was due to Christians’ “absen[ce] from the arenas in which the greatest influence in the culture is exerted.” (The decline was also, Hunter made clear, linked to the fact that mainstream Christian tastes “run to the lower-middle and middle brow rather than the high brow.”)

Hunter concluded that generations of Christian efforts to shape society through conversion and revival had been fundamentally misguided, because “cultures change from the top down, rarely if ever from the bottom up.”

How did I miss that bombshell? I was vaguely aware of Hunter’s book, but I didn’t read it or follow the controversy. I guess I was too busy as an administrator and teacher at Patrick Henry College. I see now that PHC was working both sides, encouraging the grass-roots popular movement of homeschooling, while giving bright homeschooled kids a powerful classical education that equipped them to blow the top off of law school and other graduate school entrance exams and so break into the nation’s elite institutions. Ehrett, for example, went to law school at Yale. Many other PHC grads now have Ivy League pedigrees. PHC grads can be found scattered throughout the nation’s think tanks, legal systems, and political staffs. One of my students, Gabe Evans, is now a congressman from Colorado.

Let me add another distinction. We can speak of “folk culture,” the culture of the people as a whole. And we can speak of the “high culture,” the realm of unique individual achievement. Folk culture is about traditions, customs, and assumptions. It is innately conservative, which is why Gramsci gave up on it. High culture comes from a civilization’s artists, thinkers, scientists, inventors, and other elite creators. These denizens of the high culture are often at odds with the unwashed masses of the folk culture, criticizing them and bringing new ideas that the people don’t approve of.

The conflict between the two makes for a dynamic civilization. Sometimes the high culture of the elite class does indeed influence the masses, as in the sexual revolution, often to their harm. Sometimes the folk culture influences the elite, as in the Romantic movement of the 19th century. Sometimes, though, they work together, as in the American revolution.

Where does Christianity come into this? As Colson points out, Christianity took root in the Roman Empire as a popular movement, but then when the Emperor Constantine was converted, it took hold among the elite. As Colson also points out, the Reformation was a popular movement, though it needed the Protestant princes to protect it. Throughout Western civilization, up until the last few centuries, Christianity played an important role in the high culture, with its artists, musicians, theologians, writers, and thinkers. Today, Christianity is still plays an important role in our folk culture–what with the churches, the holidays, and many of the values held even by non-believers. While the high culture, with some significant exceptions, has largely turned against Christianity.

That last point, as Ehrett also says, poses a problem for Christians wanting to pursue Hunter’s strategy. It’s hard for a Christian to break into an elite circle, such as the dominant art scene, if it actively excludes not just Christians but any religious expression. It’s possible, but it often requires Christians to keep quiet about their beliefs, which defeats the purpose of Christian cultural change.

When I was at Concordia University Wisconsin, the Cranach Institute sponsored a symposium on H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture, which examined the various historical possibilities of that relationship: Culture over Christ; Christ over culture; Christ transforming culture; Christ against culture; and Christ and culture in paradox.

My friend Wayne Martindale, a professor from Wheaton who had spent time in China, said that Niebuhr left out the possibility that was most pertinent for Christians in China and is increasingly pertinent for Christians in the West: Culture against Christ.

We naively assume that we can just pick a position, but when the culture, whether high or low, actively opposes Christianity we do not have the luxury of a choice. Being faithful and living the Christian life in a culture that hates you, even persecutes you, is a different kind of challenge.

To be sure, some elite professions are easier to infiltrate than others and Christians pop up in surprising places.

When Christians find themselves excluded from some professions because of their faith, one alternative is the parallel Christian institutions that have come into existence. For example, there are many Christian colleges and universities that can keep the Christian intellectual tradition alive. Though these might sometimes be tempted to conform to their secularist counterparts, on the whole they can be a haven for Christian academics and students. (That’s the route I chose.)

Christians’ main goal, though, should not be changing the culture, as such, but saving souls. There are still Christian churches, Christian families, Christian art, Christian music, Christian authors, Christian scholars, both from today and from our past. Learning our Christian heritage can give us a cultural and civilizational grounding that can get us through many of the conflicts we find today. So can the doctrine of vocation, which shows Christians how they can pursue even secular-seeming callings in love and service to their neighbors, and so be salt and light wherever God places them.

And vocation answers the question of how to change a culture. If you are displeased with the current society and want to make it better, start where you are: in your own life, your own family, your own workplace, your own church, your own community. Maybe you do have a vocation of major influence, but, if not, you can influence the people around you in the estates to which God has called you. And that’s usually the most significant.

Culture is people, and the goal of the culture-shaping elites is to shape and usually control “the people.” But we don’t have to let them. Our task first is be the people God wants us to be. As St. Peter reminds us, “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people” (1 Peter 2:10).

Illustration: Collage Christian Culture by User:jobas – self-made fromOther photosThe lecturing priest is scientific Georges Lemaître, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31465391

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DISCUSS: The Death of God

Last updated on: April 13, 2025 at 7:02 pm By Gene Veith

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The “death of God” is a claim made by Nietzsche and arch-liberal theologians who embrace what they call “Christian atheism.” But Luther and the Lutheran Confessions say that God did die on the cross–for us–by virtue of the Two Natures of Christ. What are the implications of that?

Quoting Luther, from Article VIII, “The Person of Christ,” Formula of Concord Solid Declaration, in Concordia: A Reader’s Edition of the Book of Concord, pp. 588-589:

If it cannot be said that God has died for us, but only a man, we are lost; but if God’s death and a dead God lie in the balance, His side goes down and ours goes up like a light, empty scale. Yet He can also readily go up again, or leap out of the scale! But He could not sit on the scale unless He become a man like us, so that it could be called God’s dying, God’s martyrdom, God’s blood, and God’s death. For God in His own nature cannot die; but now that God and man are united in one person, it is called God’s death when the man dies who is one substance or one person with God.

Some theologians, including some evangelicals and even some Lutherans, reject the substitutionary atonement because they think it would be unjust if God punished His son for what we did. How does that and similar arguments show an inadequate understanding of the Trinity?

What are some other implications of viewing God through the lens of Good Friday?

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Bad Theology Causes Church Decline

Last updated on: April 11, 2025 at 9:39 pm By Gene Veith

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The last few weeks we’ve been looking at recent studies about the state of Christianity in the United States, with special attention to what the data revealed about the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

I hope you non-Lutherans got something out of that too, since many of these findings apply to all churches and I included links that would take you to the corresponding data about your own church body.

Christopher D. Raymond looked at the data about his own Catholic Church and he came to a stark and generally applicable conclusion about the decline in church affiliation: “Orthodox believers stay, while those with unorthodox views leave.”

He makes that case in his article for Crisis Magazine entitled Bad Theology Is at the Heart of Declining Numbers with the deck, “Bad theology drives church decline. Orthodox believers stay, while those with unorthodox views leave. Generational data confirms it: faith falters with weak foundations.”

That seems obvious when you think about it, but the phenomenon has empirical backing. Raymond cites the findings of the Portraits of American Life Survey, a collaboration of Rice and Notre Dame, which surveyed people about their religious affiliation and beliefs. The survey included specific questions about their belief in historic Christian doctrines (e.g., the resurrection of Christ, the reality of Heaven and Hell, whether the Bible is inspired, whether the Bible is inerrant, whether God’s law is the basis for morality) and each respondent was given a score based on their answers and put on an “orthodoxy” scale.

What makes the Portraits of American Life Survey so unique and helpful is that the same people surveyed in 2006 were surveyed a second time in 2012. This made it possible to chart any changes in their beliefs and affiliations over that six year period.

Among Catholics, only 2% of the most orthodox respondents had left the church. Only 4% of the moderately orthodox left. But of the least orthodox, 16% left.

This data, according to Raymond, also accounts for the generational declines, as each succeeding generation–lacking the foundation from the previous generation–scores increasingly low on orthodoxy and high on disaffiliation.

Raymond published a more scholarly article on the subject in the Journal of Empirical Theology entitled The Impact of Theology on Disaffiliation, Disengagement, and Disbelief. Here is the abstract:

While the reasons for the differences in the growth rates of conservative and liberal churches are well studied, one important potential reason for this difference has received little attention. The argument that liberal theology undermines the basis of belief implies that those with liberal theological views may be more likely to lose faith and disaffiliate than those holding conservative theologies that reinforce adherents’ religious faith and practice. Using a nationally representative panel survey of the American public, the analysis performed here shows that those with liberal theologies were significantly more likely to disaffiliate from Christianity, attend church less often, and cease believing in God between the two waves of the survey than those with more conservative theologies. On the basis of these findings, more attention should be given to the role that theology may play in understanding patterns of secularization.

Again, this should be obvious. People who no longer believe in the tenets of Christianity are more likely to leave the church than those who do believe in them. As Raymond says, the question remains as to why people no longer believe in the teachings of their churches. He writes,

Leaving aside, for the time being, tough questions about how we arrived at a point where such unorthodoxy became so widespread, one simple step to arrest the decline is to do a better job instilling orthodoxy—and to root out teaching to the contrary where it exists. Lukewarm embrace of the Church’s teachings fails to help anyone; if anything, it just sets people up to be swept away by the next tide of secularization. Of course, improving catechesis and more strident apologetics alone won’t reverse the damage done overnight, but the evidence presented here shows it is clearly needed.

Well, let’s not leave those tough questions aside. Liberal theology is not always what laypeople come up with themselves. It is often taught from the pulpit and by church leaders. There is quite a bit of that in some Catholic churches, as in all of the mainline Protestant denominations.

But conservative churches are also losing members. I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising either, since many folks in the pews may not hold to the high level of orthodoxy that the conservative church stands for.

It occurs to me, though, that there are many ways to be unorthodox. If “liberal” theology means changing church teachings and practices to be more in accord with the beliefs and values of the surrounding culture, that accounts for theological “modernism,” which rejected supernaturalism in the name of scientific rationalism and materialism. But our “postmodern” culture is fine with supernaturalism, irrationalism, and being spiritual, as long as everyone is allowed to construct their own truth and their own morality for themselves.

The thing is, those of us in conservative churches have also been told for several decades that we need to change church teachings and practices to be more in accord with the beliefs and values of the surrounding culture. A changing culture makes for a different kind of liberalism. The typical evangelical congregation is little like the “old time religion” of its forebears, in music, worship, and preaching.

Though they may score high on the Portraits of American Life orthodoxy scale, these congregations often teach different kinds of unorthodoxy: the prosperity gospel, a social gospel, subjectivity, legalism, pop-psychology, the New Apostolic Reformation, and the list goes on and on. These are other kinds of “liberalism,” and though they have their attractions for today’s postmodernists, one can see how a church member subjected to such things over time would become disillusioned, burned out, and eager to leave.

Nevertheless, there are islands of orthodoxy that people are joining, not leaving. And where people are staying. The fact is, secularists and casualties of secularized religion are also becoming disillusioned, burned out, and eager to leave. A thriving church will not blindly conform to the beliefs and values of the Godless culture, whether that culture is “liberal” or “conservative.” Rather, it will offer people imprisoned in that culture what they do not already have: The Word. The Sacraments. Christ crucified for sinners.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

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The End of Denominations in Ten Years?

Last updated on: April 3, 2025 at 7:58 am By Gene Veith

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American Protestantism is becoming “post-denominational.” So observes Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, who thinks it likely that many denominations will just cease to exist over the next ten years.

He makes that point at Juicy Ecumenism in a post entitled Southern Baptist Turbulence. about turmoil in that church body, now the nation’s largest Protestant denomination with 13 million members.

In the course of his discussion of the controversy among Baptists over their Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which some Baptists complain is too liberal, he mentions that an increasing number of congregations no longer list “Southern Baptist” on their signs or webpages. Then he says this (my emphasis):

Likely many current U.S. Protestant denominations will not meaningfully exist in ten years, except as legal structures, sometimes with endowments. SBC churches are much better equipped for America’s post denominational reality because their congregations are already independent, and American post denominational evangelicalism is mostly Baptist in theology and ethos.

Indeed, congregations in the Southern Baptist Convention aren’t the only ones who are hiding their denominational identity. I’ve encountered LCMS congregations that drop the “Lutheran” label. Among Tooley’s own Methodists, of the 7,900 conservative congregations that have left the United Methodists, only about half of them have joined the new Global Methodist denomination. The rest will go independent.

And, of course, there are well over 21 million Christians who go to “non-denominational” congregations. That’s far more than the Baptists and far more than all of the mainline liberal denominations put together. Christian demographer Ryan Burge discusses the decline of denominations and the dramatic growth of nondenominations and concludes, in an article of this title, that The Future of American Christianity Is Non-Denominational.

So what would that mean, not having denominations?

Some would says the end of denominations would be a great achievement for Christian unity. But is it? Will the various strains of Protestant theology–Calvinism, Arminianism, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Pentecostalism, etc.–become just private opinions of individuals in a generically Protestant church that includes and allows for them all?

If so, is that really unity? Each congregation would consist of members with different beliefs. Some would think it necessary to speak in tongues, while others would strenuously oppose that. Some would see salvation as being by grace alone through faith alone, while others would insist on various mixes of “decisions” and good works. Some would have a high view of Communion and Baptism, while others would not.

Church unity involves agreement (1 Corinthians 1:10), so there is great benefit in being in a congregation and a larger church body in which everyone agrees on doctrine and practice. I would argue that there is more net Christian unity in numerous denominations whose members agree with each other, than in single congregations with diverse confessions.

Besides, today is certainly not the time for accepting all theologies. Radically aberrant theologies–such as the prosperity gospel, the New Apostolic Reformation, the Word/Faith movement, to name a few–are running rampant in evangelical circles. Without a denominational accountability structure, how could heretical preachers and congregations be disciplined?

Also, what would all of the independent churches teach? Ministers would have to teach something about salvation, the sacraments, the Bible, and the Christian life. I grew up in a mainline denomination of the Campbellite tradition, which was similarly ecumenical, wanting to get rid of all denominational distinctives. So my church never taught me about the Trinity, the deity of Christ, or the Atonement. I first learned about those doctrines in books. Instead, we heard sermons about morality, psychology, and politics.

To their credit, though, today’s nondenominational churches are mostly conservative, so would surely teach such things, and, as Tooley says, most of them have, in effect, a Baptist theology. I suspect that what would happen in the large scale absence of larger denominational structures that every congregation–actually, every pastor–would formulate their own theological positions. Laypeople could gravitate to the ones they find the most agreeable.

But this would mean that, far from getting rid of denominations, every congregation would be a denomination unto itself! We would have thousands of denominations. With each pastor determining the teachings, we Protestants would have thousands of mini-popes.

What would probably happen is that congregations with similar teachings would get together with each other, co-operating with various ministries and holding common events. They might train their ministers using the same seminaries and maybe start a publishing house to provide resources. In other words, they would cluster together in what would be, in effect, a denomination!

Traditional denominations, of course, involve not only doctrine but specific structures of church government. Episcopalians have bishops. Presbyterians have elders. Congregationalists let each congregation rule itself. As Tooley points out, Baptists have a congregational church government. So do Missouri Synod Lutherans, though our congregations “walk together” (which is what “synod” means) by drawing on structures that Presbyterians and Episcopalians would recognize.

Today’s non-denominational churches are likewise congregational in their church government. The congregation calls its own pastors, owns its own property, sets its own policies. That can happen within the traditional strains of Protestant theology. It’s not necessary to eliminate those. And it’s possible to have independent congregations within larger denominational structures.

And multiple denominations can exist within the one Holy Christian Church, the Body of Christ, which has many highly diverse organs (1 Corinthians 12:12 ff.).

The word “denomination” basically means “name.” There is nothing wrong with having a name that describes who you are.

Illustration: Kingsport, TN: Steeples of Church Circle by Brent Moore via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0

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Monday Miscellany, 4/7/25

Last updated on: April 6, 2025 at 8:11 am By Gene Veith

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Upending the economy. The Marxist comic book. And how to thwart a black mass.

Upending the Economy

President Trump has pulled the trigger on his threat to impose tariffs on all the world. I wish him the best, but I have long been a skeptic about tariffs. (See my post from last year entitled Why Tariffs Cannot Work.)

The very announcement of the tariffs–10% on all countries, up to 50% on those with whom we are running a trade imbalance–sent the stock market into free fall, with the Dow dropping 4,000 points in two days, the largest point drop in history, giving the stock market a bigger hit than the COVID shutdown.

President Trump keeps talking about how these different countries will have to pay the tariffs, but it’s American importers, whether companies or individuals, who will have to cough up the money to the federal government. That will hurt the exporting companies, of course, because fewer Americans are likely to buy their products. And those companies importing goods whose costs have shot up at least 10% and likely more will have to pass along that increased expense to American consumers. Tariffs always raise prices because they wouldn’t work otherwise, not only because of the extra percentage tacked on, but because if American companies don’t have to compete with cheaper foreign goods, they can raise their prices as well.

President Trump called the extra percentages some countries will have to pay “reciprocal” tariffs, explaining that we are simply charging those countries the same duties that they charge us. I think that’s a good idea, actually! It’s only fair. But these percentages are actually not based on what those countries impose on American goods! They are calculated by dividing our trade deficit with that country by the amount of the goods that we import from that country, then dividing that by half. Dominic Pino points out that South Korea is hit with a 25% tariff, even though it charges the United States almost nothing! But we have a trade deficit with South Korea of $66 billion and we import $132 billion worth of goods, which comes to 50%, with the “kind” discount of half, yielding 25%. (Is it possible that President Trump’s advisors just came up with an algorithm instead of doing the work to see what the tariffs on U.S. goods actually are?)

Other questions arise: How can a President determine tariff rates? Isn’t that the job the Constitution specifically assigns to Congress in Article 1, section 8, which reads, “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.” Yes, but back in 1977 Congress passed the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, giving the president lots of authority over the economy during an international emergency, though President Trump is the first one to use that power to implement tariffs. The international emergency the president invoked is the influx of the deadly drug Fentanyl because of lax border security, but does that emergency apply to the whole world?

Fortunately, though goods from Mexico will have a 25% tariff, that will not apply to agricultural products, which are duty free because of the NAFTA update that President Trump negotiated in his first term. That means American supermarkets will still be able to get at least some fresh fruits and vegetables year round, even when it isn’t the growing season here in the northern hemisphere.

Having criticized the tariffs, I can see, though, that they may have some beneficial effects. Already some major international companies–such as Honda, Hyundai, Pfizer, and others–have announced plans to build manufacturing plants to the U.S. to avoid the tariffs. And some major American companies, such as Apple and Johnson & Johnson, have announced plans to shift manufacturing from overseas back to the United States.

That’s the sort of thing that the president is counting on. But it takes awhile to build, staff, and operate new factories. The question is, can the American economy and the American people put up with higher prices, supply-chain shortages, and layoffs in our export industries long enough for any possible benefits to kick in?

The Marxist Comic Book

The vibe may have shifted regarding DEI and neo-Marxist Critical Theory, but they aren’t dead yet. Minnesota public schools, with the support of Tim Walz, the state’s governor and the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, have added “racial capitalism.” to meet the state’s social studies standards.

What, you might wonder, is “racial capitalism”? Stanley Kurtz helps us understand in his article Tim Walz and the Marxist Comic Book. Kurtz discusses how Minnesota is incorporating critical race theory into its required school curriculum, with much of the input coming from a group of radicals from the University of Minnesota. One of the resources that group recommends is a comic book entitled Racial Capitalism and Prison Abolition.

Read it at the link! The comic is not just “post-Marxist” but actual Marxist. Here is Kurtz’s summary:

The American system produces inequality through capitalist private ownership, which concentrates the vast majority of wealth into the hands of a tiny few, enabling them to effectively steal the labor of everyone else. Capitalist exploitation is backed up by the state, which holds a monopoly on violence. The state gets to define what kinds of violence are permitted and which are not (“illegal” immigration, for example). The police and the military back up the state yet are unaccountable to the communities they patrol. Today’s police, in fact, directly descend from the runaway-slave patrols of old. The entire American system is thus inherently unjust.

Furthermore, the comic book continues, the capitalist system uses the idea of racial superiority to solidify its exploitation of the working class. The idea of racial differences foments conflict, thereby preventing the working class from uniting to throw off its exploitative capitalist masters. The state also criminalizes poverty by classifying basic survival techniques like shoplifting or fare evasion as illegal. In effect, capitalism both creates poverty and criminalizes the condition of being poor. In the service of capitalism, the state also warehouses the masses of poor unemployed persons in prisons. Large-scale incarceration thereby reduces the risk of a mass uprising of the unemployed against the system.

Will Minnesota schools actually use this particular comic book? Maybe not, but it’s a resource on the subject. And Gov. Walz is doing everything he can to shield the curriculum and its textbooks from the public eye.

But the comic book is telling for another reason, revealing as it does the connection between various progressive policies, the way their proponents think, and the ideology that looms behind it all. Says Kurtz:

[The comic book] really does help to explain support for Democrat-backed policies that are often nowadays dismissed by conservatives as simply crazy. Why do so many Democratic prosecutors refuse to prosecute crimes? Why no cash bail? Why California’s refusal, until only very recently, to punish shoplifting? Democrats seem to have distanced themselves from slogans like “defund the police,” but the zine provides a rationale for precisely that policy. Remember, this is Minnesota, where the George Floyd incident occurred and where calls to abolish the police first broke out. The radicals behind that movement are the radicals behind Governor Walz’s ethnic studies standards. This is what they believe.

How to Thwart a Black Mass

A group of Satanists had been planning to carry out a Black Mass at the Kansas State Capitol in Topeka. This is a blasphemous mockery and inversion of the Christian liturgy, the high point of which is the ritual desecration of a consecrated Host that had been stolen from a Catholic communion service, usually by a Satanist posing as a Christian who received the host without swallowing it.

The organization Satan’s Grotto in Kansas claimed to have acquired a consecrated host and trumpeted their intention to use their freedom of religion to desecrate it in the state capitol. Legal challenges ensued, the group was not allowed in the Capitol building, so the Satanists moved it outside, to the Capitol steps.

At the appointed time, March 28, a few dozen Satanists were met by hundreds of Catholic protesters. As John Daniel Davidson tells it, when the Satanist “priest,” Michael Stewart threw the Host on the ground preparatory to stomping it, a Catholic layman named Randy Blasi rushed up, dove on top of what He believed to be the Body of Christ, and consumed it. The Satanists started hitting him. Stewart retreated into the Capitol building to at least read the rest of the sacrilegious liturgy, whereupon a young man named Marcus Schroeder ripped the pages out of his hands. Stewart then punched him twice in the face, knocking him down. Police swarmed in, tackled Stewart, handcuffed him, and hauled him off to jail as he cried out “Hail, Satan!”

P.S.: We Lutherans agree with the Catholics that the bread and wine in Holy Communion actually are the Body and Blood of Christ. But only in the context of its divinely-appointed use. That is, in the context of the Divine Service. (See Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord, VII, 83-87).) But I think we can still appreciate those Catholics in Topeka.

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Vocation and the Division of Labor

Last updated on: March 30, 2025 at 7:08 pm By Gene Veith

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Many conservatives today are debating or trying to reconcile their traditional commitment to free markets with President Trump’s protectionism and tariffs. In the course of his defense of free market economics, Dominic Pino quotes some passages from Adam Smith, the original theorist of capitalism, that shed some interesting light on vocation.

Today I’d like to discuss not so much the protectionism vs. free market debate, but the connection between vocation and the key economic principle of the division of labor. I’ll let Pino give you the passage from The Wealth of Nations:

In almost every other race of animals each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is entirely independent, and in its natural state has occasion for the assistance of no other living creature. . . .But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren.

Let that sink in. Most animals are self-sufficient. Even when they live in packs, flocks, or herds, their actions are not much different from each other. Yes, in the insect world, bees and ants have sort of a division of labor, but nothing on the scale that humans do.

The point is, human beings need each other. They (we) exist in groups–the three estates again–in which we are mutually dependent on each other. The result is a kind of unity with others, but at the same time we retain our individuality in the things we do for each other.

We don’t have to make the clothes we wear or build the house we live in. Other people, more skilled at those arts than we are, can do such things for us. In exchange, we give them the value of what we are good at–teaching or farming or managing or preaching.

Economists call this mutual interdependence the division of labor. Theologians call this the doctrine of vocation.

We Americans with our frontier heritage prize self-reliance. Ideally, we would make our own clothes and build our own houses. For those with those kinds of aptitudes, good for them! They are especially gifted, though they too are usually still dependent on other people who grew the cotton, manufactured the textiles, chopped down the trees, mined the metals, and shipped it all to them.

Sometimes, though, the ideal of self-reliance comes with an attitude: We don’t want to be dependent on anybody. And yet we are: dependent on God above all, but also on other people, who are also dependent on us. “It is not good for man to be alone,” so God created us to live in families, the state, and the church.

To lift something else from Pino out of its context of economic controversy, he points out a curious phenomenon (my emphasis):

Countries where people don’t specialize and trade — countries where people grow their own food, make their own clothes, build their own houses — are the world’s poorest. The country that elevated self-sufficiency to a foundational national principle and has almost completely isolated itself from international trade — North Korea, with its Juche ideology — is a communist police state.

In vocation, God calls us to different tasks and relationships in the church, the family, and the state. Those latter two are where Luther locates economic activity, what we do to make a living for our family (the word “economy” meaning originally the management of the household) and contribute to the society where God has placed us.

In these estates, in these mutually dependent relationships that only human beings have, we live our lives and our faith in love and service to our neighbors.

Now here is where vocation differs somewhat from Adam Smith. Pino goes on with our first quotation, above:

“But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only,” Smith wrote. “He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and shew them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them.”

Vocation is driven by love of neighbor. Capitalism is driven by self-love.

Yet Smith is surely right that we can’t necessarily expect our brethren’s help from their benevolence only. And in God’s design, carpenters won’t build our houses for nothing. Nor should they. As Jesus Himself says, “the laborer deserves his wages” (Luke 10:7).

This world, fallen as it is, must be ruled by law to constrain our sinful tendencies. We would take advantage of carpenters if they built our houses for free. We must give them something from our labor of equal value. We need a medium of exchange–money–to ensure that the exchange is equivalent, and we need a rule of law to ensure that our exchange is fair, not breaking the commandment against stealing.

The economy channels our self-love so that it is outer directed, so that we help others, even despite our own selfish tendencies.

A key text for vocation is “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 10:31). This means that we are to love ourselves. But that doesn’t have to contradict our love for our neighbor. In fact, in the economy, we love our neighbor as the result of loving ourselves.

Thus, God compels even sinners to help each other. A non-Christian and a Christian may do the very same work. But that work may have different motivations and different meanings. A non-Christian might do the work solely out of self-interest–a desire for money, ambition, or just the personal pleasure of doing the work–whereas a Christian, who may also desire money, be ambitious, and take pleasure in the work, also has the additional dimension of loving and serving his neighbor for Christ’s sake.

Image by Alexa from Pixabay

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