Transgressive Art in the Vacuum of Western Culture

May 26, 2023 By Gene Veith

For some time, many artists and writers, having given up on the concept of “beauty” as a mode of cultural oppression, have developed an aesthetic that seeks to be “transgressive.”

By creating work that shocks their audience by transgressing the moral and cultural norms, these artists and writers are rebelling against the systemic oppression of the culture and causing their audience to question their beliefs. That’s the theory.

But today our moral and cultural norms have become so weakened that artists and writers can’t be “transgressive” any more. There are no values left to transgress.

That’s the point made by Carl Trueman in his article for First Things entitled “Transgression Is Passé.” He is discussing a set of blasphemous photographs of Jesus in the company of his disciples who are dressed in the leather-and-chains garb of gay sado-masochists. This exhibit was showcased by the European Union, no less.

What struck Trueman was how boring it all was. This sort of thing has been done so much that its power to shock has faded. It might still offend Christians, of course, but few viewers among the EU secularists will be shocked at all. Which leads him to some interesting thoughts about the state of Western culture (my bolds):

The display represents both the bankruptcy of modern culture and its inability to offer anything even approximating a positive vision for humanity. For generations now the artistic establishment has been in thrall to the notion of transgression. But transgression is only significant if there is something—some rule, some custom, something sacred—to transgress. Without such, transgression itself rapidly degenerates into a series of empty gestures that tend to become both more extreme and more vacuous at the same time. Art then ceases to be about embodying and transmitting cultural value and is instead a momentary iconoclastic performance that parasitically and paradoxically depends upon resurrecting icons that have long since fallen. Only because there is a folk memory of religion does the general public have some notion that these banal photographs are meant to be shocking. And only to the increasingly marginal numbers of actual Christians are they truly so.

Such derision of Christianity is now decidedly passé. . . .The mockery of Christianity is today as clichéd and predictable as the lighting in a Thomas Kinkade painting. Nor does it “speak truth to power.” Rather, it merely offers smug affirmation of the triumph of one of the most powerful lobby groups within Western culture. . . .

[This art] is emblematic of the vacuum that has replaced Western culture. Such art says nothing new because it is part of a culture that has nothing to say. All it can do is rehash the images of a religious past and flatter itself that in doing so it is tearing down an oppressive power structure.

Trueman’s analysis is spot on. And yet I would argue that it is still possible to be transgressive. What are today’s moral and cultural values? Not Christian ones, to be sure. But our current culture seems more moralistic than ever, though the moral principles are very different.

Artists and writers could, for example, transgress the sacred cows of transgenderism. J. K. Rowling is a transgressive writer by insisting that men who identify as women–often without the commitment of surgery–are not, in fact, women. For that radical position, which is so shocking to many of her former Harry Potter fans, she is paying the price.

If a work is truly transgressive, it will not earn the praise of one’s peers or help you score a gig with the European Union. Rather, it will make people angry at you.

Most artists play at being transgressive, but they only transgress the values of people they despise and who probably won’t see their art. But there is wide scope for transgressing the dogmas of the woke power elite, if they dare.

Photo: J. K. Rowling (1999) by John Mathew Smith & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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Political Faith vs. Political Skepticism

May 24, 2023 By Gene Veith

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The new editor-in-chief of Christianity Today Russell Moore, in discussing J. K. Rowling–who used to be demonized by many evangelicals for glorifying witchcraft and is now demonized by many LGBTQ folks for her opposition to transgenderism–reflects on the similarities between the hard right and the hard left, both of which can be accused of banning books and cancelling opponents, though for completely different reasons.

In the course of his argument, he points to an article by political scientist John G. Grove, who, in his words, shows “that extreme illiberal ‘wokeness’ and extreme illiberal ‘anti-wokeness’ are remarkably similar.”

I looked up that essay, published last year in National Affairs, entitled The Post-liberal Politics of Faith. But it is far more than a simplistic accusation that “both sides do it.” Grove makes a different kind of political distinction between that is far more illuminating than the spatial metaphors of “right” and “left,” or the temporal metaphors of “conservative” and “progressive.” And it is very helpful in sorting out the current controversies over the different kinds of conservatism and how Christians should approach politics.

Grove draws on the work of the English conservative philosopher Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990) and his book The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Skepticism. This is not a distinction between religious and secularist politics. Rather, it has to do with faith in politics vs. skepticism about politics.

The politics of faith has to do with the the pursuit of perfection, the faith that if we just form the right kind of government that implements the right policies, all will be well. Our problems will be solved, we will approach utopia, and we will attain the good in life.

The politics of skepticism, on the other hand, does not believe that government can do any such thing. It is skeptical of such pretensions. All it wants from government is for it just to keep basic social order. Anything beyond that modest–but extremely important–goal is out of line.

You should read the entire article, but here are some excerpts from Grove’s explanation:

The politics of faith sees government as an “inspirer” and “director” of society’s improvement tasked with imposing a “comprehensive pattern” on society — a “mundane [as in ‘earthly’] condition of human circumstances” that directs society toward some form of perfection. . . .

The politics of faith sees man and society as plastic, capable of being molded by political choices. For man to reach his perfection, the politics of faith contends that the institutions around him must be consciously structured to direct him toward it. . . . Thus, for the politics of faith, modern government is an indispensable means of earthly salvation.

If they are to succeed in their aim, governments must be unlimited and “omnicompetent,” at least theoretically. The politics of faith “welcome[s] power” and requires what Oakeshott calls “minute government” to attend to all the various details of human activity, “to keep every enterprise in line.”. . . It can therefore be restrained only by the practical judgments of those directing society’s quest for perfection.

The opposite pole of Oakeshott’s paradigm — the politics of skepticism — sees politics as a mode of human interaction distinct from the pursuit of perfection. It views the purpose of government as the maintenance of the basic social order necessary for human beings to live peacefully together and to pursue various ends as individuals or social institutions, or as a whole. . . .

Under the politics of faith, we know the direction we ought to go beforehand; the difficult task is mobilizing society to do what it ought to do or to be what it ought to be. Under the politics of skepticism, we don’t have the answers ahead of time: The order that maintains peace and harmony in a society must be determined by the political process itself. Though a politics of skepticism need not be defined by small government, it will prioritize constitutional limits on the state designed to prevent government from using its powers for purposes beyond the specific tasks assigned to it.

These two approaches to government are not ideologies or policies. Rather, says Grove, “our ideologies and policy ideas draw on the assumptions embedded in one or both of these styles.” Thus, Communism and Nazism, for all of their differences, both exemplify the “politics of faith.” They both use the government to impose an ideal of “perfection,” though they differ on what that ideal is.

Notice how this applies to the current debates within the conservative movement. National conservatism requires the politics of faith. Small government conservatism requires the politics of skepticism.

Which would be the more Biblical view of government? One might think the politics of faith would go better with the Christian faith, but, while many religions including some versions of Christianity play the role of giving a sacred status to the state, the Bible teaches us specifically not to have faith in anything or anyone other than the Lord God.

“Put not your trust in princes,” says the Psalmist, “in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation” (Psalm 146:3). Do not fall down in worship to the image of the King of Babylon (Daniel 3) and do not make your prayer to the Emperor (Daniel 6).

The New Testament values earthly government but it does not lay out a political program or a philosophy of government. Rather, it says that human government has a very important, but very modest, purpose:

For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. (Romans 13:3-4)

Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. (1 Peter 2:13-14)

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. (1 Timothy 2:1-2)

Earthly rulers are established by God, but they are subordinate to Him as His servants, indeed, his agents, holding a vocation through which God works to restrain evil. Human governments exist to punish evildoers and to reward those who do good. What Christians want and pray for from their government is that they “may lead a peaceful and quiet life.” That is to say, Christians want the government to maintain basic social order.

But this is no small thing. This is not a formula for political quietism or for Christians to be uninvolved in their government. Today the government is not maintaining basic social order. Blowing up the family, encouraging sexual license, blurring the sexes, tolerating crime, allowing parents to kill their unborn children–these are expressions of the profoundest social disorder.

You can be a political skeptic–a small government conservative rather than a national conservative–while still battling abortion and opposing the other plagues of our culture. You don’t need to “have faith” in your government in order to try to make it better.

Politically skeptical Christians will not, however, expect perfection in the government or the culture. There will always be a need to struggle against sin in this fallen world. Politically skeptical Christians will not become disillusioned with their political leaders because they will have no illusions. They will neither divinize the state nor secularize the church. And they won’t make the mistake of confusing the kingdoms of this world with the kingdom of Heaven.

Photo: Michael Oakeshott by Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science – Professor Michael Oakeshott, c1960sUploaded by calliopejen1, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15987493

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The Evil That Considers Itself Good

May 17, 2023 By Gene Veith

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This year is the 50th anniversary of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, the book documenting Communist atrocities that woke up even many left-leaning Western intellectuals to the evils of the Soviet Union.

Gary Saul Morson has written a brilliant account of the book and its impact for the Wall Street Journal entitled ‘The Gulag Archipelago’: An Epic of True Evil with the deck “Published 50 years ago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s account of the Soviet Union’s barbaric system of forced labor camps is arguably the 20th century’s greatest work of nonfiction.”

Read it if you have the chance, though it’s unfortunately behind a paywall. But that article and the great book it discusses are not the main subject of this post. I was struck by a quotation that Morson gives from this sublime Christian author (my bolds):

Shakespeare and Schiller clearly did not grasp evil, Solzhenitsyn instructs, because their villains “recognize themselves as evildoers, and they know their souls are black,” but those who commit the greatest harm think of themselves as good. Before interrogators could torture prisoners they knew were innocent, they had to discover a justification for their actions. Shakespeare’s villains stopped at a few corpses “because they had no ideology,” nothing to compare with Marxism-Leninism’s “scientific” and infallible explanations of life and ethics. “Ideology—that is what . . . gives the evil-doer the necessary steadfastness and determination . . . the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good . . . in his own and others’ eyes.”

Read that again. Think about it.

The insight about the moral inversion of considering evil to be a positive good is an echo of Scripture:

Woe to those who call evil good
    and good evil,
who put darkness for light
    and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
    and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20)

The prophet cites the converse problem as well: considering what is good to be evil.

Similarly, after St. Paul lists a catalogue of evildoing, he notes a further overarching perversion:

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1:28-32)

It is one thing to do them, but it is an even greater sign of a “debased mind” to “give approval” to those who do them! It is bad to be disobedient to parents, but it is monstrous to approve of being disobedient to parents, to think that authority in the family is a bad thing.

This moral inversion is why self-righteousness–a spirit of legalism and self-justification–so often bears fruit in sin, as in the scribes and Pharisees who “are like whitewashed tombs,” who, though they think of themselves as righteous, “devour widows’ houses” (Mark 12:40) and within “are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matthew 23:27-28).

Solzhenitsyn names the enabling mindset that creates this moral version on a vast scale: ideology. The term means “the science of ideas.” Human beings develop abstract ideas and then turn them into a system that they impose on all of life. Marx put forward his economic theories, which the Communists applied with rigor to actual human beings in the nation they ruled, resulting in the Gulags. Some of the Nazis were reportedly nice people, but the force of their ideology led them to commit unspeakable atrocities.

A major evil today that ideology defines as good is abortion, the killing of unborn children. The ideology of feminism turns that into a good thing to do. So does the ideology of moral libertarianism, the view that defines morality as whatever I “choose.”

But hasn’t religion, including Christianity, been used in this way? Certainly inquisitions, holy wars, heretic-burning, and other cruelties are common throughout the history of the church. I think the problem is that we are always tempted to turn Christianity into an ideology. Whereupon we can use it as a cover and a rationalization for our sins.

Christian nationalism, liberation theology, Catholic integralism, Reformed theonomy, Pentecostal dominionism, and the social gospel of mainline Protestantism are all Christian ideologies, and they can all be misused as pretexts to justify evil.

But Christianity is not a set of abstract ideas that we can turn into a system to serve our own ends. Yes, it contains ideas, but it deals not with abstractions but with mighty realities that hold us to account. Properly, in Solzhenitsyn’s terms, Christianity causes its adherents to “recognize themselves as evildoers, and they know their souls are black.” At that point, Christianity offers the atonement accomplished by God Incarnate.

Photo: Gulag Prisoners in Perm (undated, but before 1947) by Mikail Solokov via Radio Free Europe, Public Domain

HT: Harold Senkbeil

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John Kleinig’s New Book “God’s Word”

May 16, 2023 By Gene Veith

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I remember many years ago as a young graduate student when I first started reading the Bible. I was blown away by its power, by its depths and complexity, and by the impact it was having on me. Ever since, I have been reading the Bible every day, good habits being as hard to break as bad habits, working through it in different translations and studying it with different helps.

After many years, though, the Bible became so familiar to me that it lost some of its experiential luster. The regular reading was still doing me good–knocking me down and building me up, just as I needed–but reading it over and over was getting somewhat tedious.

Lately, though, my enjoyment of the Bible has been rekindled. Part of the reason is that I’ve been reading the King James Version, an evocative translation that keeps the mysteries of the original languages rather than flattening them in an attempt at clarity and making them sound modern, which they are not. Editing J. G. Hamann’s London Writings also reignited my love of Scripture through the infectious enthusiasm of a great mind who was finding himself changed by reading it. And now the translator of London Writings, the Australian theologian and Bible scholar John W. Kleinig, has poured gasoline on that flame with his new book God’s Word: A Guide to Holy Scripture .

This book, part of the Christian Essential Series from Lexham Press, is not just an explanation of the doctrine of Scripture, nor a how-to book about using commentaries and concordances. “I do not intend to set out an argument to prove anything about the Bible as God’s written word, let alone explain its divine nature and inspiration,” Kleinig writes. “That would be like trying to prove the value of good food. You can only really discover how tasty and nourishing and satisfying food is by eating it.” This is not a nutrition manual, a diet plan, or a recipe book. Rather, it is more like a mouth-watering restaurant review or a documentary on the Food Network, something that makes you hungry and alerts you to flavors you might never have tasted before.

The Bible is God’s word. That is to say, God speaks. The Father speaks, the Son speaks, and the Holy Spirit speaks–and in the Scriptures they all speak about Jesus. “All this makes up a single conversation of the Triune God with his people and them with him and each other,” Kleinig writes. “Since we have a record of that conversation in the Bible, we can listen in on it and join in with it” (p. 10).

Not only that, we are to “abide” in God’s word (John 8:31-32). In other words, it is a place to inhabit. To live in God’s word is to dwell in a place of truth, freedom, love, and security.

The human authors whom the Triune God inspires to record His word “speak many different words that do different things in different circumstances”–covenant words, words of institution, life-giving ordinances, prophetic oracles of either judgment or salvation (p. 13). Returning to the banquet analogy, Kleinig says to imagine a vast smorgasbord designed to nourish everyone in every situation. “Some of it may appeal to me. Some of it, I must admit, may not suit my all too limited and untutored taste. And much of it, sadly, may even repel me. Where should I begin?” He recommends beginning with Jesus, the Word made flesh, who alone can open the rest of the Scriptures to us (Luke 24:44-47).

Throughout, Kleinig emphasizes that “the Word of God is living and active” (Hebrews 4:12). It is “powerful and performative, effective and productive” (p. 22). Indeed, that can describe even human language. Far more does God’s language bring into being what it says, from the creation of the universe to the salvation of a soul.

Thus, the Bible is not just a record of history, a guide to life, or a collection of doctrines, though it is those things as well. It is a means of grace. Kleinig tells about how, as a young seminarian trying to preach on the parables, he realized that the point is not just trying to unpack what the text means, but to discern what Jesus does in the text.

The Word “is active not just in doing what it says but in energizing those who hear it,” Kleinig writes. “It acts on them and in them.” But the Word is not a magical incantation. “It did not energize all people to do God’s work, but only those who heard it as his word, received it as from him, accepted it as addressed to them, and believed in it as his word for them” (p. 112). Thus the role of faith.

The Word made flesh is conveyed in the written Word and in the proclaimed Word. Indeed, the risen and ascended Jesus fulfills His promise to be with us always through His presence in His word. This is to say, the Word is sacramental, a vehicle of the Holy Spirit intimately connected with baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

The book is a small one, just 157 pages of text, and yet its 14 brief chapters cover a wide range of topics regarding the Bible. Here are the chapter titles: I. An Invitation to a Banquet; II. The God Who Speaks; III. Words that Do What They Say; IV. Hearing Ears; V. Speaking with Authority; VI. The Word of Christ; VII. God’s Word Saves; VIII. God’s Word Gives Life; IX. God’s Word Nourishes; X. God’s Word Heals; XI. God’s Word Energizes; XII. The Ministry of the Word; XIII. God’s Written Word; XIV. God’s Amazing Word.

Each one of them is filled with passages that brightly illuminate their topics. For example, here is a broadly useful explanation of “mystery”:

Like many modern people, we tend to confuse mysteries with secrets. And so we explain them away. But a mystery is different from a secret. Even though both have to do with something that is hidden and unknown, a mystery differs from a secret in one important respect. A secret remains a secret only as long as you don’t know it. Once it is revealed, it ceases to be a secret. But a mystery remains a mystery even when it is revealed. In fact, the more you know about it, the more mysterious it becomes. (p. 126)

As if all of this were not enough, the book is also beautifully designed and illustrated.

John Kleinig, author of Grace Upon Grace: Spirituality for Today, has long been appreciated by confessional Lutherans. I am happy that Lexham Press has discovered him and is making him known among evangelicals and Christians more broadly.

This is a book to read, study with others, and give away.

Party Crashing

May 5, 2023 By Gene Veith

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Polls show that Biden would beat Trump. But DeSantis would beat Biden. But Trump is leading DeSantis in the primaries by a large margin.

Also, 70% of Americans don’t want Biden to even run, including 51% of his own party. And 60% of Americans don’t want Trump to run. Nevertheless, they are, and it looks like the 2024 presidential race will be a rematch of 2020, probably with the same result.

We have a two-party system that determines what candidates we get to vote for. Those parties have become fundamental to our government, even though political parties are never mentioned in our Constitution and the Father of our country and first president, George Washington, warned against them.

While some people today are urging the repeal of the Electoral College, we might consider returning it to its original role. The Constitutional way of picking the president was for citizens of the states to elect people entrusted with the task of finding the best person for the job.

Currently, the two parties put up their candidate as determined by winning the state-by-state party primaries. But Americans who are not members of either party have no say at all in who the candidates will be. And, it turns out, 42% of Americans are Independents, members of neither party. Democrats comprise only 29% of the population and Republicans comprise only 27%.

So no wonder our politics are so dysfunctional and out of synch.

Peggy Noonan discusses the strange phenomenon that Americans are gearing up for a contest that the majority of them don’t want and suggests that now might be a good time for a Third Party candidate to emerge. Part of the problem with that, of course, is that the two parties so control the states that it is very difficult for alternative parties to even get on the ballot. But the No Labels movement plans to have enough signed petitions to get on the ballot in every state, which it will use for the benefit of independent “Unity” candidates.

From Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal (behind a paywall), Biden vs. Trump in 2024? Don’t Be So Sure:

A third party, if it comes, could have real and surprising power in this cycle. I am the only person I know who thinks this but, again, look at peoples’ faces when you say it will be Trump or Biden.

Independents now outnumber members of each party. No hunger for a third-party effort is discernible in the polls. So the effort would have to blow people out of their comfortable trenches and make them want to go over the top to seize new ground. It would have to be something centrists, by their nature, aren’t: dramatic. The people who would lead such an effort worry about whether or not they’d wind up as spoilers for the Democrats. You could argue as well it might spoil things for the Republicans.

They should be thinking: We are past the moment for such questions. If you think the country is in trouble and needs another slate of candidates, do it. No ambivalence, no guilt about spoiling it for the lesser of evils. If you’re serious, go for it. Look at the other two guys as spoilers.

A third party would have to have compelling candidates for president and vice president. That would be hard. I am not certain a third party is desirable. But I don’t think it’s impossible.

Third-party enthusiasts tend to be moderate, sober-minded. Such people are almost by definition not swept by the romance of history. But we are living in a prolonged crazy time in American politics. Anything can happen now.

Really, anything. I wonder if they know it.

It is surely significant that, though nations around the world have adopted representative democracies inspired by the United States, hardly any of them have a two party system like we do. Rather, they have adopted parliamentary democracies, with many parties, in which voters can find exactly the shade of opinion that they agree with, whereupon coalitions of the various parties have to be built in order to “form a government,” with the leader of the biggest party made the nation’s Chief Executive.

That still embodies the “party spirit” that Washington warned against, and I’m not sure having a three party system would be much of an improvement over having just two. Of course, what Noonan is calling for is not so much a third party–there are already a number of small parties that are on some ballots, such as the Greens, the National, and the Libertarians–as a third major candidate.

It has been said that the United States has already elected a third party candidate, namely, Donald Trump, who pulled that off by taking over one of the two established parties. Indeed, Trump opposed and was opposed by the Republican party establishment but won its primary and then the general election anyway.

So who would be a good third candidate this time?

Some celebrity like Oprah or the Rock? A bridge candidate like Robert Kennedy, Jr., who has the Democratic pedigree but the anti-vax, COVID-skeptic bona fides to attract Republicans, plus an anti-corporate stance that members of both parties can agree on? A centrist, like Joe Manchin?

I have heard people say that they are sick of all of the celebrity and ideology. What they crave, what they think we need, is not just another celebrity, nor an embodiment of some cause, but simply someone who is competent–someone who can run the executive branch, get the parts of the government to work together, and be a steady hand in the problems that we face.

Or do we want ideology after all, someone with the ideas we most agree with? If so, given the multiple schools of progressivism and conservatism, don’t we need more parties to accommodate those ideas?

Perhaps the issues we must deal with today–abortion, transgenderism, woke progressivism, the economy, threats of war–do not admit compromise and shades of grey. There are only two sides, and one of them must prevail over the other. In that case, maybe two parties in polar opposition may be the best we can do.

What do you think? I myself am open to persuasion.

UPDATE: Here is what George Washington said on the subject of political parties, from his Farewell Address:

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

Was he wrong?

Illustration: “Americans Suffer As Our Two Party System Stagnates!” by outtacontext via Flickr, CC 2.0.

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Traits of Paganism

May 4, 2023 By Gene Veith

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Religion is pretty much a cultural universal. That is to say, no human culture is without one. So if Christianity disappears in the West, we can expect other religions to rush into the void. And those religions, say some observers, are likely to be a version of those that human cultures have turned to around the world and long before Christianity took hold. In other words, they will be “pagan” religions.

Other major religions today, such as Islam and Judaism, are also very different from paganism, and they have similar concerns with Christians about the prospect of its revival.

Rabbi Liel Leibovitz has written a fascinating article for the Jewish conservative magazine Commentary entitled The Return of Paganism with the deck, “The spiritual crisis afflicting contemporary America has ancient and enduring roots—and so does the cure.”

He cites statistics that show that in 1990, a survey uncovered about 8,000 Americans who said that they are “pagans.” In 2008, that number had increased to 340,000. In 2018, that number had increased to 1.5 million. This includes not only Wiccans (who tend to be feminists) but also the self-termed “Heathens” who follow the tenets of Norse mythology (who tend to be masculinists), as well as individual adherents who make up their own idiosyncratic pagan theology.

But Leibovitz is most concerned about what he sees as pagan traits that are permeating contemporary thought and culture. “To the pagans,” he says, “change is the only real constant.” He cites that pagan myths that describe the constant metamorphoses of the gods, which are continually changing their forms, assuming the appearance of humans or animals. This, in turn, leads to an emphasis on the changes in human life.

“The soul of paganism,” says Leibovitz is “the idea that no fixed system of belief or set of solid convictions ought to constrain us as we stumble our way through life.” He relates this to the relativism of today’s postmodern thought. And yet, there is more to both paganism and postmodernism.:

Still, change alone does not a belief system make, and pagans, despite differences galore, unite by providing similar answers to three seminal questions: what to do about strangers, how to think about nature, and how to please the gods.

What to do about strangers. The many forms taken by paganism are all tribal religions. Whereas the major world religions today are universal religions, generally with a transcendent deity that is sovereign over the whole world and is accessible to people of all cultures, pagan religions are generally tied to a specific community or nationality. Each tribe has its distinct gods who give the tribe and its customs a divine status. And the tribes and their gods are at war with each other.

Leibovitz relates this to today’s tribalism, specifically to intersectionality and identity politics:

The same spirit, alas, is alive and well among our newest pagans: For them, tribal warfare isn’t just a way of life—it’s a system of divination, with power and privilege waxing and waning to reveal who is pure and worthy and who evil and benighted.

How to think about nature. Pagans venerate nature and natural forces. Leibovitz relates that to today’s environmental movement, with its eco-protests and climate change dogmatism

Just like the Scandinavian pagans who offered precious gifts to appease the Askafroa, the spirit of the Ash Tree, a vengeful entity that demanded sacrifice lest it wreak havoc, many of today’s green activists seem much more intent on appeasing an angry god than solving a scientific conundrum.

How to please the gods. The gods must be placated and appeased. But the gods have all the gold and silver they want, and animal sacrifices might seem too easy. So the ultimate offering human beings could give to a pagan deity would be their own children. Leibovitz says,

The pagans scanned the horizon for something truly precious and exquisite, something whose sacrifice would be an unmistakable sign of devotion. And, across time and across cultures, they alighted on exactly the same thing: kids.

At once the embodiment of innocence and the object of our deepest and most sincere emotions, children, the most vulnerable of mortals, were the ultimate offering to the gods—proof that the pagan believer was so certain in his belief that he would offer up his own offspring to show the gods the strength of his faith. . . .,

Child sacrifice, alas, is alive and well in America these days, too. We may not, like the Vikings, toss our young into wells as offerings to the heavens, but turn over every rock in our craggy contemporary political landscape and you’ll find some pagan policy offering up the well-being of children to the gods of virtue.

He cites the willingness of Americans to sacrifice their children’s well-being during the COVID lockdown by keeping them away from school and shut up in their homes, despite the mental and emotional consequences. Also the way the general public including some parents are subjecting children to mutilative surgery and sterilizing hormone treatments to signal their allegiance to the cultural god of transgenderism.

Strangely, he doesn’t mention the most overt example of today’s Molech worship, abortion. Parents are putting to death their own children to honor the god within, and the general public has convinced itself that doing so is righteous and pious.

Leibovitz has written a provocative article that is well worth reading in its entirety, but he is a rabbi, not a cultural anthropologist. What pagans most venerated about nature is its fertility, and they also venerated their own fertility. As I have commented elsewhere at this blog, fertility is most emphatically not venerated today. Rather, fertility is generally seen as an unfortunate side-effect of sex, to be medicated against, to the point of aborting what fertility produces.

And his thesis calls to mind what C. S. Lewis said on the topic:

It is hard to have patience with those Jererniahs, in Press or pulpit, who warn us that we are ” relapsing into Paganism”. It might be rather fun if we were. It would be pleasant to see some future Prime Minister trying to kill a large and lively milk-white bull in Westminster Hall. But we shan’t. What lurks behind such idle prophecies, if they are anything but careless language, is the false idea that the historical process allows mere reversal; that Europe can come out of Christianity “by the same door as in she went” and find herself back where she was. It is not what happens. A post-Christian man is not a Pagan; you might as well think that a married woman recovers her virginity by divorce. The post-Christian is cut off from the Christian past and therefore doubly from the Pagan past.

From De Descriptione Temporum [“of the Description of the Times”]. Inaugural Lecture upon accepting the Chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, 1954. Published in C. S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays.

Illustration: “Offering to Molech,” Foster Bible Pictures (1897) by Charles Foster, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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