January 4, 2024

In an decision made in 2023 that will have ramifications far into 2024 and beyond, Pope Francis has approved a policy that will allow Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples.

To be sure, the ruling is more complicated than it sounds.  It affirms that marriage is for a man and a woman only.  Any blessing of same-sex couples must not create the impression that it is any kind of wedding.  The blessing must not be a liturgical context, it must not imitate the sacrament of matrimony, the priest must not wear his vestments, and no fixed ritual may be established.

It points out that the church has always offered blessings to sinners–e.g., in confession “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned”–and that blessings exist to ask God’s help in living a Christian life.

So some Catholics are saying, “nothing new here!” and that the document does not, in fact, signal approval of same-sex relationships.  The Federalist‘s Evita Duffy-Alfonso goes so far as to say, in her article of this title,  that “The Media Are Lying, Pope Francis Did Not Approve Priests Blessing ‘Same-Sex Relationships.”

But that’s not quite accurate either.  Of course homosexual individuals can receive a blessing–the Benediction at the end of mass, the blessings in confession and absolution, if the Popemobile draws by as the pontiff blesses the crowds, or in any number of formal and informal contexts.  This document, though, is going well-beyond that.

Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the official formerly in charge of Vatican doctrinal statements–a predecessor of the official who issued this one–has issued a devastating analysis and critique of the new policy.

He says that it creates a completely new category of blessing–a “pastoral” blessing, in addition to “liturgical” blessings associated with the sacraments and “ritual” blessings, associated with popular piety.  These latter may indeed be given to a sinner, but not to “things, places, or circumstances that … contradict the law or the spirit of the Gospel.”  Thus, a priest may bless a woman who has had an abortion, but he may not bless an abortion clinic.  This new kind of “pastoral” blessing, though, would not be under that limitation.  Cardinal Müller goes on to show that there is no basis in church teaching for this kind of innovation.

Furthermore, the provision is not just for individuals to be blessed, but for the couple.

Notice that not only sinful persons are blessed here, but that by blessing the couple, it is the sinful relationship itself that is blessed. Now, God cannot send his grace upon a relationship that is directly opposed to him and cannot be ordered toward him. Sexual intercourse outside of marriage, qua sexual intercourse, cannot bring people closer to God and therefore cannot open itself to God’s blessing. Therefore, if this blessing were given, its only effect would be to confuse the people who receive it or who attend it. They would think that God has blessed what He cannot bless. This “pastoral” blessing would be neither pastoral nor a blessing. It is true that [the current head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office who issued the statement] Cardinal Fernandez, in later statements to Infovaticana, said that it is not the union that is blessed, but the couple. However, this is emptying a word of its meaning, since what defines a couple as couple is precisely their being a union.

To objections that asking for a blessing signals an openness to God and a step towards conversion, Cardinal Müller writes, “This may be true for those who ask for a blessing for themselves, but not for those who ask for a blessing as a couple. The latter, in asking for a blessing, implicitly or explicitly seek to justify their relationship itself before God, without realizing that it is precisely their relationship that distances them from God.”

Another issue is how this new policy is going to be received.  Does anyone really think that the couples who go to their priest for a blessing are doing so as part of an effort to be delivered from their sinful relationship?  Can anyone doubt that gay Catholics will ask for a blessing “to justify their relationship itself before God”?

Already, the practice in many countries that legally require civil marriages is to go to the courthouse, sign the papers, then go to the church for the wedding.  Protestants, who don’t consider matrimony to be a sacrament, consider the church wedding to be a “blessing” of their marriage.  Who can doubt that gay couples will get married at the courthouse, then go to church along with their family and friends for an informal, non-liturgical, quasi-Protestant-style “blessing”?

The church may have its carefully nuanced language, but those who hear that language will assume that it means something else.  In the notorious agreement cobbled together between the Catholics and the Lutheran World Federation on justification by faith, each side meant something different by the terms, but because they could agree on common language (though with different meanings), this was taken as doctrinal agreement.  This document strikes me as similar, a statement vague enough to be taken as orthodox, while being open to non-orthodox interpretations and applications.  The priest giving the blessing will think “this may help you change.”  The couple receiving the blessing will think “now we don’t have to change.”

But why should we Lutherans, evangelicals, and other Protestants care if Catholics bless same-sex relationships?  We have different theologies of marriage, blessings, salvation, and the Christian life.

Catholics tend to be way too Law-oriented, at the expense of the Gospel.  We might therefore appreciate some of statement’s emphasis on grace and forgiveness.  We might agree with the ruling when it says, “Thus, when people ask for a blessing, an exhaustive moral analysis should not be placed as a precondition for conferring it. For, those seeking a blessing should not be required to have prior moral perfection” (¶ 25).

But if sinners are given the impression that they are not sinners, they are prevented from finding grace and forgiveness, which they assume they do not need.

Carl Trueman has addressed what all of this means for Protestants in his First Things article The Pope, Same-Sex Blessings, and Protestants, in which he says, among other things,

“Whether we like it or not, the officer class of our culture cares little for debates about transubstantiation and papal authority. It makes no real distinction between Catholics and Protestants. In its eyes we are all Christians and thus the shenanigans of the pope will put pressure on us all. The argument will be that, if Rome can change, why can we all not change?”

 

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

October 4, 2023

Catholics and Protestants have been at each other’s throats for centuries.  But lately they have been getting along.  Evangelicals and other conservative Protestants see conservative Catholics as allies in pro-life issues, the assault on sexual morality, the critique of transgenderism, and the common struggle against secularism.

Since Catholics have a long philosophical tradition–which evangelicals tend to lack–they are a good source for Protestants in their arguments and reflections on today’s issues.

Now that a strain of this Catholic philosophical tradition is advocating “integralism,” which calls for the state to be under the leadership of the church, some Protestants are getting on board with that, calling themselves “Protestant integralists.”

Talk of “Protestant integralists” is exceedingly naive.  That becomes clear in James Dominic Rooney’s review article The Utopian Philosophy of the Confessional State in Law & Liberty.  He is reviewing All the Kingdoms of the World: On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism by Kevin Vallier, a philosophy professor and Eastern Orthodox Christian.  Vallier offers a fair reading of integralism, recognizing its continuity with historic Catholic teaching and noting the good parts about it.  But he ends up rejecting it because it is unfeasible, inherently unstable, and unjust.  The reviewer is a Catholic–a Dominican friar–who also rejects integralism, though with a different take than Vallier.

Rooney summarizes the three assumptions of integralism (my bolds):

  1. God directs the state to advance the natural common good of a community.
  2. God directs the church to advance the supernatural common good of all baptized persons in this community.
  3. To advance that supernatural common good, and only for this reason, the church may mandate state policies, backed by civil penalties, that directly advance that supernatural good, without excessively undermining either the natural or supernatural common good in some other respect.

What struck me is the notion that these “civil penalties” would be applied against such threats to the “supernatural good” as heretics.  That is to say, Protestants.  Also non-Christians and followers of other religions.  Here is what Rooney says about it [my bolds]:

To begin with the elephant in the room, there is an unaddressed worry about the place of non-Catholics within integralist states. Whereas Vallier has arguments against Islamic versions of these measures, he largely leaves these considerations aside in his case against Catholic integralists. This is a mistake. For non-Christians, the injustice of the integralist system is that it de jure involves limiting their participation in politics on equal footing with Catholics. No matter how nice integralists are, the ideal would limit non-Catholics’ political participation to ensure that the Church exercises effective influence over the affairs of state. Non-Catholics are thus always and necessarily second-class citizens in Integristan. Even if baptism rightly subjects a citizen to the Church’s coercive authority, merely living under a given civil government surely does not.

Remember how the old Protestant bigotry against Catholics included the fear that they wanted to do away with democracy, take over the country, and turn it over to the Pope?  And this was why so many Protestants, especially in the South, were leery about voting for John Fitzgerald Kennedy because he was a Catholic?  And how JFK forthrightly pledged to voters that he was under no marching orders from the Vatican and that he would not let his Catholicism interfere with what is best for the country?

That pledge and JFK’s presidency were probably turning points in evangelicals’ attitude towards Catholics.

But it sounds like the integralists want to do exactly what the bigots were afraid of.  Integralism sounds like a return to the bad old Catholicism.

To be sure, Reformed theology has a theocratic strain, which might come to some of the same conclusions as the integralists.  But confessional Lutheranism cannot.  Luther crusaded against the temporal authority of the pope and insisted that the church may not use coercive authority.  Rather, the secular authorities have the temporal authority, and God works through them to restrain evil in the course of their vocations.  Read the Treatise on the Power & Primacy of the Pope, in the Book of Concord, a confessionally binding document on all Lutherans.

I know, I know, the Lutheran state churches, a big mistake in my view as a violation of the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms as borne out in the tyranny of the Prussian Union, which led to the emigrations that gave birth to the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  But even in the Lutheran state churches, it wasn’t that the church exercised authority over the state–as in Catholic countries–but that the state exercised authority over the church.

At any rate, Protestants would not fare well under an integralist regime.  Fortunately, Catholics such as Rooney, whom I suspect represents the Catholic mainstream, don’t want such a regime either.

 

 

Photo:  The Pope’s Triple Crown [not used since John XXIII].  As described by the Holy See Press Office: “The Triregnum (the Papal Tiara formed by three crowns symbolizing the triple power of the Pope: father of kings, governor of the world and Vicar of Christ).”  By Dieter Philippi, The Philippi Collection, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

June 22, 2023

Jake Meador of Mere Orthodoxy has written an important post entitled The End of Evangelicalism and the Possibility of Reformed Catholicism.

He first heralds the demise of evangelicalism.  He gives three reasons:  (1)  Its leadership failures, including the way evangelical leadership covered up sexual abuse and sometimes practiced it themselves; (2) the changed social climate, with modern evangelicalism taking shape when American politics was a rivalry between the center right and the center left, when marriage and family were the norms, and Americans shared a civil religion based on a Christian consensus, none of which is the case anymore; (3) its lack of a rigorous theology, due to its status as a centrist position between fundamentalism and the liberal mainline (both of which have transformed into something very different than they were) and its lack of confessional content.

In light of the end of evangelicalism, Meador proposes the building of a new religious movement, “a reimagined Reformed Catholicism, updated and modified to suit the missionary context facing us in the late 20th and early 21st century west.”

He acknowledges that this has been done before:

The original Reformed Catholics, of course, were a certain slice of early modern Protestants who saw themselves as reforming the church catholic, calling her to renounce the accumulated errors that had piled up in her theology over the centuries and which had been mostly ignored by the church’s hierarchy. Figures like Martin Bucer and Philip Melanchthon, along with their more famous peers like Luther and Calvin, did not see themselves as beginning ontologically new ecclesial movements.

Rather, they understood their work as being the continuation of the church catholic, stretched across time all the way back to Pentecost. This is, of course, why both Bucer and Melanchthon sought reunion with faithful German Catholics as late as the early 1540s at Regensburg and why they nearly succeeded in the task, were it not for the intransigence of both the Roman Cardinal Carafa and Luther himself.

Intransigence of Luther!  The Diet of Regensburg, in which the Emperor sought to forge an agreement between the Papacy and the Reformation, was ill-fated because the distance between the sides was just too great.  I’ll come back to the intransigence of Luther.  I appreciate Meador’s diagnosis and proposal, but in minimizing Luther and ignoring Lutherans, he neglects the work they have already accomplished towards the goal he envisions.

Meador goes on to note both the similarities and the differences between the time of the early Reformation and today:

These early Protestants, rightly, recognized that the catholicity of the faith is found in its teaching, not in a singular church office. So they sought to preserve and pass on catholic doctrine for the church catholic amidst a time of political, cultural, and technological upheaval. Yet even so these men could presuppose Christendom. Their project was ultimately to conserve an actually existing Christendom by renewing it and calling it back to its first love.

The task before us is quite different. Ours is a post-Christian, perhaps even post post-Christian culture. Due to corruption and demographic collapse, we have very little left to conserve of the old American Christendom. Rather than conserving, it’s time to build. And it’s time to build a distinctly Reformed Catholic movement across the American church.

Meador describes what he has in mind, again with reference to the Reformation:

What does it look like theologically? It is “catholic,” which is to say it is historically rooted and it is universal. It does not seek to reinvent the wheel, but rather anchors itself in the historic thought of our fathers and mothers in the faith, as well as the great creeds and confessions that have defined what it means to be Christian. It is worth remembering, here, that the original vision of the first Protestants—a vision that many late medieval Catholics had varying degrees of agreement with!—was a moral and intellectual renewal of the one holy, catholic, and apostolic church. So it will be, must be, a conversation grounded not merely in specifically Protestant thinkers, though certainly in them, but in all the riches of the catholic faith—church fathers, medieval saints, and the witness of the Roman, Eastern, and Radical churches of the modern period.

We Lutherans certainly agree with that.  But where are the Lutherans in his plans?

What does it look like ecclesially? Here we should work with the institutions we still have. In my experience, the PCA, OPC, EPC, ACNA, and ARP can all be fruitful vehicles for a historically grounded Reformed Protestant church life. . . .The PCA and ACNA have the largest role to play here, as they are the respective leading denominations in America for the dominant ecclesial traditions of the Reformed Catholic anglosphere. That said, the EPC is nearly as large as the ACNA while the OPC and ARP cumulatively represent around 50,000 church members, so each of these denominations can and should have a role to play in the broader diffusion of reformed catholicity. That said, because the PCA is the largest presbyterian communion and the ACNA is the largest Anglican, these two denominations will necessarily be central to the broader movement.

The initials refer to the Presbyterian Church in America (382,209 members), the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (32,255 members), the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (125,418 members), the Anglican Church in North America (122,450 members), and the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (22,459 members).  For a total of 684, 791 potential Reformed Catholics.

But the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod has, as of 2021,  1,807,408 members.  The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod has 340,511.  The Evangelical Lutheran Synod has 19,394.  So, not counting the plethora of smaller and independent churches, the total number of confessional Lutherans in the United States alone is 2, 167, 313.  Which is more than three times the number of the confessional Calvinists whom Meador looks to as the the vanguard of Reformed Catholicism.

I realize that Lutherans, despite our large numbers, are not particularly influential in American Christendom.  We tend to keep to ourselves, due largely to our fellowship concerns, but our theology is thoroughly worked out, and it is a matter of public record.  Calvinists, though, are influential in American Christianity, despite their relatively small numbers.  But some Christians with concerns similar to Meador’s are, in fact, discovering Lutheranism.

The basis of the debates at Regensburg was supposed to be the Augsburg Confession, the defining doctrinal statement of Lutheran theology that was written precisely to show the Reformation’s continuity with the historic church.  But the Pope’s faction withdrew their earlier agreement to talk about that document, dooming the conference.

I would just like to make a friendly suggestion that Mr. Meador and his fellow Reformed Catholics study the Augsburg Confession and its Apology as a way of seeing what a Reformed Catholic theology could look like.

I realize that they probably couldn’t accept all of it, specifically, what it says about the sacraments.  But any genuine attempt to bring together the best of both Protestantism and Catholicism will have to be sacramental.

In answering “what does [Reformed Catholicism] look like liturgically,” Meador says, “As much as possible, public worship of God’s people should be grounded in the great creeds and prayers of the faith, passed down to us through the ages.”  He notes with approval the Anglican Church of North America, which has officially adopted the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, recognizing that some churches cannot be that liturgical, but that “it is still wise and good to sing old hymns and Psalms, to receive the Lord’s Supper regularly, to dedicate time each week to the public reading of Scripture and the preaching of the Word of God, and to adopt liturgical staples such as the call to worship, congregational prayer, and benediction and, in all these things, to hew closely to Scripture and historic practices and prayers.”

I appreciate his rejection of evangelical “contemporary worship,” but he should take a look at the historic Lutheran liturgy.  Receiving the Lord’s Supper regularly is indeed a good practice, but a more robust understanding of what the Lord’s Supper is–namely, the true body and blood of Jesus Christ given for our sins–would be a good motivation for that frequent reception and would bring into these Protestant churches the “catholic” spirituality of the Early Church, the Middle Ages, and Eastern Orthodoxy.

Luther’s “intransigence” was directed not so much against the Catholic side of the equation as against the Protestant side, which would not accept Christ’s presence in the bread and wine of Holy Communion.  I fear that this will prove to be a problem in this new movement also.  But maybe not.  I have known some Reformed folks who have drawn close to Luther’s understanding of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

I do recognize that “Reformed Catholicism” is a term originally used by some Anglicans, who managed to combine Calvinist soteriology with “Catholic” liturgy and a relatively high (though not by Lutheran standards) view of the sacraments.

Lutherans have been called “Evangelical Catholics,” reflecting the centrality of the Gospel (the evangel) in Lutheran theology, which we see expressed Baptism (being buried and raised with Christ) and the Lord’s Supper (in which He gives us His body and blood for the remission of our sins).

So I do see why Lutherans are not invited to the “Reformed Catholic” party.  But I do think we could be fellow travelers and give those who are part of that movement some good ideas.

 

Illustration:  Altar Cover showing Lutheran Worship in Denmark (1561) by Unknown author – Hungarian Codex, 2000, in the National Museum in Copenhagen, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6886328. 


 

 

June 8, 2023

Is Western Civilization over?  Has it come to an end like all of the others?  And, if so, what does that mean for Christianity and the church?

Peter Leithart in First Things reacts to Paul Kingsnorth’s essay that we posted about yesterday in an article entitled Christianity:  Neither Revolutionary Nor Conservative.  He basically agrees with him that in the current cultural climate there is nothing left to conserve.  “It’s hard to identify a single sector of Western society where the Christian convictions and instincts that Kingsnorth rightly identifies as the core of the West survive,” he writes. “Even much of the church has adjusted to cultural currents.” The pervasive influence of Christianity has been replaced by the pervasive influence of views that are anti-Christian.

Nevertheless, Leithart remains optimistic.  Civilizations have risen and fallen before, he reminds us.  And yet the church of the Old Testament and the New remains.  Not only that, it keeps renewing itself and the society around it:

Our historical moment exposes the limits of conservatism. How can conservatism guide us when there’s nothing left to conserve? Ours isn’t the first such moment. Western history is pocked with revolution, epochs when ancient regimes were demolished, when settled beliefs were turned upside down, when things fell apart and all that was solid melted into thin air. The Roman empire girdled the Mediterranean, but it’s gone. Western Christendom was a miraculous achievement, but it died. Byzantium was all gilded splendor, but now lies in a gilded grave. Protestant Europe gave way to the Enlightenment. Each time the world went on, differently.

This is why Kingsnorth is right to point us beyond conservatism to Scripture. Biblical faith can meet cultural dissolution in a way no merely conservative agenda can. Israel survived Egyptian slavery, the chaos of the judges, the end of the Davidic monarchy, Babylonian exile, and Antiochus Epiphany. The church thrived during the collapse of Rome, converting the invading barbarians and preserving what fragments of antiquity she could pick from the rubble. Europe remained Christian after its Reformation break-up, and the modern missions movement took off during the heyday of Enlightenment and secularization. When worlds fall to ruins, the church is the catalyst of rebirth. Jesus’s promise has proved true: The serpent’s forces do their best, but the gates of hell cannot prevail against the church.

This, he says, is because of the Holy Spirit:

Throughout her history, the church has followed the Spiritual trajectory set by Acts. She scrambles to keep pace with her dreamers and wild visionaries—her Constantines and Charlemagnes and Alfreds, her Gregories and Patricks and Benedicts and Francises, her Thomases and Luthers, her Wesleys and Hudson Taylors. Guided by the Spirit of Pentecost, Christianity is neither revolutionary nor conservative, but also neither anti-revolutionary nor anti-conservative. It’s something other, supple enough, alive enough, Spiritual enough to recover what can be recovered and to innovate when nothing can be recovered. By the Pentecostal Spirit, the church is, like our God, ever old, ever new.

Kingsnorth is right: We must grasp the gravity of our moment. The West isn’t sick. It’s dead, and we should heed Jesus’s exhortation to “let the dead bury their dead.” Our calling in the wasteland isn’t to conserve but to keep in step with the Spirit, hoping, boldly and joyfully, for resurrection.

I’m not convinced, though, that there is nothing to conserve.  Or that Western civilization has no life in it and cannot be conserved.  I’ve seen too much life in the classical education movement.

When the Greco-Roman civilization fell to the barbarians, the church kept learning alive, preserving the best of that civilization while Christianizing it.  When the Medieval civilization decayed, the church did that again, bringing the culture back to life with the help of the Renaissance rediscovery of the classics and the Reformation rediscovery of the Bible, both of which involved learning once again the ancient languages.  Maybe something similar is on the verge of breaking out today, as modernist and postmodernist education collapses in on itself, while Christians are, once again, keeping learning alive until we can convert the barbarians.

But I think Leithart’s essay is bracing.  We keep forgetting about the power of the Holy Spirit.

Happy Pentecost, the season that we are in!

 

Photo:  Peter Leithart via Twitter

February 24, 2023

Elle Purnell’s article for the Federalist, Welcome to the Culture War, Tim Keller refers to Aaron Renn’s “Three Worlds of Evangelicalism.”  So I tracked down that article, which appeared in First Things right at a year ago.

Entitled The Three World of Evangelicalism, the article looks at three stages of the secular world’s view of Christianity:

  • Positive World (Pre-1994): Society at large retains a mostly positive view of Christianity. To be known as a good, churchgoing man remains part of being an upstanding citizen. Publicly being a Christian is a status-enhancer. Christian moral norms are the basic moral norms of society and violating them can bring negative consequences.
  • Neutral World (1994–2014): Society takes a neutral stance toward Christianity. Christianity no longer has privileged status but is not disfavored. Being publicly known as a Christian has neither a positive nor a negative impact on one’s social status. Christianity is a valid option within a pluralistic public square. Christian moral norms retain some residual effect.
  • Negative World (2014–Present): Society has come to have a negative view of Christianity. Being known as a Christian is a social negative, particularly in the elite domains of ­society. Christian morality is expressly repudiated and seen as a threat to the public good and the new public moral order. Subscribing to Christian moral views or violating the secular moral order brings negative consequences.
  • The date 2014 is when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, marking the low point of Christian influence, after which Christianity began to be vilified as bigoted and a threat to public morals.

    Each of these stages, says Renn, was met by different strategies on the part of Christians, particularly the evangelicals he focuses on.

    In the “positive world,” evangelicals had two major strategies:  One was seeker sensitivity.  The assumption was that churches could attract non-Christians, understood as “seekers,” if they only presented themselves in the right way.  Thus the “seeker-sensitive” modes of worship, designed to attract people who were assumed to be open to the Christian message.

    The other strategy in the world where the overall culture still had a positive impression of Christianity was culture war.  Evangelicals and other conservative Christians believed that by exposing the evils in the culture, that the public would rise up to correct them.  This was thought to be a winning political platform.  And, indeed, it did win some elections.

    In the “neutral world,” the main strategy was cultural engagement.  Christians would get involve in the different aspects of secular culture so as to persuade non-believers of the truth and value of Christianity and Christian principles.

    But now we are in the “Negative world.”  The secular public is actively hostile to Christians and to the Christian message.  Renn says that, so far, the only real strategy that faces up to this new climate is Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option, in which he counsels Christians to withdraw as much as possible from the hostile culture and to create their own cultural institutions.

    Other than that, Renn says that evangelicals have not really come up with any other strategies for dealing with this Negative world.  The Benedict Option, he says, has not really caught on among evangelicals to a great extent.  Rather, they are still trying the strategies that may have worked in the previous stages but do not work now.  For example, many evangelicals are still trying to wage the “culture war,” as evidenced by their support of Donald Trump, even though this caused them to give up their earlier political criteria of personal morality and theological fidelity.  But that approach no longer wins elections, but only heightens the hostility.

    Problems arise when we think we are in one world, but we are really in another.  That’s Purnell’s point about Tim Keller, the evangelical Presbyterian, who had great success with his “cultural engagement” strategy in his congregation in New York City.  He is now starting, with the Gospel Coalition, the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics.  That’s a worthy project, in my opinion, but he has been the target of cancellation attempts for being pro-life and for his Biblical beliefs about sex.  Purnell fears that Keller’s “cultural engagement” approach won’t work in today’s climate.  She urges him to take on the opposition more forcefully and to join the “culture war.”

    Christians do need to resist the forces arrayed against them.  But, if Renn is right, a Christian “culture war” was effective only when Christianity had a positive reputation.  Perhaps we need another metaphor.  How about Christian resistance?

    I’ve been reading about the way Christians resisted the Nazis and the Communists–talk about “Negative” cultural climates!–and perhaps that is what we are coming to.  The “resistance” captures the separateness that the Benedict Option calls for, while also working against the forces arrayed against the Church.  It suggests working in secret, acts of sabotage, and subversive activities.

    Having said that, I would like to point that we are, as we keep hearing, a multi-cultural society.  Not everyone, and not all regions or parts of society have the same attitudes towards religion.  Renn is referring to the “high culture” elite.  That is an important and highly influential segment, but it is not all of America, or even the majority of America.

    What I’m seeing in the Trump phenomenon and more broadly is a revulsion on the part of “ordinary” Americans against the elite.  Among that demographic, many are positive, many are neutral, and some are hostile.

    As I keep reminding people, the biggest demographic of the unchurched, the nones, and the unmarried is the white working class.  These are also the folks who are most rebellious against the elite.  This is not a religious issue for them, though.  In fact, most of them, despite their unbelief, are “positive” in their respect for Christianity.  Many of them consider themselves Christians, though they don’t know much about it and never go to church.

    But the fields are ripe for harvest here.  Unfortunately, most of the church’s evangelism and apologetic efforts, as well as the church’s angst, are targeted to the affluent middle or upper classes.  Then we think there is a crisis because we aren’t getting through to them, due to their hostility.  Churches yearn to attract the high status crowd, neglecting the low status crowd that would be far more open to their message.

     

    Photo:  Members of the Maquis [the French Resistance] from Armies in World War 2 collection, https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/, via Picryl.  Public Domain

August 12, 2022

A group of conservative luminaries has put together a document entitled National Conservatism:  A Statement of Principles.  Sponsored by the Edmund Burke Foundation and published in The American Conservative, the manifesto is a statement clarifying what National Conservatism stands for.  And it isn’t exactly what I thought it was.

“National Conservatism” is a label associated with the followers of Donald Trump and the intense patriotism of those who advocate “America First” and “Make America Great Again.”  The media has made it synonymous with right wing extremism.

According to this formulation, drawn up by conservative intellectuals including R. R. Reno, editor of First Things and Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option, national conservatism has to do with all nations, not just the USA, maintaining that the nation-state in general is the best political organization of society.  As opposed to globalism, whether that of international organizations like the UN or the European Union, multi-national corporations, or “imperialism,” in which one nation imposes its will on other nations.

This particular statement, the drafters explain, focuses on Western nations and particularly the United States, but it welcomes similar initiatives from non-Western nations.

Read the statement for yourself.  Here are its 10 principles.  The statement goes into much more detail with each of them, but I give you here a brief sampling:

(1)  National Independence.  “We wish to see a world of independent nations. Each nation capable of self-government should chart its own course in accordance with its own particular constitutional, linguistic, and religious inheritance. Each has a right to maintain its own borders and conduct policies that will benefit its own people.”

(2)  Rejection of Imperialism and Globalism.  “We condemn the imperialism of China, Russia, and other authoritarian powers. But we also oppose the liberal imperialism of the last generation, which sought to gain power, influence, and wealth by dominating other nations and trying to remake them in its own image.”  Note the rebuke of the “neo-conservatives” who seek to spread American democracy at the point of a gun, if need be, an ideology that gave us the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

(3) National Government.  “We believe in a strong but limited state, subject to constitutional restraints and a division of powers. We recommend a drastic reduction in the scope of the administrative state and the policy-making judiciary that displace legislatures representing the full range of a nation’s interests and values.”  Thus, no authoritarianism, despite the accusations against this movement.

(4) God and Public Religion.  Nations should hold to and affirm their religious traditions.  This article is the most controversial, including among other conservatives.  I want to discuss this one in detail, so I’ll save it for Monday’s post.

(5) The Rule of Law. “We believe in the rule of law. By this we mean that citizens and foreigners alike, and both the government and the people, must accept and abide by the laws of the nation. In America, this means accepting and living in accordance with the Constitution of 1787, the amendments to it, duly enacted statutory law, and the great common law inheritance.”

(6) Free Enterprise.   This article affirms that free markets make for the best economic conditions, as opposed to socialism.  “But the free market cannot be absolute. Economic policy must serve the general welfare of the nation.”

A prudent national economic policy should promote free enterprise, but it must also mitigate threats to the national interest, aggressively pursue economic independence from hostile powers, nurture industries crucial for national defense, and restore and upgrade manufacturing capabilities critical to the public welfare. Crony capitalism, the selective promotion of corporate profit-making by organs of state power, should be energetically exposed and opposed.

(7) Public Research.  This article calls for “moon-shot” type research–presumably publicly funded– in science and technology, with emphasis on military and manufacturing applications, plus education in the physical sciences and engineering.  I have never heard that as a conservative priority.  This article also takes a shot at the state of higher education:  “We recognize that most universities are at this point partisan and globalist in orientation and vehemently opposed to nationalist and conservative ideas. Such institutions do not deserve taxpayer support unless they rededicate themselves to the national interest.”

(8) Family and Children. “We believe the traditional family is the source of society’s virtues and deserves greater support from public policy. The traditional family, built around a lifelong bond between a man and a woman, and on a lifelong bond between parents and children, is the foundation of all other achievements of our civilization.”  The statement decries the decline in the  marriage and birth rate.   “Among the causes are an unconstrained individualism that regards children as a burden, while encouraging ever more radical forms of sexual license and experimentation as an alternative to the responsibilities of family and congregational life.”

(9) Immigration.  This article agrees that immigration has contributed to the strength and prosperity of Western nations.  “But today’s penchant for uncontrolled and unassimilated immigration has become a source of weakness and instability, not strength and dynamism, threatening internal dissension and ultimately dissolution of the political community.”

(10) Race.  This article affirms that all human beings are created equal and in the image of God, so it condemns all racism.  “We condemn the use of state and private institutions to discriminate and divide us against one another on the basis of race.”  Furthermore, it maintains that nationalism and a common culture can bring different races together:  “The cultural sympathies encouraged by a decent nationalism offer a sound basis for conciliation and unity among diverse communities.”

So what do you think of this?  Does it sound like right wing extremism?  White supremacy?

To be sure, it is different from conventional Republican conservatism with its brakes on laissez faire capitalism and big business, its dovish aversion to foreign wars, and its openness to at least some government initiatives.

Where would you disagree with it?  Do you think it makes for an effective political ideology moving forward?

 

Illustration:  The World Flag, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons


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