The Debate Over Nations, Empires, and the Church

Last updated on: September 18, 2022 at 1:52 pm By Gene Veith

We blogged about A Manifesto for National Conservatism, issued by a number of prominent conservatives.

National Conservatism is not the same thing as Christian Nationalism, though they are often confused. And no wonder, since one of the manifesto’s articles says that Christianity should enjoy a privileged position in America’s public sphere. (See our post about this, National Conservatism and Religion.)

Now an international group of prominent and mostly-conservative leaning theologians have responded to that manifesto with An Open Letter Responding to the NatCon “Statement of Principles.”

The letter says, for example, that

A pure nationalism, disconnected from universal ideals, risks becoming the mirror image of the abstract globalism the statement’s signatories rightly reject. By implicitly asserting the supremacy of nations over culture and communities, it subordinates both the universal and the particular to the national, as if national interests and national traditions were necessarily good and anything exceeding nations must therefore be evil.

The signatories criticize the “nation-state” for obliterating local cultures and is critical of the “Statement’s” focus on the American constitutional order, leaving out European models and issues of European conservatism:

The commitment to an explicitly “Anglo-American” ideal of “free enterprise” and “individual liberty” is at odds with much of the European conservative tradition which has historically sought to limit the market and uphold a non-individualistic model of liberty, balancing rights with responsibilities.

Furthermore, the Statement, while saying much about moral values, says nothing about love, which is “the supreme theological virtue and the guiding ideal of Christian civilization” and which binds binds members of society together.

“In the end ,” the letter concludes, “the National Conservative statement is neither conservative nor Christian.”

John Ehrett, a Lutheran and a political theorist, responded to the open letter with his post Some Questions for National Conservative’s Theological Critics. He notes that some of the signatories have advocated an “imperial model” as something to be desired over the “nation state.”

His first question is “how to account for the fact that premodern “empire” did not appear to conceive of itself as universal or global in the modern sense, but required an “other” against which to define itself?” Rome defined itself against the “barbarians.” “Today, however, the institutions of liberal internationalism do claim to enjoy universal/global jurisdiction.” Ehrett concludes (his italics):

given today’s empirical knowledge of the extent of cultural differences, it is reasonable to believe that a global transnational political authority is unlikely to be able to identify a common “center” that can justify terms of coexistence capable of peacefully mediating and preserving local differences.

His second question: “Is the nation-state always and everywhere more opposed to the preservation of local difference?” He thinks not. In fact, ” the American example of federalism [which the Open Letter signatories disdain] appears to pose an empirical problem for this claim.”

Finally, “to what extent are the potentialities of Christian theology actualized through an encounter with alternative traditions?” He cites evidence that Christianity has thrived when it encounters different perspectives and that a single global church that suppresses religious differences–I think of Roman Catholicism–might not be a good idea after all.

To my mind, national conservatives can make arguments against globalizing theo-political projects that sound in a distinctively Christian register, without forfeiting the universal claims of Christian morality by succumbing to a thoroughgoing relativism.

So which is better, individual nations or an empire that brings together many nations? Individual churches or a global church?

Next time, my thoughts on the controversy.

Illustration: War Flag of the Holy Roman Empire, Ad17minstral, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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“Lying Flat” and “Letting It Rot”

Last updated on: September 21, 2022 at 8:17 am By Gene Veith

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On Labor Day we blogged about “quiet quitting,” in which workers do the least they can get by with. It turns out that this is an even bigger problem in China, where it has become a generational craze.

Chinese millennials have a name for it: “tang ping,” which means “lying flat.” As in how a 30-year-old describes her lifestyle of working about six months and then quitting: “intermittent working and persistent lying flat.”

They take this concept of working without caring a step further, giving rise to another popular term: “bai lan,” meaning “let it rot.” When facing something difficult or a problem that needs attention, the new strategy is to do nothing about it. “Let it rot.”

So chronicles Goh Chiew Tong, writing for CNBC, in her article ‘I accept being ordinary’: China’s youth are turning their backs on hustle culture.

Why is this? “Lying flat” and “letting it rot” are a reaction against the traditional Chinese values of hard work, driven personalities, and hyper-competitive hustling.

Young adults are realizing that such behavior isn’t necessarily paying off anymore. Goh Chiew Tong says that the benchmarks for success in China are described as “cheng jia li ye”: being able to buy a home (an apartment if not a house), have a family, have a good career, and have money.

Today, housing prices are out of sight for most young adults. Unemployment in this demographic is 20%, compared to 5.6% for the general population. And the economic downturn due to COVID shutdowns and the current global climate is especially discouraging for a population that had become used to rapid growth. And without the prospect of social mobility, why start a family?

All of this is resulting in a culture of giving up and escapism. Goh Chiew Tong records some poignant quotes from Chinese millennials:

“So many people are choosing to avoid thinking of it. They refuse to participate in competition, they refuse to compete for money, an apartment or marriage.”

“To me, it’s refusing to be kidnapped by societal expectations. For example, houses are so expensive, there is no point thinking about it because it’ll give me a lot of stress.”

“Even though I am married, I don’t wish to have kids either. Why should I when having one would cause my quality of life to drop drastically? I can’t give my child a good life.”

“When I was 22, I worried if I would have achieved nothing at 30. But now at 30, I accept being ordinary. I don’t think it’s as important to be rich, or be able to afford a house anymore. . . .When I was working, my life would revolve around work and I felt like I missed out on time to myself.”

Maybe some of this grows out of China’s Buddhist heritage, which cultivates detachment, the suppression of desires, and a quiescent attitude towards the world. There is certainly nothing wrong with being “ordinary” or setting aside the desire for wealth. And without the Christian doctrine of vocation, which gives labor meaning in an ethic of love and service to one’s neighbor, of course economic labor will be void of meaning, if it is only about personal “success” and money. Or maybe it’s a form of passive aggressive resistance to Communism, with the party’s constant emphasis on “workers.”

That the China is plagued with the “tang ping” and “bai lan” mindset–which is alarming Communist officials–might be encouraging to Americans worried about China dominating the global economy. Unless Americans adopt the same attitudes.

Illustration via YouTube

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Work-Life Balance?

Last updated on: September 15, 2022 at 3:20 pm By Gene Veith

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In the comments to our Labor Day post, which discussed the phenomenon of “quiet quitting,” PadreJMW offered some thoughtful reflections and suggested a good topic.

Here is what he said:

Longtime reader of Dr. Veith’s blog (and books), first time commenter. I have been greatly blessed by this blog and by much of the discussion that happens in the comments.

Your post today touched on a subject I’ve thought about suggesting for the blog since you asked for suggestions of topics a while back. I would love to see you do a blog post on a phrase I hear often: “work-life balance.” I hear this phrase used so often that it seems to be accepted without question, but it seems to be used almost exclusively to defend things like “quiet quitting.” The doctrine of vocation certainly speaks to this topic as we all have multiple callings from God that we seek to “balance” (i.e., I can sin against my calling as a husband and a father by becoming a workaholic and neglecting my family. But the reverse is also true.) However, what I see being offered as the definition of “life” in work-life balance bears little resemblance to what the Bible pictures as “life.” Loving and serving my neighbors in my various vocations seems barely visible to completely absent in the picture of life that I hear presented when the topic of work-life balance comes up, even from fellow Christians. So a blog post or series of posts on the topic would be a welcome palate cleanser. Perhaps you’d consider a post on the theology of work, a post on the theology of life, and then a post on the theology of work-life balance, a topic to which the doctrine of vocation certainly speaks. Thanks for considering!

Indeed, framing the issue as “work-life balance” implies that we have our work on one side of the scale and our “life” on the other side of the scale. Our task is to balance these two completely separate weights. The implication is that “work” is not part of “life.”

I know what people have in mind when they talk about “work-life balance,” namely, letting what we do to earn a living crowd out everything else in our lives. This is a genuine problem. Many of us work so hard and spend such long hours on the job that we neglect, our spouses, our children, and our other responsibilities, not to mention our spiritual lives and our personal sanity.

Vocation, on the other hand, makes our work a facet of our lives. But every other facet of our lives is also a part of our vocations.

As PadreJMW says, we have multiple vocations, and we have them in the multiple “estates” (as Luther called them) that God ordained for human life. We have our economic vocation, but we also have multiple vocations in the family (marriage, parenthood, etc.), in the state (as citizen, in our civic responsibilities), and in the church (the call of the Gospel, the Christian life, our involvement in the church). Luther also speaks of a “fourth estate,” not journalism but the “common order of Christian love,” which comprises the informal activities and relationships that we have, in which God may call us to His work (as in the parable of the Good Samaritan, our interactions with the people we encounter day to day, our friendships, etc.).

This doesn’t necessarily make “balance” of the different obligations in our lives any easier. It might make sorting out the competing demands even more daunting, with even more at stake, since all of these “vocations”–a word meaning “calling”–involves a call from God Himself! When the demands of all of these different vocation conflict, which should take priority? How can I handle being torn in so many directions?

When this came up in a group of pastors, to whom I was giving a presentation on vocation, one of them gave a helpful answer.

Keep in mind that the purpose of every vocation–whether in the workplace, the family, the state, or the church–is to love and serve our neighbors. The pastor said, if this is the case, then what should determine the priority when the vocations conflict is the severity of the neighbor’s need. That is, which neighbor needs me the most?

There are times when your spouse needs you, so much that your work, your civic duties, even your church meetings, should be put on hold. Sometimes you really need to spend time with your child. Sometimes a disaster at work means that your obligation to your customers and colleagues needs to take priority, and your spouse and children need to understand. Sometimes you need to devote time to the needs of your church.

This isn’t “balance” so much as throwing all of your attention–for the moment, at least–where there is the greatest need.

I think what some of us mean by “work-life balance” is carving out time just for ourselves–time to read, relax, watch TV, play video games, or whatever we like to do in our leisure time.

My sense is that this can be legitimate, as long as we aren’t neglecting the neighbors of our various vocations, but I’m not sure why. Can we take a vacation from vocation?

There is certainly a long Christian tradition of solitude. Jesus Himself would sometimes withdraw “to a desolate place by himself” (Matthew 4:13). But such solitude is usually understood as time for contemplation and prayer. Even the Sabbath–that time of mandated rest from ordinary work–is a time to commune with God through worship and hearing His Word. Thus, we can be bold to think of God as our neighbor, whom we can love and serve when we attend to Him, even when we “by ourselves” (though, of course, when we do, He is loving and serving us; and He is always present with us in every dimension of our lives). We should devote ourselves to this kind of prayer and meditation more than we do, as part of our Christian vocation.

But, again, what about pure leisure? Not doing anything in particular, or just amusing ourselves?

I would just add that, in general, it is probably better to enjoy even leisure activities with a “neighbor” of some sort. “It is not good for man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). Such activities are usually even more enjoyable when we do them with someone else–a spouse, our children, a friend, an online gamer. Watching TV with my wife is more fun than watching it by myself. Going to a ball game with a friend, going to the fair with my grandkids, going to a concert or a good restaurant with somebody–without a “neighbor” to do this stuff with, I probably wouldn’t even bother, just by myself.

I like to read. I suppose the author is my neighbor, though he might have been dead for centuries. I am in a kind of relationship when I read, and I am loving and serving the author by playing his thoughts in my mind and trying to understand him.

Help me out here.

Illustration from Open Clipart, Public Domain

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Personal Virtue vs. Social Virtue

Last updated on: September 15, 2022 at 12:25 pm By Gene Veith

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One of the many tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth develops a useful distinction between personal virtue and social virtue.

In his Wall Street Journal column The Counter-Cultural Queen Elizabeth [behind a paywall], Dan Henninger notes how the queen is being praised by all sides for her traditional virtues, for her “reserve, self-containment, duty, responsibility, modesty of demeanor, graciousness, civility, prudence, fortitude.”

This contrasts, he says, with our current “culture of self-aggrandizement,” with its “value system of self-regard, self-promotion, changeability, acting out and anything-goes behavior.”

He illustrates the phenomenon by referencing the new high-status occupation of “influencer”:

An influencer’s success depends overwhelmingly on one thing: self-promotion accomplished by rising in the hot-air balloons of Instagram, TikTok and other social media. The goal is to marry marketing with fame. Because influencers do it, millions of others, often young women, make preoccupation with themselves the one habit that directs their lives.

Meanwhile, virtue is pushed out into the realm of social attitudes.

In our time, however, personal virtue has been demoted by social virtue.

In the new ethos, a well-ordered life is measured by one’s commitment to notions such as social justice, equity, inclusion and—undeniably the most dominant modern virtue—saving the planet. The achievement of a good life depends on making a public commitment to large, sometimes amorphous groups—minorities, the transgendered, the indigenous, the disadvantaged.

The week’s recollections of what made the queen’s life exceptional are an opportunity to compare the merits of virtue earned individually with virtue, or approved behavior, constructed by society.

One effect of giving social responsibility more weight than personal responsibility is that it gives people a pass on their personal behavior. So long as one’s life is “centered” on some larger social good, the conduct of one’s personal life is, well, irrelevant.

Henninger gives examples, noting that even churches have shifted to this new emphasis.

I would add that this is a phenomenon that can be found not only among progressives–with their canons of political correctness and their enforcers on social media–but also among conservatives. Hold the right positions and your personal behavior doesn’t matter.

I have a number of examples in mind, but, yes, this would include our former president. What might Donald Trump have accomplished if his policies and zeal were accompanied by “reserve, self-containment, duty, responsibility, modesty of demeanor, graciousness, civility, prudence, fortitude”?

HT: Jackie

Illustration: “Virtue Triumphing Over the Vices” (Italian, 16th century), National Gallery of Art, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Supreme Court’s New Standards for Religious Liberty

Last updated on: December 9, 2022 at 5:11 pm By Gene Veith

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You may have heard that the Supreme Court sided with the football coach who lost his job for praying on the field. What you may not have heard is that, in doing so, the court overturned a restrictive ruling on church/state relations from two decades ago and created new standards for religious liberty cases.

The case, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, involved a football coach in Washington State, Joseph Kennedy, who had the personal custom of going to the middle of the field and praying after each game. Some players and other students, of their own volition, would join him. The school board believed this constituted an establishment of religion and refused to renew his contract.

Lower courts agreed that the coach was violating the Establishment Clause, but the Supreme Court ruled otherwise by a 6-3 vote. Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the majority opinion, said that the school board action “rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech.” On the contrary, the government should not “be hostile” to religion.

The bottom line, according to the Wikipedia article on the ruling, is that the government “may not suppress an individual from engaging in personal religious observance.”

That alone would be a landmark ruling for religious liberty. But the court didn’t stop there. Just as it over-ruled Roe v. Wade, it over-ruled another Supreme Court decision from the 1970s, Lemon v. Kurtzman. That 1971 case struck down a Pennsylvania law that would allow state funds to pay parochial school teachers who used public school material and didn’t teach religion. In the course of that ruling–which sounds right to me, since the law would have a secularizing effect on church-related schools–the court set forth three criteria for legislation that touches on religion, the so-called “Lemon test”:

The statute must have a secular legislative purpose.
The principal or primary effect of the statute must neither advance nor inhibit religion.
The statute must not result in an “excessive government entanglement” with religion.

These standards are very difficult to interpret and apply, and subsequent Supreme Courts have sought to define and refine them further. But in Kennedy v. Bremerton, the justices threw them out altogether. Though the ruling wasn’t completely thrown out–Pennsylvania still can’t pay parochial school teachers–the ruling instructed lower courts not to use the “Lemon test” anymore. “In place of Lemon,” the court ruled, “the Establishment Clause must be interpreted by reference to historical practices and understandings.”

Arguably, that too may be challenging to define and apply, but it fits the originalist judicial philosophy that now prevails on the court. And it does not give a blank check for religious litigants. In the original Pennsylvania case, reference to historical understandings would reveal that parochial school teachers were always expected to provide a distinctly Christian education, as distinct from the public schools. So a law co-opting them into the public system would still be impermissible.

For an illuminating discussion of the implications of this new ruling, see When the Court Takes Away Lemon: What the Praying Coach Ruling Means for Religious Americans by Howard Slugh, the General Counsel of the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty. Here is how he summarizes what it means for religious liberty:

It is safe to say that some of the most anti-religious understandings of Lemon are no longer tenable.

For example, a public school does not violate the Establishment Clause by merely failing to censor private religious speech. The Court went further and explained that under this test, it is clear that that the Establishment Clause does not “compel the government to purge from the public sphere anything an objective observer could reasonably infer endorses religion.”

Under this new test, state actors no longer need to worry about unpredictable litigation brought by their most zealously anti-religious citizens. No city has any reason to fear allowing a rabbi to place a menorah in a park, and no school has a reason to fear allowing a Jewish, Muslim, Christian, or any other religious teacher to express her faith in front of her students.

Photo: Supreme Court building by Joe Ravi, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16959908

Cannabis as the New Opioids

Last updated on: September 10, 2022 at 5:42 pm By Gene Veith

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Recreational marijuana is legal in 19 states. Twenty more states have legalized medical marijuana. Here in Oklahoma, we have a hybrid: medical marijuana for any reason claimed by the user. Call it recreational with a license.

But aging Baby Boomers with fond memories of the Sixties and even 30-somethings remembering the buzz they got in college from illegal weed probably don’t realize what is being sold in the cannabis dispensaries filling the strip malls and what that product is doing to many of its users.

That is the message of an important article in The Tablet, a Jewish news site–not a culturally conservative magazine–by Leighton Woodhouse entitled How Weed Became the New OxyContin. The deck (the description following the headline) sums it up: “Big Pharma and Big Tobacco are helping market high-potency, psychosis-inducing THC products as your mother’s ‘medical marijuana.’”

The substance in marijuana that creates the “high” it bestows is THC. According to the article, the weed the hippies smoked was just 2% THC. Since then, illegal growers, entrepreneurs that they are, bred the plant so that it reached a level of 20% THC. That’s 10 times more potent than it was in the 1960s.

But the now-legal dealers have gone much, much further. They are extracting the THC from the plants and concentrating it, manufacturing a wax that has a THC level of 80%. This, in turn, can be further concentrated into an oil with a THC level of 95%. This is turned into doses known as “dabs,” which are smoked with vape pens. It’s also used to make edibles and drinkables. Comments Woodhouse,

If you’re over 30 years old and you used to smoke weed when you were a teenager, the strongest you were smoking was probably 20% THC. Today, teenagers are “dabbing” a product that’s three, four, or five times stronger, and are often doing so multiple times a day. At that level of potency, the impact of the drug on a user’s brain belongs to an entirely different category of risk than smoking a joint or taking a bong rip of even an intensively bred marijuana flower. It’s highly addictive, and over time, there’s a significant chance it can drive you insane.

Says Woodhouse, “the drug has been transformed into something unrecognizable to anyone who grew up around marijuana pre-legalization. Addiction medicine doctors and relatives of addicts say it has become a hardcore drug, like cocaine or methamphetamines. Chronic use leads to the same outcomes commonly associated with those harder substances: overdose, psychosis, suicidality. And yet it’s been marketed as a kind of elixir and sold like candy for grown-ups.”

Woodhouse cites a number of terrifying cases of users completely losing their minds, descending into weird delusions, paranoia, schizophrenia, violence, and suicide. And he quotes a number of medical experts who treat addiction, such as this: “I started seeing people with the worst psychosis symptoms that I have ever seen,” [said Dr. Libby Stuyt,, who worked with meth and heroin addicts] “And the worst delusions I have ever seen.”

And psychosis from cannabis use is a common effect. Woodhouse cites the common experience among old-school smokers of of feeling “paranoid,” of becoming “irrationally anxious that everyone is staring at you and knows you’re high.” That is a mild form of cannabis psychosis, Woodhouse says, experienced by 40% of users. That becomes intensified for users of the high-potency THC products, leading 35% of those so affected to an actual “psychotic episode.”

If you keep using after that, you run a decent risk of ending up permanently schizophrenic or bipolar. Cannabis has by far the highest conversion rate to schizophrenia of any substance—higher than meth, higher than opioids, higher than LSD. Two Danish studies, as well as a massive study from Finland, put your chances at close to 50%.

“One out of every 20 daily users can expect to develop schizophrenia if they don’t quit,” Dr. Christine Miller, an expert on psychotic disorders, told me.

But quitting THC products of that potency is “almost impossible,” Stuyt said, comparing its addictive power to tobacco. The days of marijuana addiction being merely “psychological” are over. “There is a definite withdrawal syndrome that includes irritability, anger, anxiety, massive cravings, can’t sleep, can’t eat,” said Stuyt.

But what about medical marijuana? Isn’t it a good treatment for all kinds of conditions?

Well, maybe it could be. But unlike other medicinal drugs, there is little medical research to learn about that. The little research that has been done uses doses of just 10% THC. The lack of scientific trials and FDA study is largely because of the federal law that still outlaws the drug. Yet the “medical” use goes forward, with online “doctors” who never see their patients signing marijuana card applications for a fee and with no limits on dosage.

Woodhouse quotes the father whose son committed suicide because of cannabis-caused delusions: “What medicine do you get from a doctor that’s 100% always approved, that you can get within 10 to 15 minutes online, you can take as much as you want per year, you never have to come back to renew it?” And an addiction recovery specialists adds, “This doctor’s recommendation typically has no expiration, has no dose, has no duration, and no change across state lines,” Ben Cort said. “It’s basically, ‘Take as much as you want as often as you want until you feel what you want.’”

Woodhouse also points out that the major investors in Big Cannabis are Big Tobacco, Big Alcohol, and Big Pharma.

As states rush to legalize cannabis–to the point that some states are enshrining the right to marijuana in their constitutions–they would do well to realize what they are doing and what they are getting.

Photo: Cannabis products by nickolette from Bulgaria, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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