The Two Kinds of Integralism vs. the Two Kingdoms

Last updated on: September 23, 2022 at 8:26 am By Gene Veith

Yesterday we blogged about the controversy over National Conservatism and where the church fits into that, focusing on an open letter from some prominent theologians criticizing that movement.

In my mind, Peter Leithart offers a better critique than that letter in an article published in First Things (even though the editor of that periodical, R. R. Reno, was a drafter of the “National Conservatism: Statement of Principles“). In Against National Conservatism, Leithart emphasizes that Christianity cannot be a purely national religion because it is universal and transcendent:

Christian universalism takes concrete political form in a global communion of saints. It’s an ecclesial universalism. The bonds that connect Christians across national boundaries are deeper and stronger than bonds of blood or culture; Christians are in solidarity as members of one multinational body, joined by one baptism and one Spirit, eating and drinking at the table of the one Lord. Churches exist within nations and impart many social goods, but the church isn’t a creature of the nation or the state, nor a “mediating institution,” nor an instrument of national greatness. However deeply the church, her teaching and her rituals may become embedded in a national culture, she remains essentially an outpost of an alien civilization, a heavenly one, and she exists to point the nation to ends beyond the end of the national interest. Her vocation, like the apostle Paul’s, is to bring about the obedience of faith among all nations (Rom. 1:5). She honors the king, but above all she pays homage to another king, one Jesus (Acts 17:7).

Although Leithart is taking aim against National Conservatism, it seems to me that what he says also works against the globalist vision of the signatories of the Open Letter. The church is “an outpost of an alien civilization, a heavenly one.” Christians are part of one “multinational body,” having bonds with each other that are deeper and stronger than worldly ties of blood or culture, created by baptism and the Holy Spirit. That is to say, the church is a different kind of thing than any earthly polity, whether nation or empire.

The authors of both of the contending statements posit a political role for the church. Both sides are largely integralists. They want the church to rule society.

Catholicism gave us the Holy Roman Empire, with an Emperor who ruled over multiple kings and principalities, under the temporal authority of the Pope.

Protestantism gave us nation states, with independent sovereign nations choosing their own religions and rejecting the authority of both Emperor and Pope.

So it is not surprising that some integralists will favor the nation state, and other integralists will favor some version of a trans-national empire.

My sense is that integralists are wrong, whatever their preferred polity.

Both sides violate Luther’s insight that God governs His Two Kingdoms in two different ways. The church has to do with His eternal kingdom, in which He saves fallen human beings for everlasting life, working through His Word and Sacraments He also governs the temporal realm–His whole created order, believers and non-believers alike–working through vocation, the estates of family and government, and His natural and moral Law.

Someone might object that Lutheranism had state churches. Yes, though this never meant that the churches ruled the state. It was the other way around! The states ruled the churches! In all of the state churches, the king, queen, or other national sovereign was the head the church. The devout Queen Elizabeth II was head of the Church of England, as is now the less devout King Charles III. The same held true in the Lutheran nations of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the principalities of Germany. For awhile, at least, the state church of Finland, a republic, was under the authority of parliament.

The secular rule of the church expressed the Reformation conviction that God works through the vocation of earthly princes, and that the institutional church–as opposed to the invisible church of the saved throughout all eternity–is a temporal institution and so is subject to earthly authorities.

We Missouri Synod Lutherans fled the state church when the King of Prussia turned it into an ecumenical venture of “mixed confession,” including not only Lutherans but also Calvinists and anyone else that the King wanted to control. That was not tenable to us confessional Lutherans, so we emigrated to the United States, Australia, Canada, and other countries where we could find religious liberty.

Today, the world’s state churches have mostly embraced the secularism of liberal theology–with the exception of the Orthodox churches of Russia and other Eastern countries–so most confessional Lutherans today reject the concept, applying the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms in a more rigorous way, separating the two realms more completely.

The point is that the specific kind of government a state follows is not a theological question, though Christians are obliged to follow God’s moral law in their temporal affairs, which would include opposing injustice and supporting moral causes. The church can function in a wide range of polities, though some wage active war against Christians and their beliefs.

A polity that allows for religious liberty, including the freedom to preach and make converts, will have the best climate for the church to carry out its mission. This is why I prefer “liberal” government–that is, a system that guarantees political, economic, personal, and religious freedom–to either authoritarian nations or authoritarian empires. But that is a prudential, philosophical decision on my part, based on secular reasoning, including the history of American constitutionalism, rather than a theological dictate, as such. Though my theology makes me leery of both divinized nations and divinized empires.

Illustration, detail of the coat of arms of Żarnowiec Commune [Poland] by Bastianow (vector version) [Public domain or CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], 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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When Pastors Should–and Should Not–Be Political

Last updated on: September 15, 2022 at 1:47 pm By Gene Veith

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In general, the church should stay out of politics. But sometimes politics is foisted upon the church.

That’s the gist of an article in First Things by Ben C. Dunson, visiting professor of New Testament at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, entitled Should Pastors Be Political?

True, as Jesus confessed before Pilate, His Kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). I would add that making Jesus an earthly king was one of the temptations of Satan (Luke 4:5-8). The church and its pastors are preoccupied with God’s eternal kingdom, even as its members–and its pastors–must live also in God’s temporal kingdom.

Prof. Dunson gives two senses in which pastors do need to be involved in politics, and one sense in which they should not. First, the Bible does address temporal matters, including politics. Romans 13 explains how earthly authorities are instituted by God and that Christians need to be subject to them. It also explains the purpose and scope of earthly governments. The state, says Prof. Dunson, “exists to enforce justice, reward good, and provide for the common good of a nation (Rom. 13:2–7).” He concludes:

Pastors, just by teaching and preaching what the Bible says, will necessarily teach their people about the purposes and scope of the state, an important institution ordained by God. In other words, they will teach about politics, its (potential) goodness, and how it should be pursued.

His second sense in which pastors and their churches will be political is especially helpful. Of course pastors are to teach what the Bible says about moral issues. But some of those issues have been politicized–not by the church, but by the state.

Abortion, transgenderism, justice, marriage, the education of children, and so on, are all matters of fundamental Christian concern. They are also unavoidably political and partisan issues in our world, whether we want them to be or not. Laws are made in each of these areas that will significantly affect Christians and our non-Christian neighbors. They are not concerns that faithful pastors can ignore.

The church didn’t make abortion or same-sex marriage into political issues. The state did when it overturned centuries of moral teachings about such things and enshrined those changes in the law. So preaching about sexual morality and our obligation to protect human life will inevitably have a bearing on politics.

As for the sense in which pastors should not be political, has to do with the doctrine of vocation:

Those called by God to serve him as pastors must devote themselves to that vocation. In fact, from the standpoint of the Bible, for pastors to focus their labors on political activism (seeking political office themselves, extensive campaigning for candidates, and so on) would be a denial of their vocation as pastors, which is to preach the Scriptures and shepherd the people of God. . . .Most Christians aren’t called to be pastors. But some are called by God to serve in politics, just as others serve in education, trades, finance, the military, and so on. Pastors, while attending to the specific duties of their own vocations, should help their congregations serve in these ways.

I would just add that, according to Luther, all Christians, pastors included, do have a vocation of citizenship, in which we love and serve our neighbors by carrying out our civic duties that are common to all citizens, which, for us, would include voting, being informed, and working for the good of our country.

Though Prof. Bunson is Reformed, he is articulating what is, in effect, the Lutheran doctrines of the Two Kingdoms and Vocation! And he does so in a clarifying and insightful way.

Photo by Adam Schultz, President Joe Biden speaking in church, First African Methodist Episcopal Church – North Las Vegas, NV – February 16, 2020 via Flickr, Creative Commons License

Labor Day and the Refusal to Labor

Last updated on: September 5, 2022 at 8:16 am By Gene Veith

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Happy Vocation Day! (a.k.a., Labor Day, but we are in a crusade to co-opt the observance into a Christian holiday.)

Today we note two trends that work against the spirit of the holiday: Quiet Quitting & Income Equality.

Quiet Quitting refers to workers, quite consciously and purposefully, doing the bare minimum that their job requires, working enough to carry out their job description and not get fired, but doing nothing more. No “going beyond the call of duty,” no “going the extra mile,” no putting in extra time or effort or enthusiasm.

Quiet Quitting has become a theme on social media and Tik Tok videos, with countless posters proclaiming how they are adopting the “quiet quit” mentality and defending their decision. Apologists for the notion say that doing only what you have to at work is a fitting response to today’s dysfunctional workplace, is a way to avoid burnout, and is a good strategy for work-life balance.

This has become a big trend that employers are worried about it. This last quarter, productivity in the second quarter declined 2.5%, the steepest drop since 1948.

The concept has also spun off into other kinds of passive aggressive behavior: Quiet Firing, in which employers marginalize workers, refusing to promote them or give them pay raises hoping they will just quit. And, outside of the workplace, there is “Quiet Dumping” in the dating world, the practice of purposefully becoming more and more distant in a relationship as a way to precipitate a breakup.

Another problem is discussed by former senator Phil Gramm and John Early, former official at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They published an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled Income Equality, Not Inequality, Is the Problem, with the deck “Those in the middle work much harder, but don’t earn much more, than those at the bottom.” (The article is behind a paywall.)

They argue that statistics about income inequality in the United States are misleading because they don’t count state and federal transfer payments–such as food stamps, housing subsidies, Obamacare supplements, and other benefits–as income. And they don’t count tax payments as income lost. When the numbers are calculated taking those into consideration, the income inequality between the highest and the lowest 20%–which the Censur Bureau says has gone up 21% since 1967–has actually fallen by 3%.

But crunching the numbers, factoring in government benefits and the effect of taxes, reveals something else. I’ll let Gram and Early explain it (a “quintile” is 20% of the whole):

Our most significant finding from correcting the census income calculations wasn’t the overstated inequality between top and bottom earners. It was the extraordinary equality of income among the bottom 60% of American households, regardless of employment status. In 2017, among working-age households, the bottom 20% earned only $6,941 on average, and only 36% were employed. But after transfer payments and taxes, those households had an average income of $48,806. The average working-age household in the second quintile earned $31,811 and 85% of them were employed. But after transfers and taxes, they had income of $50,492, a mere 3.5% more than the bottom quintile. The middle quintile earned $66,453 and 92% were employed. But after taxes and transfers, they kept only $61,350—just 26% more than the bottom quintile. . . .

After adjusting income for the number of people living in the household, the bottom-quintile household received $33,653 per capita. The second and middle quintile households had on average $29,497 and $32,574 per capita, respectively. The blockbuster finding is that on a per capita basis the average bottom quintile household received 14% more income than the average second-quintile household and 3.3% more than the average middle-income household.

That is to say, for 60% of Americans–everybody but the highest and the next highest 20%–those who don’t work do just about as well as, or even better than, those who do work.

The writers, who have written a book about all of this, say that blue collar workers are very aware of this unfairness and that it drives some of their resentment of the status quo. “This justifiable resentment is the economic source of today’s American populism,” they write. “It is ravaging the increasingly unstable Democratic political alliance between welfare recipients and blue-collar workers.”

Whatever the solution, whatever the policy implications (and feel free to address those in the comments), both Quiet Quitting and income equality between those who work and those who don’t raise theological issues of vocation.

To the latter, St. Paul enjoins Christians “to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one” (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12). Here is the dignity of physical labor, as opposed to the notion that “working with your hands” is inferior to the white collar jobs where you supposedly “work with your mind.” Some middle class sorts, including college graduates who can’t find jobs in their field, think working in a factory or on a construction site is beneath them, so they don’t work at all. That is unbiblical.

To his readers at Thessalonica who didn’t fully get that message, St. Paul expands the point in his second letter to the church of that city, criticizing those who “walk in idleness.” Not the unemployed but those who continually and purposefully are “idle.”

Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. (2 Thessalonians 3:6-12).

The verse about not working and not eating is well-known, but the passage goes further than that. Yes, those who refuse an economic vocation end up being a “burden” to others, who end up taking care of them. That’s not loving those neighbors. This passage is not against the poor, who in St. Paul’s time as in ours often work harder than anybody but get little for it, or the unemployed who dearly want a job. Rather, “walking in idleness” refers not to the pleasant sabbaths we can take from our everyday busyness, nor does it have to do only with economic activity. “Walking” in idleness refers to those who continually and purposefully don’t do anything productive. We can speak not just of the “idle poor” but of the “idle rich,” those trust fund babies who have nothing productive to do, just live off the family fortune as they jet set around the world. (Cf. the “deadly sin” of Sloth.)

As for those who are blessed with a vocation by which they are earning their living but are doing the least they can to get by, the Bible also has something to say to them: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10; NIV).

HT: Jackie

Image by Mote Oo Education from Pixabay

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The Significance of the Home

Last updated on: August 15, 2022 at 4:24 pm By Gene Veith

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We often lament the disintegration of the family. Related, but not identical, to that is the disintegration of the home.

Yesterday we blogged about an essay from novelist and Christian convert Paul Kingsnorth reflecting on the significance of fireplaces, the Latin word for which is “focus,” in which he worried about the loss of “focus” in our homes. Indeed, he argues, in many ways our contemporary culture undermines the home and renders even those of us who have a roof over our heads to be essentially homeless.

From Kingsnorth’s essay The West Is Homeless:

Wendell Berry’s 1980 essay “Family Work” is a short meditation on the meaning of home, its disintegration under the pressures of modernity, and how it might, to some degree at least, be restored. Like so much of Berry’s work, it locates the centrepoint of human society in the home, and explains many of the failures of contemporary Western — specifically American — society as a neglect of that truth. The home, to Wendell Berry, is the place where the real stuff of life happens, or should: the coming-together of man and woman in partnership; the passing-down of skills and stories from elders; the raising and educating of children; the growing, cooking, storing and eating of food; the learning of practical skills, from construction to repair, tool-making to sewing; the conjuration of story and song around the fire.

In my lifetime, in my part of the world, the notion and meaning of ‘home’ has steadily crumbled under external pressure until it is little more than a word. The ideal (post)modern home is a dormitory, probably owned by a landlord or a bank, in which two or more people of varying ages and degrees of biological relationship sleep when they’re not out being employed by a corporation, or educated by the state in preparation for being employed by a corporation. The home’s needs are met through pushing buttons, swiping screens or buying-in everything from food to furniture; for who has time for anything else, or has been taught the skills to do otherwise?

Even back in 1980, Berry recognised that the home had become an “ideal” rather than a practical reality — precisely because the reality had been placed out of reach for many. What killed the home? Three things, said Berry: cars, mass media and public education. The first meant that both work and leisure could, for the first time in history, happen a long way from home. The second — “TV and other media” — have played a role, since the mid-20th century, in luring us all into a fantasy world of freedom from obligation, and a limitless, fun consumer lifestyle. “If you have a TV,” writes Berry, “your children will be subjected almost from the cradle to an overwhelming insinuation that all worth experiencing is somewhere else and that all worth having must be bought.” Finally, the school system is designed “to keep children away from the home as much as possible. Parents want their children kept out of their hair.” Schools exist to train children to fit into individualistic, consumer societies; to internalise and normalise their ethics and goals, and to prepare for a life serving their needs.

I hadn’t realized that no less than Wendell Berry, the widely respected author and thinker, provided such a conceptual basis for homeschooling in the 1980’s, before homeschooling became widely practiced.

Certainly the role of the home in “the growing, cooking, storing and eating of food” has changed. I just saw the statistic that, on the average, Americans spend only three dinners per week with their families.

Kingsnorth points out that in the pre-industrial times, economic labor was also centered in the home. The whole family pitched in with tending to the farm, or, in the case of craftsmen in the cities, making shoes, weaving cloth, working with metal, and selling the family’s ware in the markets. Industrialization sent men to work outside the home, and then feminism sent women to do the same. “The needs of business were sold to both sexes as a project of ‘liberation’ from home, family and place.” He says of his critique of feminism, “My point is not that women should get back into the kitchen: it is that we all should.”

Both Wendell Berry and Paul Kingsnorth believe, though, that the home can be recovered. We can, Kingsnorth writes, quoting Barry, “’try to make our homes centres of attention and interest’; to make them as productive and nurturing as we can.” Homeschooling has come back. Perhaps the technology that lets us work from home again, as our ancestors did, can play a part. Ultimately, though, “Making a home requires both men and women to sacrifice their own desires for that of the wider family.” And in a time when so many of us pursue our own individualistic desires to the point of not even wanting to have a family, that will be difficult. Though rewarding for those who discover the fulfillment that comes from selflessness, self-sacrifice, and love. That is to say, vocation.

Illustration: “A Happy Family” by Eugenio Zampighi (1859-1944), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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