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Notes -
I mentioned a little while back that I meant to write a top-level post about religion, denominational tradition, and political theology. I could draft and re-draft forever but an imperfect post that spurs conversation is better than a perfect post, so here we go.
In that previous discussion I described three 'options' for conservative or small-o orthodox Christian engagement with a culture that is largely abandoning Christian faith. I can't imagine I need to do much to prove that American culture is increasingly abandoning Christianity - the abandonment is especially obvious on the left, but even on the right, the Trump/MAGA right, despite occasionally making gestures in this direction, is substantially post-Christian.
The options I described, named after conservative Christians who have discussed some of these issues in the public square, are 1) the French Option, after David French, 2) the Ahmari/Deneen/Vermeule option, after Sohrab Ahmari, Patrick Deneen, and Adrian Vermeule, and 3) the Dreher Option, after Rod Dreher. (And of course choosing this language is riffing on Dreher's book The Benedict Option.)
What I noticed after writing that older post was that these options line up very easily with the three major branches of global Christianity - Protestantism (especially evangelical Protestantism, in the US), Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. The identification of the French Option with Protestantism needs to be nuanced somewhat; French is an evangelical specifically, and I think all these three options rise out of the collapse of the former American mainline. Mainline Protestantism constituted a kind of religious default for American society and a grounding set of institutions and values alike, but as it declines, there is competition over the void. Arguably there is a fourth option I haven't named - Progressive Christianity or Wokism or something else, call it the Bolz-Weber Option or something - but for now I am restricting myself to options for more-or-less conservative Christians.
Let's delve into these options a bit more.
Evangelical Protestantism is the youngest tradition of the three and has developed under conditions of American liberalism. It is therefore the most comfortable with liberal norms. It also tends to be very skeptical of hierarchies, institutions, and regulations - in part due to its own origins in the late 19th and early 20th century, as a kind of rebellion against theological modernists. Buried deep in the DNA of evangelicalism is a sense that one might be betrayed by one's own leadership, and I think we often find evangelicals with an in-principle hostility to higher organisation. Thus there is no one Evangelical Church, but rather scattered networks of independent churches, affiliating and disaffiliating and splitting and fusing as they feel called to do so. Enthusiastic church planting and charismatic celebrity pastors are products of this culture, as is frequent doctrinal dispute. There are loose ways for evangelicals to identify each other, from the Bebbington quadrilateral to simply asking whether a church is 'bible-believing', but there is, intentionally, no umbrella authority. Evangelicals thus also tend to be the most overtly patriotic Americans and are the most tightly wedded to the American project as such - they're the most likely to put tacky American flags up around churches! National or civic identity comes in to provide some of the structure that might otherwise come from a church hierarchy. (It's evangelicals who will sometimes talk about the US constitution being inspired by God, for instance, something very alien to other traditions.)
The French Option is the one I would summarise as "just win the argument". The gospel truth is mighty and will prevail. All you need to do is get out there, present the gospel, and let the Spirit do the rest. Virtue and moral character are important, but they cannot be compelled or produced by any coercive institution - they come from local practices and must be nurtured in local, congregational contexts, attentive to the word of God. Liberalism and viewpoint neutrality are not problems to be solved, but rather are themselves the opportunities to grow the church and create disciples.
All that said, the French or evangelical option is complicated significantly by Trump, with French himself badly out of step with most evangelicals. To an extent Trump makes sense as a result of the evangelical absence of institutional leadership and embrace of charismatic leaders - if they're going to have a political vision, it will be grounded in dynamic individual leaders hostile to traditional institutions, like Trump himself. (And scandalous as Trump is, misbehaving mega-pastors are hardly new.) The more that evangelicals continue to feel that they're doing badly, or that their fortunes are sliding, the more seductive such leaders will be for them.
To put a positive spin on it, the strength of the evangelical approach is that it has deep roots in American folkways, is easily compatible with the liberal American project, and it has a kind of confidence about itself that ought not be underrated. Its great weakness, I think, is the question of what happens if it can't 'win the argument'. What happens then? That's where we might see more of this flirting with authoritarian politics.
Of course, authoritarianism is nothing new to the second tradition, Roman Catholicism, and its integralist exponents today. I should make clear at the start that Catholicism is by far the largest individual church tradition in America (and certainly worldwide) and therefore admits of a great deal of diversity and factional strife. In this context I'm interested in the advocates of an expressly political Catholicism.
Here it is worth noting that Catholicism's relationship with political liberalism has always been strained. Up until the 1960s, the Catholic Church was more-or-less openly at war with liberalism, and continued to hold that the correct formation of a polity was for the secular authority to be subject to, or at least receiving direction from, the church. The history of Catholic-state relations in early 20th century Europe is illuminating in this regard; even in France, up until WWII there continued to be traditionalist hardliners condemning secularism and laicite as mistakes. America posed a problem - you may recall Catholics around 1900 explaining that the church ought to "[enjoy] the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority", and should not support separation of church and state. (Note that that was Pope Leo XIII, whom the current pope named himself after.) I was struck by a 1909 defense of forbidden books explaining plainly that it is the church's duty to watch over society and ban immoral speech. Vatican II represented, in some ways, the Catholic Church making peace with liberalism, but it has been an unsteady alliance, and I interpret the modern-day crop of integralists as looking back to an earlier model of church relationship with the state.
They use a number of different names for it - Deneen's 'aristopopulism', Vermeule's 'common-good constitutionalism', and so on - but what unites this group is the conviction that it is both possible and desirable for the United States to be governed in conformance with Catholic social teaching. Liberal democracy should be limited in its scope, fundamentally reframed, or (in the most extreme cases) abolished entirely.
In its full extent this vision is almost certainly unrealisable, at least in the United States - it's hard to imagine non-Catholics ever acceding to it, even among Catholics it is a tiny minority, and Catholic religious authorities, up to the pope himself, seem at best uninterested and at worst actively hostile to this vision. But to smaller extents it may be realisable or even influential in trying to push the United States more towards morals legislation, and Catholic politicians like J. D. Vance may be swayable to an extent. Moreover, among the three options I describe, the Catholic integralists stand out as the only ones with a clear plan to seize and utilise state power, which makes the prospect of their success - even if only a partial success - much more consequential.
The third option is one I've associated with Rod Dreher and therefore with Eastern Orthodoxy, though Dreher himself is an odd duck and not a great representative of the majority of Orthodox communities in the US. The thing about Orthodoxy is that, despite a handful of prominent converts, it primarily exists in ethnic enclaves, owing to the Orthodox churches' historical links to particular national communities. Both Protestants and Catholics have, in different ways, worked out how to evangelise to entirely new people and communities; I don't think the Orthodox have. (They have historically, looking at the spread of Orthodoxy across much of Eurasia; I just mean the modern day.) Traditionally Orthodox churches have been closely bound to political authority, and in some ways that's a pattern we still today with the Russian Orthodox Church. However, the Greek Orthodox tradition spent centuries existing within the Ottoman Empire, which I think gave a lot of Orthodox churches a habit of bunkering up and focusing on surviving and passing down the faith under conditions of being a minority, with little chance of dominating the wider society. To an extent the pattern repeats with the Russians under Soviet control, though since then the Russian Orthodox seem to have re-established the traditional alliance with the state. The point is that there is a deep well of resources, in the Orthodox tradition, for how to exist as a kind of society-within-a-society, without realistic hope of either converting the masses or obtaining power.
In practice, then, Orthodox communities in America and other Western nations tend to be expatriate or immigrant communities, relatively less interested in conversion, and more focused on internal discipline and cultivation. You can easily see the appeal for thinkers like Dreher, who believe that Christianity as a whole in America is soon going to be in the position of Orthodox in the Soviet Union, or in the Ottoman Empire.
The obvious criticism to make of this option is that it is a counsel of despair - it takes for granted that the public is lost. While Dreher himself denies that he calls for any kind of 'retreat', this denial has always been unconvincing at best. To many in the first two camps, this is abandoning the field before battle has been truly joined. If the Orthodox were to give battle, so to speak, they would need to find some way to compensate for their low numbers and their lack of institutional strength, most likely through alliance with this or that other Christian group. I find it unlikely that this will happen.
Perhaps more relevant to America as a whole are non-Orthodox churches or communities who nonetheless take the Orthodox, Dreher option. The Benedict Option itself is primarily a plea for evangelical Protestants and Catholics to try this. You can indeed find people in those traditions taking an option like this, though so far it's too early to see how generative their efforts are. I don't predict entire evangelical or Catholic communities taking this approach, though, until it's clear that they have no other choice.
Where does this leave conservative Christians in the US overall?
I think they're caught between several bad options. Both the "just win the argument" and the "seize state power" approaches seem very unlikely to succeed in the near or even medium term; and "retreat inwards, focus on community formation" is good as far as it goes, but represents a cession of huge amounts of cultural territory that Christians are rightly reluctant to cede.
I don't mean any of this as a counsel of despair myself - these are all judgements predicated on a cultural situation that itself may not last. At any rate, Christians are called to follow Jesus without counting the cost, so in a sense stressing over tactics like this is beside the point, or at the very least, a second-order consideration.
In terms of my own bias, it should be clear that I have the least affinity for the Catholic, Ahmari/Deneen/Vermeule approach - I believe I called them 'bootlickers' last time. I admire the optimism and confidence of the evangelical approach even if I think it is often wide open to heretical teachings or pseudo-idolatry (which is how I think of most of MAGA), and I respect the Orthodox approach even if I think it is fundamentally limited. Personally what I hope for is a combination of the evangelical view of the world as mission space and its non-hierarchical, liberal approach to conversion with the focus on interior cultivation and community practice of Orthodox communities, but it is very rare that I get what I hope for in any field. So it goes.
I think that one advantage that Christianity has is that in the beginning, it was not married to temporal authority. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. Early Christianity thrived in an environment much more hostile to it than anything the SJ or MAGA people are likely to inflict on it.
It rising to a position of temporal authority only came later, starting with Constantine. As an atheist watching from the sidewalk, I have to say that I liked the version of Christianity before the sociopaths took over better.
It might be illustrative to compare Christianity to the other religions of the book. Judaism started out as a tribe/state religion, but thanks to the zealots picking fights they could not win, they got a head start of 2ka in learning to live as a religious minority. (Again, from the outside view, diaspora Judaism seems a lot more palatable than whatever orthodox factions are bent on Making Israel Great Again.) Islam started out with strong claims to temporal authority, Muhammad was a warlord as well as a prophet, after all. While there are certainly Muslims who are good citizens to secular nation states, my feeling is that it is that they have an even harder time justifying that stance theologically than Catholics do.
In short, I think that the wall between religion and state protects religion as much as it protects the state. If organized religion meddles in matters of the state, the consequence will be that it will attract the kind of people who look for temporal power, and before long your religion will be run by sociopaths who sell indulgence to their believers, burn heretics and organize crusades.
It helps that (from my understanding), in Christianity you can be saved even if you live in a sinful state in this fallen world. If you believe that eating seafood or gay/unmarried sex or abortions condemn you to hell, liberalism is very compatible with not committing any of these sins. (Things do get a bit hairy around religious objection to military service though, or if you object to paying taxes which finance what you consider to be sinful behavior.)
Unfortunately, during my edgy teenage atheist phase I blasphemed against the holy spirit - so I can't actually be saved, because that's an unforgivable sin that not even Jesus can get rid of. Since becoming an adult, I've actually pursued a religious faith that's not Christian at all, so even if you expand the definition of blasphemy against the holy spirit to include a continual hardening of the spirit's pull to Christ (which I haven't ever felt) I still qualify. As a result a lot of Christian evangelism doesn't really land with me because there isn't actually any offer of salvation - if I become a Christian I am just guaranteeing my place in the lake of fire. The buddhists at least promise an end to suffering, rather than a guarantee of infinite torture forever no matter what I do.
I remember that; good times. Did you at least get a copy of The God Who Wasn't There in exchange for your immortal soul?
Truly, they had such a refined and rational understanding of Christian doctrine that they failed to so much as open a book and completely misinterpreted it.
I’m glad the Motte exists because it’s a good place for everyone to get their witchy opinions out on the table with minimal drama, but rationalism as a movement has always been a joke.
This was back in 2005; it was part of new atheism, not rationalism. Rationality as a movement didn't start until Eliezer wrote and published The Sequences in 2006-2009 (though, obviously, rationalism was heavily influenced by new atheism).
I know people make this argument, but they are the same movement to me.
Ghostbusters is not heavily influenced by I Want a New Drug, it is I Want a New Drug with some extra cruft added. The heart of the thing is the same. Arguably, they have the same heart as the Enlightenment, which was often equally cringe as the New Atheists and rationalism.
A reminder that this is not a rationalist forum. As for new atheism and rationalism being the same thing: no, they definitely are not. There is definitely some overlap, but new atheism spawned Atheism+ and was a driver of SJW/wokeness, which rationalism has always been ambivalent-to-hostile towards.
As for not knowing Christianity, I kind of agree with you that a lot of people don't actually understand Christianity at all, but at the same time, there are many, many "Christian" doctrines, and even the Christians here on the Motte have a habit of expressing their own interpretation in a doctrinaire fashion as obviously the correct and orthodox form of Christianity, from which any deviation is a misunderstanding at best, heresy at worst.
As for blaspheming against the holy spirit, you know, that is a pretty hard one to get around if you actually believe in taking the Bible literally. As a kid, I once made a Halloween joke about the holy spirit being like a ghost in a sheet or something, and the Sunday school teacher very seriously read me the verse about mocking the holy spirit being an unforgivable sin. Imagine telling an eight-year-old that he's just irreversibly damned himself to hell with a joke!
I get that you have very strong feelings about this, but that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
There is no meaningful difference between the tentacles of the octopus. The guys touching the trunk, the tail, the ears and the legs of the elephant are all actually touching the same thing. You can say that they are definitely not the same thing, but from over here it just looks you’re touching an elephant.
Calvinism is Christianity just like Catholicism is Christianity. In my opinion, it is weird, dumb Christianity that gets many things wrong and is just barely better than not being Christian, making me at best ambivalent to hostile towards it, but it’s still Christianity. It wants to save souls, its works are intended to save souls, and God willing, maybe it has seen some success doing that. Do I think it would be better if they were all Catholics? Sure, but they’re still part of the elephant.
Fortunately, in no church anywhere is dogma defined by the Sunday School teachers. I’m sorry that happened to you and I bet it was a little traumatizing, but I’m also willing to bet your Sunday school teacher was an untrained volunteer with a minimal grasp of theology beyond Bible stories. That’s why he/she should stick to reenacting Bible stories on a felt board.
This, incidentally, is a point for why I am Catholic. The kids stay in the service, and so a priest is available to catechize. Plus, when catechizing, they have to work out of the literal book of answers to dogma questions.
Maybe it’s a bit of a limb to be out on, but I’m going to trust the past 16-1700 years of Church teaching on what is considered blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, over the opinions of the Rational Response Squad or the knee-jerk reaction of Mr/Mrs Woebegone at Sunday School.
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Nothing you did in your edgy teenage atheist phase is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
Final impenitence, that is, dying without repenting, is the only way someone can permanently reject the Holy Spirit.
Seriously, God is more thoughtful than edgy teenage atheists.
Also, I don’t know if someone told you this directly or if you picked it up somewhere, but this is diametrically opposed to the doctrine of Christianity. Even diehard predestination Calvinists don’t believe this. The offer of salvation is always open to everyone.
Anyways, I personally hope you return to the Church one day, but whatever you do with your spiritual life, at least don’t go through your temporal life thinking edgy teenagers found the One Weird Trick.
Agreed. That entire reply was cosmologically incoherent and probably facetious: if Christianity is true, then no other faith’s afterlife even exists, nor do their rules apply.
As for blasphemy, “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain”, the actual commandment against blasphemy, is not about hitting your knee and using God’s, Jesus’, or the Holy Spirit’s name as a profanity. (Though doing so is unhealthy to the psyche.) The better way to read it is “don’t claim to be authorized by God,” which is why false prophecy carried a death sentence in BC Israel.
An intriguing and sobering clue to the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is found in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said to our ancestors, Do not murder, and whoever murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you, everyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Fool (raqa)!’ will be subject to the Sanhedrin. But whoever says, ‘You moron (morē)!’ will be subject to hellfire.” (Matthew 5:21-22, HCSB)
This detailed scholarly analysis of insults in the cultural mileu in which Jesus taught His disciples summarizes Jesus’ likely intended meaning thus:
In other words, a dismissive or dehumanizing attitude toward someone you’re angry with is what becomes a danger to the soul’s destination. This means social media is a moral hazard and Christians should be extra wary about opining online. And calling someone a retard is a highway to Hell.
Interesting that The Motte itself moderates along these guidelines! Claim that someone’s wrong using detailed rebuttals all you want, but hurling insults and dehumanizing your rhetorical opponents is subject to immediate moderation or bans.
I am very suspicious of a Jew trying to tell Christians what Jesus akshually meant.
Nevertheless, no argument here.
This just adds to my expectation that I’ll have a lot of time to really get to know purgatory on a personal level.
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