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politics and politicians
See other politics and politicians Articles

Title: American Christianity is losing its grip on political power — and that's good news for Christians
Source: theweek.com
URL Source: http://theweek.com/articles/536102/ ... wer-thats-good-news-christians
Published: Jan 29, 2015
Author: Damon Linker
Post Date: 2015-01-29 19:56:18 by Gatlin
Keywords: None
Views: 4190
Comments: 23

As secular and liberal America prepares to celebrate the probable triumph of same-sex marriage at the Supreme Court in June, let’s take a moment to note how differently some of our fellow citizens view the same development. These are not simple-minded (or pseudo-philosophical) bigots. They are thoughtful, devout Christians trying to make sense of a cultural revolution they feel powerless to reverse or control — and which they fear will sweep them, much that they cherish, and a good part of what’s most valuable in the historically Christian civilization of the West into the gutter.

The stakes, as far as these dissenters are concerned, are enormous.

The best, most thought-provoking statement of this view can be found in three articles published in the February 2015 issue of First Things magazine. I don’t agree with the positions staked out in these essays. Yet the concerns of the magazine and its leading contributors deserve a hearing, even if, as I think, their anxieties are ultimately overstated and misguided.

In the lead essay, Michael Hanby of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at the Catholic University of America explains that in our time “liberalism” has become something far more sweeping than a philosophy of limited government. It has become “an all-encompassing absolutism” that would drive out all competing forms of life, visions of the highest good, and notions of human nature. This absolutist dynamic is clearest in the sexual revolution, which in the name of liberating the individual from all received constraints summarily overthrows the anthropology presupposed by the entirety of Christian civilization.

This anthropology treated gender (male and female) as fixed and complementary, and marriage as an institution in which two individuals — one from each gender — come together to form a one-flesh union, the highest purpose of which is procreation, with the resulting family forming the ideal setting for rearing children.

The sexual revolution’s consequences for Christianity could not be more significant, since it culminates in the widespread acceptance of gay marriage and the use of the coercive powers of liberal state to enforce that acceptance in the public square — a development that “effectively brings the civic project of American Christianity to an end.”

What Hanby means is that Christianity’s role in setting the agenda and tenor of public debate in the United States — which stretched from the Puritans all the way down to the interdenominational religious right of the past quarter-century — is finally over. From now on, Christianity understood as a comprehensive way of life will be consigned entirely to the private sphere and cordoned off there, with the liberal state increasingly penetrating even this last stronghold as it seeks to eliminate any and all remaining obstacles to the thoroughgoing bureaucratization of American life in the name of efficiently providing individuals with an ever-lengthening list of government benefits.

The America of the future will be a homogeneously secular place — and for devout Christians there will be no place to hide.

George Weigel, the second author included in the First Things series, is the only participant who was closely allied with the magazine’s founder, Richard John Neuhaus — a man who remained up until his death in early 2009 an optimist about the prospects for synthesizing American culture and politics with the rigorous moral teachings of Roman Catholic Christianity. It is thus all the more striking that Weigel sounds nearly as bleak as Hanby, railing against the pervasive “dictatorship of relativism” in American culture, defensively emphasizing the importance of religious freedom, and warning Christians ominously about “a real possibility of a season of persecution.”

The concluding essay in the series, by The American Conservative’s Rod Dreher, contains numerous passages that sound equally pessimistic. Repeating sentiments expressed by both Hanby and Weigel, Dreher writes that “our prospects for living and acting in the public square as Christians are now quite limited.” In response, Dreher argues that Christians should opt for a “Benedict Option” inspired by the example of St. Benedict, who founded monasticism as the Roman Empire crumbled around him. This amounts to a withdrawal on the part of devout Christians from mainstream American culture to form insular communities in which they “live amidst the ruins...of Christian civilization” and act to preserve “the living faith through the coming Dark Ages.”

The first thing to be said about these essays is that their gloominess seems unwarranted. Yes, the stern and stringent form of faith the authors prefer no longer dominates American public life like it once did. Yes, the sexual revolution has changed many aspects of American culture, mores, and public opinion. And yes, some of those changes are morally disorienting (even to those of us less firmly committed to traditional Christian strictures than regular readers of First Things).

Yet the inviolability of the private sphere remains largely intact. Michael Hanby holds a post at a respected university. George Weigel enjoys a perch at an established Washington think tank. Rod Dreher is a prominent blogger with a large following and a several successful books under his belt. There’s no secret police battering down the doors of the First Things offices, searching for incriminating evidence of homophobic Thought Crime. Traditionalist religious believers are perfectly free to teach their children whatever they wish about gender, sexuality, and God — just as they’re free to homeschool their children to more fully insulate them from supposedly corruptive modern trends.

Sure, anti-Christian bigots will sometimes act like intolerant thugs, demanding that a Brendan Eich be fired, or calling for a conservative Christian college to conform to ideological liberalism in every respect. But when that happens, critics (like me) will denounce the bigots, drawing on resources from within the liberal tradition to defend the principle of tolerance for every American, secular and devout, against the illiberal do-gooders who prefer moral purity (as they define it) to freedom.

But that’s not good enough for Hanby, Weigel, and Dreher. They are in mourning for Christianity’s loss of cultural hegemony in the United States.

I’d like to suggest that they should get over it — that, rightly understood, Christianity can be most fully itself when it relinquishes political and cultural rule, when it ceases to identify itself so closely with any particular political order.

Consider the passage in Rod Dreher’s essay where he laments that “given the dynamics of our rapidly changing culture...it will be increasingly difficult to be a good Christian and a good American.” To which the properly Christian response is: Why on Earth would a Christian at any moment of history expect anything other than difficulty at combining faith and citizenship?

It is a perennial Christian temptation — one growing out of that most distinctively Christian doctrine, the bodily incarnation of God — to sanctify (and to see God embodied in) the political order that prevails at any given moment of history. In the American version of this temptation, the Puritans undertook an “errand in the wilderness” to found a New Israel in the new world. The religious right — especially in the mode of High Theological Seriousness favored by First Things — descends directly from this incarnational American tradition, viewing the Declaration of Independence as an expression of medieval political theology and the Republican Party’s eagerness to wage righteous wars and willingness to defend the sanctity of unborn life as evidence of America’s quasi-divine mission.

Whether in the Middle Ages or the contemporary United States, it is a betrayal of Christian ideals to give in to the incarnational temptation. In mistaking one particular political community for the city of God that always lies beyond any earthly city, it makes eventual disappointment inevitable.

That disappointment can take two forms — one negative, one positive.

When Rod Dreher talks of civilizational ruins and living through a new Dark Ages, he flirts with an irresponsible rhetoric of political and cultural reaction. That's one particularly pernicious way in which profound theological-political disappointment can manifest itself.

But when he takes up and develops the idea of the Benedict Option, that’s evidence of disappointment issuing in authentic Christian wisdom. A Christian’s natural condition, as it were, should be that of an itinerant pilgrim, never fully at home in the world or in any nation, no matter how decent. In this sense, it might be a good thing that the “civic project of American Christianity” has come to an end, since the idea of a “civic Christianity” may be best understood, everywhere and always, as an oxymoron.

To the extent that millions of American Christians have denied this and believed that their faith and their devotion to country could be easily and comfortingly harmonized, they have been led astray. And in that sense at least, they should perhaps view the seemingly less hospitable circumstances of the American present and future as an opportunity to practice a richer, truer, more vital form of faith.

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#1. To: Gatlin (#0)

Good stuff. Been saying it for years.

“effectively brings the civic project of American Christianity to an end.

Yay!

Biff Tannen  posted on  2015-01-29   20:55:05 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: Gatlin, surender to satan, Vomitarian Surrender Monkies (#0)

I’d like to suggest that they should get over it — that, rightly understood, Christianity can be most fully itself when it relinquishes political and cultural rule

Surrender monkey Christians. Just shut up and take it! /s

Why am I not surprised that Gatlin is pushing this Vomitarian anti-Christian agenda?


The D&R terrorists hate us because we're free, to vote second party

"We (government) need to do a lot less, a lot sooner" ~Ron Paul

Hondo68  posted on  2015-01-29   21:08:56 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: All (#1)

For instance, China in the 40's 50's 60's, brought forth Christians the like of which America has never produced.

Will it ever?

Biff Tannen  posted on  2015-01-29   21:10:06 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: hondo68 (#2)

On the contrary, very pro Christian.

Biff Tannen  posted on  2015-01-29   21:10:46 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#5. To: Gatlin (#0)

There’s no secret police battering down the doors of the First Things offices, searching for incriminating evidence of homophobic Thought Crime.

Not yet. But the day will shortly come when the Department of Homeland Security will unleash a private army of mindless brainwashed goons in SWAT uniforms to arrest people for non compliance with, and crimes against, cultural diversity.

rlk  posted on  2015-01-29   21:13:13 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#6. To: Gatlin (#0)

In mistaking one particular political community for the city of God that always lies beyond any earthly city, it makes eventual disappointment inevitable.

The end game is a lot bigger than ... the catholic religion - usa --- ha ha the dnc crazies !

Keywords: wailing gnashing teeth, wailing gnashing teeth, wailing gnashing teeth

#119. To: Destro (#118)

I really don't understand how liberals use trivia to operate a monstrous political reality eating machine !

Hopefully it will swallow them up 1st !

byeltsin posted on 2008-10-25

Divine intervention - deliverance - peace !

#1. To: All (#0)

dieversity = dialectical - dematerialism !

(( self correcting problem ))

When the end of time machine turns on -

the wheat separated from the chaff -

just being on the compost pile -

the dead feel nothing now - then -

the machine begins to shut down -

the compost comes back to life -

all fizziled out souls have a spark of eternity -

that get dematerialized - blown out -

they should think about that one !

countdown - the warning light is blinking !

byeltsin posted on 2015-01-11

If you ... don't use exclamation points --- you should't be typeing ! Commas - semicolons - question marks are for girlie boys !

BorisY  posted on  2015-01-30   9:34:41 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#7. To: BorisY (#6)

the warning light is blinking !

time to get up !

"The biggest mistake that libertarians make is the way they view government and private sectors. Government is the root of all evil, and the private sector is the source of all good. Libertarians have never figured out that people are the same whether in the government or in the private sector." --Paul Craig Roberts

Palmdale  posted on  2015-01-30   9:36:37 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#8. To: GarySpFc, Vicomte13, liberator, Don (#0)

Ping

" For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12)

redleghunter  posted on  2015-01-30   10:08:19 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#9. To: Gatlin, TooConservative, GarySpFc, Vicomte13, liberator (#0)

The America of the future will be a homogeneously secular place — and for devout Christians there will be no place to hide.

A bit dramatic for the author don't you think? Or does he see someone in this now 'secular paradise' trashing the First Amendment?

" For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12)

redleghunter  posted on  2015-01-30   10:22:44 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#10. To: redleghunter, Gilligan, his hero, a homofascist atheist (#8) (Edited)

The Homo-Fascist author:

"Sure, anti-Christian bigots will sometimes act like intolerant thugs...

"...Critics [like the homofascist atheist author] will denounce the [Christian] bigots, drawing on resources from within the liberal tradition [HA, what a load!!] to defend the principle of tolerance for every American [HA! Except Christians], secular and devout, against the illiberal do-gooders who prefer moral purity (as they define it) to freedom."

(above) THREE-DOLLAR BILL/HOMOFASCIST-ATHEIST AUTHOR, DAMON LINKER

Geez, what BS spin and a wet dream of homofascist and atheists -- WHO PLAY FOR THE SAME TEAM. Of course they would both demand that Christians be locked in the dungeon and NOT rise to destroy this secular-humanist, homofascist fantasy-jihad of moral relativity and sanctioned perversion.

No, Christians are NOT leaving the field of political battle anytime soon...OR ever.

Liberator  posted on  2015-01-30   10:56:15 ET  (1 image) Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#11. To: redleghunter (#9)

A bit dramatic for the author don't you think? Or does he see someone in this now 'secular paradise' trashing the First Amendment?

Well, he/it IS a queer drama queen.

Do we need further proof that the perverted "gay agenda" -- allied with militant atheism -- endorses nothing short of an unconstitutional homo-fascist, neo-Nazi "paradise"?

Liberator  posted on  2015-01-30   11:01:05 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#12. To: Biff Tannen (#1)

Good stuff. Been saying it for years.

“effectively brings the civic project of American Christianity to an end.

Yay!

Figures you'd join Comrade Gatlin/Gilligan onboard the homo-fascist-atheist express. Good luck whiff dat.

At which Turnpike truck-stop exit will your satellite HQ be?

Liberator  posted on  2015-01-30   11:06:24 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#13. To: rlk (#5)

But the day will shortly come when the Department of Homeland Security will unleash a private army of mindless brainwashed goons in SWAT uniforms to arrest people for non compliance with, and crimes against, cultural diversity.

Sure. Could even be next year. But wouldn't this event ironically present you with a mighty conundrum? With whom will you ally yourself if Christians are on ONE side, and the pro-atheist, pro-homo, anti-Constitution fascist DHS goons are on the other?

Liberator  posted on  2015-01-30   11:09:50 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#14. To: hondo68 (#2)

Surrender monkey Christians. Just shut up and take it! /s

Why am I not surprised that Gatlin is pushing this Vomitarian anti-Christian agenda?

Good observations.

Yes, High Priest Gilligan of his Dark Majesty is indeed promoting what he has always promoted: Anarchy and an anti-Christian agenda. After all, his IS a vomitarian disciple of the ACLU and SPLC.

Liberator  posted on  2015-01-30   11:12:57 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#15. To: Liberator (#13)

Sure. Could even be next year. But wouldn't this event ironically present you with a mighty conundrum? With whom will you ally yourself if Christians are on ONE side, and the pro-atheist, pro-homo, anti-Constitution fascist DHS goons are on the other?

And as Christians have done in the past, we will offer our table, clothing and protection to those persecuted by evil.

So folks like RLK will have 'a light lit' in the window for refuge if they so desire.

"Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools " (Romans 1:21-22)

redleghunter  posted on  2015-01-30   11:53:35 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#16. To: hondo68 (#2)

Surrender monkey Christians. Just shut up and take it!

Take it? They'll welcome it! The dumb bastards think suffering in this life gets them gives them brownie points to grovel before and worship a mythical figure through all eternity in their next life. What a boring existence in the next life and what a recipe for self destructive masochism in this life!

rlk  posted on  2015-01-30   13:08:13 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#17. To: Liberator (#11)

Luberator's on another posting frenzy

Biff Tannen  posted on  2015-01-30   14:12:20 ET  (1 image) Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#18. To: Liberator (#14)

vomitarian

ROFL

out damned spot  posted on  2015-01-31   23:28:55 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#19. To: rlk (#16)

The dumb bastards think suffering in this life gets them gives them brownie points to grovel before and worship a mythical figure through all eternity in their next life.

No we don't. We believe the Christ's blood alone will get us into eternity. That will be our only plea. We are sinners saved by grace. We endeavor to overcome our weaknesses as He reveals them, that we might cease to sin. But we don't believe that suffering or that our "good works" will save us.

We don't love to suffer anymore than anyone else does.

You have a warped view of Christianity, rlk. That view may be specific to a "cult" using Christianity that you have experienced.

out damned spot  posted on  2015-01-31   23:37:14 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#20. To: out damned spot (#19)

How you doin', ODS?

Liberator  posted on  2015-02-01   10:54:03 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#21. To: Biff Tannen (#17)

Would you like some ice on that? Or, a Valium?

Calm down -- I'm not gonna spank you. YET.

Liberator  posted on  2015-02-01   10:55:02 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#22. To: redleghunter (#15)

And as Christians have done in the past, we will offer our table, clothing and protection to those persecuted by evil.

So folks like RLK will have 'a light lit' in the window for refuge if they so desire.

Well stated. Of course I concur.

Liberator  posted on  2015-02-01   10:56:50 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#23. To: out damned spot, RLK (#19)

We believe the Christ's blood alone will get us into eternity. That will be our only plea. We are sinners saved by grace. We endeavor to overcome our weaknesses as He reveals them, that we might cease to sin. But we don't believe that suffering or that our "good works" will save us.

We don't love to suffer anymore than anyone else does.

You have a warped view of Christianity, rlk. That view may be specific to a "cult" using Christianity that you have experienced.

Good response, ODS.

From self-proclaimed "intellectuals, I'm surprised at this warped precept of Christianity...That Christians "love to suffer." The "brownie point" system. Or the "groveling" to God part.

Perhaps some of these broad-sweeping characterizations are based on their perception of Catholicism. This inability to comprehend the concept of God's "Grace," our love for the Lord, the revelation of the Holy Spirit, the tenets and blood of Jesus Christ for that matter would be understandable.

What they especially don't, can't, and refuse to understand is...THE day we meet Jesus Christ and God the Father will be THE most excited moment...imaginable.

Liberator  posted on  2015-02-01   11:08:24 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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