Culture11 and Anti-Movement Conservatism

The Washington Monthly profiles the rise and fall of Culture 11, the erstwhile-emerging center of anti-movement conservate journalism. While the venture failed financially, the resulting diaspora isn’t all bad. Front Porch Republic looks to be excellent for the foreseeable future (e.g. see Larison’s recent defense of localism). John Schwenkler is still blogging, despite promises to the contrary. But I’m still waiting for the eccentric genius of Mr. Poulos to resurface in some other locale.  

Make sure to read the WM essay. Or read an excerpt after the jump…

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The Reformation and the Two Kingdoms

If you’re interested in political theology, particularly within the Reformation tradition, you need to read this extended post by Steven Wedgeworth over at Basilica: “Reformation and the Two Kingdoms of Christendom.”

In this perspective the Reformation teaching on the Two Kingdoms becomes clear. It called for a strict distinction in power, defining clearly the role of each kingdom, yet it was not establishing the modern notion of “separation of Church and State.” Nor was it calling for the privatization of the Church. The contrary was the case, as it fell to Christian magistrates to defend the Church at times, as defending the Church was a way of defending the commonwealth. The Church was not limited to the clergy, nor to a group of the pure; rather it was the case that all of the baptized could claim the title Church. This allowed for the doctrine of vocation, wherein secular matters were just as much a part of “Church” as the sacramental, not needing further validation or mediation. Within this framework, both kingdoms supported one another, each carrying out its appropriate role towards the common goal of the kingdom of God.

Hauerwas on Neuhaus

The last volume of First Things was a special issue dedicated to the memory of the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. Among the many fascinating personal accounts, one that stood out most to me came from Stanley Hauerwas, in review of Fr. Neuhaus’ last book, American Babylon.

Richard was hope personified. I once suggested that, though he was (at the time) a Lutheran, he had the soul of a Calvinist. It is not surprising that such a soul fell in love with the energy called America. The hopefulness that possessed his life produced energy that many found tiring. He had a lust for battle with adversaries, but that same energy would create contexts for intellectual engagements that made friendship between adversaries possible. I admired his refusal to accept defeat on matters that matter, his love of friends and enemies, his passion for the written word, and above all his faith and hope in God. He is irreplaceable.

I cannot pretend, therefore, that this is a straightforward review of American Babylon. Rather I write in honor of a friend with whom I had deep and longstanding disagreements. This is not the time or place to review those differences. For in fact our disagreements were important to each of us because we shared some deep commonalities.

Over the years, many friends have asked me how Richard and I could be friends. I would explain that I never doubted that if Richard was ever forced to choose between his loyalty to Church or America he would choose the Church. I just thought that choice should come sooner than Richard did.

American Babylon confirms my judgment about where Richard’s loyalties lay. Before Richard’s death, I had been asked to blurb the book. I wrote: “‘American theology has ­suffered from an ecclesiological deficit, leading to an ecclesiological substitution of America for the Church through time.’ That sentence was not written by Stanley Hauerwas. It was written by Richard John Neuhaus and it is the heart of American Babylon. That sentence should be sufficient evidence that this is a book to challenge those who too quickly dismiss Richard Neuhaus as a propagandist for the American right.” [Read the rest; subscription required.]

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Summer News

On a personal note, this summer will be bookended by two exciting events: the first, already noted, is the long-expected birth of my son, who will be the eldest son of the eldest son of the eldest son. Primogeniture will be of no advantage to him, however, since the Henreckson line makes only a tenuous claim to the bourgeois. On the other hand, he will inherit a right to White Sox fandom and a large mint-condition collection of Topps baseball cards, should he desire it.

The second event, determined last week, is our move this August from Idaho to South Bend, Indiana. I’ll be pursuing the masters in theological studies at the University of Notre Dame. My paternal grandfather is one of the foremost haters of the Fighting Irish, and so my decision puts my son’s eventual meager inheritance into even further peril. Sad but true. And worth it. I’ll have to make it up to my grandfather in other ways. Perhaps by means of a namesake.

Against the Either/Or

Halden highlighted a deeply moving and provocative article by Wesley Hill, a young Christian who struggles with his gay identity:

I am drawn to these haunting confessions of Auden’s because I, too, am a homosexual Christian. Since puberty, I’ve been conscious of an exclusive attraction to persons of my own sex. Though I have never been in a gay relationship as Auden was, I have also never experienced the “healing” or transformation of my sexual orientation that some formerly gay Christians profess to have received. But I remain a Christian, a follower of Jesus. And, like Auden, I accept the Christian teaching that homosexuality is a tragic sign that things are “not the way they’re supposed to be.” Reading New Testament texts like Romans 1:26-27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 through the lens of time-honored Christian reflection on the meaning and purpose of marriage between a man and a woman, I find myself—much as I might wish things to be otherwise—compelled to abstain from homosexual practice….

In a recent reflection on contemporary society, novelist Marilynne Robinson posed the simple question: “will people shelter and nourish and humanize one another?” Read in light of the Christian Church’s relationship to its gay members, her question takes on an added poignancy. Will the Church shelter and nourish and humanize those who are deeply lonely and struggling desperately to remain faithful?

There have been many attempts lately to form a faithful Christian response to the homosexual question. From the evangelical tradition, Oliver O’Donovan’s series of Fulcrum sermons is probably one of the more nuanced and informed responses. But the sad fact of the matter seems to be that many conservative churches which are caught in the crossfire of the culture wars are not adequately prepared for an honest, self-conscious, conflicted individual like Mr. Hill. And the liberal churches simply don’t give the Scriptural commands any weight in the present day. Both sides have bought into the Enlightenment paradigm, and have consequently left the costly and all-encompassing nature of the gospel unrealized. This leaves us without a ministry to those who continue to struggle with sins that we’d prefer not to deal with. But surely it must be possible for the Church to provide both a faithful witness and to be a house of healing and fellowship for the ostracized. That shouldn’t be an either/or distinction.

If the Church’s inadequate theology of sexuality is what caused this mess in the first place, we have a responsibility to help our victims now.

Douthat and the Gray Lady

The New York Times makes a serious and somewhat unconventional upgrade at its open Token Conservative Columnist spot. Bill Kristol left the Gray Lady (or vice versa) back in January. Speculation over who would replace his op-ed was wide-ranging, although I heard surprising rumors about Atlantic columnist-blogger Ross Douthat. Turns out the rumors were true. Douthat is one of the few pudits I really respect. He isn’t afraid to take a counter-cultural stance — which is a rare virtue among today’s monolithic conservative pundit-corps. Kudos to Mr. Douthat. Here’s hoping he continues to bring his love of Burke and baseball to his columns at the NYT.

Front Porch Update

It’s barely 48 hours old, but Front Porch Republic is churning out some quality material:

• Caleb Stegall on the intrinsic value of the church porch (and cemetery).
• Jason Peters on the prescience of my second-favorite British satirist.
• Allan Carlson on the Great Agrarian/Distributist Moment in which we now find ourselves.
• Daniel Larison on why Talk Radio doesn’t communicate (it’s afraid of communes).
• (Update – 3/5) James Matthew Wilson on the traditionalisms of Burke, Brooks, and individualistic agitprop.

What God does not know about economics

There are many excellent things about the historic Reformed tradition. None of those things are to be found in this quote from the September 1956 issue of the now defunct journal, Progressive Calvinism:

What is a “just price”? Nobody knows. The ideas of a “just price” and a “fair price” independent of free market activity are utterly meaningless. We would declare that God himself does not know and cannot know what a “just price” is, were it not that we feared offense would be taken at such a statement….

In short, what [sociologist Max] Weber declares to be traditional Calvinism in regard to neighborly relations in the affairs of this world, we have laboriously defined … as, the scriptural idea of brotherly love. The definition we gave is a definition which defines an “objective and impersonal” brotherly love (emphasis added).

I’m not sure I want to know what an “objective and impersonal” brotherly love looks like.

The Problem with Conservatism

Movement conservatism sometimes acts like a personal depressant. The recent CPAC conference, with all its tin-eared message-points and Rush-worship, served to validate Alasdair MacIntyre’s infamous claim that whenever “a tradition becomes Burkean, it is always dying or dead.” It’s ironic that while conservatives almost universally detest the the monolith of “mainstream media,” we have become just as culturally homogeneous and inert as the alleged liberal establishment. In the last issue of The American Conservative, Daniel McCarthy makes the argument that conservatism has become increasingly tied to the twin-hegemonic entities of the media and the American executive branch. While conservatism used to be strongly local, with various regional brands often disagreeing on certain policy matters, modern conservatism is united through the strange alliance between Talk Radio, Fox News, and a strong faith in the presidency as the true guardian of American culture and the national defense. On any given day, you can tune in to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, or pick up any of the major conservative print journals, and you’ll likely find the exact same talking-points. Decades ago, conservatism was composed of Southern agrarians like Andrew Lytle, New York Catholics like William Buckley, and Midwest isolationists like Robert Taft. The conservative-libertarian fusionism of the 1960s eventually muted these regional differences, although the remnants were still there (the Buchanan campaigns in 1992 and 1996 reminded everyone of that fact).

But the main danger of the modern conservatism monolith, it seems to me, is found in its inevitable drive toward ideological hegemony. For Christians, this is not a benign threat. Karl Barth once said that disciples of Christ could be “for politics” insofar as they work for the betterment of their neighbors. However, Christians must never be “for ideology,” since any other all-consuming narrative is a direct rival to Christ. Politics becomes ideology when our call to discipleship is muted or ignored in favor of some competing political narrative. This is a preeminent danger to conservative Christians.

On this account, I would love to see conservatism broken up, like some modern-day political version of Ma Bell or Standard Oil. Let the regional differences come back to the forefront. Conservatism needs conflict, it needs to be locally-responsive. And honestly, it cannot just be concerned with self-preservation of the Western liberal tradition. In order to re-legitimate itself, conservatism should concern itself with protecting cultures against ideology. That’s the true strength of conservatism; it should be the first line of defense against political utopianism, economic greed, and nationalism. It should protect local narratives, local agriculture and small businesses, it should stand up against corporate hegemony and unjust wars. Conservatism should not tolerate hegemony in any form, and is consequently the anti-ideology. It should welcome debate and social tension, because certain historical tensions (“continuities of conflict,” in MacIntyre’s terminology) must exist within a viable society. I’d even go so far as to say that these tensions exemplify a theological honesty that’s completely absent from mainline conservatism. At the risk of overextending myself, I’d suggest that a true conservatism would be Augustinian, recognizing the concurrent eschatological tension between the secular city and the heavenly city. The former has a legitimate, God-given role: to protect the innocent, to punish the evil-doer, and to reward the righteous. But its place is limited, and when it becomes overly-ideological, it usually ends up in emperor-worship—either the liberal or the conservative variety.

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All that to say–I’d highly recommend the new blog, Front Porch Republic. The contributors include Bill Kauffman, Patrick Deneen, Rod Dreher, Caleb Stegall, and Daniel Larison, all of whom are fascinating writers in their own right and, mercifully, never stay on-message.

Calvinism and Capitalism

Thanks to Max Weber, Protestantism (the “Puritan work-ethic”) has been closely tied to the historical development of utilitarian and neoclassical economics. The emergence of capitalism simultaneous to the expansion of the Reformation tradition has led many to see an innate cause-and-effect. Certain events in the Reformation “mythology” are recast in a strangely capitalistic or individualistic light: Luther’s quasi-apocryphal “Here I Stand” speech becomes a seminal moment for modern individualism; Calvin’s stance on usury becomes the theological justification for all of capitalistic theory.

This Weberian thesis is not quite so popular as it used to be, although many Protestants seem very willing to embrace it. But in his 1926 work, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, R.H. Tawney suggests that the correlation is not quite so simple:

What is sometimes suggested, however, is not merely a coincidence of religious and economic movements, but a logical connection between changes in economic organization and changes in religious doctrines. It is implied that the bad social practice of the age was the inevitable expression of its religious innovations, and that, if the reformers did not explicitly teach a conscienceless individualism, individualism was, at least, the natural corollary of their teaching. In the eighteenth century, which had as little love for the commercial restriction of the ages of monkish superstition as for their political theory, that view was advanced as eulogy. In our own day, the wheel seems almost to have come full circle. What was then a matter for congratulation is now often an occasion for criticism. There are writers by whom the Reformation is attacked, as inaugurating a period of unscrupulous commercialism, which had previously been held in check, it is suggested, by the teaching of the Church…. If capitalism means the direction of industry by the owners of capital for their own pecuniary gain, and the social relationships which establish themselves between them and the wage-earning proletariat whom they control, then capitalism had existed on a grand scale both in medieval Italy and in medieval Flanders. If by the capitalist spirit is meant the temper which is prepared to sacrifice all moral scruples to the pursuit of profit, it had been only too familiar to the saints and sages of the Middle Ages…. It was predominantly Catholic cities which were the commercial capitals of Europe, and Catholic bankers who were its leading financiers (pp. 83-84).

Strangely enough, Tawney has unlikely allies in Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard (although the Austrians prefer the idea that capitalism caused Calvinism to become the bourgeois-commercialist economic force that Weber saw it to be).