Swarming the Pub(l)ic Square:

A continuing survey of the farce; or, where the folks are given the last word; or, a pointed laugh

by Gassalasca Jape S. J.

An Exceptionally Authentic Narrative of Many Remarkable and Interesting Particulars

Contents

• Bonfire of the Extremities
• A Billy Graham Center Gunpowder Plot?
• Allen Guelzo’s Anti-Anti-Americanism
• NAE Political Statement “Basement Draft”
• Charles in Charge of the English Orthodox Church

Bonfire of the Extremities: How Fr. Jape contracted a venereal disease of the soul, made pilgrimage to Crim Tartary, and was healed

“All works are good which are done within the law of God, in faith, and with thanksgiving to God; and understand that thou in doing them pleasest God, whatsoever thou doest within the law of God, as when thou makest water.”

— William Tyndale, The Parable of the Wicked Mammon

t has been a time of trial since my last essay in these pages, and I have been called to account by many, both high and low. Two months past, the Almighty determined to visit me with a reminder of his inscrutable and mysterious ways. For I dreamed that I was back Crim Tartary attending class as a young Seminarian only to discover that my rather oversized codpiece had been left off my garb to my great humiliation. And to add both insult and injury, my fellow classmates were flinging hot balls of wax from the vestry candles towards my exposed sub-regions.

I awoke clutching myself in agony realizing that though the wax was as inchoate as the doctrines of Mother Church, the searing pain in my member was quite real. I was at first struck with the certainty that I was suffering from the clap, the result of some depredarious sin of the flesh—may God assoil me—and I resolved at once to seek out a sentence of penance and absolution, until it was recalled to me that I am celibate, a Prince of the Church dedicated to spiritual rather than earthly pleasures. Yet somehow it was my misfortune to learn the truth of William Tyndale’s argument that the proper operation of one’s waterworks is a good work. “Trust me,” says master Tyndale, “if either wind or water stopped, thou shouldest feel what a precious thing it were to do either of both and what thanks ought to be given God therefore.”

Though medical men deemed it only an infection of the flesh, my physician could not heal me, and it occurred to me then that this fire burning in my urethra must surely be diagnosed as a kind of spiritual clap; the righteous revenge of a jealous God for my philosophical whoring. And the certainty of this judgment came upon me then with such force that I resolved perforce to return immediately to the Cathedral of the Day Before Yesterday on pilgrimage to seek once again the true path.

On my arrival I was, I admit, in a state of mind not given over to clear thinking, wretched and wracked as I was with the pain of the spirit-clap. In one of my fits of delirium, I went so far as to inquire of the Theologian of Yesterday, Father Hippothadeus, “Father, in your vast learning, have you seen any evidence that a man’s soul might have a penis?”

“Good God, no, man!” answered Hippothadeus.

“But if such a soul-penis did exist,” I persisted, “might it be wise to undergo a castration of some kind, an excision? Anything to cool the unholy urging and concomitant fire of hell!”

“Certainly not! You have lost your mind Jape, I suggest you devote yourself to fasting and prayer.”

“Will I be healed?” I cried.

“If God wills it.” Hippothadeus brushed past me muttering Latin oaths against the insane under his breath and I was left in great distress.

“Damnable theologians!” I shouted after him, my voice cracking, “O I am beset by these possible maybes and maybe-nots that add up to an inviolable confidence. The quagmire of your arts are such that the peace of God is usurped by man’s hypotheticals! All contradictions are subsumed within the certainty of God’s will which serves only to hide your ignorance! If God willed that I should fly, I should grow wings I suppose! These circumlocutions of false certainty greatly vex the common man!”

But he had not heard. In such a desperate and mentally shaken state one might be able to understand how I developed the notion, seemingly reasonable in my confused and pain-ridden mind, that my only hope for cure was to somehow baptize the offending member in the Cathedral’s cistern of blessed holy water. In this grip of madness and folly I was discovered by the Abbess, codpiece askew, standing astride two pews and leaning precariously over in the attempt to administer my theologically addled cure.

Needless to say, I’m sure, the ensuing scandal that rocked Crim Tartary will likely be told in lore for centuries to come. I was promptly charged with desecration and perfidy and many other nefarious outrages, all, I cringe to say, true. And I despaired, for after my Doctors had failed my body, and the Theologians abandoned my soul, I found all that I had left, my property and my name, was now entrusted to the blackest villains of them all—the Lawyers. Surely Job could not have suffered so!

I expected the worst from the Ecclesial courts, for Crim Tartary is not known for a maternal sense of justice. But Mother Mary would yet smile on me, for my case had gone so far as to attract the attention of the Holy See; Papal Legatees were sent o n my behalf, and among them, a legal physiachologist of some note. On the appointed day, this Legal Doctor of the Soul, as his official letter of introduction bespoke him, rose with a flourished oratory and defended my actions to the court as excused on the grounds of insanity.

Though he certainly convinced me, those who were masters of my fate remained impassive. As the questioning descended into the vagaries of a certain Council’s teaching on the legal permissibility of the torture of the insane, I felt it—the cool touch of an angel, and the fire was gone. Immediately a torrent of relief poured forth from my offending self, and I was lost to ecstasy as a deep wet stain spread its soft warmth across my thighs and down my robes. The prelates watched in horror, no longer intent on the doctrinal sparring with my defenders, and as I reflect back, I can see that they no doubt mistook this divine grant of salvific grace as instead, a sure sign of my mortal fear. And so by this happy error, they took pity upon me and passed light sentence.

I, never heedless of the ways of the Almighty, learned that to pass water on oneself is oft times a surer token of grace demanding that praises be rendered to our Father than all the pronouncements of wisdom that pass as gas from the mouths (or otherwise) of the learned men of many orders.

After this ordeal, and with a newfound zeal for the true experiences of the transcendent ground of my existence, I returned only to find my mailbag overflowing with calls to account of a wholly different nature.

Signs & Portents: A Billy Graham Center Gunpowder Plot?

For example, inexplicably, several readers have written to inquire as to whether I know anything about the recent fire in the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College. One suggested a Jesuit plot; another cited recusant faculty members; and another suspected that papists had once again infiltrated the janitorial staff due to insufficient doctrinal and worldview screening. Anything is possible, but why people think I might know is beyond me. There are three things even God does not know: how many congregations of religious women there are, how much money the Franciscans have stashed away, and what the Jesuits are going to do next.

Besides, I wasn’t in the country.

Now here is the most common complaint: a perception that this column is “sneering” and characterized by an “unremitting and self-satisfied moral smugness.” Who would have guessed? I do find it hard to believe, however, that the same readers are not entertained and even enlightened. It’s not as if Martin Luther, or, say, a Lutheran convert to neoconservative Catholicism, ever recoiled from the occasional sneer. It seems to me that objections regarding “tone,” especially in Evangelical circles, have become a standard excuse to dismiss any strong criticism that one does not “appreciate,” regardless of its accuracy. There is something alarming about a person—particularly a person who is neither ignorant nor a relativist—who asks “is it nice?” ahead of “is it true?” What can explain this phenomenon other than the encroaching liberal order as it tightens its grip on the Evangelical soul thus transforming what are supposed to be hardy Christians into nancy-boys or “men without chests?”

This brings to mind an old story: An Evangelical pastor and a Jesuit were out playing golf one day. They were moving along the course quite well, until they got stuck behind a group of golfers who were taking quite a long time and weren’t letting anyone else play through. Feeling a little frustrated, the two went up to the head of the group and asked him what was going on. He told the Jesuit and the Evangelical that his party was part of a special program that allowed the blind to play golf. Each blind person was paired off with a sighted player who would help him line up the shot and give him advice on what else to do.

The Evangelical was deeply edified by this display of generosity. He apologized for being so pushy, and announced that he was so impressed by this example that he intended to use this display of service in his preaching, and help others to work with those in need around them.

The Jesuit, too, felt a deep moving in his gut. He took the fellow aside and encouraged him with this friendly word of advice: “It’s wonderful what you are doing, but don’t you think that if you must play golf blind, it would be a whole lot easier for everyone if you played at night?”

Allen Guelzo’s Anti-Anti-Americanism

Just to show that I don’t believe all Evangelicals are nancy-boys, I dug around and found this example of one not being nice. In Allen C. Guelzo’s “Durable Contempt: Why Anti-Americanism Thrives” in Books & Culture (July/August 2004), Guelzo is decidedly not-nice, though he is decidedly inaccurate as well. To make his equation of anti-Americanism with anti-George Bushism clear (though this may have been an editorial decision), the leading photos show an Asian man posting a sign that reads “AMERICANS ARE NOT WELCOME HERE” above another image of a child carrying a “Down Bush” placard. For his own part, Guelzo is really quite beside himself that “Europeans” and “intellectuals” are “anti-American.” He makes no effort to separate criticism of particular American policies and practices, and he derides “the infantile Left and the Calhounite Right who belabor themselves with self-torture over whether commercial culture and popular democracy have sucked the juice out of our lives.” Apparently this is just a dumb question, perhaps because it is simply “old.” To ask it is to be an “enemy of reason” and freedom.

Surely I get some credit for nicely mustering at least one cheer for a not-nice Evangelical. Whenever Guelzo feels like it, he can come over and we can be not-nice together over bracing shots of Serbian liqueur, or, if the man is a teetotaller, monastic kvass. This may answer my prayer: grant that my kingdom not be lost for want of a worthy nemesis!

Further Signs & Portents: NAE Political Statement “Basement Draft”

But here is the most fascinating item from the mail bag. You have heard, no doubt, about the draft statement from the National Association of Evangelicals on Christian civic action called: “For the Health of the Nation.” The NAE went so far as to invite scrutiny and comment from “one-hundred denominational executives, seminary presidents, and other parachurch officials.” Now I have received this: “an underground draft—being called the ‘basement draft’—being circulated by a small but growing group of evangelical leaders dissatisfied with the business-as-usual version already in existence which sounds high principle and lets everyone off of the hook.” The author of these hushed conspiratorial tones attached the Basement Draft of the NAE statement for my review.

I can say first off that I was a bit disappointed. From the tone of my correspondent I had expected something more wildly controversial. But, some parts were indeed stirring, offering a glimpse of health in an otherwise sick “church,” if I may use that term.

The most riveting changes, and in fact the only ones worth mentioning, came in the section titled “The Method of Civic Christian Engagement.” The section was originally an insipid plea from Evangelical leaders to their laity to “do detailed social, economic, historical, jurisprudential, and political analysis” based on the objective data available. More “discernment” clap-trap, and readers are by now familiar with my not-nice feelings on that subject.

But lo, the Basement Draft offers a radical improvement:

Every political judgment requires both a normative vision and factual analysis, but the analysis of facts and what one includes or excludes as a usable “fact” is based on the prior assumption of certain norms. Therefore, however carefully and precisely Christians think about the complex facts and details of a political issue, their thinking will be marked by distinctive norms and values that can be explained but seldom accepted by others who do not share them. Disagreements of this nature are unlikely to be overcome and may in fact become harmful when carried out primarily in the arenas of civic and academic discourse apart from Christian communities that bear practical witness to truth and justice through their actions.

However, neither a publicly engaged Christian discourse nor a practically engaged community of practice is a substitute for the much less idealistic but equally important affairs of political power-broking and deal-making. While it must stand as a political ideal, unfortunately, it is seldom possible to be perfectly innocent as a dove and as wise as a serpent (Matt. 10:16). These activities often require a less than intimate and transparent relationship with the public and political leaders. Political pressuring and compromises undertaken for the realization of mere power and influence without any reference to higher ends and values are wholly immoral, yet we are keenly aware that political ends may justify the means by which they are achieved. As in the case, for example, of the United States’ invasion of Iraq, the values and goals motivating a political decision may be vindicated only by actions that in themselves are dishonorable and to some extent immoral. These actions therefore require justification through the values they serve to realize, but these values will never be realized without taking the risks and bearing the burdens of the inevitably less than pure means by which they must often be pursued. David was unfit to build God’s temple, but before the temple could be built, David had to clear the land of Philistines (1 Kings 5:3).

Now this is bracing stuff! Unfortunately, much of the rot to follow is left in the Basement Draft, and we find paragraphs like this that stick in the craw of the document, threatening to choke it: “We know that society is altered as a result of both personal decisions and structural changes. Thus Christian civic engagement must seek to transform both individuals and institutions. While individuals transformed by the gospel change surrounding society, social institutions also shape individuals. While good laws encourage good behavior, bad laws and systems foster destructive action.” The NAE statement goes on to list the “wellbeing of marriage” as the first thing likely to be destroyed.

The basement conspirators should have stricken this sickly paragraph of wishy-washy mush out and added something along these lines instead:

History repeatedly shows that societies are only radically altered by structural changes effected by a minority of people who are well-placed to promote (and to an extent impose) their vision on a generally ambivalent, if not hostile majority.

Here I think of the Reformation as well as a biting Domincan joke that explains the “difference” between Dominicans and Jesuits. The Dominicans were given the task of eliminating the Albigenses and Jesuits the Protestants. The punchline, of course, is “How many Albigenses do you see today?” A common (and inaccurate) Jesuit retort nowadays is “Well we didn’t use swords!” I believe that is the point precisely.

The ideal Basement Draft would continue thusly:

While individuals transformed by the gospel change the surrounding society, social institutions also shape individuals. Good laws encourage good behavior; bad laws and systems foster destructive action. Lasting social change does require personal conversion, but our emphasis ought to be on institutional renewal and reform since most individuals derive their personal beliefs and practices from dominant social institutions. Therefore, Christian civic engagement should take a root and branch approach to extirpating the prevailing anti-religious materialisms and autonomy-worshipping, rights-fetishizing individualisms that presently dominate the leading national political parties, much of the government and political discourse in general.

Of course even this does not go far enough. We might extend the purge to Evangelical churches as well, where materialism flourishes quite well, and not just in the purpose-driven (or is it “circus-driven?”) Mega-Lo-Mart Christianity that takes shopping malls for cathedrals.

There ought to be a recognition, if not in public statements like this one, at least in the minds of the drafters, that the laws and customs surrounding any social institution—marriage, war, schooling, growing food, &c.—as those institutions have been traditionally understood, are part of a widely-cast net which forms a public mythos, a symbolic representation of how we understand reality in terms of the ebb and flow of life; the cycle of birth, decay, and death; and the transcendent.

Because the given reality of Nature as it is in bare human experience is amoral and disordering—the evil flourish while good men suffer, as the Psalmist laments—our public myths exist to restrain the disordering violence and apparent randomness of Nature without denigrating it. For in the Abrahamic traditions, we do not represent Nature as evil and wholly without order. Nationhood and its borders (war), men and women working the land (toil), the marital bond and its natural procreative, child- and community-nourishing role (sex and learning): around these experiences accrue the fundamental structural myths of a civilized society, thereby constructing a true, but mediated and therefore protected, second reality. This is the “spiritual” or “ideational” basis for all that we name as and associate with “culture” and “civilization.” Marriage and the family in particular have formed a basic unit and enshrine particular “mystical” truths about God, man, and nature.

The laws that lawyers and judges concern themselves with are derived from and take their original form out of these myths, and so laws too are potent expressions of our experience of reality. To the extent that this articulation or “social construction” of reality is faithful to the reality of more direct and immediate human experience, we can say that the second reality of law and convention illuminates and preserves the truth of reality itself while also insulating us from the terrifyingly massive depth, width, openness, and darkness of the universe.

To try to deconstruct and rearticulate the symbols of our civilization—which represent the fundamental experiences of man and existence—in terms of a philosophy of rights (i.e., liberalism) will destroy the ordering truths that tradition has protected. If a society united in name and by law fails to maintain a general consensus on the order of its most basic structures—but rival factions keep pushing for a forced consensus on their terms—woe to those unprepared for the calamitous fighting to come!

Unfortunately, this recognition will likely never come to a group as large and influential as the NAE because many if not most of its members have already accepted the premises of liberalism and indulge the pursuit and exercise of “individual rights” in an effort to maximize one’s “personal choice.” The phrase, “the right to choose,” expresses what almost everyone wants and how we have come to think of all relationships. The “nuclear” family of the mid-twentieth century is itself a piece of deranged pathology rather than a repository of “traditional values,” as is the idea that it is responsible to organize one’s life and “family planning” around one’s ability to “afford” children. Likewise, the modern pathologies of “work” (a 20 minute morning commute to a nowhere place miles from home where nothing of substance is done) and “war” (a precision strike seen from one’s living room executed by volunteer soldiers who are not supposed to die) and “education” (a necessary sacrifice to the Moloch of institutional schooling and higher education which is intended to put the next generation on track to be equally sybaritic and automated members of the wasteful middle class) have taken a stranglehold on most everyone’s imaginations and have eliminated the ability to see the deep truths which are at stake as Evangelicals nicely tip-toe into the Public Square to dutifully perform their duties of Christian Civic Responsibility!

Charles in Charge of the English Orthodox Church

Finally, an astute member of the New Pantagruel discussion forum has alerted us to a shocking situation in Britain. Apparently Prince Charles is close to converting to Greek Orthodoxy. In the event that he is crowned king one day, what will he do about the Protestants-only Succession Rule that was established in large part because of an earlier, papistical Charles? Here are some insightful possibilities that the folk have come up with:

• Prince Charles becomes Greek Orthodox, and…



• …Greek Orthodoxy becomes the new darling of Hollywood.
• Dan Brown writes a novel which reveals that the Greek Orthodox church holds the secret of the lost templar treasure, Aristotle’s treatise on comedy, and the seven sages of the ancient world. Oliver Stone makes a movie about the Greek Orthodox church. Curiously, none of the characters have beards.


• …he follows the New Calendar.
• This pleases the current secular Greek government and the Vatican, since New Calendarists are liberals and ecumenical. The conservatives are upset and naturally doubt Charles’ true conversion. The Vatican, wanting to stay in the game, quickly joins Patriarch Bartholomew in concelebration to coronate King Charles as the new Holy Roman Emperor.


• …he follows the Old Calendar.
• This displeases the current secular Greek government very, very much. It pleases the conservatives very, very much and ruins all hopes the Vatican might have toward an East/West reunion. Greek conservative monastics are inspired to lead a revolt against the Greek government to take over all the monasteries in Greece, counting on the support of Prince Charles, who by this time, vacations regularly at Mt. Athos. Both the Church of England, the government of Greece, and a token force of octogenarian Ulstermen led by Ian Paisley will combine forces to depose him. Prince Charles parries the threat of a palace coup by dissolving the Anglican Church, which won’t be missed by anyone, since church attendance has been abysmal for decades.


• …the Protestant succession rule comes undone.


• If Charles could pull it off, he’d do it because he thinks the Anglican clergy are weenies. Britain will still remember Lady Di and follow in the celebrity magazines everything Prince William does. After Prince William sows his wild oats, then he’ll get religion, making it fashionable to grow a beard and join a monastery—but not before he sires his successor. If either of the above happens, the Anglicans might kidnap Bishop Kallistos Ware and hold him for ransom until the Protestant Succession is re-established.


• …London becomes the “4^th Rome.”


• The Russians get upset because London, Rome, and Athens have stolen a march on them, crowning King Charles the Holy Roman Emperor. They resurrect the third Rome prophecy which says that there can only be three Christian Romes in history. According to the Russians’ reading of the Book of Daniel, these are Rome, Constantinople, and Moscow. A fourth Rome is the kingdom of the anti-Christ, which would especially fit King Charles who is a Westerner. All good Slavs take notice. No one in the West pays any attention to this bizarre Russian prophecy, so the Russians find themselves in a political quandary—what to do to stave off the kingdom of the Anti-Christ? Patriarch Alexy finds a surviving Romanov (royal blood from the more legitimate 3rd Rome) and tries to resurrect the Russian monarchy. Putin balks at this, but Alexy makes a deal saying, “We’ll change our current demand for the government to return all the Church lands, if you’ll crown our boy.” Putin concedes. The Great Game between England and Russia re-commences. The US, which has no king to compete, holds a new Constitutional Convention which will redesign the executive branch and name Bill Clinton King, a job he’d been angling for all along.

Something to ponder while you wait for my next authentic narrative of immense perplexion.

A Dialogue on the Presidential Election

by The Editors of The New Pantagruel

n election eve, “discerning” Christians are awash with unsolicited advice and testimonies on the subject of voting. A growing chorus of Christian notables, now including Mark Noll, Alisdair MacIntyre, and Paul Griffiths, find things so decidedly unsatisfactory that they aren’t voting at all. Meanwhile, veterans of the culture wars such as Charles Colson and Jim Wallis continue to invoke the moral duties of the Church in favor of one side or the other, while the sophisticated folks at Christianity Today don’t endorse any particular candidate but do encourage the faithful not to succumb to the temptation of being a “one issue” voter.

Our own Fr. Jape has opined on these subjects at length, arguing in less than kind terms against the foolishness of pining for an ideologically acceptable politics in which a Christian can comfortably rest, knowing that no evil is being done on his behalf. To the contrary, history is replete with the tragic lesson that political power is inherently corrupting of principle, yet the truth of principles cannot get any traction in the world without being in and of it. A moral man may choose sectarian withdrawal, itself a kind of politics by other means, or the tragedy of engagement on the edge of risk and ever-compromised necessities. But it is the immaturity of double-mindedness to choose one and pine for the other, and such a divided mind produces only instability where order is required.

The double-mindedness which produces electoral withdrawal as a kind of fortification against compromised engagement in the rest of one’s life is a symptom of the troubling trend among Christians to cocoon themselves in the “misunderstood minority” identity and abdicate any responsibility for power while simultaneously refusing to give up what power they have. We have become exemplars of the tendency to develop a mind so principled that it succumbs to either ideologism or an idealistic paralysis that comes from seeing through all the false choices.

Institutional power is what it is—always. If a system passes through revolution to the establishment of a new regime, it will merely play its own variation on the same old problems. Or as Pete Townsend put it, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” The best of our Christian political tradition teaches us, therefore, to align ourselves radically with the particular and the individual without actually believing that the institutional regime must be overthrown. One can thus work to mitigate and contain institutional power; living in love with the frail limits of existence—family, friends, community, and place—in service of truth, goodness, and beauty, yet knowing that even if good can be done, evil will be done too.

That said, the pathological death-wish of our current social and political order can hardly be understated. Our society—its businesses, schools, governments, families, communities, and even churches—has staked its economic and spiritual stability on the shifting sand of grand consumption and its exemplars: a young, single adulthood to and beyond the age of 30; childless or near-childless, “dual income,” “professional” couples; the managerial home in which children are shuttled from one structured consumption to the next, until they are finally released to “freedom” in an institution of higher learning; and retired or pining-to-be-retired “empty-nesters.” Our economy, media, and pop-culture worship these “lifestyle” demographics and encourage and reward their aimlessly selfish carousing. This means the propagation of a culture that at every level is oriented toward the most nihilistic individualism possible; the fetishization of self and one’s “personal freedom” that led Sartre to define hell as “other people”—i.e., people who coerce and constrain us with needs and desires that can be legally circumvented.

Abortion is the jewel of this culture, and is the “single issue” in which all other issues are subsumed. It remains the worst manifestation and keystone of our gospel of self-service; a gospel which is preached and propounded by exploiters across the political spectrum, everywhere from leftist campuses to comfortably “conservative” suburbia. The metaphor is apt: the false, exploitative freedom of the self-serve soda machine in fast food restaurants is the mechanism of choice in our poisonous soup of late liberalism and consumptive capitalism. The libido seeking freedom and pleasure “chooses,” pays for, and feeds itself at a trough filled with waste and ruin.

In light of these complexities, and the vexingly inadequate political leaders we are given to choose from, The New Pantagruel asked four of its Contributing Editors to discuss the upcoming election, their participation in it, and their thoughts on the general substance of Christian writing on the subject. As you can see from the ensuing dialogue, there is by no means a consensus of opinion beyond a deep antiliberalism. Our broader hope for this conversation, as for tNP, remains that it would foster a discourse that does not minimize differences to “spare feelings” because ultimately we believe life is tragicomic and eucatastrophic. While we are engaged with the crises and catastrophes, a serious, taxing and often debilitating business, we can always look at ourselves and our situation from an imagined eternity where it is, if not farcical, a tragic agon tempered by the comic finish of the marriage feast. In less elevated language, we think the matter debated here is very important stuff, so we refuse to trivialize it by treating it with an ultimacy of meaning or our associates with an unbreakable earnestness.

–Caleb Stegall and Dan Knauss

The following dialogue took place by email in October 2004 among four of The New Pantagruel’s contributing editors: Eugene McCarraher, Assistant Professor of Humanities and History at Villanova University; Bruce Berglund, Assistant Professor of History at Calvin College; Scott Moore, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and director of the Great Texts Program at Baylor University; and Eric Miller, Assistant Professor of History and director of the Humanities program at Geneva College.

Eugene McCarraher:

Well, I’ll be the first out of the gate. I’m not going to vote in this election, even though I’d like to repeat my support for Nader in 2000. For me, my vote not to vote is based on two considerations, one specific and one general. If one opposed the invasion of Iraq and wants a clear idea of how and when we’re getting out, one does not have a candidate in this race. If one wants a genuinely pro-life agenda – in other words, one which opposes, not just abortion, but the whole culture and economy of death which is corporate capitalism – one does not have a candidate in this race. The choice, as I see it, is between Imperialism, Plutocracy, and Capital Punishment vs. Imperialism, Plutocracy, and Abortion. Nader, as usual, is the supreme diagnostician of our corrupt and comatose political culture, and many of his proposals are meritorious and visionary. But his one-man band of a candidacy marks a triumph of egotism over good sense, and his support for abortion rights, while not, I think, a completely debilitating stance (that’s a prudential judgment), gives me pause.

And yet, strangely, I feel hopeful. Things, I think, just can’t go on like this, and a lot of people, not just Christians, feel this in the marrow of their bones. To quote the old 60s canard, perhaps it’s darkest just before the dawn.

Bruce Berglund:

I also recognize the dilemma that [Mark] Noll faces: I did not push a lever for president in 1996, although not for the reasons he offers. I was distressed in that campaign by (in addition to the failings of the major candidates) the absence of any substance in the candidates’ exchange, in the way they skirted fundamental problems in society. I did not see any serious or creative thinking from either side; instead, they were trapped in phraseology, trading poll-tested but timid proposals.

I also voted for Nader in 2000. Leading up to that election, I was frustrated by a primary process that sidelined two people (Bradley and McCain) who recognized and addressed deeper issues in the country and presented instead to the electorate two demagogues. I saw Nader as a candidate who offered a serious critique to the standard practices of American politics and advocated policies outside the limited realm of options in which the major parties constrain themselves. After listening to Nader recently, though, I’ve judged, like Gene, that the valid points he can make have become drowned out by his ego.

It appears that, in the current campaign, the superficiality of American politics has only increased. The deep problems in society and in the conduct of politics are avoided, as the candidates exchange band-aid proposals on tax cuts and new programs. This lack of creativity in addressing serious issues and formulating responses is what I find disappointing in contemporary politics.

That said, I will be voting in November–for a candidate from one of the major party candidates. I judge the current administration a failure in many ways, and I will not stand aside to allow that administration another four years.

Scott Moore:

This is the first presidential election in a number of years in which I haven’t felt some deep anxiety (or guilt) about how I’ll cast my vote. That’s not because I’m pleased with the options before me. In 2000, I too voted for Nader, but not because I had any affection for him or because I believed he would make a good president. I was exercising my constitutional right to self-deception by convincing myself that I was helping make third parties more viable in Texas. But who was I kidding? We live ten minutes from Crawford. It wasn’t even close. I should have saved the gas.

I’m approaching this election year with less anxiety because I’m finally coming to terms with the end of my Constantinian Christianity. Though I’ve known for years that this epoch was over, I haven’t been able to shake a deep desire to find a candidate who approximated my beliefs, and who would, finally, “turn this country around and cure its ills.” Yes, I still believe that a pro-life, anti-war, universal health care democrat could win a national election, but it’s finally coming home to me that the problem isn’t just that these sorts of people don’t exist (or won’t run). The problem is that our country really does want the kinds of candidates that we get because these are the sorts of guys who will attempt what we have deemed “realistic” solutions to the problems we really want solved. This is a mindset which assumes that security–be it national, financial, or emotional–is not only the highest good but also to be achieved through a (kinder, gentler?) will to power. We Christians must never think that “security” is the highest good, and we must not give in to a culture of death which celebrates the ubiquity of war: the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illiteracy, etc.

At some point I’ve come to realize that I’m not just “disenchanted” by the political process; I’m really a citizen of another city. Hauerwas and Willimon popularized the theme of “resident aliens” almost ten years ago, but it is really the oldest of concepts. Its most beautiful expression is found in Philippians 3. This doesn’t mean that we have to withdraw from the political process altogether. St. Augustine, after all, encouraged us to make good use of the peace and resources of the earthly city; we just should not place our hope on that city bringing about a lasting peace because it is essentially predicated on the “inevitability” and centrality of war. Thus, I’ll probably vote, but not for Kerry or Bush. There are some local races that I’m interested in, but even here I must always be reminded of the delusion of the Constantinian and Utopian impulse. The Church’s political goal in a post-christian age is the development of a faithful, subversive counterculture.

Eric Miller:

What I’m seeing this fall is the American story playing out in diabolical farce. If it were just a farce, it would be good at least for an occasional chuckle. But since this particular story involves a cultural behemoth with imperial might, too much is at stake to make laughter easy.

How’s this for farce: of the two parties, the GOP is the one that retains at least some willful connection to the language that could expose most fully our own folly and evil: orthodox, Christian theology. Yet who has any confidence that this sorry “party” would ever allow the fluent speakers of that language to have significant authority—the sort of authority that could, say, provoke a re-thinking of its historic stances on health care, consumerism, or war? On the other side, the Democrats are the legatees of a tradition that makes possible keen vision in many crucial areas of our common life—including matters ecological, public health concerns, and wariness of the corporation. Yet over the past half-century it has energetically excluded (or, shall we say, aborted) any significant recourse to the language that had much to do with calling the party into being—again, Christian theology—and has in turn led us on a death march on “issue” after “issue.” Is this not farcical? And given the dimensions of the nation these parties lead, is it not diabolical?

I too went the Nader route in 2000, in the hope that a strengthened Green party might at least force the other two parties to take some turns, however minor, in their direction. But this time that possibility is gone. I don’t believe Bush deserves re-election. I don’t believe Kerry deserves election. I can’t see myself pulling a lever (or poking out a chad) for either.

Bruce Berglund:

I appreciated the connection that Scott draws between our shared sense of political homelessness and our citizenship in another city. Presumably then, we should take joy in our inability to find a party with which to place our allegiance.

But I am reluctant to choose the option of not voting, while congratulating myself that my political frustration verifies my status as a citizen of the heavenly city. Moreover, I am reluctant to cast a ballot that will be ineffectual. In 2000, I voted for Nader with the thought that he would gain a substantial share of the vote, enough to give pause to the major parties and, perhaps, to build a foundation for a viable third party. Well, it appears that he succeeded in capturing the vote of disaffected Christian academics who serve as contributing editors for this online journal (a journal which, oddly enough, was spotlighted by The New York Times in a survey of new trends in “conservative” thought). But I was sincerely disappointed by Nader’s overall showing in the last election.

In this election, the pressing question is: should the sitting president be entrusted with another four years? Absolutely not, I say. Although the stances of Kerry (whatever they may be) and the Democratic Party do not correspond to my own thinking on issues, I know that, by not voting for him, I concede to four more years of Bush.

I make this choice not simply due to my opposition to the current administration’s policies and my judgment that it has failed in the task of leading the country (I do agree wholly with Kerry that this is the “excuse presidency”). I am voting against the revival of Constantinianism that the Bush administration and the Republican Party represents, and too many Christians endorse: the stew of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld bowing their heads in prayer at the start of cabinet meetings, TV preachers telling me that a vote for Bush will save Christians in Uzbekistan from the oppression of their government, and political/religious organizations putting leaflets on my car, in the parking lot at church on Sunday morning, that rate candidates based on their “proper Christian” views on the Second Amendment and tax cuts.

There’s a letter to the editor in this month’s edition of Harper’s in which the writer laments about the progressives’ “ceding of God” to the Republican Party. By voting to defeat Bush, I wish to send the message that I will not allow the Republican Party or the administration to claim God’s side as their own (or, as it most often seems, the other way around). To do that, I recognize, I have to vote for Kerry.

Eric Miller:

I find myself agreeing with every particular point Bruce has made. Was it Kristof, Dionne, or some other columnist who wrote about the Cheneys’ Christmas card of last year? According to the column, it featured a Benjamin Franklin quotation to the effect that the course of this great nation was obviously being blessed and guided by providence, etc etc etc. This is enough to make one flee into the arms of any alternative, which is (almost) what I hear in Bruce’s decision. It brings to mind Christopher Lasch as a socialist in the fall of 1968 urging the readers of the New York Review to vote for Nixon–anything to repudiate and castigate the follies and evils of the Johnson/Humphrey-guided Democratic Party.

For all of the resonance I feel with Bruce’s points, I still come back to the basic fact that when electing a President, we cast votes for a political tradition as much as we choose a particular constellation of political figures. And to vote for Kerry is to side with a political tradition that has given itself over to enshrining a way of thinking about life that imperils life (daily), all in the name of “choice.” For me, this would make a vote for Kerry a very difficult one to cast, to say the least. To be sure, the very starkness of the practice of abortion (and the nexus of related and unfolding bioethical issues) has had the unfortunate effect of dimming the ability of many Christians to see the critical importance of other social, moral, and ecological concerns (many represented far better by the Democratic party than by the GOP).

Still, which party (and tradition) has the best chance in the long run of helping the country turn toward a more life-engendering way of seeing? Put this way, I would have to place more hope in the party that grants some epistemic authority to Christian perspectives. And that, it seems to me, is the GOP–despite the fact that I, as I said before, have no real confidence that it will in the coming years become more Christian rather than less Christian. Given the unpredictable nature of history, it might well be that in another fifty years the Democrats will have become reacquainted in some significant measure with their Christian heritage. At any rate, neither party today is interested in provoking a national discussion on the nature of freedom. I can’t think of a more damning thing to say about our present political moment.

But back to Bruce: it may truly be best, at this particular moment, to, for the sake of the Kingdom of Christ, be rid of Bush, precisely because of the “Constantinianism” that he represents. We need (and the world needs), it seems clear to me, a far more effective and sophisticated form of Christian politics than what we’ve seen from Bush and company.

When I ended my last remarks, I wrote that I couldn’t see myself voting for either ticket. I meant that literally. I very well could end up voting for one or the other. I just can’t see which one (if either), as of today. If nothing else, the equivocating nature of these comments gives further evidence why. For obvious reasons, I’m looking forward to hearing the rest of you out on all of this.

Eugene McCarraher:

I urge Eric, with a twist on the Bard, to screw his courage to the sticking place, and not vote. My only difference with him regards his assertion that the GOP affords Christian perspectives “epistemic authority.” Rhetorical status, yes – epistemic authority, no way. I was listening to Tom DeLay the other day using the phrase “culture of life,” and I almost put my foot through the set. That little snivel, and the mean-spirited forces he represents, are the very embodiments of a culture of death, in my view.

I speak from some experience when I say that Christians with our concerns are better off trying to establish connections with the secular left – I mean the real left of socialists, anarchists, etc., not the suburban liberals who want Anybody But Bush. Their opposition to Bush amounts, I think, to a narcissism of small differences, and I don’t think they’re at all sympathetic to anything that’s going to undermine their conception of life as a menu of “choices” and “options.” There’s at least a modicum of interest in Christian theology among people like Terry Eagleton or Slavoj Zizek, and I think we should cultivate this interest as much as we can. We should also be making connections with the labor movement – Christians, or at least Catholics, did in the 1930’s, and it’s one of the most remarkable derelictions of political duty that the churches have let these ties go attenuated.

Bruce Berglund:

Yes, I agree completely that Christians need to rethink their alliances. For the last two decades, too many Christian voters have chosen the same side as the gun lobby, Enron execs, and the raving acolytes of Michael Savage and his ilk. I was there myself at one time. But the need for new alliances is why I will choose to vote for Kerry. Call it Anybody-but-Bushism (just don’t lump me with the suburban liberals), but I don’t see how Christians and Republicans will be shaken out of their current alliance, or at least compelled to rethink the foundations of that alliance, unless the sitting president loses the election. In watching the debates, I was struck by Bush’s smugness (clearly, his scowls on night one reflected a sense that he, as President, should not be questioned) and by the thinly veiled motivation of his whole campaign: let’s send up some balloons to keep people happy and then we’ll coast for the next four years.

I am compelled to go back to Eric’s explanation for his hesitation about voting for Kerry, which presumably hinges on the parties’ stances on abortion. I must challenge the suggestion that the Republican Party “has the best chance in the long run of helping the country turn toward a more life-engendering way of seeing.” As Gene indicated at the very start, can we call the party that stands resolutely for capital punishment as the life-affirming party? Beyond the issue of capital punishment (which many Democrats support), I look to the Republicans as the party that allows the assault-weapons ban to expire and obstructs any attempt at gun control, the party that obstructs a rise in the minimum wage (at its current point, a full-time, minimum-wage worker makes $10,712/yr), the party that has done nothing (and likely will do nothing in the next four years) to address the health-care crisis in this country. That last issue is, to me a life-and-death issue.

But I challenge Eric not only on the suggestion that one party’s stance on a single issue makes it the party that promotes a “life-engendering way of seeing.” I reject the reduction of politics to that single issue and the suggestion that one party is “life-affirming,” which implies that the other is not. One of our colleagues on the editorial board offered a post in one of the online forums, suggesting that “that certain Republicans have a vested interest in NOT overturning Roe v. Wade.” I think there is some truth to that. As long as Republicans can galvanize Christians on the abortion issue, they can count on their votes. The Republican Party has been tarring its opponents on the abortion issue since when? We can go back at least to the 1984 contest between Reagan and Mondale. So, it has now been 20 years. For 12 of those years Republicans have controlled the White House. In how many more elections will Republicans play this trump card to gain the votes of Christians?

And if the upper level of the Republican leadership truly does wish to overturn Roe v. Wade, is it possible? Judges openly opposed to the 1972 decision can be Borked in the Senate. And the politics of court appointments means that considerations other than abortion often come to the fore. In 1981, the Reagan Administration clouded Sandra Day O’Connor’s pro-choice stance in order to get her past the conservatives. Twelve years later, O’Connor was an author of the opinion on Planned Parenthood v. Casey that affirmed the Roe decision.

Eric Miller:

Bruce makes several strong points against a position that I (allegedly) hold. Without devolving to a blow-by-blow reply, suffice it to say that I did not intend to imply that it is the GOP’s position on abortion that caused me to suggest that it promotes a more “life-engendering way of seeing.” What I did say (which Gene properly responded to) was that what hope I have for the GOP lies in the fact that it “grants some epistemic authority to Christian perspectives”–unlike the Democratic party, which is committed fundamentally to a liberalism that makes no place for religious authority (think Bob Casey). Put differently, the GOP holds open the door to a way of seeing (and to the people who promote and practice it) that might actually enable it at some point to correct the sorts of troubling inconsistencies that Bruce has underscored, and that I in the main affirm.

Is this sort of self-correction likely? As I said before, no. But to the extent that the battle is pitched on the field of language, I believe Christians have an obligation to seek to strengthen those groups and communities that continue speak their native tongue. This is why, I take it, people like Hauwerwas, and earlier, Christopher Lasch, were willing to associate with First Things, despite Neuhaus’s neo-conservatism, which to them is repugnant. Differences on political economy, and other policy issues, at some point must give way to the even more basic imperative of keeping the language alive and relevant for the day.

As to the matter of rethinking alliances: I couldn’t agree more. The great promise of the New Pantagruel, I think, is that it is actually creating space where Christians and others can freely draw from diverging political traditions in order to construct a way to meet the challenge of our day. And I don’t think we need to all agree on which traditions (liberal, conservative, radical, anarchist, agrarian, et al) are most salient for the moment; in fact, it is precisely this sort of discussing and disagreeing about these traditions that I see as most capable of animating an endeavor such as this.

With this in view, I’ll throw the question out there to Gene (or anyone else) – what is the reason for your hope in the secular left?

I would also like to hear a rebuttal to Bruce’s earlier argument (as well as the argument of one “Jape”) that sitting-out the election is itself an immoral choice. You who are choosing not to vote: how do you respond to those who say that we have a moral obligation to support the lesser of the two evils?

Eugene McCarraher:

Let me respond to two points. I don’t have any “hope” in the secular left. My remarks about making alliances with unbelieving socialists, anarchists, etc. amount to a tactical suggestion. Unlike the GOP, these groups keep alive that part of the Christian language which affirms social justice and solidarity. In Augustinian terms, the secular left affirms a perversion of the heavenly city – and if a perversion is a predatory, inadequate, but nonetheless dimly perceived version of a real good, then we should work with, converse with, and even seek to convert those forces. Besides, the secular left still has claim to a treasure trove of social and economic analysis which is indispensable in understanding capitalist modernity. We’re all indebted to this treasure ourselves, so an honest accounting of our own intellectual debts would be salutary.

Second, as to the morality of not voting. Voting for the “lesser of two evils” always leaves you with the evil of two lessers. It doesn’t even necessarily give you the lesser of the evils: voting against Hitler in 1933 didn’t prevent the triumph of fascism, mainly, one could argue, because the anti-fascist left didn’t get its act together to pose a real alternative to reaction. In the absence of such a clear and compelling alternative in this much less dire moment, not voting is itself a political act: it’s a way of saying that I refuse to countenance the current political culture. In effect, I’m voting – with my feet – against the system. Only if you accept the fundamental legitimacy of the system can you see that position as immoral or irresponsible. Again, I take an Augustinian position: I participate in the politics of the earthly city, but only in such a way as is consonant, in my judgment, with faith and morals. I’m cheerfully and unapologetically parasitic on the empire’s laws: I abide by them, but only because and to the extent that they further the work of the gospel.

When and if they don’t, so much the worse for them. So my not-voting is tactical, not principled: I’m not Mike Baxter or Mike Budde, both of whom refuse to vote on principle. (Even Hauerwas votes.)

Bruce Berglund:

My apologies to Eric for misrepresenting his stance. I had been chewing on your corrective to my remarks–and your point about the GOP holding the door open to a way of seeing that might lead to a resolution of the party’s inconsistencies. Then I turned through the channels on the way to the ballgame and came across the TV-preacher network’s news program. Here was all the vitriol and insolence of Fox News, wrapped in the cloak of religious certitude. I have to spit out any notion of “life-engendering ways of seeing” or granting “epistemic authority to Christian sources,” and turn back to my first position: this is a bad version of the Constantinian alliance. What is worse for the church, siding with the secular Left or the Constantinian Right? The latter, I say. And that is why I vote to defeat that alliance.

Scott Moore:

I have found this exchange to be quite helpful and I hope we’ve given our readers some new perspectives on which to reflect as we head toward next week’s vote. I too have learned a lot. I must admit however that, despite deep sympathy for the issues and questions Bruce raises, I am not persuaded by his eloquent arguments for Kerry and against Bush. However frustrated I am by the Constantinian Right (and I am very frustrated indeed), I do not believe that I can legitimize Kerry’s secular Left by supporting it. Yes, abortion is the principal obstacle there for me, but it’s also the case that for Christians, abortion is much more than simply “single issue politics.” It is about the nature of moral justification. Though I remain a registered Democrat, Kerry and the Democratic party have continued to offer not only moral justification but “normalization” for a culture of convenience and consumption versus a culture of hospitality and life. A world in which the private use of lethal force is not just morally justified but becomes the normal state of affairs is a world which Christians can never legitimize and a world in which our alienation comes to be written in ever larger and ever bolder script.

I will vote on Tuesday for some local candidates but I have decided not to vote for president. Neither one of these men and neither one of these parties does sufficient justice to the basic Christian commitment to the culture of life. I am deeply grateful that TNP exists and I hope it will continue to provide a forum where thoughtful Christians can reflect and argue about those matters that matter most.

Eric Miller:

Looking back on this exchange, and on many other similar conversations and debates, I realize that I’ve never seen such a broad, quietly bitter hopelessness during an election season. It’s no surprise that anxiety, anger, and confusion are the dominant states of mind among people I know, of whatever party.

1968 must have felt like this to many. Then, some on the left thought that the Democrats had so botched things up and compromised the nation’s soul that they must go at any cost. That cost, needless to say, was high. How might a Humphrey administration have altered the past three decades? Four days from election day, I’m still not convinced not-voting is not irresponsible.

Neither am I convinced that if I vote for either party I won’t leave a portion of my soul in the ballot box, for reasons I’ve already stated. The question that lingers with me is this: Is there one single issue that is so pliable and so consequential that at this moment it requires one particular party over the other? For many, this single issue is Iraq, and foreign affairs in general. For others, it is Bush’s Constantinian mode of governance. I find myself compelled by varying degrees by each. But what I’m wondering is this: might that single, hugely decisive issue of this moment be what Bill McClay, in the current issue of First Things, calls the “manufacturing of human being strictly for medical and quasi-medical uses,” as we continue on the futile, diabolical quest of, in his troubling phrase, “comprehensively remaking ourselves?” This is the question that haunts me as we move toward election day, and that may lead me to cast a vote for Bush.

Eugene McCarraher:

I’m anxious, angry, and confused, but I’m not bitter or hopeless. I like Gramsci’s advice: “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” The only way to really hold those two things together, however, is not through faith in dialectical historical development, but through faith in Christ.

My analogy wouldn’t be to 1968 and Humphrey, but to 1960. Then, we had two candidates whom Dwight Macdonald dubbed “Burroughs vs. IBM.” In the same year, C. Wright Mills wrote “A Letter to the New Left.” What happened within five years? A new left, a new sense of possibility, both of which drew on thinking from the previous two decades. Could we be at the precipice of, or spark, yet another such moment? I’m enough of a believer in the cunning of the Spirit to think that we haven’t seen the last episode yet.

Reason, McDonald’s, and Being, from Equality by Default: An Essay on Modernity as Confinement

by Philippe Bénéton

This excerpt is the eighth chapter of Philippe Bénéton’s Equality by Default: An Essay on Modernity as Confinement, which has been translated by Ralph Hancock and is newly available this year from ISI Books in their Crosscurrents series. Crosscurrents “makes available in English, usually for the first time, new translations of both classic and contemporary works by authors working within, or with crucial importance for, the conservative, religious, and humanist intellectual traditions.” Other books in the series include Icarus Fallen, by Chantal Delsol, translated by Robin Dick (from which a selection appeared in the last issue of The New Pantagruel), and Critics of the Enlightenment, edited and translated by Christopher O. Blum. Forthcoming titles include Russia in Collapse, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by Olga Cooke, The Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century, by Chantal Delsol, translated by Robin Dick, and Tradition, by Josef Pieper, translated by E. Christian Kopff.

Bénéton, a prominent French religious conservative and Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Rennes, has long meditated on Tocqueville, and Equality by Default is Tocquevillian in that it does not offer a partisan polemic, but rather paints a picture of contemporary life—a picture that is also a guide for discernment for those who have a difficult time “seeing” contemporary liberalism for what it is. Equality by default, Bénéton writes, “is founded on an idea of man which breaks with all the humanism of the West. Man is pure indetermination, autonomy without a compass, liberty without a vocation, he is what he makes of himself.”

“This is an essay on the modern world, a world that has now reached the condition of late modernity. My purpose is less to describe this world than to attempt, by climbing on the shoulders of giants of thought, to make visible what is going on in this world and what the results have been.”

—from the author’s preface

“Bénéton’s vision is sobering, to say the least, darker on balance than Tocqueville’s (which was already darker, more foreboding than is commonly appreciated), but somehow not a vision of despair. Tocqueville averted fruitless reaction before the leveling advance of democracy by straining to judge the new world from the standpoint of a God beyond all aristocratic prejudices, thus finding a way to accept and thereby to channel the democratic transformation of politics and society. Bénéton’s situation is of course different: he addresses a world in which this democratic and individualistic transformation of life has already proceeded far beyond the point Tocqueville provided for (if not beyond what he had the power to foresee). In our time, the option of sanctioning or sanctifying this transformation in order to moderate it is no longer viable. There is no longer any alternative to exhibiting in broad daylight the hollowness of pure, formal democracy, to plainly stating the dependence of democracy on understandings of human dignity that cannot be extracted from the pure form of democracy.”

—from the translator’s preface

hroughout the history of modern reason its status has undergone important changes. Once it was master, now it is only the servant or the master-servant. At its birth modern reason trumpeted the empire of reason, the reign of “Enlightenment,” while discrediting its opponent by presenting it as the camp of prejudice, convention, and the principle of authority. If these formulations were polemical and overstated, they nevertheless expressed a real break. Of course modern thought did not discover or rediscover reason, but it emancipated it (in a subjectivist sense), and it conferred upon it a dominant and exclusive authority (to the detriment of revelation and tradition), and, finally, it turned it in a new direction. Classical Christian reason was essentially concerned with personal life: reason was supposed to allow each person to master his or her passions and to lead a life in accordance with the nature of a rational animal. Modernity sought to transform reason’s perspective; modern reason would focus first on the exterior world; it proposed to change the fate of mankind through the conquest of nature and the mastery of society. The work undertaken by Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes issued in this revolutionary proposition: to transform the world we must rethink it. Reason was opening up a new era of the human condition.

The modern world thus embarked on a number of great undertakings (scientific, technological, and political), the repercussions of which reason has had to absorb. On the one hand, scientific rationalism (as originally understood) has disqualified itself, giving way to a new version of scientism that considers itself neutral on the subject of “values” and that, as a consequence, emancipates technoscience from all subordination in relation to reason in a higher sense—henceforth reason, committed to transforming things, concerns itself only with means and their efficiency; it is purely instrumental. On the other hand, in the realm of politics, rationalism as an ideology has collapsed, in spite of all the human sacrifices offered to the “Goddess Reason.” By contrast, liberal reason has come out the winner and at the same time has been radicalized, cutting its ties, under the influence of equality by default, with nature and with natural ends—henceforth reason as applied to the organization of society is at the service of the diverse and particular objectives that human beings pursue; it is purely procedural.

The result of all these experiences is what we see going on before our eyes: the growing power of a practical reason cut off from being, a reason reduced to a procedural or instrumental function. Reason no longer governs in view of ends; it limits itself to determining rules of the game and technical means, all in the service of formal rights and arbitrary goals. In the kingdom of equality by default, reason is ancillary, the reason of specialists; it officially abdicates all civilizing functions. But this is not to say that it abandons the leading role. The techniques forged by the “exact” sciences and the human sciences tend to rule over the whole of human activities. When substantive reason withdraws, technoscientific reason is free to display its whole force. The world, as we have seen, is now considered to be at our disposal; it has no vital distinctions to oppose to the grip of instrumental rationality. Human activities fall back on themselves without any reference points except uncertain and proliferating “human rights.” A narrow, specialized, professionalized, technical understanding of reason shapes our world, but without knowing the world it shapes.

To recapitulate: Modern reason (in its contemporary version) has nothing to do with the substantive reason of the Greeks and Christians—it is now taken for granted that there is no “life according to reason.” And it is no longer the triumphant modern reason of yesteryear—there is no question of its guiding great material projects associated with the progress of humanity. Rather, reason is now the servant or the master-servant in various external projects, diverse and without compass. It is a servant because it is instrumental to ends it does not govern, and a master-servant in that the economy and technology reign and develop according to their own logic within a world given over to them. What is called the rationalization of the world, following Max Weber, is a procedural and instrumental rationalization in which reason puts itself in the service of the irrational.

What can be more rational than a McDonald’s restaurant, at least if one reasons in economic and technical terms? There everything is thought through, weighed, calculated, recorded, analyzed; nothing is left to chance or to improvisation. The McDonald’s system is the fruit of a “doctrine” developed by a person, Ray Kroc, whose entrepreneurial talent is beyond question.¹ Ray Kroc invented nothing; he borrowed the idea and the principles of fast food from the McDonald brothers from whom he bought the business, and he borrowed from others the principle of franchising. But it was he who knew how to organize, how to extend the principles of organization to the last detail in order to achieve maximum efficiency. With this talent he transformed the art of eating into a very successful technique. The great adventure began in 1955, when Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald’s (which today has been raised to the status of a museum). McDonald’s proliferated in the United States—in 1961 a Hamburger University was established near Chicago—and then began to appear on other continents. In January 1990, a McDonald’s was opened in Moscow a stone’s throw from famous Pushkin Square; in April 1992, the largest McDonald’s in the world opened its doors in Beijing. The hamburger had set out to conquer the world.

The McDonald’s system is a triumph of instrumental rationality. Nothing escapes calculations of profit, always subject to refinement: the size of hamburgers, the restaurant’s architecture, the number of fries, the speed of service, the arrangement of parking lots, the affability of the personnel, the interior design, the dimensions of the trays. The system offers standardized products, trains standardized employees, and tends to forge standardized consumers (by the rationalization of margins of choice, the uncomfortable seating, the interior colors). This would be the ideal: robots for employees, a Big Mac for everyone, and consumers in uniform.

The McDonald’s system is also a triumph of procedural rationality, a rationality appropriate to a market economy. There, as in the supermarket, the pure spirit of the market reigns. Nothing troubles the purely functional, abstract, impersonal relationship between the seller and the buyer. Here every person, whoever he or she may be, is exactly like all the others; he or she is a consumer, nothing but a consumer, entirely a consumer, a consumer from head to toe. McDonald’s is universalist; its calling is to embrace the whole world without regard to divisions. Once one passes through its doors, an alchemy takes over and erases whatever distinguishes and separates: the person becomes a consumer and every consumer’s money is as good as any other’s. This is the wonder of the system: it neutralizes differences and divisions among people, differences in traits of character, as well as social, national, political, religious, or other differences. It makes coexistence and cooperation possible among people who have nothing in common except respect for the same rules of the game. All over the world, in New York, Paris, Istanbul, or Beijing, McDonald’s restaurants welcome you in the same way (automatic smile, guaranteed hygiene, industrial food), whether you are of the left or of the right, Turk or Kurd, Chinese apparatchik or dissident, a child or his grandfather, a policeman or a criminal, a racist or an antiracist. McDonald’s is the missionary of a new humanity, the builder of a new world, in collaboration with all the other businesses set to conquer the world market and sharing this great cause with a view to the greatest profit. This new world is undifferentiated, destined to unify itself on the basis of uniform consumption—an egalitarian world, except of course for the only distinction that matters (money), a world called to achieve unity by the grace of the market. The political problem par excellence, the problem that arises from differences among human beings, is finally about to be resolved: consumers of all lands, unite over a Big Mac!

For the workers, craftsmen, and peasants whom Péguy fervently evokes at the beginning of L’Argent, “all was a rhythm and a rite and a ceremony.” At McDonald’s, everything is just the opposite of a rite and a ceremony. A ceremony is an intense moment that involves our being, a moment that breaks through the uniform flow of time and sets itself apart in a thousand ways (forms, objects, context), a moment in which human beings share strong feelings. A meal at McDonald’s, on the other hand, is a weak moment, a featureless act, a purely functional activity. McDonald’s is the functional place par excellence. It reduces everything to a function: things, actions, and people.

Let us take a closer look at things. Here is the final outcome (as seen, I remind the American reader, from the French perspective of the author) of this techno-economic rationality taken to perfection, or almost: 1. The act of eating does not constitute any rhythm in the flow of time. The first principle of the enterprise is to break with time as it is ordered by traditional customs, and more fundamentally to break with all ordering of time. The McDonald’s formula is made up first of all by these two golden rules: long hours, brief meals. At McDonald’s one eats at any hour and on Sunday just as on any other day. Time there is not regulated—a time for each thing, a time for lunch and a time for dinner—but rather is uniform and uniformly at our disposal. It is also rationally divisible; thus, the meal must be shortened as much as possible. The time spent “around the table” is not a separate time, a privileged time in social life. It is subjected like all times to the profit motive. McDonald’s time is the time of economic rationality, a time unrelated to the rhythms of life. 2. Formalities, or at least certain formalities, are deliberately absent. Norbert Elias saw the fact of eating with utensils as an important step in “the civilizing of mores.” At McDonald’s we take a step backwards. There one employs neither plate, nor knife, nor fork; one eats with one’s fingers, even the fries that leave one’s hands greasy. Why complicate what is rationally so effective and what does not burden the consumer with respect for manners? Respect for procedures is sufficient; formalities are costly and irrational. 3. Things are purely functional; they have nothing to do with human sensibilities. Paper cups, plastic boxes, straws—just a lot of objects so meaningless and worthless that one throws them away after utilization. The whole McDonald’s universe is made of plastic, cardboard, synthetic materials—and one has the impression that the food is no exception—materials without nobility or warmth, suited to functional man. The view is of the parking lot, the air is conditioned, cleanliness and ugliness rule—everything is in order. A rose or a tulip would be a cause for surprise in this universe. 4. The food, finally, is the product of an industrial technique that abolishes all nuances of taste. Taste must either be educated or degenerate. It is doubtful that taste becomes more refined by consuming cardboard bread, meat that doesn’t taste like meat, sauces that smother all they touch, and desserts crammed with sugar.

This rational universe is in perfect harmony with late modernity. At McDonald’s, everyone is equal—but by default. The system reduces human beings to very little: an elementary function. Here, people are gathered, they cross paths, but they share nothing, not a feeling, not a way of being valued even in the least for themselves; they stand side by side in mutual indifference. Here, the other is like me—but he is also a stranger.

McDonald’s is a true “nowhere,” where a life without rules, order, hierarchy, holidays, symbols, or ceremonies is carried out, a life in which one insignificant moment follows another. Here one speaks only of unimportant things, and one maintains only superficial relations. How could one speak—of heartfelt things while chewing on a hamburger? How could one recite a poem between two gulps of a Coke? Who would declare his love over a cheeseburger? McDonald’s is not made for such things; it is made for the convenience of the pure consumer, for whom eating means nothing but eating.²

By “McDonald’s” I of course mean more than McDonald’s. If it deserves this excessive honor and reproach, this is because it illustrates and foreshadows the world toward which we are heading, a world shaped by procedural and instrumental reason, a world at once perfected and decivilized.

Notes:

1. All information on the history and system of McDonald’s is borrowed from George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society (Newbury Park, Calif.: Pine Forge Press, 1993).
2. As a counterexample, let us cite the beautiful film by Gabriel Axel, Babette’s Feast, based on a novel by Karen Blixen. In this film, a political exile from France (a communarde [a participant in the uprising that formed the Paris Commune of 1871]), who had been a great chef under the Second Empire, offers his Danish hosts a refined dinner in the French style. And what happens? The French arts of the table and gastronomy in effect liberate the Danes from their Puritan reserve; little by little the conversation becomes freer, old attitudes give way, human beings become warmer, and the guests discover something unknown to them, a moment of shared joy in which the pleasures of the creation bring creatures together.

The God Who is Where? from My Faith So Far: A Story of Conversion and Confusion

by Patton Dodd

This is an excerpt from “The God Who is Where?” in Patton Dodd’s forthcoming book, My Faith So Far: A Story of Conversion and Confusion. Scheduled for publication by Jossey-Bass in November, 2004, another excerpt from Dodd’s book has appeared online at Killing the Buddha.

y favorite course in my first semester at Oral Roberts University is Humanities I. It is exhaustive—a “bird’s eye view,” the professor reminds us regularly, of Western Civilization. Said professor is the female component of a husband-and-wife team who have been teaching the course since the beginning of said civilization. Their lectures are, if sluggish, consistently interesting and challenging. Their primary pedagogical method, however, is not to lecture but to show a series of films starring Francis Schaeffer, the quasi-godfather of modern evangelical apologetics.

A Presbyterian convert as a teenager, Schaeffer was a Christian public intellectual in the 1970s, and he was largely responsible for whatever popular intellectual engagement was happening in American evangelicalism at the time. Schaeffer was a highly regarded lecturer and author who argued (persuasively for many) for the reasonableness of Christianity via historical/cultural analysis—scanning Western cultural artifacts from Rome forward to suggest the progression toward the problem of modernity and to explain how Christianity (specifically Reformation Christianity) can provide the answer. He was, at bottom, an evangelist, as he would have been the first to tell you. He authored books such as How Should We Then Live? (a reading of Western cultural history that essentially blames the disorientations of existentialism on a philosophical misstep by Thomas Aquinas) and Escape From Reason (a tract on worldviews that summarizes the presuppositions of a Who’s Who list of important thinkers and daringly dissects them to reveal their inherent illogic).

By the time I arrive at ORU in 1994, Schaeffer is long dead, but his teaching lives on not only in his books but also in a series of documentary-pedagogical films directed by his son, Franky, who put his father’s oeuvre of research on celluloid in the mid-1970s. The films, which are meant to be a cinematic companion to How Should We Then Live? (with which they share a title), document not only the World According to Schaeffer but also the sensibilities of the 1970s and Schaeffer’s idiosyncratic chic, complete with a fantastic Dress Code-breaking goatee and even more fantastic knickers. Much of the class sleeps through How Should We Then Live?, but those of us who remain awake are overjoyed. We love the Schaeffer films, applauding them for both their cultural enrichment and their fashion anachronisms. Schaeffer is infectious. He pays attention to everything, seeing the artifacts of human civilization—paintings, statues, literature, film—as always containing eternal repercussions. The whole of Western artistic and philosophical production is assessed in light of a Christian worldview. It’s fascinating. Two thumbs up.

For me, the films are an introduction to a thinker who will loom large in my understanding of what it means to be a Christian. Like much else in my faith experience, Schaeffer’s ideas are something I will first embrace fully, then reject absolutely, then recover piecemeal. I dig Schaeffer initially because he immerses me into a study of social customs and philosophy that I might have avoided otherwise. So concerned about secularism and its rampant deceptions, I need a Christian doorway to walk through into an exploration of the World of Ideas. Schaeffer gives me license to achieve a kind awakening to film, literature, and art because he offers a Christian posture, a way of study that says it is okay to investigate the world around me and see how it fits and does not fit with what I believe. I do not realize that I need this license, but I do. The secular/Christian music dichotomy has implicated non-musical mediums, too, and the limiting paradigm, though unarticulated, works the same way. With this license in my pocket, I begin to turn my attention to the non-Christian world more and more, watching movies and listening to music and reading literature always with an eye toward what the appropriate Christian response might be.

I am not very good at it. Mostly, I cower in the face of secular wisdom. Brandon and I go to see Pulp Fiction and scurry to find the Christian angle but come up with nothing. All we can produce is guilt for having watched something that must displease God. Rather than discussing it on the drive back to campus, we pray together for forgiveness. I pick up The Grapes of Wrath, which I read adoringly in a high school English class, but now it gnaws at me as it references the Bible over and over again but rejects Christian theological possibilities and pokes at the Pentecostal preacher, Casey. In my interaction with these and other media, I cannot get much past overtly moral concerns—should a Christian let his mind reflect on sinful subject matter? Should a Christian be exposed to anything that does not affirm the lordship of Jesus and promote biblical values? I see from Francis Schaeffer’s work that he was reading Michel Foucault and watching Woody Allen and Federico Fellini movies and putting them to work for his overall Christian project. While I can’t get beyond simple guilt, Schaeffer sits atop the Fortress of Reason like a Christian sniper, his scope trained on everything in sight, taking down enemies with precision. Hegel, Picasso, Bergman, and infinite others receive the Schaefferian rapid-fire hit and, at least within the airtight pages of his books as I understand them, don’t get back up.

But I can’t climb the fortress, and I’m no sharpshooter. My instinctual intellectual reflex is not to offer a rejoinder, but to give the benefit of the doubt. I feel convinced by whatever I am reading or watching. Against my spiritual inclinations, I entertain the sinking suspicion that these secular stories and philosophies might be more accurate portrayals of the world than my own. At times, every other point of view—even Steinbeck’s, even Tarantino’s—seems more viable to me, like they know something I don’t know, like my Christian experience of the world has been too limited and maybe I should take their way of thinking into consideration.

I think these thoughts, then pray against them. I pray without ceasing as I read books and watch movies because I feel I cannot resist the onslaught of their influence. I ask for God’s guidance as the lights go down in a movie theater. I beg for insight, for some kernel of truth, for the key to unlock these misleading mysteries and expose them for what they are. I hope to one day be able to think through secular culture the way Schaeffer does, but for now I fear that secular culture is thinking through me.

The more I read Schaeffer and try to let him teach me how to locate and debunk secular presuppositions, the more I find that there is something inherently unsettling in one of Schaeffer’s own presuppositions. His square Reformation Christianity peg does not quite fit into my round charismatic Christianity hole. Francis Schaeffer’s working premise, which is reinforced for me and Brandon as we read and discuss Escape From Reason, The God Who Is There, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, and other Schaeffer books on our own, is that Christianity is imminently reasonable because God is the Author of all Reason. Schaeffer explains that there is a step-by-step logical progression that should lead one straight to Jesus, with the inherently true, verifiable, inerrant Scriptures paving the way. Any other way of arriving at belief in God, he says, is an irrational leap of faith, which equals existentialism, which equals despair.

According to this way of explaining things, me and my charismatic friends are all existentialist Christians, and therefore, if I understand Schaeffer, not really Christians at all.

Christianity and Liberalism: Two Alternative Religious Approaches

by David T. Koyzis

t the very end of the twentieth century, Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball published a collection of essays titled, The Betrayal of Liberalism : How the Disciples of Freedom and Equality Helped Foster the Illiberal Politics of Coercion and Control.¹ This title is characteristic of one school of analysis of contemporary liberalism, represented by what Alasdair MacIntyre has labelled “conservative liberals.” The gist of the argument is as follows: liberalism is a philosophy of freedom which had made huge strides in liberating humanity from a variety of oppressive institutions, including chattel slavery, feudalism, hereditary monarchy and other forms of ascriptive social patterns. Liberalism’s beginnings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were on solid foundations, as articulated by the likes of John Locke, Adam Smith, the American founders and (perhaps) John Stuart Mill. Modern constitutional democracy, including that of Canada and the United States, would be all but impossible without the groundwork laid by this early liberalism.

However, the story continues, over slightly less than the last hundred years, the original liberal impulse has been betrayed by those falsely claiming the liberal label. These include the likes of US Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and, especially, a series of Supreme Court justices (in both countries) whose decisions have imposed an undemocratic rights-oriented regime on a recalcitrant public deemed to have retained “unconstitutionally” atavistic attitudes towards abortion, homosexuality, marriage and a number of similar issues. Furthermore, the very institution of the welfare state is leading us down what the classical liberal economic philosopher, Friedrich von Hayek, was calling as early as 1944, “the road to serfdom.” This more recent liberalism is thus eroding representative government, personal freedom and even equality, insofar as it champions race- and gender-based affirmative action. The net result is a society which is anything but liberal in the traditional sense. When a human rights tribunal is able to force a private printer to accept business effectively advancing a cause with which he disagrees, then liberalism has become most illiberal indeed.

This “betrayal of liberalism” thesis is advanced primarily by those who would call themselves liberal in the older sense. They retain a commitment to the principles championed by Locke, Smith and Mill. They are very often citizens of the United States who attach more than ordinary significance to the American founding, including such foundational documents as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers and the Bill of Rights. They take great interest in the thoughts and writings of such figures as James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and their contemporaries, assuming that in them they will discover the collective mind of the founders and it will enable them to unlock the riches of the liberal tradition bequeathed to later generations. They will then be able to hold up this tradition as a standard by which to measure the apparently misguided activities of the pseudo-liberal upstarts.

Proponents of the “betrayal of liberalism” thesis include, most prominently, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, George Weigel, Robert George, and other so-called “Catholic Whigs” associated with the journal First Things. For these figures the Christian tradition itself calls for a classical liberal and democratic approach to politics, at least at the present historical moment. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the Catholic Whigs ascribe their own position to Pope John Paul II himself. On the protestant side one can find Charles Colson, the Reformed theologian John Bolt, and a number of others associated with the several Reformation traditions. Catholics, Protestants and Jews of this persuasion have come together in the Acton Institute of Grand Rapids, Michigan, which pursues market-oriented economic, political and social reforms. Of course, there are also people who do not identify overtly with any of the traditional religions and adhere to some form of the “conservative liberal” thesis, such as Milton Freedman and Hayek himself. But among Christians adhering to this interpretation, there is at least an implicit tendency to assume that the American founding is somehow uniquely revelatory of God’s purposes in history. Their common assumption is that it is possible to follow the principles of the earlier liberalism championed by the founders without necessarily embracing the latest manifestation of the liberal worldview.

There is, of course, another account of the relationship between the earlier classical liberalism and seemingly illiberal contemporary liberalism. This account emphasizes the continuities between the two, and it includes both adherents and opponents of liberalism. Here the story goes as follows: the liberalism of the welfare state, activist courts, human rights tribunals, affirmative action and the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League is rooted in the logic of the earlier liberalism of Locke, Smith and Mill. For its proponents, the contemporary liberal enterprise aims simply to complete the pioneering work of Locke, Smith, Mill and the American founders. Thus the voting record of a Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) stands squarely in the tradition of the American founders. On a theoretical level, the ruminations of a John Rawls or (increasingly) Canada’s Michael Ignatieff are simply the continuation of the project begun some three centuries earlier in England and Scotland that spread to North America. Partisans of the latest form of liberalism include a large number of intellectuals who would accept both Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government and Rawls’ Political Liberalism, seeing the latter as the worthy heir of the former.

Of course nonliberals too are fully capable of seeing the continuities between early and later forms of liberalism, and some would agree in seeing Rawls and Kennedy as legitimate successors to Locke and Jefferson. Yet for them this is by no means to be applauded. As they see it, liberalism as a whole has had a fragmenting impact on the larger society. A lopsided emphasis on individual rights minus the counter-emphasis on responsibilities to the larger society can only have a deleterious effect on marriage and family, on secure neighbourhoods with safe streets, on the maintenance of social mores, and so forth. Where these nonliberals differ from their classical liberal opponents is in recognizing a connection between the early social contractarian theories of community and the fissiparous tendencies of contemporary liberalism, with its excessive emphasis on freedom of choice at the expense of a common good.

Opponents of liberalism seeing the connections between the different stages of liberalism include the Augustinian Catholic David L. Schindler, traditionalist Catholic Robert P. Kraynak, Protestant ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, University of Notre Dame’s Michael Baxter, Jacques Ellul, Canada’s George Parkin Grant, and, I would argue, those standing within the reformational tradition extending from Calvin, through Johannes Althusius, Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, Abraham Kuyper, Herman Dooyeweerd and Bob Goudzwaard. One might also include in this growing community of scholars and observers Nicholas Wolterstorff, Alasdair MacIntyre and (possibly) Jean Bethke Elshtain. For all their considerable differences, all are united in viewing the liberal tradition as a single spiritual strand, moving inexorably through the centuries and working out its foundational presuppositions in the various societies it has touched. Only gradually has its full implications become clear, until the affected society comes to taste its bitter fruit, in addition to reaping its undoubted benefits, the latter of which have come primarily through the spectacular technological innovations it has unleashed.

I would count myself as part of the latter group. In contrast to the Catholic whigs and the Acton Institute, which tend to view the various liberal strands as separable and capable of being assessed differently, I concur with those seeing contemporary liberalism rooted in the logic of the earlier liberalism. Rather than lionizing Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, I believe we must subject it to the same critical framework that we would bring to the later forms of liberalism for which it served to pave the way. If the various stages of liberalism have anything in common, it is the tendency to view all forms of human community as mere voluntary associations, in principle mutable and even revocable at the whims of constituent individuals. The political implication of this is that, by conflating the state with a voluntary association, liberalism has eviscerated the state’s jural character, i.e., the understanding, rooted in both universal human experience and biblical revelation, that government is obligated to do justice and that this obligation is its defining feature.

Of course, those Christians who would still adhere to the betrayal-of-liberalism thesis have a response to the logic-of-liberalism argument. Liberalism, they would say, is not at fault. As Richard John Neuhaus has put it, “When we survey the depredations and ravages of our social, political, and religious circumstance, it is tempting to look for someone or something to blame. It is easy to say, ‘Liberalism made us do it.’ But liberalism is freedom, and what we do with freedom is charged to our account.”²

Yet what if it turns out that liberalism is not merely equivalent to limited constitutional government and the protection of freedom, but instead is itself an idolatrous overestimation of these undoubted goods? To be sure, some people accept the liberal label simply as a way of claiming support for a wide measure of personal freedom within a given political community. It is difficult to find fault with this. In this sense to be liberal means to be attached to liberty, but in a balanced and proportionate manner. This is undoubtedly the meaning the Acton Institute ascribes to the word when it includes “in the liberal tradition” everyone from John Locke, Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson, to Thomas Aquinas, Althusius, Edmund Burke, Tocqueville, Kuyper and C. S. Lewis. As Paul Marshall puts it, “If it simply means a great concern for individual freedom and rights in a constitutional, democratic order, then this author is happy to be called a political liberal.”³ Agreed.

Yet there is more to liberalism than this. Much more. I would argue that liberalism, as an ideology, has a creedal character and is rooted in a fundamentally secular worldview. To begin with, liberalism starts with a basic faith in human autonomy extending well beyond a mere attachment to personal freedom. Autonomy means to be self-directed, to govern oneself in accordance with a law which one has chosen for oneself. Each of the ideologies attaches this autonomy to some manifestation of humanity, be it the individual or some community such as the state or nation. Liberalism assigns this autonomy to the individual, who is deemed to be the centre of the cosmos. Liberalism proper arose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that is, in the intellectual milieu of the scientific revolution and of René Descartes’ attempt to construct a unified science on mathematical models. Accordingly, liberalism, in typical Cartesian fashion, reduces society to its component parts and attempts to rebuild it on a more rational basis. Human community is deemed very nearly a fictitious construction reducible to its component parts, namely, the individuals. The only way to understand a community is to subject these parts to rigorous examination. Individuals are sovereign, and thus it is they who determine the shape of their communities.

The implications of this liberal creed are huge, insofar as it effectively levels out the diversity of human communities, recasting them all as voluntary associations, subject to the whims of their members. That this conflicts with ordinary experience would seem evident.

If, for example, someone were to walk into room 212 at Redeemer University College and see me standing in front of a group of some fifty young people and lecturing to them, she would know immediately what she was seeing: a classroom community united by the shared desire to study political institutions and processes. She would know, without having to engage in elaborate theorizing, that we were not a family. A combination of cues would provide the evidence, including body language, lack of physical resemblance among those present, the larger numbers, the formal nature of the conversation, the note-taking, the overhead projector (or something more technologically sophisticated), the 50- or 75-minute length of time, and so forth. A liberal emphasis on the community’s voluntary character would tend, if taken seriously, to suppress this experientially-based knowledge. Even if we admit that the students in attendance are there of their own free will, there are limits to the voluntary character of a classroom community. They could not, for example, announce to me one morning that they had taken a vote and decided to disband the classroom community and reform it as a bird-watching club. The most that could occur would be for students, on an individual basis, to drop the course and enroll in an ornithology course in its place. But it is not up to them to decide on the structural form of the classroom community which they have elected to enter.

The early liberal political theorists are known as social contract thinkers. The social contract makes its first startling appearance in the writings of Thomas Hobbes, especially his Leviathan. It reappears half a century later in John Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government and later still in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s On the Social Contract. The social contract theory takes a narrative form, beginning with atomized individuals in a pre-political state of nature, characterized by economic scarcity and at least a potential condition of warfare. At some point these individuals tire of conditions in the state of nature and elect to band together to escape its dangers and uncertainties. They do so by means of a social contract. Although the various liberal theorists differ among themselves on the precise nature of the contract, all are in fundamental agreement that it is entirely voluntary, and thus subject to the aggregate of wills party to the contract. As these sovereign wills need not answer to anything outside themselves, it is not surprising that they should be changeable in the expectations they attach to this contract. The early liberals clearly favoured a “lean and mean” state apparatus, capable of defending the citizens and their property but incapable of interfering further in their lives and livelihoods. Yet as this night watchman state proved inadequate to the doing of public justice, later liberals expanded the role of government, initially to regulate the large monopolistic enterprises established during the early industrial revolution, later to secure equal economic opportunities for all citizens whatever their respective social stations, and later still to subsidize a wide variety of personal choices and to cushion the potentially detrimental effects flowing therefrom.

Although the followers of the earlier form of liberalism, including Friedman and Hayek, dislike the expansive state of late liberalism, there is little if anything in their ideological commitments to prevent it. After all, if the state is a mere voluntary association, then its members are well within their rights to alter the terms of the social contract, effectively abandoning the strictly limited state in favour of what has come to be known as the welfare state—one undertaking to provide a wide variety of services to the public. Moreover, if Hobbes, Locke and Jefferson are to be believed, the parties to the contract even have the right to abolish it altogether in a revolutionary act, if it fails to do their bidding.

So what’s wrong with all this? Isn’t all this as American as apple pie? Yes, it is. But its influence is much more widespread than the boundaries of the United States. The lure of voluntarism—of not having to submit to anything or anyone outside of our own wills—is a powerful one throughout the western world and beyond. We dislike the thought that we may be under obligations to which we have not freely assented. We did not choose our parents, yet we are still responsible to obey them when we are children and later, as adults, to continue to honour them. Nor have we literally entered into political community or overtly assented to its laws. Most of us are born to citizenship in a particular state, with all the rights and responsibilities attached to it. Those who are not acknowledged as citizens in the land of their birth, for example, Palestinian refugees or non-Israeli middle-eastern Jews, find their claim on public justice precarious at best. Citizenship is not a voluntary status, yet those without it or whose status is unclear are anxious to claim it for themselves. They are as worthy of pity as orphans who have lost their parents at too young an age. It may be a cliché to affirm that we are embedded in a plethora of overlapping communities from day one, but liberalism in all its stages has difficulty accounting for this.

What then shall we make of the larger liberal project? I would argue (contrary, it seems, to “Fr. Jape” in the last issue of The New Pantagruel) that obedience to the will of God as expressed in his Word—far from being opposed to discernment—requires discernment (see I Corinthians 12:10; Colossians 2:6-8). Like it or not, we human beings are confronted by a plethora of worldviews vying for our allegiance, and some of these take the form of political ideologies, such as liberalism, conservatism, nationalism, democratism and socialism. To know what obedience requires of us in the political arena, we must first discern what in these ideologies is worthwhile, even as we recognize their apostate spiritual underpinnings and seek an alternative better able to account for the rich social complexity in God’s world.

Notes:

1. Chicago: Ivan R Dee, 1999.
2. Neuhaus, “The Liberalism of John Paul II,” First Things 73 (May 1997): 21.
3. Paul Marshall, God and the Constitution: Christianity and American Politics (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), p. 124.

Christian College Professor Flunks Christian Worldview Tests

by Jack Heller

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