Christian Conservative, not Right, not Republican

A few weeks ago, Rev. S. Hutchins of Touchstone announced that his magazine is not conservative. Christian, yes, but not conservative.

I did not find this announcement, or the essay that followed, to be helpful. If the writer is troubled by the ambiguity of the term "conservative," then he should be appalled at the practical meaninglessness of the word "Christian." All sorts of people and ideas trumpet themselves under this rubric. The word "Christian" cannot ever be used as a clarification.

Anti-Nicene (not ante-nicene) unitarians, gnostics and libertines regularly flash "Christian" as their ID badge for admission into ecumenical shindigs at the neighborhood cathedral. Some years ago, I had been elected (under no little duress) to attend a "Christian Unity" service/event/happening/hoedown (since it had tambourines, bongos and the ubiquitous sappy youth ensemble) at the big church downtown. We Orthodox were attired black in somber cassocks: everyone else had on their baptismal whites with rainbow stoles: flamboyance kissed kindergarten burlap chic that day in the liturgical arts.

After my eyes refocused from the haze of kumbayah and willing suspension of belief, my gaze was assaulted by the stole of a priest/minister/shaman standing next to me, whose cloth was spangled with crosses, stars of david, buddhist wheels and yins and yangs (along with other characters I know not what of -- I'm sure Wicca and the Golden Dawn were represented somewhere along the strip).

"What are you doing here?" I asked in my most genteel ecumenical tone (you know, velvet, metrosexual, urbane, glossed with that sherry and canapé cachet).

"Oh, I'm Unitarian you know," he avowed (or averred, I'm not sure which), "and I'm here because this is Ecumenical, you know, and that means that we Christians should all be here." He framed this in a big warm church growth smile. "Isn't this great?"

Then we traipsed off, with the rest of the big happy's, into the galleria of unity, gluing ourselves linguistically together with litanies that announced our position on hunger and war (we were against them), and how we were just very upset by prejudice against blacks and women ("here here" gushed the distaff rev's). The service was topped off by a postmodern sermon (replete with lots of "awesome" this and that's) by the city's assembly of god minister, who was sporting a nice suit from Target (i.e., evangelical vestments).

That service is what "Christian" means today, so no, I don't think it is helpful to call Touchstone or any of us conservatives "Christian."

But Rev. Hutchins is correct in his complaint that the word "conservative" suffers from some lexical neglect. And despite the fact that in these virtual pages, I have written several times on its meaning, I will again have a dash at defining it, at least in my favored (and dyspeptic) apophatic manner:

"Conservative" is not Ayn Rand. What complete rot. Ayn Rand was or is an individualist libertine and an inhumane moral nutter. Think Nietzsche trying to fawn and pander at the exurban country club ("thanks, cool guys, for letting me in").

"Conservative" is not Republican laissez-faire economicism. A thousand years ago, the theocratic societies of the Christian East and West would never have tolerated an ecumen dominated by secular capital and multi-national wealth-production hegemonies. "Laissez faire" in Republicanism means "hands-off" for large business, but not for everyone else.

"Conservative" is not the prosecution of an undeclared war. It is not the demonic Clauswitzian meaning of war as an extension of the national interest (an expedient category that subsumes business interests under a political rubric). Conservatives get a migraine when politics and business interests are conflated, especially for the preservation of usury ... especially in labyrinthine rationales for war.

"Conservative" is not the consumption of Creation, or its raping and pillaging under the rubric of property rights or the Rapture. Neither is it the distortion of human or any nature whether by "therapeutic" behavior mod from Madison Ave, manipulation of DNA, slicing and dicing of embryos (i.e., "new from K-TEL!"), or by the splitting of atoms and calling it -- and thus blaspheming -- "Trinity."

"Conservative" is not the identification of "Israel" with the geopolitical institution marked by international boundary. Neither is it the exploitation of hackneyed chiliasm for the aims of geopolitical/economic hegemony (aka "neoconservatism"). Conservatives do not understand the notion of a dual covenant, especially when spiced up with liberal doses of dispensational eschatology and served up to international affairs.

“Conservative” is not revolutionary linguistics. It finds the playground pranksterism of Derrida and Clinton distasteful at the least. It does not permit the usage of words like “whites,” “blacks,” “hardworking whites,” “bluecollar” or vagrant (and awkward) participles like “evil-doers.” It does not permit the substitution of “celebration” for “liturgy,” “worship center” for “church,” “consensus” for “dogma,” “music ministry” for “punishment.”

"Conservative" is neither sociological or revolutionary. It puts no faith in mortal princes, and is ready to be disappointed by all campaign promises but is ready to pray for our leaders anyway, and to forgive. So you're right, Keith Olberman, President Bush is despairingly cretin in appearance (and cynically Borgia, I think, at base): but your diatribes against our king are impious, and they're getting on my nerves. Anyways, a conservative knows that the most boorish of patriots can be found in the precincts of both right and left. Liberals can be quite patriotic -- one need look in Napoleonic France to see a whole quivering mass of revolutionary patriots. Outside America, we can see this clearly, but we call them "nationalists" instead.

Conservatives are loyal and even embrace the myth of America. They worry, though, about the fantasy side of "lapel pin patriotism," whose narratives distort the real virtues of the West into small-minded notions of imperium. I prefer the West as a superior Christian culture, but I have no affinity with the EU, opting instead for the more conservative Christianity of the sub-40's. I love America, its land and deep culture, but I cannot stand the violent marketing of its commercial avatar. If you mean by patriot the likes of Lincoln, then yes I am a patriot, but not if you mean anything like Halliburton or Exxon.

"Conservative" is neither right nor left. I think this is where Rev. Hutchins went wrong. He meant to say that his magazine is not "rightist," and that is a good thing to say. The "right" in modern geopolitics usually connotes an alignment with the political party that holds military power. The Christian Church has always shown a critical ambivalence toward militarism, and that is why the term "Christian Right" is so very nauseating. I have been accused of being an intolerant anti-feminist, anti-abortion radical, a homophobe, and an anti-evolutionary flat-earther: but I will not tolerate being called "Right." Well, it depends on what you mean by that.

"Conservative" is not the mindless explosion of any article of the Bill of Rights into absolute status. Neither the Bill of Rights nor the Constitution is identical to or coterminous with Natural Law. The Constitution is, as Justice Antonin Scalia says, a dead document. Natural Law, however, is immutable but ever new, and is seething and pregnant with consequences.

That said, "free speech" cannot be mutated to mean license to spit out the "F-word" whenever an uneducated mind has run out of its 50-word vocabulary. "Free speech" does not mean the depiction of glossy breasts and pects as come-ons for cars and toilet bowl cleaners; neither does it mean the display of genitalia and groin-squatting as airdoll stand-ins for selfless love.

"Free religion" does not mean state religion -- so I shouldn't have evolution stuffed into my brain at every turn, no? Neither does it mean that I have to agree, like Huxley's Soma crowd, that "we all worship the same God." No, we don't. The Holy Trinity of Christianity is not the Allah of Islam. Neither does it mean that I have to bow before the Iron Crown of secularization.

"Free gun" means that I can have a rifle slung above my door, ready for the hunt, for the guard of my house, and for the militia. It does not mean AK-47s, Uzi's, Glocks, or any weapon meant for the destruction of human life. Sports, yes, hunting, yes, protection, yes, but never, ever assault.

"Conservative" is not commodification. The chief stupidity of the Republican Party is that it has used economic value to obliterate real difference in substance. The value of Land is delimited to a mere monetary price. The value of human life is fixed on actuarial charts. "Conservative" is not Democrat, to be sure, and we all knew this already. But "Conservative" is also not Republican, and that is getting clearer everyday.

Peggy Noonan wrote a fine article in WSJ today (May 16th) about the death of the Republican Party. Her trenchant analysis chronicles the steady loss of power since the Republican high water mark some years ago -- a loss I am tempted to ascribe to divine judgment. I would add to Noonan's explication that the Über-PAC (for that is what it is now) is dying chiefly because its main business is business, and not conservatism, and definitely not Christianity.

Real conservatives should find economics rather much of a yawner, a necessary evil. Something that must be discussed as part of the bourgeois fallen world, but then off to the better things of beauty, truth and the good of custom and hearth, heart and earth.

And now for the cataphasis: "Conservative" is the cultural articulation of Natural Law. It distrusts civilization. It uses sociology as history, but despises it as a philosophy. It yearns for the Gospel as it narrates human nature and the rest of nature. It seeks friends, not allies. It seeks truth, beauty and peace, not advantage. It mourns the loss of friendship, not the decline of polling data. It understands tragedy and true comedy.

It does not, and will not ever, understand the words "coalition" and "expedience" or even "party." That fact alone could be the main reason why the Republican Party as a conservative group is withering: conservatives are simply no good at playing the internecine political game. The process of politics promotes mode over substance, method over discrimination, gesture over craft, movement and association over home and town. A conservative cannot do this long without getting sick, sick at heart.

The conservative knows that true history is nearly elusive a subject as Being. A conservative can live and pray, breathe air and drink water, sing old songs and embrace with love, without beginning to understand life, nature, poetry and the grace of the Trinity.

"Conservative" is really -- despite the "ecumenical" obfuscations -- orthodox Christian (with a small “o,” but better with a big one). Conservative clarifies the term Christian, and vice versa.

Comments

[Trevor]

Hear, hear! I have only one quibble. Can a militia really function as it should without assault weapons? Maybe in the 18th c. it was safe to assume that a musket was sufficient weaponry for the spirit of the second amendment, but now? What invading force or oppressive government wouldn't be armed so heavily as to overwhelm any defense waged solely with hunting rifles?

I think it's possible to separate the AK-47 (for instance) from the revolutionary ideology it has so often served. It truly is a weapon for the people, and it seems to me just as useful for any militia, whether Marxist, Islamist, or conservative. I can't personally conceive of a viable militia without it or something similar. If such a thing is possible, I'd love to hear about it :-)

And for the record, I'm not some gun-toting maniac. I don't think I've fired a weapon since I was ten years old, and I don't currently own anything more dangerous than a knife (well, except for my car perhaps). I do, however, have an interest in physical defense as it relates to Christian principles.

[Fr. Jonathan]

Thank you, Trevor. You're right, of course, about assaultive weapons being rather key to the nature of militias nowadays. Since that is true, then we ought to drop the militia rationale for private gun ownership.

Once again, I'm all for the hunting and the home protection side of guns: but I will never understand the private ownership of military arms. And there is simply no Christian rationale for the rhetorical extremities fostered for the Second Amendment.

[FrGregACCA]

Given that "conservative" has suffered at least as much connotational degradation as "Christian," why not use "traditional" (not "traditionalist") instead?

Where is what bothers me about the gun question: having lived in rural areas for much of my life, and having grown up with guns, I know plenty of people who own them for hunting and home/self/family defense, if the latter is ever called for. I also know that in many cases, one too many drinks combined with a escalating situation can well lead to tragedy. We saw it around here a year or so ago when somebody got shot in an alcohol-fueled disagreement over a friendly football bet.

[Fr. Jonathan]

I was tempted to do that, Fr. Greg, but the term "traditionalist" is also liable to interpretations (especially in the Orthodox community) that I'd rather avoid in this argument. (I like that phrase "connotational degradation", by the way.)

You're right about the perilous mix of guns and domestic squalor. Of course, the latter can mix with many other catalysts to produce peril and perdition.

[FrGregACCA]

I'm glad you like that phrase. I do too. I think it is important to make a distinction between "traditional" and "traditionalist" as J. Pelikan, of blessed memory, did:

"Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living".

[Richard Barrett]

Bless, Father.

I agree with your definition of "conservative"; so would, I think, Russell Kirk, and likely Rod Dreher (not, of course, that you're seeking affirmation).

The problem is, correct definition or no, many people who call themselves "conservatives" would not recognize this definition, so what you have is a fight to define the term. My own father, for example, is a dyed-in-the-wool "neo-conservative" and a militant atheist who read Kirk's The Conservative Mind and basically said, "That isn't what I know as conservatism. Conservatism means if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and trying to make any more complicated than that is pseudo-intellectual nonsense." (This is somebody who already complains that he feels like many conservatives try to define him out of the club since he's an atheist.)

The current political discourse tries to make "conservative" (and "liberal", for that matter) co-terminous with all kinds of things with which neither term was meant to be co-terminous. I think there are a lot of well-intentioned efforts out there, such as this one, to reclaim the true sense of the word "conservative", but at the same time it's difficult to deny the baggage that the word carries in this day and age. My sense is that Hutchens is trying to bypass the baggage, no more and no less.

That said, I also agree with your point that the word "Christian" also manages to have its own set of baggage, but at the same time, Hutchens is writing his essay in the context of a publication that seeks to reach a working definition of that word; after all, the subtitle of Touchstone is not "A Journal of Mere Conservatism".

All in all, however, it's an opportunity to discuss what "conservative" really means. That's not a bad thing at all -- these days, it's probably a really healthy thing for all of us who consider ourselves conservative but have serious trouble identifying with the modern Republican party.

In Christ,

Richard

[Fr. Jonathan]

Thank you, Richard. You are right about this post being an attempt to reclaim the meaning of the word "conservative." Your father's working definition is probably the majority opinion, despite the fact that it is better served by the word "Republican."

I think that "conservatism" should have something to do with "conserving." An alignment with financial and military interests -- which is the ironic and lazy usage of the term -- should be labeled as "right," or "pro-government."

I attempted to call back the word more to its historic usage. Fr. Greg (see above) suggested a substitution of "conservative" with "traditionalist." On reflection, I respectfully disagree, since I am not ultimately interested in civic tradition: it matters little whether I serve a king, a republic, or a nominal democracy that masks an oligarchy. The politics of a civilization will change with the moment. However, the apprehension and observance of natural law by a culture is something enduring.

I do not know any other word that can describe this wish of mine (and probably yours) as well as the word "conservative."

For me, "Christian" only means "Trinitarian." I suppose that "traditional" -- more than "conservative" -- can be used meaningfully to qualify "Christian."

Despite my great obligation to and respect for C. S. Lewis, I object to the term "mere" used as a qualifier for "Christianity." There can be no "mere" in any sentence about Christ and His Church. That unfortunate phrase is predicated on the irrational notion that the Apostolic faith can be abridged or simplified. This is something that I'm sure the Touchstone staff worries about, late at night when the gremlins ask their mean existential questions.

[Richard Barrett]

Actually, I get the sense that the Touchstone staff worries about this kind of thing very much. I often think I detect that the editorial board is a bit of an uneasy alliance sometimes.

That said, I agree with you wholeheartedly, and thanks for continuing to clarify.

In Christ,

Richard

[John S. Bell]

My own philosphy on political labels is stolen directly from R. A. Lafferty, a writer almost impossible to describe in any sane fashion but who was one of the great voices for sanity in the century just past:

"Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial; the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade. But do not pity them overly, it is your own death and your soul's death that they work by their deception."
--from The Flame is Green by R.A. Lafferty

[Fr. Jonathan]

Thanks, John, for this quote from Lafferty. He is indescribable mainly because he is a Christian science fiction writer (from Tulsa): usually, "Catholic" and this particular genre do not mix. But he did it well, and it takes someone from Chesterbelloc's persuasion (and my own) to come up with such a contrarian list of antinomies like this.

[Joshua]

Fr Jonathan:

Father, bless.

I was wondering whether or not you would be able to point toward some literature that discusses the conservation of God; that is, God's actions in conserving the good. I remember reading something to that effect in Thomas Oden's paleo-orthodox systematics, but I'm not sure where he would have found such information. Is there a strand of thought in the Fathers that aligns with, I suppose, the Wesleyan notion of prevenient grace? Thank you for your time, help, and attention.

Regards,
Joshua