Boost the Immune System

No. 15: July 17, 2020

Dear Friends,

When George Will got his first job as a syndicated columnist he worried about how he was going to come up with enough material every week. I understand the feeling.

He shared his concern with William F. Buckley, Jr., who laughed it off. “George, certainly there will be two things that irritate you every week. Write about them.”

Okay, I’m just stalling because I don’t quite know what’s going to come out when I start tapping. Let’s give it a try, shall we?

Social Convulsion

We are living in what seems like unprecedented times. I am going to say two things, and you’ll have to bear with my internal contradiction for the moment: 1) We are not experiencing anything unprecedented. 2) We might be experiencing something unprecedented.

The “Good” News

As a society we are well within living memory of the close of the 1960s, and its characteristics should seem familiar: racial tensions, protests, riots, looting, burning, the cowing of educational institutions to “woke” mobs (sit-ins, etc.), the rise of militant groups seeking to overthrow the status quo—often on racial grounds (Black Panthers), but also on left-wing socialist economic grounds (the Saul Alinski “community organizing” crowd). The 60’s had it all. Radical sexual autonomy revolting against established norms like monogamy, marriage, and family? Check. Repudiation of markets and capitalism (the “military-industrial complex”)? Check. Burning flags and viewing patriotism as dangerous jingoism? Check. Effort to “give voice” to every marginalized or oppressed group? Check. The rise of pagan spirituality (the “Age of Aquarius”)? Check.

Almost none of this is new. And if we go back before the 1960s we can see that this kind of societal upheaval has been going on for a very long time. The 20th century was a steady train of mass ideological movements trying to overthrow what is essentially Christendom: socialism, fascism, nationalism, communism, and so forth. And guess what? The century before that knew these kinds of upheavals, too, and the century before that. My friend Wesley Smith (follow him) likes to remark that what is happening right now is that the French Revolution is fighting the American Revolution. He’s exactly right, but we should not miss the obvious point: those revolutions took place two centuries ago.

All of which is to say: I know it feels like we’re experiencing something new, that we are nearing a breaking point, and that, once again, this upcoming Presidential election (this one, right here!) is the most important one ever. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I tend to think not because our real problems have very little to do with who occupies that office. But whatever your view on that, actual history tells us that we are not unique. These challenges have been seen, and met, before.

The Bad News

There is something that may be unprecedented, however. America has weathered revolutionary storms of the past because it had a very strong immune system: a cultural consensus and heritage that resisted the radical clarion call to burn everything down and start building a mythical utopia from the ashes. Moreover, America was home to strong institutions committed to the American project of a free and virtuous society. “Ordered liberty.” Rule of law, freedom of conscience and religion and press and association. Our institutions—higher education, political organizations, press and media, etc—have been intellectually hollowed out. Not only are the institutions objectively weak, where they are strong they simply no longer believe in the American project.

America is very short on white blood cells. (Here’s hoping I’m still allowed to use that metaphor.) Our immune system is failing. And the blame does not rest on one political party or another. The lion’s share of the blame rests with another hollowed out institution: the church in America. If you take a broad look at American Christianity—the Bible-believing, evangelical kind—over the past century, it is not difficult to see why the church as an institution is so very anemic and has so little purchase on our lives and communities.

One stream turned the Faith “once-for-all delivered to the saints” into almost pure anti-intellectual entertainment and sentimentality: the church as a carefully tailored lifestyle brand with weekly TED talks on how to have a fulfilling life with a few Bible verses scattered about. (I’m generalizing here, so no particular offense.) Others of a more “serious” mindset cloistered themselves in little doctrinal ghettos and went to war with other little doctrinal ghettos over who is more righteous and pure (have you ever seen a flowchart of American presbyterian denominations?). Others fashioned entire theological rationales for why the great public truth of Christianity (“Jesus Christ is LORD”) really doesn’t apply to secular societies and anyway if we do have anything to say we have to stick with neutral principles and natural law and never, ever, ever bring the Bible into it.

I’m not against church being fun, and I’m not against serious doctrine, by any means. But the church has become culturally irrelevant—it has almost no prophetic voice in public affairs, and it barely has it in the private affairs of its own congregants. When the institution of moral formation par excellence, the church of Jesus Christ, no longer, well, forms its own members and informs wider society of what the Lord Jesus Christ requires of them, you get a society ripe for infection with really anti-Christian ideologies and nowhere near enough white blood cells to resist; and the infection then enters the bloodstream of the church itself. Really: take an anonymous survey of the youth in your church and ask them what they think of LGBT issues. I bet you’ll be shocked at how far their thoughts are from the Bible’s take on the matter.

I’ve written this before, but I’ll write it again: if your church’s answer to racism is not preaching the gospel of reconciliation and having it conclude with actual repentance, actual forgiveness, and actual people of all colors sharing in the body and blood of Christ together—and this is important—at the end of the sermon, then I daresay there’s an infection in your church. The world wants, instead, endless “conversations,” endless soul-searching, endless self-flagellation for whites and victimology for blacks. The world never wants sin to actually die at the cross and at the table. It wants it alive, prodded, stoked, and cherished. And if your pastor and congregation is reading things like White Fragility and engaging in lengthy struggle sessions, they are helping keep sin alive. The church is not a cultural white blood cell because it has an infection all its own.

I remember reading an article in First Things about how the Roman Catholic Church had failed lower class white neighborhoods. The reason, according to its (Catholic) author? Not enough budget to make the churches look pretty (they didn’t have the aura of awe and transcendence) and they didn’t have enough priests to say enough masses at convenient times. I promise I am not making this up. The reason working class white neighborhoods were rife with infidelity, divorce, and drug abuse is that their church building wasn’t pretty enough and they didn’t get enough wafers put into people’s mouths. Oh, and he never once mentioned that a horrifying number of priests were molesting white working class children—one would think that would’ve made a list of the ways in which the church “failed” the neighborhood. I threw the magazine across the room.

That’s what passes for sober self-reflection in the American church today. It’s not much better with evangelicals—we tend to think the problem is with marketing or not appearing “welcoming” or “nice” enough. Don’t misread me: we should be welcoming and nice, but it needs to be more than a facade—the fruits of the Spirit need to be worked into the texture and fiber of our communities. And issues like racism provide an opportunity we are in grave danger of squandering. If the world sees the church as just another place where people endlessly wring their hands instead of a place where it miraculously doesn’t exist because of the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, then the church will have nothing at all to witness about. Salt without saltiness, is how Jesus put it. We’re about to be trampled under foot and we’ll have it coming.

In the long list of institutional failures in our society (I could go on forever listing them), it’s high time we faced up to the one institution that as Christians we don’t like to blame: ourselves.

So what can we do? Is it too late? Can the church rouse itself to relevance? I am not optimistic, to be honest. I believe we are reaching something of a tipping point: the immune system might be gone. Since Constantine’s conversion 1700 years ago, Pagans have lived in a more or less (and often less) Christian empire; and very soon Christians will be living in a Pagan empire. See here and here.

Let me suggest, first, that we understand the times. My friend Larry Taunton gave a keynote address recently entitled, “Understanding What Is Happening In America: A Christian Response.” It is incredibly insightful. Larry’s field of expertise is Russian history—he is well-versed in the “logic” of radicalism, and he walks you through how all of these seemingly unrelated social upheavals are not unrelated at all. Please click through and listen or read it.

Perhaps more importantly, Larry has followed that up with “A Letter to America’s Pastors and Churches.” Read it and send it to yours.

Second, let me suggest we encourage one another to obey the most-repeated command in the Bible. Do you know what it is? No, it isn’t “love your neighbor.” It’s this:

“Fear not.”

In a world awash with fear—fear of viruses, fear of Twitter mobs, fear of “cancel culture,” fear of backlash, fear of micro-aggressions, fear of Donald Trump, fear of Joe Biden, fear of our collapsing civilization, God tells us, “Do not be afraid.”

It’s what the angel told the women on Resurrection morning, and he gave a reason that is still true today, two millennia later: “He is Risen, just like he said.” Christ is Lord. That’s the public truth. It’s time to start asserting that again, boldly, and maybe God will show us mercy.

Miscellany

• I mentioned White Fragility in today’s newsletter. It’s a massive bestseller by Robin D’Angelo, and this review by John McWhorter is the only thing you really need to know about it.

• Speaking of important institutions being “hollowed out,” Bari Weiss resigned from the New York Times this week. Ms. Weiss was invited by the newspaper to serve as an editor and opinion writer, in hopes that she could add some intellectual diversity to their staff. You should know what she is hardly some kind of political conservative. But she deviated from the party line just enough, and she had to go. On the way out the door she published her truly breathtaking resignation letter.

• Andrew Sullivan also quit New York magazine this week because his colleagues apparently think his views on sex and gender are “violent.” Yes, that’s the openly gay man who was practically the architect of same-sex marriage. He—He!—is canceled, baby.

• A museum curator was foolish enough to admit that, yes, he actually would display art created by white people. He’s gone.

• The National Museum of African American History & Culture created an “infographic” called “Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness and White Culture,” that you have to see to believe. They’ve since taken it down, but Jonah Goldberg explains why it is disgustingly racist—toward African-Americans.

• Did you take an ethics class in college? Remember all that boring droning on about Immanuel Kant and the “Categorical Imperative,” or the “greatest good” arguments of Utilitarianism? Well, youngsters are all abuzz because some guy came up with an easier way to figure out if you’re a good person (language warning): Do you return your shopping cart? They’re quite animated about this, and I’m glad Kant has been simplified. Our future is in the best of hands.

• Last weekend I attended a small group gathering. Not a Bible study, exactly, but something quite different. We were a motley collection of different age ranges, background, and education, but we gathered to talk about Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s prophetic 1978 Harvard Commencement Address. Everyone had very interesting thoughts to contribute. Consider starting that kind of club, one where you discuss important cultural contributions, yourself.

• I cannot believe I’ve made it this long without closing out with a Tommy Emmanuel video. Tommy is the greatest guitarist in the world, and that’s not really a matter of opinion—pretty much any real guitarist will tell you so. Here’s a TED talk he gave, “My Life as a One-Man Band,” and I’ll follow that with a live take of something extraordinary.