Precedented Times
No.118: July 29, 2022
Dear Friends,
Thanks to a generous and kind shout-out from a friend with some cachet, I see some new faces here. I am glad to have you! Thank you for signing up for The Square Inch.
Please feel free to browse around through the archives, but if you’re very new and need some direction I’ll quickly curate a selection of some of the more popular essays you might enjoy:
By now I suspect this narrative has been thoroughly drubbed into your head: our culture has experienced a radical shift over the past few decades. It used to be that Christianity was a welcome participant in the public square, reasonably well-respected in elite institutions, and believers could go about their business without fear of harassment. Then something happened and the world became less welcoming to Christians; it became merely tolerant. We entered a “neutral” world. But in the last decade things have deteriorated further and we now live in an openly hostile culture.
That’s the narrative of Aaron Renn’s widely celebrated article, “The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism,” and I will not bore you by rehashing that somewhat complicated debate. The main takeaway from this narrative is that, given this shift to a hostile environment, Christians must rethink their mode and methods of cultural engagement. For some, this means abandoning the classically liberal order itself and embracing the quest for political power over our enemies (e.g., Sohrab Ahmari and the Roman Catholic “integralists”); for others who might not go that far, it at least means a more muscular and aggressive posture (“No More Mr. Nice Guy”), which involves fully embracing and leaning into cultural and political polarization—no squishy “nuance,” common ground, or “third ways.” You know, the kind of person who thinks Tim Keller is a fossil. If you’re interested in some of my deeper thoughts on these issues, I wrote them down here.
Recently I was listening to someone describe our cultural situation. As best I can recall, it went something like this:
Our kids are entering a world in which there is a massive social and cultural shift. There is a lack of cultural homogeneity; autonomy, relativism, and pluralism reign. They are encountering more “inputs” or influences than ever before thanks to technological advances. Moreover, orthodox Christians are increasingly marginalized and shunned. Institutions of support are weak. The family is under relentless attack. The church is anemic, caught up in endless internal squabbles and strife, and its efforts to prepare them for the world are fruitless.
A Christian kid goes off to college or university and it is fortunate and rare if he comes out the other side still a Christian at all. Even if he does, his career prospects are dim because he is an orthodox Christian. The towering “elites” of society, the gatekeepers, won’t let him in without total acquiescence and compromise to the Zeitgeist. The prospects for living a faithful Christian life in the public realm are meager.
It is impossible to gainsay this description. Most of it is self-evidently true. But I had a sudden realization.
He was describing, in eerie detail, the biography of … Herman Bavinck. That should strike you as a bit odd because Bavinck lived in the 19th century. How could a description of the 21st century apply to him? I mean, he must have lived back in the good old days when Christianity was the dominant cultural force, right?
But if you go ahead and order that wonderful award-winning book I just linked, on the very first page Dr. Eglinton begins describing the world Herman Bavinck inhabited. So convulsive was the social and cultural change in Holland in the middle of the 19th century that someone described it as “the ground shifting beneath the feet.” Technological advances, new scientific theories that “discredited” Christianity, the rise of pluralism and multiculturalism and the shattering of social homogeneity—any of this sound familiar? The dominant elite institutions were run by liberals, and orthodox Christians were marginalized and considered backward and ignorant. The institution of the family was under relentless attack. Bavinck wrote, (in 1912, mind you):
There has never been a time when the family faced so severe a crisis as the time in which we are now living. Many are not satisfied with remodeling; they want to tear things down to the foundation.
Churches were anemic, caught up in endless internal and inter-denominational strife, and were not at all good at preparing their children for the secular world they were about to face.
Herman Bavinck went to Leiden University and was just glad to still be a Christian when he came out the other side. Opportunities? Even though he was the most brilliant and talented theological mind of his generation, elite institutions wouldn’t hire him because he was an orthodox Christian—you know, the “narrow-minded and bigoted” sort. Herman had to settle for teaching at his small denominational seminary—until a Christian visionary built a new institution (more on that another time).
What’s my point? I have at least two.
1. We are living in precedented times.
Aaron Renn’s cultural analysis spans all the way back … forty years. And if you look at a snapshot like that it is all-too-easy to arrive at some very misleading conclusions, the worst of which is the idea that this culture shift is some kind of unprecedented situation for Christians. Once you internalize that fallacy, it is a very short step to concluding that we must reinvent Christian cultural engagement. That seems to be Renn’s takeaway: “The previous strategies are not adequate to today’s realities and are being deformed under the pressures of the negative world.” I promised not to rehash everything, but that just strikes me as not only shallow (adequate for what? Christianization of the world? What’s the benchmark?), but also rather historically naïve. It gives the impression that Christians have no memory of or experience with cultural marginalization. Like we’ve never faced this before? You know, one time the towering elites of the Roman Empire actually threw Christians to lions for entertainment. Emperor Nero covered them in pitch and lit them on fire to light his garden parties.
I suspect historical myopia, coupled with a deeply rooted impatience (exhibited by the short timeline), is a major factor in some of these suggestions floating around that we’ve got to stop trying to be persuasive and winsome and start “fighting back.”
2. Herman Bavinck did the opposite of what people are counseling today.
Do you know what Herman Bavinck is most known for? His abrasive, muscular, no-holds-barred scathing rhetoric. His proud rejection of “nuance.” Huddling in a little tribe of the pure and faithful. Unwillingness to give an inch to the opposition, rejection of “common ground” or “third ways,” fighting fire with fire. Rejecting the liberal order and the idea of pluralism. “No More Mr. Nice Guy.”
Sorry—let me check my notes again. Oh. Right. Herman Bavinck was universally admired and revered for Christian generosity and charity. His uncanny ability to treat his opponents fairly while firmly critiquing them. His catholicity and willingness to find common ground and learn from people who thought very differently. His belief that Christianity could and should stand on its own two feet in a free and open marketplace of ideas.
I suppose someone might ask: “What good did that do him?” He and his friend Kuyper didn’t seem to succeed in winning over Dutch society, at least not for very long. Ah, but there’s that timeline thing again. Maybe Herman’s ideas and approach—that is, his own personal cultural engagement—didn’t see massive fruitfulness in his own day (although we do understate his influence), but guess what? Here we are one hundred years after his death and Herman Bavinck is, I believe as a matter of indisputable fact, one of the most influential theologians of the present day. Worldwide. Anyone who’s anyone is reading Bavinck. Do not despise small beginnings, nor be deceived by appearances. Being a bombastic flamethrower is existentially satisfying and might get some quick and fleeting results (it certainly gets you clicks and notoriety), but being a sower and planter—a lifetime of patient and consistent faithfulness—will reap a long term harvest.
No, I do not believe that “the times” require a complete overhaul of Christian cultural engagement. We’ve been at this marginalization thing for a while now, and if somebody thinks (and it appears that some do) that we need to renegotiate the standards the Lord requires of us (e.g., 1 Peter 3, “do this with gentleness and respect”) because, well, surely the Lord didn’t have a hostile world in mind—hahaha!—I think that burden of proof cannot be met.
Historical myopia carries with it other deleterious effects. Keeping a short timeline obscures the possibility of cultural renewals and reversals. Straight-line projections are almost always wrong, and they surely are here. Yes, culture is shifting and large (and, I should add, powerful) segments of society are growing extremely hostile to Christianity. But why should we conclude that this trend is somehow inevitable? Or that the cause of this trend (or at least not the solution to) is our “outdated” or ineffective cultural engagement strategies? Such massive culture shifts are too complicated for simple explanations or solutions, especially from the vantage point of a person standing in the middle of it. You know who isn’t standing in the middle of it? God. And he makes a lot of promises about rewarding faithfulness and about the inevitable advance of his kingdom.
Things can and do shift the other direction. Revivals do happen. Social conditions don’t just get worse and worse. And cultural reversals take time and patience, and that particular virtue is non-existent or in very short supply among the “sky is falling” crowd who seem to think forty years is a time period long enough to try and to scrap three different cultural strategies. Honestly, it seems like Sohrab Ahmari tries a new one on every other year.
Think of the time just before Renn’s timeline really begins: the 1970s. Roe v. Wade had just been decided and the term “originalism” barely existed, if it did at all. The sexual revolution was in full swing (pardon the pun). Divorce rates skyrocketing. America in an all out retreat and appeasement around the globe. Inflation out of control. Gas shortages. An incompetent President. Well, things turned around, some of them very swiftly and dramatically (anyone remember the Berlin Wall?), but others took a great deal of time.
In fact, we just witnessed the astonishing culmination of a fifty year project undertaken by a multitude of “cultural engagement” folks: the building of conservative and Christian legal institutions to produce lawyers and jurists committed to proper and disciplined Constitutional interpretation. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health did not come about because impatient and immature people kept scrapping their cultural engagement strategy every ten years—“tsk-tsk, this is not adequate for today’s realities.” It came from mature faithfulness, or to borrow Eugene Peterson’s phrase, a “long obedience in the same direction.”
By the way, on that note, do you think “winsomeness” and “kindness” are outdated and “not adequate to today’s realities?” Consider the Alliance Defending Freedom, the foremost Christian legal organization in the world and the one proximately responsible for the Dobbs legislative and legal defense strategy. For decades now they have conducted themselves with utmost Christian charity and integrity. I happen to know that foundational to all of their training has been the cultivation of Christian virtues like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. They are a charitable bunch—happy warriors—known even to sit down and eat lunch with their transgender opposing counsel. They always do combat with the ideas, never the person. What a bunch of squishes, huh? Well, those squishes are holding fourteen Supreme Court victories. And I’d like to remind you what happened when ADF got kicked off of the Amazon Smile platform for being a “hate group.” Mikey Weinstein, one of their opponents who hates God as well as everything ADF stands for, wrote a letter to Jeff Bezos. You should read the whole thing. But it includes this:
In my long years of fighting for what’s Constitutionally right, I’ve come to personally know several senior ADF lawyers extremely well. Their religiously-based legal positions, I and MRFF TOTALLY reject. However, their integrity, compassion, character, empathy, honor, and concern for their fellow humans I will steadfastly affirm. I have seen it and I have lived it. As seemingly incomprehensible as it may seem, sometimes hell actually DOES freeze over. I consider them dear friends and I assure you that I don’t use that term lightly.
Seems the “strategy” of … acting like Christians can be effective, after all. Shocking, I know. Mr. Weinstein thinks it’s akin to hell freezing over. Sure, maybe they haven’t convinced Mikey himself of their views; but they also wipe the floor with Mikey’s arguments in courtrooms all across the land. Thanks not only to the truth, but also thanks to longterm, sustained Christian faithfulness in cultivating legal institutions that recognize the truth.
I have a few more things to say, but I have kept you long enough for this week. We live in precedented times. I plan to follow this up to explore one other factor that I think is driving this urge to re-tool everything. It’s called fear. There may well be another Jacobin “Reign of Terror” in our future, and the main thing about Reigns of Terror is that they are terrifying.
Our Lord has something to say about that, too.
*Check-check*
*Tap-tap*
If you’re still with me, thank you so much for reading! As always, please feel free to pass this along to all your friends and invite them to subscribe. Also, I’d be grateful if you’d consider upgrading to a paid subscription. It’s 5 bucks a month, and you get a steady and diverse stream of content! This week paid subscribers received my very fun encomium for Calvin & Hobbes, and on Wednesday a Quarter Inch that had a follow-up on last week’s essay, “Leave,” along with a really great Substack reading recommendation. Click the button below and fully join!
And have a wonderful weekend.
What a great tale about ADF. Just confirms everything else I've heard about them.
Doom and gloom sells, period. I think it's partly a function of our refusal to view Christianity with a multi-generational outlook... or in 500 year chunks.
Next time somebody tries to sell you the idea of a slippery slope into decadence as evidenced by US political corruption, remind them that Alexander Hamilton was trying to corrupt Presidential electors in the first decade of the republic. The more things change...