Welcome to The Square Inch, a weekly newsletter on Christianity, culture, and all of the many-varied “square inches” of God’s domain. This is a paid subscription feature with a preview before the paywall, so please consider subscribing to enjoy this weekly missive along with a frequent Pipe & Dram feature of little monologues/conversations in my study, and Wednesday’s “The Quarter Inch,” a quick(er) commentary on current events.
Dear Friends,
The Discourse™ would like us to talk about the latest “Topic of the Day,” which involves various people on the right debating the NETTR principle—whether it is necessary or good to highlight, expose, and expel bad actors, or whether this hurts “the cause.” What the “cause” is, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder. The Trump Administration’s new policy of affordable, widespread IVF? Cheaper abortifacients? Or maybe Josh Hawley’s “Workers of the World, Unite!” socialism? “Conservatism” has become something I scarcely recognize.
I’ve written quite enough about the NETTR principle and its obvious moral bankruptcy. I would like to just point you to Erick Erickson’s smart takedown of Matt Walsh. I called them “conflict entrepreneurs” the other day, but I think that “outrage entrepreneurs” is a better term. There is an entire ecosystem of pundits deeply invested in keeping you panicked and outraged, and Matt Walsh arguably tops the list.
He thinks that “we” lose (culturally and politically) because we are insufficiently committed to frothing at the mouth at every Leftist outrage. And because we police the racists and other assorted lunatics on “our” side (I wish). Well, you should read Erick’s essay. If this is “losing,” I wonder what “winning” looks like in Matt Walsh-World.
I would further suggest that this little convulsion about the NETTR principle on the right seems to signal—to me, anyway—a “vibe shift” of a sort MAGA world isn’t anticipating. Namely, I think huge swaths of people are becoming not only turned off by the triumphalist posture of MAGA world, and turned off by its Messianic syncretism (Eric Trump says his Dad is “saving Christianity and saving God”), but are increasingly appalled by the willingness of the movement to turn a blind eye to its cranks. Walsh’s doubling down is not attracting people; it is, I believe, repelling them.
So much for The Discourse™. Let’s talk about something much more important.
In the Year of Our Lord 597 a monk by the name of Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory the Great to the wilds of “Angle-land.” After a spectacularly successful missionary campaign, he established the church in England, headquartered in Canterbury. He was the first Archbishop of Canterbury, a post held in a long, continuous succession of luminaries, including Anselm and Thomas Becket, and Thomas Cranmer, who aided Henry VIII in severing ties with Rome during the English Reformation. And he had the monumental task of disentangling a thousand-year-old institutional bond. It involved a lot of paperwork.
For almost a millennium and a half (that is a really long time), Canterbury has held pride of place in the English church—through the Medieval era, on into and after the Reformation. All through that time, the Archbishop of Canterbury has enjoyed the status of “first among equals” in the Anglican church.
She’s just lost her church.
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