Posted on 05/05/2021 10:48:31 AM PDT by lightman
Left leaning commentator Matthew Yglesias, who’s Jewish, tweeted today: “Think I’m becoming a Straussian/Putnamist who instrumentally wants to get everyone to go to church again.” Columnist Ross Douthat, who’s Catholic, responded: “Be the change you seek.” Yglesias retorted: “Not gonna sell out the chosen people like that! But I’m gonna go neocon and root for the Christians vs the post-Christians.”
(Political philosopher Leo Strauss is considered a father of neoconservatism. Robert Putnam wrote Bowling Alone about declining social capital and civic life in America.)
Although personal religious faith remains strong for many Americans, institutional Christianity is declining, with a minority of Americans now identifying as church members. Many Americans are now religious without church affiliation. And many Americans are still church going without identifying with or even belonging to denominations or congregations. With some exceptions, Protestant denominations and Catholicism are declining, while nondenominational Christianity is growing. Religion is increasingly individualized.
Savvy non-Christian commentators like Yglesias recognize that de-churched America or post-Christian America is not good for democratic, civic-minded America. Americans detached from traditional religious institutions are more susceptible to political extremes, to social isolation, to conspiracy mindsets, to identity politics, to apocalyptic perspectives, to fears and despair that mitigate against good citizenship.
Churches and denominations were central to building America’s democratic ethos. They civilized and socialized the early frontier. They created a wider civil society supporting politics, education, charity and community building. Regular church goers have never been a majority in America. But churches as institutions were foundations and pillars of wider society that benefitted all. Typically savvy non religious people have recognized their centrality to American culture and civic life.
In recent decades a growing secular elite has scoffed at organized religion’s social and political contributions to American life. For many of them, religion, even its progressive variants, is irrelevant, retrograde and reactionary. It merits dismissal and mockery. The decline of religious institutions should be welcomed as human progress, they think, without considering what might replace them. Societies don’t function well without culture-shaping institutions like churches.
Unfortunately, many religionists have not been helpful in response. Traditional Protestant denominations and the Catholic Church, whatever their faults, understood their historic responsibilities to shape and serve wider society. In America they saw themselves as stewards of American democracy. Their decline left a vacuum.
Nondenominational Christianity and evangelicalism often lack this long history and self-understanding as cultural stewards. They often focus more exclusively on individual faith and spiritual needs sometimes from a consumerist perspective. Sometimes their adherents see themselves more as a tribe or a subculture than as parcel to wider society with wider responsibilities.
Meanwhile, many Evangelicals and others scoff as Christian participation in civil religion as theologically and morally compromised. Progressives see civil religion as parcel to idolatrous nationalism. Many conservatives see civil religion as a dilution of authentic religion. They insist that any message not specifically evangelistic betrays the Gospel.
What critics of civil religion fail to see is that Christianity has a duty to society to help create the language and architecture for constructive civil life that benefits all. Christianity wants all to be fed, clothed, housed, provided health care, treated with dignity, given security, and equipped with the political tools to live harmoniously in peace. Christians seek the common good for all society, not just what directly benefits themselves. But this promotion of the common good certainly benefits Christians and itself witnesses to the power, grandeur and truth of the Gospel.
Conservatives Christians of today want to protect the church from social hostility. Liberal Christians want the church to be a tool for social justice. But American Christianity at its best evangelized, discipled, offered charity to all and helped build and refine American democracy in ways that pointed Zionward and in collaboration with all who shared a vision of the good society.
This comprehensive multifaceted work on behalf of the Gospel and civilization requires strong religious institutions and strong religious memberships. Atomized individuals pursuing their own spiritualities are not particularly helpful to this project. Ardently religious people disconnected from great traditions and multigenerational religious institutions generally will lack the wisdom they need to sustain healthy civic life.
So America needs to be rechurchified. Certainly we need evangelism and converts to genuine faith. But such converts may fail as believers and as citizens if they are not catechized into the wider institutional church. It’s fashionable now even among the religious to mock and disdain organized religion. Supposedly we can all access God without it.
But no branch of Christianity or any traditional monotheistic religion believes God calls His people to absolute autonomy and isolation. Traditional religion always involves a community and institutions. They often fail but no more so than do individuals.
Sustaining religious communities requires compromise, sacrifice, grace, mercy, patience, humility. And all of these qualities are needed for wider society and nation. Hence churches are nurseries and building blocks for decent and sustainable society.
So Matthew Yglesias is wise, as a non-Christian who cares about society and America, to hope more Americans go to church, to the benefit of all. Will more Christians share in this insight?
Jesus began with a community of 12.
Left leaning commentator Matthew Yglesias, who’s Jewish, tweeted today: “Think I’m becoming a Straussian/Putnamist who instrumentally wants to get everyone to go to church again.” Columnist Ross Douthat, who’s Catholic, responded: “Be the change you seek.” Yglesias retorted: “Not gonna sell out the chosen people like that! But I’m gonna go neocon and root for the Christians vs the post-Christians.”
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It’s amazing how someone mired in academics just can’t help but post pedantic gibberish.
I’m launching ultra-orthodox synagogue-a-palooza. Yarmulkas from sea to shining sea....
Bullfeathers...
Those folks are doing more outside of the church walls than most pastors would ever counsel their parishioners to do. The 'ardently religious' (I'll translate that to "Disciple of Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit) are doing God's work -- checking with Him every morning and...
Buying groceries for people without enough
Providing peer counseling to recovering addicts
Spending time with kids, or old folks, or the homeless and doing what they can.
Making art and literature that brings glory to God instead of promoting filth.
God is getting his followers used to doing their thing on the down low and without a MA(Div) tossing out the interpretation to Romans that hasn't really changed much in 2,000 years...
I'm not too enthused about this dude wanting to make a church a well behaved social club.
Sounds good to say, until you start actually trying to find some faith and humility.
So, if I am reading this author and Yglesias right, they promote traditional churches not for their eternal salvific role but because they can be counted on to clean up the secular world’s messes? Just a tool?
I had a summer job during my college years as a small town newspaper proofreader. The editor wrote an editorial which mentioned a “spicket”. I quietly asked him if perhaps he meant “spigot”. He sort of huffed it off but later thanked me for saving his reputation. Even editors need proofreaders sometimes.
Wrong thread. Sorry.
He’s right that beyond any religious importance the local church was central to community health.
It was where people would come together to help neighbors in need, friendships were forged, and couples would meet for the first time.
Without these local networks Americans have turned to big tech and government.
Christianity doesn’t seem to thrive in cultures with amazing and unprecedented social conditions like the poorest people being the most likely to be obese.
Freegards
Bullfeathers...
Those folks are doing more outside of the church walls than most pastors would ever counsel their parishioners to do. The ‘ardently religious’ (I’ll translate that to “Disciple of Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit) are doing God’s work — checking with Him every morning and...
Buying groceries for people without enough
Providing peer counseling to recovering addicts
Spending time with kids, or old folks, or the homeless and doing what they can.
Making art and literature that brings glory to God instead of promoting filth.
= = =
And the AOC-type govt. is trying to claim they are only a drain on society; cut off their support.
Yes, like Putin is doing in Russia.
“Wrong thread. Sorry.”
HA! Maybe wrong, but I related to your post. I read this piece and actually had to look up the word “parcel” because the author used it a couple of times. I guess he was meaning it as in “part and parcel” but still, I had to look it up!
Those uses of the word parcel are pretty awkward. He may have been using it in the sense of real property where land plots are referred to as parcels. Whatever way, I would have chosen another word.
It was where people would come together to help neighbors in need, friendships were forged, and couples would meet for the first time.
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You could meet and do all these things at other social clubs. You could even do all the above mentioned things by meeting at local pubs.
That’s true, and it would be nice to have them back too.
The article cites Putnam, his argument is that the modern American watches 20 to 30 hours of TV per week. Before TV we had all sorts of other hobbies that were much more sociable and made for a better society.
“I would have chosen another word.”
Yes, thanks. For the second time today on FR I get to say: glad it wasn’t just me!
Parcel does have a variety of meanings, as I learned. It can also mean group, “parcel of children”, etc.
Funny, I don’t see any institutionalized churches or religions in the book of Acts.
Look again...when Paul came to Jerusalem to consult with the council of the elders regarding circumcision, if that wasn’t institutionalized (and hierachical!) religion I don’t know what else to call it!
One huge difference between the U.S. and Russia is that we have a diversity of Christian groups. While Protestants were until very recently a majority religion for America, it is split into numerous and often conflicting denominations. Catholicism and Mormonism are minority religions with local majorities in places like Rhode Island and Utah. Judaism and Eastern Orthodoxy are smaller minority religions. However, Russia had been Orthodox for 900 years before the rise of Communism. There were breakaway sects and small groups of other faiths, but Orthodoxy had the allegiance of most Russians before 1917. Despite intense persecution and the murder of thousands of clergy and millions of believers, often in brutal manners, the faith persisted.
Author states...”Christianity has ‘a duty to society’ to help create the language and architecture for constructive civil life that benefits all.”.....
Thats a very broad brush which I don’t actually see as a Christian Duty. Though we can certainly influence society.
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