The Coservative Polemic For Christianity

There has been much discussion in conservative circles since the election about whether the “religious right” caused the GOP defeat. The theory is that “religious conservatives” have turned off too many people and thus McCain was unable to successfully reach out to the middle. Gay Patriot West notes the issue:

Kathleen Parker has a very forboding essay today in National Review where she frequently echoes views opposite of my own on social conservatives and the GOP. Unfortunately, she’s  harsh on social conservatives. I disagree with her suggestion that social conservatives try to “make their arguments without bringing God into it.“

They should be able to make a case for their political views through their faith. That said, I do think she’s trying to liberalize the GOP when she encourages them to make their case through logic and reason as that tactic might better resonate with voters.

Here is where I totally disagree with her:

As long as the religious right is seen as controlling the Republican party, the GOP will continue to lose some percentage of voters, and that percentage likely will increase over time as younger voters shift away from traditional to more progressive values.

As I’ve written before (and this is a topic to which I’d like to devote more attention in the coming weeks and months), the GOP needs to find a way to accommodate social conservatives and unite and motivate them much the same way that Karl Rove was able to accomplish

Should we do that and put forward a consistent conservative message on the economy which resonates with voters, we’ll be back in 2010, if not before.(emphasis in original)

I think we should be clear - the phrases “religious right”, “social conservatives”, “religious conservatives”, etc are code words for “practicing Christians who are politically engaged”. And I worry that this bit of discussion will boil down, for some, to a question: how do we keep the Christians on-side without actually advancing their agenda? I get the strong sense - not from Gay Patriot, I should add - of contempt for Christians from conservative elites who want our votes and donations, but don’t want to be troubled with all that, well, Christian stuff. But to be conservative in the United States means to be, at bottom, a defender of Judeo-Christian civilization - you can’t, as it were, be a conservative unless you are a member of the “religious right”, at least in the sense of broadly advancing the agenda of the religious conservative right.

If you are not conserving Judeo-Christian civilization, then what are you conserving? To me, to be a conservative without the Christian bit is to be what Chesterton considered conservatives of a hundred years ago to be - people who conserve the liberal agenda. I prefer to be a conservative who conserves our civilization - which means, in turn, that I conserve the Judeo-Christian worldview. Being a conservative can, at times, mean being someone in favor of revolutionary change. Grasping this comes once one understands that most aspects of liberalism have gone so entirely wrong (sexual revolution, atheism eg) that only a complete uprooting of it and a restoration of the old ways will do - and even though one is attempting to restore, the overturning of what is works out to be a revolution.

In my battle for conservatism, I’m battling for freedom of worship; life; the family; individual liberty; respect for private property; local control of affairs…all of these are Judeo-Christian ideals. Unfortunately, too many conservatives have come to the conclusion that conservatism means the defense of things like capitalism (brought to us by liberalism), individualism (brought to us by liberalism - and something different from individual liberty, but that’s another post); the b*****d child of individualism, a right to privacy (brought to us by liberalism), strict immigration controls (brought to us by liberalism); legally sanctioned usury (brought to us by liberalism); fiat money (brought to us by liberalism), etc, etc, etc. Liberalism has also, of course, brought us things like socialism, so a conservative battling for capitalism will find himself hotly engaged with liberals battling for socialism, but both of them are battling for liberalism, just different interpretations of it…and that they are so starkly different highlights the basic incoherence of liberalism which grows out of its fundamental flaw, the conception that mankind is perfectible by human agency. And just as conservatism is fooled or fools itself into fighting for liberal things, so is conservatism incoherent.

There is room at the table for a wide variety of opinions in conservatism. Indeed, so varied are the problems facing us that prudence dictates that we not be too rigid in our means of meeting the issues of the day. As long as core, conservative principles - properly understood - are adhered to, we’re doing ok. I am not all knowing and all seeing. I have plenty of flaws, gaps of knowledge and my own bits of pigheaded adherence to received ideas. But if we are to do a conservative thing, then let us be genuinely conservative.

And so, the problem is not how to mesh conservatism with Christianity - they are essentially one and the same - but how to mesh conservatism with a society damaged to its core by liberalism. All who adhere to conservatism have a role to play here, so let us all leave off - as Gay Patriot has wisely done - all talk of whom to purge. We need to unite on what we agree on, and battle against those who war against us all, the liberals.