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The problem with Evangelicals
Alan Roebuck writes:
Most commentary on my essay on how evangelism is not sufficient for cultural renewal is at Free Republic and two pages at The Thinking Housewife. Most commenters either say, “We’re doomed—what’s the point of fighting back,” or else, “Evangelism is sufficient—your proposal is a waste of time.” We have a lot of teaching to do.
For example, a Freeper said:
You say ‘what is needed is to defeat the rule of liberalism by publicly defeating its fundamental ideas and by placing those who reject liberalism in positions of leadership.’ I say ‘replace’ them with what? Unregenerate people who believe in ‘non-liberalism’ (In whatever form that takes). Where does that get you? Ungodly men make ungodly societies no matter what their ideology.
I replied:
We should not aim for a society ruled in a Christian manner by Christians. We should only aim for what we had until roughly the 1950s: a society in which the government generally allowed Christian communities to define themselves and act as they saw fit, and which did not tolerate, or force people to pretend to celebrate, obvious sins such as abortion, homosexuality, public blasphemy, and the deliberate attempt to replace white Americans people with hostile and inassimilable foreigners via mass immigration.
Another Freeper said
I believe your entire position is an attempt to deal with spiritual matters (a degraded culture) with worldly solutions.
To which I replied:
Sin is dealt with in different ways. The church deals with it in one way, by proclaiming repentance and forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name, and by sanctifying believers with God’s Word and the sacraments. The government deals with it in another way, by using the sword to restrain evildoers. The government is currently not doing its job, as it actively encourages many forms of evildoing such as homosexuality, divorce, mass immigration, and so on. Since most Protestants do not give much thought to exactly how the government is to do its job, my call is for us also to look into this area, but without neglecting the proper job of the church.
At the Thinking Housewife, a defeatist called Reader N. said
Unhappily, Mr. Roebuck admits that his plan consists of waiting for the Left to fail, and then to swoop in and pick up the pieces. This is no different than “the plan” from the 1970s,1980s, 1990s. How’s that plan worked out for the last generation and a half? It hasn’t worked at all….
Mr. Roebuck, to paraphrase Martin Luther, plans to wait with his mouth open, sure that a fried chicken will sooner or later fly right in there and feed him. I am very disappointed. This is not a plan. This is magical, wishful thinking.
My reply:
Mr. N., you castigate me for not describing a detailed plan when I didn’t offer one, and you misunderstand what I did say. I assumed that it was obvious, and therefore did not need to be said, that a mere mortal cannot outline a detailed plan that will ensure victory. My essay and my comments were obviously intended to be general observations rather than a detailed battle plan. Obviously I did not say “Wait for the left to fall apart.” That you would describe my words in this way is evidence that you are thinking with your emotions. I was describing the weakness of liberalism: If it has no weaknesses then it will rule forever, so it is important to understand that it does have weaknesses. I was simply proving that victory is possible, not making this my plan.
If you would read the essays of mine linked above, you will see more details of how we can fight the left. Basically, we need to organize to do what the left did: persuade people, take advantage of their sense that something is wrong with the status quo, and inspire them with an ideal, except that our ideal is traditionalist conservatism. You bitterly recount the failed conservative campaigns of the recent past. They failed because they did not do what needs to be done: challenge the left on its basic principles rather than just on specific issues. [LA replies: Bravo!]
I am preparing more essays giving more details about “conservative evangelism.” One person cannot possibly create the battle plan; the subject is too vast. But I can certainly make important points that others can work on.
Here are two questions for you, Mr. N: Are you sure the situation is hopeless? And if you are not 100 percent sure, then rather than continuing to curse the darkness, why don’t you light a candle? If you refuse to do so, then you become our enemy, whether you intend it or not.
The fight goes on.
LA replies:
Mr. Roebuck writes:
We should not aim for a society ruled in a Christian manner by Christians. We should only aim for what we had until roughly the 1950s: a society in which the government generally allowed Christian communities to define themselves and act as they saw fit, and which did not tolerate, or force people to pretend to celebrate, obvious sins such as abortion, homosexuality, public blasphemy, and the deliberate attempt to replace white Americans people with hostile and inassimilable foreigners via mass immigration.
Mr. Roebuck is not granting enough to pre-1950 America. Prior to the 1950s, we didn’t just have Christian communities that could govern themselves and make their own rules. We had a majority culture in which belief in or deference to the God of the Bible was the norm, which was implicitly or explicitly Christian in all kinds of ways, and which did not allow gross public disrespect to Christianity. We had a culture in which atheists arguing for the elimination of religion, such as Heather Mac Donald or Deroy Murdock today, would not have been able to make such arguments in mainstream publications. We had a culture in which Christianity-haters like Bill Maher or Christopher Hitchens, if they existed, would have been confined to the dark alleyways of society.
- end of initial entry -
Steve W. writes:
This statement doesn’t appear to be an accurate description of pre-1950s history:
We had a culture in which atheists arguing for the elimination of religion, such as Heather Mac Donald or Deroy Murdock today, would not have been able to make such arguments in mainstream publications. We had a culture in which Christianity-haters like Bill Maher or Christopher Hitchens, if they existed, would have been confined to the dark alleyways of society.
Certainly there were prominent, outspoken atheists and anti-Christians in the first half of the 20th Century. Isn’t Bertrand Russell an example? And wasn’t this what William F. Buckley was complaining about at Yale in the early 1950s? According to Buckley’s book, God and Man at Yale, these intellectual currents already were preeminent in the American intelligentsia by this time, right? What time period do you have in mind when they were more marginalized? Moreover, please correct me if I am wrong, but you appear to be arguing in favor of some kind of enforced uniformity of thought on matters of religion (e.g., “would not have been able” and “would have been confined”). Is this your solution to our present cultural decay? Suppression? (Not to mention, who will be doing the suppressing? And how?) Does decadence inevitably lead to tyranny? If so, perhaps the pessimists and defeatists are right.
LA replies:
Though Steve W. has been reading and commenting at this site for years, he still seems to be vaguely under the impression that it is a libertarian site, fitting his libertarian dispositions, and so when he sees me say something that is non- or anti-libertarian, he is scandalized. Is it necessary for me to explain again the difference between traditionalism and libertarianism? Is it necessary for me to explain again that all societies, including liberal/libertarian societies, have standards in keeping with the self-identity of the society, standards that they enforce by allowing some things and disallowing others, whether they acknowledge that they are doing this or not? Is it necessary for me to explain that this is not a matter of law, but of the shared affirmations by which a society defines itself? Has Steve been reading VFR all this time and never encountered this idea?
I would ask Steve to go to the Word document, “VFR articles arranged by topic,” linked on the sidebar, and peruse the articles under the headings “Traditionalism,” and “Resisting the rule of liberalism; the traditionalist agenda.” In other words, Steve, how about learning what VFR is actually about, instead of reacting against each assertion of a traditionalist, non-libertarian idea at this site as though you had never encountered one before?
As for the place of outspoken atheism in pre-1950s society, Russell was a high level intellectual but not seen as mainstream. My point stands that in pre-1950s America you would not have seen articles in mainstream publications, let alone conservative publications, arguing that Christianity was objectionable and that society would be better off if people stopped believing in God. When Ayn Rand came out as an out and out religion hater in 1957 with the publication of Atlas Shrugged, the conservative movement, which had previously embraced her, famously expelled her.
Mercedes D. writes:
Dear Laura and Lawrence:
Thank you both for the recent and continuing discussion of Alan Roebuck’s ideas about Conservative Evangelism. I think he is absolutely correct, and I look forward to reading the continuing discussion about it on both The Thinking Housewife and View from the right every day. I am also eager to read Alan’s essay (“The Proposed Manifesto of the American Traditionalist Society”) when he publishes it.
God bless you both, and Alan Roebuck as well.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 11, 2010 04:00 PM | Send
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