The Last Christian on Earth

by Os Guinness

  “Oh, no,” St. Peter muttered. “Not that Ulsterman back.”

  “No,” said the gatekeeper, “It’s the Devil—asking for political asylum.”

  The audience greatly enjoyed the joke, and so did I, though not for the reason the bishop intended. For behind the jest was a revealing gulf, not between Englishman and Irishman or Anglican and Presbyterian, but between far more serious rivals: conservative and liberal churchmanship.

  Nothing better illustrates and introduces the third main area in which we have inflicted serious damage on the Church: damage to its involvement in the modern world. All sorts of labels have been attached to the different sides of this gulf—orthodox versus revisionists, reactionary versus progressive, right wing versus left wing, “fundies” versus “trendies”—but all are a revealing admission that in almost every department of the Christian faith there is now a bitter division over how to engage the modern world.

  Earlier, Western citizens were well aware of their deep divisions in facing the challenge of the Soviet bloc. Were they hawks or doves? Supporters of cold war or of détente? But Christians have generally failed to appreciate how the far greater challenge of modernity has left them just as hopelessly divided. This fatally compromises their integrity and effectiveness. Ecumenism, as the bishop shows, often stops at home. Thanks to the overwhelming challenge of modernity and the chronically divided Christian response, a credible, united Christian Church is no longer possible.

  This grand polarization is far more important to us than the divisions between denominations. Indeed, we have reached the place where an orthodox Baptist or Presbyterian is closer to an orthodox Anglican or Lutheran than they are to revisionists in their own denomination—and vice versa. Ecumenism is thought to be a tremendous gain for the Church. But if our research findings are accurate, it will not be in the long run. Whatever the gain, it is comparatively trivial. Trends such as secularization and rationalization have already eroded the foundations of the once-impregnable denominational walls, so all that the “ecumaniac” is achieving is the dismantling of crumbling masonry.

  More importantly, Christians have become so excited about the din and drama of demolition that they have not noticed the even greater wall of division rising nearby. What is left of old partitions between denominations is nothing compared with what is now dividing different Christian stances toward the modern world.

  Civil war has always been the most refined and the most cruel of wars—the two sides know each other so well. Similarly, conservative Christians and liberal Christians confront each other implacably, like pope and anti-pope in the medieval world. Each lays claim to the truth and accuses the other of being in error. But each undermines its own claim by failing to see that it feeds on the other and uses the other as one side uses the opposing team in tug of war. If the tension between them were severed, both would fall flat.

  The best way to appreciate this polarization is to view it as a continuum stretched between the two poles of extreme conservatism and extreme liberalism.1 But before we look at this in detail, let me make some preliminary points.

  First, our interest in describing the polarization is to survey the broad trends and tendencies that we can use. We are not obsessed with individual people or schools (although you will notice that the polarization has greatly increased the vice of “naming names” and has therefore given a lot of mileage to Propaganda and Disinformation). Reality, of course, is often a little messier and more complicated than the broad types, which I have deliberately simplified to make a point and to help us discriminate in labeling real cases.

  Also, be sure never to allow the question of sincerity to creep into your assessments. Sincerity is one of the strongest drives in the whole movement of polarization. Passionate sincerity fuels the polarization and makes it extreme and bitter (each side, being sincere, regards the other’s position as not wholly honest). This becomes useful in allowing us to egg them on and compound the damage. But our first task is to understand the polarization and the extent of the damage it is causing. For that task, the issue of sincerity only muddies the water. Both sides are sincere. The question is, in which direction and to what extent?

  Finally, notice the distinction between our use of the terms “conservative” and “liberal” and the common religious usage that is restricted to theology. The common usage refers only to the way Christians relate to the modern world “theoretically” (conservatism resisting modern thought and liberalism adapting to it). Our distinctive use is important. In line with our whole operation and its goal of subversion through worldliness, we regard theology as only one part of the Church’s involvement in the modern world. Our categories of conservative and liberal, therefore, cover practical as well as theoretical involvement. We are as much concerned to foster worldliness of institutions, which they seldom consider, as worldliness of ideas, a far more common preoccupation.

  This is crucial strategically. Although conservatism, defined theologically, often coincides with conservatism, defined culturally, at other times it may be extremely liberal when defined culturally and yet not know it because of its lack of a wider category by which to judge. As we shall see of the Evangelicals and the fundamentalists, this fact allows us to turn Christians who are the most world denying in theory into those who are the most worldly in practice. Their language masks their lifestyle from themselves.

  THE GREAT POLARIZATION

  I am not trying to set out a comprehensive overview of Christian conservatism and liberalism, but only to analyze the polarization between the conservative and liberal stances toward the modern world. I have jotted down a short outline of the main contrasts between them. As I stressed, this is highly simplified, yet it serves as a rule of thumb with which to make preliminary assessments. Stand back and look at the broad strokes and you will see the real pattern emerge.

  In this memo, I will examine the conservative tendency, leaving the liberal tendency to the next one. Notice that on either side they are in an invidious position and neither represents a real solution. The track record of both extremes makes rather shabby reading. Unable to maintain a balanced third way, Christians have found themselves pulled irresistibly toward one pole or the other.

  Émigrés from a Lost World

  Has the clock of history ever been turned back after a broadly based revolution has succeeded? In fact it has, and two of the greatest movements in Western history were just such a “return to the past”—the Renaissance and the Reformation. But such is today’s thoughtless, pell-mell rush to the future, and such is the instinctive denigration of the past (“so yesterday”), that this awkward fact is quite forgotten. In today’s climate, supporters of any ancien régime may try ceaselessly to turn back the clock, but all they do is consign themselves to the scrap heap of history.

  Ponder this point, and you will see why today’s Christian conservative is the spiritual émigré from a lost world. The ancien régime of the spiritual has been overturned in the secular uprising, and the once taken for granted solidity of yesterday’s religious certainties are shattered into a thousand fragments. Or to change the picture, Christian conservatives are like the scattered embers of a once-blazing fire, extinguished in the grate, which still smolder and spit in the corners to which they have been flung. Fierce loyalties, long memories, forlorn causes, splintering factions, fading dreams—conservatives are refugees from yesterday and show all the marks of the émigré mentality.

  To see the heart of the conservative dilemma, start from the two problems at its core and then trace the inevitable weaknesses that follow. The first problem is one that has confronted conservatism in every age, not just in the modern world: It is impossible to be absolutely conservative. The reason is simply that time does not stand still. So even if an individual or group manages to preserve something from one generation to the next, it may come to have a different meaning (or perhaps no meaning) because it has a different setting.

  What is true of communication across language
s is also true of communication across generations. An idea or intention can mean the same thing in another tongue or in a different time only if its form is changed when necessary. “Thank you” in English means “thank you” in French only when it is translated to “merci.” In the same way, if there is to be authentic communication from one generation to the next, what is assumed naturally in fluency between languages would have to be paralleled by flexibility between generations.

  Here, then, is the nub of the conservative dilemma: passing time. Only the eternal does not eternally change. So the less eternal a reality, the more ephemeral it will be. Absolute conservatism is therefore self-defeating: the ideal of changelessness is an illusion. Nothing changes more inevitably than that which refuses to change.

  The second problem is peculiar to the modern world. The central thrust in modernization toward change and choice puts an unprecedented strain on conservatism. As impossible as absolute conservatism has always been, most pre-modern cultures naturally bred a high degree of conservatism, sometimes even creating the illusion that time was stationary and society static. In such periods it was change, not conservatism, which needed justifying. For most people conservatism has traditionally been a state of affairs, not a conscious philosophy.

  Like a new broom or a revolutionary government, modernization swept all that away. Gone is the sense of the taken-for-granted givenness of things. Choice and change are now the state of affairs. No longer is there anything automatic or assured about tradition, so to be conservative is to be defensive self-consciously. The result is a new nervousness, insecurity, and anger. Genuine conservatism in a fast-changing world is a threatened species, and the aggressiveness with which it defends itself betrays its underlying insecurity. The old assurance has gone for good.

  We have therefore forced modern conservatives into a vicious quandary. To defend conservatism well, they must do it in a progressive way; to fight for tradition, they must use weapons that are modern. This is why fundamentalism has become a modern reaction to the modern world.

  Like democrats condemned to become illiberal in the process of defending pluralism, or humanitarians who become inhuman in defense of humanity, modern conservatives are caught in a double bind. They must sup with the devil, but the long spoon is in short supply. They will resist change to the death, but in the struggle for tradition not a single feature of their familiar world will be left unchanged.

  Small wonder field agents find conservative-baiting such good sport. These two core problems are inescapable for conservatism in the modern world and explain its air of inherent instability. Traditional conservatism was like a pyramid—massive, solid, stable and almost impossible to overturn. Modern conservatism, by contrast, is like a top—unless it keeps spinning, it falls.

  Driving Them Toward the Traps

  Once you understand this émigré status of conservatism and the problems at its heart, you will no longer be surprised at its precariousness and its proneness to fall into traps. There are seven main pitfalls in the path of the modern conservative. Not even a buffoon with boundless energy could succeed in stumbling into all of them. But it is surprisingly easy to drive conservatives from one pitfall to another, and thus to weaken their otherwise considerable energy.

  The first three pitfalls can be engineered as a result of a conservative impulse to resist modernity by withdrawing from culture (hence “fossils”). The other four are related to the alternative impulse to resist modernity by engaging with culture, although in a distinctly conservative, sometimes belligerent way (hence “fanatics”).

  Pitfall 1: Elimination

  The first pitfall concerns the vulnerability of extreme conservatism to elimination by force.2 This is the rarest pitfall, one that is inoperable in the West today, but I include it for the sake of completeness since it illustrates the dynamics of conservatism so well. The problem for the conservative here is clearly not internal. Quite the opposite. Sensing a menacing degree of corruption or compromise in the wider Church or society, a conservative community may determine to be radically different. It may even achieve a level of consistency and purity that contrasts dramatically with the rest of the Church.

  But if it does this by almost completely disengaging from the surrounding culture, it will achieve its victory at the price of becoming not only dramatically different but also totally defenseless. It can then be eliminated by political decision or, as in the past, through mob violence.

  This is what happened in Russia around the time of the revolution. Prior to 1917 there were various Utopian religious communities that even the Marxists regarded as progressive. But once the Marxists came to power, the story changed. These communities were suddenly seen as reactionary. They were threats, centers of a different way of doing things in a society that could not tolerate such deviance. In order to be consistent, they had become detached; being detached, they had become defenseless. As such they were easily eliminated.

  By contrast, the Russian Orthodox Church proved impossible to eliminate. What it lacked in the Orthodoxy of its very name, it made up for in Russianness, and therefore became so intertwined with Russian thought and life that it was ineradicable. Marxists, wishing to eliminate Russian Orthodoxy completely, would have had to break with the best and greatest part of their own past. Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and countless others would have had to be pitched out too.

  This pre-revolutionary story in Russia illustrates the sort of dilemma with which we can confront conservatives. Are they committed to culture? Then they become contaminated and compromised (more Russian than Orthodox, more tares than wheat). Are they different from culture? Then they grow detached and become defenseless. Because they are separate, they become small; and because they are small, they are easily suppressed. Once set apart from the tares, the Russian wheat was harvested with a single swing of the Soviet sickle.

  Pitfall 2: Ossification

  The second pitfall is also rare today, at least in its more advanced versions: the tendency of extreme conservatism to harden slowly into rigid and inflexible forms, whether of beliefs or habits.3 Here again, the primary problem for the conservative community is not internal. As with the first pitfall, conservatives may be astute in recognizing trends in the wider culture that present a danger, and they may resist them effectively while demonstrating a more consistently Christian alternative.

  Nor in this case is the problem external in the sense that there is any threat of outside force. The problem lies instead in the way conservatives achieve their goals. If they achieve and maintain their purity by cutting off contact with the outside world and building a closed world of their own (especially a closed world of the mind), then the lack of challenge and interchange sets off a hardening process.

  Communities that do this may be relatively successful in achieving their goals, but only at the expense of stiffening into a permanently defensive posture. Loyalty may still be high and nostalgia will run deep. But over the course of time such communities begin to resemble living antiques, Disneyesque reconstructions of a previous age. Inescapable problems then arise: How do they win new converts? How do they make sense to a new generation? How do they keep their own children?

  You can see advanced forms of this in some of the old Amish settlements, or the more extreme Orthodox Jewish communities in New York. Milder versions were once commonplace among Christian conservatives of all kinds—that is, until the social earthquake of the ’60s jolted many Christian groups out of the sleep of decades and into cultural awareness. Genuine otherworldliness is rarely a feature of conservatives today. Their problem is worldliness—though from time to time separatist tendencies (such as the Christian Yellow Pages movement and the extremes of the Christian Schools movement) have allowed us to revive this possibility.

  Our simplest way of speeding up the hardening process is to perpetuate any success beyond the point of usefulness. Was Christian abstention from alcohol a striking stance in the gin-sodden world of the eighteenth century? Then harde
n it into the arbitrary absolute of prohibition, and it will do nearly as much havoc to the faith as the original drink. Is this new music something they will borrow for worship? Then put it in the deep-freeze of tradition, and over the centuries the dances of Calvin’s Geneva will become the dirges of the Scottish isles. Is a new way of doing things successful? Then let it be done again and again and again, forever and ever. Amen.

  Remember that what is “best” and “highest” for one generation can be made dreary and deadly for the next. Time has moved on, but the old are stuck and the young are stumbled. There is only one tactic that rivals the old trick of turning the Adversary’s absolutes into relatives—turning the Adversary’s relatives into absolutes. Achieve this, and ossification sets in at once.

  Pitfall 3: Domestication

  The third pitfall is less drastic, but likely to catch many who sidestep the previous one. It concerns the tendency of conservatism to become docile in the demonstration of its differences. On the surface this pitfall resembles the previous one. Once again the problem is not primarily internal; the conservative community or group maintains its distinctiveness successfully. Nor is it external in an obvious way; there is neither the threat of force (as in pitfall one), nor any need to erect a moat and drawbridge of the mind (as in pitfall two).

  There is the rub. Without an external threat, the conservative community is neither troubled—nor troubling. It is tolerated, perhaps even applauded and adopted by the world outside, but only so long as it poses no challenge to that world.

  I do not need to reiterate the pressures that make this pitfall so prevalent today. Privatization in particular is ideal for helping us to produce this effect. Nothing is more domesticated than the “household gods” and the “spiritual playground” faith of the private sphere. Counterfeit forms of faith fit in nicely here too. Ceremonial religion and civil religion, for example, are not only tolerated and applauded, but they are actually subsidized. They are as endearing and compliant as a regimental mascot on parade.