[Rod Dreher 03/22 09:08 AM]Today we're going on to the Religion chapter, which is in some ways the most important one in Crunchy Cons. I didn't set out to write this book with this in mind, but it became clear to me that the base of this entire neo-traditionalist sensibility is religious conviction. It quickly became clear in doing my research that almost everyone to whom I'd spoken was in some serious way a religious believer. Why is that? I think it's because people who are serious about their religion understand in their bones how devotion to God and to His laws must be the basis for ordering our own lives, and that of our society.
That does not have to mean a theocracy, I hasten to add; I doubt anyone here would want to live in a theocracy, and the idea that the bishop could call the magistrate and have me put in jail is a revolting idea. But it seems to me clear that T.S. Eliot, in his essay "The Idea of a Christian Society," was right to say that the idea that a Christian (and I might add a serious Jew or Muslim) can accomodate himself easily to a liberal society in which religion is entirely privatized, and which consents to treat the believer good-naturedly, so long as he doesn't presume to think his belief has nothing to do with life and how to live it — well, that attitude is becoming "less and less tenable."
In no case did I find what most of us (well, us conservatives at least) would call religious fanaticism. Rather, I found quite a few people struggling with more or less the same dilemma that a British Muslim woman I met last December in Dubai is: she told me that she and her husband are faithful Muslims who worry about losing their children to Islamic fundamentalism; but they are equally worried about the eroticized, materialistic, go-go culture that is now mainstream in Britain. She said she and her husband are increasingly alienated from British society, not because they are religious radicals (far from it; they despise the Islamists), but because they are sincere believers in God, who has been discarded by British society. We religious Americans are better off than those believers in the UK, but I believe many of us share this woman's anxieties.
Eliot said that Christians should be aiming for "a society in wich the natural end of man — virtue and well-being in community — is acknowledged for all, and the supernatural end — beatitude — for those who have the eyes to see it." There is an entire worldview there in those few words, and I think it's a pretty accurate summation of the crunchy-con social ideal. We should talk about that in over the next few days.
It is also worth discussing the observation first made (to my knowledge) by the scholar James Davison Hunter: that the fault lines in American culture no longer run between religious confessions, but between liberals and conservatives across churches and faiths. (Terry Mattingly sums Hunter's observation up
here.) Why do I find it much easier as a Catholic to talk to a Southern Baptist or an Orthodox Jew about matters of faith, politics, society, etc., than with liberal members of my own church? It has to do with the way we view religious truth, and indeed Truth itself. Conservatives in whatever religion view Truth as transcendent, as something that can be known, however imperfectly, and as an objective standard that humans have to conform our own consciences to. The modern, liberal view is that Truth is mutable, and can be reinterpreted in every generation to suit the perceived needs of the community. I have more in common with Tikva Crolius, the Orthodox Jew I interview in Crunchy Cons, than I do with liberal Catholics, chiefly because we both see Truth as transcendent and objective, even though we disagree over the precise nature of that Truth. Yet it must be admitted that there are potentially dark implications for this exclusivist view. How do we hold onto exclusivist truth (which to me is just Truth) in a pluralistic society?
Finally, I hope we can talk about a point Spengler and some others have raised, namely: is it possible to embrace a tradition that is not your own? Caleb is the only person in the Religion chapter who remains in the faith in which he was raised. Everyone else is a convert. Does migrating to another religion indicate a true subjectivism masked by a superficial quest for Truth? What do you do when you find yourself questing for Truth in a deracinated society that has effectively destroyed tradition? What about Evangelicalism, the most politically conservative American faith, but also the one most radically rooted in the individual experience, and therefore most adaptable to the way Americans live today? Is their success a sign of hope for our increasingly rootless country, or at bottom something that should make traditionalists despair? As Spengler observes:
I agree with Dreher that the Chartres Cathedral is more conducive to spirituality than a shopping-mall megachurch, but there is a reason why Chartres is full of tourists and the megachurches are full of worshippers. What if this is as good as it gets?
