Who’s the Boss?
July 01, 2005
Prof. Koyzis has clarified his position. He wonders what my views of religious freedom are, and reduces vexing questions of religious liberty to nearly meaningless theoretical mealy-mouth-isms like: “The state normatively mandates obedience to the laws but not uniformity of religious belief, the encouragement of which lies beyond its mandate as a limited differentiated institution.” This will simply not do (as if a clear dividing line ran straight and true between belief and behavior), though I daresay that a previous associate of mine, the very ill-liberal Mr. Cromwell, could have agreed enough to get on with the business of actually ruling: “As to freedom of conscience, I meddle with no man’s conscience; but if you mean by that, liberty to celebrate the Mass, I would have you understand that in no place where the power of the Parliament of England prevails shall that be permitted.” There’s a man I can respect, limb of Satan though he was. Would that today’s Cromwells contained just a trace of that same metal from which the original was cast.
The problem is, for Koyzis and others like him, that for all their strong repudiation of liberalism, choice, and individualism, they have theorized themselves into a corner from which they cannot escape. Koyzis correctly goes to the heart of the matter in its most primitive form: “in a world filled with competing worldviews and the claims made on their behalf, and where so many have been uprooted from their nurturing traditions, we need to know whom and what to obey.”
Yes, who’s the boss? That is the question.
Or more to the point, who’s the boss of the faithful? A theory? A salad bar? The free market? Caesar? A liberal panoply of diverse perspectives mutually tolerating each other and working toward rational consensus (voiceover: now with 30% more Christians of influence)? For Koyzis and others committed to the liberal public square, clothed though it may be, the final answer is all of the above, which always boils down to: well, you are the boss. We are each our own boss, and the only power we must give up in exchange for this privilege is the power to invade another’s ability to be his own boss. Given this situation, Christians of good heart who seek some kind of temporal justice and righteousness are left with only the relatively weak tools of rational argument and persuasion and a naive conception of power which is, at best, ineffective, and at worst, dangerous. Thus, Koyzis must always fall back on “discernment” as the highest Christian good, and is forced into making such clearly false statements as “discernment necessarily precedes obedience.” Discernment in this context amounts to nothing more than the retort of the rebellious fool that, “I will do this, but not because you tell me to, only because I have decided it is right.” The discerning person, in the context of “principled pluralism,” retains ultimate jurisdiction over himself. He cedes autonomy to no one.
A sure indicator that one’s soul is locked into the principle of autonomous choice is the reaction of most “thoughtful” Christians to the gauche religious right–those who, in a rather crude and clumsy way, are actually in the business of seizing and wielding power. The discerning Christian of no tradition has such anxieties about being identified with the Ted Haggards–and about being ruled by them–that they slide willy-nilly into the Jim Wallis mold. To be sure, they don’t mean to become liberals, as surely as Koyzis struggles hard against the shackles he willingly wears, but in trying to find the perfect non-Catholic orthodoxy with some satisfying catholicity their main oppositional reference point becomes an ill-liberal version of the faith, whether it be the crusading hordes of suburban Republican fundamentalists or ultramontanist Catholics. Keeping their eyes on this creature who would violate the sacred principle of the liberal public square, they back away toward the theological and political left, assuming this is how one properly centers oneself. Then salt your progress with “ecumenical” sound-bites from the likes of Wendell Berry, or George Steiner and “the Christian tradition” to reassure yourself you’re well-grounded. This is the formula of Christian assimilation.
Further problems arise when one considers that the principled pluralism advanced by Koyzis mandates not just tolerance of all religious beliefs, but also of all philosophies and ideologies. On what grounds, in a liberal state such as this, can a polity possibly arrive at a definition of the common good and how to enforce it? Only by recourse to the liberal theories of individual consent and contract. This is, without a doubt, the most corrosive force at work in our world upon true religious belief. It has proven a universal solvent to every traditional bond it has ever come across, and has left desolation, alienation, and ruin everywhere in its wake. Pointing this out has been a central thrust of this publication from the beginning: “[The liberal public square] prizes above all else the liberty of an individual to define himself in a fluid environment, unimpeded by any outside constraint save perhaps the reciprocal consent of his fellow citizens–a consent which, by the perverse logic of Liberalism, can almost never be withheld. This freedom, left unchecked, has become endemically exploitative in both the political right and left today, though for a time the areas of exploitation have remained distinct. And it is manifested in a dehumanizing materialism which, in essence, denies the human soul.”
This all adds up to the phenomenon of “flattening” that Koyzis correctly points to. It is the fact that he and other Christians are unaware that it is they who are being flattened that chiefly concerns me. Koyzis seems to make the error of confusing intent with effect. He does not intend to be liberal, and that is good enough for him. Yet the effect of his commitments and the commitments of his fellows is the inexorable progress of liberalism. He and others become rather naive and unaware abettors of the very thing they profess to stand against.
It is not true, as Koyzis asserts, that principled pluralism can account for “genuine differences” among what Koyzis labels “the pluriformity of human communities and responsibilities.” That its adherents believe that they have retained such “pluriformity” I have no doubt, however, they are deceived. Liberalism conquers its own dissidents not with armies, but with illusions. What appears to so many Christians as solid “communities of faith” are in actuality, houses of cards based on the confluence of a niche market and a political identity group, both of which seat the autonomous principle of choice on the throne. Those who wonder why Christian churches cannot weather even the smallest squall need look no further than this fact for their answer.
On this very point the editors of tNP prepared a very convincing case study concerning the efforts of Lisa Beamer after September 11 to which I warmly refer Prof. Koyzis. In examining the attempts of Christians to bear faithful witness in the public square after unexpected and unasked for notoriety befell them, the editors observed that while there is an “abundance of Christian hand-wringing over what counts as proper cultural engagement,” this “wrangling rarely gets past debating standards of propriety or ‘taste.’” They went on to say:
And the threat to authentic, socially engaged faith is much stronger and much more serious than might be supposed from a discussion over mere style. To us, the root of the problem, and the threat, lies in the fact that in a deeply liberal environment, the only important questions are questions of style. In fact, it is one of the primary functions of our open society to reduce the public sphere, as much as possible, to choices of taste and style. Very few people are willing to kill you because they don’t like the clothes you wear.
By providing a nexus between identity politics and niche marketing, liberal democracies give each “faction” what they appear to want in exchange for the tacit admission that what they want is, in public at least, only a “choice” or “style,” and not inherently better than whatever it is that other factions want. “‘Let’s roll,’” as Lisa Beamer/Ken Abraham explains in Let’s Roll “is not a slogan, a book or a song; it’s a lifestyle.” Who or what is included or excluded from that lifestyle? Success in the mainstream rests on leaving that question unanswered.
But while convincing someone that they are wrong is tacky (and possibly grounds for having one’s citizenship in the pluralistic state revoked), convincing people that without the right choices they are not “cool” or “with it” or “in style” is encouraged; in fact, required. Appealing to the widest possible market is the prime directive of advertising in a market society. It is also the stated goal of most Christian commercial entities which see broad appeal as a missiological as well as an entrepreneurial calling.
Of course, aiming for the widest audience is tantamount to trying to please everyone and offend no one. This is what keeps Stone Phillips’ plastic smile firmly intact when people like Lisa Beamer talk about the importance of their faith on Dateline NBC. As long as they don’t start out-and-out proselytizing–a word that embarrasses more and more Evangelicals–they’re fine. Just another viewpoint among many under one liberal pluralist state. As the iconoclastic Stanley Fish has written in First Things, a Christian may sit at “liberalism’s table, … but it will still be liberalism’s table … and the etiquette of the conversation will still be hers.”
Similarly, you can make an “Evangelical” or “Christian” labeled product, but it will just be another product in a market full of products. In a consumer economy, the product, like “the message,” in Marshall McLuhan’s famous saying, cannot transcend its medium–the structures that direct its construction, packaging, delivery and reception or consumption. In this view, Christian products in the form of books, clothes, music, etc., are ultimately nothing more than the artifacts of a niche market in the contemporary cultural scene, and like all the other artifacts, they bear the stamp Liberalism. Even when the niche market seems to be making exclusive claims or cohere around a relatively exclusive identity, this is just business as usual in the game of identity politics.
Look at it this way. There is Country Club Barbie, and Secretary Barbie, and Doctor Barbie, and Lawyer Barbie. There is also Black Barbie, Asian Barbie, and Hispanic Barbie. So why not Evangelical Barbie? Everyone gets to have their kind of Barbie and think it is the best. This pride is not just indulged, it is encouraged, because it is the bait required to exact the price liberal democracy requires. Exclusivist claims and preferences for one thing over all other things are neutered once packaged. You can proclaim the superiority of Evangelical Barbie all you want, but at the end of the day, people have choices, and Neopagan Barbie is moving off the shelves pretty fast. The mistake Christians often make in this deeply liberal environment is to exchange critical engagement with the world’s structures for a spot at liberalism’s table, preferably a spot in the limelight. Now it’s Evangelical Barbie ahead by a nose–clearly God’s work. Vox populi, vox dei.
Within this plastic environment, Christians not deeply rooted in some non- and pre-liberal tradition are left doing the endless dance of self-fashioning, always to the liberal fiddler’s tune; and the fiddler always gets paid. G.K. Chesterton put it succinctly, and with exquisite directness: “The Catholic Church is the only thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his own age.”
This is Who’s the Boss? in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: No Messing with Mister In-Between | Next: Hold the Line, Simians! | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
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