I’m too principled for this church, too principled for this church, so principled it hurts
January 17, 2006
Another Pantagruelist stirring the pot! And at the outset I must vouch for Prof. Hochschild’s character of restraint. For over a year now I have been urging, nay, begging, the good Professor to allow me to stand as middle man between he and certain, shall we call them, Jesuit recalcitrants of my acquaintance, who would be all too pleased to dust off their eye screws for President Litfin and his minions. When I told these friends of mine of Goodman Hochschild’s refusal, they were quite bereaved, one going so far to say that on this account Hochschild was not “Catholic enough” and his conversion for naught. I on the other hand think that such liberalizing abstentions from violent recourse in matters theological have their place in a modern church for good, provided of course that they are occasionally offset by a cracked kneecap here or there.
It has been interesting to watch the fallout in the days following the Wall Street Journal piece (no longer available online, but the inferior Chicago Sun Times version is) on Hochschild’s firing. J. Bottum of First Things approves of Wheaton’s actions, writing that: “[P]rincipled stands are supposed to cost something; otherwise, they’re not stands but merely poses. In the end, Wheaton is, I think, to be applauded for trying to prevent the decline of religious identity…. If Catholics are concerned—as they ought to be—about the Catholic identity of their own colleges and universities, then they must accept the right and even duty of Protestant schools to maintain a Protestant character.”
This sounds fine at first glance, but it cannot stand to any serious scrutiny. It is rather like saying that because heterosexuals expect the right to marry, they must likewise defend the rights of homosexuals to the same state. Codswallop of course! If I didn’t know better I might assume Puck is up to his mischievous games again!
But more importantly, perhaps, is that Bottum begs the question of whether there is, or can be, such a thing as a “Protestant character” in the first place, a question he seems to sense lingering when he earlier noted that the problem “is the difficulty in crafting a faith statement that can be signed by every Protestant—from the highest of high-church Anglicans to the lowest of low-church fundamentalists—but can’t be signed by any Catholic. In the end, all such things are likely to run on a wink and prayer, which says a great deal about the incoherence of some Christian disunity.” A wink and a prayer indeed.
This kind of question raising and begging reads to me like an attempt to contain dissent among the coalition of “mere Christianity” and of “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” Bottum announces that the response “of serious religious believers, Protestant and Catholic alike,” i.e., those in the coalition, will be: “Good for Wheaton.”
I don’t think Bottum is right about the reaction of many conservatives who may be in, or have been in, the MC club. Many of these would only think that this firing is good if Wheaton had ejected a liberal Catholic or mainliner. The real problem is that Wheaton has liberals by the bucketful. Weed out all the catholic Christians and Wheaton’s “Protestant character” can still accommodate Jim Wallis and pro-gay marriage socialists—precisely because all that can come from literalist reading of the Bible and is thus accommodated by Wheaton’s statement of faith in ways that submission to an orthodox tradition which is clear on deviant expressions of the faith is not.
S.M. Hutchens at Touchstone understands this well and notes that: “A deeper problem for Wheaton, though, the problem of which the rejection is ultimately a symbol, is that in rejecting a Catholic in accordance with Evangelical principles, it has passively endorsed the continued tenure and influence of its liberalizing Evangelicals whose anti-Christianity Litfin and Wheaton, along with almost every major Evangelical institution, have admitted as fully Evangelical…. Wheaton may be devoted to the Bible, but its interpretation is, among Evangelicals, falling into much worse hands than those of the Catholics. In valiant, Protestant resistance to the authority of the pope, Wheaton, with high principle and courage, is solemnly submitting to that of the devil.”
Hutchens demonstrates that he understands one of the key conservative truths of the nature of human existence in the universe: that the truth of right order always lies deeper than the truth of principle. What good does it do a man, or a university, to stand on principle when to do so means he must sit under the devil? Jesus said it best (or, as my friends from Wheaton might say, Bob Dylan said it best) when he said “You gotta serve somebody.”
And thus we arrive at the heart of the matter: Why are Protestants, even liberal ones, acceptable to Wheaton and its donors in a way Catholics are not? When he was an Episcopalian, was anyone at Wheaton concerned that Hochschild and other Episcopalians there were of the Gene Robinson variety? If Wheaton Episcopalians are not judged exclusively by their church, why should a Catholic be? It is because Hochschild’s Catholicism is a clear vote against his former Protestant church and all Protestantism, since he didn’t see fit to join another Protestant Church, not even the locally popular Anglican Mission-in-America church which attracts Wheatonians by the thousands each Sunday. This, more than anything else, triggers the broad Protestant intuition that admitting of a close or essential doctrinal agreement with Catholic tradition and orthodoxy means one is no longer a Protestant. When Protestant and Papist alike have both become true catholic Christians, then the problem shifts to one of ecclesiology. For the Protestant, there is nothing left to explain one’s separate identity or to justify schism short of pretending church membership is a kind of style choice, one of many (equally valid?) doors in the hall of mere Christianity. Conservative minds tend to balk at this liberal, relativizing gesture and thus are vulnerable to giving support to “principled” acts on behalf of a “Protestant character” which, if it exists at all, exists as a liberalizing impulse toxic to the truth of right order found in true catholic Christianity. As one former Wheaton professor has said, “The increasing arrogance of the liberal power block [at Wheaton] was alienating both alumni and supporters, so some act was needed that gave the appearance of traditional values. What better way to bump off a conservative and claim tradition?”
As an addendum, it must be said that while I impugn the very nature of the “Protestant character” here, I am not unaware that many of my separated brethren in the magisterial reformed traditions continue to exist in tidepools and rowboats where they valiantly adhere to the catholic Christianity of their forbears. The problem is simply this: that tidepools do not resist the tide and rowboats cannot cross oceans.
To counteract the impact of the Hochschild affair and the multiple misinterpretations of its importance and meaning currently being proffered, I have made the following quite unprincipled proposals in the spirit of the truth of right order. First, I perceive that the current environment at Wheaton—mixing a liberalizing faculty and administration with a conservative, traditionally-minded student body—makes for a target rich environment. Thus I have sent a missive to my superiors in the church to this effect urging that we hit Wheaton with an English-rite Catholic Church and let young Jesuit missionaries from orthodox Irish seminaries tear through the student body like wolves. It’s their only chance against Wallisification.
Second, given that Hochschild is one of our own here at tNP, I have proposed to the powers that be that a Protestant member of our editorial board (preferably a junior member who has not contributed in a while) be taken out and summarily shot (through the foot of course! What do you people take me for?) in retaliation for Wheaton’s actions. The resulting bloody washrag may be sent to President Limpfin’s chambers, courtesy of yours truly.
On a more serious note, readers may appreciate the following related contributions to tNP and The Japery:
- Evangelical Self-Fashioning
- The Outrageous Ideas of Mark Noll
- Mark Noll on The Bible in Public Life
- Theology of Scandal, by D. G. Hart
- Evangelicalism’s Insecure Calvinists: The Proliferation of the Evangelical Self-Critique Book at the End of the Twentieth Century, by Gregory Johnson
- What Would Jack Do? (Containing Fr. Jape’s criticisms of S. M. Hutchens’ attempt to salvage a viable Protestant ecclesiology followed by Voegelinian therapeutic suggestions.)
- Of Catholicism, Catholicity, and “a Christian Review”
- Traditional, Faithful, Mainstream, Representative, Typical?
- Timid, Theoretical Radicals
And for more serio-comic enjoyment, see Peter Leithart’s “The Accidental Ecumenist.”
This is I’m too principled for this church, too principled for this church, so principled it hurts in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: Bishops Meet to Renew the Language of the Liturgy | Next: Married to the Company in the 21st Century | TrackBack (1) | Comments (0)
Trackback Pings:
TrackBack URL for this entry:
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference I'm too principled for this church, too principled for this church, so principled it hurts:
» Mark Noll’s Evangelical Mind is Moving To Notre Dame from The Japery
Christianity Today reports that Mark Noll will be leaving Wheaton College to replace George Marsden on the History staff at Notre Dame. (Hat tip: Mirror of Justice) Noll made no comment on the move, and there is no reason to… [Read More]
Tracked on February 10, 2006 08:15 PM