Yesterday in The New York Times; last week in The Atlantic; a week before that in First Things, National Review, The American Conservative; and, yes, once more, in The New York Times, an intramural feud within the dandruff-caked world of the conservative commentariat trickled into the broader public discourse.
The hard-to-define dispute is (mostly) about what posture the religious right — and the conservative movement generally — should take toward the current liberal democratic order, which some view as hostile to traditional religious values.
The ballyhoo began when commentator Sohrab Ahmari fired an intellectual shot at fellow conservative writer David French. Ahmari, the op-ed editor at the New York Post, recently published a memoir, "From Fire, by Water," detailing his conversion to Roman Catholicism. French, meanwhile, is an evangelical Christian and an Iraq war veteran, probably best known in Latter-day Saint circles for co-authoring the book, "Why Evangelicals Should Support Mitt Romney (And Feel Good About It!)."
So what’s Ahmari’s issue with French?
Well, Ahmari believes that “for French,” and for those like him, “the solution to nearly every problem posed by … individual autonomy … is yet more autonomous action.” Ahmari contends that simply backing religious morality as a matter of mere personal or social preference will be insufficient to compete with unrelenting cultural forces and economic systems intent on foisting vice on a sometimes unwitting populous.
As Ahmari puts it, “sentimentalization of family life won’t be enough to overcome the challenges posed to it by the present economy. Calls for religious revival are often little more than an idle wish that all men become moral.”
In short, Ahmari (whose memoir is critical of the way religion and government mix within the Middle East) seems to be not only open to government action on a suite of moral issues but downright advocatory.
To his credit, Ahmari is clear-eyed that government can’t resolve every problem.
But, his bullishness doesn’t seem to fully appreciate — despite the 20th century’s more-than-flirtatious history with totalitarianism — how many evils are birthed by well-intentioned strong-arming.
Ahmari may be justified in taking “issue with David French-ism’s almost supernatural faith in something called ‘culture’ — deemed to be neutral and apolitical and impervious to policy — to solve everything.”
Certainly, we cannot live on culture alone. In the spirit of full disclosure: I’m religious. And, I absolutely believe religion is normatively a wise choice. In fact, I think it’s the wise choice.
But, I also become concerned when I read — not from Ahmari himself, but from supporters — offensive comments characterizing the push for robust pluralism as surrendering “the public square … to the pagans and the perverts.”
I agree that our citizenry must match raw autonomy with morality, and liberty with responsibility. In this sense, government can play a part.
I’ve generally been laudatory of Utah’s legal regime when, at its best, it seeks to balance a reverence for human agency with prudent checks on the corrosive effects of social ills — gambling, DUIs, underage drinking, etc.
I agree that our citizenry must match raw autonomy with morality, and liberty with responsibility. In this sense, government can play a part.
This trajectory seems to be aligned with Franklin Roosevelt’s declaration: “In teaching this democratic faith to American children, we need the sustaining, buttressing aid of those great ethical religious teachings which are the heritage of our modern civilization. For ‘not upon strength nor upon power, but upon the spirit of God’ shall our democracy be founded.”
So, you might ask, if we need religion so much to help sustain society, why not impose it a bit more? Why not, as some have recently advocated, start looking to Russia or Hungary as potential models in this regard?
For Christians, at least, the answer may be embedded within our own faith tradition. On this point, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s enduring reflection on faith and freedom in "The Brothers Karamazov" is instructive.
You’ll recall that, within the episode titled "The Grand Inquisitor," Jesus Christ comes back to earth during the period of the inquisition. He begins performing miracles and the people recognize him. Soon, however, the clergy of the day bring Christ in, and the Inquisitor lectures him on why the church ecclesiastics were forced to correct the “errors” he made during his temptations in the desert. The New Testament records that after 40 days of fasting, Satan came tempting Christ to turn stones into loaves, to cast himself down from the temple pinnacle and have the angels bear him up, and, finally, to assume the kingdoms of the earth in exchange for worshiping the tempter.
Professor Simon Critchley writes that Christ’s rejection of Satan’s temptations is the rebuffing of “three potent forces: miracle, mystery and authority.”
These three forces are salient in wielding political power — the first represents endless bread, or the promise of economic superfluity. Combined with authority and mystery, this unholy trio has often been used to legitimate the subjugation of many under the rule of the few.
“What Satan promises Jesus in the last temptation,” Critchley continues, “is complete political authority, the dream of a universal state. Namely, that one no longer has to render to God what is God’s and to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Temporal and eternal power can be unified under one catholic theological and political authority with the avowed aim of assuring universal happiness, harmony and unity.”
And yet, Christ resists.
So, back to Dostoevsky. In the story, the Inquisitor tells Christ that the church has finally corrected his "error" — that is, it has leveraged miracle, mystery and authority to take away freedom and, at last, to put an end to human rebellion to "make them happy."
The reader senses that Christ — who only answers the inquisitor with a kiss at the end — doesn’t believe that true obedience or happiness are gained from the sword or the dole.
But the inquisitor rails: "Oh, never, never, will they learn to feed themselves without our help! No science will ever give them bread so long as they remain free, so long as they refuse to lay that freedom at our feet, and say: 'Enslave, but feed us!'”
And, yet, a resounding message from the gospels is that the bread of heaven is only purchased through grace and the incremental labors of moral agency.
Fears that today's liberal order leads too many away from God are genuine; so too are concerns that the religious aren’t doing enough to combat the trends.
But before we seek to bargain away freedom in order to "make men happy,” we might first seek to do the arduous, but redemptive work of rendering unto God what is his in the varied vines and fig trees he’s so generously planted in the soil of American liberty.