Rod Dreher's Blog, page 488

Mohamed Bzeek Is Surely A Saint

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A reader sent me this incredible story about Mohamed Bzeek, a Los Angeles man — a Muslim immigrant from Libya — who cares for terminally ill foster children that no one else wants. Read on:

He has buried about 10 children. Some died in his arms.

Now, Bzeek spends long days and sleepless nights caring for a bedridden 6-year-old foster girl with a rare brain defect. She’s blind and deaf. She has daily seizures. Her arms and legs are paralyzed.

Bzeek, a quiet, devout Libyan-born Muslim who lives in Azusa, just wants her to know she’s not alone in this life.

“I know she can’t hear, can’t see, but I always talk to her,” he said. “I’m always holding her, playing with her, touching her. … She has feelings. She has a soul. She’s a human being.”

Of the 35,000 children monitored by the county’s Department of Children and Family Services, there are about 600 children at any given time who fall under the care of the department’s Medical Case Management Services, which serves those with the most severe medical needs, said Rosella Yousef, an assistant regional administrator for the unit.

There is a dire need for foster parents to care for such children.

And there is only one person like Bzeek.

“If anyone ever calls us and says, ‘This kid needs to go home on hospice,’ there’s only one name we think of,” said Melissa Testerman, a DCFS intake coordinator who finds placements for sick children. “He’s the only one that would take a child who would possibly not make it.”

More:

There was the girl with the same brain condition as Bzeek’s current foster daughter, who lived for eight days after they brought her home. She was so tiny that when she died a doll maker made an outfit for her funeral. Bzeek carried her coffin in his hands like a shoe box.

“The key is, you have to love them like your own,” Bzeek said recently. “I know they are sick. I know they are going to die. I do my best as a human being and leave the rest to God.”

The whole story is so beautiful it hurts. May God bless that good and holy man and reward him in eternity.

Evangelicals & The Ben Op, Part III

Do Evangelicals have what it takes to do the Benedict Option? That question was asked of me this week by Dr. Al Mohler at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I told him I didn’t know, and I hesitate to pass that kind of judgment on a tradition I don’t know well. He did not have trouble at all with this. He said that Evangelicalism absolutely does not have what it takes … but historical Reformation-era Protestantism does.

I blogged about this yesterday. And this morning, I posted a follow-up. Now, I offer you this third entry, a letter from a reader:

Your posts about Evangelicals and the BenOp have really resonated with me, especially as I am coming to grips with some of the very same issues in my own spiritual life.

My family has belonged to a Bible-believing, entirely orthodox Evangelical church for a decade now, following many years in the spiritual wilderness (though I was raised Lutheran – the old LCA, and my wife a Methodist).  The people are truly wonderful – warm, welcome, deeply committed Christians as I have written to you before.  They are the reason we go back.

But I always had to swallow hard over the contemporary praise music.  In fairness, our church has never gone in for the super-slick performances that many churches do here, which my wife and I have attended at times and, well, they’re awful.  If nothing else, they left us wondering if it would have made any difference if the congregation participated or not – it was truly a performance.  These are very popular in our area, which includes a nearby university town.  Nobody in the ministry is over 40.

And the lack of a liturgy is starting to bother me; though we pray as a body, there is someone leading a prayer and it isn’t truly a “common” prayer that we say together. Creeds are never recited.  There is no call-and-response so to speak.  And once-per-month Communion is a memorial meal affair, preceded by a “sermonette” about the importance of choosing and reflecting on Christ (a mild altar call, I guess).  Never is there any mention of self-examination or thought about giving and receiving beyond just the ushers, e.g. that we are in Communion with Christ.

Maundy Thursday, the day Christ gave us the commandment to “do this”, something shared by virtually every Christian body in the world?  No, that’s too traditional.  How about a hymn or two that everyone knows?  That’s “not the direction we’re moving in”.  Communion more than once a month?  What are you, Catholic?

Many of the congregants are also very well educated in the Bible, C.S. Lewis, Tozer, Calvin, Josephus, etc. and understand Christian history.  But in many, perhaps most, cases there is precious little integration of all these things into a cohesive view of things.  So, like much of the rest of the culture, young people will begin to accept cultural ideas that are quite clearly at odds not just with individual verses of Scripture (some of which can be explained away to an extent) but with the totality of a Christian worldview.  Everyone knows about the 95 Theses, but I doubt anyone could name one, much less #1: the Christian should live in a state of repentance.

I had a discussion with a young woman who came of age in my church, a very orthodox and pure young woman.  We happened to be talking about literature and I mentioned that a professor I know is moderating a discussion of trans issues in publishing.  Despite attending a highly-regarded Christian college, she is entirely on board with trans everything.  That’s all very well and good, but I asked her how on earth she squared that with her Christian faith; I got rather a lecture on persecuted people, focusing on “the least of these”, etc, etc.  After agreeing that the protection of the law should apply to everyone, I asked her how she felt about worshiping a fallible God.  It had not occurred to her that by embracing the acceptance of trans people as perfectly normal and right means rejecting some fairly basic Christian doctrine.  And that doctrine is neither conservative nor progressive and can’t be discarded without the entire edifice crumbling.

And this is, based on my general observation in my region, a pretty common problem.  Pastors won’t confront error much, especially not among popular figures – Jen Hatmaker comes to mind – because they (the pastors) are simply written off as haters.  Or worse, the pastors are simply ignored.  I hear and read lots of people who confront this kind of error online in blogs and such, but rarely do I hear it in the pulpit.  I don’t expect people to be attacked by name, obviously, but it’s time for Evangelicals to stop preaching altar calls every five minutes and start the business of teaching Christians about how to live in harmony with Christ, their faith, and the community.  Part of that is teaching about sexuality and sexual expression, why it is the way it is, and so on.  Evangelical churches need to confront the excessively violent culture that many Christian men seem to take for granted, even revel in, while pretending to eschew pornography.

And what are the tools Evangelicals have for this?  Preaching and Bible study.  You might have a prayer group, but its effectiveness will depend on the willingness of people to pray out loud.  Rote prayers are “too traditional”, even though our fathers in the faith found them sustaining for generations.  Surely knowing Scripture is always beneficial and oftentimes critical, but we must also know HOW to live it out.  And, at the risk of being excessively frank, far too many Evangelicals of my acquaintance

think repentance is a one time thing
are excessively legalistic about alcohol, sex, smoking
are NEVER legalistic about gluttony, violence, or self-regard
take a dim view of any other Christian denomination
hold to teachings (Rapture, wives should be submissive, no women teachers, etc) that are unexamined and frequently misunderstood as if they were the very fulcrum of the faith
and so on

But where to deal with all of this?  Perhaps the Reformed Anglicans.  But I don’t know who else.  I really want to use your book as the basis for an adult Sunday School class, but I’m getting a little resistance.  I think I’ll overcome it, but it stems from two things: (1) it’s too traditional sounding (though my pastor won’t say it) and (2) a lot of people don’t think our church needs it, since the church body appears strong and united.  I’ve gently pointed out how many young people who grew up in church have gone on to divorce, pregnancies outside of marriage, and heterodox beliefs about sex and the family.  The silence is very uncomfortable.

I just don’t know.  It is nice to think that perhaps we can return to the roots of the Reformers because I think Luther and Calvin still have a lot to say, but it’s going to be a long tough process.  A few years back a friend of mine remarked on how the senior pastor at his church was delivering ever more long, boring, and tedious sermons.  I asked him what he intended to do about it, and he replied “I hear a lot of great speakers every week on podcasts.  When I go to church I just take what I need and leave the rest behind.”  Among the circle of people there, I was the only one a little dismayed by that.  But I suppose that’s the outworking of a church where everything is about the individual’s own personal experience.

Let’s hope for the best.

What a great letter. Thank you. I have such insightful readers. About the podcast guy, that’s the outlook of someone who thinks Christianity is about gaining information that meets felt needs. It’s an abstracted MTD. That’s not Christianity, and it’s certainly not going to survive these times.

 

Throwing Chairs To Prevent America’s Suicide

A strong comment by Isidore the Farmer, on why he doesn’t want to hear any lectures by Sen. Rubio about civility:

No one that actually needs to hear what Rubio is saying care at all what he has to say. They are playing a different game by a different set of rules.

Here is what Rubio and most of the so-called conservatives refuse to understand: people like myself do not view the constitution as a suicide pact, and we are tired of watching people like him play by a set of rules that only guarantees he will lose. Rubio needs to realize that the set of rules he is defending have long since been replaced. He is bringing a knife to a tank-fight. And, like all conservatives, he will conserve nothing as a result: not even decorum.

The idea that the Constitution was a document that magically ratifies abortion, gay marriage, transgender bathrooms, open borders, or any of that evil nonsense is laughable. Furthermore, if that is the purpose it now serves, it has no value to me. Worse, it has become my enemy.

The dishonesty of the LGBT movement related to gay and marriage and transgenders, combined with the traditional conservative movement’s disdain of the white working class (my neighbors and my family), added to the insane notion that the chief executive of a sovereign nation can’t follow existing precedent to secure our borders, indicating that we must seemingly let in almost anyone that wishes to be here……..well, those things have made me more than willing to throw a few chairs around.

I serve on the board of a small, rural school. Last year, we had to waste time deciding how to handle Washington telling us that our boys and girls ought to be able to use whatever facility they choose. My wife, a great photographer, no longer takes pictures because we can’t risk six-figure lawsuits that would put us under, for merely refusing to glorify and make beautiful that which is hideous and ugly.

So, yeah, I’m ready to start throwing chairs. There are things that can bother a man much worse than seeing it all come crashing down.

The Constitution and Senatorial decorum, will never serve as a suicide pact I have to embrace just to watch them destroy so many of the customs my ancestors loved, and which I would want for my descendants to love as well.

Bull#@$% like that is why people like me swore, after the Gang of 8, that we would never vote for the likes of Rubio or Ryan ever again. Along with Bill Kristol, they can be among the first to be displaced and replaced, as far as I am concerned.

They have no idea the anger they are drawing up against them. They are hated a little bit more every day.

For Church, Gay Rights Trump Religious Liberty

Here’s news that ought to shake small-o orthodox Christians out of their complacency regarding the future of the church in America:

The majority of Americans who identify as religious say they favor allowing gays and lesbians to legally marry and oppose policies that would give business owners the right to refuse services to same-sex wedding ceremonies, according to data compiled by the Public Religion Research Institute.

Last Friday, the Washington, D.C.-based polling firm released a new analysis drawn from interviews with 40,509 Americans throughout 2016 for PRRI’s American Values Atlas.

The data, which has an error margin of less than 1 percentage point, finds that the majority of only three religious demographics — white evangelical Protestants, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses — said they oppose “allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally.”

While 58 percent of Americans said they support same-sex marriage, 61 percent of white evangelical Protestants, 55 percent of Mormons and 53 percent of Jehovah’s Witnesses signaled that they oppose the legalization of same-sex marriage, which happened in 2015 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states cannot ban same-sex marriage, making it legal nationwide.

By comparison, only 28 percent of white Mainline Protestants and white Catholics, 25 percent of Hispanic Catholics and 30 percent of Orthodox Christians said they oppose allowing gays and lesbians to legally marry.

In the story, the conservative Methodist Mark Tooley says that the PRRI poll misstates what is actually at issue regarding small business owners. Nobody has sought the right to avoid selling to or otherwise serving gay customers. The disputes have all been specifically about participating in same-sex weddings. It’s an important distinction, but I think had the question been phrased more precisely, the outcome would not have been any different.

Anyway, read the whole thing.  A few things about the data stand out to me:

First, religion has been no bulwark against being assimilated into the world’s views on fundamental principles of Christian cosmology (i.e., how reality is constituted), Christian anthropology (i.e., portrait of what man is) and morality. As I explained earlier, the gay marriage issue is what revealed the weakness of Christianity in our culture: “the gay-rights cause has succeeded precisely because the Christian cosmology has dissipated in the mind of the West.” Excerpt:

[I]s sex the linchpin of Christian cultural order? Is it really the case that to cast off Christian teaching on sex and sexuality is to remove the factor that gives—or gave—Christianity its power as a social force?

Though he might not have put it quite that way, the eminent sociologist Philip Rieff would probably have said yes. Rieff’s landmark 1966 book The Triumph Of the Therapeutic analyzes what he calls the “deconversion” of the West from Christianity. Nearly everyone recognizes that this process has been underway since the Enlightenment, but Rieff showed that it had reached a more advanced stage than most people—least of all Christians—recognized.

Rieff, who died in 2006, was an unbeliever, but he understood that religion is the key to understanding any culture. For Rieff, the essence of any and every culture can be identified by what it forbids. Each imposes a series of moral demands on its members, for the sake of serving communal purposes, and helps them cope with these demands. A culture requires a cultus—a sense of sacred order, a cosmology that roots these moral demands within a metaphysical framework.

You don’t behave this way and not that way because it’s good for you; you do so because this moral vision is encoded in the nature of reality. This is the basis of natural-law theory, which has been at the heart of contemporary secular arguments against same-sex marriage (and which have persuaded no one).

Rieff, writing in the 1960s, identified the sexual revolution—though he did not use that term—as a leading indicator of Christianity’s death as a culturally determinative force. In classical Christian culture, he wrote, “the rejection of sexual individualism” was “very near the center of the symbolic that has not held.” He meant that renouncing the sexual autonomy and sensuality of pagan culture was at the core of Christian culture—a culture that, crucially, did not merely renounce but redirected the erotic instinct. That the West was rapidly re-paganizing around sensuality and sexual liberation was a powerful sign of Christianity’s demise.

Second, the churches that have a deeper cosmology — the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox — are doing far worse in forming the understanding of their people in America than are Evangelicals. Look at the appalling numbers for white Catholics. All those culturally conservative Hispanic Catholics on whose backs some conservative Catholics think a more faithful American Catholicism will be built? The overwhelming majority favor same-sex marriage. Same with Orthodox Christians.

Somebody will eventually say in the comments thread that if the survey had focused on people who actually go to church, the numbers would look more favorable for Christian traditionalists. Probably so, but I don’t think they would be that much more favorable, and even if they were, doesn’t this just go to show that Christianity is dissipating as we move farther into post-Christianity?

Third, the data show that only a slight plurality (44 percent) of American Muslims oppose same-sex marriage. Is that not remarkable? Such is the power of American popular culture.

Fourth, these results show why the GOP Congress and President Trump are not likely to do anything substantive to protect the religious liberty of believers who dissent from LGBT orthodoxy. Though it’s the right thing to do, doing it would not be popular. In fact, it would tar Congressmen and senators with the scarlet letter of bigotry (“bigotry”), and for no political gain. Trump, who favors gay marriage, doesn’t really care about religious liberty, and despite campaign promises to the contrary, certainly won’t endanger the things he does care about for the sake of taking a politically unpopular stand.

He’s promising to throw Evangelical Christians a bone by pushing for a repeal of the Johnson Amendment, which prevents churches from openly endorsing political candidates, or risk losing their non-profit status. As Tom Gjelten explains, it has been rarely enforced, but if it were to be repealed, it would have a massive impact on church fundraising for political candidates — and in turn, for the politicizing of religion.

I think it’s a terrible idea, and will corrupt the churches if it goes through. Besides, this is not remotely the kind of legislation that churches need right now. We need real religious liberty legislation, like the First Amendment Defense Act.  In fact, last fall, Trump said on his campaign’s website that if Congress passes FADA, he would sign it.  I doubt he will do that, but the GOP-led Congress should test him on it.

Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have promised to re-introduce FADA in the Senate. Rep. Raúl Labrador says he will do the same thing in the House. Watch what happens over the next month or so on this front. If a Republican-led Congress will not pass FADA and send it to the president’s desk, that’s game, set, match, at least on the legislative front (we’ll see what courts do later). Look at the poll numbers on this issue, though, and it’s hard to see any political upside to them doing so. Religious liberty advocates would have to depend on GOP politicians having the courage to stand on principle, even when it might cost them.

Fifth and finally, these data show where the culture is going on the issue. We small-o orthodox Christians have lost on sexuality, which led to our loss on homosexuality, which led to our loss on same-sex marriage, which is leading to our loss on gender and the natural family — and which, if Mary Eberstadt is right, will lead to the loss of religious faith. From my forthcoming book The Benedict Option:

The fate of religion in America is inextricably tied to the fate of the family, and the fate of the family is tied to the fate of the community. In her 2015 book How The West Really Lost God, cultural critic Mary Eberstadt argues that religion is like a language: you can learn it only in community, starting with the community of the family. When both the family and the community become fragmented and fail, the transmission of religion to the next generation becomes far more difficult. All it takes is the failure of a single generation to hand down a tradition for that tradition to disappear from the life of a family and, in turn, of a community. Eberstadt is one of a long line of religious thinkers to recognize that when concrete embodiments of the relationship to God crumble, it becomes very hard to hold on to Him in the abstract.

Eberstadt makes a powerful case that we acquire religion not like information in a classroom, but more like apprentices to a craftsman. That is, we learn it by doing it, in community, most especially the community of the family. You lose the family, she contends, and you eventually lose God in all but the most nominal sense. Perhaps this is why the Bible presents to us as normative and binding what we have come to call “traditional marriage.”

These things do not occur in isolation. Things are connected. You might think you can pick and choose what to believe, based on your personal preferences. And yes, maybe some of these things don’t really matter in the long run. Maybe. But something as fundamental to Biblical religion as sexuality and the family — indeed, something as fundamental to the human experience as those things — cannot easily be changed without tectonic results.

The die is cast for American culture. Christians who are traditionalists on matters related to sexuality and the family are going to be tarred as bigots and pushed to the far margins of society. We are going to have to decide which matters more: social acceptance and material prosperity, or fidelity to the truth. Ultimately, it means having to decide between shoring up the American imperium, or creating new forms of community within which orthodox Christianity can survive. 

Evangelicals & The Ben Op, Part II

You might have seen yesterday’s post in which I repeated Al Mohler’s question: “Do Evangelicals have what it takes to do the Benedict Option?” (His answer: No, but those who return to a more robust and rooted Reformation form of Protestantism do.) Along those lines, here are a couple of great thoughts from Evangelicals.

The first is from an e-mail from Marcus Brown, which I post here with his permission:

Greetings from Wheaton, IL — the Evangelical Vatican. Regarding your question about the BenOp and whether evangelicalism has the stuff to sustain such an effort … I think the observation that, in general, evangelicalism is too shallow to survive is spot on. I come into contact with a lot of pastors of evangelical churches, and their number one priority is marketing. How can they get more people in the door? How can they make the production of the worship service more attractive? How can they make their sermons more “relevant”? Lots of skinny jeans and soul patches. I know that’s a broad brush, but I see it every week.

However, there has been a movement afoot to return evangelicalism to its classical roots. I’ve seen this especially among two groups — the Reformed and the Anglicans.

Go read Bob Webber’s books from the 1980s and 1990s. He saw it coming — Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail.

Twenty years ago, I discovered the Anglican Church, an odd group of evangelicals who were rediscovering the beauty of tradition and liturgy and along with refugees from the Episcopal Church and all its collective lunacy. The result? A vibrant and rich movement that’s grounded in tradition and fueled by evangelistic fervor. The Anglican Church in North America has the stuff to sustain the BenOp.

Right here in evangelical Wheaton, I could point you to multiple examples of churches that are bucking the trend of evangelicalism by going back to the traditions of the Reformation and the church fathers. Places like College Church in Wheaton, Church of the Resurrection, All Souls Anglican Church, St. John’s Lutheran Church. Also, Clapham School — a classical Christian school birthed 10 years ago and growing its enrollment every year.

The means are there because more and more evangelicals are looking around at their slick production values, their trendy branding efforts, and their pseudo-intellectualism, and they’re coming to the conclusion that the emperor has no clothes. The road to the future runs through the past.

“The road to the future runs through the past.” What a great line, one capturing the essence of the Benedict Option.

Next, here’s a powerful essay from Sharon Hodde Miller, making her debut on the Evangelical site Mere Orthodoxy. She talks about how this year has been an “apocalypse” for her in terms of an unveiling (the real meaning of “apocalypse”). It has revealed to her that the Evangelical culture of which she was a part is too focused on self-help, and not enough on real discipleship. She writes about how this realization caused her to change her own ministry. More:

This is the challenge facing evangelical women. The pressure to be nice competes with the calling to be prophetic. But women are not the only ones facing this struggle. For every article about making money with your blog, or having a better marriage, we need leaders who are leveraging their authority with their particular audience to call people to rugged faithfulness. We need teachers who are targeting the idols of people-pleasing and politics and worldly success, and helping us to be the actual people of God. And we need pastors engaged in the kind of spiritual formation that resists cultural influence, and prepares believers for loving self-sacrifice.

Last year [Walter] Brueggemann summarized our prophetic failing this way: “I believe the crisis in the U.S. church has almost nothing to do with being liberal or conservative; it has everything to do with giving up on the faith and discipline of our Christian baptism and settling for a common, generic, U.S. identity that is part patriotism, part consumerism, part violence, and part affluence” (A Way Other Than Our Own, p. 3)

Both in women’s ministry and “American Christianity,” we are witnessing the fruit of inadequate spiritual formation. When our spiritual formation winks at, or embraces, cultural idols, we will produce individuals who are totally unable to resist the culture. That is why we are in dire need of prophetic leaders with the courage and clarity to name our adulterous loves. It’s hard work, and humble work (since ranting should not be confused with prophetic teaching), but we need it now as much as ever.

Read the whole thing. This is a time of choosing. There is no more middle ground.

Here’s one more, from an interview with my friend Tish Harrison Warren, a priest in the Anglican Church of North America. Excerpts:

I have had to learn to think about repentance differently. I think the term “repentance” can be thought of as this really dramatic event, like an altar call, you repent once and then your life is supposed to be different from then on. I’ve come to see repentance and faith as breathing out and breathing in, as I say in the book, or your left foot and right foot. We’re constantly walking in repentance and constantly walking in faith. I need to understand repentance and faith not as things that happen to us in dramatic moments but as the daily rhythm of life. Kathleen Norris makes the connection in her book The Quotidian Mysteries between repetitive practices in liturgy and repetitive practices in things like laundry — repetitive practices in daily life. That was really helpful to me.

There seem to be two different struggles that we have with repetition. One is for those folks like me that really crave novelty and new experiences. Having to do something every day — like make the bed every day when you know that it’s going to be unmade again — is really discouraging. Some of it is personality. I need ritual and routine so badly, but I reject it at the same time. To some extent, repetition is completely impossible to avoid. We just are — neuroscience is showing this more and more — people that live in patterns. It’s not the patterns themselves that are the enemy. It’s what those patterns are doing to us. Are we entering into patterns that are diminishing us?

Can we enter our daily lives and the work we have to do in a way that doesn’t diminish us but teaches us the beauty of repetition or teaches us how to serve people? I think Evangelicals love novelty and Americans in general love novelty, but novelty exhausts us. We cannot base our faith on it. Repetitive practices are what we actually need to sustain the marathon of our life in Christ, this long obedience in the same direction, as Eugene Peterson would say. I also think there is some Evangelical bias against so-called “vain repetition.” I actually sometimes wrestle with that, but I think that I’ve come to see repetition as completely unavoidable. Even in churches that claim no liturgy at all or have set themselves up against liturgy, it’s fairly predictable what each Sunday will look like.

I’ve just gotten to the point where I think this is how humans are made. We will be unhealthy people if we try to reject all repetition. We need to think well about how this repetition is forming us and what kinds of people it’s making us.

She’s talking about her new book, Liturgy Of The Ordinary: Sacred Practices In Everyday Life. More:

I really want readers to think more about how their corporate worship practices are shaping them and the way that their daily activities are shaping them. I joked that I hoped that no one could read this book and ever brush their teeth the same way again. I didn’t mean that every time people brush their teeth they would be singing the doxology or something; I meant that daily life would take on the texture of worship in a new kind of way. I want people to be able to approach their ordinary life with a new level of respect and to recognize the way God is working and shaping them.

Check out Tish’s website here.

You want to meet Evangelicals building the Benedict Option within their own traditions? Here are three.

A Nation Of Chair-Throwers?

Republics, empires, civilizations fall, you know (Simone Padovani/Shutterstock)

Marco Rubio gave a tremendous speech on the floor of the Senate, defending the GOP majority’s silencing of Elizabeth Warren for violating the Senate rule against insulting a member in Senate debate. You might think that you have no interest in hearing it. You would be wrong. Here are excerpts from the transcript:

Turn on the news and watch these parliaments around the world where people throw chairs at each other, and punches, and ask yourself how does that make you feel about those countries? It doesn’t give you a lot of confidence about those countries. Now I’m not arguing that we’re anywhere near that here tonight, but we’re flirting with it. We’re flirting with it in this body and we are flirting with it in this country. We have become a society incapable of having debates anymore.

More:

I know that tonight is probably a made-for-TV moment for some people. This has nothing to do with censoring the words of some great heroes. I have extraordinary admiration for the men and women who led the civil rights effort in this country. I am self-conscious enough and understanding to know that many of the things that have been possible for so many people in this country in the 21st century were made possible by the sacrifices and the work of those in that movement that came before us. This has to do with the fundamental reality and that is this body cannot carry out its work if it is not able to conduct debates in a way that is respectful of one another, especially those of us who are in this chamber together. And I also understand this, that if the Senate ceases to work, if we reach a point where this institution, given everything else that is going on in politics today where you are basically allowed to say just about anything. For I have seen over the last year and half things said about people, about issues, about institutions in our republic, that I would never thought I would see. Ever. Ever.

If we lose this body’s ability to conduct debate in a dignified manner, and I mean this with no disrespect towards anyone else – I don’t believe anyone else came on this floor here tonight saying, “I am going to be disrespectful on purpose and turn this into a circus.” But I am just telling you that if this body loses the ability to have those sorts of debate, then where in this country is that going to happen? What other forum in this nation is that going to be possible?

Read — or watch — the whole thing at this link.

I think Rubio is right, and right in an important way — a way that even pro-Warren partisans should stop and think about. We started down the long road to this point long before Trump showed up on the political scene, and even before Rubio was elected to the Senate. That said, the conduct of our president and some of his circle since he took office has fallen far, far short of the dignity of their offices, such that with respect to Rubio’s point about chair-throwing foreign parliamentarians, I find myself embarrassed for our country.

For instance, it’s a good thing that Rep. Jason Chaffetz and Rep. Elijah Cummings, the GOP chairman and the ranking minority member on the House government oversight committee, issued a letter today calling for an official ethics review of Kellyanne Conway — this, over her cheap shilling for Ivanka Trump’s clothing line on TV this morning. It was truly a demeaning moment, having a top White House adviser on live television acting like some kind of QVC salesman. It’s the kind of thing that you might have expected during the campaign, but Conway works as counselor to the President of the United States, and was on TV in her official capacity as a spokesman for the White House. 

Of course, she wouldn’t have been on TV at all had our temperamentally unsound president not blasted on Twitter a department store chain for offloading his daughter’s clothing line

My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 8, 2017

Anybody who might have held out a shred of hope that becoming US president would cause Trump to assume a shred of dignity appropriate to his high office will have by now been disabused of that folly. You don’t have to be a fan of John McCain’s viewpoints to be shocked that a Vietnam draft dodger like Donald Trump would publicly impugn him as a loser over McCain’s criticism of the Yemen raid:

Sen. McCain should not be talking about the success or failure of a mission to the media. Only emboldens the enemy! He’s been losing so….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017

…long he doesn’t know how to win anymore, just look at the mess our country is in – bogged down in conflict all over the place. Our hero..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017

It’s all very discouraging. You might have seen a month ago that Baby Boomer liberal Catholic priest in Michigan, preaching from his pulpit while wearing a pussyhat? (Photo here; scroll down.) A narcissist who takes his role as the spiritual father of his congregation so unseriously cannot expect to be taken seriously. Same principle here. Policies aside, Trump demeans the presidency and thereby dissipates his authority. Trump is not operating from a position of strength when he does things like this, but of craven weakness.

Does he really think that carrying on like this inspires loyalty and confidence in his leadership? After he’s gone, what will it take to restore dignity and decorum to the presidency? And how long?

Of course Trump isn’t the only one. Elizabeth Warren demeaned the Senate with her anti-Sessions stunt. Marco Rubio is right: members of the Senate on both sides had better think hard about what they are doing to the institutions of the Republic with their behavior. There’s a lot more at stake here than mere political power. Sen. Rubio gets it.

Evangelicals And The Benedict Option

Hi all, I’m in transit back to Baton Rouge after a great week in Louisville at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Boyce College. Yesterday afternoon I sat down with the great Al Mohler to record an episode of his podcast Thinking In Public. Late in the interview, he said something to the effect of, “Now, I have to ask you a tough question, and I want you to be honest when you answer me.”

I seized up. He continued, “Do you think that Evangelicalism has what it takes to do the Benedict Option?”

I gave him my honest answer: “I don’t know.” I explained that I don’t want to make a comment on a form of the Christian faith about which I know so little. I told him that I have to believe it is possible, because I know Evangelicals personally who are doing it (and interviewed some of them for my book), but in general, I don’t see that they have nearly the resources in their tradition that Catholics and Orthodox do. But that could just be my ignorance.

He replied that he is certain that Evangelicalism does not have the internal resources to do the Benedict Option — but that classic Protestantism does. He talked about how Evangelicals need to plunge deeply back into their Reformation roots and recover the spirituality and structure of the Reformers. I’m not going to say more, because you’ll really want to hear what Dr. Mohler had to say on this front. It was quite powerful, and to me, a revelation of sorts. Not sure when the podcast will be up.

I had a conversation later with another young theologian who told me there is a rising number of young Evangelical pastors and theologians — many of them there at SBTS — who understand completely that Evangelicalism, as it is currently constituted, won’t make it. Too shallow, too fleeting. Yet they remain Evangelical in the sense of believing deeply in the mission of proclaiming the Gospel to those who do not know Christ. The difference is that they are committed to doing exactly what Dr. Mohler proposed on the podcast: going deep into the Reformation to recover what Luther, Calvin, and the others had — and that includes doing a deep dive into the Church Fathers (that is, theologians of the patristic period).

I find this exciting, to be honest. To be sure, I would love it if everyone became Orthodox, and I know that there are tremendous Ben Op resources near to hand in Orthodoxy. In all honesty, though, if you cannot do the Ben Op unless you become Orthodox (or Catholic), then a lot of people who need to root themselves firmly in the Christian tradition, against the dissipating currents of modernity, are not going to do it. It is not up to me to tell Catholics or Evangelicals how to do the Ben Op while being faithful to their own traditions, though knowing Catholicism from having been Catholic for 13 years, I have a pretty good idea of what I would say. My goal with The Benedict Option book is to spark wide and serious discussion within the various Christian traditions, and across these traditions. And not just discussion, but creative action.

Still, let me put the question to my Evangelical and classically Protestant readers: what resources do you see within your specific tradition that will help you live out the Benedict Option?

By the way, David Goodwin, head of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, has very generously endorsed The Benedict Option:

The Benedict Option rings a bell that has long rested. The Christian Way has been intermingled with culture many times before. But this time is different. Dreher brings to light a cultural phenomenon in the West which has precedent, if ever, only early in the Christian era. His ‘Benedict’ prescription is an insightful response for Christians in a post-Christian culture.

Retreats normally don’t end well, especially in culture wars. But, rather than retreat, Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option advocates for Christians take up defensible positions. For too long, we’ve taken half-measures to transform our children, our families, and our communities toward Christ and away from the ideas and false-virtues that are dominant in our post-Christian culture. This kind of ‘running retreat’ will disperse and collapse true Christian communities unless we take bold action. Dreher’s comprehensive proposal may just provide the decisive turning-point needed for committed Christians to sustain our identity and become effective as we influence the world for Christ.

I am pleased to recommend The Benedict Option to Christians who are trying to live before God and man, but find it to be increasingly difficult. The work provides a comprehensive call in areas from education, to vocation, to technology, to living ‘the good life’ in a post-Christian culture.

Don’t Dismiss SJWs

Reader “Annie” comments on Social Justice Warriors:

For years I’ve seen too many comments along the lines of “SJWs will get out in the real world and they won’t be able to handle it! They’re dumb but they’re in for a rude awakening.”

No, they are not. SJWism is the logical result of neoliberalism. As such, they will reinforce the globalist, imperialist Empire. The power of the meritocratic society gives our untitled aristocrats a belief in the rightness of their rule through the power of the resume and college credentialing. It’s kind of like being Born Again, except there’s not even the ghost of a belief in Sin to keep them in check. And there’s nothing like Confession, except making a list of grievances.

There’s a reason they’ve attached themselves to identity politics and gender ideology as opposed to climate change. They can jet to Southeast Asia for a semester, volunteer in South America for a year, travel to Turkey twice a year, and never think twice about their carbon footprint. They dine out more than any generation ever has, but they vote the right away and never think about warehouses or trucking lines. One fights climate change through the government, not through one’s personal choices.

SJWs are consolidating power. They’re the children of neoliberal boomers and they stand to inherit their parent’s and grandparent’s wealth & power. They criticize the faces of that power while embracing the underlying premises. Now it will be Science & Rationality that will rule, not Protestant Capitalists, and so they are justified.

It’s an enormous mistake to think they are going to grow up and accept things. I know too many of them who are all grown up, and they pride themselves on being “allies” even if they are not out smashing things. They are the Obama bureaucrats still in their jobs, the lawyers in California mid-level institutions, the doctors, the foreign correspondents. They are revolutionaries, but the revolution strangely keeps all wealthy urbanites like themselves in their Real Simple lifestyles. It’s a revolution forced upon the lower classes that gets corporations to signal their alliance and promises a future of material abundance for those willing to partake in the dream of creating a plastic humanity. The colleges are at the center of this revolution for a reason: they give the credentials. If the SJWs ever start rejecting the college system, then we’ll know something has changed.

The good news is that if you never liked Empire, you get to keep the moral high ground by opposing the boujee SJWs. Their self-righteousness is a farce. This is the toxic rot of meritocracy: we are watching the scions of the upper middle class and wealthy justify their rule to themselves, and us, through a progressive, statist politics which leaves the poor rotting on drugs, jobless, hopeless, fatherless. They don’t even know the consequences of the policies they promote because they only know these stories on paper, or while gentrifying a neighborhood.

It almost makes you long for an aristocracy where the power was an accident of birth, where there were reciprocal obligations. Interesting that the gap between the rich and the poor has never been greater than in the global meritocracy. They believe they actually have earned the right to tell the lower middle class why they were replaceable, or the poor why they should be grateful to be forced to stay in their failing schools. I, too, fear where this will lead.

I know Annie personally, and can assure you that she’s talking from personal experience.

Lifestyles Of The Young And ‘Rigid’

Matthew Schmitz’s essay about “The Young Pope” is worth your time. Excerpts:

The Young Pope, HBO’s series about an arch-reactionary successor to Pope Francis, is often boring and occasionally blasphemous, but its images are splendid: Jude Law, dressed in papal white, reclining with a cigarette, as menacing as Joseph Cotten in Shadow of a Doubt. Jude Law, standing on the sedia gestatoria, arms outstretched like Pius XII. Jude Law, celebrating the Tridentine Rite as if Paul VI had never reigned.

Each of these images affords the thrill of transgression. Just as AMC’s Mad Men offered its viewers the frisson of watching natty and unpleasant people smoke and drink in the office (a relief from casual Fridays, anti-smoking campaigns, and corporate sponsorship of every enlightened cause), The Young Pope depicts a Church that no longer seeks the favor of the world—and is all the more fabulous for it.

More:

Young people really do desire structure today. Call it “rigidity” if you like, but they have had occasion to learn the value of rules. Some of them would have been spared a great deal of misery if our Church and society had been more rigid on certain points.

[Showrunner Paolo] Sorrentino understands this. The young pope is an orphan, you see, having been abandoned at a young age by his parents—two freethinking hippies. It is because he has lacked a mother and father that he has come to see the value of traditional authority. An exchange between him and an old cardinal is telling:

“You surprise me, Holy Father. You are young, and yet you have such old ideas.”

“You’re wrong about that. I’m an orphan, and orphans are never young.”

“But the majority of churchgoers are not orphans.”

“Says who? You really think the only orphans are those without a mother and father?”

With a single line, The Young Pope hits on what life has been like for the children of the baby boomers.

Read the whole thing. The last paragraph is devastating.

Readers, I’m traveling for most of today, and will only be able to approve comments between flights, or after I am home early this afternoon. Thanks for your patience.

Epitaph For The Old Republican Party

Tell me this didn’t happen. Tell me that the quintessential GOP Establishmentarian didn’t say that. Tell me that this is from the dream life of Steve Bannon.

Everybody loves to say that this or that thing is Why Trump Won™, but I think this really, really is a humdinger. And it’s why the Republican Party establishment really can go straight to hell.