Rod Dreher's Blog, page 558

‘The Party Of Lost Causes’

I’m a social and religious conservative. My friend Damon Linker is not. But I join him in being astonished by the GOP’s obstinate cluelessness about how the country has changed. From Linker’s column:

This isn’t the platform of Donald Trump, who is focused on immigration, trade, and terrorism while soft-peddling the social issues. On the contrary, this is a party still endlessly obsessed with cultural conservatism. (In that sense, it’s far more Mike Pence’s party than Donald Trump’s.) But the GOP is not just obsessed with cultural conservatism. This is a party unwilling to think or speak about social and cultural trends of which it disapproves in any terms other than absolute rejectionism, as if nothing in the world and the country had changed in the past two decades.

In 2004, George W. Bush ran for reelection on a platform that included the goal of passing a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage. It went nowhere at all. Twelve years later, same-sex marriage has been declared a constitutional right by the Supreme Court, it is legal in all 50 states, and it is supported by a majority of Americans. And how does the GOP respond? By calling in its 2016 platform for an amendment that would ban same-sex marriage in the U.S. Constitution.

Everything has changed. Nothing has changed.

And that’s not all. The platform draft approved by delegates last week also favors “conversion therapy” for gays (RNC chair Reince Priebus disputes that the platform explicitly calls for this, though the language seems intended to tacitly support parents who want to subject their kids to this “therapy”). The draft platform holds that “natural marriage” creates an environment in which children are less likely to become addicted to drugs or be otherwise damaged. And it describes pornography as a “public menace” and a “public health crisis.”

The GOP, even in 2016, is a singularly reactionary party.

He goes on to say that he doesn’t mean the stances individuals take, but the fact that a major political party commits itself to fighting for these things in the public arena.

Well, let me be clear about a few things. I fully support natural marriage and the natural family, and believe that government policy should be geared towards supporting it. I’m also against same-sex marriage, and strongly against pornography. By Damon’s reckoning, I’m probably a reactionary, which is fine by me. I’ll own that; doesn’t bother me.

But I agree that it’s just … weird that in 2016, the Republican Party at the official level still pushes for policies like this. It’s like the official party still believes that politics can fix these problems, that politics can reclaim a culture that we conservatives have lost. The grassroots GOP voters don’t even believe this stuff, which is why Donald Trump is going to be nominated this week, and not an actual social conservative.

It’s not that I directly mind that there are GOP folks who believe that Obergefell was wrongly decided (as I do), and want to devote themselves to the hopeless cause of having it overturned. I find it frustrating for indirect reasons, including the way maintaining this illusion distracts from what we social and religious conservatives can and should be doing to respond effectively and meaningfully to this new world.

For example, all the money, the attention, and the effort going into fighting for the Lost Cause of natural marriage in the political arena is money, attention, and effort not going to fighting for shoring up natural marriage within the culture (and within the church).

The political conservative cliche justifying tax cuts as a strategy of shrinking government is: “starve the beast”. You want to starve the Religious Conservatism, Inc., beast in Washington? Redirect your contributions to religiously conservative organizations and ministries doing real work at the cultural level, especially local, to build a thick and resilient traditional culture. I bet there’s a classical Christian school in your city that could do a lot more with your donation than some lobbyist panjandrum inside the Beltway, who thrives on perpetuating among donors the belief that he is a lot more effective than he really is. I don’t want to call it a racket, because I am confident that at least some of the lobbying in DC does some good. But it’s a persistent delusion among a certain kind of Christian conservative that politics is the answer to cultural collapse.

They remind me of the educational reform people who believe that public policy is the key to fixing the schools. They say this, and genuinely believe it, because it’s something that they can control — as opposed to the broken families and family systems at the heart of broken schools. That problem is largely beyond politics, and can’t be solved by winning a vote or writing a check. What’s the saying? When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Look, when it comes to social conservative goals in the political arena, the only thing I really care about is protecting religious liberty. I mean by that the right to be left alone, both individually and within our institutions, with the broadest possible firewall between us and the state. The day when Christianity set the boundaries, tone, and direction of American culture has passed. What we are now defending is against American culture setting the boundaries, tone, and direction of Christianity. That’s not a battle that can be won in the halls of Congress. It can only be won in our churches, our schools, and our communities.

UPDATE: Elijah writes:

But, look, you’ve only got to read a few pieces over at The Corner to see that many Republicans or Republican sympathizers are still pushing the same tired tax cuts, hawkish foreign policy, crony capitalism that has gotten the party elite so disliked. And they can’t seem to understand why people are supporting Trump! It’s such a willful blindness.

Totally fair and necessary comment.

Diary Of A Racist Cop Killer

Gavin Eugene Long, who murdered three Baton Rouge cops today, was a narcissist who fancied himself a race warrior, a ladies man, and a lifestyle coach. A selection of his tweets:

You cant talk (or protest) the devil into changing his ways, this has never been done and never will
# 1.Exact Justice (Blood) or 2.Revenue

— Convos With Cosmo (@ConvosWithCosmo) July 10, 2016

Power doesnt respect weakness. Power only respects Power.
# Alton # Castile

— Convos With Cosmo (@ConvosWithCosmo) July 8, 2016

They gone be mad when niggas start doing this. pic.twitter.com/dTga9v8ctA

— The Hood Bible (@HoodBibIe) July 7, 2016

Treat Me Like a God, or meet my Devil

— Convos With Cosmo (@ConvosWithCosmo) July 5, 2016

Your Spiritual Journey: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win

— Convos With Cosmo (@ConvosWithCosmo) June 24, 2016

What’s so interesting about reading Long’s Twitter feed is that he’s pretty clearly not concerned with racial injustice. For him, it’s all about masculinity and power. Those three Baton Rouge police officers he murdered today were real men; he was a punk to the marrow.

Cop Widows and Their Fatherless Children

A reader who is a widow and a mother writes in the wake of the Baton Rouge shooting. I know her; she is a churchgoing Christian who does not curse. But she curses below. I’ve left the words in, but bowdlerized, because I want you to feel the raw emotion in this e-mail:

I can’t get the comments box to let me type, so I am sending you my thoughts here.

Any clue what it is like to be a single parent? To be a fatherless child?

Any clue how much energy it takes to keep the house functioning with bills paid, maintenance done, and meals cooked?

Any idea how hard it is to look forward to a day when you have no one to tell about the mundane stuff, like the freezer that went out and wasted the entire batch of meat you bought two days ago or the memory of that family trip or how your mom made potato soup?

Any idea how hard it is to find energy to pay attention to what your kids are looking at on their computers and phones when you are simply trying to find energy to face another day in a life you never wanted?

Any idea how it is to help a 16 year old adjust when he now easily looks over your head, his voice is changing, and he has no one to teach him to shave?

Any idea what you say to your 19 year old daughter who has decided not to date because the reason you date is so you can find a life mate and who will walk her down the aisle since her dad isn’t here?

Any idea how hard you cry when you son looks at you and says, “Mom, I don’t remember the sound of Dad’s voice anymore”?

I keep reading this rhetoric about politics and guns and who to blame, and the truth is it is just that, rhetoric. No one has any plans to do anything to fix any of it. They just want to bitch and point fingers and protect their own interests. You know where I am on this right now? F–k them. F–k them and their rhetoric. Those questions are pointless, empty bulls–t. Let’s ask some real question and come up with some real answers.

If we look beyond the rhetoric, the real issue is men being strong leaders. The real issue is breakdown of family, of family values, of security, safety, respect. In 10 days we have lost eight leaders. Who is going to step in and fill those holes so those kids don’t grow up disconnected? We talk about being politically disenfranchised. F–k that. Let’s get to the real issue. The real issue is being emotionally disenfranchised. Who is going to help these kids find their way? Who is going to help these exhausted moms get up day after day and still have enough emotional and mental energy to be moms and not just the machine that makes money to keep roof over their head and food in their mouths.

Being a parent is so much more than financially providing. We live in utter chaos because parents have quit providing emotionally and mentally. Look at any of these shooters. Show me one that is really connected and has strong mental and emotional support and connections. You won’t find one, so it seems to me if we want to heal our communities, we need to step up and support the moms who are going one hell of a hard road alone. We need to be the surrogate parents. Who is going to do that? THAT is what we need to be talking about. We need to be talking about how society as a whole is failing.

I hope your book about the Benedict Option addresses issues like this because my concern is that people are going to be looking for ways to protect and provide for themselves and their families, but a real Benedict Option provides for those who are hurting and in need, not just physical need but emotional and mental need. We are only as strong as our weakest members, and right now, there are children and wives/mothers who are incredibly vulnerable and broken beyond words. They may have the strength to keep getting out of bed every day, but make no mistake about it, their hearts are broken and their spirits are crushed. They will only heal with God’s hand, and it is time for the rhetoric to stop and the hand of God to reach out through the hands of His people.

At least that is how it looks from my (fatherless) table.

From Clint Eastwood To … Chachi?

Oh, how the mighty have fallen:

Scott Baio, star of the sitcoms Charles in Charge and the Happy Days spinoff Joanie Loves Chachi, has announced that he will speak at the upcoming Republican National Convention in Cleveland after being personally asked by Donald Trump. “I was at a fundraiser for Mr. Trump the other night with my wife and he invited me to speak at the convention, which was completely unexpected and out of left field,” the actor told Fox News Saturday.

Baio provides Trump with a celebrity endorsement, something lacking from the list of expected convention speakers that includes Trump’s wife and children, former GOP presidential hopefuls like Ted Cruz and Ben Carson, high-ranking Republicans, military veterans and UFC president Dana White. Football star Tim Tebow was initially named as a convention speaker before the quarterback quashed those rumors. Baio added in his Fox News interview that Trump was “a man that I believe in.”

The 2012 GOP Convention’s celebrity superstar was Clint Eastwood. This year, it’s Scott Baio. If Edward Gibbon were Perez Hilton, he would know how to frame this.

Three Cops Slain In Baton Rouge

Just got out of church and learned that three Baton Rouge law enforcement officers where shot dead in BR today. Two are wounded and hospitalized. One other was shot, but apparently seems not to have been hospitalized and was sent to a different hospital; information sketchy now. One suspect dead, two at large, reports say. The very latest is cops are said to be in a standoff with one suspect. Not sure yet what happened. An ambush? Hard to say. One witness I’m listening to now on WAFB, the CBS station in Baton Rouge, said suspects were shooting with semiautomatic weapons before police arrived. He said he saw one man dead and a man with a gun running towards him — this, 45 seconds before police arrived on the scene. If so, that would indicate that this might not be a Dallas-style premeditated cop killing.

Community leaders calling for no Alton Sterling protests in the city today.

No news yet as to the race of the suspects or victims.

The city is extremely on edge now. It’s hard to imagine what will happen next. Actually it’s all too easy to imagine it. God help us. I’ll update this post as we know more.

UPDATE: Last week, BRPD arrests thwarted an alleged plot to murder police, tied to a pawn-shop robbery. One of the suspects arrested is 13 years old.

UPDATE.2: Three police officers are dead in Baton Rouge, and the public does not yet know who did the shootings or why, but this scumbag, the LGBT editor at Think Progress and, in his own words, “proud SJW,” is already busy blaming law enforcement:

Given how police haven’t been held accountable for murdering black people, it’s no surprise some are taking justice into their own hands.

— Zack Ford (@ZackFord) July 17, 2016

There are no words. Well, actually there are words, but I will not say them. Zack Ford and those like him are making America worse.

BTW, local BR media reporting that the dead shooter is from Missouri.

UPDATE.3: Shooter was Gavin Eugene Long, black male, from Kansas City, Mo. Today was his 29th birthday.

UPDATE.4: Here is Montrell Jackson, one of the Baton Rouge police officers killed today, and his now-fatherless son, in happier times:

UPDATE.5: A Facebook post from Ofc. Jackson, during the protests in Baton Rouge:

And here is one of the other officers killed today, Ofc. Matthew Gerald, and the woman who is now his widow:

UPDATE.6: The Daily Caller found some YouTube videos posted by Gavin Long. He was a stone-cold white-hating racist.

UPDATE.7: The third dead police officer was Brad Garofala, a father of four who was set to go on vacation Monday. 

Methodist Crisis

The Western Division of the United Methodist Church gave the middle finger to the rest of the church by electing the Rev. Karen Oliveto, an openly gay woman, as its bishop:

“I think at this moment I have a glimpse of the realm of God,” 58-year-old Oliveto said after her election, according to a news story from the church. “Today we took a step closer to embody beloved community and while we may be moving there, we are not there yet. We are moving on to perfection.”

On to perfection! More:

The United Methodist Church, which has more than 7 million members in the United States, is divided over the issue of homosexuality. “This election raises significant concerns and questions of church polity and unity,” Bruce R. Ough, president of the Church’s Council of Bishops, said in a statement after the vote.

As Ough wrote, “we find ourselves in a place where we have never been.” He highlighted the divisions on the issue:



“There are those in the church who will view this election as a violation of church law and a significant step toward a split, while there are others who will celebrate the election as a milestone toward being a more inclusive church. …Our differences are real and cannot be glossed over, but they are also reconcilable.”

Nonsense. They are not reconcilable. What does it mean to be a Methodist if an entire division of the church can defy the international body on such an important theological issue?

The folks at Juicy Ecumenism are all over this story. Here’s a reprint of a 2005 piece John Lomperis wrote reporting on a presentation that Oliveto gave at a gay United Methodist gathering. Excerpt:

In her sermon during the closing worship, she criticized St. Paul for casting a demon out of the slave girl in Acts 16:16-18. Oliveto encouraged her audience to question the traditional interpretation that this exorcism was “an act of liberation” for the girl. Negatively comparing Paul’s response to the slave girl to his subsequent saving of the jailer, Oliveto asserted that Paul was not motivated by compassion for the slave girl and noted that the text does not say that she found salvation.

The RMN leader went on to defend the demon’s possession of the slave, as this demon helped enrich her owners by giving her fortune-telling abilities. Oliveto declared that by casting the demon out of the girl, Paul did nothing to make the girl’s life better and “probably made it worse” as she was now “damaged goods.” Oliveto was very concerned by “questions about the imposition of religious values, in this case religious values,” such as if the exorcism was really good for the slave girl and whether she wanted to be exorcised. However, she did not explore the possibility of demon possession having had any detrimental effect upon the girl.

So there you have it: the newest United Methodist bishop once denounced St. Paul for casting a demon out of a slave girl. What else do you need to know about the Western Division of the United Methodist Church for having elected such a heretic as its bishop?

Lomperis points out separately that the Western Division of the UMC is tiny, and though it encompasses one-third of the United States geographically, it has about as many Methodists as northern Georgia. The South Central Division, five times larger than the Western Division (which is the fastest declining division in the US), immediately filed a complaint with the church’s governing body.

What does a pastor (a bishop, a division) have to say or do to get kicked out of the United Methodist Church? Seriously, are there special rules that let gay-rights advocates defy the church without sanction? If they can get away with it, who’s to stop anybody from doing whatever they want to?

Evangelicals All In For Trump

Pew’s latest survey of religion and the 2016 election finds that white Evangelicals are strongly behind Donald Trump. Excerpts:

Indeed, the latest Pew Research Center survey finds that despite the professed wariness toward Trump among many high-profile evangelical Christian leaders, evangelicals as a whole are, if anything, even more strongly supportive of Trump than they were of Mitt Romney at a similar point in the 2012 campaign. At that time, nearly three-quarters of white evangelical Protestant registered voters said they planned to vote for Romney, including one-quarter who “strongly” supported him.1 Now, fully 78% of white evangelical voters say they would vote for Trump if the election were held today, including about a third who “strongly” back his campaign.

More:

While many evangelical voters say they “strongly” support Trump over Clinton, this does not necessarily mean Trump is their ideal choice for president or that they are convinced he shares their religious convictions. In the current survey, 42% of white evangelicals say it will be difficult to choose between Trump and Clinton because neither one would make a good president. And a January Pew Research Center poll found that 44% of white evangelical Republicans view Trump as “not too” or “not at all” religious.

But even if many evangelicals do not think he shares their religious commitment, most do think that Trump understands the needs of people like them. Indeed, fully six-in-ten white evangelical voters (61%) say they think Trump understands their needs “very” or “fairly” well, while just 24% say this about Clinton.

Pew goes on to say that white Evangelical support for Trump is driven at least as much by opposition to Hillary Clinton as actual support for Trump. In other words, they’re not voting for Trump as much as they are voting against Clinton. Pew found that large numbers of pro-Hillary voters are in the same boat: they’re voting against Trump, not for her.

And get this:

White evangelical Protestants who say they attend religious services regularly are just as strongly supportive of Donald Trump as are

evangelicals who attend religious services less often. Fully three-quarters of both groups say they would vote for Trump over

Clinton if the election were today, and roughly a third in each group describe themselves as strong Trump supporters.

If memory serves, back during the GOP primaries, there was a Trump gap between churchgoing Evangelicals, who generally opposed Trump, and non-churchgoing Evangelicals, who generally embraced him. The gap has now vanished.

Read the whole thing.

O Beautiful Two Gay-ish Guys

The New Yorker’s TV critic tweets:

A kid just told me that “in a magical, wonderful world” Aaron Burr would kiss Hamilton instead of killing him & then they would get married.

— emily nussbaum (@emilynussbaum) July 16, 2016

Whee!

The Failed Turkish Coup

As of this moment, it appears that the military coup attempt in Turkey has failed. Walter Russell Mead explains why it will make Islamist strongman Erdogan much, much stronger:

The main question now in Turkey is what happens next. The most likely scenario, and it is an ugly one, is that Erdogan and his followers use the putsch to consolidate the strong man rule that Erdogan clearly hungers to build. Purges of real or accused Gülenists from the military, journalism and civil service, crackdowns on any public criticism, constitutional ‘reform’ that reduces freedom and shores up Erdogan’s personal power: these goals will all now be easier to accomplish.

Meanwhile, new UK Foreign Minister Boris Johnson might have hoped that a successful coup would have spared him the awkwardness of having to meet Erdogan. Here’s why.

Too much news this year…

The Coming Christian Collapse

Michael Brendan Dougherty has a good piece on how the potential for a Trump candidacy existed in plain sight among Republicans and their conservative base for years — but establishment Republicans refused to see it because it didn’t suit their biases. Excerpt:

The truth was, the great wave of migration America experienced from the early ’90s to the middle of last decade was a history-shaping event with long-term consequences. But because it was hardly debated by official Washington, the passions it generated tended to find sensationalistic or conspiratorial outlets.

And immigration went hand in hand with anxiety about American jobs and sovereignty. There was a minor nationalist panic during the Bush presidency, with conspiracies floating around that North American governments would create a common currency, the Amero, in imitation of the European Union. Pictures of the currency still float around the internet today. They came with the theory that America would stave off bankruptcy by uniting itself with Canada’s natural resources and Mexico’s underpaid labor. With that done, an enormous new transportation network would spread across the map like a squid, the NAFTA superhighway system. The rumors were fueled by quixotic lobbying dreams. But the opposition was real and fierce, and it eventually took down the very real Trans-Texas Corridor project with it.

In other words, there were signs of an emerging Trumpism on the right for years. These political tremors were ignored during the Bush years as the GOP immolated itself on foreign policy. And so no one wanted to believe an earthquake like this was coming.

Read the whole thing.

I believe the same thing is happening now with Christianity in America, but Christian leaders simply do not want to face the reality of what’s happening. Consider:

Millennials are far more likely to have no religious affiliation than any other cohort. From Pew:

While some Millennials are leaving their childhood religion to become unaffiliated, most Millennials who were raised without a religious affiliation are remaining religious “nones” in adulthood. Two-thirds of Millennials who were raised unaffiliated are still unaffiliated (67%), a higher retention rate than most other major religious groups – and much higher than for older generations of “nones.”

It is possible that more Millennials who were raised unaffiliated will begin to identify with a religion as they get older, get married and have children, but previous Pew Research Center studies suggest that generational cohorts typically do not become more religiously affiliated as they get older. And the new survey finds that most generational cohorts actually are becoming less religiously affiliated as they age.

Millennials, even those who identify as Christian, are shockingly illiterate, both in terms of what the Bible says and more generally regarding what Christianity teaches. I trust you don’t need me to repeat again Christian Smith’s findings showing that Moralistic Therapeutic Deism — a bland, undemanding, non-specific religion parasitic on Christianity — has taken over US religious institutions and has displaced authentic Christianity, especially among the young. That has had a further effect of hollowing out the moral sense of Millennials, as Smith’s further research has shown. Here’s an excerpt from a review of his subsequent book, Lost In Transition:

The four sections deal with specific moral problems faced by emerging adults. The topics include consumerism, drug abuse, sexual liberation and civic and political disengagement. All of these problems stem from the lack of awareness and commitment, the authors identify in section I. The book shows that the goal of the majority of emerging adults is to achieve material affluence; they are not critically aware of the problems of consumerism and materialism. Alcohol consumption and binge drinking are continuously increasing. Sexual liberation is greater than in previous generations, and many emerging adults are not aware of a world of hurt, regret and other negative emotions beneath the veneer of happiness. Moreover, most emerging adults are apathetic, uninformed and disengaged from political and public life. In all aspects of life, the majority of emerging adults are experiencing a lack of reflection, criticism and firm direction. This findings comports with Damon (2008)’s qualitative study, The Path to Purpose. His study indicates that the majority of adolescents and young adults do not have a clear commitment to a purposeful life. Damon describes them as “drifting”, which fits with Smith, Christoffersen, Davidson and Herzog’s analysis. The lack of purpose, goals, reflection, criticism and awareness will result in emptiness and nihilistic morality. This phenomenon might be related to the degenerative moral development of young adults. Since emerging adults will become the future leaders of society, the problem of their lack of moral development is very urgent. If not addressed, their problems may be repeated in future.

In my own informal conversations with college professors — both progressive and conservative, and both at Christian and secular institutions of higher learning — this finding has been abundantly confirmed. The ignorance is so widespread and profound that most of their students don’t even know what they don’t know. Which leads us to:

If we lose the middle and upper classes, we lose the church. For various reasons, churchgoing in America is primarily something that educated middle and upper class Americans do. Charles Murray, among others, has highlighted research showing that the working class has largely abandoned church. If Christianity is to survive in the US, it cannot afford to lose middle class Americans. Of course Christianity must especially be for the poor and working classes, but at this point in its history in the US, the poor and working classes have already left, and the middle classes are hemorrhaging.College is (at least for now) a common middle class experience. If we lose these kids in (or by) college, they’re gone. According to my anecdotal information, supplemented by the research from Smith et al., this has already happened.

In 2009, Michael Spencer, who blogged as “Internet Monk,” predicted a “coming Evangelical collapse.” Spencer has since died, but his prophetic words are as important as ever. He was an Evangelical, so he addressed himself to fellow Evangelicals. But the Catholic trajectory is the same, and for similar reasons. There are so few Orthodox Christians in America that it’s hard to know where we stand, but I have no reason to believe that Spencer’s diagnosis and prognosis doesn’t apply to us as well. Excerpts:

2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we’ve spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

3. There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven megachurches, dying churches, and new churches whose future is fragile. Denominations will shrink, even vanish, while fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive.

4. Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.

Spencer predicted that Catholicism and Orthodoxy would benefit from this collapse. Maybe so, but he must have had no idea how unprepared Catholicism and Orthodoxy are to react to these developments among Evangelicals. We can hardly keep our own young people, much less offer a safe, strong position for refugees from the Evangelical collapse to land. In theory, we have it. But we either don’t really believe what our own traditions teach about themselves, or we don’t care enough about it to teach it effectively to our own young.

Conclusion: Christianity in America is strong in pockets, but mostly its strength is only apparent. It is a façade that will come tumbling down when social conditions are right. This is something that most of us Christians will live to see. This is something that few of us Christians will have prepared for.

And when it happens, our bishops, leading pastors, and senior laymen will be like the GOP Establishment in the Age of Trump, left to wonder what in the hell happened.