R.R. Reno’s “Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society”

Perhaps the first thing one should note about R.R. Reno’s Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society is that he’s not calling for a return to some imagined Christian government for the United States. The title might lead some to believe that, given it’s a presidential election, year, and given that it’s this presidential election, with people talking of whom they’re voting against rather than whom they’re voting for.

No, Reno, editor of First Things Magazine, isn’t writing about a Christian government. He’s writing about the idea of a society informed by the values of justice, mercy, and protection of the weak, as opposed to what the United States has become – a society informed by social Darwinism; a political, cultural, and economic elite that makes the rules for everyone except itself; and a culture of nonjudgmentalism that permeates our education system. Among other things. Among a lot of other things.

Reno completed this book before the political primary system got fully underway. And so it’s surprising to see just how well he anticipated, without once mentioning their names, the rise of the anti-elitists in both major parties – Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Party and Donald Trump in the Republican Party. He has much to say about America’s elites – corporate elites, political, elites, cultural elites – and none of it is good.

“Visit the poorest neighborhoods of a major American city or an impoverished rural town and you’ll quickly discover a misery more profound and pervasive than simple material want,” he says. “Drugs, crime, sexual exploitation, divorce, fatherlessness, streams of expletives, pornography, violent images – they are everywhere. The sheer brutality and ugliness of the lives of countless Americans – not only poor but middle-class as well – is shocking.”

And the worst impoverishment of all, and the one he lays at the feet of American elites, is spiritual impoverishment. Through actions like movies, news media, corporate CEO’s lobbying on social issues, social engineering in public schools, and more, American elites ridicule the values of family, honesty, hard work, caring for the weak, and decency – while often typically practicing those very same virtues in their own families.

It’s fine to make often ridiculous rules and issuing directives for the children of the middle class and poor when your own children are in private schools and will be exempt. It’s normal to contemplate major changes to Social Security when you yourself have another pension system (Congress) and won’t be affected. (Those brilliant legislators in California – the ones so sanctimoniously passing gun control legislation – are exempting themselves from the bill because, as one of them explained, “We need protection.”)

R.R. Reno

What Reno is doing here is tearing away the hypocrisy of what passes for elite thought – right and left – in this country. One small example: “There is a far greater range of moral and political opinion in American churches than in a typical newsroom or editorial board.”

Reno’s suggestions for change recognize the difficulties of that change. It’s relatively easy to pass rules or make bureaucratic decisions out of the public spotlight; it’s quite another to change hearts. And it’s hearts that must be changed. It doesn’t take a “moral majority” to do that, either, for Reno understands something else, something profound: It doesn’t take a lot salt to ensure sufficient seasoning. A small number of people, standing with moral authority of doing what is right, doesn’t need political judges, people rewriting laws behind closed doors. And the hysterical rants of newspaper editorial writers to create change.

If you want to understand what is happening in this wild and crazy political season, and why there is hope no matter who wins the White House, Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society is a good place to start.

Related: Yuval Levin’s The Fractured Republic.

Photograph by Martin Birkin via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

“So Many Christians, So Few Lions”

About 10 years ago, I was in my office at work, and a colleague came by to talk about a project. I don’t remember exactly what the project was about, but it did involve people who had been critical of the company and its products.

Then, out of the clear blue, my colleague said, “But you know who really frightens me?”

I shook my  head.

“Those Christians,” she replied, shuddering.

“Those Christians,” she nodded. “Those evangelicals. They scare me, always trying to force there views on us.”

Stunned, I sat for a moment without speaking.

“Do I scare you?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“I’m one of them,” I said. “One of those evangelical Christians. Do I try to force my views on you?”

It was her turn to be stunned. I could see cognitive dissonance exploding inside her head.

“Well,” she said finally, “if you are one of them, you must be the exception.”

It was my first experience of “Christianophobia” with a work colleague. I had experienced it before, something on the level of group hysteria, over a school district controversy. My colleague was college-educated, older than I was by a few years, with a journalism background.

If you asked conservative Christians if there is Christianophobia in the United States, the likely response would be a rather large majority affirmative. The evidence has largely anecdotal – court decisions, stories of university political correctness run wild (lots of those), sneering editorials by the local newspaper, fundraising letters by organizations like People for the American Way.

George Yancey

All anecdotal, until So Many Christians, Do Few Lions: Is There Christianophobia in the United States? by George Yancey and David Williamson. The authors are sociology professors at the University of North Texas, a public university (not religious) in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

The book, while more engaging than the typical sociology book, is still a sociology text. Yancey and Wiliamson don’t sensationalize their subject or write in screaming prose. You have to read slowly and deliberately. The appendices comprise about half the volume.

David Williamson

They make their case. Using existing surveys plus ones they themselves conducted, they make a solid case that there is indeed Christianophobia in the United States, and especially among a rather elite group – highly educated, relatively wealthy whites. In overall size, they would be smaller than the conservative Christians they fear. In influence, position, and power, however, they’ve got it all over the Christians.

In terms of what has been happening culturally in the United States, this is an important subject to consider and discuss. And I will be discussing key parts of the book over the next two to three Mondays – who are the people so afraid of conservative Christians; why do they believe what they do; how do they rationalize what would otherwise be considered intolerant, bigoted beliefs; and what the implications might be.

I do know that my work colleague who so feared “those Christians” fit almost exactly the demographic described by Yancey and Williamson. And that happened a decade ago. 

The situation has not improved since then.

Painting: The Christian Martyrs Last Prayer, oil on canvas by Jean-Leon Gerome (1883); the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

Has the Culture Captured the Church?

Who sits in the pews on Sunday in the United States? Americans or Christians?

Don’t answer too quickly. I did, and I answered it wrong.

The deeper I get into reading David Platt’s Follow Me: A Call to Die. A Call to Live, the greater my discomfort is growing. Not with the book; not at all. My discomfort arises from the growing certainty at how much American culture has captured the Church in the United States.

How much? A lot.

Two major strands of cultural influence have fused in the church today – American individualism and American consumerism. If we’re not toting around our focus on self and trying to discern “God’s plan for my life,” we’re telling ourselves that we’re not “into church” but we are “into Jesus,” and we go shopping for the right church to meet our needs (Platt and others refer to this as “dating the church”). Or we choose to abandon church altogether and stay at home on Sunday’s with our bibles and internet worship services.

It’s not about determining God’s plan for your life, Platt says. It’s about living each day expectantly, knowing that God is going to do something with you, and likely something surprising, and being open and available. A friend of mine (a young pastor) once scandalized older pastors and elders alike when he said that 90 percent of missions was simply showing up.

“So we go to him,” Platt says. “We spend time with him. We sincerely listen to his Word as we walk in obedience to it. As we do these things, God leads us and guides us according to his will, and suddenly we realize that the will of God is not a road map just waiting to be unearthed somewhere. Instead, it’s a relationship that God wants us to experience every day (emphasis added).”

And if you’re truly “into Jesus,” you’ll know that church is not optional. It’s designed by God, and we are all parts. It’s how the work gets done. God’s work. Not by people sitting at home by themselves, but by people in community, who come together with all their hopes and joys and aggravations and dreams and irritations and failures, and somehow God creates something beautiful out of all it.

Church is not about meeting our needs. We’re looking at this through the wrong end of the telescope. It’s not about us. It’s about what God wants us to do in the world.

The church is supposed to be countercultural – that what has given it its strength for than two thousand years. It runs into trouble when it embraces the culture, whether that’s culture left or culture right.

We’ve been embracing the culture for a long time. Too long. We need to stop, and be the church we’re meant to be.

We’re discussing Follow Me over at The HighCalling. Visit the site to see what today’s post is about and what’s happening in the comments.