I don’t say that conservative Christians should get out of political life, stop voting, stop running for office, and so forth. I expect that we will keep doing that, and that’s fine, that’s even necessary. But we should abandon political hope, by which I mean that we should understand that politics can at best be a defensive action at this point, not a means by which conservative Christians can transform the commons, except at the local level.
.. Yes, we will keep voting, and yes, we will run for office. But that kind of political action is now at the periphery. We lost the political fight because we lost the culture a long time ago. It’s going to be a very long time before it will even be possible to return to normal politics for us.
.. We are not being nihilistic or relishing in contrariness and rejection. Instead what we are doing is showing that there is an alternative to modernity and that this does not involve the flight of fancy of postmodern thought. We can stay grounded while criticising the modern. We can hold our position without seeking to transgress or to destroy.
Conservatism After Trump
they insist that the school’s mission to educate kids in a classical manner, according to the Catholic faith, cannot succeed unless the parents are also part of the mission. In other words, people in the community cannot sit on the outside, partaking of its goods as consumers. Real solidarity requires them to assume a role in the overall mission.
Progressive Benedict Option Part 1
First, there is often little that is distinctive about progressive Christians when compared to secular, liberal humanists. Let me be clear, as a progressive Christian I think this is a feature rather than a bug. I tend to think that liberal humanism owes its moral vision to Western Christianity. For arguments making that case see, well, see Alasdair MacIntyre’sAfter Virtue. Or Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age. So I tend to see liberal humanists as cousins of Christianity rather than as opponents. There’s a family relationship.
.. To take one example, as Westerners progressive (and conservative) Christians privilege individualism over collectivism. And as any church leader will tell you, this individualism makes it very difficult for Western Christians to live as the church. Trying to do church with Western Christians is like herding cats.
Rod Dreher & Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove on the Benedict Option [Part 2]
For us on the traditionalist side, it is a matter of justice too, “justice” being the right ordering of things. Noncelibate gay partnerships and gay marriage doesn’t make sense within our Christian conception of order ..
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Nicholas Wolterstorff taught me that there’s a basic difference between understanding justice as the “right ordering of things” (i.e. “justice from above”) and understanding justice as a systemic effort to listen to the oppressed (i.e. “justice from below). His Reformed colleagues in South Africa justified apartheid as “the right ordering of things.” They forced him to reimagine justice biblically as God hearing the cry of Israel in Egypt.
.. Our problem is not so much with liberals (= Democrats and their fellow travelers) as it is with liberalism as an individualist mode of thought and politics that emerged from the Enlightenment. Conservatives — that is to say, Republicans and their fellow travelers — are as captive to liberalism, in this sense, as are their political opponents.
.. Sex is not the whole of the Gospel, of course, but fidelity to Scripture on sexual purity is precisely the area on which the world will push hardest against us. – See more at: http://www.redletterchristians.org/rod-dreher-jonathan-wilson-hartgrove-on-the-benedict-option-part-2/#sthash.LisFnw0Y.dpuf