Living Orthodoxy

Lessons for the Parallel Republic, dispatched from Rome

The Value of Orthodoxy

“I’m a little worried about you,” my friend told me. “You’re way too obsessed with all this culture wars stuff. It’s not healthy.”

This is, in fact, not an unfair assessment. And yet here I am, beginning a blog series that will almost certainly deal largely with “this culture wars stuff.” Why am I ignoring my friend’s advice and doing it anyway? What could I possibly have to add?

I accepted this invitation because I think it’s important. Even if my interest in “culture wars stuff” shades into obsession at times, that doesn’t make the topic less vital. As to what I have to add -- well, naturally I think I am a delightful snowflake of a human being with a refreshingly unique perspective on the world (you, gentle reader, may judge for yourself as this series unfolds). But more honestly, what I can say for myself is this: my interest in the culture wars lies not (primarily) in the complaint—the “this shit is crazy,” the diagnosis, if you will—but in the cure.

I’m a hospitalist nurse practitioner. I like fixing people. I am also very, very interested in diagnosis. Many of the most satisfying moments in my career have been away from the bedside, discussing the workup of a difficult case with another clinician. But as fascinating as I find the act of diagnosis, it would be meaningless if it didn’t lead towards an answer, an action. Perhaps that action is only “give him plenty of morphine and hold his hand,” but at least it’s something to do. That’s what I hope to offer here. I will spend plenty of time on the diagnosis—when Brandon suggested calling this blog “Orthodoxy,” I almost immediately thought, “what about calling it ‘Heresy’?”—but I will try not to let too many posts slip by without considering our way forward—a way to turn away from the insanity all around us and live out Truth in our lives. That’s the “living” part of the title of this series. 

And the “Orthodoxy” part of the title? What on earth could the dusty teachings of an ancient church (as alluded to by the series title, I am a faithful Roman Catholic) have to offer in a conversation about secular politics?

The Church is a diagnostician par excellence. The philosophies underlying many of our most frustrating modern conflicts have been exhaustively detailed by the Church in centuries past; then, they were called “heresies.” Heresies are condemned not because the Church enjoys policing our minds; she leaves thought-policing to totalitarian states. No, heresies are toxic in and of themselves, because bad thinking so often leads to bad choices and to intractable conflict.

Are you frustrated by the way so many people see the world as an epic battle of good and evil? Understandably so; this is why Manichaeism has been condemned for millenia. Exhausted by the message that the only way to consider yourself a worthwhile human being is via a grueling program of “doing the work,” including constant agonizing self-examination and a commitment to all the right causes? Yeah, the Pelagian heresy is a beast, isn’t it? Oh, are you upset that a single error seems enough to destroy an entire life, with no forgiveness and no way back? I hate Donatism, too. 

And notably, once the Church has named the heresy, she also, always, shows us the way out of the mess -- the way back to orthodoxy. This, all of this, is what the dusty old church can bring to us today, and a large part of what I hope to explore here.

Whither, Christendom?

And yet, American Christianity is in crisis; to think otherwise can most generously be characterized as naive optimism. The most recent drumbeat in the cavalcade of grim tidings (grim to some like me, at least; cheerful for others) is the widely publicized Gallup poll finding that, for the first time, formal church members compose less than 50% of the U.S. population.

We need, if not a way out, then a way forward. For Christians, the way we engage with cultural questions—“that culture wars stuff”—is part and parcel of our way forward.

Roughly speaking, there are three strategies currently articulated for cultural engagement, and thus, for moving forward. Ross Douthat outlines all of this at length in his extremely insightful piece “The cul-de-sacs of the Christian intellectual.” You should read his article in its entirety, but I will lay out its general outlines here.

First is the ‘accommodationist’ response—this has been the response of most of the mainline denominations, and is perhaps best represented in the writings and public ministry of Fr. James Martin, Nadia Bolz-Weber, and Rob Bell, among others. This response seeks a renewal of the life of the church by (in large part) accommodating the church to what Charles Taylor calls “expressive individualism”—the modern sense that seeking and then living out one’s true identity and desires (often, though certainly not always, tightly tied to a particular sexual or gender expression) is the summit of human flourishing. 

I have a great deal of fondness for some of the thinkers in this camp. They are often expansively imaginative, mining insight from the most unlikely of locations (try Rob Bell on Leviticus; he’s one of the best commentators out there), and they tend to prioritize pastoral concerns over a strict orthodoxy, an approach that may give people like me the occasional case of full-body hives, but one that is, frankly, deeply needed in a world where our pastors and priests often seem much more concerned with leading our money to the collection box than with leading our souls to heaven. Unfortunately, expressive individualism is in fact a heresy, and the fruit of this heresy (leaving aside the spiritual evils) sure looks to be institutional collapse. All of the mainline denominations that have embraced this approach are hemorrhaging membership and seem poised to self-destruct. 

Second is the ‘Benedict option’ (I shall call it the BenOp) response, best represented by Rod Dreher in all of his writings, but particularly in his book of the same name. This approach combines a grim pessimism with a bracing sense of almost heroic pragmatism. The cultural war, Dreher argues, has been lost; our only real choice is to circle the wagons, do our best to defend against the outside world, and concentrate on building ‘thick’ communities, communities where members can grow in holiness together, and also communities that might serve as a repository of the Christian intellectual and cultural tradition. 

This approach has a great deal to recommend it, particularly its emphasis on living lives as Christians without worrying so much about what “The World” thinks of us. Of the three approaches I sketch out here, this is the one that most appeals to me. However, it has taken a fair amount of criticism (perhaps an unfair amount) from the partisans of an emerging third camp, which I shall name the Crusader option. 

In a nutshell, the Crusaders are impatient with the BenOp camp’s ‘defeatism,’ and think we should fight the culture wars to win. A primer on this perspective is best provided by Sohrab Ahmari’s 2019 piece in First Things, “Against David Frenchism,” wherein he calls upon Christians to “fight the culture war with the aim of defeating the enemy and enjoying the spoils in the form of a public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good.”

As a bit of a scrapper myself from time to time, I certainly see the emotional appeal here—but when a fellow Christian espouses “defeating the enemy” in the form of his fellow citizen, and then advocates “enjoying the spoils” in the form of earthly power — exactly the sort of power that Christ warned us away from — well, suffice to say I have some criticisms. On the other hand, as a BenOp partisan, it would be foolish of me to entirely dismiss the charges of defeatism the Crusaders level against us. Pessimism can, in fact - and often does - lead to defeatism, quietism, and a withering away of the vibrant Christian culture all Christians hope to preserve.   

So whither, Christendom? 

Towards the end of his (excellent. did I mention excellent?) article, Douthat gestures at a ‘third way’. Well, we’re already up to three; let’s call it a fourth way. He describes it thusly:

“…it might mean trying to consciously encompass the other [three] tendencies I’ve just mentioned, rather than treating them simply as rivals…so that the best of different Christian responses to our circumstances are lifted up together…

“…So if liberal society has fallen into decadence, and the forms of Christianity that strove to adapt to it have reach[ed] some sort of dead ends, then you would expect the new thing, the next resurrection of the Christian faith, to look at least as complex and capacious as liberal Christianity did. Maybe not as novel, to the extent that it involves a reaching backward to pre-liberal Christian forms, but at least as inventive, in a way that transcends the mere traditionalism to which many conservative Christians have fled…

“…How do you get out of a cul-de-sac? Well, you can go forward and hope to knock down walls, or you can go backward in search of a wrong turning. But sometimes you need to simply rise, ideally together, and see the whole landscape from above.”

He’s right. 

We cannot give into the heresies of the accommodationists, but we can learn from their imagination and vital spirituality. We may not be fully comfortable accepting the pessimism of the Benedict Option camp, but we should—and must! incorporate that pragmatism. And finally, while Christians may not in conscience strive for domination as if it is our highest good, we certainly can learn to be bolder, more faithful, and less fearful as we live out our faith in the world. 

And so here I am, with my little column, sorting through how I might best do my part, and inviting you to join me. Welcome to Living Orthodoxy!