The definition of “traditional” in your reply of April 15th, 2009 at 12:39 pm, is so broad as to encompass any number of “traditions” which have been at times rather less restrained in the advocacy of war than the “tradition” that you accept, whereas there are lots of people who consider themselves traditional or orthodox Christians who reject the just war tradition that you cite in your reply of April 15th, 2009 at 12:51 pm. In a way, I think you are simply defining away the problem.

But set that aside. Even if one were to accept everything you say, then the result would be to exclude the vast majority of current Christians in the U.S. from being “traditional” or “orthodox” Christians. Assuming that that is true, I’m not sure exactly where that leaves your argument (and Ross’s). It’s one thing to advocate more orthodoxy or adherence to tradition, but quite another to make it happen. Especially since the various protestant denominations that call themselves Christian conservatives don’t really seem to have that tradition at all. (Catholics, OTOH, do have it, though even there calls for adherence to that tradition fall on mostly deaf ears.) In other words, in the already unlikely event of some sort of religious revival in the United States, I don’t think we would have an increase in what YOU would consider “tradition” or “orthodoxy.” Really, to a large extent the nation was populated (initially, at least) by people who dissented in one way or another from that tradition.

So what both you and Ross end up doing is contrasting a (mostly) theoretical orthodox Christianity to the actual existing lukewarm deism that predominates in the U.S. That isn’t a fair or useful contrast.

A separate point, which I don’t have time to develop right now, is that people on both sides of the debate tend to make a similar type of mistake in these debates – blaming the “other side” (orthodox Christianity, secularism, “Moral Therapeutic Deism,” whatever) for trends and events which either (a) are human nature, to which people of all creeds are susceptible to, or (b) are caused by broader cultural trends divorced from religious belief. I mean, both consumerism and American exceptionalism are overwhelmingly popular in the U.S. among virtually all creeds (as well as among secularists too). Sure, some dissenters base their dissent upon their religious beliefs, but there are plenty of secularists (and probably even some Moral Therapeutic Deists) who are also non-interventionists and or who have problems with consumerism.

True enough in theory… but you don’t see Catholic prelates arguing that war and death penalty-supporting politicians should be denied communion, and getting a pile of attention from national media for their efforts. If only, say, 2% of the electorate shares your views, then it does make sense to discuss “orthodoxy” as standing with Bush and movement conservatism. Maybe this is a temporary consequence of the “culture wars, pick a side” rhetoric of the past few decades.

This is a familiar conversation; movement conservatives aren’t recognizably conservative, either, but self-identified conservatives and the most prominent self-proclaimed conservative leaders have succeeded in changing the meaning of the word in current political discussions.

Ross has been part of two “denominations” as far as I know–the one to which he now belongs, and the one before that. That’s not very many.

Yes, I think that’s right. I suspect the commenter actually meant to speak of Rod, though, who has been a member of all of … three denominations.

There are two things you could say about such a move at that point: Bush supporters may have started out orthodox, but compromised their orthodoxy in order to defend his policies, or they were never orthodox but merely pretended to be so. Unless Linker would actually like to argue that support for the war in Iraq is perfectly consistent with orthodox Christianity, despite the clear and consistent rejection of this war by leading Catholic authorities among others, he has to take account of how Christian Bush supporters deviated from orthodox Christianity to maintain their support for his war.

If someone were to say, in response to criticisms of Byzantine or Counter-Reformation policies, that the authorities engaged in these efforts were not in a very meaningful sense orthodox, then you would have a point in likening this to ideological denial. One might even point to such periods in the past as an argument against enforcing orthodoxy, but at least we would be debating the actual enforcement of orthodoxy. The idea that the Bush years saw anything of the kind is just fantasy fed by a strange fear of a theocracy that virtually no one wants to create.

Ross has been part of two “denominations” as far as I know–the one to which he now belongs, and the one before that. That’s not very many.

This sounds like, “Real communism has never been tried.” There are always alternate interpretations available, so perhaps Linker should be objecting to right-now-orthodox-Christians, rather than orthodox Christianity.

As an aside, it’s a bit rich to see someone who has lived in as many different denominations as Douthat complain about Therapeutic Deism.

If we’re being ecumenical, “traditional” should refer to those who ahdere to teachings on morals and doctrine that can be found commonly in the so-called Great Tradition of the three main confessions of Christianity. Such a traditional Christian ought to see Scripture as a revealed authority mediated through the interpretive framework established by the Church and as maintained for the vast majority of Christian history, and he should not indulge in fantasies that the Kingdom can be realized here below. The traditional Christian should be extremely wary of secular rulers who want to claim some sort of divine mission or blessing, but who do not attempt to abide by the demands of justice and God’s law as conveyed through the tradition mentioned above. He would remember the warning about false prophets and the injunction not to trust in princes. Just because a secular ruler invokes God, the traditional Christian does not necessarily assume that the ruler is doing God’s will, even though he acknowledges and respects legitimate secular authority. He is also going to challenge secular authority when it commits acts of injustice that go against the Source of legitimate authority.

I would want to make the distinction between politically conservative Christians (i.e., Republican voters) and theological conservatives (some of whom might conceivably have very different conventional political alignments), and I would want to have a higher standard for what passes for theological conservatism than a few litmus tests on social issues and what-have-you. This would bring us back to a crucial distinction, which both Linker and Sullivan elide all the time, between religious conservatives and fundamentalists.

If someone wants to make the case for the traditional-ity or orthodoxy of Bush supporters, he would need to be more specific about what it is he means and what he is using to determine the boundaries of this orthodoxy. Obviously, there are some other empirical problems with Linker’s analysis when some sizeable proportion of self-described traditionalist Christians of different confessions, particularly Catholics, swung to the Democratic column in the last election (and if, as I suspect, Obama carried the Orthodox vote as Democrats often do). It would certainly complicate things, which may be what Linker wants to avoid.

Granted, although perhaps the Linker-Ross discussion suffers from not having definitions for those terms. I was taking “traditional” to simply mean conservative, as the two words are often used interchangeably. I would wager that Linker was also using that definition, hence his connecting the current religious Bush-worshippers (who would certainly self-identify as “traditional” Christians) and the reactionary religious types of the past (ditto). I gather that you mean something else entirely by the term, though.

Of course, one can imagine that a genuinely radical witness to Christian social teaching that emphasized equitable distribution of wealth, the rights of labor, protection of the unborn and traditional sexual morality and conceptions of marriage would horrify Linker even more, because of its “totalizing” character and its intrusiveness on many different aspects of public and private life.

I suppose it could be the case that power corrupts in such a way that orthodox believers always become less orthodox as they come into contact with it, but I tend to think that the corruption usually works in other ways. If the first claim is right, that would mean that the best thing to do would be for orthodox Christians to withdraw from politics and do the necessary cultural work to spread and instill this orthodoxy in their own communities. However, we know what that means, at least if we listen to Linker–it means scary authoritarianism!

This is the other way in which Linker misreads things: many of the people who want to affirm traditional Christianity tend to be the ones who are least interested in continuing the futile politicking that has encouraged Christians to neglect the cultural work they could have been doing. They are also the ones who are most likely to criticize abuses of power by the state. What is Linker’s answer? To mock and attack advocates of the “Benedict Option” even more strenuously than he does the “theocons,” because he fails to distinguish between the two groups. That’s amusing enough, considering that his last post was entitled “the art of drawing distinctions.” He wants to have it both ways: Christians should not engage in politics, as Ross would urge them to do, and they shouldn’t withdraw to pursue cultural work, either, as I would advise, but should apparently lie down and do nothing at all.

Aren’t those one and the same in the vast majority of instances, though? How often are “perverse and misguided ideas” not prevailing in the centers of true power, given the nature of power and those who tend to seek it out?

It should also be acknowledged that conservative religious groups could have fought against Bush’s perverse and misguided ideas, but largely chose not to for whatever reason. Bush was forced to back off from social security reform, immigration reform, and the Miers appointment because major factions in the GOP objected strenuously to them. But the prevailing attitude amongst the religous groups within the GOP seems to have been that Bush was “one of us” and thus entitled to uncritical support. Or they were well aware of Bush’s misguided ideas but happened to agree with them.

Which is to say, the hard-right religious groups had and have influence within the GOP, but chose not to exert it.

Our Shadowrun future seems to be getting ever closer.

Sorry for the OT, It seemed more expediant than emailing you.