Is what really a very important question? God? Family? Architecture? Liturgy? Birkenstocks? Organic chickens (which I understand to mean “the kind of food we eat”)? No, Maggie, footwear is not an important question, and people who actually read my book know that I don’t make an issue of it, except as an example of how I let a silly cultural prejudice against a brand of shoes keep me from trying out a product that has given me good service. So okay, footwear is not important. But all the rest of it, yeah, it’s important. ~Rod Dreher, Crunchy Cons

I think Ms. Gallagher hit a nerve. Of course, she would do that by making the sort of careless and unbalanced criticisms that she made in her column. I didn’t touch on her annoying remarks about Rod’s religious practises in my last post, but they are revealing:

There is something movingly pathetic in watching the Drehers drive through different religious identities, for example, searching for one that “fits.” Worshipping at a Lebanese Maronite (Catholic) Church, for example, because they like the taste of ancient tradition, even if they are neither Lebanese nor Maronite. Tradition itself becomes a kind of consumption item, to be produced and consumed by crunchy cons.

Read Rod’s response to this by clicking on the link above. As a convert to Russian Orthodoxy, I understand Rod’s reasons for attending the Maronite church perhaps better than many, especially better than those who have had the good fortune of finding a spiritually enriching, solemn, traditional church or the even better fortune of being raised up in such a church. That Rod and I have both felt drawn to more traditional Christianity, a Christianity that requires an active denial, or better yet the disciplining and proper redirection, of the desires of the self, should suggest that something other than religious consumerism is going on here. This is why the language of asceticism crops up so often in Rod’s book. In many of his chapters, he is talking about incarnate faith and practical askesis, and all Ms. Gallagher can see is organic chicken and “exotic” Arabic liturgy. That’s a pity. Maybe she’ll see something more if she reads closer. Pace Goldberg, people who concluded in “good faith” that Rod was simply substituting his personal experiences for the basis of an entire way of life may have had a lot of good faith, but they did not pay very close attention to what he actually said.

That Rod and I concluded that this sort of traditional Christianity was available for the most part only in the more “exotic” churches of the Maronites or Russians says something meaningful about the substance of what is on offer in the thoroughly modernised and Americanised churches. If we were religious consumers going for an eccentric “taste,” we would not find the stability that just such a traditional church offers because we would be interested only in partaking superficially and not submitting ourselves to the healing disciplines and services of our respective churches. Likewise, I suspect the “cradle” and more serious members of our parishes would grow weary of such a superficial commitment fairly quickly.