This is an excellent review of Dreher's, Live Not by Lies and I broadly agree with the sentiments of the author:
Scrutonism, of which as you can see Dreher has a bad case, is a call to be a beautiful loser. But you can’t inspire anyone with a program that offers being a loser. People cowering under fire want a plan; they want a leader to point not only to what Christ would do, but how that will help them, and more importantly their children, come out the other side, cleansed and victorious. What Dreher offers instead is a call to martyrdom. This is theologically sound, but not politically.With regard to "theological soundness", I'm not so sure. While it may be that in certain circumstances martyrdom may be the only option for the Christian, in others it may be the totally wrong choice.
One of the things that I'm interested is in the relationship between Caritas and Evil (Malum). Particularly, does Caritas have the right to push back and not merely suffer it? It's an interesting question as I feel that the Buddhist drift in Christianity over the last few hundred years has all but deligitimised it. It would be extremely difficult to visualise the current Pope, or even JPII for that matter, if capable of time travel, blessing the soldiers prior to the battles of Vienna or Lepanto. Yet their contemporaries of the time would have had no problem in doing so. Although this is no proof, there does seem to be strong correlation between the decline of the Christian religion and Buddhist drift.
Just saying.
Note: I'd just add some reservations about alliances with "sinners" of various types. Materialists of any kind--even conservative ones--are generally bad news to Right politics.
15 comments:
I don't think much of the review - anybody who *warns* that we are 'headed for' totalitarianism - not noticing that there was a successful global totalitarian coup, under cover of the pandemic, earlier this year - really is not paying attention to actual, daily life.
Nor to what the world leadership is explicitly telling us is coming with the Great Reset/ Agenda 2030.
But the Christian Buddhist is a commonish kind of person - including in the Christian churches, in th eChristianised New Age, and among perennial philosophy types (like Prince Charles and his Temenos organisation) - I wrote about it earlier this year:
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2020/03/mindless-mindfulness-and-meaning-of.html
To my mind, mainstream orthodox Christianity (created sometimes after the death of the Apostles, apparently - when the teachings of Jesus were fitted into Greek-Roman philosophy) has an innate tendency towards de facto Buddhism in one directio,n as towards de facto Islam in the other direction - because of its insistence that Christianity is monotheist, God created everything from nothing, and that God is omnipotent, omniscient etc.
This is one reason why modern people find it hard to discern the USP of Christianity, which looks like an incoherent half-way house between the mystic East and the tough Middle East.
But that's another story! (Although it's all in the Fourth Gosepl.)
I think Hebrews 11 needs to be our chapter. With the caution that I don’t know anyone’s heart, I suspect the Christian Buddhism” is masking a fundamental materialism. We look at the strength if our enemies and quail. There’s also a fundamental scrupulous moral insecurity, that we will get it wrong and so had better tack to the “safe” side, not realizing there is no safe side.
Hebrews 11 includes a tremendous number of people who gained “impossible” (by materialist standards) victories. Martyrdom may be on the cards, but it’s something that should be thrust upon you, volunteering seems like suicide, although not in every case. The history of the west also includes victories that would have seemed impossible at earlier dates.
What seemingly few want to do is check in with God, because there is no strategy that works without His blessing. It seems that some want to fight without thinking and some want to martyr themselves without thinking. The intuitive sense seems dead in too many men, who derided it as “feelings” without understanding the difference. The Bible gives us examples of warriors and martyrs. But you won’t know which one you’re supposed to be without asking God, and you won’t be a warrior ever if you categorically take it off the table.
Side topic, but does it ever strike you that some of these people seem motivated by an excess delicacy?
"Go gentle into that good night. The dying of the light is good for you, especially if you buy one of my books before you slip into oblivion"
Rod Dreher, 2020.
I don't know whether you have followed his blog over the last few days, but Dreher now resembles a hysterical, transexual banshee, pointing and shrieking at Trump in a tone so high-pitched it gives me tinnitus. He now says he is glad Trump lost because the latter is clearly a 'fascist'. In which case, Dreher clearly prefers the totalitarian persecution that Biden's handlers have in store.
I know you use a wide sweep of history and theology to make sense of the present, but I think it is quite simple in Dreher's case. He is just a conventional, bourgeois, American Protestant centrist who role-plays as a Catholic/Orthodox reactionary. However, this is all an extended LARP. Whenever anyone challenges the establishment, Rod clutches his pearls and starts screaming. He insists that the liberal order must be obeyed, even though it is clearly dead and was the very thing that brought us to this pretty pass. Reviving liberalism makes about as much sense as giving a zombie mouth-to-mouth resuscitation; it's not only futile, but disgusting and dangerous. But Rod cannot cope with the possibility of an alternative path.
According to Herodotus, Cyrus the Great said soft countries made soft men. There is a lot of truth to that. We have such a ridiculously comfortable existence in the West that we struggle to take anything seriously. So we refuse to confront the rot because, hey, there's still Netflix and Walmart. Even those who affect to be a Cassandra, like Dreher, pull their punches because they don't truly believe the serious of their warnings. It just another LARP.
Until the house finally falls in and there really is blood on the streets. That day isn't far off.
Lancelot Andrewes
@Bruce Charlton:
To my mind, mainstream Mormonism has an innate tendency to towards de facto Kabbalistic Gnosticism, because the insistence that a fallen creature can achieve godhood by learning esoteric rituals and having multiple wives (Harold Bloom, an admirer, explains this in "The American Religion").
@Lancelot Andrewes
Someone gave his daughter in marriage to this Craven Coward. What a disgrace.
@Bruce
This is one reason why modern people find it hard to discern the USP of Christianity
USP?
@Hoyos
I think Hebrews 11 needs to be our chapter.
Yes.
and you won’t be a warrior ever if you categorically take it off the table.
Yep, that's the core problem. There's been this progressive shift which has increasingly putting any form of righteous violence off the table.
I had this thought today which disturbed me. What if Vatican II was just a distraction from a more profound change in Christian teaching which was going unnoticed? Like I say, my own studies have suggested that the rot in Catholicism, in particular, preceded V2 and I just wonder if some of the theological changes in emphasis may be responsible here. Once again, it's the withdrawal of Grace-due to corrupted teaching--which may be responsible here. From Hebrews 11:
And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets—who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection.
There's no way to square this passage of Hebrews 11 with some of the modern developments in Catholic theology.
Side topic, but does it ever strike you that some of these people seem motivated by an excess delicacy?
I don't know if it's delicacy as much as it is the refusal to embrace the reality of the world. Hypergamy, for instance, disgusts a lot of Christian men and they seem to want to frame male/female dynamics in a way that totally excludes it
@Lancelot
American Protestant centrist who role-plays as a Catholic/Orthodox reactionary. However, this is all an extended LARP.
I think Aaron Renn does a good job psychoanalysing him in this post quoted by Dreher.
Dreher does sound like a gentle soul who really had it hard while he was young. Christianity, through it's idea of redemptive sufferring can easily appeal to such a man trying to make sense, and seeking comfort, through these trials. Where I feel Dreher errs is in that it is normative for the Christian to be the suffering victim waiting for Christs succor. I think this is but one aspect of Christian love, but I don't think Christ intends us to be the suffering victim as much as he desires us to be Christian Men. If Hebrews 11 is to be taken as a guide, it does appear that Christ expects us to put the hurt on when the occasion demands it. He calls us to not to be Christian victims but Christian men.
The other dimension to Dreher's approach is that it does provide a cop out mechanism to avoid change in our persona. I mean if you're earning merit in heaven by being a victim why then make the effort to gain agency in your affairs? There's a whole theology of the suffering Christ which you can legitimately lean on. Sometimes it easier to bear suffering than to change. I mean how different would Dreher's life been if he hit the gym and did some martial arts classes. It's a speculation.
Reviving liberalism makes about as much sense as giving a zombie mouth-to-mouth resuscitation; it's not only futile, but disgusting and dangerous
Cyrus the Great said soft countries made soft men. There is a lot of truth to that. We have such a ridiculously comfortable existence in the West that we struggle to take anything seriously.
Agree.
Liberalism isn't the problem as much as the culture in which it subsists. A Christian liberalism with limits I think is about the best that human culture can achieve.
@John
Dreher is not in my good books at the moment but lets try to keep things civil. (Note, I'm guilty of crossing the line at times.)
@The Social Pathologist
Alright. I will try. Although I will still stand by my comment that he is not worth for any Man to give his daughter away to.
Especially given his antics about Trump.
Hi social pathologist. I am a long term reader and think I might be able to give you anothet puzzle piece in your quest of what went wrong in Rome. This is an extensive tome written by the Catholic revisionist PhD historian and occult researcher Michael Hoffman. His tome "the occult Renaissance Church of Rome" laboriously covers the "Neo-Platonic Hermeticist" infiltration into the church hierarchy from the 15th century onwards. This ties into many issues of your interest such as the "Buddhist"/platonic contempt for the flesh, but also things like the gradual acceptance or usury, sorcery and other topics.
https://www.revisionisthistory.org/page1/page5/page5.html
There is a prequel that gives you a feel for the author.
Mormonism is at its esoteric core based on Freemasonry, with its founder being a high ranking renegade mason. Many authors and researchers have covered this like Deanna spingola (a former lds member and researcher).
Freemasonry as you probably know is based on older kabbalistic and platonic-pythagorean ideas that both trace back to Babylonian mystery religions.
@literate carpenter
Thanks.
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