Hard to be crunchy

He's absolutely right about Evangelicals' blindness to greed. They have become obsessed with sex to the exclusion of every other issue.>

What was the emailer's comments about the greed of forcing poor people out of your gentrifying neighborhood by instituting regulations on building and appearance, all in an attempt to increase property values?>

"the religious leaders of first-century Judaism would not have conspired to murder an innocent though admittedly inconvenient rabbi."

Do you have any evidence of this other than a book that was written with an eye to appeasing Roman rulers?>

That was a good point about discouraging one vice isn't the same as encouraging general virtue. Contemporary conservative churches act like the only two sins are illicit sex and credit card debt. (The second one is only bad if it inhibits tithing.) Jesus had rather little to say about sex but lots and lots about the evils of irresponsible wealth. My own opinion is that the emphasis on sex amounts to idolatry: we will worship our own avoidance of this one sin and condemn all those awful people outside our doors. We just won't mention any sins our members commit. No wonder religious people aren't popular among my friends. I appreciate Mr. Dreher's efforts to get the church to pay attention to other, more corrosive, sins.>

Daniel, the emailer Rod quotes did not merely say that Jesus "did not necessarily abolish attachments to particular cultures." He said that Jesus was "able to value his own local, particular, tribal world," which I believe would entail encouraging such attachments, not merely abstaining from abolishing them.

(It appears that you admit as much when you assert that "the particular is good because it is created and should receive the respect due to it." It's not that the particular is morally neutral, no. The particular is inherently good, which would be consistent with the idea that Christ outright defended attachments to the particular rather than abstained from abolishing them.)

It seems to me that he's essentially saying Jesus was crunchy. I would love to hear an alternative interpretation of what he wrote, but that interpretation should be at least as plausible as mine.


I really wish that you and Rod would not only assert that agrarian life is "obviously" and "categorically" preferable in terms of promoting virtue. (Really, promoting virtue ought to be the goal, not merely inhibiting vice, a point I think was made quite well in the movie Serenity.) Don't just assert it; argue it, prove it if you can.

It seems your argument reduces to discrediting those who support the alternative, practically asserting that modernists just want to indulge in the license to do whatever they want.

That seems to be the same smear that Rod's committed. Mainstream conservatives defend the free market, not because it's more efficient or more moral, not because the individual actually has property rights, but because we're greedy.

That sort of condemnation of those with whom you disagree surely go over well with those who are already in the traditionalist camp, but I can't imagine it would persuade many others.

It certainly doesn't persuade me.>

On the agrarian life, I would point you to the writings of any number of political philosophers and writers who will have done a better job explaining agrarianism's greater potential for providing a humane life, starting with Jefferson, the Southern Agrarians, Kirk and Bradford. If there are conservatives completely unaware of this part of their own tradition, and completely at odds with it, this only goes to prove Rod's claim that these conservatives are disconnected from some of the very principles that their tradition defends.

If that isn't satisfying, here are a few terse summaries of the virtues of agrarian life: 1) its healthy attitude towards nature and its symbiotic relationship with nature; 2) its greater encouragement of the virtues of self-reliance, moderation and humility; 3) its promotion of economic and political self-sufficiency, preventing men from becoming the servants and lackeys of others; 4) its tendency to coexist with relatively stronger, more cohesive, local communities, averting the isolation, alienation and anonymity of urban life. This list is not exhaustive, nor could it hope to be. Since Bubba will declare that these are all "assertions" and nothing more (since Rod and I have apparently never said anything that was not an assertion), I leave it to readers interested in further discussion to take these for whatever they are worth.>

I've never quite figured out why so many people think Americans (in general, as opposed to in particular) have such a problem with greed. Yes, there are some people, perhaps a few more than the average, who are greedy.

So far as I can tell, most of us just want to "live well"--to have enough to eat, a place to sleep, a group of people who care for us, and a little entertainment to keep our minds busy and help us relax. (Relaxation is a real human need, although like all others it can be overdone, and is one of the lesser needs--you can get by without it if you must.)

When people accuse me of greed, I think first of Jesus at a party. "The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you said, 'Look at the drunken glutton!'" Asecticism is not an end in itself. The world is made, admittedly only in part, for our enjoyment. We are not expected to live in misery.>

I generally agree with Mr. Dreher's premise, though I worry about the greed discussions.

It's not that Americans don't exhibit greed. Greed is something we should talk about. It should be preached against. Yet I worry of an overreaction in favor of legalism or socialism. Pastor Keller is right, but the economy is not a zero sum game. My shopping at Gap is not preventing someone else from starving anymore than if I shop at Target.>