The cultural contradictions of Rovism

Hard not to think of this when, visiting your blog, we see all the ads for weight loss and the more provocative dating ads.

In P.D. James's excellent book (awful movie) "The Children of Men", a depopulating England is run by a dictator called "the Warden."
In a cool scene, a lonely B&B owner prays for a single customer, and when her prayer is answered, says: "I realize, of course, that...this little town is dying...but the Warden has promised that everyone at the end will be cared for."
He thought: Her God provides the occasional overnight customer, but it is the Warden she relies on for the essentials. Rove may be right here, Rod. Just replace "Warden" for "Republican". And never underestimate the power of Gno$tic American Chri$tianity. Security, Comfort, and Pleasure are what the American people want. Republicans provide the first two, while Democrats can always be relied on for the third. Or just vote for Rudy: he does all three!

MTD appears to be strongest in, of all places, Evangelical Protestantism! Therefore, one questions how "conservative" or "traditional" that movement is. If one recalls that American Minimalist Evangelical Protestantism (for such it is) has its roots in the Radical Reformation, one wonders how such were ever considered "conservative" in the first instance. Let me give an example. The worship found in "Evangelical" circles has no relationship to traditonal Christian liturgy. This in itself invalidates any claim of that movement to be conservative. Therefore, if they are going in for MTD in a big way (and they are) they are being TRUE to their anti-traditional roots! As for the infiltration of MTD into Orthodox circles, it has not for the most part. There is some infiltration in unrepresentative intellectual circles, but it has made no inroads amongst the bulk of the faithful and parishes. One word from a true starets is worth a thousand from a "therapist". Vara Drezhlo

I've been Orthodox for over a dozen years now and can honestly say that I've never heard a sermon that would qualify as MTD. I'm sure that it has something to do with the fact that asceticism has such a priority in the Eastern Church. It's difficult to reconcile Great Lent, the Wednesday and Friday fasts, the other shorter fast periods during the year, the often long services, etc. with an MTD mentality. This is probably what makes Orthodoxy attractive to a lot of folks who've known nothing other than the thin gruel of MTD.

Oh, I don't at all believe that all of US Evangelicalism lines up with MTD. I know plenty of Evangelicals who are fighting it. Anyway, I think it is not so much an Evangelical thing as an American thing. Like I said, MTD is SOP in AmChurch Catholic homilies.

Well, it can, but it won't stick. The problem of rationalists is trying to built a binding morality without a transcendent source of authority.

~tv: "Because, as we all know, people are incapable of being good without a sky-daddy to beat them when they're bad." ~tv, not trying to be snarky here, but if you could clearly explain what you (~tv) mean by "good" and "bad" in the sentence above, it would help me better understand your stance. When I say "clearly explain" above, I am under no illusions that my explanations of "good" and "bad" would be the least convincing to you.

Regarding all the (generally self-serving) comments on how some deominations are riddled with MTD and others not, please read the Rod's linked article by Korb. MTD doesn't seem to be "denomination" correlated. However, if one were inclined to pin down where MTD is most commonly found, we could just look for small family size, or even high abortion rates, as these tools are commonly used to maintain the "happy life". These metrics, I think, are a fairly accurate test for MTD. (and looking at the data, one can see how Africa is the future of Christianity). Children (/1000, Source: UN) #1 Niger: 50.1 #2 Mali: 49.6 #3 Uganda: 48.1 ----- #151 US: 14.2 #161 France: 12.9 #176 Russia: 10.9 ------ #218 Germany: 8.2 #219 Japan: 8.1
#220 Hong Kong: 7.3 Abortion(/1000, Source: UN) #1 Russia: 19.3
#2 Bulgaria: 13.0
#3 Hungary: 7.7
#4 Cuba: 7.4
#5 Sweden: 4.2 #6 United States: 4.1 #7 Norway: 3.0
#8 New Zealand: 2.8 #9 Iceland: 2.7 #10 Japan: 2.7 (some data, eg China, is missing)

Well, like I said, I don't think MTD is a denominationally-specific thing. I think it's an American thing. Or to be most precise, I think it's a modernist thing.

You are, of course, free to point to my pos as "exhibit A" in whatever case you're trying to make. We know thew world is going to hell in a handbasket. The only thing we can do is to be good to each other until we're done here. I'm not trying to be argumentative, but the handwringing I see you do over this issue time and again is, in my opinion, a waste of the precious mind and heart God gave you. Either God's got it all under control, or He doesn't, and He needs *us* (in all our pathetic incompetence) to make the world right. "Be still and know that I am God," either means something or it doesn't. Love your family. Love your neighbor. The rest will sort itself out.

Whatever, Iranaeus - if you don't know, then no definition I give you will suffice. Good is what Good is. Are you telling me you wouldn't know what "Good" is unless and until your church fathers told you? Rousseau says that empathy and self-preservation are the sources of all morality. No mumbo jumbo about received tablets, and no need to a "seal of approval" from a bunch of power-hungry despots with Heaven (and landed nobility) on their minds.

I keep trying to understand what is so wrong about being therapeutic. But I m not getting it. Therapeutic means having or exhibiting healing properties. So . . . if we actually had a culture that was therapeutic, would that not be a good thing? We ve had thousands of years of non-MTD religion--prohibition, punishment, and preaching about the wrath of God in an attempt to control and change. Well, as Dr. Phil, that icon of MTDness, would say, How s that workin for you? By their own admission, the ministers of the COC/WOG--Culture of Condemnation/Wrath of God--have failed. By their own standards, people seem to be as bad as ever. Maybe it's time to try something else. I surely do wish my fellow Christians were more willing to focus on giving love and showing the way, just for a change. And if that makes me therapeutic, so be it. Jesus was pretty darn therapeutic, I d say. He was scorned by all right-thinking people for unauthorized healing and neglect of the proprieties. And remember when Peter and John met the beggar outside the temple? Peter said to him, I don t have any money, but I ll give you what I ve got!
So what did he give him? What was the treasure that he had? A set of precepts? Maybe a stern moral lecture? Don t look for a handout from me, you lousy scion of a liberal socialistic worldview! And by the way, there shall be no goshdarn gay marriage around here! Gay people are gravely disordered! And you young people better shape up and quit having sex and thinking you can worship God with guitars!
Or not . . . . Actually, he said In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, GET UP AND WALK. In other words, be healed. The precious thing that Peter owned was faith in the healing love of Jesus. They didn t even ask the beggar to repent first. They just healed him. How very therapeutic of them.

I (heart) you, Sigaliris. You rock so hard it hurts.

How about seeking that which makes you "good and happy."

Thanks for the vocab lesson, Rod, but tautology doesn't fit as it presupposes the statement to be "needless." Obviously it was needed, because Iranaeus knows exactly what good is, as he defines it. Good is whatever his church fathers say it is. Even when what they say is bad.

Speaking of tautologies, MTD may be reductionism. It seems to fit some trends, but the true spiritual picture of America's youth is likely to be more complicated than that. Everybody thinks their type of religious expression is the perfect type. I appreciated sigaliris' corrective comments. I think a healthy trend would be for believers to limit their complaints about other forms of Christianity to a few concise points. We do damage to ourselves and others when we go into long, exploratory diatribes about what's wrong with other churches. The reason for this is that there is much wrong very close to our own home. We should be humbled until that is fixed.

We ve had thousands of years of non-MTD religion--prohibition, punishment, and preaching about the wrath of God in an attempt to control and change. What a cartoon view of history this is. Do you really think that traditional, orthodox Christianity has been largely about "prohibtion, punishment and preaching about the wrath of God"?
Authentic religion is never mere moralism (hence the derisive "M" in the "MTD"). Moralism concerns itself primarily with external behavior -- often the behavior of others -- rather than contemplation of God. But authentic religion is also not antinomian. To pretend to have life-giving faith, to contemplate the face of God, while rejecting the moral law when it becomes inconvenient is nothing more than self-deception -- the way of death. In rejecting moralism a Christian doesn't reject morality, any more than in rejecting self-righteousness he would reject righteousness itself.

M_David, I must thank you for quoting those beautiful scriptures to me. I went and re-read them in context, and they gave me much joy. There s so much richness in them and the surrounding words that I m surprised you could restrain yourself to just a verse or two. I always have trouble stopping before I ve read whole chapters. Yes, in all of them, Jesus is healing and setting free those who are hearing him. He sets us free from being enslaved by notions that we have to be rich and successful before we can be loved. He lets us know that even when we might look like a failure in the eyes of more popular people, even when we re in pain, even when we turn our backs on him as the disciples were soon to do after that last quote from John, he s still right there with us, loving and encouraging. We don t have to be slaves to money or the opinions of the authorities. We have nothing to fear, because there is no place, even death itself, where he hasn t gone ahead of us. I find that extremely therapeutic to know.
I wish that I knew more about how crunchy con people have heard such verses calling out to them, and what actions they ve felt led to take as a result. It would be illuminating, I think. So often, one only hears conservatives using scripture verses as a bludgeon against those they don t like. That makes it harder to hear them as the voice of one who loved us. Myself, I ve never found anything but healing in the voice of Jesus. However, when people try to turn words into stones to beat me with, I use my most respectful martial arts methods of not being there. Sometimes I sing Kumbaya as I disappear over the horizon. ;)

Rob Dreher: "God has to exist. If God doesn't, "good" or "bad" are merely expressions of individual preference." Good or bad have to exist independent (transcendent) of God, else the question of "good" or "bad" merely depends on divine preference. There is no a priori requirement that God be "good". tv writes: "Good is what Good is. Rob Dreher replies: "That's not an argument or an answer. It's a tautology." Yes, as is the claim that God *defines* what is good. The latter claim simply adds a degree of separation to the tautology and doesn't "fix" it. The definition and assessment of good and evil present some of the classic unresolved problems of theology/philosophy. I think part of the issue is that "good & evil" are axioms in many metaphysical constructs, so of course they'd appear to be transcendent within those systems.

Dostoevsky was a great novelist; that doesn't make him always right. I have many wonderful Christians in my life, but the people I know who best exemplify goodness, who dedicate their lives tirelessly to altruistic endeavors, who always treat their fellow man with respect and acceptance, are all atheists. Go figure. I guess they didn't get the memo that it's okay for them to rape and pillage.

Not quite. Christian theology states that goodness flows from God's nature not his will. Goodness is not an 'attribute' of God; since God is love, he is good by definition. That's an awful lot of mental gymnastics to define something that is so very easy to define: Good and Bad are in the eyes of the beholder. "Good" is what is good for the definer. "Bad" is whatever is bad for the definer. That's how the same action can bee good for one, but evil for another. If a man makes money from a business deal and another loses money on the same deal, is that deal good or bad? It depends on which one you ask. If a man steals bread to feed his family, is that a good action or a bad action? Depends on whether your the man's family or the original owner of the bread, doesn't it? Good and Bad are predecated upon the minds of the actor and the observer. Transcendent? Hardly. There is absolutely no reason under the sun to take the word of the long dead about what is "objectively" good and "objectively" bad because even that is merely subjectivity made objective by consensus. Faith absolves man of responsibility for his actions. He can do great evil - throwing families out of their homes for non-payment of rent, shooting someone for trespassing on his land, etc - and call it "good" because some group of subjective beings came to a consensus about it.

'Faith absolves man of responsibility for his actions. He can do great evil - throwing families out of their homes for non-payment of rent, shooting someone for trespassing on his land, etc - and call it "good" because some group of subjective beings came to a consensus about it.' And these things you describe as great evils are so because....?

David J. White writes: If they're atheists, how can they possibly believe that what they do is "good"? You are one of the most intelligent posters on this board, but I'm not with you on this one. If anything, humanists are utterly preoccupied with what is "good" and what is right, and how to help their fellow man. They're not in it for salvation, to follow externally imposed rules. I'd pose the same question to you I did to Rob above: do you really need God to exist to know booting the old lady under the bus is pretty bad? If you decided God didn't exist, would you instantly turn into a self-absorbed hedonist? I doubt it--I suspect you'd still be a pretty upstanding guy.

Rob Grano: "Not quite. Christian theology states that goodness flows from God's nature not his will. Goodness is not an 'attribute' of God; since God is love, he is good by definition." Yes, I understand that assumption. Still, I'm not convinced that "Will" and "Nature" can be separated in necessary beings -- Not just for the 'God' of philosophy, but also of Western religion. It's not clear that 'badness' cannot also be permitted by God (from a moral standpoint, as opposed to the decree of a God). There is simply no a priori necessity that a God must be good. That can only be deduced -- and only provisionally -- by other means, such as Rob mentions. The existence of God and of moral absolutes are somewhat orthogonal questions. Belief in a particular moral system, like religion requires faith, but not necessary cojoined faith.

Otherwise the decision is purely subjective and arbitrary, if there's no higher standard to judge it by. Why do you need a higher standard by which to judge? Don't you trust yourself? If not, why should anyone else?

The simple truth is that way American society has become constructed, any church that does not make its members feel good about being there is going to be empty. There is no social pressure to belong to a church and no stigma for not belonging to one. So people can pretty much ignore any moral dictats coming from a pulpit and it is not a great stretch to see a time when the very concepts of good and moral will carry little, if any weight. In practical terms they carry little now.

"One can accept that religious understanding is imperfect even if one assumes that there are transcendent truths or moral systems." Agreed. But that's a different issue, or at least the next link in the chain; once one admits the transcendent, the next step is to query if and how it's knowable. "Why do you need a higher standard by which to judge?" So if one person finds Gandhi to be a great role model and another finds Stalin so, which person's judgment is wrong? Why? Can't you trust him to make his own judgment? Going further, can't you trust Stalin to make his own judgments on right and wrong?

Rob, I used to think as you do, because it seemed logical to me. We have to ascribe our ideas of what is right and wrong to a supreme and unquestionable source, because otherwise, won t people just make it mean whatever they want it to? Now I m not so sure. First of all, I ve noticed that people who claim to believe in God still manage to make right and wrong mean whatever is expedient for them at the time. Ever heard the word jesuitical ? It may be unfair to Jesuits, but it was coined in response to just such behavior on the part of some staunch believers in Moral Absolutes. You can create a convoluted rationalization to justify almost anything, if you try hard enough. Referring the subject to holy books doesn t help all that much. The books had to have been put together, authorized and preserved by humans, even if inspired by God, so that always creates room for argument. And, being books, they are composed of words--tricky little human inventions, always a rich source of ambiguity. It seems to me that, in general, people do know what basic agreements are necessary for humans to live together productively. See C. S. Lewis and the Tao, in The Abolition of Man, as referenced by others here. Arguments are usually about practical applications, not outright reversals. When a fairly radical idea comes along, it takes centuries to work its way into the culture--for instance, the idea that a human being cannot be property. The global human community has still not fully assimilated that one, even though we got the Memo from God a long time ago. We keep finding different ways to own each other and say it s okay. Anyway, I started asking myself, how DO I know that it s not right to push the old lady in front of the bus? And why is it that people who have been given the Memo from God and have been beaten up plenty for not obeying it, would push her anyway? The thing is, it s not as if I would WANT to push her, but sternly restrain myself because I ve been taught right from wrong. I don t even want to. I hypothesize that the law written in our hearts gets there via empathy. If you are treated with love and enabled to connect with others in your childhood, you learn empathy. You learn that what hurts you would hurt others too, and you don t want to go there. If you get violence and isolation, that s what you give out. It s not inevitable. There are geniuses of the heart who can turn this around. But in general, we know how to create bad humans, as surely as we know how to make a dog a killer, and we do it every day. We know how to ruin people. We just don t seem to know--or care--how to fix them. The repentance and salvation model, where you see that God will love you unconditionally, even though no one else does, actually works some of the time. It s therapeutic, in other words. :) That s why it s still around. I consider it a wonderful thing, a revolution in human consciousness. And we re finally beginning to understand some practical things about how to repair damage to the human heart--you can look for articles about reintegration of child soldiers, or treatment of PTSD, for instance. I believe there s more hope to be found there for saving Mrs. McGillycuddy from the bus than in yet another rerun of Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God.

And these things you describe as great evils are so because....? I guess it depends on whether you're the land owner or the one being evicted or shot, doesn't it? For hundreds of thousands of years, perhaps even millions, humans that were generally as evolved as we are survived on this planet without any transcendent revelation nonsense about good and evil. Yet some monotheistic bronze age tribalist goes up onto a mountain, carves some rules into stone and *that's* supposed to be the be-all, end-all of right and wrong? Good is what works. Bad is what doesn't work. Everything is subjective.

"Good is what works. Bad is what doesn't work. Everything is subjective." So if pederasty "works" for the pederast it's okay?

So if pederasty "works" for the pederast it's okay? Here's a question for you. Will my agreeing or disagreeing stop pederasty in any way?

Agreed, Franklin (although that wasn't quite what I was trying to get at.) "Here's a question for you. Will my agreeing or disagreeing stop pederasty in any way?" Depends on if you choose to act upon your decision. "If your transcendant source of morality (in your belief system, God) said to murder babies, would that be good?" No.

"If your transcendant source of morality (in your belief system, God) said to murder babies, would that be good?" No. But He did just that, if you believe the bible is His story. How do you reconcile it? Do you just say "Well, God has His reasons and it's not for me to decide whether those are good ro bad" or would you actually stand there and tell God "No." when he ordered His people to dash babies against stones? If the source of your transcendent morality can do things that you say are evil, doesn't that make them good?

Yes, and likewise, you may feel free to believe that ultimately there is no difference between Gandhi and Stalin. You just keep on reading what you want to read in what I post, there. I didn't say there is ultimately no difference between the two. I said that ultimately, whether one considered either, neither, or both of them "good" or "bad" was dependant upon how much they agreed. YOU are the one who added the "they're not different" nonsense - for what purpose, one can only speculate.

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So, since the OT accounts are unreliable, according to Rob, how can any of you be sure that the NT accounts or the writings of Church fathers who spent centuries straining at gnats to suss out the dogma now touted as transcendent truth are reliable? Faith? Sounds more to me like you believe what you agree with, which is what I've been saying all along.

Meh - that you're incapable of understanding anything outside of your dogma ceratinly isn't *my* fault. Of course it's faith, but faith in a person, Which person would that be? The person telling you about God? or God? Without one, how would you know about the other?

In other words, you believe what you agree with and don't believe what you don't.

"...a lot of it one accepts on authority..." So you don't agree with it, you just believe it because the person who told you has authority. Yet just above, you go to great lengths to show how those very people are unreliable in what they have to say about what God wants. Why take it on their authority if they are unreliable?

How about killing heretics? ONce upon a time, that was right, moral and proper. Now, it wouldn't happen.
What has changed? Is killing heretics good or bad? If it's good, why don't they do it anymore? If it's bad, how can you trust in the authority of those who would do bad and call it good? I realize this is now picking nits, but you make a broad sweeping generalized statement like "good can't exist without God, because there's no outside authority," then go on to show how the outside authority isn't even authoritative. I wonder how it is you believe anything at all, when you rely on the authority of humans who are just as fallible as you are to determine the rightness and wrongness of something. I think you're closer to hitting the mark when you said that you weigh what's said against reality. That's generally what we all do. You take it a step further, though, into the realm of the absurd when you state that your assessment holds more weight than the assessment of anyone else simply because old dead men with power agendas happened to agree with you.

Meh - if I want to know what land barons masking themselves in piety had to say about the general design of the Cosmos, I know where to find it. Thanks for the suggestion, though :)

It's not what they said that matters, Rob, it's their *authority to pronounce reality for anyone other than themselves* that is at issue for me. They don't have the authority to determine the makeup of the clestial bureaucracy, nor do they have any means of telling people what happens after they die. Yet they did just that, and used it as a bludgeon that countless millions felt on their backsides for hundreds of years. "You shall know them by their fruits."

A parody of what, may I ask? Is it not fact that the whole idea of heaven, hell, purgatory, limbo, intercession of the saints, angels, the whole lot of it was made up by men? Oh - you can of course point to their claims of supernatural revelation, but you haven't given any reason why you believe it nor why anyone else should. Face it - they were wrong about the makeup of the solar system. They were wrong about the causes of disease and mental illness. They spoke with authority regarding stuff about which they knew nothing. If they were alive today they'd be laughing stocks. If they were wrong about those things regarding the fundamental makeup of the universe and how it operates, how do they have it right about the state of the soul? Why do you put faith in anything those people had to say about anything?

There's the rub. The solar system, the human body, and the rest of the natural world isn't "the fundamental makeup of the universe." Except when they tried him for heresy, they took it as a spiritual affront, rather than a matter of pure science. They weren't able to separate the two.

No, you're right. You're not required to defend them. But you're still willing to take their word for it regarding metaphysics. Okay.

If the founding fathers ever wrote that one could not be American unless they believed in the same atomic theory as they did, then I'd have to re-examine that. They didn't.

"If that understanding is wrong, then everything that followed from that understanding is also tainted." True, but that's not what you were saying above; you were arguing against their metaphysics by ridiculing their views on science, not the other way around. In the same way that the Founding Fathers' views on science aren't particularly germane to their idea of government, the medieval and patristic writers could be quite off-base scientifically but still get the metaphysics right.

Rob, I don't mean to pile onto you, but I do see a valid point in GIITTV's argument. If, for instance, Augustine, Aristotle and Aquinas had an idea of woman as an inferior or defective version of man that is falsified by our current knowledge of biology, how could they form a true idea of relations between men and women, based on this error?
I also think that Aquinas's ideas about substance and essence become somewhat problematic now that we have molecular biology and physical chemistry. We can see right down into the atoms of the Eucharistic bread and wine, and they remain bread and wine throughout. So where does that leave those stories the nuns told me about bleeding Hosts, and so forth? I don't mean any irreverence to the Eucharist, but this does wreak havoc on the traditional explanations of transubstantiation that I was given as a child. Understanding DNA leaves us with a lot of questions about the mechanics of the Incarnation, too. If Jesus was fully human, he had to have chromosomes. Where did they come from? You can posit various kinds of miracles, sure, but it does get a lot more complicated. What about Adam and Eve? If there was no one single First Couple, created from nothing, but rather a slow evolution of human consciousness, then what would it mean to say that the very first humans ever were given a choice and flunked the test?
Thus, erroneous science can lead to problems in metaphysics, I should think.

Sigaliris, I understand what you and TV are saying, I just don't think that the problems are insurmountable. To take each of your examples in turn: A) if their biological view of woman was incorrect it could indeed affect the metaphysics of relationships, etc. But I think what you'd need to do in that case is to examine the instances that could be traced to bad science and weed them out. I have a feeling that such 'bad science' in this case wouldn't affect the metaphysics all that much. B) as far as transubstantiation goes I, as an Orthodox, see that as a philosophical term which tries to explain what is ultimately a mystery in the strict sense. Since the Orthodox don't use that term, the philosophy underlying it doesn't really mean much one way or the other; to us the terminology (since we don't use it) is something that could be dispensed with, doing no violence to the doctrine or mystery. I'm not sure where a traditional Catholic would stand on this and I don't want to speak for them. C) The virginal conception of Jesus has always been seen as a miracle sui generis. I don't see how chromosomes change or affect that at all. D) On Adam and Eve, I haven't really come to any sort of conclusion yet, but I'm not sure ultimately how much it matters. I believe that there was at some point in human history a fall or cosmic catastrophe of some sort that affected things both physically and metaphysically. As to the 'nuts and bolts' of it, I have yet to come to a conclusion.