What Happened to Craig Carter?

All over the internet the buzz is "What happened to Craig Carter?" Well, OK, that is a slight exaggeration. Would you believe an obscure blog ranted at me last week and one or two others said "Yah!"? Adam Steward is disappointed in me and Halden Doerge notes it but is waiting to see "how it plays out," though he has tended to be quite critical of my recent writing.

Adam hurls the ultimate "hipster" insult my way - "He's gone all First Things." Nothing is more calculated to hurt a guy in certain regions of the blogosphere than to associate him with that magazine. First Things is the most intelligent and interesting read of any magazine I know, but it has one fatal flaw that more than compensates for all its wit, insight and humour, not to mention poetry and cultural criticism, in the eyes of some. It endorsed George Bush and his modern, liberal war against Iraq in the name of Enlightenment values like liberty, equality and democracy. And that is the unpardonable sin - except I can't figure out if it is really Bush's Enlightenment beliefs or his waging of an unjust war that is the real problem for some people. But everything gets tarred with one gigantic brush - like this:

1. It was an unjust war according to just war theory (not last resort, aggressive).
2. It was launched by a Republican president who allowed the American Empire, neo-conservative, cabal (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc.) within the party to have their way.
3. Social conservatives and the Religious right vote Republican because it is the only party that opposes abortion.
4. In this case, both the social conservative and the Religious Right (AND the Democratic Party, including most of its current leadership), chose to close ranks behind the President and supported the war. First Things, (along with just about every other magazine and newspaper in the US), did the same.
5. Therefore the social conservatives/Religious Right (symbolized by First Things) are completely discredited forever on all issues including abortion, euthanasia, marriage & family, etc.
6. Therefore, for Craig Carter to criticize the left from a conservative perspective is for him to align himself with a discredited neo-conservativism.

I think the Iraq War was wrong. I opposed it from the time it was first suggested until today. I opposed it on the basis that it was unjust and the perpetrators professed to believe in the Just War Theory and were not practicing it.

But I do not think it is fair or reasonable to assign blame to the soc. con./RR for initiating the war or pressuring Bush to go ahead; i. e., point 5 does not logically follow from points 1-4. Another wing of the Rep. Party should be blamed for pushing for that war. What the soc. con./RR group can justly be blamed for is putting party unity ahead of principle and not opposing it. But this can also be said about the Democrats who voted for the war as well. So there is no moral high ground in either party on this issue; there is plenty of disgrace to go around. I do not think that the issues that the the soc. con/RR caucus in the Rep. Party stand for (sanctity of life, marriage, etc.) are unimportant or rendered somehow obsolete by the Iraq fiasco. In other words, to be clear: I am not defending anyone's support for an unjust war, but I am saying that to write off all that First Things stands for, because of its failure on this point, is unreasonable and no one would do it unless they had other reasons for doing so and the war was just the excuse.

During the last election campaign, Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo, Brian McLaren, and others formed a new Religious Left (the original one embeded in liberal Protestantism having fallen on rather hard times) to rally Evangelical support for Obama and the Dem. Party. They thought it was all right to compromise on the life and marriage issues in order to get the Dem. Party into power so it could expand the welfare state. For them to continue to use the Iraq War to beat the soc. con./RR over the head is disingenuous. Sure they are politicans and they know when they have a sure-fire winner of a sound bite, but that is all they are. They are gigantic hypocrites for doing themselves exactly what they blamed the soc. con./RR people for doing: compromising their basic Christian principles for the sake of gaining influence in a political party - all for the noblest of causes, from their point of view, of course. But if it is wrong for one, it is wrong for both - and it is.

The fact that First Things has become a sort of symbol of compromise in certain quarters means that it now takes its place alongside Focus on the Family, the Moral Majority and other such symbols of - something - the question is what? What exactly is being rejected? I would suggest that what is at stake here is a conflict between two positions that Christians take in contemporary politics.

On the one hand is an economic left-wing committment to social equality through re-distribution of income. For those on this side, equality requires some (or a lot of) levelling out of income and a great deal of social engineering to achieve ideologically-motivated goals (such as that women should be economically independent of men and so must be in the workforce and competitive with men in income). This philosophy tends to think in terms of the individual and the state and is not much concerned with civil society or the family, both of which it often frankly regards as oppressive because they place limits on the autonomous individual. I will refer to this philosophy below as left liberal thought (even though it incorporates much of the Marxist critique of capitalism into itself.)

On the other hand are those who see human equality in terms of equal value and worth, but who have less concern for re-distribution of income and more concern for equality of opportunity. For those on this side, social engineering is highly suspect and the emphasis is on protecting human dignity through the rule of law - this, rather than income redistribution, is the primary function of government. This philosophy tends to focus on how best to strengthen the family and civil society so as to make continual expansion of bureaucratic management of daily life uncecessary. I will refer to this philosophy as conservative thought (even though it often makes common cause with neo-conservativism, which is too smitten with capitialism to be true conservatism).

Now, I suggest that First Things, has become a symbol of all things conservative, the primary fault of which is the rejection of left liberal philosophy. But I distinguish between neo-conservativism and true conservativism. What I call true conservativism is a political philosophy that historically and logically precedes modernity and calls into question all the nominalism, individualism, rationalism and materialism that flows from the Enlightenment and is expressed in the two great Enlightenment religions: Capitalism & Marxism. True conservatism emphasises the family, localism, agrarianism, tradition, religion, duty & natural law. Both neo-conservatism and true conservatism are represented in First Things and I contend that it is wrong to reject both because true conservativism, unlike neo-conservatism, is a genuine alternative to modernity and the Enlightenment. So it is not logical to derive point 6 above from points 1-4.

Now in the process of trying to reject the Enlightenment, a group of people, (most of whom are currently unhappy with me) has been attracted to Yoder as a way out of what they see as the trap of having to choose between the secular left and the secular right. They embrace postmodernism and pacifism in an attempt to extricate themselves from the modern dialectics between equality & freedom, left & right and empire & revolution. Through their reading of postmodern philosophy they encounter neo-Marxist critiques of global capitalism and they embrace these eagerly. They see themselves as at once hovering above the left-right political battles and, at the same time, are utterly convinced that some sort of left liberal economic redistribution of wealth is necessary for a just society, which means that the right must be defeated. Thus they see themselves as simultaneously detatched and engaged - but they fail to detect any contradiction in such a stance. Well, I do.

What has happened to Craig Carter? It is really very simple. For the past 20 years I have described myself as left-wing on social issues and conservative in theology, although my pro-life and pro-marriage postion has always made me uneasy in left-wing circles. But in the past few years, I have lost my faith in liberal progressivism altogether. I no longer would call myself left wing on any issue. I have come to realize that to claim to be a Christian who is neither left wing or right wing is one thing, but to think that one can embrace left liberalism and still remain untainted by modernity is just not logically possible. In fact, I think that most of the Yoder-loving, neo-Marxist quoting, pacifist/anarchist, postmodern philosopher-reading crowd are just upscale liberal progressivists at heart. They are not "fundamentalists with Ph.D.'s," as the early Evangelicals were described, they are "community organizers with Ph.D.'s" - Jim Wallis dressed up in pastmodern jargon.

The great hero of this crowd is Mr. Bushy Eyebrows himself, Rowan Williams, also known as "the Great Undecided One" (the perfect foil to G. W. Bush, the self-proclaimed "Decider-in-Chief.") R. Williams is a nice man and by all accounts an excellent professor who embodies the Peter Principle, which says that in any organization employees will be promoted to the level of their incompetence. As Archbishop, he has displayed a talent only for making the ecclesiastical train wreck that is the Anglican Communion happen in slow motion. But that is not what I want to point out about him here. Williams embodies a common type in modern theology. He embodies the intellectual who is characterized by fair-mindedness, wide scholarly acumen and a talent for self promotion that combines more than a dollop of commendable orthodoxy with a standard, left liberal ideology. This endears him to the "upper class with a social conscience" types who facilitate his social promotion and it compensates in their eyes for his orthodoxy. One of his articles of faith is the Trinity; another is socialism. Redistribution of income is the sine qua non of social justice. The problem with the Labour Pary is that it is too right-wing. (N. T. Wright is another one of this type.)

The fact that the same people simultaneously like Yoder (the ultimate outsider) and Williams (the consumate insider) and think of themselves as radical in so doing is an incongruity that causes the oneness and threeness of the persons to pale in comparison as a source of wonder. What am I trying to say? Simply that I understand why I'm being excommunicated from this circle, but I'm not sure the excommunicators understand what they are doing.

What has happened to Craig Carter? I have come to believe that the only truly radical (getting to the roots) way of being a Christian in late modernity is to embrace a pre-modern conservatism that challenges all forms of liberalism (left liberalism & neo-conservativism alike) by challenging the fundamental, bedrock assumption of modernity common to all strands of modernity and postmodernity, which is the priority of the autonomous self. True conservativism hearkens back to a time before the priority of the autonomous self, a time when family was fundamental, civil society was robust, tradition was sacred and the state was limited. It does not want to go back to that time (which is impossible), but it does want to mine that tradition for resources that can help us rebuild a church that has been decimated by modernity.

What resources does it offer? It offers such treasures as a metaphysics of a universe in motion moved by the love of God (C. S. Lewis, John Milbank), virtue ethics (A. MacIntyre, S. Pinckears), proper confidence in reason's ability to know truth (St. Thomas Aquinas, Benedict XVI) and a way of reading Scripture for its spiritual meaning (H. de Lubac). These are just the examples that come to mind first.

I find Adam Steward's critique of me as being characterized by "resentment" to be hilarious. He thinks I am a fundamentalist who secretly believes that the powers of the world are ultimate (although how a true fundamentalist could believe that is difficult to understand) and he dismisses my critique of liberalism as envy. Adam, on the other hand, hovers serenely above the fray "content to let the world go by, to know no gain nor loss" while smiling knowingly about my preoccupation with "the things of this world." Who is the real fundamentalist here? The really funny part is that he quotes a neo-Marxist in his critique of me! So I'm pre-occupied with the powers of this world and a neo-Marxist analysis proves it! Stop the irony - I can't stand it!

What I observe about the Yoder-Williams crowd is that the only way they know to overcome or at least mitigate the incipient gnosticism to which they are tempted (the perennial Protestant temptation) is to declare their indifference to party politics, political issues & this-worldly debate until at last they can take it no longer and they succumb to a fit of liberal progressivism, after which they immediately go back to pretending to be so different from the Religious Right because they know that all that political stuff is irrelevant in the context of the great cosmic drama of redemption through the crucified Messiah. Finally, then, my rejoinder to Adam and Halden and co. is clear: I think the way of embodied discipleship in this world is true conservativism and I think the reason they find that distasteful is that they have bought into a typical Protestant attempt to marry a gnostic streak with a liberal progressive default position. That is why you never find them marching against abortion, but always ready to mock those who are.