Comments Which Conservatives Block For September 7, 2022

[Editor's Note: Apologies ahead of time for not having edited the comment before sending it out. And so what is below in the first comment was what was submitted as a comment.] 

Sept 2

To editors at Heidelblog and Townsend P. Levitt regarding the article that quotes part of Levitt's article about the challenges Presbyterian culture faces in today's society. Those challenges are in the light of how traditional Christian views are now regarded in society. This article was posted in Heidelblog.

Levitt's full article is called The Dilemma Of Presbyterian Culture and can be found at:

https://heidelblog.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Ntj-July-2022.pdf

The lack of a third option exhibits the same kind of thinking that is evident in the analysis of Christianity's relationship with culture which is stated by quoting Carl Trueman later on in the article cited:

'The Western public square is no longer a place where Christians feel they belong with any degree of comfort'

The trouble with that using that quote is that there is not reflection on why Christians now feel that uncomfortable in the Western public square. Trueman cites changes on sexual issues that accepted by society which have made traditional Christian beliefs either 'outmoded' or appear 'hateful' (see  https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/08/a-church-for-exiles for the source). 

But Trueman never fully explains why we don't feel at ease in the Western public square. After all, in a diverse, multicultural societal setting, why should the mere criticism make us feel uncomfortable? And as for the hostility, doesn't anyone here remember the hostility that traditional Christians have shown to both the LGBT community and those who followed different heterosexual ethics? Are we receiving similar hostility? Are our sexual practices criminalized or are we marginalized for practicing traditional Christian morality? 

Disagreement is not hostility especially in a multicultural setting. So perhaps what Trueman cited in his 2014 article is not the reason why some religiously conservative Christians feel uncomfortable in the public square and, according to the article cited above, are thus forced into either choosing The Benedict Option or Reformed Transformationalism. Maybe our problem is that in societies that consist of unbelievers from many multiple traditions and believers, we favor our dominance over others to multiculturalism. And so when we see disagreement expressed by unbelievers, we expect to be treated in the same way in which we have treated others in the past.

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Sept 6

To George Panichas and his article called Restoring The Meaning Of Conservatism. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative Blog.

From what I read in the above article and from other writings, the need to rescue the word 'conservatism' exhibits the cult-like loyalty people have to the term. This cult-like loyalty is seen in the above article by how it uses the word 'desanctifying.' One can only desanctify that which is holy. And on what basis is the word 'conservative' a holy word that puts us in connection with the divine?

Another indicator of the cult-like loyalty to the word 'conservative' is found in the last two paragraphs of the article. For it is there that Panichas  refers to traditions treasured by conservatives as 'reverent traditions.'

In reality, the meaning of conservative is relative to the context in which it is being used. For example what was conservative during the Cold War depended on one's location. What was conservative in the US back then would be considered liberal in the Soviet Union and what was considered to be conservative in the Soviet Union would be called leftist in the US. So conservatism is really a relative concept. This relativity of conservatism might escape many conservative readers of this article because they might reduce conservatism to conservatism in the setting of Western Civilization.

The real fault of conservatism is found in both how conservatives relate to the outside world as well as to each other. The fault of conservatism isn't necessarily found in the practice of preserving that which deserves to be conserved, for that is everybody's task. But the fault of conservatism is found in its assumption that conservatism, or true conservatives, alone are the final judges of that which is permanent, the right paradigm of essences, and that which should be considered to be sacred. For it is from that fault that leads conservatives to think that they have 'everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them,' which is what Martin Luther King complained about the West in his speech against the Vietnam War.