This Friday's review will review two people's work. That is because we are review and article by Trevin Wax (click here and there for info) which reviews a book by Jim Belcher (click here for info) on Christianity and rescuing America from its current plight. Belcher's book is called Cold Civil War: Overcoming Polarization, Discovering Unity, And Healing The Nation (click here for the book's link).
Belcher's book addresses a real problem with America. We are sharply divided. We are sharply divided because we have gone through some significant changes and not all are in favor of those changes. Those changes come from addressing longstanding injustices being practiced against Blacks and Hispanics as well as against the LGBT community. And with the Obergefell decision being acknowledged as the final nail in the coffin of past Christian dominance over culture and society, Christians have been at a loss in terms of how it should now relate to society.
One of the first proposals that resulted from the Obergefell decision was described in Ron Dreher's book The Benedict Option: A Strategy For Christians In A Post Christian Nation. Dreher's proposal was that Christians should somewhat retreat from society and circle the wagons in order to regroup and keep themselves unstained by the world.
Belcher's proposal is a bit different, according to Wax's review (click here for Wax's article). Belcher wants Christian to take their faith and go out into America, rather than retreat from it, and use their faith to heal and unite the nation. To do that, American Christians must supplement their faith with a sound knowledge of natural law and social teaching. This is necessary, according to Belcher, for Christians to help America recover its covenant and to return America to the moorings provided by its founding fathers.
Belcher identifies the opponents of American Christians in this noble quest. They include those who see The Constitution as being purely secular, those who see America as being fatally flawed from the beginning, libertarianism, the alt-right, proponents of Critical Race Theory and open borders, and the ruling elites.
Belcher believes that Special Revelation, which is God's Word, provides the 'grounding' for general revelation, that which we learn from nature and observation, Belcher believes that America needs to 'rebuild the culture' and restore civic responsibility along with getting legal immigrants to resemble the majority of Americans so that America's common heritage and traditions can live on.
Wax is sympathetic to Belcher's concerns and what he calls for. Wax appreciates Belcher's citing Catholic Social Teaching and his dependence on Tocqueville. We should note that Tocqueville's view of America was somewhat racist in his comparisons between Anglo white settlers and either Blacks from Africa or Native Americans. Tocqueville believed British society had accomplished a superiority over other European societies, especially the Spanish, in the new world. We should also note that quite a few Christians regard Tocqueville as a kind of secular Apostle who speaks authoritatively on what makes America tick. Regardless, Wax appreciates that Belcher interacts with people from different perspectives and tries to show what they hold to in common.
But Wax can't buy a significant part of what Belcher is advocating. The reason is, and it would be similar to what J. Gresham Machen would say if he were alive, he believes that Belcher is putting the Gospel in a 'supporting role' to accomplish another good. The temptation, for those who use the Gospel that way, is to critique the Gospel in terms of how it contributes to the establishing of some other good. Such would tempt us to change the contents of the Gospel to fit the purpose of this other good. Wax has a couple of other criticisms but that one is the most important one. Wax believes that Christians and the Gospel can play a role in helping America recover what it once lost, but that such would be an indirect benefit of the Gospel.
What both seem to miss is this. We religiously conservative American Christians are not the victims of the current state of ideological polarization in America, we are major contributors to it. Thus both Wax's and Belcher's, even more so, when calling America to Christianity, are calling on America to return to a partial state of oppression and injustices. It's not that either Belcher or Wax are advocating the repeating of marginalizing Blacks and Native Americans, even though such marginalization was written into The Constitution that they are so enamored by. But they want to return to a state where Christianity had a significant control over the culture and society. And when Christianity had such control, certain groups were heavily marginalized.
And seeing how we religiously conservative Christians have diametrically opposed sexual morals that those held to by the LGBT community, what would happen to the advances made by and for the LGBT community should it be us religiously conservative Christians who spearheaded a more united nation? Can't we see that it is our reactions to these gains made by and for the LGBT community that play such a significant role in the polarization in America.
We might also ask if in getting the immigrants who are here to fit in by adopting American culture, whether they would be allowed to either make their own contributions to that culture that we would have to learn from or they would be allowed to maintain their culture as they are fitting in here.
But the biggest problem here is whether Belcher and Wax have recognized how we religiously Christians have contributed to the current Civil Cold War and the division and polarization in our nation by our strong reactions to the changes, many of them are attempts to undo social injustices, that have already taken place. And we have done that by already pursuing many of the paths that Belcher has been promoting. It isn't just the ruling elites who are dividing us. It is the old guard as it reacts to significant changes that bears most of the responsibility for the division and polarization that we live with.
The current state of America did not have become what it is now. We religiously conservative Christians could have responded favorably to the changes, especially most of the changes advocated by the LGBT community, without compromising our faith and standards. But we chose to resist those changes rather than to accept them. We chose to oppose multiculturalism rather than to embrace or even tolerate it. We religiously conservative Christians can never work for the healing of our nation until we acknowledge the major role we have played in dividing and injuring it.
