T.S. Eliot's "Christianity and Culture"

At The Imaginative Conservative. 

Death to liberalism:

This is not to say that ours has become a pagan society. In saying that ours is a neutral society, Eliot also is pointing out that it remains Christian, though only in vestigial form. Liberalism, the ideology dominant in the West, has emptied out (some might say “secularized”) our society, dissolving many of its religiously grounded structures and aims. Liberalism has done much to neutralize Christianity, but claims the labels “benign” and “tolerant” because it has put nothing in Christianity’s place. As Eliot puts it,

Liberalism….tends to release energy rather than accumulate it, to relax, rather than to fortify. It is a movement not so much defined by its end, as by its starting point; away from, rather than towards, something definite. Our point of departure is more real to us than our destination; and the destination is likely to present a very different picture when arrived at, from the vaguer image formed in imagination. By destroying traditional social habits of the people, by dissolving their natural collective consciousness into individual constituents, by licensing the opinions of the most foolish, by substituting instruction for education, by encouraging cleverness rather than wisdom, the upstart rather than the qualified, by fostering a notion of getting on to which the alternative is a hopeless apathy, Liberalism can prepare the way for that which is its own negative: the artificial, mechanized or brutalised control which is a desperate remedy for its chaos.(CC, 12)

Liberalism is fundamentally negative in its teleology. Its inherent purpose is to liberate individuals from constraints of tradition, social structure, and cultural context. It can have good effects (some structures are, indeed, oppressive), but if not checked it will corrode the social framework, producing anarchy and brutal responses to that anarchy. Here, obviously, Eliot is referring to the rise of totalitarianism, perhaps most obviously in response to the anarchy of post–World War I German society. He also points to the discomfiting fact that Western democracies share significant affinities with totalitarian regimes. Totalitarian regimes simply have advanced more fully (and ironically, more efficiently) on the road to paganism, a destination toward which our society continues to move.[5]

Great Article on Richard Hooker

In summary, Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity is not only a refutation of bad doctrine. It presupposes a comprehensive and coherent theology–balancing Catholicism and Protestantism, tradition and spirit–that we can confidently call Anglican theology.

Read it here.

Two New Blogs on the Sidebar

Anglican Catholic Liturgy and Theology

Paterfamilias Daily

Theological Foundations of Infant Baptism

Great article from Paterfamilias.

Christianity's Manhood Problem

From the Art of Manliness:

Among men who are committed Christians, why do they seem to be more effeminate, on average, than the male population as a whole? As Murrow puts it, what is it about “Christianity, especially Western Christianity, that drives a wedge between the church and men who want to be masculine”?

These are fascinating questions, certainly for Christians who have noticed this phenomenon themselves and for pastors of churches who are concerned about the health of their congregations (as we’ll see, there’s a strong connection between the number of men in a church’s pews and its vitality).

But it’s also a fascinating subject for anyone interested in the influence of economics and sociology on religion, and who understand the enormous influence religion has had and continues to have on Western culture in general, and conceptions of manhood in particular.

So over the next several weeks, we’ll be offering two articles that explore possible answers to the above questions. First, we’ll outline various theories as to how, when, and why Christianity became feminized and unattractive to many men. We’ll then delve into the history of a time in which there emerged a dedicated response and effort to revive the masculinity of the faith — a movement that went by the name of “Muscular Christianity.”  (Link to "Muscular Christianity" provided by me, not in the original article at Art of Manliness)

Stay tuned.

Is Christianity an Inherently Feminine Religion?

The Feminization of Christianity

Any Day Now

Manchant

Bulgarian style.  Let Orthodox Anglicanism rid itself of every effeminate musical thing and aspire to this.

Full CD is available at Amazon.

Bernard of Clairvaux’s Writings on Violence and the Sacred

Here.  Abstract:

Monk, exegete, political actor and reformer, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) was not just a man of his times; he was a man who shaped his times.  Bernard’s writings on Christian morality and the transformation of the human spirit in the pursuit of God reverberated in his time and have remained influential through the Protestant Reformation and into the modern era.  The apparent contradiction between his writings on love and those on warfare has resulted in an artificial separation of his writing by scholars; those who are studying monasticism or Bernard in general tend to ignore or gloss over his writings on violence, while those studying the Crusades, warfare, or masculine identity often only look at those writings while ignoring Bernard’s less topical work.  This separation of his writings, though convenient, conceals a deep continuity which runs throughout Bernard’s corpus and cheats Bernard of his intellectual completeness. This paper explores Bernard’s writings on the issues of physical and spiritual violence, demonstrates that they are a coherent part of his wider set of beliefs and shows that, when studied side by side with his other writings, they clarify his thoughts on acceptable monastic and Christian life.

THIS is the Bernard I keep talking about and from whose writings I base my argument for the "Bernard Option."  Mark, learn, and inwardly digest, and then note the complementary ideas of C.S. Lewis in his essay "The Necessity of Chivalry":

The word chivalry has meant at different times a good many different things - from heavy cavalry to giving a woman a seat in a train.  But if we want to understand chivalry as a distinct ideal from other ideals - if we want to isolate that particular conception of the man comme il fant  which was the special contribution of the Middle Ages to our culture - we cannot do better than turn to the words addressed to the greatest of all the imaginary knights in Mallory's Morte Darthur.   "Thou wert the meekest man, says Sir Ector to the dead Launcelot.  "Thou were the meekest man that ever ate in hall among ladies; and thou wert the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest."

The important thing about this ideal is, of course, the double demand it makes on human nature.  The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost maidenlike, guest in a hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man.  He is not compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth.  When Launcelot heard himself pronounced the best knight in the world, "he wept as he had been a child that had been beaten."

What, you may ask, is the relevance of this ideal to the modern world.  It is terribly relevant.  It may or may not be practicable - the Middle Ages notoriously failed to obey it - but it is certainly practical; practical as the fact that men in a desert must find water or die. . . .  (Brute heroism without mercy and gentleness) is heroism by nature - heroism outside of the chivalrous tradition.

The medieval knight brought together two things which have no natural tendency to gravitate toward one another.  It brought them together for that very reason.  It taught humility and forbearance to the great warrior because everyone knew by experience how much he usually needed that lesson.  It demanded valour of the urbane and modest man because everyone knew that he was as likely as not to be a milksop. . . .

If we cannot produce Launcelots, humanity falls into two sections - those who can deal in blood and iron but cannot be "meek in hall", and those who are "meek in hall" but useless in battle - for the third class, who are both brutal in peace and cowardly in war, need not here be discussed.  When this dissociation of the two halves of Launcelot occurs, history becomes a horribly simple affair. . . .  The man who combines both characters - the knight - is not a work of nature but of art; of that art which has human beings, instead of canvas or marble, for its medium.

In the world today there is a "liberal" or "enlightened" tradition which regards the combative side of man's nature as a pure, atavistic evil, and scouts the chivalrous sentiment as part of the "false glamour" of war.  And there is also a neo-heroic tradition which scouts the chivalrous sentiment as a weak sentimentality, which would raise from its grave (its shallow and unquiet grave!) the pre-Christian ferocity of Achilles by a "modern invocation". . . .

(However), there is still life in the tradition which the Middle Ages inaugurated.  But the maintenance of that life depends, in part, on knowing that the knightly character is art not nature - something that needs to be achieved, not something that can be relied upon to happen.  And this knowledge is specially necessary as we grow more democratic.  In previous centuries the vestiges of chivalry were kept alive by a specialized class, from whom they spread to other classes partly by imitation and partly by coercion.  Now, it seems, the people must either be chivalrous on its own resources, or else choose between the two remaining alternatives of brutality and softness. . . . The ideal embodied in Launcelot is "escapism" is a sense never dreamed of by those who use that word; it offers the only possible escape from a world divided between wolves who do not understand, and sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable. . . .

 The time for milksoppiness is over. 

The Church Prays. And Dithers

Somewhere on this blog, and probably more than once, I have complained about how the response of so many Christians, especially of the "neo" variety, is to wring their hands about the "coming persecution" and whose only other response to it is a call to prayer.  Now, I am all for the call to prayer.  Prayer is what we do.  All the time.  And our prayers are powerful and pleasing to God.  But the Church also has a call for both vigilance and political responsibility.  There have been times when Christians have been called to fight with weapons other than prayer, and we are now living in such a time.  It is now abundantly clear that the Left intends to do in both the Church and what remains of traditional culture.  They don't even pretend anymore.  They'll use the arm of the state when they can; they'll use the shock troops of antifa and other groups if they need to. They'll do whatever they can.  It's 1917.   Total domination is their goal.

It's time to stop dithering therefore.  It's time to stop with all of the spiritual platitudes.  It's time to take to the streets.  And a time may come very shortly when it will be time to take up arms.

There are already millions of people preparing for the day when force of arms becomes necessary.  These are normal Americans, mostly libertarians and conservatives, who are willing to fight and die for the traditional rights of Englishmen and American liberty, INCLUDING the right to practice one's religion.  That's why I am revolted by the sentiments of so many Christians I know who have imbibed the pacifist koolaid.  I find this especially prevalent in Millennials who have become clergy.  Many if not most of would accept someone fighting and dying on behalf of their liberty but they wouldn't do so for others.  It is unmanly and unseemly.  The American warrior-clergy of our revolution are spinning in tbeir graves. Bernard of Clairvaux is spinning in his grave.  More about him in the next post.

Christian Men and White Nationalism

From this recent piece by Rod Dreher:

Christians: if you don’t want to lose your sons to the false god of white nationalism, then you had better introduce them (and yourselves) to the God of the Bible, who is rather different from the God of the comfortable American middle class.

It is widely acknowledged among conservative Christians today that the white church in the South failed terribly in the civil rights era. The failure was not primarily because they stood for white supremacy (though some did). The failure was mostly because the churches did not preach against white supremacy, preferring instead to stay neutral, and cultivate an ethos that was suited to supporting the Southern white middle class at prayer.

Today, I am aware of young white men who attend comfortable middle-class churches, but who identify as white nationalists. I doubt very much their parents or their pastors know. But it’s happening. These aren’t young men who have been downtrodden by society; that would at least give some sort of social and economic rationale for their race radicalism. These are relatively privileged young men. Why do they find no anchor in the church? Why is the god of racial nationalism more appealing to them than the God of the Bible?

Rod is spot on here. I recommend that Christians, and especially clergy, familarize themselves withthe kinds of neopaganism that influenced the National Socialists in the middle of the 20th century and the European "Nouvelle Droite" now in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Many American young men are reading the intellectuals of the Novelle Droite and accordingly find attractive the American alt-right, which takes much of its philosophy from this European movement. These authors, Faye, Benoit, et al., make their disdain for the Christian religion abundantly clear: it is a pacifist, feminized, non-European religion that has given rise to the liberal-left elite who are at the helm of the suicide of the West. That's why they will only scornfully laugh at such things as the recent public statements and sermons of Christian clergy about Charlottesville and their condemnation of neo-Nazism, white supremacism, racism, etc. They believe Christian clergy are merely feminized, feckless sell-outs to the Western liberal elite and who are merely the natural offspring of that religion of the "pale Galilean", as one such Nordic neopagan group refers to our Lord.

And the thing is, while the Nouvelle Droite's and the American alt-right's assessment of the Christian faith in extremely jaudiced and mostly incorrect, its assessment of the Western liberal-elite is spot on. Dreher is correct about that in his litany of things the Left does to summon the demon of white nationalism. But he is also right about the Christian disease of feminization, which many Christians such as Leon Podles have warned us about. We need to find a way to dissuade young traditionalist men from putting stock in the Nouvelle Droite/alt-right assessment of Christianity, but in order to do so we DO need to reverse this unfortunate trend in the Church. Dreher recommends that we preach the *real* God of the Bible. I heartily concur. Tolkien had some additional ideas:

Tolkien & Anglo-Saxon England: Protectors of Christendom

On the Feast of the Transfiguration

A must read article by a philorthodox Anglican priest on the meaning of the Transfiguration and the symbolism of Eastern Orthodox Transfiguation iconography.  

Two Articles on Solo v. Sola Scriptura

For us traditional Anglicans, as for all Catholics, it will always be prima scriptura, not sola scriptura.  Seriously, Evangelical Anglicans might want to consider the Presbyterian church.  Though these articles are penned by Orthodox and Roman Catholic authors respectively, Anglicans in the stripe of patrologist J.N.D. Kelly will say "Amen."

Protestants and a Churchless Tradition: “Sola” vs. “Solo” Scriptura

Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority

Steve Hutchens on ACNA's Final Report on Women's Ordination

The Final ACNA Ordination Report

Excerpts:

Was I right? Not entirely, for the Task Force, despite the methodological groundwork it had laid in irresolution because of the existence of differing ecclesiologies, was careful not to tell the bishops explicitly what they should do, but employed terminology that tended toward making the change of the current denominational status quo (i.e., ordained women in some dioceses) a long, distasteful, divisive, anger and angst-filled process, making it easier, much easier, not to change anything, and thus to fall back on denominational unity as the principal value to be served, with no weightier theological reasoning than the necessity to accommodate pre-existing ecclesiologies–the acceptability of none of which is apparently open to questioning–that is, the threat of more time-consuming, divisive, destabilizing, and unpleasant theological work.  Better all-round, it would appear, to make unity the thing by waking only one sleeping dog, and doing it carefully. . . .

The Report is heavily larded with the customary affidavits in defense of the learning, goodness, and godliness of all parties involved.  Alas, another red herring in which this long report seems to have specialized, as in this whole business of treating varieties of churchmanship as bearing on the issue.  A person’s goodness and godliness cannot, we are assured, be tested by his endorsement or rejection of women’s ordination.  Clever, but deceptive, since if someone is right about it, those opposing–who may be good and godly in a general way, but in this case are rejecting his word and will by promulgating error–are behaving badly, even if they don’t usually.  We may certainly believe that the lot of them are Very Nice, but none of that is to the point either.  Right doctrine and practice is good and godly; bad teaching and disobedience is not, and the question here is which of the two mutually exclusive possibilities is right.

Be sure to read the ongoing discussion in the comments below the article.

Deus Vult

EXCLUSIVE: Christian Women Up Against ISIS.

"We have hundreds of Christian warriors — Syriac-Chaldean-Assyrian, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox branches and Armenians."

Ecclesia Anglicana

A Brief History of the English Church, by the Ven. Guy P. Hawtin

In Defense of Constantine

Two reviews by Robert Louis Wilken.

New to the Blog

The Southern High Churchman.

The Once and Future Christendom

James Pinkerton on the coming Great Western Civil War.

Eamon Duffy on "The End of Christendom"

Duffy reviews Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650, at First Things.

It is hard to dissent from the detail of all this. Yet one may well feel that whether in Gregory’s stark dissection of the leading ideas of Protestantism as the unwitting corrosive which dissolved the moral and religious coherence of Christendom, or in Eire’s more hesitant and nuanced analysis, there is something left unsaid. The principle of sola scriptura and Protestantism’s consequent inability to arrive at workable criteria to determine Christian orthodoxy certainly contributed to the breakdown of Christendom and the emergence of a secular society. But so too did the repressive authoritarianism of post-Tridentine Catholicism, the emergence of a Catholic ecclesiology inimical to true communitas by its overemphasis on clerical power and centralized authority, and the acceptance into Catholic theology, philosophy, and anthropology of a dualistic Cartesianism every bit as inimical to the medieval intellectual and moral synthesis (if such a thing can be said to have existed) as anything that emerged from Wittenberg or Geneva. Nonetheless, Eire’s majestically comprehensive survey leaves no doubt about the enduring consequences, for good and ill, of the religious upheavals of the sixteenth and subsequent centuries. His readers will decide for themselves whether there is much to cheer about in 2017.

The Oxford Movement's Sacramental Interpretation of Scripture

Here.