NY Times on Christianity’s Decline: Politics or Anabaptists

“Will ye plead for Baal? will ye save him?…if he be a god, let him plead for himself” (Judges 6:31).

“Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?...ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses (the Greek word martyrs--before Christ, no Greek would have thought of suffering when he saw the word) unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 8)

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“Can Politics Save Christianity?” asks Ross Douthat of The New York Times. What's he getting at? Take a cue from his fellow writer at the Times, David Brooks, who sees terrible clouds on the horizon: The Terrifying Future of the American Right. The New Right is regrouping as a government in exile. The Old Right woke up after Woke with the sense that they had been disinherited and that someone had changed the locks on their abode. Moderates have been purged and what remains of Evangelicalism is a hollowed out form of Christian identity, not unlike Holy Moscow. If you're a patriotic Russian you're automatically a Christian. Dostoevsky, the writer Turgeniev said, was "the most evil Christian I have ever met in my life." But neither would deny that he was a Christian. But this is the government in exile plotting revenge. The New York Times has been shouting into a void ever since the crusade to sham people away from Trump failed. They won the Culture War, but now there's no one left to talk to. They want to negotiate the peace using the old democratic institutions, but the Neo-Cons who ran them were turned out either by Woke or @Metoo. The New Right has tossed them all aside as corrupted relics. This is what is meant by the New Right's illiberalism, and its anti-democratic rhetoric. Caesar knew that if he didn't seize power someone else would. Illiberalism is here to stay, the New Right says, and better an illiberal Right than an illiberal Left. But how do you share the Gospel with the Left with brother Orban in the choir. The Iron Curtain was there to keep the Gospel out, and now we need an Iron Curtain to keep it safe? But the Gospel, as even The New York Times laments, needs to be saved. Are they not pleading for Baal here? 1000 years ago the Crusaders went off to save Christianity and came back with enough splinters of the Cross to rebuild Noah's Ark. Fredrick, Luther's sovereign, invested heavily. His "inventory of 1518 listed 17,443 items, including a thumb from St. Anne, a twig from Moses' burning bush (scorched no doubt), hay of the holy manger, and milk from the Virgin Mary." Maybe they'll do better this time. It'll take Big Christian Government to put the Left in its place. But it will be Big Government nonetheless. And do you trust Orban?

Douthat speaks of Putin/ Orban/Trump, which Brooks translates into "violence." All Protestant churches see the right to take up arms against tyrannical government as biblical, and the Second Amendment has the sanctity of a Commandment. Preacher Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who tried to assassinate Hitler, is considered a martyr. How would you distinguish between him and Barabbas who (in the Apostles' words) tried to "restore the Kingdom to Israel." Rome would have considered the Apostles' thinking subversive, because it would require dealing with Rome. Jesus taught that Rome had the right to tax Jews. How do you define a patriot here? After Pentecost, all the Apostle were considered anti-Israeli, because they attacked the Jewish cornerstone: Temple religion. Paul escaped death at the hands of Jewish patriots because he carried proof of Roman citizenship (was he required to be a Roman patriot if he didn't renounce his Roman citizenship?). But Rome in Israel surely fits the definition of tyrannical government. Yet, Jesus says, pay the taxes that fund the tyranny. A pilgrim in a tent is not concerned with such questions, for he "hath here no continuing city." It will suffice that the sword-bearing ministers of God in Egypt and in Gaza do not, as he tells Sarah, "kill me." Were the Ministers of God in Ur more law-abiding? Is he calling Pharaoh a murderer? But he didn't leave Ur to put himself under Pharaoh, and as pilgrim he knew he had no rights. But a sheep would be dead within half a day without a shepherd. They have no fear, and never hide. You could just as well leave the house to children: they'll find a way to burn it to the ground. From half a mile away, sheep seem like the most evil things on earth, doing everything but staying within view of the shepherd. Close up they'll soon have you convinced that the problem is with you. Like Enoch, Abraham sojourned with God: Emmanuel. Even as he watched the Lord approach, God was with him in the door of the tent. God would have had to fill his heart with faith to keep him from dying of loneliness. Cain would not murder you if you became a citizen of Enoch. After Pentecost, the patriots became pilgrims. They were given "power" to "be martyrs" (our word witnesses). Like Abraham they had power for others, while faith had to do for themselves. But they were always under the watchful eye of the Shepherd. Nimrod built Babel. Abraham knew he was laying the foundations of Zion.

The New Right is now synonymous with Evangelicalism. The question is not if, but when. They see the uber-rich coastal elites disdaining to be converted and flooding the West with immigrants in order to establish authoritarian and anti-Christian government. With sinister forces afoot, Kyle Rittenhouse merely killed in the style of Paul Revere, invoking Second Amendment patriotism. Most Evangelicals would welcome a clean war and most pine for armed conflict--take out enough of them to send a message to the rest. Weaken them enough to make them stop sneering at the Gospel, and then send in the church planters. As things stand, the Great Awokening hit the churches like an updraft from Tophet, and in their weakened condition, they turned to Trump, who bewitched them with the prospect of retaking the redoubts by outflanking the Public Square (the secular platform of debate, the court where for centuries "such suits were tried"). The genius of Trump is that he generated enough oxygen and mass outside the Public Square to create immunity from the Woke shaming that so decimated the Left. The Left cannot believe that its shaming crusade to pry support from Trump failed. His support reaches the upper levels of Government, and his brownshirts brazenly walk the halls of Congress. These are the power brokers. He outflanked the Left. Wokeness wiped out the moderates on both sides, and created the New Right, basically a mob so bereft of ideas and vision that Qanon is the prophet of choice, and that sees itself as the legitimate government in exile. This is what makes Brooks' hair stand on end. What's in the air? The Second Amendment in the hands of Barabbas. Only this time Douthat's Catholics will ride with Calvin's Huguenots, who rank with Bonhoeffer in armed zealotry. Case in point: Rittenhouse is a hero in the Evangelical church, a throwback to an earlier age--a Brutus of a sort. There has been not one mention of the 6th Commandment, for war against the Canaanites is a religious duty. "No man careth for their souls." I met two people this month who fled Colorado because of the Libs. If this is what they did to Pike's Peak, how then can these publicans and sinners be saved at the foot of the Cross. To the Crusades then. I met one of them last summer, and my first impression was that he was such a pagan simpleton that he couldn't tie his shoelaces. He whipped out his cellphone and showed me what he was up to. He was a hacker, who designed crypto-coin, made millions, and was off to new ventures--and nowhere. He was into Game Theory and everything, the Bible, the soul, were mere pieces to be sorted out and turned into Apps. A lost soul, only he didn't think he had a soul. "Son of man, can these dead ones live?" Can Christianity save this man? We'll have to wait for Politics to first save Christianity to know. But Putin and Orban are holding the line over there. "Thus far and no further," they cry.

The Church of "observation" has been unpersecutable since Constantine made it a department of Government. The decline was rapid. And now that it it has been cast headlong from its State patronage in Europe and America, it seeks renewed sponsorship from the dark side of the Universe: Putin, Orban, Trump. This will now be the price of Political power. Herod will protect you, but his chaplains will be your preachers, and if he orders you to execute John the Baptist, you will be shot for disobeying orders. The SS were allowed to use the regular Army in its cleansing operation on the Eastern Front. A SS officer would stand behind and command you to shoot women and children. Hesitate and you would be the first in the ditch. A young soldier so used by the SS went to his preacher for counsel. They both knew that death would be instant if he disobeyed. But, the preacher reasoned, since the Jews will be killed anyway, would not the wrong be compounded if, besides the Jews, this young man also lost his life? "Is that what God wants?" he asked. Dwight L. Moody, who loved sitting with the Generals thought war was a private matter: "In that sense I'm a Quaker," he said. He loved preaching brand Moody to non-Quakers who would dance on the altars of Hell by morning with his "smooth things" in their ears. "Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits" (Is. 30)." "When war comes," Robert E. Lee said, "a soldiers puts his politics aside and hopes the politicians are right." His God-ordained duty is to obey the "ministers of God." And in uniform, it is not you who kills, but the State. Executions and torture were regular events in Calvin's Geneva. But those were all the enemies of God, and as Cardinal Richelieu, who caused thousands to disappear in France, replied on his deathbed when asked if he would not like to forgive his enemies before he died: "I have no enemies but the enemies of the State." And a Christian must hate what God hates. A man told me recently that his son, a Special Forces soldier, told him more than he wanted to hear. "Dad, I killed people," he blurted out. I got the sense that neither knew where to go from there. Could you pray with a man who had taken a human life, and would feel justified doing so again? Would you sit next to the State Executioner who is a deacon in your church? "Someone has to throw the switch," you say, "for it is necessary that offenses come." Some time ago, NPR interviewed a prosecutor in Georgia who outranked all others in the number he sent to their deaths. A lifelong Catholic, he said, "I often wonder if my Creator will confront me with the 6th Commandment." He said this having read all the arguments of Augustine and Aquinas on Just War killing. How could he still have doubts? I shivered. Of course, you can kill and tell yourself you'll repent later. Would such counsel suffice for the German soldier above? Why could not Cardinal Richelieu, knowing that his soul was in mortal danger, deliver his soul on his deathbed? "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found." "Today, while it is called today..." God does not allow deferred repentance. "The summer had ended for Richelieu, the harvest was past..." There is zero wiggle room on these question in the Bible. Like Lot, you'll have to participate in all that the State does, and end up either a captive in Babylon, or worse--raising your grandchildren in a cave. The Early Church understood this predicament and refused to pay the price of patronage. From 325 A.D. on, the established Church has been unpersecutable, and the major persecutor of Christians, from the Inquisition to the martyrdom of Anabaptists. The Left will vex you, but it does not have the levers of violence to kill you. Which is why the killing of Christians has always come from the religious Right.

“Can Politics Save Christianity?” Asks Ross Douthat of The New York Times. The Apostles had little doubt that Christ would turn Israel into the world’s superpower, which is what it would have had to become to free itself of Rome. (Most of them would die as witness-martyrs--Anabaptists until Rome hijacked the Church). For what Kingdom would it be that had no real political power. Ever since Cain converted his Mark into the insignia of the State, statecraft meant the monopoly of violence (now he can kill Abel legally). War, Clausewitz says, is no more than the extreme form of Politics. Apostolic Politics then would be a Hyper-State of Israel. Raw political violence. Roman heads would roll, “the blood would be up to the horse’s bridle.” “Can Politics save Christianity?” This is what Putin and Orban profess to do by resurrecting the Iron Curtain to hold the line on Biden’s Bathrooms and Islam. Evangelical elders from Fox Church are now making regular pilgrimages to Moscow and Budapest to see how, as Deacon Douthat wonders amidst the spiritual wreckage all around him, “Politics can save Christianity.” He sees nothing else on the horizon.

And what would Christianity that the New York Times wants to save look like? Most likely it would bear a striking resemblance to the New York Times. “Men and brethren, what must we do to be saved?” If you listen to Dauthat, his Church would seem to offer less hope than the Times. “Will ye save him (your god),” Gideon’s father cries. The Rev. Graham called on Trump to use Politics to ban Islam in order to save Christianity. Putin is spending billions on magnificent church buildings. As in Europe, they remain empty. Western Europe (even as it preaches Biden’s Bathrooms) is taking heavy blows from Islam and Wokeness, while the Old Iron Curtain has been resurrected to hold the line (Politics to the rescue). Mosques are full–and the streets around them (without Politics). “Will you pray for someone to save Baal?” is what is meant here. And even more ridiculous: “Let him pray for himself–to whom?” But Douthat, the son of Balaam Graham, Putin and Orban speak to the same thing: If Baal needs to be saved, what does that say about Baal–or his followers? “Is this the guy you’ve been praying to all these years?” is what is meant here. Tired, decaying Europe sighs, “Let it go. The summer is ended, the harvest is past, and we are not saved.” But the Czars are holding the line. Nothing else, according to Douthat, is. Even the Apostles (before Pentecost) knew that a revived Israel would require a violent political Revolution. Power (Politics), then, as today, was on everyone’s mind. Even Christ’s: “Ye shall receive power,” He said. Finally, the Kingdom of God would “come with observation.” The mother of the Sons of Thunder had already petitioned Jesus for a Cabinet post for her sons.

All Christians in state “vexing” churches are perfectly safe in China. In Russia, Putin is waging all-out war on all unofficial gatherings, because he sees them as susceptible to foreign influence. What do you think a ruler hears when he hears you say “we ought to obey God rather than men?” The preachers in the King’s Chapel may think that, but would understand the consequences of saying it. John the Baptist did not make a slip of the tongue when he incurred Herod’s wrath by preaching repentance. He was called to preach “the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world.” And Herod, we are told, loved to listen to him (until he dared preach directly at the Czar). But you would be perfectly safe in what we call the mainline Denominations, both in China and in Russia. You're safe from Critical Race Theory there, and there are no Biden Bathrooms. But your preacher will be someone deemed safe by the State Seminaries–the subversives will disappear in jail. John the Baptist’s rebuke of Herod was a strike against the authority of the state. John and Jesus were without patronage. When Abraham left the mainline denominations he told Sarah, “they’ll kill me.” He knew the dangers of leaving patronage. The Rev. Amaziah told Amos the shepherd preacher that his preaching was treason (Amos 7). China will let you preach all day long as long as you’re licensed by “the king’s chapel.” Lot on the other hand had nothing to fear from the politicians once he joined them. But he almost lost his freedom as a captive, and certainly lost his testimony in a cave. Lot did not improve Sodom. In fact, many would have survived as captives did Abraham not rescue them to be destroyed later by fire. Those were Biden’s Bathrooms. The price of patronage was “vexation.” Vexation is suppressed conviction. The price of non-patronage was the watchful tent–the precarious existence of the Book of Judges when no visible king watched over Israel. How did Abraham deal with Biden’s Bathrooms? With righteous conviction: “I wouldn’t take a shoestring from you.” Politics would not save Abraham if he kept preaching like that--in fact, the Pilgrim had to come to the rescue of the Politicians. Here’s vexed citizen Lot trying out his first rebuke with angels standing nearby: “I pray you, brethren…” “What,” cried the brethren, “we’ll do worse to you…” And Douthat wants more of that? Lot had to be rescued. His rebuke lacked conviction because it barely rose above the level of more “vexation.” Biden’s Bathrooms are vexing only if you’re too close to them. He knew those bathrooms were there when “he pitched his tent” toward them. Now he caved like a beanstalk, and needed rescuing. It may have occurred to Douthat that the price of a million dollar salary at the New York Times is vexation, and the loss of conviction.

Ross is a convert to Catholicism who earns a very handsome living airing the dirty laundry of the Church (the clergy) in the New York Times. I wrote him 15 years ago that if he said in his Church what he says in his columns, he would see revival. Conversely, if he said in the New York Times what is discussed in his Church by the members (doctrine), he would get booted from the New York Times. I talk to Catholics like Ross all the time. One of them attends a very small, very Conservative Parish, which found itself in possession of a vast amount of some of the priciest land in the country when the owner died. He stipulated in his will that the money was to remain with that small church forever. The Bishop’s lawyers found an easy maneuver around the will, and now the money is slowly seeping to other “needy” areas leaving the members fuming. But what can they do? What could Ross Douthat do? This man has a very profitable business, which like Douthat’s career, would likely be severely impacted if he did what he could do: “to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” There are tens of thousands of people in the Catholic church who can tell you everything that is wrong with the Church. “Why not get up in front of the members and say what needs to be said?” I asked him. No, no, no–he’s a layman. He would be tarred and feathered by the clergy, and the rest of the people would slowly abandon him and put themselves under the old customs again. This, for Douthat, is unthinkable. If he said what he thinks in church he would find himself alone, and with a very small audience, if any. What’s left? As he cries, “Can Politics save us?” Note the capital P. That’s what he’s getting at: Strong-arming morality with the sword. In Europe they shrug, “What’s left to save?” The religious business is outdated. Statism is the new religion. Only Douthat would blush to consider such heresy. But he sees no hope in his clergy. From Francis on down, it’s only downhill, and fast. But who will lead? he sighs. He hears the mob in the stadiums. He knows his fellow members also attend there. He’s afraid to think what’s coming.

Don’t laugh? Walk several doors down the corridor and listen to his stablemate: David Brooks. Brooks draws an even fatter salary by airing the dirty laundry of Conservative/Evangelicals to smirking New York Times readers. He knows where all the bodies are. He’s been AWOL since he began writing for the Times, because, like Douthat, he was forced to have his “head shaved and his nails pared,” in order not to offend his readers. It’s all self-help mush at the Times. But lately, he’s been given an outlet at The Atlantic, a seedy outpost for also ran’s, which might be likened to a farm team for the Big Leagues–only few that enter here, ever leave. He likely gets pennies for venting here, but it’s vintage New Republic quality of the old days. The Times hired him and pays him millions because he’s capable of writing like this (nothing he writes for the Times is worth reading, but here he pulls out all the stops). The Terrifying Future of the American Right, he writes after visiting a secretive gathering of a resurgent militant Right thinkers (in-depth coverage in The New Republic here). Violence and Racism, he shudders, animates everything you see here. No ideas, period. It’s all violence, racism–and revenge. But why did he have to cross over to the Dark Side to hear this? This is what terrifies him. It’s the only side that remains. The old redoubts of the Neo-Cons and their more Conservative moderates were wiped out in the first onslaught of the Woke War–the Neo’s (these are all non-Evangelical) were turned out in droves from University and Media by @Metoo, and the Evangelical moderates beat a hasty retreat away from all things Confederate, with Critical Race Theory in hot pursuit. The Southern Baptist Convention never knew what hit them–a total rout, they folded without as much as a whimper. The Dark Side Brooks mutters about is what’s left of the wreckage of the Cultural War, which the Right lost hands down (in Europe this rout gave way to Putin and Orban). The Right (what's left of it--Trumpers) is in full retreat. It has abandoned the Public Square completely. The Left is left with a hollow victory–one hand clapping. Think of Napoleon in burning Moscow. He won the War, but found no one with whom to negotiate the peace–Moscow was in flames all around him, and he could already hear the honking of the winter geese. He knew the Cossacks were out there waiting for him in the snows. Brooks wants to go back to the old days where a cushy medium existed (the secular platform where wordsmiths from both sides solved their differences with the force of argument and ideas), that was invented to avoid a repeat of The Religious Wars stirred up by the Reformation, where the battlefield was the court “where such suits were tried.” Men who, like Czar Alexander, have little left to lose, see no reason to negotiate. They are in a position to take revenge. This is what Brooks sees. The Left is now in full possession of the Information-Sphere (Media and Education), and are now in a position to rewrite the Cultural Software unimpeded. But violence, Brooks knows, is the Cultural Hardware that will now counter it (the Right is in full possession of the military--and it’s graduates, the NRA). He hears the rising voice of Barabbas in these meetings, confidant Cossacks who can “take it to the Libs.” Douthat, who sees nothing but “Libs” in his Church leadership, hears the muttering of the laity around him. This bodes ill. To whom do they look? Raw Politics is all that’s left: Raw Wokeness and Biden Bathrooms (they hijacked Civil Rights to get here) on the Left and raw violence and revenge on the Right (the middle is gone). He knows that many also attend the stadiums. The Public Square has been abandoned. Debate is dead. Which is why Brooks has to trek to St. Petersburg to eavesdrop. Napoleon had assumed that oppressed Russian peasants would greet him as liberator. If ever there was Woke it was Napoleon. He had deposed all the Monarchies of Europe and freed the people–or so he told himself (he would end up with less than he started). They took their revenge at Waterloo.

But there can be no doubt that Wokeness has now overthrown the Public Square where differences were once hashed out on the secular (small s) platform of The Great Books, the Great Conversation, the Western Canon of Ideas passed down through the centuries. All this is now seen as mere (Dead White Men) propaganda to control the oppressed. But with what do you replace that? Pure emotional conviction (Left)–or violence (Right). Wokeness is pure conviction. Conviction is the emotional instinct grounded in a universal and indisputable sense of right and wrong. If you can anchor your cause to it, it will carry all before it. Abolition! Slavery! “Workers of the world unite! All you have to lose is your chains.” You do not profane such convictions with arguments. They just are, deal with it. This is why the line buckled, and Dagon was toppled overnight, because there is no conviction left in the Church to counter it. Eisenhower held Bobby Lee as one of his five greatest Americans. They just voted to throw him into the Woke furnace and melt him down (he symbolizes the Dead White Guys who wrote the hated Western Canon). This is the power of conviction, of Wokeness. Today it exists only in the unfinished business of American slavery: Civil Rights (which is why it entered France--were the tools of Critical Anything Theory were forged, but found no outlet--from America). And none is more on the run than the Church itself. In my day, you were a Christian if you had convictions. But how do you have convictions at the foot of Bobby Lee? It’s the Church herself who is in the fiery furnace, because the Confederacy survived by becoming the Bible Belt and army bases named after Confederate Generals. What makes Brooks’ hair stand on end is the fact that the “shooting” part of the military is purely Evangelical (you’ll find Progressives only in the bureaucracy). The Church now finds itself in a position to do with coercion what the early Church did through conviction: “I believe and therefore I have spoken.” Brooks doesn’t hear anything but saber rattling. They would have to meet Woke conviction with even greater conviction. But the Bible of the modern Church has been so hollowed out that there is little left to believe, and little left to convict—they made Trump head of the Church. But nothing can stand in the way of conviction, even if it is mere secular Wokeness. Which is why the Right had to abandon the field. But although you can win a war with conviction (the Taliban), you need ideas to lead the peace–or violence. The Left has neither (Climate and Bathrooms do not resonate in the Street). What terrifies Brooks is that the Right has no ideas either. He knows what it does have. “Can Violence Save Christianity?” is what Douthat is getting at. Brooks, two doors down and still shivering from the Siberian snows, could enlighten him.