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June 20, 2015 Orthodox Social Thought, Politics

Some Solzhenitsyn for Saturday

[I]n early democracies, as in the American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. . . . All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the 20th century’s moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the 19th Century.

– Alexander Solzhenitsyn, A World Split Apart (Harvard Address 1978)

Much has changed in the 40 years since Solzhenitsyn delivered those words, including the number of Christians open to the idea that the American Founding had much of anything to do with God. There is a small but vocal minority of Catholics (and a few Orthodox and Protestants) who oppose all liberal-democratic institutions on the grounds that they are essentially godless and, further, that their triumph has meant the decline of Christian belief in the West. Most still claim to be Christian, but very few live it out in any discernable manner. God, at most, provides some soft spiritual comfort, but that type of belief really has very little to do with Christianity and much more to do with trite existential security. As for the moral poverty of which Solzhenitsyn speaks, I believe we can all agree that none of the technological achievements of this century, which has given us iWatches and unfettered access to “revenge porn,” has done anything other than bankrupt the entire culture. A few decades ago it was still possible to believe that the most rank and unnatural absurdities would never be front and center in society; now they are enshrined in law. Some still say it didn’t have to be this way. Others, contra Solzhenitsyn, hold that this was inevitable. God’s glory and truth weren’t radiant at the Founding; they were eclipsed by it.

June 14, 2015 Church, Politics

Secularism, Utopia, and Escape

Quite recently, I was in Paris, and I went to my favorite theological bookstore and found books there titled something like this: A Marxist Reading of St. Matthew; A Freudian Reading of Genesis, and so on. Of course, this approach was being prepared over many centuries when it was thought that human reason, human scholarship, knowledge of late Syriac grammar would finally explain to us what Christ meant by the Kingdom of God. And before Dr. Schnuklemeukle wrote his authoritative three volumes on that subject, nobody ever understood what it was.

But today it is taken for granted: that Christianity is in need of utopianism. We have to repent — for what? For having preferred the transcendent to the immanent? For having thought of the Kingdom of God in terms of the Other World? And now we are obliged to mobilize ourselves and join every possible activism, whether it’s called “liberation theology” or “the theology of urbanism,” or “the theology of the sexual fulfillment”… The word “theology” used to mean “words about God.” Now it may also mean words about sex, or contraceptives… And, as a reaction to that development, Christians surrendered to the Me-Too utopianism.

At the same time, we have a fundamental resurrection of escapism, which takes on many forms in religion today. People turn their backs to the world and plunge into almost anything. As an Orthodox priest I can see the forms it takes in our Church: we have people who do not care what is going on in the world. They have discovered The Icon. Or, of course, one of the areas, into which one can endlessly escape, is a discussion of the high-church, low-church, and middle-church liturgical practices. Vestments… Modern or archaic… You can hear people saying, “But that isn’t right: in the third century in eastern Egypt…” — and you already feel that the Transfiguration has begun. The third century in Egypt, or in Mesopotamia, or wherever it is — as long as it is not in Chicago, New York, London or Paris. As long as this Epiphany or Theophany takes place somewhere in some impossible land! In Caesarea of Cappadocia… — that is music itself: Cappadocia, it already gives you the feeling that you are in the right religious school, you know. Introduce Chicago into that religion, and it spoils the whole dream, the whole sweetness, the whole thing.

So we have either Jesuits disguised as the professional unemployed walking the streets of Chicago, finished with all the Cappadocias at once, or we have people escaping — in orderly procession — to Cappadocia. And this is of course the tragedy of our Christian response to Utopia and to Escape. Now, then what?

– Fr. Alexander Schmemann, “Between Utopia and Escape”

June 12, 2015 Integralism, Politics

Options and Liberalism Again

I have written previously on the so-called “Benedict Option” and the difficulties it presents (see, e.g., here, here, and here). It appears that commenting on the “Benedict Option” — or any other “option” — is turning into a growth industry. A quick glance at Ethika Politika reveals several pieces on the topic, including Andrew Lynn’s “Saving the Benedict Option from Culture War Conservatism” and Jeff Guhin’s “No Benedict Option Without Benedictines.” The latter piece is rather pessimistic, declaring that not only is “liberalism is hard to shake” but that “[w]e are all liberals now.”

June 10, 2015 Politics, Spirituality

Some Comments for Wednesday

A friend once confided in me that the problem with my politics, assuming I have “a politics,” is that its predicated on a romantic view of the past which cannot be ratified in the present. Never one to turn down an argument, especially a pointless one, I couldn’t help poking back a bit, inquiring over and over what my politics ought to look like in the light of the “reality” he assumed custody over. Nothing came of it. Nothing could come of it. For it was clear to me that the discussion was far less about what I actually believe (and why) and much more to do with providing him something to scoff at. People love to scoff, even if they don’t admit it openly. Scoffing provides a thin layer of surety that one’s own view(s) are intrinsically superior. If one could try to see things from another point of view and appreciate the merits, then what follows? Self-questioning? Reexamination? Doubt? Heaven forbid.

March 22, 2015 Eastern Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Church, Politics

Sunday Remarks on “Ukrainian Fascism,” Catholicism, and Russian Orthodoxy

Put “Ukraine” and “fascist” into Google (or Bing) and prepare for a torrent of hyperbolic hits, and a few sane ones as well. There is no shortage of “well-sourced stories” from mainstream news sites, Leftist rags, and, of course, Eastern Orthodox web-logs claiming that Ukraine, or at least all of Ukraine except the “Holy Russian” eastern portion of the country, is in the hands of fascists. Take for instance Alex Gordon’s latest contribution to the socialist news source The Morning Star. Although the headline indicates that the article concerns NATO’s role in fostering Ukrainian fascism, the actual product amounts to little more than smear journalism that fails to make elemental distinctions between far-right, fascist, and Neo-Nazi political movements and positions. Granted, in the murky world of Eastern European politics the lines sometimes blur easily, but not so easily that movements which are consciously nationalistic are automatically racist or genocidal. Gordon’s article also contains manifest untruths, such as claiming that Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist hero and Greek Catholic, “murdered thousands of Ukrainian Jews and Poles during World War II.” He did nothing of the sort and was, in fact, interned in a Nazi concentration camp when Ukrainian-backed atrocities took place in the country.