Liberals are only aware that they do n’t want Christians to try to fix our broken politics and degraded culture.
This was made evident by liberal educational Mark Lilla’s new critique of postliberal Catholic intellectuals in the New York Review of Books. Although Lilla concentrates on the usual suspects like Patrick Deneen, Sohrab Ahmari, and Adrian Vermeule, his evident proclamation that all Catholics should leave politics overshadows his examination of their struggle against political and philosophical democracy.
Lilla reluctably acknowledges that his priorities “get a number of points right” in a grudging acknowledgment. There is a weariness … in contemporary Western civilizations, reflected above all in the alarming condition of our kids, who are ever more sad and homicidal. And we do not have the social vocabulary and political concepts necessary to define and support the common good and impose the necessary restrictions on personal independence. Villa includes himself in this liberal failure to also offer a conceptual framework for how to handle the crisis that surrounds us.
However, he insists that capitalism’s inadequacy does not mean Deneen and organization are right, either in their entire diagnosis or their suggested solutions. Instead, Lilla states that they are” just one more example of the philosophy of self-induced intellectual frenzy,” which begins with the recognition of a real concern and quickly transforms into a sense of world-historical problems and the visit of oneself and one’s fellow citizens as the limited called to attack down the Adversary. Whatever capitalism’s challenges may be, its postliberal reviewers are entangled in horrific fantasies of greatness.
This may be a fair charge to make against a little, radical movement that is susceptible to rhetorical bombast and has a propensity for alienating potential allies. There is abundant space for fair praise and criticism regarding the ideas, techniques, and characters of the Catholic postliberals. However, Lilla rather concludes by hurling them into submission for their ostensibly anti-Christian pursuit of political power, and he does so in a way that might be used against any Biblical influence in politics.
What is striking about their writings is that they hardly ever mention the power of the Gospel to lift a society and culture from the depths by first turning its people ‘ inner life. Saving hearts is, after all, a wholesale business, not a general one, and has nothing to do with maneuvering for political strength in a fallen earth. For serving calls for prudence, generosity, and sincerity. It entails getting to know each person where they are and convincing them of a different, more fulfilling way of life. This kind of ministering should be practiced by postliberals if they are serious about urging Americans to abandon their dull, materialistic individualism rather than hatching plans to ensnake the Department of Education.
In fact, it’s possible for Christians to put too much faith in kings and not enough in the Gospel. They can put too much emphasis on politics and not enough on lecturing. But Lilla’s analysis leaves no room for career. After all, the postliberal triumvirate he identifies consists of a political theory professor ( Deneen ), a pundit ( Ahmari), and a law professor ( Vermeule ). It is actually each boy’s job to stop engaging in politics and the exercise of power. Does Lilla think that it is insurmountable for a Christian democratic theorist to consider social theory as a Christian, or that Christians are not required to pursue such vocations, or that if they do, they may leave their religion out of their work?
If so, he ought to say so directly, rather than sneaking it in as an inference toward the end of a long article. Furthermore, it is not as if Deneen and Co. are urging their fellow Christians ( or even just their fellow postliberal Catholics ) to abandon all evangelization, discipleship, and charity to focus entirely on politics. In fact, secular liberals frequently overestimate how politicized doctrinally conservative churches and their members are.
The truth is that, though their members tend also to be politically conservative, most conservative churches of any denomination spend very little time on politics, and they still would n’t even in the postliberal future of Adrian Vermeule’s dreams.
Although there is legitimate disagreement over whether Christians should concentrate solely on politics and on the relationship between Christianity and liberalism, Lilla’s suggestion that none is the right choice is more radical than what the postliberals have suggested.
He attempts to make troll Christians quietists as he wraps up his lengthy essay, warning that” these Catholics will inevitably face disappointment as long as their focus is on culture wars rather than spreading the Good News.” Well, yes, politics will never give us all that we want or need. That does n’t mean Christians should shun it.
Lilla has yet to repeatedly assume that this is true, without ever having the guts to make a direct claim and to support it. He writes,” If I were a believer and were called to preach a sermon to them, I would advise them to keep cultivating their minds and ( why not ) their souls together, and to leave Washington to the Caesars of this world.”
Lilla obviously does n’t object to just a select few Catholic thinkers. Instead, he wants all Christians to give up and allow self-admitted liberal failures like him to rule politics. However, to disregard his advice would be a betrayal of both our citizenship and the love we should show our neighbors. After all, in America the people are nominally the rulers, so citizenship comes with obligations of civic and political participation.
Additionally, Christian truths about the nature of man and how we are meant to interact with one another are not just for Christians. They apply to everyone, rooted in the order of creation in general and human nature in particular. Therefore, Christians are required to carefully incorporate Christian moral principles into both politics and law.
The postliberal claim that liberalism is not a neutral system but is actually a totalizing ideology that will have no other gods before itself only further supports the postliberal argument that Lilla is revolted by this fundamental Christian truth. Although Vermeule makes the claim that liberalism is satanic, Villalla bops at Vermeule’s assertion that it is satanic, and insists that Christians are not required to offer political solutions.
Better to live in hell than to serve in heaven, in fact.
Nathanael Blake is a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a senior contributor to The Federalist.
