Not many Protestants are aware of the deep and rich philosophical literature of English Catholics. I’m not sure whether it’s the wisdom of English culture minus the liberalizing tendencies of the Anglican Church, or the persecution endured by Catholics in England that caused such a deep vein of thought and culture. While not endorsing their doctrine of course, we can appreciate the work of English Catholics like Tolkien, Lewis (lifetime flirtation & deathbed conversion), Belloc and Chesterton.
Chesterton (1874-1936), of whom I’ve read a very little bit from secondary sources, was quite the original thinker, a defender of localism and promoter of an economic idea called distributionism derived from Catholic social principles as an alternative to what he thought were the twin evils of communism and capitalism (He defined capitalism not as free enterprise but as the unholy separation of management and ownership protected by the limited liability veil of corporate governance, effectively removing moral responsibility and consequences from both parties).
One of the distinguishing arguments of Chesterton and Belloc was the idea that the Christian faith was uniquely European, and that while it could and should be exported to other cultures, it could not be separated from its genesis in Europe. The two were eternally bound.
While I would not venture to take an argument that far (especially in light of Europe’s declining faith, as there are now more people attending mosques than churches in Europe, a double symptom of insane immigration policy and postmodern soul-killing agnosticism), it does seem there is some substance to the claim that Christianity is inseparable from Western Civilization and that culture should play a role in our religious experience.
The Orthodox Churches, arguably the closest surviving model of the original New Testament church, intentionally organizes itself into national-level entities instead of one universal church (a heresy, they claim of the Catholic, which literally means universal, Church). There is a Greek Orthodox Church, a Russian Orthodox Church, a Serbian Orthodox Church (the unfortunate victims, if you recall, of Bill Clinton’s UN-backed “police action” on behalf of Muslim-Albanian terrorists to distract from the Lewinsky scandal), an Armenian Orthodox Church, among others. Each church is headed by someone called a Patriarch who heads a church government of bishops and priests who are allowed to marry (celibacy being a Roman Catholic doctrine alien to the original NT church). Each national division of the Orthodox Church celebrates its own heroes, saints and holy days. For example, Serbians celebrate Serbian saints and historic Serbian victories over Muslim aggressors (as one of the last outposts of Christianity in southeast Europe, the Serbs are a little rough around the edges, but only because of centuries of being the firewall against various Islamic invaders of Europe).
The Orthodox understand that God has created men as members of nations and peoples- there is no universal man, thus there can be no universal church. Orthodox churches are united on doctrine (somewhat), but not in government or culture.
We sons and daughters of Western Europe sometimes in our hubris believe we can overcome the ties of blood and soil. Some believe that an abstract Christianity can be distilled from the Scripture where we can escape what we see as the unnecessary “worldly” loyalties that can be cast aside through unity in Christ. Such notions are actually anti-scriptural, because the Bible clearly indicates that nations and nationalities will even persist into the new heaven and new Earth. Such beliefs represent a hyper-scriptural idealism reminiscent of the heresies of Babel. Some Christians explicitly endorse this theologically, with specious arguments that the judgment of Babel was somehow reversed at Pentecost, and thus we can proceed to destroy God’s ordained order of nations and peoples by pursuing the same abominable global unity with a Christian veneer.
I believe that the loyalties of blood, soil and nation are ordained of God- and that the maintenance and cultivation of these loyalties is necessary to the full Christian life. Just as we favor our families over other people’s families (not because they are necessarily better- though of course it is entirely healthy for a parent to think well and be proud of their child- but because they are ours), we should favor our nation and people over those of others. This is the order ordained by God in the world, and arguably in the world to come. As a wise man once said, there is no such thing as a “man”. There are Englishmen, and Frenchmen, and Germans, and Irishmen, etc- but no one has ever seen this supposed “man”.
Taking as a postulate this loyalty, we must then determine what duties this loyalty requires of us. And more importantly, as the definition of “American” becomes less meaningful, we must determine the group to whom we must be loyal.
I also believe that participating in the culture of our people must be practiced in our lives. In the media we consume, the politics we support, and the history we teach our children we should do our best to improve and better the biocultural entity that God has ordained as ours.
Finally, as our people reject the emptiness of the broader culture and seek meaningful alternatives, largely in a real and robust Christianity, we should also avail ourselves to the rich and deep Christian heritage that sits waiting for us to experience. Poems, novels and histories, more than we could ever read, are still with us from the days (approximately 100 years ago) before our civilization went perilously off-track. But since they are all in the public domain, they will not be marketed to us- we must seek them out.
It’s very hard for us to imagine a healthy, vigorous pride in one’s people and culture that does not involve destructive attitudes toward other groups- mostly because the media in our country tries very hard to associate such feelings with low levels of education and socioeconomic status (e.g. the movie stereotype of the hateful, sadistic, dumb, skoal-dipping Southerner with a rebel flag belt buckle, from movies like Mississippi Burning that depict a one-sided biased view of history). The reason the media does this is that the urban elite in our country have A) an irrational paranoia directed towards the people of our country, imagining them as potential fascists and Nazis (this bigotry is especially directed towards Southerners and people from rural areas, as seen in occasional left-wing portrayals of George W. Bush as Hitler) and B) a vested interest in eroding American patriotism to make way for their Globalist agenda.
An example of the sort of positive, healthy pride I’m talking about can be found in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Greeks are similar to Serbians in having developed a cultural immune system to the multiculturalism that surrounds them in the Balkans. They have pride in who they are and in their culture without denigrating others (well, except maybe Turks, but there’s a history of Turkish oppression in Greece- and let us not forget that Martin Luther’s original A Mighty Fortress included a politically incorrect line referencing “the murderous Turk”). We should be more like the high-fertility proud Greek people in this movie, with a specific cultural identity, and less like the flavorless, bland, low-fertility Northeastern liberal family of the groom.
In my next post on this subject I will seek to define who “our people” are exactly. Human groups are “fuzzy”, not subject to simple definitions, and especially as Americans it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly who and what we are. Are we English? Anglo-Saxon? Celtic? I will make a case for a uniquely American people, and seek to draw some fuzzy boundaries around this group.
I will also discuss practical ways to experience our heritage, including some regular features on this site that will offer a sampling of what is available- at least what I have come across and enjoyed in my limited experience.
Ding, Dong, the (Feminist) Witch is Dead:
Obama Sends a Shout-Out to His Homeboy Pastor Rick:
Huckabee Is Finished:
Nightline Report on the "Quiver Full" Movement:
This Warms My Heart: