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Defining Conservatism Down - Chapter 3




It has been pointed out by Jean Miller Schmidt (Souls and Social Order) and James Davidson Hunter (Culture Wars) that two fundamentally opposing views of religious progress and political progress exist in American expressions of both religion and political theory. One seeks change beginning with the individual and works up toward a common cooperate goal, where as the other begins with the cooperate identity and seeks to change down to the individual. In American Christianity both of these ideologies find homes, one in the "conservative evangelical" groups and the other in the "liberal social gospel" groups. The conservative evangelical begins with the individual, first to procure the eternal destiny of their soul and secondly to conform their actions toward a high morality. The liberal social gospel seeks to change the corporate group through moving society as a whole toward a brighter future for the purpose ultimately benefiting the individual. Schmidt writes, “essentially the division is between those who see the church’s task as the transformation of society, and those who see its mission as individual salvation.” (Hart, p. 58)

Both begin at different places, but what both have in common is that they find purpose in affecting society as a whole in the public marketplace of ideas. It is the public-ness, the this-worldliness, that both ideologies agree upon. It is the belief that Religion, being inescapably bound to politics, needs to affect the public society as a whole toward its reform. The question then that ignites the riot is, 'where to begin?' Interestingly enough, the conservatism that came to define both conservative American Christianity and Politics is the conservatism of revivalist pietism, the pietism that begins with the individual and work toward the top. Also interestingly enough, since Confessionalism as a Protestant expression of faith was silenced as being too “churchly” or “traditional” it has never been an informant in the defining of conservative protestant religion, let alone conservative politics. There reason? The reason is because it sees the purpose of the church as fundamentally different from American evangelical protestant Christianity. The Confessional church is not so concerned with society as a whole (believers and unbelievers) and its reform as it is concerned with developing a “holy society” which is confessedly “otherworldly” where the pursuit of the world to come is the primary focus rather than the present reality. This ideology is “useless” to the American since it does not foster progress in any practical manner useful for the American society.

But nonetheless as the American religious playing field developed throughout the 20th century, religious critics could find no difference between the conservative evangelicals of the revivalist sort and the conservative protestants of the confessional sort for, after all, as Hart points out, the confessional churches believed and confessed the “fundamentals” of the orthodox Christian faith as expressed in their creeds and liturgies. Ultimately conservative Christianity become synonymous with revivalist, politically active evangelicalism, whereas conservative confessional Protestantism distinctives were simply lost in the hodge-podge of the splintering of evangelical factions. The critics simply saw (or didn’t see) the confessionalists as a part of the whole whose forthright purpose was to stem the flow of modernism in the ever “civilizing” and “advancing” society. They were bracketed along with the fundamentalists as rural uneducated religious folk “declaring a holy war upon every decency that civilized men cherish.” (Hart, p. 64) Yet the confessionalist could not rightly be ascribed in the categories the critics were espousing. The confessional Protestant churches simply were not actively engaged in warfare against modernism and its philosophies of naturalism as is evidenced in the fact that they were not trying to rid the schools of evolutionary thought or prohibitionist activism.

Furthermore, confessionalism’s identity was darkened still by the movement of conservative evangelicals to become more tasteful in the eye of the public (aka Neo-Evangelicalism). The formation of the NAE (National Association of Evangelicals) testifies to the fact that conservative revivalist protestants worked effortlessly to rid their public persona of the negativism associated with it through its ties to separatist fundamentalism’s anti-intellectualism and withdrawal from broader society. C.F. H. Henry’s The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism is the “manifesto” of the movement. (Hart, p 72). Their goal was to be more intelligible, likeable, and influential in the public sphere for the purpose of restoring the remnants of the once “Christian” nation through civic action and cooperation with broader society. Because they did not expressly cut ties with the “modernists” the fundamentalist’s responded out of fear of compromise by separating themselves from their Neo-Evangelical cousins. Nonetheless the goal of the Neo-Evangelical was the same of the militant fundamentalist and the pacifist liberal: the restoration of the American society to its beginnings as a “Christian nation.” Because the confessionalist conservative protestant were not so concerned with the nation as a whole as they were with the body of believers in their respective folds their identity became obscured given the powerful social influence of the conservative revivalist protestants. Hart writes, “Consequently, as much as the new evangelicalism helped rejuvenate the image of conservative Protestantism, it further obscured the creedal, churchly, and liturgical aspects of historic Protestantism.” (Hart, p. 74)

As a result of the evangelical plea for social credibility it turned its attention toward political action and soon became “yoked” to the republican party which sympathized with the middle-class American spirit. (Hart, p. 75) By the end of the 1960’s the evangelical spirit turned intensely political because of the threats of a secularizing society (the sexual revolution, feminism, abortion, et al). The conservative Protestant became by default a conservative republican because of republicans sympathies with a well-ordered, moral, family-oriented society. The assumption of evangelical Protestants was that the gospel would produce “good” citizens who in turn produce a “good” society, namely a Christian society. The ultimate goal, then, of the evangelical revivalist Protestant is the safety of a Christian society, not the preparation for the life to come and most certainly not the living within a tradition bound ultimately to the authority of the Church where the administration of the salvific graces is found.

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