The editors of Patrol Magazine, an online journal for hipster evangelicals, recently offered a broadside against those evangelicals like Brett McCracken and the Southern Baptists who remain cautious about throwing off their prudish heritage and embracing the liberating and enlightened state of those Christians who engage in . . . profanity.

There’s no doubt that those suddenly addressing the “issue” of Christian swearing have missed the cultural train. What David Bazan arguably started with his potty-mouthed lyrics has been fully realized as younger Christians have thrown off the church’s traditional linguistic taboos with nearly as much fervor as they have embraced alcohol and rejected partisan politics. Considering how widespread and essentially non-controversial Christian swearing has become in the past decade, even in the Bible Belt, it is surprising that a Christian musician only now had to battle with a record label over a lyrical obscenity.

The irony of their critique is that McCracken’s piece was published by Relevant Magazine, the editor of which was originally tapped to pray at Barack Obama’s inauguration and has openly rejected partisan politics. If there is one evangelical magazine that has not missed the cultural train, it’s Relevant.

The editorial continues:

No, the obscenities now uttered by young Christians have transcended the milquetoast rebellion of the “emergent” movement and are likely here to stay. They have arisen as peripheral indicators of a whole new level of intellectual openness, and an almost masochistic devotion to honestly sorting through the horrors of our time. With young Christians in unblinking pursuit of the big questions, it’s hardly a surprise to find them uninterested in who is saying [s**t] or what corporate behemoth is gifting funds to gay rights. In an adult world of strong ideas and strong language, puerile fixations on “bad words” and partisan allegiances are no longer even part of their consciousness.

The attempt to justify swearing on grounds that we have ascended to “big questions” is both facile and pretentious. It ignores the fact that somehow the Victorians—not to mention many of our parents—managed to ask big questions without stooping to use profanity. And while Patrol thinks that critiquing corporate behemoths for funding gay rights is beneath them, their suppression of piracy is worthy of judgment. Never mind that disparaging traditional evangelical efforts to vote with their dollars undermines the case for ‘protest stealing’ that Sessions argues for in the case of piracy. Intellectual consistency be—dare I say it?—damned.

All this reminds me of Biola professor John Mark Reynolds’ response to an essay I wrote about the new evangelicalism that Patrol Magazine exemplifies.  Writes Reynolds:

Anderson is right that young Evangelicals are intent on outer signs, and that they are not culturally clueless or “fundamentalists.”  What he is wrong to think is that there is anything new in this. It is hard to expect much different when the head of an Evangelical arts program, about my age but dressing younger, can tell me that a goal of his program is to let the “kids know it is o.k. for Christians to say ‘bastard.’”  I remember thinking at the time that it might be more useful to have a program in the arts reminding students that it was okay for a Christian not to say ‘bastard.’

I suspect that Reynolds would agree that jumping on the “cultural train” is a sure way toward cultural captivity, popularity, and Christian impotence.  Regardless, the editors attempt to justify swearing as grounded in a better way of intellectual life (ironically) undercuts the possibility of thinking about swearing and its implications, which I suppose is why the article is suspiciously light on arguments. Some “weighty” reasons for swearing are mentioned, but never articulated or even linked to. But then, that’s not Patrol‘s point: Patrol wants us to ignore the question of swearing altogether and simply accept the fact that all the kids are doing it. This is, however, a rather impoverished view on Christianity’s offering the world on the question of language and its appropriate uses.

Despite Patrol‘s  best efforts, I suspect that swearing will (rightly) remain a question worth considering along all the other questions of evangelical ethics, for it is a question of our speech to each other and to the world. I will make no attempt to answer it one way or another here, but will instead close with Karl Barth’s devastating critique of Christian freedom for its own sake:

The strength of the strong is confronted by an iron barrier. We now stand before the krisis of what we think to be our freedom, of the freedom in which we rejoice as our good. But it is good only when it is the freedom of the Kingdom of God. Do we understand this? Is our freedom nothing but the freedom which God takes to Himself in our doing or in our not doing? Or is it a freedom which we take to ourselves in His name? Or do we perceive that our freedom is important only when it demonstrates His freedom? Or do we suppose our freedom to be in itself important? In displaying our strength, are we anxious that—righteousness and peace and joy should be made known unto men? Or are we, in fact, in the end concerned with—eating and drinking?

In the latest issue of Commentary, Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner have offered the latest volley in the ongoing war to define conservatism’s future.  While less comprehensive than the path offered by Dreher or Salam/Douthat, Gerson and Wehner offer their own distinct blend of foci as a cure for the Republican intellectual and political malaise.

Which is why this foundation is a tad surprising: “Any serious attempt to revivify the GOP might begin with a full-throated stand for a strong national defense.” I’m supportive of including national defense as one among many Republican policy positions. But to remain belligerently focused on it in the face of enormous fiscal challenges strikes me as (at best) tone-deaf. While I’m sympathetic to their attempt to frame foreign policy around global issues like “global issues like genocide, poverty, women’s rights, religious liberty, malaria, and HIV/AIDS,” I suspect that any presentation of conservatism that leads with national defense will quickly be identified with traditional formulations.

What follows is a relatively mixed bag of proposals that includes winners like making the tax code simpler and more family friendly, and losers like picking out the “Religious Right” for the “anger, personal attack, and extreme language” of the Republican party.  As best I can tell, it was not the Religious Right who gave the world Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, or Rush Limbaugh. And while we agree on the substance of the point, it’s curious to see tone listed alongside national defense, the economy, and other such matters of social import.

The most hopeful suggestion is this one:

In this last connection, and again with an eye toward immigrants and the poor, the GOP would be wise to strengthen its reputation as the party of community and order. Republican rhetoric can sound intensely individualistic, as if to suggest that once government impediments were cleared away, all persons and all families would thrive as a matter of course. Individual freedom is indeed central to conservatism but so is the belief that individual freedom is given purpose and direction in the context of strong communities. It is a staple of conservatism that strong social bonds are essential to human flourishing.

While it’s precisely this sort of understanding that can help ground traditional social conservative arguments, Wehner and Gerson refuse to go there.  In this, Wehner and Gerson are provocative in what they don’t say as much as in what they say. That they thought such proposals would be appealing without any mention of traditional social conservative causes suggest that they think such causes expendable, and that they would pick on the “Religious Right” suggests they are too eager to chasten them.

What to make of this? Not much. If social conservatives can win back the philosophical ground by striking at the heart of an unrestrained liberalism through reintroducing the concept of human communities, their generation, and continuation as meaningful and relevant categories, then they shall inevitably make progress in their social agenda. Meanwhile, Wehner and Gerson can continue to strum the tune of national defense to an audience that isn’t listening.

Conservative anxieties about embracing and entering culture—by which we mostly mean Hollywood—seem to have subsided in recent years. Emboldened by film successes like The Passion of the Christ, conservatives seem to be waking up to the possibility of a Tinsletown that is more amenable to its ideology.

For Conor Freidersdorf, however, the talk radio disposition toward Hollywood and journalism—exemplified by Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood—derives its energy from an unhealthy paranoia and a latent sense of victimization. Friedersdorf’s counsel to conservatives seeking careers in Hollywood or newsrooms is to consistently produce excellent work and maintain a reasonable level of respectability.

All well and good, so far. But where Friedersdorf contends that conservatives are being scared away from “the very cultural institutions that most need their presence,” he ignores the deeper questions about those institutions’ legitimacy. Consider the case of Walden Media; while unabashedly conservative in orientation (and defiantly owned by an evangelical), it has come to success not within Hollywood proper, but largely as an independent alternative. The talk radio that Freidersdorf disdains is an alternative cultural medium that the left ignored—and later attempted to imitate. The conservative political strategy, for good or ill, has not been to ignore Hollywood, but to sidestep it.

Additionally, the conservative anxiety about Hollywood is—ironically—grounded in the acknowledgment of culture’s formative influence. Conservatives are not worried that people will be tempted to turn their back on the conservatism that had formerly defined them. That would be too conscious a rejection for most. Instead, the deeper temptation is that living and breathing liberal air exclusively—which is often what such professions demand—will slowly cause conservatives to confuse the distinctiveness of their own ideas or relegate them to the background in their pursuit of legitimization.  A conservative alone, the worry goes, in a liberal culture will not long a conservative remain. Better to establish independent channels of distribution and offer an alternative that wins on its merits, rather than its adherents.

Of course, none of this addresses the deepest problem of Friedersdorf’s piece: He has not escaped the trajectory which he is criticizing. At bottom, the conservative complaint against Hollywood and the news media is not that there are liberals there, but rather that in order to succeed, one must pass a political litmus test. True or false, this politicization of cultural institutions is precisely what Friedersdorf’s advice depends upon and ultimately reinforces.

Last week, Joe Carter praised The Atlantic’s forthcoming (mammoth) article on health care as “one of the most sensible and pragmatic articles on the health care debate you’re likely to ever read.” I couldn’t agree more. Goldhill’s analysis is even-handed and thorough.

But what struck me most was his solution: Goldhill suggests that people finance noncatostrophic health care the way they finance cars, through saving and (if necessary) borrowing. Goldhill wants to restore the consumer to the center of the health care system, which he persuasively argues would reduce costs and increase the possibility of coverage for everyone.

All this I tentatively agree with. But Goldhill’s solution includes government contributions to health savings accounts for those who are incapable of making their own contributions. Yet what happens if such individuals use those funds for lifestyle, for things outside of health care? Goldhill’s answer is that they would pay for health care costs with credit, borrowing against future contributions to their health savings accounts.

This answer is limited by the dissolution of social structures surrounding the family and the church. The inability to pay for health care by some can, and doubtlessly would, be offset by contributions and donations from churches and extended family. Such contributions, for those who are willing to receive them, would presumably be more efficient at eliminating poverty than increasing the debt of America’s poorest class.

It is also limited by its ultimate dependence upon the concept of rights. The assistance of the poor and disadvantaged by the church and by extended communities is a pre-political solution to health care reform, a solution that situates our health in the complex web of human relationships. And as such, it is a solution that can not be implemented as long as the language of rights remains the dominant framework for our discourse about health care. Despite its long Christian heritage, the notion of rights has been stripped of its pre-political meanings and has been reduced to signify that which exists only in a political context. For this reason, the question of whether health care is a right can only be answered in terms of the government’s involvement or lack of involvement in it.

Goldhill’s imaginative vision, then, is constrained on the one hand by his consumerism—which understands health care as something to be bought and sold—and on the other by his implicit understanding that health care is a right. Whether real health care reform can be built on this foundation is an open question. While I am more sympathetic to Goldhill’s proposals than those being discussed in our halls of government, I remain duly wary.

See also: Eric Chevlen’s article today on “Confessions of a Health Care Rationer.”

Matthew Milliner’s recent article for Public Discourse (which Micah pointed out last week) is a triumph that had me shouting ‘yes’ all the way through. As a young conservative who remains hopeful that conservatism offers something deeper than tax cuts or strong defense, I found Milliner’s piece to be gratifyingly refreshing. His is a conservatism that ends—or rather, starts—with culture, which he argues contemporary conservatism has largely ignored. Writes Milliner:

To familiarize oneself with contemporary conservative ideas and publications often means choosing culture wars over culture. Conservatives are practiced in lionizing the classics and lamenting the decline of Western culture, but should one wish to fully engage the culture of our time, a Leftward drift is difficult to resist. For example, the editor of a successful journal devoted to religion and the arts, Image, recently announced his need to “walk away from the conservative movement,” for he found the “imposed abstractions” of contemporary conservatism less than conducive to the sponsorship of poetry, art and fiction. While I take issue with his decision, I admit it is understandable, for the arts and contemporary conservatism don’t quite go hand in hand.

Milliner argues the lack of attention conservatives’ pay to culture stems from a false division between culture and politics. Again, Milliner:

Should conservatism wish to become a cultural force it will require consciously resisting the natural tendency to bifurcate culture and politics. Culture captures hearts and minds often so much more successfully than does an argument—something the Left knows well. Like some sort of artistic arms race, the side of our undeniable political gulf that first develops a winning strategy for the future cultivation of culture may very well win. Conservatism has the principles, dispositions, roots and resources to emerge as a powerful sponsor of the arts, but in comparison to the Left, it often seems to lack the will.

Two small quibbles: First, Milliner’s point that conservatives have bifurcated culture and politics strikes me as bordering on inaccurately charitable. The stronger thesis that conservatives have surrendered to an understanding of politics that is totalizing could just as easily have been defended, and probably would have been more accurate.

(more…)