Category: Faith & Ideology

Trained Seals

I almost had nothing to post today, but encountered this late Sunday.

Daddy explained to me why he was a Republican: he was a Christian, and he felt that conservatism aligned most closely with his Christian values, and Republicans aligned most closely with conservatism. In that order.

But somewhere along the way we’ve gotten confused on the hierarchy of things …

Here’s where we are: the GOP has come to understand that Evangelicals are trained seals. We show up and clap for any clown you can slap a Republican jersey on. It doesn’t even have to be a godly or wise person. Our votes are a sure thing, and we’ll turn out and vote for problematic or corrupt GOP candidates far more consistently than non-religious conservatives. So come to terms with the fact that the church isn’t influencing diddly squat, not even in our favorite party. To the contrary, the church is the one being influenced — and our credibility before a lost and dying world destroyed — because we have believed the great lie about political engagement.

We have all the power in the world, but we lack the faith to exercise it. They own us, because we don’t trust God enough to call the bluff.

(Dana Hall McCain, The Great Lie We’ve Believed, Dothan Eagle)

I got quite angry in 2002 when a lawyer who had affiliated with the Constitution Party said substantially the same thing, but with his emphasis on the cynicism of the Republicans, the gullibility of Evangelicals.

Now there’s cynicism galore on both sides of the codependency.

And, God help us, when an American pagan thinks “Church,” he probably thinks of Evangelicals owned by the GOP (see My Journey from Atheist to Catholic: 11 Questions for Leah Libresco)—and despises it.

It’s getting dark out there.

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“Liberal education is concerned with the souls of men, and therefore has little or no use for machines … [it] consists in learning to listen to still and small voices and therefore in becoming deaf to loudspeakers.” (Leo Strauss)

There is no epistemological Switzerland. (Via Mars Hill Audio Journal Volume 134)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

From my Twitter feed

I’m strongly inclined to agree with Shapiro on that.

By analogy, I am pretty confident it’s possible for a couple to, say, marry before one of them is through college, practice contraception to allow that one the best chance to finish college on time, and not buy into the culture of death by so doing. But if Rome is right on this (which I often wonder), they’re still doing a bad thing, and they’re probably creating cognitive dissonance should they wish later to criticize “the contraceptive mentality.”

A society that decides that contraception should make every child Planned® is a different story.

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I think he’s burned that bridge, but I am regularly amazed at people’s credulity and partisan flip-flopping.

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Let me translate:

One thing the Roy Moore reaction proves: Rod Dreher is totally correct in his Benedict Option book to place no hope for Christian conservatives in the old Religious Right.

He’s got that right. If they’re not uniformly corrupt, politically and morally compromised, the old Religious Right is too full of metastatic corruption and compromise to even hold out hope for them.

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* * * * *

“Liberal education is concerned with the souls of men, and therefore has little or no use for machines … [it] consists in learning to listen to still and small voices and therefore in becoming deaf to loudspeakers.” (Leo Strauss)

There is no epistemological Switzerland. (Via Mars Hill Audio Journal Volume 134)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

St. John the Almsgiver, 2017

    1. Obviously, these prophets didn’t understand
    2. Contemning “thoughts and prayers”
    3. The last idol still standing
    4. Historical Ignorance, Moral Arrogance
    5. Absolute passion, utter fragility
    6. John the Merciful

Continue reading “St. John the Almsgiver, 2017” →

More Moore

Will Evangelicals show themselves wicked and condemnable, as has David Horowitz?