Readers may recall the post last week that referred to Fr. McCloskey’s hope for a Christian America through Roman Catholicism. Two-kingdom proponents would likely want to advise McCloskey to tread cautiously with this idea of a Christian nation since Christianity itself admits of no Christian nation (except Old Testament Israel) and the record of Christian politics is not so Christian.
A fairly recent story adds reasons for further caution. It contrasts the two vice-presidential candidates, Joe Biden and Paul Ryan, both of whom are Roman Catholics and are at odds with their church’s teaching. If he holds to the planks of the Democratic Party’s platform on abortion rights, he is obviously in opposition to Roman Catholic morality. And Ryan’s budget plan has generated lots of criticism for being antithetical to Rome’s social teaching. The report observes how Biden and Ryan represent different generations and segments of Roman Catholicism in the United States.
Catholicism is complicated, says Deal Hudson, a Catholic strategist for the Republican Party. It can’t be pigeonholed as conservative or liberal. He says that, increasingly, the divisions within the Catholic faithful are sharpening — and this race reflects that.
“These two vice presidential candidates represent the old and the new in the Catholic church in the United States,” Hudson says.
Biden comes from a more traditional generation of Catholics, says Stephen Schneck, a political scientist at Catholic University of America.
“This is the Catholicism of our old ethnic neighborhoods, and our union halls, and St. Christopher medals on the dashboard sort of thing,” Stephen says.
It is a working-class Catholicism, he says, where the Mass and the rosary are part of the warp and woof of daily life in places such as Scranton, Pa., Biden’s boyhood town. As Biden said when he visited Scranton in 2008, “This is where my family values and my faith melded.”
Those values — of the cop, the fireman, the union leader — placed Catholics solidly in the Democratic camp for decades. Schneck, who co-chairs Catholics for Obama, says these Catholics tend to have a positive attitude toward government.
“Think about John Kennedy’s famous ‘ask not’ lines here,” Schneck says. “For that generation of Catholics, it’s a recognition that government and civil society have a profoundly positive role to play.”
But that generation now has moved on, says Robert George, a conservative Catholic and professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University.
“We have a younger generation of Catholics who are more conservative, especially on moral and cultural issues,” he says.
George says these younger Catholics — who are sometimes called “intentional Catholics” — tend to be more committed to conservative parts of Catholic doctrine. Many, like Ryan, 42, came of age during the papacy of John Paul II. They see themselves in Ryan, who opposes same-sex marriage and abortion except when the mother’s life is in danger. In fact, Ryan sponsored a “personhood bill” that would define a fertilized egg as a human being.
At the very least, this kind of diversity within the church in the United States should undermine the notion that Roman Catholicism is going to save the country. It is proof once again of the wide spectrum of believers in fellowship with an infallible bishop. It may also recommend two-kingdom theology to Roman Catholics (who should already know it if they read Augustine). Salvation only comes from the Lord. A decent and orderly society comes from basic notions of right and wrong, hard choices by civil authorities, and honest and hard-working citizens. It’s not rocket science. Nor is it the new heavens and new earth.
Old Life 
“But that generation now has moved on”. That’s a nice way of putting it.
Pick any issue and I think Catholics will split 50/50 on it. I think that shows you what a truly big tent Rome is.
Although if you include Mainline Protestants in the “Protestant” camp we’re probably not much better.
Our country is pretty much just confused…
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“It may also recommend two-kingdom theology to Roman Catholics (who should already know it if they read Augustine).”
On Augustine, consider the following regarding Escondido’s 2K. (1) The two cities originated with the holy vs. the fallen angels, so that both cities were supernatural (§3.11.1). (2) The two cities also resulted from “men who live according to the spirit” vs. “men who live according to the flesh,” so both cities were earthly (§3.14.1; see §§4.15.1–5). Thus one cannot say that God’s City was supernatural while Man’s City was earthly. (3) Augustine also contrasted these cities as the “vessels of mercy” vs. the “vessels of wrath” (§4.15.6), the elect vs. reprobate, or the ethical break between righteousness and unrighteousness. Even VanDrunen agrees by observing that Augustine’s two cities are first “believers, of the other [city] unbelievers,” and that in Augustine’s scheme, “Christians have no dual citizenship” because they do not belong to the City of Man at all (VanDrunen, 2005, p. 253). Gilson also saw the City of God grounding the “ideal of a world society,” the Great Society, rather than Escondido’s 2K claims.
2K may be biblical and confessional, but Augustine’s City of God doesn’t help. A Christian cannot live in both of Augustine’s cities.
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Phil, keep reading Augustine. He also says that Rome’s fall cannot be calculated on the basis of either city. The point being that the earthly kingdoms are not of the devil until redeemed. They are part of a providential order. 2k is all there.
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I Corinthians 15: 23 “But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming lthose who belong to Christ. 24 Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. ”
Rosario Butterfield, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, p140–“My children’s recognition and historical placement of the Magna Carta was significant because my children SHOWED THAT THEY WERE KEEPERS of THE CULTURE.”
P114—“Lacking fellowship” means that a family thinks they need to be in a church of people who are just like they are, who raise their children using the same child-rearing methods, who take the same stance on birth control, schooling, voting, breastfeeding, dress codes, white flour, white sugar…I think there is no greater enemy to vital faith than insisting on cultural sameness. I think we as parents we would be more effective in our parenting if we leveled with our children, if we told them that some of our dearly held rules are not morally grounded but are made for our convenience.”
And thus Augustine’s dialectic continues. Now that we have kept the unity of the one visible church by having the magistrates kill the Donatists, let the wheat and the tares grow together until the Lord comes, not in the world (as the Bible text says) but in the one visible church (outside of which there is no salvation). To keep “the” culture the same culture, we are going to need to be “catholic” about the one culture.
Two parties, not three.
One church, no sects.
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D.G. Hart: Readers may recall the post last week that referred to Fr. McCloskey’s hope for a Christian America through Roman Catholicism.
RS: A group that declares the Gospel of Jesus Christ anathema (Trent I) needs to be saved itself rather than offering salvation to an entire nation. It offers us purgatory to suffer for our own sins rather than Christ who fully propitated the wrath of the Father. It offers us works (yes, they say things like grace involved, but…) for salvation rather than the imputed righteousness of Christ. The hope that Rome offers is ultimately a hope in God to help us hope in ourselves. The Gospel, however, gives us Christ alone by grace alone.
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But does this mean that we who do presumably know the gospel are now free to offer our services for the sake of the conservation of the American empire and the elite civilization “values” of our Greek and Roman heritage? Since we share “common ground” with some Roman Catholics about the heroic virtues and “natural law” (creation not salvation) and anti-individualism, why should we have a narrow focus on the legal aspects of our hope (justification and the atonement)?
Fundies only talk about Jesus coming here again. But this November comes a present opportunity. And opportunity means duty. I refer of course the next meeting of “The Christian Goat-herders Society.”
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McMark: But this November comes a present opportunity. And opportunity means duty. I refer of course the next meeting of “The Christian Goat-herders Society.”
RS: Are you referring to a meeting of some synod or minsterial association or…?
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Just yesterday Michael Milton of RTS published this piece – “Being a Pastor and Speaking Out in Today’s Culture” on stevedeace.com. It is a site that mostly evangelicals would go to. Has anyone heard of him and has he weighed in previously on the 2K debate?
http://stevedeace.com/news/national-politics/being-a-pastor-and-speaking-out-in-todays-culture/
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A couple of my comments on that piece:
Pastor, You cite some Old Testament prophets but can you cite any New Testament passges to support your view that it is a Pastor’s job to speak to governments and the culture at large? Surely you are aware of the “Two Kingdoms” debate going on in the Reformed world today. Are you familiar with the writings of Van Drunen and Hart on the issue? Deace’s audience is probably not familiar with this debate.
One concern I have is how does a pastor who speaks on the Law of God in the public sphere put it fully in the context of the gospel. When a Pastor speaks on gay marriage the media will characterize him as being a “homophobe” without putting his views in the context of all the Bible says about the law and the gospel. The pastor becomes a caricature and really doesn’t have the ability to influence much of anything in the end. What did Jerry Falwell really do to advance the gospel in his lifetime as a result of his political activism (as opposed to the preaching he did in his own church)?
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What would happen if every pastor in the country and every Christian conservative activist in the coutry made it their goal to befriend a homosexual or a “married” homosexual couple? The area of shared interest could be sports, eating at restaurants, volunteering together, something that we all have in common as human beings. The pastor would generally keep their opinions about homosexuality to themselves and just be a friend. Surely some homosexuals would reject the overture but a lot would accept it. Over time could some of these homosexuals become Christians and be changed? Maybe. As it is when pastors speak out publicly on homosexuality they generally don’t convince any homosexuals to change anything. They just make them and their allies mad and make them think the Bible isn’t about much more than being against homosexuality. They maybe reinforce some of the views of people who are Christians already on the issue. The two sides end up pretty much in the same place they were before except they are more hostile to each other. What has been accomplished?
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Erik, that Milton piece was the subject of my “Aftershave…” posting on Monday.
I was actuallly in the same PCA Presbytery as MAM at one time. He was starting a church in KC, and there seemed to be a good deal of buzz about him, like he would be a rising star. Then the trail went cold until I came across that article.
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MikelMann – I read your piece earlier in the week and liked it (I even clicked the “like” button) but didn’t realize you were commenting on the same thing until now.
It’s interesting that Milton says that Machen “was not afraid to speak to the ungodliness in his culture”. Now I’ve read D.G.’s biography of Machen (highly recommended) and I seem to recall Machen being more concerned about the purity of the church than the purity of the culture.
Does Machen come down more on the side of 2K or the opposite (do you guys generically refer to the other side as “neocalvinism”?)
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I’m not going to say too much about Machen with DGH looking over my shoulder. But, to give one example, he did give some famous testimony in WDC against public schooling. But that’s not preaching. Milton seems to have glommed together preaching and the activities of citizens, so maybe he did that with Machen as well.
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Islam is a really good top-down religion. Christianity is really lousy from the top-down. It has to be practiced from the bottom-up. All top down Christianity leads to is nominalism, legalism, and hypocrisy. There was a time when the church and state were virtually one and it was the age when Rome ruled and anyone expressing Protestant notions could be put to death.
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Erik —
I think that’s a good point. Once Christianity enters the public as opposed to the private sphere it ceases to be a religion and instead turns into a religious based political philosophy. Using your example of homosexuality… Evangelical and Conservative Catholic Christianity is being confronted with the problem that:
a) Their Conservative Christian sexual ethic once understood is widely rejected in practice.
b) That a substantial majority of the population thinks it is extremely important to pay lip service to the Christian sexual ethic (i.e. to be biblical and Christian).
c) The conservative Christian sexual ethic is an accurate biblical representation of Conservative Christian theology and hermeneutic.
This is a real point of tension. If this issue is brought into the public sphere in a confrontation way one of these 3 are going to need to break. In turn what breaking would look like is:
(a) A return to the Christian sexual ethic would immediately lead to a desire to correct sexual behavior and the root causes. There will be a return to something like Victorianism. And by that I mean the whole ideology of the Victorian social reforms with evangelical Christianity having the advantages and disadvantages of being a state church, though likely a state church de facto but not de jure. A church based moralizing social welfare state is what Theonomy would likely look like in actual practice. I don’t see that as likely given the fierce independence of the American Protestant churches and the strong church / state separation.
(c) An attempt to relegitimize liberal Christianity. Since we are mentioning Machen, think the problems Machen faced with Rockefeller in his day but with 100s of Rockefeller organizations. Precisely the kind of situation the evangelicals in 1970-1990 fought against in taking on the mainline churches and their ties to society as harmless benevolence associations.
(b) I’m not sure what attacks of this nature would look widespread. This could take the form of state sponsored New Atheism designed to undermine the bible, like in Western Europe. It could mean a history of religions approach which is more in line with Eastern Europe. It could be state support for New Age philosophies that contextualize Yahweh and the bible as one of the Gods (think Oprah with state support i.e. something like Jezebel).
If you are a limited government social conservative its hard to imagine what are the advantages of a public Christianity. State religions don’t focus on converting people, they achieve their objectives the way states achieve their objectives by force. Machen opposed state religions because he understood that the Presbyterian church could only exclude a Pearl Buck because it was a voluntary association. The political system is not voluntary.
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“Machen opposed state religions because he understood that the Presbyterian church could only exclude a Pearl Buck because it was a voluntary association. The political system is not voluntary.”
Those are good insights. I am convinced that Christianity continues to flourish (relatively speaking, anyway) in the U.S. as opposed to Europe for this very reason.
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But what if we don’t want the religion which is called “Christianity” to flourish? What if we would rather live in a more secular and less “religious” Europe? And yes, Roger Williams and I will accept the gift of one way tickets.
Stan Hauerwas: “I must admit I thought that, after John Murray Cuddihy’s The Ordeal of Civility, no one would be able to recommend civility without apology again. Civility is that part of the modernization process that requires the separation of private affect from public demeanor. It is the great bourgeois project to adapt the individual’s inner life to the socially appropriate.
“Niceness” is as good a name as any for the informally yet pervasively institutionalized civility expected—indeed required—of aspirant members of that societal community called the public culture. Intensity, fanaticism, inwardness—too much of anything, in fact—is unseemly and bids fair to destroy the fragile solidarity of the surface we call civility.
Civility, as the very medium of Western social interaction, presupposes the differentiated structures of a modernizing “civil society.” Civility is not merely regulative of social behavior. It is an order of “appearance” constitutive of that behavior.
.”The Jews, ” writes Maurice Samuel, “are probably the only people in the world to whom it has ever been proposed that their historic destiny is—to be nice.” Of course, you may well object that being nice is not a bad alternative to being killed. But if Cuddihy is right, then the Holocaust is but the other side of assimilation into the new and oppressive order of civility.
Jews were being asked, in effect, to become bourgeois, and to become bourgeois quickly. The
modernization process, the civilization process, and the assimilation process were experienced as one—as the “price of admission” to the civil societies of the West at the end of the nineteenth century.
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/08/004-the-importance-of-being-catholic-a-protestant-view–13
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@Erik Charter: Does it flourish? It does seem to me that orthodox christianity suffers as much in the United Staties as it does here in Europe. The health and wealth gospel is an American invention, not an European.
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http://www.faith-theology.com/2010/11/on-smiling-and-sadness-twelve-theses.html
from Ben Meyers:
In the Protestant West today, smiling has become a moral imperative. The smile is regarded as the objective externalisation of a well ordered life. Sadness is moral failure.
The motif of late-capitalist society is the cultivation of lifestyles from which every trace of sadness has been expunged. Peter Berger identified ‘the Protestant smile’ as part of Protestantism’s cultural
heritage in the West. In a Catholic country like France, it is still considered crass to smile too often, or at strangers. Evangelical churchliness is the ritualisation of bare-toothed crassness and our
cultural obsession with health and happiness.
Where the culture ritualises the smile, sad believers are spiritually ostracised. Sadness is the scarlet letter of the contemporary church, embroidered proof of a person’s spiritual failure.
When the church’s theological rejection of sadness was secularised, sadness became a pathology requiring medical intervention. If Luther or Kierkegaard or Dostoevsky had lived today, we would have given them Prozac and schooled them in positive thinking.
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Mark Van H – I thought about putting flourish in quotes. At least people are still in our churches as opposed to them being museums in Europe. As long as that is the case there is still hope for reformation. This is the project of guys like The White Horse Inn, and to some degree, Old Life (although we are mostly just grumbling curmudgeons)…
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McMark – I for one long for a society where God is worshipped in biblically sound churches. He deserves that. He always seems to preserve a remnant.
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@MarkvanH —
This wasn’t directed at me, but think about it this way. The sociological function of the Health and Wealth Gospel is to either run a scam on Christians or to reconcile Christianity with the desire for individual achievement. In both cases it presupposes a population broadly supportive of Christianity and desiring to to live a Christian lifestyle. You wouldn’t find that in European Countries.
43% of Americans report weekly church attendance.
To put 43% in perspective the 3 most religious countries in Europe are: Poland (63%), Cyprus (25%) and Greece (27%). So were the USA a European country we’d be in 2nd place.
On the low end are the Reformed churches that were state churches: Denmark (3%), Norway (3%), Sweden (5%), Finland (5%).
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“On the low end are the Reformed churches that were state churches: Denmark (3%), Norway (3%), Sweden (5%), Finland (5%).”
Wow – that is mind-blowing. Would you say most of those people are aggressively atheistic or just more laid back & apathetic about religion? I don’t mind secularists but militant, take on religion, atheistic do-gooder secularists bug me.
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Marky Mark, more good stuff. Too bad it’s not yours this time. But what does it say that I smiled when I read it?
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Erik, have you considered that the Bible seems to have a counter-intuitive way of identifying flourishing? It seems to be as a result of or at least in association with persecution, whereas worldly praise and creaturely comfort and ease are indicators of impoverishment. Culture warriors seem to want the latter for Christianity, and seem to think that one way to get there is to fabricate a false sense of the former. But it could be that Christianity is flourishing where it is least seeming to thrive, places that have no sense of religious liberty and freedom, and perhaps is most impoverished where those sensibilities are enshrined? That’s a lofty thing to say, and don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of religious liberty, etc. and so forth. I’m just saying the Bible sure seems to lay it out in a completely opposite way.
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Zrim, it says that you are a cynical guy with a cold heart. And it takes one to know one. Are you in one of the “caring” professions?
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@Erik —
First of remember they don’t have a revival culture. Because the church is a state institution they think of it as a state institution. The kind of attitude you might have towards the department of labor or Amtrack. Among non muslims, “ethnic Europeans”:
1/4 are Christian by casual American definition. This ranges from what we would call devout to people who are religiously Christian but indifferent. They are paleobaptists so they’ve been baptized, often married in the church, attend once in a while and hence view themselves as saved. They view the church as playing an important role in society even if they themselves don’t make heavy or frequent use of it. This group are the supporters of maintaining state churches, and consider Christianity a key component of Europe’s social identity, “Christianity is the soul of Europe”.
1/2 are what I’d call new agers. They aren’t dogmatic materialists so they often believe in some kind of supernatural. They might believe that the soul is immortal or that angels exist. But they generally reject major components of Christianity like a belief that the God of the bible created the universe. These people are often formally and legally part of the churches, though they openly profess non belief in Christianity, calling themselves things like “post-religious”. This group has mixed feelings about the churches. So for example they often support church choirs as critical to Europe’s identity and often attend Christmas pageants.
1/4 are firm atheists. They reject the existence of a supernatural and have often explicitly quit the state churches and registered as no faith.
In European culture wars the 1st and the 3rd group are unified, which is very different from America. The big social issues is resisting Islamization of Europe. In more religious countries like the Poland example: 80% are religiously Christian, 15% new agers and 1% firm atheists.
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Zrim – That is a good point. It is hard to say that 5% church attendance in Sweden is good news, though. Now 5% in North Korea or Iran is very good news, however. It depends on your perspective and the historical context of the country in question.
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CD – Very interesting analysis.
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D.G. talks about “From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin” on the 8/30 “Office Hours” at the Westminster Seminary California website.
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Pulling an all-nighter at work (man I’ll be glad when this month is over) and listening to Scott Clark interview D.G. on “The American Church and Confessionalism”. D.G. says his two heroes growing up were Dick Allen & Mike Schmidt. I’m reminded of the Sports Illustrated cover with Dick Allen in the dugout juggling baseballs with a cigarette in his mouth. Classic.
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McMark, as much as I like Hauerwas and his bad-a__ demeanor (an inspiration in part for Old Life), I think it is hard to think of Christians not being civil. I know being nice is not being Christian. And I regard Hauerwas’ criticisms of liberal Protestant niceness highly. Still, for all of the defects in our political order, I am not sure: 1) if we could put together a better arrangement than some kind of “let’s just get along” public ethic; 2) that the Bible is calling Christians to stand out in their ordinary lives the way Hauerwas says.
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Erik, you speak the truth. That Sports Illustrated cover is framed and hung on my office wall.
BTW, I would have had the chance to hear Allen a few years ago if not for a conflict. He was speaking to the Kennett Square (PA) sports hall of fame.
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Did anyone hear the Roman Catholic Archbishop of NYC pray last night after Romney’s speach at the RNC? He prayed to, God the Father, “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jesus,” and than proceeded to not mention the name of Jesus for the remainder of the prayer. A sad but not surprising concession by Rome to Mormonism.
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Mark, please don’t give any ammunition to my wife who isn’t convinced that there is a difference between a cold hearted cynic and a warm hearted skeptic (or that the virtue of self-comportment beats that of self-expression). And, yes, I care about the field of standardized student assessments–it puts bread on my family’s table.
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To correct my previous comment (accurately but for the worse…) here is what the highest ranking Roman Catholic in America, Cardinal Timorthy Dolan, prayed last night.
“Almighty God, father of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus, we beg your continued blessings on this sanctuary of freedom, and on all of those who proudly call America home….Most of all, Almighty God, we thank you for the great gift of our beloved country.”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/kathyschiffer/2012/08/cardinal-dolans-prayer-at-the-republican-national-convention/
I have not seen one mention on the Internet of the obvious concesion to Mormonism and implicit denial, given the context, of the denial as Jesus as God. Usually RCs are guilty of the opposite problem, vain repetition of Christ’s name. I thought some would enjoy the irony in the common ground in Timothy Dolan’s closing statement and many protestants today…the greatest gift is not Christ…it is the country.
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McMark: When the church’s theological rejection of sadness was secularised, sadness became a pathology requiring medical intervention. If Luther or Kierkegaard or Dostoevsky had lived today, we would have given them Prozac and schooled them in positive thinking.
Thomas Adam: It is the devil’s master-piece to make us think well of ourselves. “Private Thoughts on Religion”, 1700’s.
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B: I have not seen one mention on the Internet of the obvious concesion to Mormonism and implicit denial, given the context, of the denial as Jesus as God.
I posted these two links yesterday morning:
Understanding Mormonism (a video by James White explaining the heart of Mormonism in detail)
The fly in the ointment
In general, Roman Catholics believe in “a hierarchy of truths”, and since Vatican II, they are inclined to celebrate what “truths” they find in non-Christian religions like Mormonism:
843 The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since he gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as “a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life.”
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Other people being sad about how much they are “struggling”…. makes me sad.
Zrim, surely you do not allow your spouse to read this stuff, do you? I like your “I care because it pays the bills”. Ellul once asked, why do you think you need a “vocation” if you need a job in the order of “necessity” for the money?
DGH, I take your point, and I know it’s not nice for me to not pretend to go along with the ceremonial gesture of voting a preference for one of the two corporate whores. I do attempt to be “nicer” in person, but only because I want the offense to be my message instead of my underwear showing.
BTW, despite (or because of) his false gospel (the church is Christ), Stan is one of the nicest most caring guys I ever met….
Romney:
I am an American.
I make my destiny
We deserve better.
Mark McCulley:
I am a citizen of heaven.
I do not control my destiny
We deserve worse.
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B – Jacob must be feeling left out.
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B – Ah, a correction.
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Matt T—In several books, including The Lost Soul of American Protestantism, A Secular Faith, and From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin, Hart has skillfully demonstrated the pietist post-millennial origins of both American evangelicalism and the social gospel, arguing that these groups have far more in common than most scholars would like to admit.
http://www.reformation21.org/articles/the-two-kingdoms-doctrine-whats-the-fuss-all-about-part-one.php
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