Top Down, Bottom Up, or Inside Out?

Is the Christianization of America more likely to happen from a Spirit-wrought revival of the populace that seems to arise from nowhere? Or from a Christian prince who seems to pop up from nowhere and uses political power to impose his views on the people? Or is some third option most likely?

Rev. Rich Lusk
Question Raised on X

Just to be clear from the outset here. While I do think that Rev. Lusk can be quite insightful from time to time on the whole, since he is one of the worst practitioners of what is now known as “Federal Vision,” I consider him at the very best heterodox and at very his very worse heretical.

However, he asks a good question here that has been bandied about a good bit by folks lately so I thought I would weigh in on the matter.

If we could reduce the question to its essence it amounts to this;

“Will Christian renewal/reformation be top down or bottom up?”

My answer to this question finds me ripping off from the black Marxist Van Jones who was Obama’s Green Jobs Czar at one time. Van Jones likes to talk about “change being top dow, bottom up and inside out.” And honestly, this is a maxim that has been pursued by Marxists for generations — often quite successfully. It’s also been pursued by Christians in history as well. In point of fact I would argue that it is a biblical principle.

So, my answer to Lusk’s query is that it must be all at the same time. At various times I suppose one will lead and the other follow but on the whole I look at history and I see all three happening whenever a nation pivots from its previous historical/theological/worldview antecedents.

I see it, for example, in a book I finished last month on the Spanish Civil War. Both the Nationalists and the “Republicans” were fighting for a renewal/reformation for their nation as understood as coming from their different beginning points. Both sought top down solutions. The Roman Catholic Nationalists had their Franco and others. The Republicans had their Francisco Largo Caballero and others. However, both parties also sought the support of a bottom up constituency and they both fought for hearts and minds (the inside out component).

If you want to go behind that to consider how Charlemagne would use the sword to convert tribes in his orbit of rule one sees again the top down approach being married to a bottom up approach. After these pagan tribes were “converted” Christian missionaries would then swarm over them to knead Christianity into the individual lives of those previously pagan but now, because of Charlemagne’s sword, Christian tribes.

If one reads their Old Testament Scriptures one finds that both Reformation and Deformation come and go with the coming and going of Righteous or Un-Righteous Kings leading the way. The OT Scriptures indeed seem to support more the idea that Reformation and Deformation come from a top down matrix.

Part of the problem behind people accepting that Reformation could come down in a force manner as being led by a Christian Prince is the fact that the American mind is so infected with the Democratic mindset. We want to insist that Reformation will only come as a bottom up “Spirit led” revival. Certainly, with God all things are possible, but consider that God marries means to ends and currently the means that would lead to an end of a “Spirit led” revival are not present. There is very little proclamation of the whole counsel of God in pulpits today in even putative conservative churches. The enemy has completely captured the places where the most intense catechism occurs; the Government schools and the Universities, as well the media industry (entertainment and “news”) as well as most of the Churches in the West today. Then there is the fact that the publishing houses are almost all captured territory as well as the gaming industry. In light of that could bottom up Spirit led revival still happen? Sure … because God is sovereign all things are possible. However, when we look at history, history suggests that a bottom up Spirit led revival is not going to happen apart from a movement that is also top down and inside out.

And most pietistic Christians don’t want to hear that. They would prefer to think that God always works His ends without means that He Himself has raised up. A Christian magistrate has often been the top down means God uses to prompt bottom up Spirit led revival.

Machen Was Right In 1935…. And He is Even More Right Today

“America has been no exception to this decadence (experienced by Europe since the end of WW I). Liberty is being threatened and, there is coming before us in the near future, the specter of the hopeless treadmill of a collectivist state.

Certainly when we take the world as a whole, we are obliged to see that the foundations of liberty and honesty are being destroyed, and the slow achievements of centuries are being thrown recklessly away.

In such a time of kaleidoscopic changes, is there anything that remains unchanged? When so many things have proved to be untrustworthy, is there anything that we can trust?

One point is at least clear – we cannot trust the Church. The visible Church, the church as it now actually exists upon this earth has fallen too often into error and sin.”

J. Gresham Machen
The Christian View Of Man
Published 1936

Matters were very bad in Machen’s time. However 90 years later the fruit of the theology that Machen was witnessing is now being harvested by the tractor-trailer loads. Most of us would rightly think that it would be an incredible blessing to only have to deal with the error and sin that Machen was dealing with in 1936. Yet, Machen was not in error here. He lived to see the beginning rot and of understanding where it was going. Because he had that kind of prophetic insight to understand “ideas have consequences” he was hated like very few men of his time. Such is a prophet’s reward.

Machen’s observation remains sadly true. We cannot trust the visible Church… especially those church denominations that were once touted as “conservative.” Conservative denominations no longer exist. There may be conservative… (better to say Dissident) Christian congregations exist but denominationally there is nowhere to place one’s trust.

Machen though, was not only right about the Church of his era he was correct about the collectivist government that was descending upon Americans. He lived through the Wilson administration and while most Americans don’t know their history, the Wilson administration was a time of the great restraining of liberty in the US. Things had been relaxed somewhat in the intervening 17 years between the end of the Wilson administration and the time of Machen’s writing this but there is no doubt he could begin to see what was bubbling up around him. FDR had come to power and had introduced the alphabet soup legislation which was all about ushering in a collectivist state. Machen was no fool. He could read the times. Others writing about the same time, such as Christopher Dawson, were saying similar things to what Machen is saying here.

The world changed during these men’s lifetime. World War I had ended old Christendom and they were insightful enough to know that massive change had settled upon them.

We now live in the continued stream of that change. We have gone, since the time of Machen, from Revolution to Revolution as pursued incrementally. Because we live in that incremental Revolutionary change most people don’t notice it. Some do and some see that the foundations were long ago destroyed. The message today is not “the end is coming.” The message today is, “the end has come and we have to reverse and rebuild.”

And as Machen notes above… the Church will be that Institution that will provide the most opposition to re-fashioning a new Christendom. It already is proving that all the time.

Picking At The Issue Of Culture

In the Christian anthropology man is being that is composed of two parts that are so closely integrated that some theologians have referred to man’s ontological reality as being a “modified unichotomy,” comprised of a corporeal dynamic (being made from the dust of the ground) yet also having a spiritual dynamic (God having breathed into him the breath of life). Some have referred to man as being a dichotomous being but this doesn’t quite capture it given that man’s body and spirit are so closely and intimately integrated. We can distinguish body and soul but we can ever isolate them or divorce them. God alone does that at death and then only for a season until our bodies as glorified will be reunited with our heaven dwelling spirits. Unichotomy is a clumsy way to express this union of body and soul (spirit) since the word itself means “One” and “to cut.”

I lead in with the above observation in order to talk about the problems with what we call “multiculturalism.” Multiculturalism, professing that it delights in a multitude of cultures in point of fact ends up creating a unitarian culture that disallows Christian culture since Christian culture is premised upon the conviction that inferior cultures should not be allowed equal standing with superior cultures. For example, while multiculturalism would insist that cultures that honor sodomite marriage should be protected, Christian culture would demand laws prohibiting such inferior cultural norms as existing among a Christian people.

The link between the first two paragraphs is that for multiculturalism, premised at it is on Marxist underpinnings, holds an anthropology that denies the Christian anthropology insisting instead that man is only matter in motion. Since man is only matter in motion and since there are no transcendent ethics by which man must be guided the multiculturalist seeks to create a culture that is unitary. Since man himself is definitely not a composite of body and soul and therefore is a unitary being then it is inevitable that man should build unitary cultures that disallow for any culture that insist that distinctions exist as given by extramundane God, who, according the to the multiculturalist worldview can’t exist because he is a spiritual being.

So, we have established thus far

1.) Multiculturalism is a euphemism that hides the unitarian uni-cultural agenda.

2.)  Man created as body and soul has implications for culture.

It is #2 that I would like to tease out a wee bit.

When we consider culture we have to consider it as being the product of both man’s corporeal and spiritual reality. This is why when asked the definition of culture my answer is typically, “culture is a particular people’s religion externalized.” This is a slight twist on the Calvinistic philosopher’s “culture is religion externalized.”  When we talk about what makes culture, culture we have to take into account our Christian anthropology which teaches that man is a modified unichotomy. We have to take into account that like man individually, culture is, a modified unichotomy expressing both man’s corporeal and non-corporeal realities.

Culture is the expression of men living in one geographic area that reflects both a shared genetic heritage (thus tipping the cap to man’s corporeal being) and a shared religion, belief system, worldview (thus tipping the cap to man’s non-corporeal being). Another way of saying this is that “culture is theology as poured over a particular people group.”

The implications of this are fairly obvious if this is an accurate assessment of culture. One implication is that where there is a particular culture that exists one cannot add too  that particular culture either a large injection of alien peoples (corporeal aspect of culture) or a large injection of an alien worldview (non-corporeal aspect of culture) and still at the end of that addition have the same culture that one started with before the addition was injected. The application here to massive third world migration to the formerly Christian West should be obvious.

Another implication is that just as one cannot add to a particular culture either a massive injection of foreign peoples or alien ideas and retain the same culture, in the same way one cannot delete or vastly diminish either a particular culture’s convictions/religion/worldview or it’s genetic heritage and still have the same culture after the deletion or diminishing.

The implication of pursuing an agenda of either massive addition or deletion as described above in any particular stable culture will be significant conflict as the new mix vies for hegemony in the new culture.

Now, there are many in the Christian community, who will insist that culture is only a matter of an abstracted large number of individuals owning a shared set of ideas. They do not believe that a shared genetic heritage should be considered an element for building stable Christian culture. The problem here, for these will intended but vacuous thinkers, is that they are denying the Christian anthropology as applied to culture that man is both body and soul. Instead, what they have is an anthropology, when applied to culture, that sees man as only the sum of his thoughts. Historically, this line of thinkinking has been known as “Gnosticism.” This line of thought is Gnostic because it does not take seriously the truth that man is an embodied being, opting instead to see man as a brain on a stick. This line of thinking belittles the corporeal realities that make for the manishness of man.

Dr. Adi Schlebusch offers insight here as to the historical foundations of this errant form of Gnostic thinking that has invaded the Christian universe of thought;

“This (Gnosticism as applied to defining culture) is the basic tenet of liberalism and this was central to the flaws of the Enlightenment. It is for this very reason that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century counter-enlightenment philosophers polemicized so heavily against abstract theories of human rights or the idea of the social contract as the basis of society. 

What the liberal philosophers of the Enlightenment, especially the eighteenth-century French philosophers sought to do was to rebuild a new society based on ideals. It fundamentally sought to de-root man from the so-called “chains” imposed upon him by created realities. In doing so, they often appealed to nature or man’s supposed state of nature which, according to them, had been corrupted by customs and habits imposed by tradition. It is for this reason that I believe the contemporary Neo-Thomist accusation against Theonomists that we are fundamentally liberal in our anthropology as a result of our skepticism about natural law, holds no water. The fact of the matter is that appeals to nature as justification for egalitarianism and a universal human fraternity was actually quite common during the Enlightenment, particularly in France. This is not to say that natural law theory is liberal in and of itself, but it has certainly historically been much more of a tool employed by liberals than Scripture has, for example.”

The opposite problem of a Gnostic definition of culture that insists that culture is only the sum total of how abstracted individuals think is the assertion that culture has nothing to do with any spiritual reality, insisting instead that culture is merely matter in motion. This materialist Marxist understanding of culture viewed man and cultures as being a biological machine(s) that could be shaped by the party in any direction it desired. In reality Marxism was the anti-culture culture because it was the anti-religion religion. Marxist culture remained the outward manifestation of a people’s inward beliefs but what was manifested in Marxist culture was the Marxist religion that held that man was an economic being that could only be understood in terms of class warfare. Because man in Marxist religion and culture was only matter in motion man became dehumanized and having lost the manishness of man he lost those realities that make men, men; connection to family, clan, nation, church, and place.

Only Christianity can build stable culture because only Christianity has an anthropology that seeks to maintain the relation man as body and man as soul. Christianity then must do battle with the Gnostics in the church that says culture is only the consequence of what men in the abstract think and Christianity must do battle with the Materialists in the church who think that man is merely matter in motion.

What is interesting here is that even though man as material alone or man as spiritual alone are stark opposites in terms of anthropology in the end they both will build cultures that are unitarian and monistic. If man is merely one component then man will build a culture that is monochrome and unitary. So, even though spiritualist views of culture and materialist views of culture are seeming at opposite ends of the spectrum they end up building the same kind of ugly mulatto cultures. This is where we are right now with the rise of multiculturalism – a euphemism if there ever was one.

As a Christian the danger that I am dealing with now the most in the Christian church on this subject is the the Gnostic/spiritual side of the equation. More than a few are the clergy who seemingly believe that the results of Christianity, in terms of culture, will eventually be a world where particular nations  disappear because the gospel has been so successful that there is no longer a need for diverse nations or cultures. I call this “Christian Globalism,” and it is more prevalent than one might think. It’s almost as if the only reason diverse nations and cultures exist is because of sin.

From what we have said here we see that the finest culture can only arise where there is a dynamic interplay between Christian thinking and Christian genetic heritage. The fun thing about this is that because God has made peoples to be diverse different peoples, these different peoples when turning to Christ, will result in their thinking their thoughts after Christ, and the result of that will be a plurality of diverse Christian cultures, each and all expressing in ways distinct to their heritage strengths the glory of God.  Each and all of these cultures will esteem God’s law but the esteeming of that law will run through the prism of genetic distinctive heritage. In such a way the temporal one and many of culture(s) will reflect the One and Many character of God. With this shared owning of Christ the different distinct and different nations and cultures will together glorify the great and magnificent creator God just as a symphony orchestra with all it diverse instruments work together to produce majestic pieces of music.

 

 

‘Dios! Patria! Fueros! Rey! — God, the fatherland, local rights, and the King, in that order

“The political philosophy of the Traditionalist Communion (opposing the Spanish Revolution) rejected any strong central government, parliamentary or otherwise; except for national defense and foreign affairs, they wanted Spain governed by its separate provinces. (The Carlist motto was ‘Dios! Patria! Fueros! Rey! — God, the fatherland, local rights, and the King,) in that order.”

Warren Carroll
The Last Crusade; The Twentieth Century’s War For the Sake Of The Cross – p. 19

There are a good number of variant visions being cast in favor of Christian Nationalism. Recently, I’ve read one Christian Nationalist proclaim that given what we are up against in our own government that it is ridiculous to think any movement that is decentralized could successfully defeat the current Leviathan State. I will concede that is possibly true but be that as it may could I have my vision of Christian Nationalism come to pass it would be of the kind in the quote above. I still believe that power tends to corrupt and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. I still believe that if we are able to cashier our current god-state with a centralized state that would work in the favor of Christians the end result would soon enough be a return to where we began. Like our Founders I do  not trust power to be concentrated in any one place and as such I would desire a Christian Nationalism has many power centers as lodged in the society.

Of course a multitude of power centers can never work where there is not a harmony of interest among the population and a harmony of interest can only arise where there is a common Christian faith and worldview as embraced by a kin people. Both a common Christian faith and worldview combined with a kin people can provide social order that will avoid the deep fractures that currently exist in what was once Christendom. Where there is a common Christian faith and worldview combined with a kin people then a decentralized arrangement can work. In that arrangement “God, the fatherland, local rights, and the King” can provide a solid foundation for social order.

Naturally, this kind of desire is not possible in our current arrangement in America where massive immigration has instead given us a country where there is no common faith and there is no one predominant kin people. Diversity of faith and/or blood will never be any social order’s strength.

A decentralized and diffuse jurisdictional approach where a people are characterized by a common faith and a common blood is the only approach to building social order where maximum institutional and individual liberty can be lived out. A decentralized and diffuse jurisdictional approach allows the institutions of family, church, civil-social, and others to flourish and that apart from a top-down approach where all authority is lodged in the State.

Fashions Change But Style Endures

In the last few weeks I’ve been in and out of a couple hospitals visiting folks. Of course, as clergy, hospital visitation is part of the calling and so I am not unfamiliar with this territory. However, I’ve noticed something recently that was reinforced by viewing video clips of the different denominational gatherings. Both the denominational gatherings and the hospitals I’ve been in recently are screaming at me that we are a different type of people than even a few short decades ago.

You see, I’m old enough now to remember hospitals from decades ago as well as denominational meetings from the same time frame. Hospitals a few decades ago were staffed by a very prim and proper staff. Nurses wore their white dresses with their nursing caps all wearing their nurse’s pins. Doctors, when making their rounds wore their white smocks with their names sewn into the lapel while wearing a button down collar and tie. Clergy, in a very similar manner attended their denominational gatherings in suit and ties. The few women present serving in support roles were all wearing dresses.

Those times are gone.

Both hospitals and denominational meetings are characterized, for the most part, by people dressed, comparatively speaking to the past, incredibly slovenly. I constantly finding myself arching my eyebrows by what I’ve seen in the past few weeks in both hospitals I’ve been in and by the attire seen at these denominational meetings. Of course, if it were merely a matter of attire I could probably care very little but I suspect that sloppy attire might possibly belie sloppy thinking.

Undergirding this observation is the irrefutably true observation of the difference in attire, in both pulpit and pew, when gathering to worship in God’s house. The clergy and laity in 1975 (randomly chosen) appear for worship dressed in their “Sunday best,” whereas clergy and laity appear for worship dressed like Hobos, Hippies and Hobgoblins. This belies a different view of not only “dress,” and what is happening in and with Worship but it belies low views of God.

I understand that we should be glad that people are in Church no matter their attire. If forced to choose between seeing people in Church dressed like beachcombers and beatniks or not seeing people in Church because they don’t want to dress the part I would obviously choose the former. But I would do so with sadness.

I’m not looking for a return to 3 piece suits or even the nurses white dresses and little hats of old. I merely desire professionals to dress professionally when working in their professional capacity. At this point I’d only ask people to think through this matter a wee bit.