Evading The Title Of Cultural Warrior

Over at,

http://matthewtuininga.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/how-to-be-aware-of-a-culture-war-without-becoming-a-culture-warrior-thoughts-on-acton-university/

Matthew Tuininga strikes again.

He titles his piece,

How to be aware of a culture war without becoming a culture warrior: thoughts on Acton University

I might subtitle it …

How to be aware of a culture war without becoming a cultural warrior, or, how to become a cultural warrior without admitting you’re a cultural warrior.

For those who want the whole article, I direct your attention to the link above. I’m interacting with only the bits I found curious.

Mr. Tuininga wrote,

But is not the work of the Acton Institute simply a culture war in reverse? Do not many Christians simply seek to impose their own agenda and ideology by means of the power of the state? To be sure, I did hear some people at the Acton University talk in this way. While the speakers and attendees were very sensitive to liberal accretions on state power, there was less criticism of the ways in which conservatives have sought to use the state to advance their own ideology. In general, however, this was not the spirit of the conference. In general the speakers and lecturers recognized that it is vital for both freedom and virtue for government to be kept in its place.

The problem here, of course, is that the Obama administration does believe that it is keeping to its place when it desires to force Christian institutions to provide abortifacient measures. The Obama administration believes that people like Mr. Tuininga are being reactionary conservatives by desiring to limit the Government from a place it believes it has a right to enter. Now, in this example, I agree with Mr. Tuininga that the Government is overstepping its bounds in seeking to make Christian institutions a arm of the State. What I don’t agree with Mr. Tuininga on is that somehow the State can remain in some realm designated as “neutral.” If the Obama administration doesn’t get its way on this matter then the Christian agenda of more limited more decentralized government will have won the day. If the Obama administration does get its way on this matter then the progressive pagan agenda of a Centralized top down system will have won the day. There is no neutrality. Whoever wins on this battlefront moves the culture war in one direction or another.

Mr. Tuininga offers,

As one speaker pointed out, Christians should not argue for a free market or capitalist society because Scripture or the Church has given us such a system. Rather, the moral case for a free market and for capitalism depends to a significant degree on the fact that it works. Principle, in that sense, is inseparable from pragmatism. If you want to help the poor, why would you support any system other than that which has done more to create economic growth and has lifted more people out of poverty than any other institution or force in the history of the world? If you value freedom, why not maximize it as much as is possible consistent with general prosperity, peace, and order?

However the reason that free markets and Biblical capitalism (as opposed to evolutionary capitalism or Corporatism Capitalism) work is because those economic orders are consistent with what is taught in Scripture. With the Eight Commandment we find the idea of private property, which is the foundation of Biblical capitalism. The problem with appealing to pragmatics is that it tends to peel the ethic away from the theology that creates the ethic. Biblical Capitalism works because it is informed by a Biblical theology that then gets into Biblical economics. I’m all for free markets (though I am a little enamored with the ideas of the Distributists — man is, after all, more than a economic being) but I’m also for free markets remembering that freedom only has any possible sustainable meaning inside of a Biblical worldview.

Mr. Tuininga ends with,

(1)That does not mean our arguments for a free economy should not be fundamentally moral. Human beings are fundamentally moral creatures and must always be addressed as such. (2) That said, however, the arguments we make should not be designed to advance a particular ideological or religious agenda, but to appeal to human beings’ basic understanding of morality and truth in light of experience and sound scholarship. (3) In short, while we may recognize that there are those who are launching a culture war on American society, our response should not be to launch a culture war of our own. (4) On the contrary, our response should be to work as thoughtful, loving citizens, urging and convincing our fellow citizens of the best ideals, policies, and practices conducive to our prosperity as moral human beings. (5)To put it another way, our aim should not be to conquer, but to win hearts and minds with the truth.

The second sentence in that paragraph convinces me that I’ve fallen into Alice’s Rabbit hole.

If we make arguments that are not designed to advance a particular ideological or religious agenda, haven’t we at that point designed arguments to advance the ideological and religious agenda of not making arguments that advance a particular ideological or religious agenda? My point is that ideological and religious agendas are inescapable and Matt doesn’t escape them by insisting that he does escape them. The whole idea that an appeal to human beings’ basic understanding of morality and truth in light of experience and sound scholarship can be done absent of either religion and / or ideology is a howler of the first order. What is the interpretation of human experience based upon except for religious and ideological a-priori’s informing the interpretation? What is sound scholarship based upon except for some pre-commitment to a religion or ideology that is informing the scholarship? Has Matt forgot that both facts and a philosophy of fact must be considered simultaneously? Human beings are fallen creatures and it is a dangerous game to appeal to the basic understanding of morality and truth of creatures that are fallen as some kind of foundation for social order truths. What good was Stalin’s basic understanding of morality and truth in light of experience and sound scholarship? What good was Chairman Mao’s? Felix Dzerzhinsky’s? Pol Pot’s? One does begin to quickly get my point.

Sentence (3) is yet another curio. If someone is attacking me, is it war if I resist? If the cultural Marxist are continuing with their long march through the Institutions is it culture war on my part if I start my own counter long march through the Institutions to return them to what they were before the Cultural Marxists started marching? In sentences (4) and (5) we have a whopper of a false dichotomy. We are not to try and conquer but we are to win hearts and minds with the truth … which of course would mean that if successful we would (shh … don’t say it to loudly) C-O-N-Q-U-E-R.

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him. View all posts by jetbrane