If Conservatism is defined as the insistence that the idea of the Transcendence as found in the Christian faith must be maintained in order to ground morality so that Civilization can flourish then Liberalism/Progressivism as its antipode must be defined as the insistence that any Transcendence that limits the overturning of current moral foundations is something that man must rid himself of so that he can be “free” in the fullest sense.
If Conservatism alone is defined as the impulse to retain the idea of the Transcendent then everything that denies that from Romanticism to Existentialism to Postmodernism all must be considered expressions of Liberal/Progressive reactionary-ism.
As we consider the various schools of thought competing with Liberal thought in the 20th century forward one is immediately saddened by so little representation by theologians who were both explicitly Christian and who argued against the Liberal/Progressive worldview while standing squarely on the Scriptures. Prior to WW II one could have seen the Dutchmen Herman Bavinck in that role as one of the inheritors of Groen Van Prinsterer but coming out of WW II there are very few like Bavinck save RJR and RJR didn’t publish his first book until 1959, a full 14 years after the war’s end.
There were Christian writers to be sure in post-war America but many of them were theoretical and conceptual and didn’t do the spade work that the authors in the other categories did. Even, Van Til and GHC seldom get into issues like the immorality of the Atomic Bomb, a Biblical view of Joseph McCarthy, or a theological treatise on Civil Rights from a Biblical and Conservative perspective. It is not as if the issues that they were addressing were unimportant, but the Christian right did not have any high profile theologians writing on these post WW II subjects from a Biblical and Conservative perspective.
As such a lacuna was present and the authors of the other three schools of thought quickly filled that lacuna in. Sometimes inadequately. RJR, for example, has a lecture on the inadequacy of Russel Kirk’s epistemology from a Biblical and Conservative perspective.
Because of this lack the Conservative and Biblical understanding atrophied on these various subjects with no one except RJR trying to fill the field to address these kinds of issues. It is only now, among writers like Dr. Adi Schlebusch, Dan Brannan, Michael Fort, Colby Malsbury, and a few others where this kind of analysis can be found. Keep in mind that these writers are a small minority who don’t make a living wage to write full time. Anything they produce is due to their love for Christ and their love for the saints and their hatred of the enemy.
None of this is to throw the other categories under the bus. I’ve read exhaustively in the Libertarian, Anti-Communist, and Conservative field with great profit but it simply remains the case that we need more writers writing on contemporary issues from a uniquely Biblical and Conservative perspective. The closest we typically get now is material from the right side of the left that can easily pass as “right” since we as a people as well as we as a Church in the West have gone so far left. Indeed, perhaps the greatest need right now is for writers who can expose the right side of the left as not being right but really as growing out of a kind of retarded Fabianism. Right now in the Church world positions that were clearly left a generation of so ago are now esteemed as being “conservative.”
We need a full frontal attack on the left/progressive in all its incarnations from classical Marxism, to Fabianism, to Cultural Marxism, to Corporatism, to Syndicalism, to National Socialism, and everything in between.
Iron Ink will continue to try and to just that.
