The Trouble With An Establishment Of Religion

EVERYONE has something to say about the Archbishop of Canterbury and his suggestion that the adoption of some aspects of sharia law in Britain is “unavoidable.”

In the New York Post John O’Sullivan feels that the Archbishop is preemptively appeasing the Muslims in Britain.

He seems to be blessing a creeping development in British life that would divide the nation into religious ghettoes, reduce women’s rights and abolish one of Britain’s proudest achieve- ments: a rule of law that applies equally to everyone.

Everyone thinks he is a fool, and many people think he should resign.

But to me the flap is salutary. For it demonstrates the problem with a nation that has an “establishment of religion,” that is, an official government religion.

And I include in that, naturally, the established religion of the United States, the belief system of the educational and cultural elite which we call multiculturalism and diversity.

When you have an establishment of religion then all questions of moral and cultural values come under the sway of national politics. You get Archbishops preemptively deciding the future of cultural and moral change. Or, in the case of the government universities in the United States you get speech codes and persecution of conservatives who don’t fall in line with the elite cultural consensus.

This is all wrong when you look at society from the point of view of Michael Novak in The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism.

In Novak’s view we should think of modern society as differentiated into three sectors: the political sector, the economic sector, and the moral/cultural sector. Each sector is in some sense independent of the other sectors. Indeed it is their greater separation of powers that guarantees the future of freedom because each sector is deliberately denied the power to oppress the other sectors. And each sector is jealous of the powers of the other sectors and is always ready to point out when another sector is get above itself.

Now, it is obvious to me that all laws promulgated by the political sector issue in some way from the moral/cultural framework in society, the notion that people have of good and evil. When you have an establishment of religion it means that the moral/cultural sector is subsumed into the political sector. In this state you cannot have a free and open contest between differing moral/cultural viewpoints. In fact you get what we have now in the United States and doubly so in Britain. You get a hegemony of the established church, whether the Church of England or the church of university and media liberals.

In the United States and in Britain the overwhelming domination of the Christian world view is coming under challenge from non-Christian immigrants who include not just Muslims but Hindu Indians and Han Chinese and their Confucian tradition.

It is “unavoidable” you might say, that in the future the culture of the United States and eventually its laws will come to reflect the evolving blend of cultures.

That process gets to be very different when an established church is in charge of the moral/cultural sector. For then all changes to the laws end up being a political deal between the current political/religious establishment and the insurgent minorities.

And that usually means more conflict than when different moral/cultural traditions are forced to compete on a level playing field where none have the open support of the government.

Let us learn from the foolishness of the Archbishop and insist that the United States purge itself of the creeping establishment of the church of liberal pieties and insist on a return to a rigorous culture of moral/cultural freedom, where no belief system has the sponsorship of the government, where all moral/cultural traditions must compete for the favor of the American people.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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