Marginal Christianity

Liberalism needs nothing less than a great rebalancing if it is to regain its intellectual and political vitality Jun 12th 2018 by BAGEHOT BREXIT is such an all-consuming process for the British—at once a drama, a muddle and a mess—that it is easy to forget that it is part of something bigger: a crisis of liberalism in the west. A growing number of countries have had their own equivalents of Brexit: Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election; the election of a populist government in Italy; the Catalan revolt in Spain; the rise of populist authoritarians in Russia, Hungary, Poland and, to some extent, India; the simmering rage against what Viktor Orban calls “liberal blah blah” in the intellectual dark-web. The list will be a lot longer by the time Brexit has been completed. It’s worth taking a break from the ins-and-outs of Brexit to look at the bigger picture, partly because the bigger picture helps us to understand Brexit better (NB...

I have four reasons why American Christians should be neither right-wing or left-wing politically an socially. The first is that the particular version of the left-right spectrum we have today is almost certainly internally incoherent and does not offer the kind of direction and guidance we need (see Crispin Sartwell's “The Left-Right Political Spectrum is Bogus” on this blog). Secondly, Jesus cannot fairly be mapped on our right-left spectrum. He can be claimed to support some things the right promotes and other things the left supports (probably more on the left according to our current spectrum). Yet to so map him fundamentally distorts his message and ministry. To follow him faithfully is to be politically eclectic in our situation. Third, to define our discipleship in terms of right or left is to define it in terms of morality or ethics (a shared error of both right- and left-wing Christianity). Fourth, such a way of defining discipleship obscures or overlooks t...

http://robbbeck.wordpress.com/2014/07/27/church-decline-and-karl-marx/ July 27, 2014 in Anglican Social Teaching , Christopher Lasch , Common Good , Ecclesiology From Patrick Deneen’s How Red (State) is Marx? , in The American Conservative : Here’s what Marx got right—profoundly, overwhelmingly, admirably right: capitalism is unforgiving to “conservatives,” those who care about neighborhood, Church, family, loyalty, tradition. As Marx and Engels eloquently described in The Communist Manifesto, The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, ...