"God & Country," declining norms, and other recommended reading
Plus, an update from Midwest Model United Nations
This week I’ve been in St. Louis with 10 students, for the annual meeting of Midwest Model United Nations. For those unfamiliar with Model UN, students act as delegates for an assigned country, arguing for that country’s interests and positions across a range of issues in international politics.
This year, our students are representing Russia and Malta. During one committee meeting a delegate from Ukraine called out Russia for its ongoing invasion and occupation, at which point our student had to defend the actions as part of a “special military operation” — unsurprisingly, this didn’t make him popular with the other delegates.
But the most interesting moment—for me, at least—came about 30 minutes before the start of the conference, when I got a panicked call from one of our students explaining that he had forgotten to pack pants. So, we found a local store that turned out to be formal wear rental business, tucked in the middle of what appeared to be an industrial park. He ended up buying pants there. In my five years taking students to this conference, this was a first.
We’ll be heading back to Northwest Arkansas Saturday afternoon, after—get this—26 hours of committee meetings and sessions since Wednesday evening. It’s a tiring experience, yes, but so far, rewarding.
Here are a few recent essays and articles I’ve found worth reading:
Writing for Christianity Today, Messiah University professor John Fea reviewed the documentary God & Country. Featuring notable Christian voices like David French, Phil Vischer, Kristin Kobes du Mez, and Russell Moore, the documentary shines a light on—what else?—Christian nationalism in the United States.
Fea called the film “a brilliant piece of documentary filmmaking.” However, he is ultimately not impressed:
Though the core message of the film is true—this kind of extremism is antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ—God & Country suffers from a consistent failure to define its terms and distinguish its subjects. In the end, the movie raises more questions than it answers and will be limited in its persuasiveness to viewers who don’t already share its concerns.
Also for Christianity Today, editor Bonnie Kristian reflected on norms and what happens when they go away. Consider this:
In a secularized, fragmented society, we are running perilously short on widely accepted norms. A panic is rising. No one wants anomie, a norm less culture, but how do you set effective norms if there’s no consensus on what’s normal? On what basis do you mourn or herald the death of old norms or the rise of new ones? By what rule can we judge and instruct if we’re losing agreed-upon rules?
And this:
“Moral communities are fragile things, hard to build and easy to destroy,” as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt wrote inThe Righteous Mind. Haidt recognized that declining institutional authority and religiosity lead to exactly the anomie we now face. “If you live in a religious community, you are enmeshed in a set of norms, relationships, and institutions” that produce “shared moral matrices,” he explained. Without that moral organization, when all do as they please—well, have you read Judges 19–21? Or Reddit?
Over at Current, Covenant College professor Jay Green discussed the evolution of a new kind of Christian college. Specifically, he explains how Hillsdale College has transformed from a philosophically and ideologically conservative college into a civilizational Christian college, and what that means for Christian higher education moving forward:
I have found it helpful to distinguish between “confessional” and “civilizational” Christian colleges. Confessional Christian colleges like Covenant (and those in the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities) are “Christian” in the sense that their faculty (and sometimes their students) submit to clear statements of faith. Do these statements of faith have “civilizational” (i.e., real world) implications? Indeed! But they are less prescribed and more open to debate.
At its best, I believe that Hilldale is a civilizational Christian college, which is to say “Christian” in a different sense: in acknowledging and honoring the strategically important role the faith played in laying the foundations of both Western Civilization and the American Founding, both key components of Hillsdale’s mission and ethos.
Finally, for Salon, journalist Chauncey DeVega interviewed political scientist Paul Djupe about Donald Trump’s transformation of the American right via the rise of Christian nationalism,1 and what the means for the future of the American system of government and politics:
I’m consistently finding about that at least 40 percent of adult Americans believe that they need to “avoid sinful people.” That number grows among Christians to solid majorities. I’m not sure that democratic politics is possible under these conditions. And that’s what a good number of survey respondents say: “I sometimes wish people like me would secede from the United States to form our own country.” Very few of those who reject Christian nationalism agree with that statement, but a third of ardent Christian nationalists agree.
But the answer to the question also hinges on what we mean by democracy. Without getting too esoteric, democracy needs participants, and Christian nationalists are highly participatory. Since 2016, they indicate on surveys that they engage in more political activities than others. Some of that is due to church involvement, but much seems to come from motivation – motivations that seem downright undemocratic in many cases.
I tend to be inherently skeptical of most takes on Christian nationalism these days, primarily because the term itself has become so malleable as to mean whatever readers (and writers) want it to mean. However, Djupe is a pro and an expert researcher, so his perspective is worth more consideration than most.