In a previous post I wrote:
This tension between the ancient vessels of culture and what they contain is not indefinitely sustainable: in the long run, either we will adjust our thinking and feeling to match the shapes of our familiar institutions, or we will reshape those institutions so that they suit our thoughts and feelings. The latter is quite obviously what’s happening, because new institutions — the catechizing and propagandizing ones, which cunningly present themselves as non- or trans-institutional — are co-opting the old ones. “The media creates us in its image” — but the existing institutions are incompatible with the shape in which we are being remade. So they must either be transformed or destroyed.
I want to link this with an earlier post on the idea of a “long march through the institutions”:
You sometimes hear Dutschke’s phrase from conservative commentators frustrated by the success of the left in making just such a march through American civil society, through the media and the arts and the universities. They are correct that this has happened, but they rarely draw the appropriate conclusions from it. Instead of imitating the patience and persistence of the leftist marchers, they long for a strongman, a Trump or an Orban, to relieve them of the responsibility for reshaping civil society. If reshaping those institutions seems hard, then why not dream of someone powerful enough to blow them up and start over? Dreams of an omnicompetent strongman are the natural refuge of people too lazy and feckless to begin, much less complete, a long march.
What’s the purpose of a strongman? The strongman props up the decaying institutions on which we have come to depend. The strongman postpones the day of reckoning. The strongman kicks the can down the road so we can go peacefully to our graves knowing that institutional collapse will be our grandchildren’s problem to deal with, not ours. Sweet dreams to us.
You know what the Trumpistas and Orbanistas remind me of? Denethor. Last year, I gestured at some of the issues I’m here concerned with in a post about intellectual/political “fascist architecture,” about the ways in which laziness leads to hopelessness and hopelessness to a kind of nihilistic wrath:
“I would have things as they were in all the days of my life … and in the days of my longfathers before me: to be the Lord of this City in peace, and leave my chair to a son after me, who would be his own master and no wizard’s pupil. But if doom denies this to me, then I will have naught: neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honour abated.”
For all Denethor’s talk of “honour,” his behavior is shameful. But there are two reasonable and, yes, honorable alternatives to authoritarian nihilism, especially for my fellow Christians. (Much of what I say in the following paragraphs also applies to cultural conservatives more generally.)
The first is to seek the renewal of those institutions that are not too far gone for rescue — genuine renewal, not turning them into puppets for strongmen. For guidelines to that project, see my posts on Invitation and Repair.
The second is, when institutions cannot be renewed, to follow the example of James Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus, who strove to create for himself an environment in which he could, in the face of cultural indifference or opposition, thrive as an artist. “I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use — silence, exile and cunning.” Let Stephen be our model, even though his enemy — I am not unaware of the irony — was the Church, along with his nation and his family. Stephen is our model because he thought hard about how to survive, and even thrive, while still in thrall to Powers he could not directly challenge.
Silence: Not a permanent silence, but a refusal to speak at the frantic pace set by social media; silence as the first option — the preferential option for the poor in spirit, you might say; silence as a form of patience, a form of reflection, a form of prayer. A refusal to be baited; a renewal of the old and forgotten virtue called “keeping my counsel.”
Exile: The idea of the Church in exile is an increasingly popular one these days, and for good reason. I’m a little suspicious of some of its potential implications, but overall, I think, we do well to think of ourselves not simply as on pilgrimage — though yes, always that, we are a pilgrim people — but more specifically as pilgrims who are also exiles, who are on the way because we have been cast out of the place where we had hoped to rest. (Call it Christendom, America the Christian Nation, what you will.) Whether this casting out is primarily due to our sins or the ruthlessness of our enemies is something we can debate as we walk, though my counsel is that we should always focus primarily on where we have missed the mark, because that leads to repentance and amendment of life. Moreover, while some exiles are simple this one is complex, because we have not all been exiled to the same place. The body of Christ is not just wounded but divided: our exile is of that particularly painful type known as Diaspora. In such circumstances we travel light, our luggage reduced to the barest essentials; we regularly send out messengers to seek the brothers and sisters whom we have lost; and we relentlessly recite to ourselves the terms that mark our identity. These are the prime virtues of a people in exile.
Cunning: Many traditional communities rely heavily on the kind of person that in England used to be called “cunning men” and “cunning women” — every American Indian community likewise had its “wise woman.” If you had a bad tooth, of course, you’d go to the surgeon — who was usually also a barber — and he’d yank it out. But you’d go to the cunning folk if you didn’t know what was wrong with you, or if anything was wrong with you at all, other than a suspicion that something was wrong with you. The cunning folk had no technique — if they had technique they’d belong to some proper profession — but could draw on experience, and a body of lore passed down from generation to generation, and a certain undefinable shrewdness: a nose for trouble. The cunning man or woman needs, above all, attentiveness and imagination — especially in relation to the beauty hidden in filth. We Christians are in likewise desperate need, not of better techniques for management of our “diminished thing” called the church — as though our highest ambition were to make our spiritual nest egg last just a little bit longer; kicking that can down the road — but of theological and pastoral cunning. What do we have to lose but our chains?
