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Questions for Jake Meador after reading his lovely new book
Jake Meador is one of my favorite writers to read today on the intersection of faith, politics, and culture. (Am I contractually obligated to call him a "young" writer? What are the rules here when you're not sure whether you're older than the young writer in question?) We've yet to meet, but he's been gracious to me over the past few years, posting and soliciting essays I've written for Mere Orthodoxy, which he edits.
I was eager to read his new book, In Search of the Common Good: Christian Fidelity in a Fractured World, and I wasn't disappointed. The book will be a boon to a variety of folks, especially pastors, churches, and college students. Indeed, I'm assigning it to one of my classes this fall. Given Meador's politics—a social conservative against racism, an agrarian against abortion, a Christian against the GOP, an evangelical against Trump, a Calvinist against capitalism—his writing makes for nice inroads to conversations with ordinary believers that bypass the partisan binary.
But while I wasn't disappointed, I was surprised by the book. I've been chewing on the reasons for that surprise for the last month. So let me try to boil down my surprise into the form of questions Meador left me with—questions I hope his ongoing work, at Mere O and especially in future books, will continue to grapple with.
1. For whom is this book written? Who is its primary audience? Meador's writing is always clear but it is often pitched "higher," to those who've read the primary sources and know the state of the conversation, and who have the desire or the power to do something about it. The book seems pitched "lower" (not in a pejorative sense), to those who haven't done the reading and aren't familiar with the driving conversations of the day. If so, perhaps the book is meant as a kind of translation or popularization for ordinary Christians, as I suggested above. In that, I think it succeeds; but it was not what I was prepared for.
2. Substantively, what surprised me most was the relative lack of direness in Meador's account of the current civic crisis. Partly a matter of tone, it's more than that too: one doesn't get the sense from the book that American society is an free fall. Sure, things are worse than they could be, but also, things are looking up, or at least, signs of (this-worldly) hope are on the horizon. But this doesn't match what I read in Meador's more regular writing. So just how bad are things? Are we in the midst of a kind of crisis? Or is it less dire than that?
3. Related is the state of the church in the U.S. I had thought, again based on Meador's other writing, that we are currently in a stage of ecclesial emergency. The church's numbers have been declining rapidly and continue to do so; those churches that have changed with the times have apostatized, and those churches that have ostensibly remained orthodox are beset by trials and scandals of a political and sexual nature. But a strikingly sanguine tone characterizes much (not all) of the book's talk of church: the simplicities and ordinary kindnesses of congregational life, etc. Is this just a non-alarmism about an objective emergency situation? Or have I misread Meador? How bad is it, and how bad are our future prospects?
4. Combining the previous two points, perhaps the biggest conceptual gap in the book for me was the relationship between the church and politics. If the church is declining in numbers and the wider culture is secularizing, indeed moving toward a post-Christian hostility to the church, then why continue to presume the ongoing power and influence of the church to effect much of anything in (at least national) politics going forward? There is a sort of running "if...then" momentum in the book, such that "if" X or Y happens within the church or on the part of Christians, "then" A or B may or should or will happen within the culture or the government. But I had thought we'd moved beyond that thinking. What if the church—the faithful, those who worship in parishes and congregations and actively follow Christ (say, 15-20% of the population)—were to be perfectly faithful across the next generation, and American culture and politics simply ignored us? What then? Or am I misunderstanding the nature of the book's vision?
5. By book's end, Meador's cheerful optimism—in one sense an antidote to the hysteria on all sides of cultural commentary today—left me with a vision of non-political politics: witness without agonistes. I had no sense of either the fight I ought to join or the battle from which I ought to retreat; the book describes not so much a field of conflict as a state of affairs in which the good has been leached out of our common life, and those of us who recognize that fact ought to do our best to pour it back in. But is Meador really so optimistic? Does he lack a sense for the conflicts facing our society and Christians therein? I don't think so. So what am I missing?
6. What I want to know (what I was left wondering) is: What is possible, and how do we get there? Does Meador think the "Trump effect" is not so much the ratcheting up of polarization, demonization, racism, reaction, etc., but instead the detonation of past paradigms so that we can imagine, more or less, whatever future we want? The Overton window not only expanded but smashed to smithereens? I doubt he'd put it in quite such extreme terms, but if it's something like that, then what does he (what should we) want at the end of our political and cultural labors? Beyond relative peace, stability, freedom, prosperity, depth of faith, intact families, and the rest. In other words, are we meant to close the book and imagine a radically transformed post-liberal America? Or a small but faithful remnant of Christ's church in the ruins of a decadent, hostile empire? That difference of visions is the ambiguity I felt from start to finish.
7. Put differently once again: Which saint, which option, ought we to choose? Should we opt for Dreher's Benedict Option, strategically withdrawing energy, emotion, time, and resources from political activism in order to shore up the wealth of the tradition and catechize our children for the dark ages? Should we instead follow Jamie Smith's Augustine Option, approaching culture and politics with a holy ambivalence that discriminates between good and evil case by case, refusing alarmist fears for engagement and resistance as the situation requires, without spurning the need for compromise? Or should we choose the Daniel Option, the proposal of Alissa Wilkinson and Robert Joustra, who don't deny the ills of modernity but basically see our time and culture as a benign one, full of signs of progress and opportunity for good, thus requiring our support for and participation in the liberal regime? (We could go on, with saints and options; perhaps Solomon standing for integralism?) I have always thought of Meador as BenOp-adjacent, not quite there but quite close, minus the tenor of Dreher's terror. But In Search of the Common Good, had I never read the author before, would have had me assuming he was somewhere between Smith and Wilkinson.
8. Speaking of saints, let me also mention martyrdom. The lack of an agonistic vision of politics combined with the cultural optimism resulted, in my reading, in a denial of tragedy, an account of political engagement without suffering or loss. I was left wondering what it might mean—not least coming from a person who has written tirelessly about putting principle over winning, means before ends—for the church to follow Meador's vision for Christian sociopolitical witness and still to "lose" or "fail" on the world's terms. What if being faithful means "death," however metaphorical? I'm confident of Meador's response: "Then so be it." But I was surprised by the implicit suggestion in the book that, in general, things will work out. What if things don't work out? What if, in 75 years, the church in America dwindles to one-tenth of the citizenry, despised but ignored, even as a third or more of the population claims the mantle of "Christian" while denying everything Christianity stands for? (Wait, that already sounds too familiar.) Note well, I'm not predicting this future. I'm saying: Christians have grown so used to this country being "theirs," so used to "running the show," to having influence and wielding it, that it is close to impossible for them (for us) to imagine a future in which that is no longer the case. Hence the very real fears of losing that power—fears we have seen manifested in spectacularly wicked ways these last few years (and not only then). What happens once we move beyond those fears to living in that future? Or is that so hypothetical as to be irrelevant to the present time—the spasms of dysfunction visible today signs of nothing seismic or epochal, just the usual bad actors and bad apples? (Answers here bears on answers to numbers two and three above. Just how bad is it?)
9. Shifting gears a bit here, and by way of closing, I sense a disjunction between two modes of thought in Meador. One is the natural, the other the supernatural; let's make their representatives Wendell Berry and St. Augustine. Meador envisions the good life as one in accord with creation, in harmony with the natural world. Hence his emphasis on farming, local community, conservation, the natural family, children, kinship, caring for the elderly, knowing one's neighbors, staying rooted in one place, and so on. This is the moral vision of Port William. Moreover, the natural good life is available, epistemically and otherwise, to all people, not just Christians. Whereas the Augustinian vision, while certainly affirming natural goods and the good of the created order, differs in important respects. The world is fallen, corrupted by sin, and women and men are depraved in their wills, their minds, their hearts, their desires. Driven by disordered love, sinful people neither know nor live in accordance with the highest good or the proper hierarchy of goods under God. They serve idols of every kind. What people need, then, is grace: to cleanse their conscience, heal their hearts, reorder their wills, and guide their lives. Apart from grace they cannot live as their ought nor know how they ought to live. Grace is a necessary condition of the good life, in and after Christ. (Recall too that, for Augustine, as for the catholic tradition after him, not to have children, not to be married, not to serve in civic life is actually the higher form of life in Christ, even if that ideal is not meant for all.) So the question arises: Where does Meador fall between Berry and Augustine here? What exactly is he recommending, and for whom is he recommending it, and on what (epistemic, moral, theological, political) basis? At what point do the theological virtues enter into the natural good life, and when and where and to what extent do they challenge, subvert, or deny aspects of it? And what of our neighbors? Is our concern for their good limited to the natural, or does it extend to the supernatural? If the latter, what social and political shape should that concern take?
That's enough for now. I've presumed too much of your patience, dear reader, as I have Jake's (if he reads this). Lest my questions be misinterpreted, let me be clear that I intend them in a spirit of friendship and of affinity for the book they query, and for the project that book advances. I'm thankful for the book, and I'm eager to see the fruit it bears in the coming years.
I was eager to read his new book, In Search of the Common Good: Christian Fidelity in a Fractured World, and I wasn't disappointed. The book will be a boon to a variety of folks, especially pastors, churches, and college students. Indeed, I'm assigning it to one of my classes this fall. Given Meador's politics—a social conservative against racism, an agrarian against abortion, a Christian against the GOP, an evangelical against Trump, a Calvinist against capitalism—his writing makes for nice inroads to conversations with ordinary believers that bypass the partisan binary.
But while I wasn't disappointed, I was surprised by the book. I've been chewing on the reasons for that surprise for the last month. So let me try to boil down my surprise into the form of questions Meador left me with—questions I hope his ongoing work, at Mere O and especially in future books, will continue to grapple with.
1. For whom is this book written? Who is its primary audience? Meador's writing is always clear but it is often pitched "higher," to those who've read the primary sources and know the state of the conversation, and who have the desire or the power to do something about it. The book seems pitched "lower" (not in a pejorative sense), to those who haven't done the reading and aren't familiar with the driving conversations of the day. If so, perhaps the book is meant as a kind of translation or popularization for ordinary Christians, as I suggested above. In that, I think it succeeds; but it was not what I was prepared for.2. Substantively, what surprised me most was the relative lack of direness in Meador's account of the current civic crisis. Partly a matter of tone, it's more than that too: one doesn't get the sense from the book that American society is an free fall. Sure, things are worse than they could be, but also, things are looking up, or at least, signs of (this-worldly) hope are on the horizon. But this doesn't match what I read in Meador's more regular writing. So just how bad are things? Are we in the midst of a kind of crisis? Or is it less dire than that?
3. Related is the state of the church in the U.S. I had thought, again based on Meador's other writing, that we are currently in a stage of ecclesial emergency. The church's numbers have been declining rapidly and continue to do so; those churches that have changed with the times have apostatized, and those churches that have ostensibly remained orthodox are beset by trials and scandals of a political and sexual nature. But a strikingly sanguine tone characterizes much (not all) of the book's talk of church: the simplicities and ordinary kindnesses of congregational life, etc. Is this just a non-alarmism about an objective emergency situation? Or have I misread Meador? How bad is it, and how bad are our future prospects?
4. Combining the previous two points, perhaps the biggest conceptual gap in the book for me was the relationship between the church and politics. If the church is declining in numbers and the wider culture is secularizing, indeed moving toward a post-Christian hostility to the church, then why continue to presume the ongoing power and influence of the church to effect much of anything in (at least national) politics going forward? There is a sort of running "if...then" momentum in the book, such that "if" X or Y happens within the church or on the part of Christians, "then" A or B may or should or will happen within the culture or the government. But I had thought we'd moved beyond that thinking. What if the church—the faithful, those who worship in parishes and congregations and actively follow Christ (say, 15-20% of the population)—were to be perfectly faithful across the next generation, and American culture and politics simply ignored us? What then? Or am I misunderstanding the nature of the book's vision?
5. By book's end, Meador's cheerful optimism—in one sense an antidote to the hysteria on all sides of cultural commentary today—left me with a vision of non-political politics: witness without agonistes. I had no sense of either the fight I ought to join or the battle from which I ought to retreat; the book describes not so much a field of conflict as a state of affairs in which the good has been leached out of our common life, and those of us who recognize that fact ought to do our best to pour it back in. But is Meador really so optimistic? Does he lack a sense for the conflicts facing our society and Christians therein? I don't think so. So what am I missing?
6. What I want to know (what I was left wondering) is: What is possible, and how do we get there? Does Meador think the "Trump effect" is not so much the ratcheting up of polarization, demonization, racism, reaction, etc., but instead the detonation of past paradigms so that we can imagine, more or less, whatever future we want? The Overton window not only expanded but smashed to smithereens? I doubt he'd put it in quite such extreme terms, but if it's something like that, then what does he (what should we) want at the end of our political and cultural labors? Beyond relative peace, stability, freedom, prosperity, depth of faith, intact families, and the rest. In other words, are we meant to close the book and imagine a radically transformed post-liberal America? Or a small but faithful remnant of Christ's church in the ruins of a decadent, hostile empire? That difference of visions is the ambiguity I felt from start to finish.
7. Put differently once again: Which saint, which option, ought we to choose? Should we opt for Dreher's Benedict Option, strategically withdrawing energy, emotion, time, and resources from political activism in order to shore up the wealth of the tradition and catechize our children for the dark ages? Should we instead follow Jamie Smith's Augustine Option, approaching culture and politics with a holy ambivalence that discriminates between good and evil case by case, refusing alarmist fears for engagement and resistance as the situation requires, without spurning the need for compromise? Or should we choose the Daniel Option, the proposal of Alissa Wilkinson and Robert Joustra, who don't deny the ills of modernity but basically see our time and culture as a benign one, full of signs of progress and opportunity for good, thus requiring our support for and participation in the liberal regime? (We could go on, with saints and options; perhaps Solomon standing for integralism?) I have always thought of Meador as BenOp-adjacent, not quite there but quite close, minus the tenor of Dreher's terror. But In Search of the Common Good, had I never read the author before, would have had me assuming he was somewhere between Smith and Wilkinson.
8. Speaking of saints, let me also mention martyrdom. The lack of an agonistic vision of politics combined with the cultural optimism resulted, in my reading, in a denial of tragedy, an account of political engagement without suffering or loss. I was left wondering what it might mean—not least coming from a person who has written tirelessly about putting principle over winning, means before ends—for the church to follow Meador's vision for Christian sociopolitical witness and still to "lose" or "fail" on the world's terms. What if being faithful means "death," however metaphorical? I'm confident of Meador's response: "Then so be it." But I was surprised by the implicit suggestion in the book that, in general, things will work out. What if things don't work out? What if, in 75 years, the church in America dwindles to one-tenth of the citizenry, despised but ignored, even as a third or more of the population claims the mantle of "Christian" while denying everything Christianity stands for? (Wait, that already sounds too familiar.) Note well, I'm not predicting this future. I'm saying: Christians have grown so used to this country being "theirs," so used to "running the show," to having influence and wielding it, that it is close to impossible for them (for us) to imagine a future in which that is no longer the case. Hence the very real fears of losing that power—fears we have seen manifested in spectacularly wicked ways these last few years (and not only then). What happens once we move beyond those fears to living in that future? Or is that so hypothetical as to be irrelevant to the present time—the spasms of dysfunction visible today signs of nothing seismic or epochal, just the usual bad actors and bad apples? (Answers here bears on answers to numbers two and three above. Just how bad is it?)
9. Shifting gears a bit here, and by way of closing, I sense a disjunction between two modes of thought in Meador. One is the natural, the other the supernatural; let's make their representatives Wendell Berry and St. Augustine. Meador envisions the good life as one in accord with creation, in harmony with the natural world. Hence his emphasis on farming, local community, conservation, the natural family, children, kinship, caring for the elderly, knowing one's neighbors, staying rooted in one place, and so on. This is the moral vision of Port William. Moreover, the natural good life is available, epistemically and otherwise, to all people, not just Christians. Whereas the Augustinian vision, while certainly affirming natural goods and the good of the created order, differs in important respects. The world is fallen, corrupted by sin, and women and men are depraved in their wills, their minds, their hearts, their desires. Driven by disordered love, sinful people neither know nor live in accordance with the highest good or the proper hierarchy of goods under God. They serve idols of every kind. What people need, then, is grace: to cleanse their conscience, heal their hearts, reorder their wills, and guide their lives. Apart from grace they cannot live as their ought nor know how they ought to live. Grace is a necessary condition of the good life, in and after Christ. (Recall too that, for Augustine, as for the catholic tradition after him, not to have children, not to be married, not to serve in civic life is actually the higher form of life in Christ, even if that ideal is not meant for all.) So the question arises: Where does Meador fall between Berry and Augustine here? What exactly is he recommending, and for whom is he recommending it, and on what (epistemic, moral, theological, political) basis? At what point do the theological virtues enter into the natural good life, and when and where and to what extent do they challenge, subvert, or deny aspects of it? And what of our neighbors? Is our concern for their good limited to the natural, or does it extend to the supernatural? If the latter, what social and political shape should that concern take?
That's enough for now. I've presumed too much of your patience, dear reader, as I have Jake's (if he reads this). Lest my questions be misinterpreted, let me be clear that I intend them in a spirit of friendship and of affinity for the book they query, and for the project that book advances. I'm thankful for the book, and I'm eager to see the fruit it bears in the coming years.
A proposal regarding Christians and the Fourth of July
I first published this in 2012, and often re-publish it as July 4th approaches.
For Christians concerned with issues like nationalism, the violence of the state, and bearing witness to God's peaceable kingdom, one might expect the Fourth of July to be a straightforward call to action. An opportunity to debunk American myths; a day of truth-telling about those who suffer as a consequence of American policies, foreign and domestic; a chance to offer a counter-witness to the civil liturgies covertly clamoring for the allegiance of God's people. And there are compelling, laudable voices doing just that sort of thing today.
On the Fourth, however, I find myself wondering whether there might also be another option available. Not as a replacement of those I've listed above, but rather as another way of "being" on the Fourth that, on the one hand, betrays not an inch on the issues (which, of course, do not disappear for 24 hours), yet on the other hand is able to see the holiday as something other than just one more chance for another round of imperial debunking.
To put it differently, I'm wondering whether there might be certain goods attendant to some "celebrations" of the Fourth of July, and whether it might sometimes be a good idea for Christians to share in those goods. If an affirmative answer is appropriate to both questions, I'm wondering finally what faithful participation might look like.
For example, I grew up in a decidedly non-patriotic household. Not "anti-patriotic," mind you, but "non-." It just wasn't an issue. No flag burnings (hence not "anti-")—but no flags around to begin with. Even on a day like the Fourth, while there was probably a dessert lurking somewhere colored red, white, and blue, that was both the extent of it and about as meaningful as having silver-and-black cupcakes when the Spurs won the championship. In other words, not much. Beyond that, we didn't sing patriotic songs or wax nostalgic about the glories of the U.S.A. or thank God incessantly for making us Americans and not communists. We cooked a lot of food, had lots of people over, ate and laughed and napped and swam and ate again, and concluded the night by watching fireworks. Then we crashed.
Perhaps my experience is not representative, but in reflecting on it, I have a hard time getting very worked up by what is generically derided as hyper-patriotic, nationalistic, blasphemous, violence-perpetuating, etc. No doubt there are gatherings and celebrations which do earn those and other descriptors, and Christians shouldn't hold back in truthfully naming them for what they are. My point is merely that not all are like that. And my question is this: Might Christians' sharing in ordinary gatherings like those I have in mind be one faithful option for the Fourth of July?
While I don't see this as some kind of paradoxical subversion of the holiday, the possibility is worth pondering for at least a moment. America's particular brand of individualism and pluralism at times affords some unexpected benefits, not least of which is the notion that the meaning of common set-aside days is not a shared given but rather what each of us decides to make it mean for oneself. Thus we "do" or "do not" celebrate x holiday; or we "don't do it that way," but "this way"; etc.
Well, why can't the church—not as a day off from its witness to the God of peace against the violent idolatries of the state, but precisely as one form of it—make its own meaning on the Fourth? The meaning can be simple: Rest from work is good; time shared with neighbors, friends, and family is good; feasting with others (when done neither every day nor alone—which is generally the American way) is good. I've been part of celebrations like this that go the whole day without waving a flag, memorializing a war, comparing a soldier's sacrifice to Jesus's, or mentioning "the greatest country on Earth"—and that, without anyone present consciously intending to avoid such things! It just happened; and I suspect it did, apart from consideration of the faithfulness of those gathered, simply because of all the good being shared among and between us. Almost like an unconscious tapping-in to that ancient notion of habitual rest and feasting, only we were so preoccupied with one another's company that we forgot "the reason" we were together at all.
So perhaps that can be the understated motto for what I'm suggesting. Let American Christians across the land feel free to "celebrate" the Fourth of July, sharing in its manifold goods with our neighbors with a clean conscience; only let us do so, at every moment and with focused purpose, forgetting the reason for the season.
For Christians concerned with issues like nationalism, the violence of the state, and bearing witness to God's peaceable kingdom, one might expect the Fourth of July to be a straightforward call to action. An opportunity to debunk American myths; a day of truth-telling about those who suffer as a consequence of American policies, foreign and domestic; a chance to offer a counter-witness to the civil liturgies covertly clamoring for the allegiance of God's people. And there are compelling, laudable voices doing just that sort of thing today.
On the Fourth, however, I find myself wondering whether there might also be another option available. Not as a replacement of those I've listed above, but rather as another way of "being" on the Fourth that, on the one hand, betrays not an inch on the issues (which, of course, do not disappear for 24 hours), yet on the other hand is able to see the holiday as something other than just one more chance for another round of imperial debunking.
To put it differently, I'm wondering whether there might be certain goods attendant to some "celebrations" of the Fourth of July, and whether it might sometimes be a good idea for Christians to share in those goods. If an affirmative answer is appropriate to both questions, I'm wondering finally what faithful participation might look like.
For example, I grew up in a decidedly non-patriotic household. Not "anti-patriotic," mind you, but "non-." It just wasn't an issue. No flag burnings (hence not "anti-")—but no flags around to begin with. Even on a day like the Fourth, while there was probably a dessert lurking somewhere colored red, white, and blue, that was both the extent of it and about as meaningful as having silver-and-black cupcakes when the Spurs won the championship. In other words, not much. Beyond that, we didn't sing patriotic songs or wax nostalgic about the glories of the U.S.A. or thank God incessantly for making us Americans and not communists. We cooked a lot of food, had lots of people over, ate and laughed and napped and swam and ate again, and concluded the night by watching fireworks. Then we crashed.
Perhaps my experience is not representative, but in reflecting on it, I have a hard time getting very worked up by what is generically derided as hyper-patriotic, nationalistic, blasphemous, violence-perpetuating, etc. No doubt there are gatherings and celebrations which do earn those and other descriptors, and Christians shouldn't hold back in truthfully naming them for what they are. My point is merely that not all are like that. And my question is this: Might Christians' sharing in ordinary gatherings like those I have in mind be one faithful option for the Fourth of July?
While I don't see this as some kind of paradoxical subversion of the holiday, the possibility is worth pondering for at least a moment. America's particular brand of individualism and pluralism at times affords some unexpected benefits, not least of which is the notion that the meaning of common set-aside days is not a shared given but rather what each of us decides to make it mean for oneself. Thus we "do" or "do not" celebrate x holiday; or we "don't do it that way," but "this way"; etc.
Well, why can't the church—not as a day off from its witness to the God of peace against the violent idolatries of the state, but precisely as one form of it—make its own meaning on the Fourth? The meaning can be simple: Rest from work is good; time shared with neighbors, friends, and family is good; feasting with others (when done neither every day nor alone—which is generally the American way) is good. I've been part of celebrations like this that go the whole day without waving a flag, memorializing a war, comparing a soldier's sacrifice to Jesus's, or mentioning "the greatest country on Earth"—and that, without anyone present consciously intending to avoid such things! It just happened; and I suspect it did, apart from consideration of the faithfulness of those gathered, simply because of all the good being shared among and between us. Almost like an unconscious tapping-in to that ancient notion of habitual rest and feasting, only we were so preoccupied with one another's company that we forgot "the reason" we were together at all.
So perhaps that can be the understated motto for what I'm suggesting. Let American Christians across the land feel free to "celebrate" the Fourth of July, sharing in its manifold goods with our neighbors with a clean conscience; only let us do so, at every moment and with focused purpose, forgetting the reason for the season.