Stark Choices Up Ahead

Christ or Caesar

One of the meta-narratives swirling around in the current US presidential election--indeed, in almost all US federal elections--is cynicism towards the state.  Donald Trump's selection as the Republican Party's nominee was essentially a protest vote reflecting disgust and antipathy towards "Washington" and the fetid swamp of Congress, as Sarah Palin once put it.  

This electoral revolt can easily morph into a worldview where the svelte set come to think that right wing protest is performed by rustic rubes who are fundamentally ignorant, and don't know how to spell.  The corollary is that those who stand with and believe in government uber-competence are the intellectual, educated, smart set.

It is possible, however, that this cynicism towards the state will not fade away.  It is possible that it will grow.  Angelo Codevilla explains why this may well turn out to be the case:

One reason for antigovernment sentiment is that government has become the main weapon of those who want to denigrate and diminish the role of family and religion in American life.  This is not to say that government has campaigned directly to increase the rate of divorce or to decrease that of church attendance.

But government did institute no-fault divorce, has mandated sex education that abstracts from families, has weakened parental control by spreading the presumption that families abuse children, has made abortion into the most absolute right in the land, and has campaigned for the proposition that all forms of human relationships are at least as valid as that of the natural family.  [Angelo Codevilla, The Character of Nations: How Politics Makes and Breaks Prosperity, Family and Civility (New York: Basic Books, 1997), p. 18.]

Codevilla was writing this at the end of the nineties.  Now, a decade and a half later all of the above has become stronger, more extreme, and more consistent.  Ironically, the "side" in the electorate which most espouses an anti-statist resistance (grass roots Republican) is the segment that pushed and secured the nomination of Donald Trump as candidate--a man whose career has been inextricably linked to soft-porn, multiple marriages and divorces, and dissembling.  This serves to demonstrate that the selection of Trump was a protest, rather than a principled movement or ideological construct. Even more ironical is his persona as the caudillo, the strong man, who would hit those who oppose him twice as hard.  "Serve you right", screeched his supporters.

Anti-government sentiment, then, appears to have quite a way to go in the US before it becomes a principled, disciplined, and ideologically consistent political movement--both at state and federal levels.

Crucial here will be the Church of our Lord.  The controlling statist ideology is essentially anti-Christian.  Its animus against Christ will continue to become more transparent.  The soft-persecution of Christians has begun at the state level.  Eventually it will become overt at federal level.  As this transpires, one inevitable consequence will be the purification of the Church.  The fellow travellers who currently cloak themselves as believers will be exposed as being devoted to the Emperor, not God.

Resistance to the marauding secular State comes out of love, loyalty, and fidelity to Christ.  The preachers and teachers of the Church will need to help the flock stay faithful to His law, and bear the consequent affliction with patience and joy.  But we are convinced of this: only the faithful Church can built a resistance movement to secular Statism that is principled, ideologically consistent, and truth-based.

This will either take at least a generation to bear fruit, or if not, multiple generations will be required.  At present there is a strong vestige of Christian faith, indeed of Christendom itself, in the United States.  A revival of true religion, led by preachers and churches, along the lines of the Great Awakening, would transform the United States within a generation.  But if not, then it will become a multi-generational task, because the Church itself will require a reformation from the bottom up, before the government can be reformed.

Whatever be the case, these things are never static.  The social and societal decay from the explosion of statist ideology will only gather pace with each passing year.  It is now impossible for the modern secular state to reform itself from within.  It has gone too far.  The rotten fruits of statism will become increasingly evident, and the stench will rise to heaven.

Government  has effectively driven religion out of America's public schools and indeed out of almost all public spaces.  The odor of illegitimacy attached to public expression of religiosity has largely cause the very word "Christmas" to be replaced with "holiday" on the airwaves and in public discourse.

The government has established, at public expense and with a host of privileges, a secular priesthood of judges, social workers, psychologists, intellectuals and artists, all of whom teach a contrary gospel.  The result has been not only a host of social pathologies ranges from increased abuse of children and the elderly but also a growing split between those who live in natural families and by biblical religion and those who live in alternative arrangements and by the regime's new gods.  [Ibid.]

The vast bulk of the US adult population is not Christian, who yet still cling to Christian principles, verities, and practices (even whilst not understanding their origin or foundation), will be forced to make a choice.  Confronted with that reality, the public preaching of the Gospel will become really, really interesting.  "Will you live under Christ or the demons?" will become an intrinsic aspect of the Gospel's proclamation.  And that we have not seen for a long, long time.