Blogotional

I have no idea what the religous affiliations or practices of Mark Steyn are, he doesn't talk about it much. However, a piece he did a while back in Canada's Western Standard manages to spank the church pretty doggone hard.

If you are not in the know, Steyn is freelance columnist, living in New Hampshire, and writing for publications in America, Canada, and Europe. He is a first class writer managing to be absolutely devastating to much of the nonsense that passes for thought in our world today while making one laugh at the very same depressing moment. His book, America Alone may be one of the more important short books written in the last decade.

Anyway, in the column I link above, Steyn turns his wit onto the writing of one Canon Smart, the Director of Lay Education for the Anglican Diocese of Montreal. In the piece Steyn skewers a piece by Smart, widely circulated in Anglican publications, concerning among other things the glories of "a good poop" and speculating that Christ likely had sex with his "women admirers." Says Steyn:

I would wager Canon Smart knows as little about "guys" as he does about "anything biblical or scholarly". What does he mean by "women admirers"? That Christ was some sort of Clintonian lounge act taking advantage of the more nubile groupies? You don't have to be a religious believer of any kind to feel pity for a faith reduced to such woefully lame provocations. The Montreal Anglican would seem, very literally, to have hit bottom, though one can find less vivid examples of the phenomenon in almost any mainline Protestant ad campaign or episcopal interview, and, indeed, I cite a few in my book. Whatever the sensory pleasures Canon Smart derives from "a good poop" and shagging women admirers, God's position would seem pretty clear: He created man to be a little lower than the angels but above the beasts of the field--i.e., we are not the prisoners of our appetites, we are capable of rising above them. In his reductio of Christ to one horny crapper, Canon Smart is in effect subscribing to the redefinition of man as a vehicle for self-gratification--in other words, the kind of radical narcissistic self-absorption that has delivered Europe to the brink of the death spiral. It seems obvious that secularism--at least in its Eutopian social-democratic manifestation--is exhausted, and into that barren seam has surged Islam, grim and confident. There are those throughout the West who sense the emptiness of contemporary secularist individualism, seek something bigger, and turn to Buddhism, environmentalism and, of course, Islam. But why would such people choose a faith exemplified by the likes of the present Anglican leadership? A faith that does no more than license your appetites and provide a little pseudo-spiritual cover for modish pathologies.

Steyn makes the Anglicans the target of his venom, but much of what he says could apply to most on denominational Christianity in America too. Clearly, it would seem, the reason America is able to stand alone, as Steyn's book contends, is because evangelicalism has kept genuine Christianity alive in our nation as it rots in the rest of the western world.

And yet, evenglicalism too, is frought with danger. I am reminded of a blog series a fellow Presbyterian threatened to start back in mid-December a series which at the time of this writing had not been published. titled "The Dangers of Evangelicalism" the Backwoods Presbyterian cites four:

1. Lack of Pastoral Oversight
2. Lack of Historical Perspective
3. Lack of Eucharistic Awareness
4. Lack of Creedal Association/Foundation

I think he is onto something with this points, but I want to leave them up to him, and add a fifth.

• Evangelicals need to develop a coherent, complete, and robust political philosophy

It really takes a denomination to accomplish something like that. Evangelicals within denominations, people like myself, have yet to rest control of the denomination sufficiently to accomplish such a thing. Non-denominational evangelicals, the majority of them, simply are too independently minded to do such a thing. And yet, if America is to indeed stand alone and preserve western civilization we must find a way to accomplish this.

To do otherwise will be to cede governance and societal mores to the same forces that have degraded Europe and Canada so. Over at my political blog, Article VI, I have recently written a five-part series out of a book "Evangelicals in The Public Square." That book takes a hard look at the deficiencies of evangelical political thinking and I recommend it to all interested in the topic.

To evangelicals everywhere, our personal salvation is but a starting point. If we do not figure out how to engage politics and governance in a thoughtful and deep manner. we risk losing the ability to choose that personal salvation. If you don't believe me, read Steyn's book.

Related Tags: civilization, church, denomination, evangelicalism, political philosophy, Mark Steyn, Presbyterian, Anglican