Against the Antis

You need to be for things, not just against things

This is a guest post by Dr. Benjamin L. Mabry.

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Most modern discourse centers around a form of rejection.  It is far rarer to find someone who can say that they are for-something than someone who is going to aggressively attack some position which they are against.  Even when they nominally hold an opinion with positive content, in practice their positive content is the negation of something they dislike.  Most social justice discourse is of this kind: the positive content is little more than the inversion of what they’re against.  As Ibram X. Kendi said, discrimination then requires more discrimination now.  The modern world takes the form of a vicious circle of Antis, seeking to negate and invert one another.  Therefore, let me present my argument, Against the Antis.

In his classic text, Revolt of the Masses, José Ortega y Gasset describes the nature of the anti- attitude.  The anti-X is the desire that a world exist without X.  It has no positive content other than resentment against the X, and seeks to negate X out of the world.  The result, however, is to create more X.  Ortega explains that some process exists in the world that led to the emergence of every X, and by clearing the way, the antis in fact contribute to the creation of more of what they hate. 

Consider this metaphor: anyone who has weeded a garden knows that pulling weeds is not a permanent solution.  By pulling weeds, one provides what new weeds need to grow: empty space.  So long as you are merely anti-weed, pulling weeds will only lead to the proliferation of more weeds.  The only real way to deal with weeds for good is to replace the conditions for the growth of future weeds with an alternative content.  You must lay a garden tarp, place rocks, or grow other plants that will crowd out any future weeds in order to create a truly weed-free garden.  The past has a reason, Ortega tells us, for what emerges in the present.  If we do not understand the past, and the reasons for the conditions we oppose, then our struggle is futile.  We must get down to the roots if we want to move beyond the current struggle and change the paradigm we face.

George R.R. Martin is a good example of an archetypical anti.  As he explained in many blog posts throughout the 2000’s and early 2010’s, his fundamental method is not to positively create a work of literature but to invert the work of J.R.R. Tolkien.  His work is ugly because it caters to the resentment of an audience who are fundamentally antis themselves in their worldview and mindset.  It appeals to the person who wants the hero to be humiliated, who enjoys the excessive violence and repeated rapes of nearly every female character in the story.  This kind of resentment wants the world to be this way because it justifies their own sense of aggrievement and envy of the good.  On his blog, he demonstrated a particular obsession and dislike of Aragorn as the basis of his creative process in bringing Westeros into existence.  “Unrealistic” is his repeated objection to good defeating evil.  This is why, despite the attempt by Big Hollywood to breathe new life into the franchise, A Song of Ice and Fire is in decline and will not survive in the popular consciousness beyond this generation, while the universe of Tolkien continues strong seventy years after the publication of The Lord of the Rings. 

Another example is found in John Stuart Mill’s description of the two types of vices.  The first type is simple vice, which takes pleasure in the vicious act itself.  An adulterer commits adultery for adultery, he says, and the drunkard drinks to drink.  The act itself is the reward they seek in their viciousness.  Mill describes this as a lesser evil, and one that can be tolerated in a society because the costs of enforcement outweigh the benefit of extinguishing it.  However, the second type is the vice which demands it be praised as a virtue and ultimately participated in.  It derives little to no pleasure from the evil act, but only finds pleasure in demanding that others join them in their depravity and debasement.  No adulterer publicly praises adultery, he says, but they commit their vice in private.  The decadent vices, however, demand recognition and praise.  Rather than being pro-vice, this attitude is anti-virtue and anti-innocence.  It is grounded in a hatred and envy that is willing to debase itself in order to also debase the object of its resentment. 

We can certainly agree or disagree with Mill’s libertarian argument regarding the cost-benefit ratio of suppressing vice, but his distinction between simple vice and decadent vice is particularly relevant.  Even Mill’s libertarianism cannot tolerate decadent vices, and we should see in these vices a particularly virulent and detestable form of anti-ism. 

It should be clear by now that an attitude which is purely against something without any positive content of its own is particularly corrosive to the soul.  Even if the thing that one is against is wicked, a purely anti- attitude merely proliferates an unwinnable contest, as Ortega argues. 

Unfortunately, American Christianity has been trapped in one of these cycles for the last century and a half.  Anti-fundamentalists are mirror images of their anti-modern counterparts, both hearkening to a supposed purer period of Christianity in the early 20^th Century, just differing on either the emphasis on mainline liberal Christianity or rural fundamentalism.  As Ortega states, it’s the nature of every such position to ignore the way that it creates its own nemesis.  Early 20^th Century Fundamentalism arose because of Mainline liberalism, whose anti-traditionalism created the incentives for people who were serious about doctrine to react against the unseriousness of theological liberalism.  Likewise, those people whose sole position became a reactionary anti-modernism failed to create an authentically Christian alternative to the secular world and generated a demand for a pseudo-Christianity that blended the Gospel with the late-20^th Century, upper-middle class, establishment cultural consensus to form the New Civil Religion of American society.  Anti-fundamentalism and anti-modernism feed off one another by identifying who they are not, and therefore by strengthening the identity and solidarity of the other side. 

This is the core of the problem with Critical Theory in the seminaries.  I read Critical Theorists and I sometimes even use their tools, when necessary.  The problem with the Southern Baptist seminaries teaching these topics is not that Critical Theory is inherently sinful.  The problem is that they’re eating meat sacrificed to idols in front of impressionable youth.  They’re participating in the rites of a rival religion, or a colonizing heresy if one prefers, and blurring the lines between Christianity and its most bitter modern rival, the New Civil Religion.  The response of Evangelical elites to reject critical methods altogether, as typified by Neil Shenvi’s use of the nonsensical phrase “woke right,” demonstrates a purely anti- orientation to all critiques of the upper-middle class, world-adjacent Evangelical establishment.  Shenvi demonstrates in his article that he is fundamentally anti-thought, and has nothing of substance to offer other than oppositionalism. 

Unfortunately for the Establishment (and fortunately for those who want to see real Christian reform) the fact that seminary elites are merely reactive to threats against their power and privilege ensures that their position will remain fragile.  It is even more incumbent on Christians to offer a positive vision of Christianity against the go-along-to-get-along syncretism of the well-fed seminary elites who are desperate to preserve their own status among the Beltway class by slapping secular political ideology with a coat of Jesus paint.

Many of Aaron Renn’s critics accuse him of pessimism or defeatism for his Three Worlds framework, but I argue that they fail to see the new opportunities that arise in the Negative World for a robust Christianity in the 21^st Century.  The hardening of the secular heart against any form of truth may help break this cycle in the Christian community by making it impossible for any kind of Christianity to ingratiate itself to the New Religion of secular society.  Likewise, as society continues to sort itself into Christians and anti-Christians, many of the internal struggles within the churches will diminish.  There will not be any more debates over Law Amendments because the kinds of people who believe in priestesses today will end up conforming to the worldly, ex-vangelical narrative that it is altogether immoral to be a Bible-confessing Christian at all, just as many of their Mainline ancestors did fifty years ago.  Without the pressure of constant defense, church organizations with a more robust internal consensus can begin to chart a positive future path.  I’m not prophesying here; there are plenty of other things that could go wrong in the Negative World.  Leaders addicted to drama could and probably will turn to bickering over more obscure issues.  This is why wise leadership (preferably including people outside of the seminary bubble) is still necessary. 

The tradition gives us resources to apply to current situations, not precedent to blindly apply without consideration.  Recent Protestant theology is so philosophically unsophisticated that they have warped the meaning of our fundamental principle, ad fontes.  Returning to the source is not blind adherence to some dogmas set down by some seminary professor.  Returning to the source means returning to the Divine Ground which originally inspired the prophets, apostles, and reformers.  It means understanding why they wrote what they did, not mindlessly adhering to it.  It means applying their reasoning, not their conclusions, to present situations. 

This is the space where energetic and faithful thinkers can breathe new life into the dead debates and reactionary anti-ism of modern Evangelical discourse.  The Southern Baptist ERLC is a great example of a resource that could have been useful if not trapped in its anti-fundamentalist cul-de-sac.  By bringing in authentically Christian thinkers from a broad, diverse swathe of fields, rather than being an exclusive clique of seminarians, it could have brought together bold minds willing to think positively about the problems of the Negative World.  It could have been a solutions-oriented organization instead of becoming co-opted by the partisan, political goals of its leadership. 

This is the reason that I caution others who talk about abolishing the ERLC.  Abolition is an anti- move.  Let’s think of the productive uses that this unproductive and unfaithful organization can be put towards.  Let’s begin thinking forwards, thinking towards, and thinking with the possibilities of moving forward culturally, religiously, and philosophically, because being merely against the antis is not enough.

Benjamin L. Mabry holds a Ph.D. in political science from Louisiana State University.

Cover image credit: Fibonacci Blue/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0