Social Matter

Every once in a while, you hear from some (probably well-intentioned) conservative strategist that we on the Right need to have ourselves a reality check. You hear that we’re in denial, that the ship has sailed on some particular issue—drug use, multiculturalism, homosexual marriage, immigration, pick one—and that the upcoming generation has already accepted it wholesale. The only thing to do, they’ll assure you, is to accept this uncomfortable truth and move on to more important issues, to battles that we can actually win.

These would-be thought leaders of the Right don’t want us to seem out of touch. They’re worried that some of our principles, or perhaps just our tendency to adhere to them so rigidly, will seem alien and off-putting to the cohorts of young potential conservatives out there. To hear them say it, that next generation is out there right now, this moment, just waiting to join arms with us in the fight against the excesses of contemporary progressivism. And all we have to do is make our peace with some teeny, tiny little technicality like, say, legalized mass infanticide.

You’ll excuse my skepticism.

Here’s a little background on me. Sure, I realize that, if you were only judging by the subtlety of my intellect, the breadth of my learning, the fineness of my aesthetic sensibilities, etc.,  etc., you’d assume that I’m some sort of high-society cosmopolitan. You’d assume I’m expensively educated, born into passports and private planes, acquainted with all manner of cultures hither and yon upon the earth. All that. And I can’t blame you for reading such a grandiose backstory into my delicate turn of phrase. But none of that is actually the case. The case is that I grew up in a… I suppose we’ll say a “modestly sized” city in middle Tennessee. And I grew up regularly attending a church that belonged to the Southern Baptist Convention, that most narrow and parochial of American denominations. So I’m not exactly a world traveler. Nevertheless, the sort of conservative-strategist advice that I referenced above seems very familiar to me.

That line of argument, in fact, reminds me of nothing so much as the sort of talk I would hear around the halls of the Southern Baptist church of my childhood and teenage years. The whole Southern Baptist denomination was and had been for some time in a state of steady demographic decline, which rightly concerned the elders and deacons and administrators of the church. Gradual extinction is a problem that certainly requires confrontation. The solutions for this crisis that they came up with, however, left a lot to be desired.

You see they needed young’uns like myself to grow up in the church and not depart from it. They needed to appeal to us. But their basic strategy was to incorporate me and my peers, not by encouraging us to acclimate to the traditional culture of the church but instead by adapting that culture to us. Their watchword was “relevance.” Their gameplan was to create a hip cool spot that kids would congregate in naturally. The modi operandi were Christian rock and pizza parties and youth pastors that had holes in their acid-washed jeans and maybe an earring. Can’t tell you how many times I showed up for the Wednesday night youth service to blaring music and soda and music videos on a widescreen. They even had a couple arcade games in the lobby of the recreation center where we would meet. Despite all these blandishments, though, the effect of the church environment was increasingly dispiriting and odd.

On a recent trip home to visit the family, I had occasion to attend a service at that old church. The days of my childhood were far behind me, and it had been years since I’d darkened those doors for anything other than a Christmas or Easter service. The changes were still more substantial than I had expected.

These days the 10:00 worship is described in the bulletin as “casual,” which I would say is an understatement. There was some lady up front in sandals singing “praise choruses” with a couple guitarists and a drummer backing her. And I’m not putting you on: she had purple hair. Lyrics scrolled across huge projector screens on both sides of the stage while the lady sang. Little scenes flashed behind the words: a bubbling stream, a cross silhouetted against the sky. You know. Touching, soulful stuff.

Needless to say most of the pews were empty or way under capacity. A lot of the churchgoers were in shorts and cotton polos, staring dutifully ahead, biding their time. I didn’t hear any amens from the cheap seats. And despite all the updated trappings, the congregation still looked like it skewed strongly middle-aged. Not a lot of new blood. The only thing these innovations seemed to have achieved was driving the older folks into to the “classic” worship service at 8:30.  The whole scene was a little depressing to me, but not particularly surprising.

Even as a teenager—hell, especially as a teenager—I could read the writing on the wall. Nobody was buying it. My peers, even the ones who like myself who were sincerely religious, we could see through all the pyrotechnics that the adults had engineered for us. And we didn’t especially like the lack of confidence that such antics betrayed. Here was this group of grown ups, purportedly in possession of divine and ancient truths about life, about God, love, the nature of the universe. In possession of the sayings of old, of pearls of wisdom, of the words of the Lord. Stewards of a religion that stretched back millennia. And yet they were clearly pandering to us. Why did concepts of ours like “cool” even figure into their thinking? Why were they copying us? Didn’t they have more important considerations to attend to?

Yes. There’s a point to these recollections. I’m sure you already see the analogy I’m trying to make here. And I think it holds. In the end, true conservatism isn’t necessarily religious, but it ought to be serious in the sense that religions are. It deals with weighty truths. It engages with the complexities of tradition, history, ethnos. It dares to instruct people on how best to live their lives and orient their thoughts, rather than simply leaving them to navigate by their own lights. Facelifts don’t really befit its dignity.

The idea that we can rally young people to our flag by making it a little less distinguishable from those that they’re more accustomed to is wishful thinking. It’s a fundamentally pandering gesture. And young people aren’t looking for more of the same anyway. They haven’t been for a while. Serious conservatism has the unique capacity to offer that to them, a genuine alternative to the deracinated anomie that they grew up in. We’d squander that capacity by sacrificing core tenets of the Right for a fancier, more up-to-date recreation center for all the kids to mill around in. And following that up with a family friendly rock concert and hip youth pastor speechifying.