The Form of Faith. James Prothero

Individualism is not only our birthright, it is a principal tenet of Christianity. Private property is also a Christian right. Personal responsibility is important and “if a man will not work, let him not eat.” But most of all, these liberties must be guarded from government, which is more likely to be the problem than the solution.

      That is not the whole of the narrative. But it has the essential elements. To be fair, liberalism has its own myth and narrative, which I find almost equally incredible. Whereas conservatives raise individualism and individual rights to a religious principal, liberals do so with equality and tolerance. Community is also a higher value for liberals. My problem with both narratives is that there are elements of truth in each of them, but these truths are pushed out to some logical, or perhaps illogical extreme to the point that the person that holds them has to deny a certain degree of reality in order to maintain their pure and undiluted philosophy. Thus I think if we truly are Christian, we cannot put individualism over community to the degree that we let people suffer. The Good Samaritan did not cite his personal rights and move on past the wounded traveler. Yet, as Lewis deplored an all -powerful state, I would too. It’s not a matter of who is right, and who is wrong. It’s a matter of applying sometimes conflicting principals in a balanced way in a complex world. Pure philosophies sound good on paper; they don’t deal well with reality.

      In addition, some extremes on either side seemed to me obtuse. On the liberal side, tolerance pushed to the point where one denied the existence of truth was laughably preposterous. And confusing equality of access, something right and necessary, with equality of results was also a twisting of reality. People are all different. If you give everyone a fair start, they are not all going to finish the race at the same moment. And their failing to do so doesn’t automatically mean the start was faulty. And I fear the possibility of the sense of community turning to a collectivist tyranny as much as any conservative. But that doesn’t mean we throw out all community. What is needed is not a holy war from the left or the right; what is needed is balance.

      On the conservative side, individualism was elevated to a place of higher importance than the teachings of Christ, and with some strained effort of interpretation, the differences between Christ’s teachings and individualism were denied. Indeed, denial of emerging realities seemed to be the hallmark of the movement, whether they be science, faith, or that simple confronting of our own sinful racism. But beyond that, for me the single most obtuse thing about conservatism was Tim McVeigh Fallacy.

      All this fear and hatred of the government I call Tim McVeigh Fallacy. McVeigh, as many will recall, built a bomb to blow up the hated government. He set it off next to a government building in Oklahoma City in 1995. And when the dust had cleared what we all found was that he had killed fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, even little children. It is a fallacy to talk about government as one single, huge, evil, malicious entity. It isn’t. Government is us. It’s Americans, as McVeigh proved in such a lethal manner. When I hear someone complain that they don’t want the government, what I hear is they don’t want to be part of America, to share the burdens and difficulties of community. That’s what taxes do. I hear them saying that they would rather live as a one-person nation to themselves off in the wild. Such attitudes show an ignorance of how much we all count on each other and on the infrastructure we build and provide for each other. It’s a fallacy and a form of short-sightedness.

      Conservatives deplore government, but what else is there if we are to work together as a nation on anything? Sure it can be bumbling and ineffective at times, but that’s us being bumbling and ineffective, not some evil alien power. Some talk as if we could return to the frontier of the old West, where individualism and law out of a gun barrel were all that one needed. How is that possible in an increasingly urban and technological America? Even the Old Testament has God holding nations collectively responsible. How are we to be collectively responsible if we cannot work together and elect leadership because it might become a government?

      These pure, pre-packaged philosophies, so popular now, always for me smelled suspect. Granted, my sense of community and my respect for science and the environment probably leads some to accuse me of being more left than right, but if that’s so, it’s because so much of the right seems to me to deny the complexity of reality and the fact that the world does change over time, whether you want it to or not.

      As I said, in that moment Mr. M barked at me to sing for joy, I understood the nature of the theology and faith of that brand of Christianity increasingly merged with conservatism: compliance and conformity were holiness in that creed. Mr. M needed to make all of us do what was Correct. That was the meaning of being American and Christian. Looking back now I see how seductive that line of thought is. How comforting to be able to simply glance at someone or listen to them for five minutes and know whether or not they’re a patriotic American and are going to Heaven. How convenient.

      So Mr. M and Paul Harvey first introduced me to the conservative narrative. I gagged a little, especially on Paul Harvey. It wasn’t till I met Bruce Thielemann that I began to see more. But that’s another chapter.

1. Lewis, Experiment in Criticism, 44.

      Four: Blessed Liberty and Gregg

      A man’s life of any worth is a continual allegory—and very few eyes can see the mystery of life—a life like the Scriptures, figurative . . . .

      —John Keats

      My parents told me that if my grades went up, I could escape my prison and rejoin my brothers in public school. At this point, whatever effect the ADD had on me, I was outgrowing it somehow, and the possibility of escape from tyranny was enough to cause me to become a rather good student. My grades shot up like a balloon trapped under water and released. I do admit with some shame that it was not until I’d been in college for some time that I became as hard-working and good a student as I was really capable of. And I had a very poor reason for this. Donald by this time was an honor-roll student and fiercely competitive in academic circles. Perhaps it was Donald’s influence, but I was as disinclined to be competitive as he was inclined to be competitive. Maybe I learned the best way to compete with Donald was not to compete. In that junior high and later high school atmosphere heavy with peer pressure, I did not want to be compared to Don. I was smart enough to get Bs without trying too hard, so that is what I did. And the habit unfortunately stayed with me all through undergraduate school.

      In the eighth grade I was liberated and granted the right to go to public junior high. There I saw more beautiful young girls around me than I thought were possible in the world. One pretty girl named Rita, with long, black hair, who sat next to me in typing class, almost caused me to unravel on the floor. I was never one of those boys who disliked girls when I was in elementary. I never said, “Ew! Girls! Yuk!” or pretended to be disgusted by them. More likely I was to be found playing house with them when I was small, and casting admiring glances thereafter. There was always a girl I had a crush on. I always was in awe of women, of their beauty in all its various forms and of the goodness and grace they bestow on the human race. And I still am. I am an inveterate philogynist—a lover of women. This may seem a funny point to bring up, but I have often wondered if it was the boys who hated girls when those boys were still in elementary school who subsequently abused their wives, daughters, and girlfriends in adulthood. I remember having a crush on one young beauty in my class, Sharon Fitzgerald, which led me to do a rather good pastel portrait of her. I caught her in the hall one day and gave it to her. She was very gracious and started talking to me with interest, while I stood there mainly tongue-tied and stupid. Then she thanked me and walked away. I felt a mix of relief that she liked the portrait and frustration that I couldn’t do more with the conversation but sweat and stutter.