Editorials

A Nation with the Soul of a Church

by Mark Herring

Under the four lugubrious years of the Biden administration—it felt like forty—we were no longer a nation with the soul of a church but a nation without a soul. The phrase comes from the great British essayist, G. K. Chesterton, in his What I Saw in America.

Another visitor, Alexis de Tocqueville, said something very similar. After his visit to America, Tocqueville wrote, “Upon my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention…In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions. But in America I found they were intimately united.”

He continued, “The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other…They brought with them into the New World a form of Christianity which I cannot better describe than by styling it a democratic and republican religion.”

It is ironic to read that France was already on a downward slide, but that should not surprise. The French Revolution—that bloody one—was hardly irenic toward Christianity or any other religion. Today, France is reeling from the influx of too many Muslims wanting Sharia Law. That should become for us in these United States a morality play for what is going to happen here, or is already happening. The Tea Cozy tribe in Congress is too many, and we should not be blind about what they want for this country. Imagine some Conservative being elected in a Muslim country and trying to establish a Christian worldview. Sadly, those who may wish to try will not be long for this world. Our indiscriminate tolerance may be our undoing yet. Tolerance does not mean one must accept views and principles antipodal to what has made this country great for the last two hundred-plus years.

In York County, not far from where I live, there is an African American Muslim compound, Islamville, established in 1983 by Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, as part of the Muslim in America (MOA) organization. While the compound has been a peaceful one so far, the MOA does have ties to the less-than-peaceful Jamaat ul-Fuqra.  The group has a right to establish itself under American law, so long as it abides by American law. Given the current Middle East tensions, we will do well to remain circumspect.

Before Chesterton and Tocqueville, however, there was Adams and his familiar, “Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” How many of our representatives have forgotten this, or even fail to know it? James Madison, often called the Father of our Constitution, argued that if “men were angels, we would not need government.” I am certainly not arguing for a theistic government. Nor do I think that we must elect only preachers, priests, religious colporteurs, or cathbracks, not that any of these should be prohibited from running for office. We should, however, elect men and women who understand that this country is based on Judeo-Christian values, and those who do not share these values need not apply. This philosophical bent would have eliminated the antisemitism rampant in our country today. Religion is the esemplastic that vouchsafes our freedoms.

Again, Tocqueville: “Religion is no less the companion of liberty in all its battles and triumphs; the cradle of its infancy and the divine source of its claims. The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law, and the surest pledge of freedom.” What we are missing from the political calculus today is what we had when I was growing up in the fifties: men and women who believed in Christian morality implicitly, or acted as if it was overriding, unassailable, guiding principle.

From Adams, to Jefferson (himself a deist), to Lincoln, to John F. Kennedy, and to too many others to name, the idea of this nation with the soul of a church has been the guiding principle of our freedoms.

We cannot let those who think otherwise guide this great country to its undoing.

With Friends Like These?

“Man is, by nature,” Aristotle wrote, “a political animal.”  He meant by this that we are by and large social creatures and want to be involved in communities, and thus, involved in politics.  Ah, there’s the rub.  Only the most antisocial among us will avoid politics at any cost. But it is that almost inherent and inescapable part of our nature that gets us into potential difficulties even among friends.

Addison, the great English essayist, may have captured this problem, especially, when he wrote about the London theatre and complained that even then opposing sides could not get along.  He wrote, “…our politest assemblies are like boisterous Clubs [sic], that meet over a Glass of Wine, and before they have done, throw Bottles at one another’s Heads.”

While I would be last to argue that politics is anything other than a blood sport, as wags have called it.  When Roosevelt and Willkie went at it, Wilkie was pelted with everything from rotten eggs, fruits, vegetables, rocks—even lightbulbs, an office chair and a wastebasket, the latter two thrown from an office window.  But must we be this contentious inside our own party?

Addison went on to comment, sagely I think, when he wrote, “Instead of multiplying those desirable Opportunities where we might agree in Points that are indifferent, we let the Spirit of Contention into those very Methods that are not only foreign to it, but should in their Nature dispose us to be friends.”

Among Republicans across the Palmetto state, we are in agreement at least 85% of the time.  Yes, that 15% can be maddeningly evident, but shouldn’t our vituperation and billingsgate be reserved for those with whom we rarely, if ever, agree?  At times, we Republicans are so contentious with one another that it feels like we are giving aid and comfort to the enemy.  With friends like these….

I am not arguing that we should not disagree among ourselves.  That is inevitable .  On the contrary, for example, Republicans who voted to keep our primaries open, or who voted, at least initially, not to save women’s sports, need to taken to the proverbial woodshed, to name two maddening examples. But this can be done privately.  And we can, of course, seek candidates to replace them.  But shouting them down, declaring them RINOS, excoriating them publicly, all of which is great fun, of course, is neither helpful nor effective.

As a Reagan Republican (but I’ve been voting Republican since 1972), I ascribe to Reagan’s Eleventh commandment.  As you’ll recall, Reagan coined the familiar phrase in his 1966 campaign for governor of California: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”  We have forgotten this admonishment—and I admit, I have not always followed it—but I think we need to get back to it.  The truth about an issue is far more damaging  (and effective) than disparaging a fellow Republican. We have been quick to hail someone as a RINO, or worse, when we should bedevil them with the truth of the matter.  If everyone with whom we disagree is a RINO, no one is.

I want our party to be a cohesive unit.  If anything can be learned from Democrats—and not much can—their willingness to vote unanimously on issues is one reason our goals fail. We circle the wagons only to shoot at each other. We antagonize one another to the extent that quite possibly some votes against Republican common sense may well be made in spite of the unnecessary disparagement against office-holding Republicans. If we disagree, can we  vex those GOPers with the truth, instead of disparaging them with name-calling and mudslinging?

Of all the places to find Conservative sentiment brilliantly defended, I am in mind of recalling the words of Gustave Mahler. That’s right, the composer of some of the most beautiful classical music ever written. Mahler wrote, “Tradition [i.e. conservatism] is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”  Isn’t that what we Republicans are all about?  Rather than burning bridges on which fellow Republicans may be standing, let’s preserve that fire for the salvation of our culture and the harrowing of our liberal opponents.