Strangers and Sojourners

A response to Paul Kingsnorth's "Against Civilization"

It’s not every day that the hippie gives the keynote, but First Things invited Paul Kingsnorth to do more or less just that with the 2024 Erasmus Lecture this fall. The title of the lecture was what you would expect, nay hope for, from this sort of intersection: “Against Christian Civilization.” People in my circles have been twittering and discoursing about it ever since. I joined C. R. Wiley and friends on the Theology Pugcast to talk out loud about some of my own thoughts, but I haven’t sat down to hash them out in written form until now. The latest edition of the magazine has printed a version of the lecture, which will make it easier for readers to follow along.

In a way, it was actually fitting for the magazine to invite Kingsnorth, since that was where he published his Christian conversion essay, “The Cross and the Machine.” One of the most striking testimonies of its kind in recent memory, it established Kingsnorth as a formidable new arrival among the ranks of literary Christian converts. There were some parallels to the journey of other “reluctant converts” like C. S. Lewis, particularly in Kingsnorth’s uncanny sense of being pursued or hunted by Someone he “most desired not to meet.” But Kingsnorth is sui generis. As an online friend was musing the other day, his type was supposed to have died out with the rise of modernity—the type who doesn’t just rail against some select pieces of the Machine, but against all of it. Against the sexual revolution and industrialism and capitalism and transhumanism and military-industrial complexes. Against—well, against civilization. You just don’t find that sort randomly wandering about in the wild anymore, but lo and behold, there he is, giving a keynote.

Unsurprisingly, I’m going to be discussing points of both agreement and disagreement here. But the nice thing about Kingsnorth is that he isn’t the sort of thinker who casually drops a bunch of provocative comments, then storms off in a peevish huff when people are provoked. Already in the lecture Q&A, the audience starts to offer polite pushback, which he takes in stride. I trust that my two cents will be received in a similar spirit of good faith.

Kingsnorth frames the lecture with the writing of Native American social reformer Charles Eastman, otherwise known as Ohiyesa. Ohiyesa isn’t a household name, perhaps because he didn’t die in a blaze of battlefield glory. Instead, he worked to build sociopolitical bridges between his people and white Americans. However, he did reject the concept of “Christian civilization” as an oxymoron, despite identifying as a Christian himself. Even though he came to respect individual white missionaries, he maintained that the American Indian had a clearer path to God and Christ without the cultural obstacles the white man put in his way. The American Indians, after all, had their own “myths and hero stories,” which he suggested were “quite as credible” as those of the Hebrews of old. And “The logical man must either deny all miracles or none.” As for Jesus, one chief stood up after hearing Eastman’s gospel presentation and gravely concluded that “this Jesus was an Indian” — opposed to material wealth, unpractical, “inclined to peace,” and one who “set no price upon his labor of love.” In the final analysis, Eastman judged that “the spirit of Christianity and of our ancient religion is essentially the same.”

This intrigues Kingsnorth, who proceeds to build his lecture on the question, “What if God agrees with Ohiyesa?” What if “Civilization happened” was a direct consequence of “The fall happened”?

To give Eastman his due, it should be clarified that he invested a great deal of energy in “civilizational” institutions, including the YMCA and the Boy Scouts of America, which he co-founded. In his autobiography, he singles out some of the admirable men he encountered on the International Committee for the YMCA, including Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the first gift for Vanderbilt University. These men he holds up as “some of the best products of American civilization” — men who had “contributed vitally to the stability and well-being of the nation,” and who, like him, loved the nation’s boys. So, Eastman was complicated, and his thought and life’s work won’t fit neatly into a box marked “civilization bad.” Nevertheless, it could fairly be said that his view of Christianity was tinged with syncretism. He’s frustrated with the well-meaning but “narrow” white missionaries who branded his people as “pagans and devil-worshipers,” insisting that they worship God in a particular kind of building, using particular tangible symbols, under the white man’s particular rules. If nature is our cathedral, what need have we for churches?

At the risk of “getting letters” from Christians to my right, I am in fact open to a version of soft inclusivism that recognizes the wideness in God’s mercy for the noble pagan (think Emeth in The Last Battle). But it must be said plainly that Eastman was playing with strange fire here, and Kingsnorth is importantly mistaken to let it go unchallenged. Beyond all the theological slipperiness, the fact that Eastman chafes at the idea of church buildings is also revealing to me. I wonder what he made of projects like the great medieval cathedrals—the quintessential products of “Christian civilization.” It’s not clear that he would be moved by them, or by the Notre Dame rebuilding project. That money could have been spent on the poor, after all.

I’m not ascribing that kind of myopia to Kingsnorth, to be clear. But I see it as a potential reductio of what he seems to be drawn to here. If one is really committed to the notion that Christian civilization is an oxymoron, a centuries-long tragedy, then one risks being closed off from much that is beautiful and pleasing to God. Kingsnorth tries to anticipate this by making a distinction between Christian civilization and Christian culture. But culture is nurtured in the cradle of civilization. Good culture is a civilizational good.

Consider this sermon that I recently unearthed from Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko, the great Polish resistance priest who defied communism and paid with his life. This sermon is his lament for everything good and beautiful and holy that’s been trampled under the godless communists’ boots. It’s a lament for a lost culture, yes, but it’s also a lament for a lost civilization:

Polish culture from the start carries within itself a clear Christian character. Christianity has always been reflected in the history of our thought, art, poetry, music, drama, ceramics, painting, and sculpture. Polish culture for centuries was inspired by the gospel. Adam Mickiewicz, our national poet, wrote that “a civilization to be truly worthy of man must be Christian.” Thanks to Christianity, we are connected with Western culture, and that is why we could resist all the barbaric cultures. We could resist cultures superimposed on us by enemies or friends.

Or consider this line from Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization.” Bonhoeffer, of course, has been appropriated by just about every political faction in modern times, and it’s not my intention to perpetuate more of the same here (I’ll have more to write on this later). But no one can deny he embodied the sort of “radical,” Sermon-on-the-Mount Christianity to which Kingsnorth wants to recall everyone. Yet Christian civilization is the good thing in his picture, the thing for which he, like Fr. Jerzy, would also become a martyr. And as theologian Peter Leithart nicely outlines in his response essay, this is a fully biblical outlook. Man, even pre-fall, was not meant to be eternally garden-bound. “Taking the whole sweep of biblical history into account,” Leithart writes, “the human vocation is the edification of earth, the erection and curation of garden-lands and garden-cities.”

I also take issue with Kingsnorth’s reading of Jesus as radically opposed to wealth creation. Economics isn’t an issue I deal with much in my work, because I’m mainly content to focus on the threats of social leftism. But I’ve always been, quietly, the sort of old-fashioned fiscal conservative who believes we can’t construct policy on the assumption that money grows on trees. I also speak as someone who’s been a liaison between the West and the global church. The simple fact is that were it not for rich Western Christians, an incalculable number of good things would never come to pass. Borewells would never be drilled. Homes would never be built. The hungry would go unfed, the orphans unsheltered, the sick untreated. Kingsnorth praises the Christian genesis of hospitals and other institutions built to serve those in need. But such institutions would collapse tomorrow were it not for the wealth that sustains them.

Not everyone should be rich, of course. Not everyone is like Gimli, with gold flowing through his fingers and holding no power over him. Some men are like the rich young ruler. When Jesus asks them to follow him, they will go away sad. C. S. Lewis sets a wise example here. We should “give until it hurts,” he wrote. He lived this out by putting all his book royalties into a trust fund for the needy, dying with very little to his name. He may not have lived like St. Francis of Assisi, but that’s what it looked like for Lewis, a civilized modern man, to follow Jesus.

As a high school teacher, I’ve known bright young men who came from some money, who had bright ideas about creating their own wealth. One day a couple of them asked me what I thought about their grand plans. Carefully, I said that there’s nothing wrong in and of itself with wanting to make a lot of money, but they must think about the why. What’s the purpose of accumulating this wealth? What’s it all for? Where’s it all going? “We could give it to churches and stuff!” they said. I approved.

Of course, there’s a dark side to wealth creation, particularly at the intersection of capitalism and vice. Kingsnorth states the obvious when he says that Western civilization is undergoing a moral collapse. However, I note an interesting internal tension in his comments here, in that he’ll repeatedly use the phrase “culture war” pejoratively, yet he himself is already engaged in culture war. Already, his use of the phrase “moral crisis” marks him as a culture warrior. As he’s going through the seven deadly sins of the city, pronouncing prophetic “woes” along the way, he includes a satisfyingly pointed dig at Pride month. The establishment of Pride month was an act of culture war—and a consumerist act at that, as various corporations have bought in. We didn’t seek out that war, but war is now upon us, whether we sought it or not. While I don’t put Kingsnorth in this camp, there’s a certain elite way of talking about American conservatives in particular that displays a profound ignorance of what life “in the trenches” has actually been like over the decades. N. T. Wright was recently seen doing this on abortion and guns. The shallowness of his knowledge about the history of the pro-life movement was really quite breathtaking for a scholar of his stature.

Meanwhile, it’s sadly interesting to reflect on the trajectories of American figures in an Anabaptist vein who once employed rhetoric similar to Kingsnorth’s, then went on to capitulate to social leftism. To give just one example, here’s popular speaker Shane Claiborne artfully dodging a question about gay marriage without ever giving an explicit answer, though in the end tipping his hand with much talk about the “fruit” of “faithful, loving same-sex partnerships.” This, too, is an act of culture war. In the hands of people like Claiborne, a phrase like “social justice” has become weaponized, a mere stick with which to beat people to their political right for not conforming to the world. It is this cynical sense of “social justice” Jordan Peterson rightly rails against, something I think Kingsnorth fails to appreciate when harshly criticizing Peterson’s “Message to the Christian Churches.” Peterson has no quarrel with actual social justice, in the sense of actually loving mercy and doing justly. His quarrel is with the sort of people Kingsnorth himself has warned about—the sort who, in the end, would rather see the rich guillotined than the poor uplifted.

But there is also a temptation for Christians who place themselves on the right side of the political spectrum. There’s culture war, and there’s culture war. Kingsnorth has a warning for Christians who are so consumed with war they’re thinking about nothing else, and they’re willing to make compromises along the way. He’s mindful of the temptation that comes over Boromir as he handles the One Ring—not unmixed with good intentions, but leading him down a dark path.

As readers know, I’ve been a consistent third-party voter in presidential elections, because I believe in the importance of maintaining consistent standards for our political leadership. In the wake of Trump’s election, I’ve seen some right-wing Christians tweeting gleefully about who will now be welcome “in the halls of power” and who will not. To be sure, I’m very glad to see honorable Christian men like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya elevated to the positions of authority they rightfully deserve. I’m viscerally satisfied to see someone like Jay replacing someone like Francis Collins, who abused his own evangelical Christian “street cred” in tyrannical, manipulative ways. However, it’s important that Jay didn’t arrive at that position by compromising who he was. My feelings about the rise of a figure like J. D. Vance, who had to muzzle himself on issues like abortion in order to match Trump, are more mixed.

Some Christians like British ex-pat Fr. Calvin Robinson see Trump as a figure who, because he’s not openly hostile to Christianity, can help pave the way to “making the West Christendom again.” Robinson represents what one might call a return to “muscular Christianity,” meaning a Christianity that’s bold, unapologetically masculine, and willing to secure its borders, figurative and literal. He’s seen the demographic havoc of unfettered Muslim immigration in Europe, which has fundamentally altered both the cultural and religious makeup of the continent, and he’s disillusioned by a doddering Church of England whose bishops can’t even agree on basic Christian dogma. America, by contrast, feels like a blast of fresh air to him—sprawling, vibrant, full of evangelical Christians who are vocal and visible and represent a significant voting bloc. As he said in a brief speech to a crowd of Trump supporters, England may have fallen, but it’s not too late for America. We are the last, best hope of the West. When Trump won, a British man set off red, white and blue fireworks in celebration. “We are looking to America to turn the tide,” Fr. Calvin quote-tweeted. “Make America Great Again. Make the West Christendom Again.”

Fr. Calvin was also moved by a clip from a Trump victory party where the attendees spontaneously broke into the hymn “How Great Thou Art.” He wrote, “How Great Thou Art was an anthem of Billy Graham’s Crusades. Let it become an anthem in President Trump’s Crusade to Make America Great Again. Make The West Christendom Again.” It’s easy to see why that clip was an encouragement to him: a group of devout evangelicals praising God just after using the power of their vote to oust a totalitarian administration that’s been actively oppressing the faithful. If that’s “Christian nationalism,” he’ll sign up tomorrow.

But the messy truth is that while these Christians might have given Trump their vote of confidence, Trump caters to a broad coalition with interests that aren’t at all aligned with Christian interests. He’s pledged to make insurance companies cover IVF or else pay for it with our tax dollars. And contrary to the caricatures of desperate leftists, he only intends to roll back the least popular excesses of the sexual revolution, and he went out of his way to remove the definition of marriage from the Republican platform. None of this seems conducive to halting the West’s moral decline, let alone making the West Christendom again.

Enter Kingsnorth to say, “See?” And he’s not wrong. The Eastern Orthodox writer Vesper Stamper makes a charming analogy here to the disintegration of a jello cake. Once the cake has lost its shape, you’re simply not getting it back in the mold again. As goes the jello cake, so goes the West. We can’t go back. All we can do is go forward, with as much integrity as we can all muster. That doesn’t let us off the hook from participating in the political life of the nation, voting for good men and good laws as we can. It doesn’t mean that someone like Dr. Bhattacharya is obligated to say “No” when God calls him to be a faithful presence in the halls of power. But it does mean that if and when Christians do become politically irrelevant, the work of the church will proceed according to plan, because our plans don’t depend on political relevance. It’s in moments like these that we remember, “Oh, that’s right. This world is not our home. Oh, that’s right. Here we have no continuing city.” That is what it is to be strangers, here in this land of our sojourn.

Bonhoeffer again, on Jesus’ “Blessed are those who mourn”:

By “mourning” Jesus, of course, means doing without what the world calls peace and prosperity: He means refusing to be in tune with the world or to accommodate oneself to its standards. Such men mourn for the world, for its guilt, its fate and its fortune. While the world keeps holiday they stand aside, and while the world sings, “Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,” they mourn. They see that for all the jollity on board, the ship is beginning to sink. The world dreams of progress, of power and of the future, but the disciples meditate on the end, the last judgement, and the coming of the kingdom. To such heights the world cannot rise. And so the disciples are strangers in the world, unwelcome guests and disturbers of the peace. No wonder the world rejects them!

“Christianity is impractical,” Kingsnorth reminds us. “It’s impractical, it’s intolerable, and it’s awful in the original sense of that word. It’s terrifying and it’s designed to kill you.” It killed Bonhoeffer. It killed Fr. Jerzy. It killed Dirk Willems, the Dutch Anabaptist who managed to escape from prison, only to turn back and rescue his pursuer from an icy pond. That, to me, is the quintessence of Jesus’ commandments about enemy love. I don’t believe it requires pacifism in all times and places, but it is still radical, and still potentially lethal.

Driven by the zeal of the new convert, Kingsnorth expresses some anxiety that perhaps he still isn’t living out Jesus’ words radically enough. Perhaps he still isn’t dying to himself enough. Even just the act of putting on a suit and tie and coming to give this lecture feels to him like some sort of small concession, to exactly what he’s not sure. To this I would say we are all given our tasks, and we are all given our crosses. To St. Francis, God gave the task of being a poor monk, and God saw that it was good. To Kingsnorth, God gave the task of being a husband, a father, and a writer, and God saw that it was good.

I hear in Kingsnorth some echoes of a favorite singer-songwriter who did his own level best to imitate the way of St. Francis. He died suddenly and young, after a long and painful struggle to discern exactly where God was calling him. He spent his life caught between the desert and the city. In some ways he was a victim of his own material success as an artist, always desperately seeking to shed it. He never did find a balance that brought him peace. But his songs remain, little haunting reminders of a little life. I’ll end with one of his best-loved tunes.

Sometimes I think of Abraham
How one star he saw had been lit for me
He was a stranger in this land
And I am that, no less than he
And on this road to righteousness
Sometimes the climb can be so steep
I may falter in my steps
But never beyond Your reach