If culture can neither thrive nor survive without religion, then a cultural conservative, which Russell Kirk claims is the most imaginative of conservatives, must fight to preserve the religious foundations of his culture.
Apropos of the title of this online journal, I think it appropriate to offer a few Russell Kirk—inspired refections as to what it means to be an “imaginative conservative.” In his essay, “The Cultural Conservative,” found in Politics of Prudence, Russell Kirk explains what it is to be an imaginative conservative, particularly in relation to conservatives of other stripes. Kirk remarks that “in practical politics, what we call the conservative movement… is a coalition of several interests and bodies of opinion. It is only in their opposition to the Leviathan that the several factions join forces. Among these factions… the most imaginative is the body of persons called “cultural conservatives” or “traditionalists.” Thus, according to Kirk, an imaginative conservative (or, at any rate, the most imaginative ones) is a cultural conservative.
But what does it mean to be an imaginative, that is, cultural conservative?
A cultural conservative, according to Kirk, is “a person who endeavors to preserve the customs, institutions, the learning, the mores of a society, as distinguished from men and women whose immediate interest is the practical political activity of a conservative cast.” The aims of a cultural conservative are therefore broader than mere politics and encompass the most fundamental and transcendent aspects aspects of human life. Kirk does not explicitly make the point, but one can reasonably infer from his remarks that the cultural conservative’s aims are not only of a higher order, but are foundational to those of the political conservative. Political conservatives are persons engaged in the immediate, pressing concerns of the day. But, like all of us, they are the product of a particular civilization and culture, such that their framing of political problems as well as their solutions are shaped by their historical and cultural context. Thus, to the extent the cultural conservative is able influence the culture in which the political conservative lives, moves and has his being, his efforts will have a fundamental and more enduring impact, even if imperceptibly gradual, on the sphere of life in which the political conservative operates. As George Washington, perceptively observes in his Farewell Address, “of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports.”
But what should be the focus of the imaginative/cultural conservative’s efforts, especially in light of the fact that the foundation of western and American civilization continues to erode? While the obvious answer is that the cultural conservative strives to shore up the collapsing edifice of our culture, Kirk clarifies precisely where this renewal must begin. According to Kirk, the “cultural” conservative (i.e. the imaginative conservative) should primarily begin by preserving “the cult,” which Kirk defines as the “attempt of a people to commune with a transcendent power.” If Kirk is right that the keystone of a culture is its religion, then the culture conservative must be concerned, most of all, with the preservation of religion.
Unfortunately Kirk does not elaborate in this article on his contention that the lifeblood of culture is religion. The article does, however, point to Christopher Dawson in support of this point, and Kirk’s own work, Roots of the American Order, illustrates religion’s essential role in the development of a culture, American culture in particular. As Roots makes clear, “all the aspects of any civilization arise out of a people’s religion: its politics, its economics, its arts, its sciences, even its simple crafts are the by-products of religions insights and a religious cult.” Kirk also states in Roots, that a culture depends on order, order in the individual soul and in society. While law is necessary condition of this order it is not sufficient. A system of morality is also necessary, and as Roots as a whole demonstrates, at least with respect to American culture, an indispensable source of that morality is religion.
The growth and maintenance of a culture depends on order, for culture, as Dawson defines it (borrowing from the sociologists of his day), is “any social way of life which possesses a permanent institutional or organized form.” Persons cannot live in an organized community and share a way of life without some order. In fact, the order itself by which persons live in community is, arguably, a definitive aspect of a culture.
A society’s laws cannot, however, be the only source of this order. While Nazi Germany had laws that established order at least for a time, this was merely political and social order imposed through force and power and, as a result, was unable to establish itself (thankfully) as an enduring order from which a culture could emerge. A social contract to live according to an agreed upon set of laws may also establish order for a while, but the laws that give flesh to this contract will not have a lasting legitimate authority without these prescriptions taking root in individuals’ hearts, and thus, serving as a moral code by which individuals order their lives. For, as Plato’s story of Gyges shows, without inner order the only reason to follow the laws is to avoid the inconvenience of getting caught. As soon as one believes he has chanced upon his magic ring, he will be the first to flout the law. We would not be surprised, then, to find that the culture of a society of Gyges would not be long for this world. Thus, as Kirk rightly states in Roots, a culture depends not only on political and social order, but also on the inner order of the soul, which is the effect not of laws alone, but of possessing, internalizing and thus living by a moral code.
But even if culture depends on order and order on morality, is it not possible for morality to exist without religion? Take Plato, for example, who seems to expound a morality promoting order in the individual’s soul. Plato’s morality, however, if not derived from, was at least coincident with a metaphysics that was independent of, if not at odds with, his culture’s traditional religion. Is it not possible, then to live by a moral code that provides the order of a thriving culture which does not also depend on religion? If so, then while morality is necessary for culture, religion is not.
Kirk’s article does not argue the point, but cites Christopher Dawson, et alia as sufficient proof that religion is essential to culture. Looking to Dawson, not surprisingly we find him saying “first, Religion, then Society, then Art, and finally Philosophy.” Dawson does not mean by this that culture progresses beyond religion, culminating in philosophy without religion. Indeed, Dawson concludes that “the great religions are the foundations on which the great civilizations rest,” and that “a society which has lost its religion becomes sooner or later a society which has lost its culture.” Thus, if Dawson is correct that a society that loses its religion loses its culture, then it is likely that he would also answer, in response to our question above, that a purely philosophical morality is not sufficient to provide the order necessary to sustain a culture.
Dawson’s basic argument is that history shows that culture has never existed without religion and, as a result, no culture ever will. Admittedly, this is an oversimplification that not only ignores the nuance of Dawson’s argument, but exposes it to the familiar Humean objection that just because we have witnessed repetitively the impact of one billiard ball causing another to move, does not mean we shall always experience this same connection. In several places, however, Dawson does express his conclusion in a more restrained fashion. He concludes not that we have apodictic certainty that culture can never exist without religion, but that the historical evidence reveals there is no good reason to believe that a culture will ever materialize, thrive or be sustained without religion. But even if Dawson did believe that it is simply impossible for culture to exist without religion, his argument is still persuasive, so long as the key premise from which he moves from the historical fact that culture has never existed without religion to his conclusion that it is impossible for it to do so is based on an insight into the very essential nature of man (assuming, of course, one thinks such insights are possible). For if the reason history shows that culture has never existed without religion is that man is by nature a religious animal, then assuming man has a stable nature, it is impossible that there should ever be a culture that does not arise out of and is not sustained by its religion.
In the course of making his argument, Dawson also addresses, to a certain extent, the specific question as to whether a purely philosophical morality could provide the basis of and/or sustain a culture. He cites, for example, Kant, whose ethical system is “a direct survival of the intensive moral culture of Protestantism” as well as the liberal movement of the eighteen century which “seems simply to carry on, in a generalized and abstract form, the religious and ethical teachings of the previously dominant religion.” Even the expressly areligious and anti-religious movements of modernity, “Democracy, Socialism and Nationalism,” which include Marxism and its political manifestations, as well as Nazism and Fascism, are substitutes for religion and cannot escape the religious impulse inherent in man. Democracy, for instance, appeals to the “sacredness of the People,” Socialism to the “sacredness of Labor,” and Nationalism to the “sacredness of the Fatherland.” While these movements are not based on “transcendent religious values or sanctions” and are therefore “religious emotion divorced from religious belief,” they demonstrate that man cannot escape his religious nature because even while eschewing religion, man must consecrate his earthly ideologies and elevate them as a substitute for genuine religion.
Far from proving that culture can survive without religion, Dawson argues that these modern movements rely on the “inherent social capital of religious feeling,” which will eventually dissipate “if no new creative religious power arises to take their place.” While a society and its culture may linger on for a long while because the process of religious decay is a slow one, “when the process of secularization is completed, the process of social dissolution is consummated and the culture comes to an end.”
Further, although Dawson does not explicitly argue the point, even apart from the fact that a purely philosophical morality arises from or out of a conflict with the predominate religion of a culture, a philosophical articulation of a moral system that either derives from or is justified by a transcendent metaphysics is arguably a religion. In so far as it provides a social cohesion, which Dawson and Kirk both observe is an essential characteristic of religion, it would satisfy Kirk’s definition of religion as “an attempt of a people to commune with the transcendent.” Thus, any such morality rooted in a transcendent order would qualify as a religion and would not, therefore, disprove Dawson and Kirk’s conviction that culture cannot survive without religion. Yet, the historical reality is that such moralities either do not provide a basis for an enduring culture or they are absorbed into a culture through its religion. Dawson cites the integration of Confucian ethics into Chinese religion and culture as an example of this phenomenon, but the adoption of Plato’s philosophy by Christianity through the neo-platonists arguably illustrates this point just as well.
If Dawson and Kirk are right, then, that culture can neither thrive nor survive without religion, then a cultural conservative, which Kirk claims is the most imaginative of conservatives, must fight to preserve the religious foundations of his culture. While the cultural conservative need not surrender on the political front, perhaps, as Kirk says, “the politics of this country…[should]…be much more concerned with the reinvigoration of culture than with economic [or other] issues. And whether or not modern people are given a Sign from on high, those men and women who are urgently concerned for the moral order, and for the survival of a high culture, need to repair the culture’s source – the religious perception of what we are or ought to be, here below.” If, then, we are indeed “imaginative conservatives” we must courageously strive to revitalize the religious dimension of our society and culture both through our conversation in this journal as well as in our daily lives.
This essay was first published here in October 2010.
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Besides noting that genius is centric rather than eccentric, Chesterton writes somewhere that creativity thrives best under limitations. He gives an example that many people would hesitate if told to write a poem, but would find it easier to write a poem on a given topic such as a man with big feet. I suspect that religion provides civilisation with its needed boundaries. Put otherwise, it may be a kind of laser that makes light coherent (in the scientific sense) or, to please GKC, that religion defines centricity. other things can attempt to define centricity, such as communism or any ideology, but it seems to end in tears. For believers ideology lacks Divine inspiration, and for others it lacks thousands of years of testing and evolution – both explanations work. The latter, rather than faith, may be why FA Hayek finally concluded that civilisation was unlikely to exist without religion.
Forty years ago, when Duncan Williams wrote 'Trousered Apes,' the old oxford don argued that the end of western culture began with the romantic era, its hijacking of art from Christianity, and its insistence that art be both ever-increasingly innovative (there goes centricity) and personal (bye-bye comprehensibility). So some clot wraps cliffs in cellophane while another pens poems that only he can understand. today in the BBC, the word for good is 'anarchic,' meaning clever, revolutionary, not conventional or traditional, etc. Not far from where I live in Afghanistan there is plenty of real anarchy and ideology too – I doubt that the denizens of the BBC cocktail-party circuit would much like living in it.
S Masty
A favorite Kirkism of mine ~
"A culture is perennially in need of renewal."
and
"A culture does not survive and prosper merely by being taken for granted; active defense is always required, and imaginative growth, too."
Dana in GA
I do not think you can argue that "religious feeling" makes its own argument. Humans have a need to explain or understand the world (and all that is). Religion is a way for primitive man to explain using terms beyond himself. Comprehensibility is theologizing life, instead of understanding politics and human behavior (the need to survive on many levels). And social science seeks a "scientific explaination" to these behaviors, just as the natural sciences explain physical life.
Culture (via religion) survives as a pragmatic necessity when oppressive forces limit political "life". The helpless are the ones that turn to power beyond themselves. Political liberty is the real test for character, not an oppressive dominating environment (authoritarian rule). Parents are the ones responsible for society's future, not religion. Parenting is of foremost importance, not religion in maintaining culture, as parents "frame" the child's opinion of himself and the world. Religion can be limiting, and confining to a child's options. The best parents do not have to have a religious framing to "mentor" their child successfully!
Who conserves religion? Our churches no longer “read” the Bible, during the service as part of the lectionary. Few of us read the Bible outside of church. Western Civilization will wither and die without this basic Biblical knowledge. So, for the Love of G-d, for the love of family, for the love of country – read the Bible to your children.
As a military man, I have lived in 23 zip codes between 1981 and 2022, and have attended at least 46 different churches from Hawaii to England on a long term basis. I noticed a trend – one that started about 1995 and was almost complete by 2000 AD. Churches don’t read the lectionary anymore.
Until about the year 2000 AD, I heard the lectionary every week in almost every church – all of them: Catholic, Episcopal, Methodist, and Church of Christ. Each church read almost the same lectionary – a well-defined set of Old Testament, Epistles, and Gospel readings on a three year cycle. A child raised in such churches would then be exposed to the water of the Bible 5 times before graduating high school.
Not any more. Outside of the formal “Orthodox” protestants, Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches – no other church I have visited since 2000 AD reads these passages during the church service to my children (or to my parents, or to me).
When even our churches remove that Root described by Kirk, when we remove that well of water that the USA has nurtured for 400 years, we will not likely survive.
Without religion a cultural and political order erodes. Indeed. But how do you “shore up” religion in a culture such as ours? Here is where a certain conservatism handicaps itself. Standing athwart an evolving human society has its uses. Yet a more imaginative and ultimately effective thing is to enter into the flow with insight and confidence in the wisdom of the past, and be ready to “shore up” the development of new ways of doing the old things. Pope Francis just might be far more effective by “coming along side” the actual people of our rapidly changing world than say, Cardinal Burke. No matter how many young people are taken with the look of the old.
One might well add that Hilaire Belloc in his powerful introduction of The Great Heresies (1936) makes the same observations that no society has ever lasted or has persisted which does not have a religious basis.
How do you define “religion”? Is it the organizational entity? Is it a set of beliefs centered around a higher power? Does man not possess a moral sense in the absence of religion?
The attitude of American Catholics intellectuals (I do not include Kirk among them) is, to say the least, contradictory. They blame the Reformation and the spirit of Enlightenment (as any traditionalist catholic has to do for the last 3 centuries), but they accept the patriotic American mythology. I don’t know how a traditionalist/Catholic narrative is reconciled with the glorification of Calvinists and Deists revolutionaries (aka Founding Fathers). The explanation that 1776 was not a “revolution” but a “restoration” seems like cheap sophistry to me. Especially today when we all see where Americanism and liberalism have ended up.
At some point they will have to choose. Either they will continue to be part of the broader “American conservatism” (ie Protestant liberalism/WASPism) or you will take a different path, the path of Tradition and Truth.
(sorry for my poor English)
Matthew: I don’t think the Founding Fathers were predominantly Calvinists or Deists. This topic has been discussed by reputable historians, and I remember it was concluded that the majority were Anglicans. At least, only the New Englanders would have been Calvinists.
“Religious feeling” sounds just like a term an atheist would hang on us “primitive men”. God placed in us all the capacity to perceive him. It is more, much more than a feeling. It is the inevitable longing of our souls fir the friendship of God. Yes, it is the responsibility of parents to properly educate children. This, in response to a mandate from God. The denial of our impulse to please God is what leads to false religions, which in our time take the form of animal activism, climate activism etc. on a personal level, many try to drown out the voice of God with alcohol and drugs. People often fear that religion will bind them to some miserable, restrictive way of life. Not so. It opens the door to the only true freedom that can be experienced.
Matthew – The foundation of our government was/is based on “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and the “Truth…that all men are created equal…and endowed by their Creator…etc.” Calvinists or Deists though they may have been, they got that right. The secularism that now pervades is not a failing of the Founders and the founding but rather of the ‘Me people’ like Ms. Van De Merwe who disdain the existence of any power higher than her own.
The theme of this essay is absolutely correct: When you take God out of the picture all Hell breaks loose.
Thanks for the replies.
So there are also good aspects of Enlightenment? Ok, I won’t completely disagree.
About the America… I don’t see an outside intervention during the period 1776-present. What I see is a continuum linking the establishment to the individualist dystopia of the 21st century.
Also, why does every godless and blasphemous trend always start in the US and then spread to the “Rest”? Is there something inherently flawed here? Traditional Catholics should perhaps look into the matter further.
Matthew, you say: “Also, why does every godless and blasphemous trend always start in the US and then spread to the “Rest”? ”
I suggest that you might want to get better control of the use of the words ‘every’ and ‘always’.
Did the Communism ‘trend’ start here and spread to the ‘Rest’? Did the Nazi-ism ‘trend’ start here and spread to the ‘Rest’? Did the Socialism ‘trend’ start here and spread to the ‘Rest’? Did the Darwinian evolutionary ‘trend’ start here and spread to the ‘Rest’? With respect to the influence that these isms as “outside interventions” have had on our own culture, are we not part of the “Rest” rather than being the instigators?
Was VaticanII an “outside intervention? Are not the wiles of Satan an outside intervention?
Which of all of the numberless godless ism ‘trends’ would you say started here and spread to the “Rest”?
“establishment” = “Founding”
I wrote this. I mistakenly confused my nickname with that of the commenter above.
Peter Judge, I can’t disagree. But after WW II almost every evil thing has its origin in the US. From lgbt stuff, to extreme individualism and destruction of tradition, etc. Ok, it was also May 68 in France, but the biggest Babylon is definitely the USA. Anyway, I’m not suggesting that American Catholics should “hate” their country, but to stop idolizing it. The obsession with the founding fathers and the american mythology seems like a very WASP/protestant thing. It better stop. At least that’s my view as a non-American.
Matthew – “…almost every”, while a bit of an improvement, is at least a move in the right direction. Based on your last post, you might also do a little work on your use of the words “obsession” and “mythology” and “definitely” and “idolizing” and “biggest” (as it relates to Babylon). The extensive misuse of hyperbole against our country in your posts hints of a bit of prejudice – especially as it comes from a professed “non-American.
With regard to “…every godless and blasphemous trend always start(ing) in the US”, I would suggest to you that based on numerous studies of Mass attendance, the incidence of apostasy in Europe far exceeds that in the U.S. both in scope and in origin. The so-called ‘spirit of Vatican II’ that has so compromised the intentions and declarations of the Council began, not here, but also in Europe. The ‘Synodal’ concept, promoted by Pope Francis (from Argentina}, morphed into the ‘Synodal Way’ perpetrated by the German Church (speaking of Babylon!). The Synodal future , especially with regard to sexual accommodation, could eventually progress all the way to Scism.
I submit to you a personal experience that I had on the practice of ‘communion-in-the-hand’ in 1971 – long before it was reluctantly ‘approved’ by Rome. I attended a neighborhood Mass at which one person grabbed the host when it was presented and fed it to herself. Everyone was shocked. She later explained that she had witnessed this practice at churches in Europe during a vacation trip there.
The U.S. is most certainly in spiritual and moral crisis as is all of Western culture, but it is disingenuous to burden our founding principles and governmental heritage as the source of those problems. The tragic abandonment of God in Western culture finds it’s fault in the failure of the fallen nature of man to adhere to those gifts and promises that He has bestowed – but rather be allured by Satan’s universal appeal to pride, power and greed that has no national origin.