In Michael Horton’s 1992 book, Power Religion: The Selling Out of the Evangelical Church?, is an essay by J.I. Packer entitled, “The Comfort of Conservatism.” Here are a few quotes that are even more apropos 32 years later:
When evangelicals call themselves conservative, is there anything more to their conservatism than barren, blind traditionalism? (p 283)
The sound you just heard was Packer firing across the bow. He continues:
A relatively modern word, with a sociopolitical focus, conservatism…has two tones or meanings, each determined by usage.
One sort of conservatism is a heroic resolve to preserve whatever in one’s heritage one sees to be truly valuable…Such conservatism calls for a responsible use of one’s intelligence and critical judgment and also for the courage to swim against the cultural tide where necessary, in order to safeguard what is right and precious. That sort of conservatism—creative conservatism as I venture to call it—may prove to be the most radical, realistic, hard-thinking, forward-looking, and stimulating option that the marketplace of ideas has to offer. Such is tone-one conservatism. (p 284)
So far, so good. Whether one calls one’s self a conservative, this is the conservatism I knew as a much younger man. There was a core and there were limits. Packer then contrasts tone two with tone one:
The other sort of conservatism, however, is a blind, stubborn, ‘Archie Bunkerish’ adherence to what is old and conventional just because it is old and conventional, a knee-jerk reaction of the mind expressing nothing more respectable or responsible than prejudices that one refuses to examine…Such is conservatism, tone two: a nostalgic syndrome that buries its head with regard to the future and seeks only to hang on to the past. I label that, in King James language, ‘carnal conservatism,’ since the inertia of the mind at its heart is flesh-fed, just as it is flesh-pleasing…[T]he first is sometimes mistaken for the second, and the second sometimes kids itself into thinking it is really the first.
The second sometimes kids itself into thinking it is really the first. Three decades on from Packer’s essay, I suggest at the level of popular conservatism in which there is no core beyond opposition, from which there is no motivation other than fund-raising or grifting, and for which there is no goal beyond a cult of personality, the second always kids itself into thinking it is really the first.
Packer asks his readers to reflect on these issues:
(1) that backward-looking fixity, whether demanded by leaders or sought by followers, or both, can of itself make people feel good, safe, and wise; (2) that those feelings can in turn prompt people to gang up in order to impose the same fixity on others, in the belief that such action renders its recipients the truest service…Although the people in charge…may not have behind them direct biblical command, they often insist that in order to render fullest obedience to God we ought to surrender our own thought processes to those who have already made the difficult decisions for us. (emphasis in original, p 285)
I would pause here and say the concept of tribalism had not yet become common currency in 1992, but Packer’s warning about imposing fixity on others we should recognize as a tribal problem not merely a conservative one.
He continues with a section on “magic-word mentality” that should call every Southern Baptist to attention if not cause them to blush:
In recent discussion of biblical inerrancy, for instance, it appeared that some could not grasp that inerrancy my be affirmed without using that magic word for the purpose, and that others who maintained the full truth and trustworthiness of Scripture might choose to avoid the term because they thought it had unfortunate associations.
“Unfortunate associations” indeed.
Packer also speaks to today’s “conservative” pastors and leaders.
For leaders, we should note, a carnal conservatism context creates special temptations, for it gives them a role as traditioners that places great power in their hands. We know how pastors as a body love power across the board, and how the desire for total control factors into the decisions of nonpastors to form independent ‘ministries’ of their own, in which they are not accountable to any authority. Now we should note that leaders who commit themselves to uphold as vital bits of the tradition what others have let go seem to their followers, for that very reason, to be persons of superior insight and are praised for ‘taking a stand.’ The possibilities of abusing one’s power when one finds oneself on this pinnacle of veneration are enormous, and we should not be too surprised when we hear of traditioners of this type seeing themselves as above the law and coming moral croppers.
Those praised for “taking a stand” against the “woke mob,” “Big Eva,” or “the Elite,” are typically being adulated for setting afire some barn they themselves erected, stuffed with hay, then doused with gas.
Packer’s words are a needed kick in the pants for so much of today’s worldly comfort of conservative American evangelicalism. If political conservatism is to be anything other than GOP du jour and if theological conservatism anything more than MAGA GOP with a Bible verse appended, then intellectual rigor, critical thinking, and a soul-deep commitment to not be aligned with comfortable conservatism are a must. “Marvel not if the world hates you,” said Jesus. The people of God to well to remember that “the world” has many faces and not all of them have horns.
fides quaerens intellectum
