Reflections on Postliberalism

Part 2, Did Postliberal Theology Lead to Donald Trump?

Having described postliberal theology and postliberal politics, we can turn, now, to the debate kicked off by David Congdon’s article in The Journal of Religion entitled “What Has New Haven to Do with Hungary? On Theological and Political Postliberalism.”

To recap a bit from the last post. Both postliberal theology and postliberal political theory have decried the impact of liberalism and its inability to form the virtues necessary for human flourishing, personally and collectively. Noting this, postliberal theology posited a hard church/world contrast. Christian virtues could only be formed from within the particular and distinctive Christian community over against the pluralism of the surrounding culture. As Stanley Hauerwas famously said, “the first task of the Church is to make the world the world.” The church would carve out a space from within the pluralistic culture, living as a “colony of heaven” in the midst of the world. There the church would function as a counter polis, a community of contrast making visible the politics of the Kingdom of God over against the kingdoms of the world.

To accomplish this, a degree of cultural quarantine is needed so that the shared life of the Christian community will not be diluted or compromised. This vision of retreat in order to protect cultural homogeneity reached popular expression in Rod Dreher’s book The Benedict Option. There has been a lot of debate about what Dreher means by a “retreat” from the world. He is not advocating for an Amish-like withdrawal. But that debate does not concern us here. All we need to note is how postliberal theology argues for the necessity of a thick and homogeneous cultural life carved out from and lived in contrast to the surrounding secular and pluralistic culture.

The postliberal political thinkers reject this “colony of heaven” approach. According to the postliberal political theorists, the forces of pluralism, secularism, and liberalism are so dominant and powerful that they generally overwhelm Christian attempts to form a distinctive identity. The cultural withdrawal demanded is so severe and the costs so high that most Christians balk. Most churches are unable to create thick cultures of community, providing instead a worship service on Sunday morning and leaving their members to navigate the secular and pluralistic culture on their own and as best they can. The results, as you know, have not been good.

Consequently, postliberal political thinkers believe that the church cannot be the sole focus of Christian engagement. The toxicity of the culture must be directly addressed. This will, however, mean a turn toward an illiberal and authoritarian politics that imposes a Christian culture upon the nation. Liberty and freedom are set aside to pursue a particularist vision of the collective good.

While postliberal theology and postliberal politics have different foci—the church versus the nation—Congdon argues that postliberal theology set the stage for the authoritarian turn among many Christians, as seen in their embrace of Donald Trump. An example of this is Rod Dreher himself. After espousing the postliberal theological vision in The Benedict Option, Dreher pivoted to embrace the illiberal political vision of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. Dreher was a champion of Orbán’s government as a political model for Europe and America. In turning away from The Benedict Option toward Christian nationalism, Dreher illustrates the church-to-nationalism shift, the slide from the particularist ecclesiology of the postliberal theologians toward the authoritarianism of the postliberal political thinkers.

Here’s how David Congdon describes this trajectory:

Postliberal theology erected an entire edifice rooted in the idea that church and world (or state) are in a metaphysical battle to the death, with only one potential victor, in which the only hope for humanity is to gather in small-scale, tradition-homogeneous communities where proper Christian virtue and character may be cultivated and lived out. Most people, however, do not have the capacity to leave their jobs and social networks behind to establish a commune in the woods, and most do not wish to flee to Hungary. Is it any wonder, then, that Christians catechized on a diet of Hauerwas and Milbank would eventually seek to take over the reins of political power in the United States and elsewhere? The idea of having a template for a happy life but resigning oneself to a politics of lament would strike most as an unnecessary form of defeatism....The charge of “sectarian temptation” that Gustafson leveled against Hauerwas has now matured into the authoritarian temptation of the political postliberals. These are not opposed positions but rather two sides of one coin—namely, the antiliberal coin that posits a binary between church and world and requires cultural homogeneity as a precondition for human flourishing...

Once “the world” is perceived as a vast wasteland of heresy and ungodliness, it is but a short step from we must avoid the world to remain pure to we must purify the world. Postliberal theology taught Christians to see the cultural Other as utterly alien, incapable of understanding or engaging with the truth revealed to the church. After a generation of being conditioned to view others this way, is it at all surprising that some have decided such people should not be allowed to govern society?

This is a provocative and contentious claim. To blame theologians like Stanley Hauerwas, given his theology and witness, for the rise of Donald Trump is pretty outrageous. So there has been pushback. David Fitch has written a series of responses on his Substack, the first of which is here. (Fitch’s posts were how I became aware of Congdon’s article.) James K.A. Smith shared a critical yet more sympathetic response on his Substack. Congdon replied to Fitch on his Substack.

Okay, I’ve taken two posts to set this controversy before you. The question before us is this: Does postliberal theology tempt us toward a postliberal politics? Does, as Congdon argues, a hard church/world contrast teach Christians to view the “cultural Other as utterly alien”? Is there a dehumanizing temptation at work in “the first task of the Church is to make the world the world”? Relatedly, have the postliberal ecclesial expressions proved so severe and costly, and churches so impotent in forming their people, that pastors and church leaders eventually concluded that something more drastic was warranted by way of addressing the culture? If being the postliberal church is very hard in a liberal and pluralistic world, might it be a good idea to create a nation where it is easier to be the church?

While I understand why people will want to rush to defend Hauerwas from what they take to be an ugly smear from David Congdon, implicating him in Trumpism, I find myself pondering the questions above, if only for my own benefit. As I’ve shared recently, I love Hauerwas. But I also have a progressive, liberal, and humanistic streak in me that inclines me to adopt a more positive posture toward “the world.” Consequently, on one of the central issues in this debate—Is pluralism good or bad?—I find myself pulled in two different directions. So I’m going to try in this series to think aloud and sort a bit of this out. Feel free to follow along and share your own thoughts.