American Theology Simply Stated; The Transcendence of Liberty

The Transcendence of Liberty

I’ve told this story before, of the time in 1991 I attended a birthday party for a law professor at a university in USSR Ukraine. Around three tables pushed together, in a dimly lit room, in early-winter, there were twelve, mostly academicians, all standing, glasses held high, while the host’s son would go around and fill each glass with a home-brew vodka in a very traditional Russian round-robin series of toasts. When this parade finally ended at the head the table, the host asked me to speak on his behalf. Just a little in my cups, and having nothing unfoolish to say right off the top of my head, I steadied myself and reached into my inside pocket and pulled out my trusty Cato Institute edition of the Constitution, and read from it aloud, more specifically, Jefferson’s famous lines of the Declaration, one slow phrase at a time, so it could be translated. “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”

At the time I didn’t know these words by heart, but I do now.

What happened next is why.

Common  words to many Americans,  I swear, I don’t think any of those Soviet professors had ever heard them before, for upon finishing, I looked up to see every person assembled crying, tears pouring down their cheeks. There wasn’t a single smug been-there-heard-that look in the crowd. (I expect maybe the vodka helped.) Then after we had eaten, three of the professors, continuing a constitutional Q & A begun before the meal, rushed up to say “Mister, Mister, now we understand Amerika Constitution. Is simple…even Ivan Ivanovich (the Russian Homer Simpson) can pursue life, liberty, happiness without permission of state.” (Emphasis mine …and theirs.)

Out of the mouth of babes, huh? But scholar-babes…who could get to the nub of a proposition in a blink of an eye…and yet be humbled by a simple truth when they discovered it for the first time. When do we ever see that in Amerika anymore?

One of the most moving events in my life, I felt like I had been witness to a visitation, only am still not sure who educated who on this visit to the law professor’s cottage in the village.

Sadly, to many Americans, those words by Jefferson are as chestnut as “Ohsaycanyouseebythedawnsearlylight”. Eyes glaze over. And now there are the Millennials, who increasingly have never heard those words at all, in part because they never asked, or no one has bothered to explain the American theology of liberty to them in the first place.

Since then I’ve come to learn what I’ve suspected for many years now, namely that some well-educated men and women, people who have read all the books, and even proclaim themselves “conservative”, haven’t any earthly clue as to what “American conservatism” really  means, or what its purpose is.

You know the type. I recall watching late night television while in law school in the 60s, when a theologian (he professed to be a Methodist), while discussing “How Great Thou Art” (the wonderful Hines-Boberg hymn made famous by George Beverley Shea) smugly commented “it was theologically shallow”.

With images of multitudes getting up from their seats and coming down to the altar at one of Billy Graham’s crusades while that song was sung, I decided it was time to throw off my Methodist label, just as I threw off the Republican label in 2011. But since I was trying to get a law degree that would allow me to move among the smarter set, I began an inquiry into the difference between the “corporate church” and “church of the people” seeking to learn which actually sits at the heart of Christianity, and who is “the reason for the season”, the theologians or the Homer Simpsons of the world?.

You already know the answer to this, but the process is instructive.

What I have learned may be illuminating to those seeking guidance on how to deal with the rift between “corporate conservatism” and the “native conservatism of the people”.  Much has been written about it of late, and much of it is wrong.

The Parable of the Parallel

The simplicity of Jefferson’s truths, and their ability to overpower even the super-educated, if their hearts are “in the trim”, is what makes certain truths transcendent, which, once learned, can be re-born as if brand new..

The lines between the Front Office and the Front Lines are well established, but because of transcendence, exceptions can be found in both Christianity and human Liberty.

It’s been said about Christianity that it grows one soul at a time by a process of a few simple truths being reborn in a single being. This is how it has re-birthed itself for over two thousand years. These truths never lose their ability to stand the hair up on the back of one’s neck, or to rend your heart, especially when we see others discover it for the first time. It renews our/your own faith as you watch a new star being born.  If you’re a regular church-goer you know what I mean.

Truth is literally re-born all over again, new and fresh. Thus, it can forever renew itself, which is why, for almost 1500 years, when Muslims have swung swords over the heads of infidels, saying “Recant and accept Islam or die”, there are brand new Christians no more than 25 years old, who still offer up their necks and refuse. Such is the power of this transcendence.

I like to think there are still Americans who will refuse to recant the doctrine of liberty under similar inducements. Time may soon tell.

But you have to look at the simplicity of this American theology, this doctrine of liberty, to understand how such people can exist. But first, you have to know to look for it, and where to look for it. This is supposed to be foundational in the conservative thinking, for the great ideas of liberty are transmitted in the same manner. Becoming a Christian and becoming a liberty-lover are not dissimilar, for each touch a primal need inside all mankind. Christ promised spiritual liberty while the American Constitution provides men with the corporeal freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness “without the permission state”. Not that long ago, so powerful was this right that men would fight, in rolled-up sleeves scrappin’ mode, defending a Constitution they had never read, or in  many cases, were unable to read. They only knew it by name. They simply knew it was the source of their freedoms.

Today in America men and women still fall at the altar of freedom without once having to resort to a catechism, or a handbook, to guide them to this new freedom that has been revealed to them.

It’s the same thing, the different wings of the spiritual universe.

So, how does the native conservatism of the people stand against the conservatism of its priesthood?  Who is the “reason for the season” here?

Again, early Christianity provides a clue. I’m an apologist for the churches in America, so study this subject. In a book I’m working on, The Devil’s History of the United States, the following is excerpted from a section on the parallels of Christ’s ministry and the founding of America:

Christ preached for three years, and the things He preached, as recorded in the New Testament, could all be written down longhand onto a few sheets of lined paper. It was simple and directed at ordinary people. He didn’t aim His remarks at the Establishment of the day, government and religious officials, businessmen or teachers at the lyceum. And He didn’t need a chalkboard or syllabus to lay out how to find inner peace, God, or the path to salvation and freedom. “And the common people heard him gladly” was how Mark (Mk 12:37) spelled this out. Christ wasn’t trying to impress anyone inside the Judean or Roman Establishment. The common people were the reason for the season.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum.

Christ was executed (Fact) and then arose and ascended into heaven (Belief, so you don’t have to believe this part, even though the circumstantial evidence is pretty overwhelming), and then 10 days later 120 men and women departed Jerusalem headed in 120 different directions to preach the story of what they had personally known of this Man. (Again, Fact). What is also fact is that they took no textbooks with them, as the Gospels would be some years in the writing, Saints Peter and James had not yet written their story, and St Paul was still running around persecuting Christians under his Roman name, Saul.

(And they were mostly martyred, again Fact, which proves they weren’t scamming a bogus product.)

So, what message did these first missionaries carry orally to the far-flung world? Christianity began with 120 versions of eyewitnesses to Christ’s sermons so in all likelihood none of those 120 versions were exactly the same. In fact, we know they weren’t because different opinions arose almost immediately. The first century of church fathers and scholars were curious and inquiring and devout, using the best evidence available to settle disputes, and trying to create an orderliness to the intellectual chaos. Still, by the 4th Century, hundreds of different interpretations of Christ’s words had been created and each taking hold of new ground they refused to concede.

The makings of a corporate church was taking shape, in Nicaea in 325 AD, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing at the beginning. In fact, it was a natural progression of man’s intellect and his need to collate, standardize and organize.. What we know is that, beginning at Nicea, eventually the corporate church went one way, toward what students of organizational studies now know to be a series of historical crucibles that define its rise in strength and protection, a long period of bureaucratic consolidation, and then a kind of collapse…all according to fixed laws of bureaucracies, and which, in almost all human enterprises, saps the transcendent idea that started it in the first place right out of the enterprise.

But note, that while the corporate church was heading in one direction, the corpus of the church, the parishes, where the common people lived, largely continued on their original course, one soul at a time. And for two thousand years, the essence of that message, often called the Good News, was heard and understood by millions despite the variations in its telling, even as attempts were made in the front office to create doctrine and rites as unbending and orthodox as an EPA regulation, including a full menu of sanctions against those who strayed off the reservation.

So, predictably, the corporatization of the Church occurred in phases. At Nicaea, having arrived at a “consensus” (250 churches of approximately 3500 invitees actually showing up to vote) the Church first declared itself to be The Universal One True Church, then decided what was “canonical” (what could go into the New Testament and what could not), then granted itself the power to excommunicate dissident churches. At this early point at least, this was just a paper exercise, for those dissident churches were unfazed inasmuch as the Church had not yet obtained a blam stick with any kind of long reach. Then, in 800 AD it got one, when the Church inked a power-sharing agreement with the king-system of Europe by crowning Charlemagne (a Frank, if that give you any clue as to kind of deal the Church was making) as the Holy Roman Emperor. Fully half of Christendom lay outside the reach of the Roman Church in Europe, but, blam stick fully in its grasp, the Church no longer had to dilly-dally with dissidents within its territories and began burning people at the stake as if they were cordwood.

So, there was no more need to bother with scholarly disputations, although, if the record of the trial of Joan of Arc is any indication, Church tribunals had become excessively rigid and unbending, and tedious and long-winded, especially when they were driving toward a pre-determined outcome, based on political considerations and not Church law. All sorts of sects disappeared completely over these five-six hundred years, undoing half a millennium of scholarship and shared piety. Finally, on the corporate Church’s watch Mankind was also jailed into feudalism, making the 99%’s (Homer Simpsons) physical life worse than it ever was at the time of Christ, thus making their quest for spiritual freedom even more problematic.

If the Devil were in charge of this circus you’d have to say it looked like he was winning, and since health concerns and the prospects of a new shooting war have not allowed me try to spread the message wider. I’ve found that the Devil’s organizing message, while unable to succeed for more than three generations (100 years) will still postpone Nature’s (and God’s) plan a century. I can see a heavier hand cutting through the red tape of post-modern management thinking and restoring the handshakes of understanding to last no more than a generation.

If any of this sounds familiar it’s because the Church followed the path of kings, and every kingdom that has come down the pike since the pharaohs, even the enlightened ones, and every corporation, no matter how much better they designed the 8-cylnder engine. No one ever did a real study, but by the 14th Century, fewer than half the clergy were even religious, including a few popes, and the common man and woman were so beaten down and poor they were unable to make personal decisions about God that did not include fear, and

Christ’s simple message had gotten much less simple. Still some of Christianity’s greatest giants lived in those days; creating the monastic orders, which saved western civilization and scholarship in the darkest of days, and saving the Church at important turns, (Catherine of Siena) and everywhere there were friars who shepharded their flocks just as they had done since the 1st century. (Historians, for reason not pertinent to this discussion, but always front-office and king-centered, overlook these essential building blocks altogether, just as modern corporate conservatism now overlooks its own roots.

For you see, the Christian Church didn’t go the way of the Bourbons, or General Motors, although the modern debauchery of the Roman Church and its front office has put its front lines at risk. The whole Church had something corporations and top-down governments don’t have, and it’s that transcendent fire that never really goes out at its base. So, in the early 16th Century, outlier churches rebelled, both over the arrogance and suffocating power of the Church, but also its doctrine, only rescuing it instead of burying it. All those 1st Century variations of the Good News hadn’t been killed off after all. It was called the Reformation, and insofar as the history of the “churches in America” is concerned, saved the Catholic Church, for the passion of its parishes here defines it, not its corporate front office.

Sidebar: It was during this period that America was first incubated (1607), and I wonder if any of you can see a connection? (Go re-read Larry Schweikart’s Patriot’s History of the United States in this context.)

So, whither Conservatism?

American conservatism is founded on simple principles framed in the Constitution by those words (above) by Thomas Jefferson that brought those Soviet scholars to tears, about man’s unalienable right to pursue life, liberty and happiness. Their transcendent connection with the people is undeniable.

That is the transcendent handshake between the Declaration and the Constitution, perhaps Jefferson’s and Hamiton’s only handshake. That is the reason for our season. That is the purpose of conservatism; to protect the common man and woman as they first discover then pursue those few simple things. If you have not knelt at that altar and dedicated yourself  to that purpose foremost, you are no more a conservative than Obama is a scholar, or Bill Clinton a choirboy.

And just saying you’re conservative won’t make it so…not any longer.

There was not always a scholarly front office conservatism in America. (Has anyone talked with George Will about these things?) George Will may well be last of the living older-generation conservatives (save me). But at least since Bill Buckley, Bill Rusher and Russell Kirk came on the scene in the 1950s, making it shine bright for over 50 years, until of late. WFB and his pals, through “National Review”, created a handbook of erudite conservatism that covered every aspect of national policy; anti-communism, both foreign and domestic, and manners and morals in the arts, sciences, and academy. But it was not front office and corporate in the managerial-oversight sense. Yet in every issue NR let us know they still had the original fire in their bellies, and they still knew the original purpose, the prime directive of conservatism…to protect the Constitution and the common man and woman. As elite (versus elitist) as one could get, no one ever went to bed wondering whether Bill Buckley actually would prefer to be governed by the first hundred names in the Boston Telephone Directory than by the entire faculty at Harvard.

And for half a century a generation filed in behind to emulate them. They made conservatism respectable to both the uncommon man and common man classes, without losing sight of the reason the season.

So, did you not know that the Constitution actually was written for those names in the phone book, and not the political class in Who’s Who and and the corporate class in the Yellow Pages?

In recent years that connection seems to have been slipping away, the usual culprits; money, celebrity and status-ism. Sadly, conservatism has entered its corporate phase.

Did you think I could write all this and not mention Donald Trump?

I’m a little older than Donald Trump, and since I believe he possesses instant recall about certain things, he may recall our shaking hands on the Boardwalk outside the entrance to one of his casinos. It was 1991 or ’92, and I was not there to gamble, but to be at a meeting nearby and had time to kill. I lived in Cincinnati at the time. Standing back along the wood rail fence facing the entrance, I noticed Trump walking down the boardwalk with two younger bodyguards, also in business suits, and Trump was talking and they were laughing. I since found out that Trump’s a few months younger than me, and is tall, 6’3. His guards were both taller than he was. And both were quite young. DLT was talking, and they were listening and laughing. (I notice stuff like that, having been around executives, and how they get on with staff has always educated me into things about an executive, especially how they treat their staff. DLT sent his guards inside so i moseyed over to just say “Hello”. Since I had a business suit on as well, he extended his hand, we shook, and I was about to introduce myself when one of the guards peeked out the door, and Trump turned to say it was time to go.

All I can say is “Nice guy.”, but of the dozen or so people on the Boardwalk, I’d say I was the only one to recognize Donald Trump.

Donald Trump may never be president. But he has been a Godsend. For 20 years we have had a Great Spiritual Awakening just around the corner, waiting to happen, only this time it is as much about the American theology of liberty as it is about the underlying issues of faith and morality that we are seeing mocked, only no longer just by the Left and corporate GOP Establishment, but corporate conservatism. Today, our country is besieged with enemies who wish to eradicate both of these freedoms, in no particular order, so it only stands to reason that both the apologists and defenders of these freedoms have to at least know where their heart is, and that they are more than just vain repetitions.

They have all joined together to shout out their mutual disdain for one thing. So how can men of goodwill, Christian or libertarian sensibilities not find some basis for enthusiasm for Donald Trump?

I often use a term here, “rice bowl Tories” to describe those conservatives, who, if forced to make a choice between the only genuine philosophical purpose of conservatism, or the King, will likely choose the King… just to protect their rice bowls plus all the status that can come from that employment.

I thank God for Donald Trump. He is gathering up the faceless-and-nameless vote, people who are supposed to be conservatism’s constituency, but have been cast off. They have been abandoned at the altar of an Establishment that long ago buried trite, simplistic chestnuts as a justifiable cause for any movement, as any Methodist theologian would. Obviously the connection was ruptured long ago, and the time for a reformation is upon us.

Trump is jeopardizing those rice bowls. He is on the verge of dismantling  the establishment’s entire support system.

American history needs to be shed of these faux-corporate conservatives,  just as all the Great American Tories from the first Revolution have faded into dust.