The Lockean Liberalism of Douglas Wilson's "Boniface Option"

How do we get a Christian nation?  In his Frequently Asked Questions About Christian Nationalism, Douglas Wilson says there are three common answers to that question: the Benedict Option, the Bonaparte Option, and the Boniface Option.

Oddly, Wilson does not mention Rod Dreher, although the Benedict Option was originally proposed by Dreher in his book with that title.  I have argued that Dreher's argument is incoherent, because while he claims to reject liberalism, his proposed alternative to liberalism is founded on the liberal principle of individual liberty by which social order arises through voluntary choice.  I am making the same argument about Wilson's Christian nationalism: although Wilson appears to be arguing for an illiberal theocracy, his careful readers can detect a secret teaching in favor of a liberal social order with religious liberty and toleration.

Dreher tells the story of St. Benedict (480-543 A.D.) and the monastic tradition that he began.  Disgusted by the corruption that he saw in Rome under barbarian rule, Benedict turned to a life of prayer and contemplation, living for three years as a hermit in a cave.  After leaving his cave, he joined a monastic community, and founded twelve monasteries of his own.  To guide the monks and nuns living in such monasteries, Benedict wrote a book The Rule of Saint Benedict with rules for how each day in a monastery can be devoted to prayer, work, eating, fasting, and other orders of ascetic discipline, in which monks learn to live a holy life in this world to prepare for the eternal life to come in Heaven.  This guided the monastic tradition of the Middle Ages.

To show that this is a living tradition today, Dreher describes his time visiting the Monastery of St. Benedict in central Italy near Norcia--the modern name of Benedict of Nursia's birthplace.  This monastery was founded in the tenth century.  It was closed in 1810 under the tyrannical rule of Napoleon, who was trying to destroy the Catholic Church in the territories under French imperial rule.  The monastery was reopened in 2000 by some young American men who wanted to live the contemplative life of Benedictine monks.

Oddly, Dreher does not reflect on how this manifests the religious liberty secured by liberalism.  This monastery was closed under the illiberal rule of Napoleon, but then reopened under the liberal order of modern Italy.  Moreover, as Dreher indicates, all of the monks have voluntarily chosen to submit to the discipline of this monastery, because they want to live a Christian monastic life.  Therefore, the monastery is a voluntary association, which is possible in a liberal social order that secures the liberty for forming such voluntary associations.  So, if the Benedict Option is optional, if it's a product of individual choice without coercion, then it is founded on the liberal principle of social order arising by individual consent. 

Now, of course, few people will choose to live in a monastery.  But Dreher points to many other ways that people can choose the Benedict Option.

Here's how to get started with the antipolitical politics of the Benedict Option.  Secede culturally from the mainstream.  Turn off the television. Put the smartphone away.  Read books.  Play games. Make music.  Feast with your neighbors. It is not enough to avoid what is bad; you must also embrace what is good. Start a church, or a group within your church.  Open a classical Christian school, or join and strengthen one that exists.  Plant a garden, and participate in a local farmer's market. Teach kids how to play music, and start a band. Join the volunteer fire department (98).

Even without living in a monastery, Dreher argues, parents can turn their home into a "domestic monastery."  A Christian family can have regular times of family prayer.  The family can have strict rules limiting television and online media.  The family can live in neighborhoods with other Christian families.  And the family's life can be organized around their church's worship services and around their private Christian school. 

Notice that Dreher identifies the Benedict Option as "antipolitical politics."  It's "antipolitical" in the sense that it does not require that Christians become politically influential in striving for political power.  For Wilson, that means that while it's a good starting point for Christian nationalism, it doesn't go far enough towards achieving the triumph of Christian nationalism as a political project.  Wilson explains:

The Benedict Option emphasizes a grassroots cultural build-out.  It's about making enclaves where we can keep the faith alive until all of this blows over.  Any concrete political applications or proposals are down the road, on the other side of a bridge that we should cross when we come to it.

The Bonaparte Option believes that a lot could be done through decisive political action.  If we could just get ourselves a Christian prince with some backbone, willing to knock a few heads, we could put a lot of things right around here.

The Boniface Option is the one I hold, which is a deft combination of the first two.  Start with grassroots foundations: sticking to practical Bible teaching, starting classical Christian schools, beta testing a Christian culture in a small town, writing and publishing on the subject.  Do all of this over the course of many years, hoping to establish an intelligent Christian populace that will provide the necessary support and platform for some decisive Christian leadership.  This is basically the first option, but with the expectation that we are going to get to that bridge we need to cross a lot sooner than the first-option men think we will (FAQ, 133-34).

What Wilson says about the Bonaparte Option is incoherent.  First of all, Napoleon Bonaparte was not a "Christian prince."  As Dreher indicated, Napoleon shut down the Monastery of St. Benedict in Italy because suppressing the Catholic Church was part of his plan for imperial conquest.  In fact, a few paragraphs after the passage above, Wilson says that the proponents of the Bonaparte Option are not necessarily looking for a Christian prince: "We need a strong solution, they think, not necessarily a Christian one."  He goes on to say that what's most likely is that they will put into power someone like Hitler or "a bargain-bin Mussolini" (135).  

When Wilson first proposed these three options, in a 2023 blog post, he said that the Bonaparte Option would be the rule of a "strong man of some sort," and he did not identify this strong man as a "Christian prince."  Nor did he say that the Boniface Option included the Bonaparte Option.  So on the question of whether the Bonaparte Option means the rule of a "Christian prince" or the rule of a fascist "strong man," Wilson contradicts himself.

Wilson does insist that his Boniface Option is not "Christofascism."  Because he does not want "a red Caesar."  He does not want "Donald Trump to be made the Lord Protector."  He does not want "women to be relegated to breeding status only, and forced to wear those scary red dresses."  And he does not want "resurgent antisemitism" (136).  I have written about the Claremont Institute's plan for making Trump the "red Caesar."  Apparently, Wilson is rejecting that.

So it's hard to know what exactly Wilson means by the Boniface Option.  He takes this term from Andrew Isker's book The Boniface Option (2023).  Instead of St. Benedict, Isker argued, Christian nationalists should choose another monk for their model--St. Boniface (675-754).  Boniface was a Benedictine monk best known as a missionary to Germania who converted the pagan Saxons to Christianity, as a reformer of the Frankish Church, and as a promoter of the alliance between the papacy and the Carolingian dynasty that began with Charles Martel.

The most famous story about Boniface is prominent in Isker's book.  When he arrived in Germania, Boniface found that the Saxons were mixing what little they had learned about Christianity with their ancestral paganism.  In their "sacred forest," they had altars to both the Germanic gods and Jesus Christ.  At the center of the forest, was Thor's Tree, a large oak tree that overshadowed Christ's altar.  Benedict wanted to show that Thor had no power and therefore could not be the one true God.  He announced to the Saxons that he was going to cut down Thor's Tree with an axe, and the Saxons gathered around to see Boniface killed by Thor's lightning bolts.  After one swing of the axe into the roots of the tree, according to one of his biographers, a mighty wind swept down from the sky and quickly toppled the tree.  The Saxons who saw this quickly converted fully to Christianity.

For Isker, this story illustrates what he means by the Boniface Option: instead of withdrawing from the pagan world around them and retreating into their cultural enclaves (the Benedict Option), orthodox Christians should become active missionaries to the pagans and seek to convert them.

But notice that there's nothing theocratic about this.  Boniface converted the pagans through persuasion not by force.  And he did not call upon political rulers to help him coercively impose Christianity on the pagans.

The forcible conversion of the Saxon pagans began after Boniface's death, when the Frankish King Charlemagne conquered the Saxons and used violence to motivate conversion in Saxony.    Previously, Christian rulers had used force to correct dissident Christians (heretics and apostates).  But this was the first time that a Christian ruler forced the conversion of pagans.  (See Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity [University of California Press, 1997].)

It would seem, therefore, that the Boniface Option is not illiberal or theocratic because it accepts the liberal principle that religious belief and practice must be voluntary rather than coerced.

That Wilson's Boniface Option does indeed manifest a Lockean liberal view of religion becomes evident in the last chapter of FAQ with the title "What Christians should be doing now."  He explains nine things that Christians should be doing now:

1. Worship in the splendor of holiness.

2. Put away your idols.

3. Stay in the Word.

4. Love your wife; obey your husband.

5. Read.

6. Make money.

7. Live not by lies.

8. Preach the Word.

9. Keep your kids, and keep having kids.

This is a restatement of Dreher's Benedict Option, and it assumes a liberal social order in which Christians are free to live their Christian lives in their voluntary associations--families, churches, schools, clubs, and neighborhoods.  Nothing theocratic about that.

But then Wilson might respond by saying that this Benedict Option is only preparing the way today for a future time--"maybe in 500 years"--when most human beings around the world will have become Christians, and then it will be possible to move to the Bonaparte Option and have Christian princes ruling Christian nations around the world.  In fact, Wilson argues, God has told us--in the Book of Revelation--that this is inevitable because it is prophesized that Christians will rule over the whole Earth for a thousand years, and this will be the ultimate theocracy on Earth.  After that thousand-year reign of theocracy, Jesus will come back to Earth to usher in the Day of Judgment, with the saved ascending into Heaven and the damned descending into Hell. 

If Wilson is correct in this "postmillennial" interpretation of Revelation, this would prove that Roger Williams and the Baptists generally are wrong in their claim that the New Testament does not support Christian theocratic government.  Because even if the New Testament Christians did not try to establish a Christian theocracy, they saw in the Revelation of St. John a prophecy of Christian theocracy at the end of history.

But as I will indicate in a future post, there is no reason to believe that John's Revelation clearly says that.  If the revelation of Christ to John was perfectly clear, we should be able to define the content of that Christian revelation in a way that all Christians will accept.  Since Wilson admits that his interpretation of what Revelation says about the millennium has not been accepted by all Christians, because there are at least three or more Christian views of the millennium, that means that his interpretation is not the clear revelation of God's word.  It is just "the opinions of some guy."

The Liberalism of the Benedict Option--Against Catholic Integralism?

An Austrian Monastery

The argument of Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option (2017) is fundamentally the same as Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed.  And like Deneen, Dreher's argument is incoherent, because while he claims to reject liberalism, his proposed alternative to liberalism is founded on the liberal principle of individual liberty by which social order arises through voluntary choice.

A few years ago, Deneen wrote an essay placing himself and Dreher on the same side of an intellectual debate among traditionalist American Catholics.  (Since then, Dreher has converted to the Eastern Orthodox Church.)   On one side, there were the Whig Catholics taking the position developed by John Courtney Murray that Lord Acton was right about Thomas Aquinas being "the first Whig," and that traditional Catholicism was compatible with the American tradition of liberal democracy, because liberal pluralism and religious liberty secured a home for Thomistic Catholics to live their Christian lives.  The proponents of this position included Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, George Weigel, and others who wrote for First Things, the journal founded by Neuhaus. 

On the opposite side of this debate were the radical traditionalist Catholics--Dreher, Deneen, and others--who took the position developed by Alasdair MacIntyre that Thomistic Catholicism and American liberal democracy are fundamentally incompatible, because the false anthropology of liberal individualism that sees human beings as essentially separate, autonomous selves destroys the conditions necessary for cultivating the natural and supernatural virtues in families, communities, and the Church.

Since Deneen wrote his essay in 2014, the journal First Things has moved away from Neuhaus's Whig Catholicism--Neuhaus died in 2009--and towards the radical traditionalism of Deneen and Dreher.  For example, in last October's issue, First Things published an article by Edmund Waldstein defending Catholic integralism, which Waldstein has summarized in three sentences:  "Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that rejects the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holding that political rule must order man to his final end. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him: a temporal power and a spiritual power. And since man’s temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power." 

In particular, Waldstein recommends the medieval Catholic kingdom of St. Louis IX in thirteenth-century France as a historical model of a social order in which the temporal power of government was subordinated to the spiritual power of the Church.  Here then is a clear rejection of the modern liberal regime and endorsement of the medieval illiberal regime.

But what makes the argument of Deneen and Dreher so confusing is that while they reject modern liberalism, they also reject medieval illiberalism, because they want to build on the achievements of liberalism in promoting liberty, equality, and justice.  That's what I mean in saying that their argument is incoherent.

As I indicated in my previous post, Deneen condemns the medieval social order for its "practices of slavery, bondage, inequality, disregard for the contributions of women, and the arbitrary forms of hierarchy and application of law" (19, 23, 185).  Similarly, Dreher says that medieval Europe was "no Christian utopia," because "the church was spectacularly corrupt, and the violent exercise of power--at times by the church itself--seemed to rule the world."  And yet, "despite the radical brokenness of their world, medievals carried within their imagination a powerful vision of integration.  In the medieval consensus, men construed reality in a way that empowered them to harmonize everything conceptually and find meaning within the chaos" (25).

So, Dreher believes, medieval Christians had "a powerful vision of integration"--a metaphysical conviction that "meaning transcends ourselves and is grounded in God" (234)--but their medieval social orders failed to actualize that metaphysical vision of human beings living lives that are meaningful because they are part of a cosmos created by God with the promise of eternal life in Heaven. 

Liberal social orders must also fail to actualize that metaphysical vision of living in a sacred cosmos, because liberalism separates church and state, so that religious belief and practice become a private activity of individuals exercising their religious liberty, but without any public support from a political establishment of religion.

Through most of American history, Dreher observes, American Christians could be reassured by the thought that although there was a formal legal separation of church and state, there was an informal cultural consensus that America was a Christian nation.  Or as Neuhaus once said, even if America did not have a confessional state, it could have a confessional society.

In recent decades, however, Dreher laments, it has become clear that American Christians have lost the culture war--their Waterloo was in 2015 when the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges declared a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, thus rejecting the biblical teaching about sex and marriage.  Orthodox Christians are now a small minority, and America has become a post-Christian society.

The only choice left for Christians who want to live a Christian life in a post-Christian culture, Dreher argues, is the Benedict Option.  With this term, Dreher is echoing the famous last paragraph of MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981).  MacIntyre had told the story of how the ancient Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics had been lost, how the modern attempt to ground morality in a shared, rational, and purely secular basis had failed, and how this had left us with a chaotic degraded morality of emotivist hedonism and Nietzschean nihilism.  He then concluded by suggesting that we are living through a time like that of the Roman empire declining into the Dark Ages, when men and women of good will set out to construct "new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness."  Now, we today face a similar choice.  "What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. . . . We are waiting not for Godot, but for another--doubtless very different--St. Benedict."

To think through what MacIntyre might be suggesting, Dreher tells the story of St. Benedict (480-543 A.D.) and the monastic tradition that he began.  Disgusted by the corruption that he saw in Rome under barbarian rule, Benedict turned to a life of prayer and contemplation, living for three years as a hermit in a cave.  After leaving his cave, he joined a monastic community, and founded twelve monasteries of his own.  To guide the monks and nuns living in such monasteries, Benedict wrote a book The Rule of Saint Benedict with rules for how each day in a monastery can be devoted to prayer, work, eating, fasting, and other orders of ascetic discipline, in which monks learn to live a holy life in this world to prepare for the eternal life to come in Heaven.  This guided the monastic tradition of the Middle Ages.

To show that this is a living tradition today, Dreher describes his time visiting the Monastery of St. Benedict in central Italy near Norcia--the modern name of Benedict of Nursia's birthplace.  This monastery was founded in the tenth century.  It was closed in 1810 under the tyrannical rule of Napoleon, who was trying to destroy the Catholic Church in the territories under French imperial rule.  The monastery was reopened in 2000 by some young American men who wanted to live the contemplative life of Benedictine monks.

Oddly, Dreher does not reflect on how this manifests the religious liberty secured by liberalism.  This monastery was closed under the illiberal rule of Napoleon, but then reopened under the liberal order of modern Italy.  Moreover, as Dreher indicates, all of the monks have voluntarily chosen to submit to the discipline of this monastery, because they want to live a Christian monastic life.  Therefore, the monastery is a voluntary association, which is possible in a liberal social order that secures the liberty for forming such voluntary associations.  So, if the Benedict Option is optional, if it's a product of individual choice without coercion, then it is founded on the liberal principle of social order arising by individual consent. 

Like the Amish children who choose to be baptized as adults and thus become members of the church, the men and women who choose to become monks or nuns are freely choosing to limit their choices by submitting to the rule of their religious community.

In his review of Dreher's book, Edmund Waldstein tells his story of how he became a Trappist monk in a Cistercian monastery in Austria as an illustration of Dreher's Benedict Option.  He came from a family of eight children, living in the United States and Austria. They were raised by Catholic parents, and they are all still practicing Catholics, because their parents took them to Mass everyday, prayed with them, and educated them to understand and appreciate the intellectual and artistic traditions of Christendom.  They lived in Catholic communities all their life.  Waldstein attended Thomas Aquinas College, a small Catholic "great books" college in California, and he sees the college and the community of families surrounding it as a Benedict Option Community.  All of this prepared him to seek out the monastic life.

But notice that the formation of Waldstein's Christian life was made possible by the freedom of liberal social orders in America and Austria--a freedom expressed in the free choices of his parents and of his siblings to live in Christian communities, and in his choice to live as a monk.  In fact, living the monastic life remains an option in liberal societies around the world, as indicated at the website with instructions for how one can become a Trappist monk or nun at one of the Cistercian monasteries in the United States.

Here is a video about the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, a Cistercian monastery made famous by Thomas Merton, who was a monk there:

It is hard, therefore, to understand Waldstein's scorn for modern liberalism and his Catholic integralist longing for the medieval theocratic monarchy of St. Louis IX, which suggests that he doesn't appreciate how he has benefited from the liberty secured by liberalism.

Now, of course, few people will choose like Waldstein to live in a monastery.  But Dreher points to many other ways that people can choose the Benedict Option.  He writes:

"Here's how to get started with the antipolitical politics of the Benedict Option.  Secede culturally from the mainstream.  Turn off the television. Put the smartphone away.  Read books.  Play games. Make music.  Feast with your neighbors. It is not enough to avoid what is bad; you must also embrace what is good. Start a church, or a group within your church.  Open a classical Christian school, or join and strengthen one that exists.  Plant a garden, and participate in a local farmer's market. Teach kids how to play music, and start a band. Join the volunteer fire department" (98).

Even without living in a monastery, Dreher argues, parents can turn their home into a "domestic monastery."  A Christian family can have regular times of family prayer.  The family can have strict rules limiting television and online media.  The family can live in neighborhoods with other Christian families.  And the family's life can be organized around their church's worship services and around their private Christian school. 

Much of Dreher's book consists of his reports from interviewing people who live in local Christian communities of families.  One example is the community of orthodox Catholic families who live in one district of Hyattsville, Maryland.  They moved there so that they could live in a neighborhood with other Catholic families.  Many of them are rooted in St. Jerome Parish. 

In 2010, the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., was planning to shut down the school attached to St. Jerome Parish because of the school's dropping enrollment and increasing debt. Parents organized to persuade the archdiocese to allow the school to be turned into a "classical Christian education school" based on a "Great Books" and Christian curriculum.  The new St. Jerome Academy was so successful that it has become a model for establishing other classical Christian schools around the United States.

But here, again, one sees the incoherence in Dreher's argument as soon as one notices that the flourishing of these Benedict Option communities depends on the liberal principles of tolerance and religious liberty that Dreher rejects as threats to Christian life.

In his chapter on "The Roots of the Crisis," Dreher writes:

"The U.S. Constitution, a Lockean document, privatizes religion, separating it from the state.  Every American schoolchild learns to consider this a blessing, and perhaps it is.  But segregating the sacred from the secular in this way profoundly shaped the American religious consciousness."

"For all the good that religious tolerance undoubtedly brought to a young country with a diverse and contentious population of Protestant sectarians and a Catholic minority, it also laid the groundwork for excluding religion from the public square by making it a matter of private, individual choice.  In the American order, the state's role is simply to act as a referee among individuals and factions.  The government has no ultimate conception of the good, and it regards its own role as limited to protecting the rights of individuals."

"When a society is thoroughly Christian, this is an ingenious way to keep the peace and allow for general flourishing.  But from the Christian point of view, Enlightenment liberalism contained the seeds of Christianity's undoing." (36) 

Notice Dreher's evasiveness here.  Is privatizing religion and separating it from the state a "blessing"? "Perhaps it is."  Religious tolerance brought some good--"to keep the peace and allow for general flourishing."  But it also "contained the seeds of Christianity's undoing."

Elsewhere in his book, however, Dreher declares that religious liberty really is "a blessing to us" (80). And he explains:  "Religious liberty is critically important to the Benedict Option.  Without a robust and successful defense of First Amendment protections, Christians will not be able to build the communal institutions that are vital to maintaining our identity and values" (84). 

So here it seems that rather than planting "the seeds of Christianity's undoing," the religious liberty in a liberal order is the critically important opening for the Benedict Option. 

Far from being anti-liberal, the Benedict Option is made possible by liberalism.

The Failure of Deneen and Dreher in Their Critique of Liberalism

Last year, I wrote a series of posts on Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option and Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed (here, here, here, here, and here).  I argued that their critique of liberalism failed at four levels.  They failed to provide an accurate interpretation of liberal political theory.  They failed to analyze the factual evidence of liberalism's performance.  They failed to provide any attractive illiberal alternative to liberal social order.  And they failed to provide any coherent argument for rejecting liberalism.

Recently, their books have been published in paperback editions with new forewords.  I assumed that they would use these new forewords to answer their critics.  I was disappointed when I saw that they had decided not to do that.  Deneen's foreword does end with four pages under the title "Responding to Some Critics" (xx-xxiv).  But he responds in only a very general way without any detailed responses to the particular criticisms that I and others have offered.

My first criticism--their inaccurate interpretation of liberal theory--is mentioned briefly by Deneen in saying that "the book has been criticized for an inaccurate or unfair depiction of 'classical' liberalism" (xx).  But he and Dreher are completely silent about my specific claim that they have failed to develop any good interpretation of John Locke's liberalism.  This is important because they agree that Locke is "the first philosopher of liberalism" (Dineen, 32).

While Deneen insists that Lockean liberalism teaches "pursuit of immediate gratification" (39) and the "absence of restraints upon one's desires" (116), he says nothing about how Locke contradicts this claim in Some Thoughts Concerning Education.  In that book, Locke stresses the importance of parents educating their children so that they have a sense of shame in caring about their good reputation (secs. 56, 61, 78).  Locke says that "the great principle and foundation of all virtue and worth is placed in this, that a man is able to deny himself his own desires, cross his own inclinations, and purely follow what reason directs as best though the appetite lean the other way" (sec. 33). "It seems plain to me that the principle of all virtue and excellency lies in a power of denying ourselves the satisfaction of our own desires where reason does not authorize them" (sec. 38). Children must be taught that "covetousness and the desire of having in our possession and under our dominion more than we have need of" is "the root of all evil" (sec. 110). 
Above all, Locke insists, children must be taught and habituated to show "civility"--respect and good will to all people (secs. 66-67, 70, 109, 117, 143-44). Here Locke's emphasis on the need for "civility" is part of what Norbert Elias identified as the "civilizing process" promoted by early modern liberalism to overcome the incivility, violence, and corrupt manners of medieval pre-modern Europe.  Deneen and Dreher are silent about all of this.

They are also silent about my second criticism--their failure to survey the factual evidence of liberalism's performance.  They say nothing about how the empirical indicators of human freedom correlate with the indicators of human happiness.  They say nothing about the historical evidence that modern liberal cultures have inculcated virtues of self-control that account for the stunning decline in violence over the past 500 years.  They say nothing about how the empirical evidence denies Deneen's claim that liberalism produces "titanic inequality far outstripping the differences between peasant and king" (139): this historical evidence shows that rigid inequality was far higher in medieval Europe than it is today.  They also say nothing about the evidence for social connectedness--social bonds within families and voluntary associations--being high in liberal social orders.

In another post, I have written about the evidence that the level of inequality (as measured by the Gini Coefficient) in some Lockean liberal social orders is close to what it was in hunter-gatherer societies.

Rather than looking at the empirical evidence of what liberalism has done, Deneen and Dreher employ a distinctive rhetorical strategy: they find authors who agree with them in criticizing liberalism, they summarize what these authors say, and then they conclude that this proves that liberalism has failed.  They do not even ask the question of whether the empirical evidence supports what these critics of liberalism say.  And whenever one of their favored authors says something positive about liberalism, they are silent about this.  Deneen's selective reporting of Charles Murray's research is an example of this.

In short, the primary mode of argument for both Deneen and Dreher is begging the question.

My third criticism--the failure to defend any illiberal alternative to liberalism--is acknowledged by Deneen (xxii).  But he doesn't offer any clear answer to this criticism.  

My fourth criticism is that both Deneen and Dreher are incoherent in that while they profess to reject liberalism, they actually embrace the fundamental principles of liberalism--such as voluntarism and religious liberty.

Deneen and Dreher would have a coherent argument for rejecting liberalism if they endorsed the radical Catholic traditionalists like Edmund Waldstein who defend Catholic "integralism" in recommending a return to the medieval theocratic kingdom of Saint Louis IX in 13th century France.  But both Deneen and Dreher reject the medieval illiberal order because of the corruption of the medieval Church, its violent exercise of power, and its failure to secure liberty, equality, and justice.

Deneen and Dreher agree with Alasdair MacIntyre's recommendation at the end of After Virtue that we need "the construction of local forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness."  For Deneen the best example of such "local forms of community" is the Amish communities.  For Dreher such communities can arise whenever families form households organized around private religious schools and traditionalist Christian churches.

All of this depends on religious liberty.  Dreher explains: "Religious liberty is critically important to the Benedict Option.  Without a robust and successful defense of First Amendment protections, Christians will not be able to build the communal institutions that are vital to maintaining our identity and values" (84).  But in their appeal to this liberal principle of religious liberty, Dreher and Deneen contradict their claim to be anti-liberal.

Deneen does say in his new foreword that the political history of the past two years--particularly, the populist revolts against liberal democracy in the United States and Europe--suggests that within the next few years we will see the emergence of a "postliberal political theory," perhaps developed in a book written by one of the young readers of Deneen's book (xxiii-xxiv).  But what will make this new political theory postliberal?

Deneen explains: "the achievements of liberalism must be acknowledged, and the desire to 'return' to a preliberal age must be eschewed.  We must build upon those achievements while abandoning the foundational reasons for its failures.  There can be no going back, only forward" (182).

So what are "the foundational reasons for its failure" that must be abandoned, but without abandoning the "achievements of liberalism"?  Are they the liberal principles of "anthropological individualism and the voluntarist conception of choice" (Deneen, 31)?  But as I have pointed out in my previous posts, what Deneen and Dreher scorn as atomistic individualism--human beings living as completely solitary creatures with no social bonds--is rejected by liberals like Locke, Adam Smith, and Friedrich Hayek as "false individualism."  Liberal individualism is actually a communal individualism in which human beings as naturally social animals live as family members, as friends, and in voluntary associations such as schools, churches, and other groups.

Or would Deneen and Dreher say that what must be rejected in a "postliberal political theory" is "the voluntarist conception of choice"?  Deneen observes: "Ironically, given the default choice-based philosophy that liberalism has bequeathed to us, what might someday become a nonvoluntary cultural landscape must be born out of voluntarist intentions, plans, and actions" (192).  What is he saying here?  Is he saying that what start out as voluntary associations must eventually become coercive?  So, for example, while children in Amish communities are now free to choose as adults whether they will stay or leave the community, the "postliberal political theory" of the future will coercively enforce their staying in the community?  Would there be a multiplicity of different communities, in which people would be forced to stay in whatever community in which they were born?  Or would there be only one comprehensive community--perhaps a theocratic Catholic Church--that would constitute the "nonvoluntary cultural landscape"?  So at some point, the Benedict Option will no longer be optional but coercively enforced by law?

But surely this cannot be what Deneen and Dreher are suggesting, because this would abandon "the achievements of liberalism" that come from the voluntarist principle of free choice.  So we are left in a state of total confusion as to what they mean by "postliberal political theory."

As an alternative to Deneen and Dreher, one should consider another modern defender of Christian orthodoxy--C. S. Lewis.  As I have indicated in a previous post (here), Lewis was a Lockean liberal who rejected theocracy as a form of tyranny, who believed that government should not have the power to legally enforce Christian morality, and who thought the only proper aim of government was to secure individual liberty from legal interference except when necessary to prevent harm to others.
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Deneen and others have recently launched a new journal--Postliberal Thought--that will be published both online and in print.  One of the introductory articles is "The Postliberal Moment" by Andrew Willard Jones, which concludes:

"Christianity has deep resources from which to draw. Christianity has the depths from which to offer a meta-critique and the solutions that can save all that was good and right in modernity. If modernity is indeed a Christian heresy, then orthodoxy contains its strengths and even its pathos, but without its exaggerated errors. Within a recasting of the liberal lexicon in terms of a Christian lexicon, liberalism itself, like the Christian heresies that have come before it, is capable of some measure of redemption."

"We are launching Postliberal Thought in order to provide a place for this work. We understand the project to be the work of generations and we are fully aware that by breaking free from the dominant paradigm, we thrust ourselves into areas of intellectual instability and obscurity. Much of what we propose will often no doubt turn out to be mistaken; many of the roads we go down will no doubt turn out to be dead-ends. Postliberal Thought is therefore a place for open-minds and forgiving spirits. We hope to forge a community of Christian thinkers who are animated not by certainty concerning what to do or what to think, but by the hope that we, humbled in prayer before God, will find a way forward."

I find it hard to understand what he is saying, because, like Deneen and Dreher, he seems to be caught in the incoherent position of both denying and affirming liberalism.  Jones is the author of a book--Before Church and State--defending the "Sacramental Kingdom of St. Louis IX" in 13th century France as "the most Christian kingdom."  Wouldn't his position be more coherent if he simply argued for the illiberal regime ruled by Saint Louis as being the model of the best regime designed to secure both the temporal and eternal ends of human life?  In doing this, he would be embracing the Catholic theocratic authoritarianism of the French Counter-Enlightenment that began with Joseph de Maistre and then was renewed by Charles Maurras and the Action francaise.

In identifying liberal modernity as a "Christian heresy," is he referring to Protestant Christianity?  Would postliberal thought require the persecution and suppression of all thought contrary to medieval Catholic social thought, which would deny Vatican II's affirmation of religious liberty?  Would communitarian Christian groups like the Amish have to be persecuted because they arose from the heresy of Anabaptism, which interprets the New Testament as teaching separation of Church and State ("Render unto Caesar . . .") and religious liberty, so that Christian communities must be based on the voluntary consent of the adult members?

The Book of Revelation Does Not Support Christian Theocracy--Douglas Wilson's Postmillennial Liberalism

In arguing for Christian nationalism, Douglas Wilson might seem to be advocating the establishment of a Christian theocracy like the Puritan theocracy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  But I have argued that careful readers of what Wilson has written about Christian nationalism will see that he never clearly advocates anything like Puritan theocracy, and he hints that he is secretly rejecting theocracy and supporting the Lockean liberalism of religious liberty and toleration.

One obvious objection to what I have said is that Wilson is very clear in embracing a postmillennial eschatology that he sees in the 20th chapter of the book of Revelation, which prophesized that Christians would someday, prior to the Second Coming, rule over the world for a thousand years; and surely this means that all nations would be under theocratic rule.

My response is to point out that when Wilson lays out his postmillennial interpretation of Revelation, he never says that the millennial rule of Christians over the world will be theocratic in the sense that Christians will take political power over all governments and use that power to coercively enforce the Mosaic law of the Old Testament.  He does say that the millennial dominance of Christianity over the world comes from the Christian evangelization of the world, which began with the preaching of the early Christians, and sometime in the near future, Christians will succeed in converting most human beings to Christianity.  But he never says that Christians will adopt the Bonaparte Option, which is the theocratic option, so that Christians will put in power "a Christian prince with some backbone, willing to knock a few heads" (FAQ, 134).  His silence suggests that his Boniface Option is simply a slightly more aggressive Benedict Option, in which Christians organize themselves into voluntary groups that promote Christianity, but without seeking the political power to coercively enforce theocratic rule over others.

MILLENNIALISM

The 20th chapter of Revelation (or the Apocalypse) is the most controversial chapter of the most controversial book in the Bible.  Like much of the Bible, Revelation is so obscure that Christians have fought over its interpretation for over 2,000 years without ever reaching agreement about what it means.  The book was written by John (perhaps the apostle John who wrote the Gospel of John), who reports a series of mystical visions that he had on the Greek island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea, in which Jesus Christ revealed to him prophecies of what was to come.

Perhaps the best survey of the leading interpretations of Revelation is Steve Gregg's Revelation/Four Views, Revised & Updated: A Parallel Commentary (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2013).  Wilson mentions this book as "an enormous help to me" in his book When the Man Comes Around: A Commentary on the Book of Revelation (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2019).  Wilson thus invites his readers to compare what he says with what Gregg says; and if they do, they will see that Wilson refuses to endorse postmillennial theocracy.

There are four major views of Revelation as a whole, and three major views of the Millennium in chapter 20.  A preterist (from the Latin word praeter for "past") believes that most of the prophecies in Revelation have been fulfilled in the past--during John's life or shortly thereafter.  A historicist believes that most of the events forecast in Revelation are happening now in the present.  A futurist believes most of those events are yet to come in the future.  An idealist believes that these events are not literally true but rather they have symbolic meaning as part of a dramatic story that conveys transcendent truths, such as the conflict between Christ and Satan.

Revelation 20 is the only chapter of the Bible that speaks of the 1,000-year reign of the saints on the Earth that is commonly called the Millennium.  This chapter raises one of the ultimate questions of the Bible--whether, how, and when God's kingdom is established on the Earth.

The three major approaches to interpreting Revelation 20 are distinguished by how they determine the timing of the Millennium in relation to the Second Coming of Christ.  The premillennialists say that Christ will return before the Millennium, and thus Christ will directly rule over this thousand-year reign of the saints on Earth.  

The postmillennialists say that Christ will return after the Millennium, and thus the millennial reign of the saints on Earth will be the fulfillment of the original gospel mission of the Christian Church to evangelize the whole world.  

The amillennialists say that there is no millennium if it's understood as the literal rule of the saints for a golden age of 1,000 years, because Revelation 20 should be understood symbolically or spiritually as the ultimate victory of the Christian Church in propagating Christianity, with the 1,000 years understood symbolically as the entire period from the First Coming of Christ to His Second Coming.

Wilson identifies himself as a preterist and a postmillennialist.  As a preterist, he believes that most of what is prophesized in Revelation was concerned with events of the first century.  John says that the Revelation of Jesus Christ that appeared to him in his visions was "to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass" (1:1).  Surely, Wilson insists, "shortly come to pass" must mean that most of the events foretold were to happen either during John's lifetime or shortly thereafter.  

But still, as a postmillennialist, Wilson is a futurist in seeing that the Christianization of all or most of the world must lie sometime in the future, perhaps a few hundred years from now, but before the Second Coming. 

Revelation 20 begins with John reporting:

Then I saw an angel coming down from Heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.  He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished.  But after these things he must be released for a little while (Rev. 20:1-3).

According to Wilson, the binding of Satan with a chain is a metaphorical way of saying that he will no longer have the power to deceive the nations the way he had previously.  He will not be able to prevent the evangelization of the Roman Empire and then over the centuries the evangelization of the whole world.  "Looking at the nations of men, he no longer has the run of the place.  Rather, preachers of the gospel have the run of the place, and he can do nothing to stop them" (231). The one thousand years of Satan's binding is a symbolic image of the age of the Christian Church from the time of Pentecost to the Second Coming.

John continues:

And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them.  Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands.  And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.  But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished.  This is the first resurrection.  Blessed and holy is he who was part in the first resurrection.  Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years (Rev. 20:4-6).

Wilson says the thrones that John saw are located in Heaven.  The souls of the Christian martyrs have ascended into Heaven, and there they participate in the spiritual rule of the world, in and through Christ (233).  They are the priests of God and Christ who reign with God a thousand years.  

By the "first resurrection" John means the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the second resurrection is the general resurrection of the dead at the end of all human history. Christians participate in the resurrection of Jesus because "every believer who is truly converted throughout all church history is made a partaker of the resurrection of Jesus, the first resurrection" (234). 

That Christians reign with God for a thousand years refers to the progressive victory of the gospel in the world from the time of the early church to the end of history.  Eventually, over time the vast majority of human beings will be converted, and that's why Wilson is optimistic that in the near future all nations will be Christian nations, because most of their people will be Christians.  The world will become Christianized by through the persuasiveness of the gospel.

And yet, if you read Gregg's book, you will see that some postmillennialists--particularly, the Christian Reconstructionists like Rousas John Rushdooney--say that persuading people to voluntarily convert to Christianity is not enough to create Christian nations.  In addition to preaching the gospel, Christians need to take political power so that they can use governments to coercively enforce the Mosaic laws of the Old Testament: Christian nations must become Christian theocracies.

But in his commentary on Revelation, Wilson says nothing about this; and his careful readers can see this silence as evidence that he cannot endorse theocracy because he is committed to the Lockean liberalism of religious liberty and toleration.

THE OBSCURITY OF REVELATION DICTATES RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

Wilson might respond by saying that he cannot endorse theocracy as taught by the book of Revelation because that book does not teach that--or at least not clearly enough that all Christians can agree that that is what Revelation teaches.  But, as I have argued in previous posts, that's the fundamental problem in taking the Bible as God's revelation of His truth--it's so obscure that Christians cannot agree on what it means--particularly, in its eschatology, in its teaching about what lies at the end of human history and in the afterlife (Heaven and Hell).

Moreover, that the Bible is so obscure that even devout Christians cannot agree on its meaning casts doubt on whether the Bible is a true revelation from God.  In John 17, Jesus prays to God that all believers will be as one, that they will come to complete unity, "so that the world may believe that you have sent me."  It seems that Christians would give witness to the truth of revelation by showing their agreement about that revelation.  But if they cannot come to agreement, then the world can rightly doubt that the Bible is a true revelation.

This is certainly true for the Christian disagreement over the meaning of the Millennium in Revelation 20.  For example, the early Christian apologist and philosopher Justin Martyr (100-165 AD) was a premillennialist, but he respected the opinions of those many true Christians who disagreed with him.  In his Dialogue with Trypho, he wrote:

I and many others are of this opinion [premillennialism], and believe that such will take place, as you assuredly are aware; but on the other hand, I signified to you that many who belong to the pure and pious faith, and are true Christians, think otherwise (Gregg, 49).

 This shows the reality of religious pluralism--or as Locke said, "Every man is orthodox to himself," and "Every church is orthodox to itself."  And that shows the need for religious liberty rather than theocracy.

"WE NEED GOD'S WORD FOR IT"

Remember where we started with my first post on Wilson.  We saw that Wilson's conception of Christian nationalism assumes a Divine Command Theory of ethics--that the only standard of right and wrong is the command of God: whatever God commands to be done is right, and whatever God commands not to be done is wrong.  Wilson explains:

Christian nationalism is the belief that human societies require a transcendent anchor to hold all our cultural, political, and social assumptions in place, and that this transcendent anchor should be the true and living God, not an idol.

All ethical judgments, in order to be ethical judgments, rely on some form of "Thus saith the Lord."  Otherwise, they are not ethical judgments at all, but rather the opinions of some guy. . . . If we want a standard for right and wrong--regardless of whether that standard is going to be applied to a next-door neighbor or to Congress--we need God's word for it.

But how do we know what "God's word" is?  Do we read John's reports of his mystical visions on the island of Patmos?  But how do we know that his mystical visions were true revelations from God?  Even if we assume that they were true revelations, how can we be sure that we have correctly interpreted his often obscure writing?

Should we rely on Wilson's commentary on John's book to give us the correct interpretation?  We notice, however, that Wilson's commentary is full of "I take it that . . ." and "I believe that . . ."

So, finally, what we have is not "God's word" but "the opinions of some guy."