Forging a Christian Politics

Derek Suszko

            Derek Suszko is the Associate Editor of The St. Croix Review.

Introduction

In a previous essay, I attempted to effect a partial reconciliation between a personal devotion to Christianity and the practical pursuit of temporal power offered by the philosophy and doctrines of Friedrich Nietzsche. A majority of Christians can never retreat from power, for it is a Christian duty to preserve the stability and prosperity of civilization and to use the righteous methods of power to ensure preservation. Having granted that it is the duty of Christians to pursue power in the rapidly decaying United States, it remains for me to outline the means and methods by which they should do so. I wrote already of the messianic basis of any authentic “Christian politics.” A true Christian politics is always one of deliverance, of making the paths straight for those seeking salvation, and of safeguarding the resonances that are native to human hearts. I will offer in the course of this essay pragmatic suggestions for the advancement of a Christian politics. But such a politics will make no progress if those who lead it fail to grasp that it must embrace the people as they are and not succumb to the allure of “purity tests” or similar exclusionary measures. The American people are a Christian people, however much a puritan or a cynic might point to apparent hypocrisies or shortcomings, and the assertion of the desire for salvation is all that is needful to call a man or woman blessed in the name of the Lord.

The Integration of the American Right

I said before that there is no possible dismissal of the emerging, quasi-Nietzschean “Dissident Right.” It will have to be integrated, in one form or another, into “American conservatism.” In truth, this process might prove less an integration than an overthrow. Old-style conservatives may deplore the rise of this kind of aggressive politics to their right, but such a development was inevitable given the reality of the American political situation. The political record of the “conservative coalition” that emerged in 1980 and persists tenuously to the present, is abysmal. Such a coalition was a boon for large corporate and financial interests, but a disaster for the Christian-American folk who make up the plurality of the “conservative” electorate. It is not inaccurate to assert that the Republican coalition of the last forty years has not delivered a single tangible benefit to the great majority of its voters. You could go further and assert that it has aided the leftist establishment in tangibly harming these voters. The problem was always rooted in a fear of deploying political power. Rather, a fear of deploying domestic power. The leaders of the “conservative coalition” had no problem pursuing their own material interests by killing many thousands of Middle Easterners across the sea. But it could never bring itself to advocate any policies that would benefit its voters. An in-house backlash was inevitable, for the old “conservatism,” rooted as it is in the same degenerative “global liberal” ideology as the leftist establishment, is “dead values” for the 21st century. American conservatism conserved nothing, and the political Right is adjusting to the reality that all the public institutions, bureaucracies and engines of culture are in the hands of leftists.

The old Reagan coalition is over, but what takes its place in the politics of the American Right is not yet clear. Much depends on how dire the American situation is perceived to be. The emerging “Nietzscheans” do not hesitate to say that the Western embracement of the ideologies of global liberalism is nothing less than the suicide of its own civilization. Perhaps most “conservatives” would agree to this, but the fault lines on the political Right relate to the extent of the intended remedies. How many of the corrosive effects of modernity can really be repudiated? And, more to the point, is it possible to induce a majority electorate to support an iconoclastic platform when they are inundated by leftist propaganda and narrative control? I say it is possible, for American decline under leftist hegemony is relentless and terminal, but it is crucial that emerging leaders on the political Right distinguish what is possible from what is fanciful. Any cultural abandonment of Christianity, advocated by the most perverse of the secular Nietzscheans, is laughably deplorable. But the idea of the integralists, to forge a state grounded on a common religious institutional authority (almost always the Catholic Church), is equally outlandish. The central religious expression of America is fiercely and obsessively individual, and it is Protestant, not Catholic.¹ The future course of the American Right lies no more in a rejection of Christianity than it does in an imposition of European modes of Christian statehood. The religious culture of America possesses the rebel spirit of the frontier that separates itself from the viscosities of ancient Old-World heritage. For the American believer of all denominations, the person of Christ is an immediate presence and His Spirit hovers over the acts and thoughts of daily life. To understand what the man of power must be to restore the old resonances to the American folk, we have to go to the words of Christ Himself.

The Faithful Steward

The parable in Luke 16:1-11 is illustrative of Christ’s idea of political leadership. This parable is one of the least-known and most resistant to adequate exegesis, judging by the platitudinous commentaries that have thus far come to it. I will go through it with deep precision because it is easy to mistake the meaning, and no parable is more important for our times than this one. The parable is as follows:

1 “And Jesus said also unto his disciples, There was a certain lord, which had a steward; and the steward was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods.”

2 “And the lord called the steward, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? Give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward.”

3 “Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed.”

4 “I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.”

The beginning of the difficulty arises with the ambiguous use of “they.” A “steward” was the servant who was at the head of all other servants of a household. In the context, the steward refers to as “they” the servants over whom he exercises stewardship.

5 “So the steward called every one of his lord’s debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord?”

6 “And the servant said, An hundred measures of oil. And the steward said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty.”

7 “Then said the steward to another servant, And how much owest thou? And the servant said, An hundred measures of wheat. And the steward said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore.”

8 “And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.”

The parable does not explicitly clarify why the steward is called “unjust.” But we can infer that the steward has been too rigid in his standards of exactment from the servants. By seeking to have the servants repay the lord exactly what they owe him, the steward has ensured that his lord receives nothing. This is the grounds for the lord questioning his performance. Jesus moves quickly from the context of the parable to the general implication. The “children of the world” are, in the context of the parable, the servants; but in a broader sense they are just that: all the people of the world in need of salvation. “The children of light” are either those in religious authority, or (for our time) anyone tasked by God with “stewarding” the people to salvation.

9 “And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.”

“Mammon” is a term used by Jesus here and in the Sermon on the Mount.² The exact meaning of this word is disputed, but its etymological origin relates to material wealth or riches. More broadly, it relates to the sinful desires of the world and the temptations that draw one away from salvation. Jesus should not be obfuscated here. He is suggesting that the “stewards” of the world must make friends with the “sinful masses” because when they fail in their higher missions to bring the people to salvation, they will find redemption in their affection for the very people they were supposed to help save. This is a symbiotic relationship. The “stewards” will fail, because mankind is sinful by nature. It is only by cultivating an authentic love for the people that justifies the salvation of the stewards. Without such a love, the stewards will not be saved themselves.

10 “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: And he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.”

No exegesis I have seen has dealt appropriately with this verse, likely because it appears in a different context in Matthew.³ The “least” here refers to the “children of the world.” To be faithful to the “children of the world” is to be faithful to a sinful humanity that is unworthy of salvation. To be “unjust” to the “children of the world” is more tempting for the “children of light,” because the “children of light” might assume out of pride that they are less sinful than the masses, and so are licensed to castigate them.

11 “If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?”

The moral injunction here is clear. If the stewards insist on “respect for persons” and treat others on the basis of perceived moral worth, they are committing a grave sin that will justly condemn them. A steward is not worthy to oversee the “true riches” of the heavenly pure who are without sin if they are not worthy to oversee the sinful masses of the earth.

12 “And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own?”

The stewards are summoned to the higher calling of moving the “children of the world” toward repentance and salvation. If they are not faithful to this cause they will not receive what is “their own,” namely, their own salvation.

The parable is uneasy for our times because it contradicts the rampant egalitarianism of contemporary Christianity. Our modern Christians rightly insist that everyone is sinful, but they take this so far as to nullify the very clear distinctions Jesus Himself conveys among the people of the world. Just because everyone is a sinner and unworthy of salvation doesn’t mean that some aren’t called to steward the salvation of others. It is clear that the standard of salvation is different for the stewards and the servants. The servants will be judged on the basis of belief. But the stewards will be judged on the basis of belief and the faithful execution of their callings. The steward who proclaims Christ but treats the masses with contempt is damned.⁴ The commentators who say that this parable is directed at the “unjust stewardship” of the Pharisees are correct, but there is reason to believe that the intended scope is broader than this. Certainly, spiritual leaders are called to steward the people, but on what grounds can I insist that Jesus is here referring to political leaders also?

The Politics of Christ

In the context of the parable the steward is clearly in a position of power, and the power he exercises is economic in nature. He is charged with exacting payments owed to the lord by servants. To dismiss this as only metaphorical for “spiritual payments” is an easy but inadequate way to deal with the implications of the parable. Why does Jesus add the detail of the steward’s consternation: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed? To beg is to admit that one has no temporal power. But Jesus makes it clear that the steward is meant to have power. If the steward is metaphorical for a “spiritual leader,” why should he not beg? Elijah and Jeremiah were beggars. St. Francis of Assisi was a beggar. Jesus instructs the disciples themselves to beg at the houses of those they administer the gospel to. The steward acts justly not by “selling all he has” to the servants but by amending his stewardship and retaining his position. Jesus, here and elsewhere, is all-knowingly perspective of the different functions given to men on the earth. No Christian would insist that everyone is called to be a wandering prophet. When Jesus said “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s”⁵ it was not a statement of the permanent division between the State and the Spirit (which is a secular modern invention) as much as an acknowledgment of the different functions of men of the world.⁶ Some men are called to be prophets and preachers, and they will be judged for the faithfulness of their stewardship. But others are called to be faithful to the people in the exactions and executions of the tasks of daily life. In the highest sense, these are the politicians and the rulers. The politicians are tasked by Christ with preserving the dignity of the people, and this dignity is crucial in the process of individual salvation. I hardly mean to suggest that a ruler is of equal importance to a prophet in leading the people to salvation. The matters of the spirit, here and in all things, supersede the matters of the world. But the rulers do have a role, to uphold the sanctity of a society (I dare to say a Christian society) where the people can retain dignity in their bids for salvation. The steward of the parable is not meant to be a surrogate for a prophet but rather a surrogate for those politicians and taskmasters who administer the daily functions of the world.

This reading undermines the modern idea of the secular state. Yet even wary conservatives recognize that the “modern” nation-states of the Western world have produced well-nigh assaults on the individual dignity of the people. The state of our social relations between men and women is a disaster, and the louring leviathans of bureaucracy and administration are designed intentionally to cudgel individual sense of meaning. The secularization of marriage and family matters has produced a wreckage of heartbreak, enmity and shattered homes, and the sense of the communal bond upheld by the state is a forgotten resonance. To obliterate the chronic angst of modernism, you must obliterate its conception of the secular state. No state is ever really secular, as I maintain the religion of the present American state is embodied in the ideologies of the rainbow flag. But these secular monstrosities are inadequate substitutes for true values, because they seek to supplant native meanings endowed in humans by God. The all-hallowed “separation of church and state” is a mirage, for all states impart the values of their ruling elite. A state that can send a man to prison for desecrating a rainbow flag is a state with blasphemy laws. The conservatives who say that the history of the United States bears out the prudence of “separation of church and state” do not understand that for most of our history, Christianity was common culture, and there was no need to make explicit what was obvious to everyone. Now the United States is a multicultural quagmire of competing tribes, with no justification for existing as a compact except as an economic zone where various grievance factions can plunder from the population not allowed to advocate explicitly for itself. The ruling regime’s contempt of Christians is both religious and racial in nature. It is religious because Christianity is the greatest impediment to the inculcation of secular values among the people. And it is racial because the enemy race of the regime is European-American whites, and white evangelical practice is the strongest counter-resonance to regime ideologies.

Conservatives who reject this overt identitarianism must understand that it has been forced on the Christian-American folk by targeted hostility from the ruling regime. Such animosity necessarily awakens the dormant consciousness of a people. Only by a communal comprehension of themselves can the targeted groups overcome subjugation. It is no accident that this sounds like the rhetoric of leftism. The leftists learned long ago that all politics is won by generating and sustaining factions animated by shared grievance. Leftist political domination in the United States is due not only to its ability to form and appease clearly delineated factions within its coalition, but also to its propaganda triumph in denying such faction formation and advocacy for its opposition. Here is the origin of our decline, for the factions supported by leftists are destructive to society (and so to individual dignity) while the Christian-American folk embody the pursuit of dignity, both in healthy societal behaviors and in the embracement of the Christianity that upholds native human meaning. Any American state that would prosper must protect this population as its priority. And so, the great task of the stewards of the future American state commences by awakening in this population its consciousness of itself as a people.

The Caution of Puritanism

There is another side to the parable that I will consider, and it relates to the caution of puritanism. The steward is clearly puritanical in his role as exactor. He asks of the people what they are not able to give. In his pride, he sets the boundary of his task at “all or nothing” and the consequence is that he exacts nothing for his lord. This is the great danger for the prophets and philosophers of the world, that out of the hubris of their insights, they attempt to exact too much from the people. Such “puritanism” has already infected many on the “dissident Right.” They are so plugged into politics that they do not see that politics is never life for the people. Partisans of the “dissident Right” routinely mock the remnants of “boomer” conservatism and constantly display frustration at the perceived political naiveté and moral laxity of the folk.⁷ Many recently converted right-wing intellectuals seem especially apoplectic at the alleged amorality or naiveté of the people, and succumb to the nihilist pits of women-hating, boomer-hating and even evangelical-hating. These are the Jonahs of the new Right, obsessed with their own dubious moral purity and incensed at a wicked and amoral population desperately in need of instruction. They would rather sleep in the belly of the whale (political irrelevance) than meet the people on their terms. Successful politics is always a balance of pragmatism and principle. The key is not to compromise principles but to find the most pragmatic way to pitch the principles to receptive factions.

I’ll take two examples: The “boomer” conservatives and “traditional” women. No one needs to persuade old conservatives to despise the leftist infestation of American society. What is necessary is to persuade them that there are no methods involving “limited government” or “forming a multiracial coalition” or “Congressional investigations” that will succeed. Only state power can supplant state power. The Democrat coalition is built on hatred and envy of whites (I include in this calculus white Democrat voters, who hate themselves). The legislature at this stage of our “republic” is impotent before the bureaucracies. These statements are all true. But only by crafting a proper political paradigm will the “New Right” convince the old conservatives to support them. This is not done by vicious disparagement of their long-held ideological positions. The case with “traditional” women is even more delicate. The social situation for men is wretched, and social reforms are needed to fix the decline in marriage and birth rates. But our women must never be treated with the open contempt that is displayed so frequently by many young right-wing intellectuals. What does it matter that newly traditional women were promiscuous and after their “conversions” tend to display some remnant attachment to feminist paradigms? I am not concerned about the current aggregate political preferences of women. It is true that women are natural feminists until they have a man (mostly fathers and husbands) they can trust with their safety. It is part of their survival strategy for the modern world. But so too it is women’s strategy to follow status and power. And nothing displays the lack of status and power like whining resentment. Instead, offer women the chance to be the beloved wives, mothers and daughters of a great and rejuvenated people. Women are more tribal in political affiliation by nature, and the leftist success in instilling the idea that a woman’s tribe is the “sisterhood” and not “the Christian-American people” is the root cause of majoritarian woman support for leftism. Women are receptive to communal appeals and never to moral scolding. The appeals must show a sincere affection for women and a yearning to restore for them what they have lost. The assertion of Will as an act of love is the closest we can come to answer what women want. This is as true of politics as it is of romance.

The Übermensch as Architect of a People

Before I return to Nietzsche, I offer an insight from a very different origin. Here is Confucius speaking on the divide between the “higher men” and the people:

“The law of right living is not immediately clear to the wise man, but it becomes much clearer when he follows it. The law of right living is immediately clear to the ordinary person, but it becomes less obvious when he tries to follow it.”

Here we find the Eastern comprehension of the dilemma of Zarathustra. The skeptical quester needs to exhaust all the possible interpretations of life before he arrives at what the people have found instinctually. But once the quester has found the mode of “right living,” he is much better at adhering to its precepts than the people. The quester is worthy of power because his intellectual explorations have fortified him for the contradictions of life, but only if he rejects the dogmatic expectations of the people that characterize the “philosophers” and the “prophets” I mentioned in the previous essay. The people know how they should live, but mostly fail to live this way. This paradox is the origin of all the frustrations faced by the great charismatic leaders of history, from Moses’ endless exasperation at the “stiff-necked” Israelites down to the inevitable posthumus vilification of Franco and Pinochet. The great writers knew this too, as when Dostoyevsky said, “as I love mankind more, the more I cannot do with individual men.” The balance between managing the fickleness and desire for transgression among the people and protecting their deepest desires for native meaning is the essential dilemma of all human history.

On the spiritual side of the matter, only Christ succeeded in the fullest sense, and He had to rise from the dead to do it. Jeremiah’s failure was total. Moses was a partial success. Muhammad was a resounding success only because he indulged the severest dogmatism of the people and gave birth to the creed of Islam, permanently fearsome for all infidels. Joan of Arc was abandoned to burn at the stake by her countrymen but became in death a person of universal resonance to all Frenchmen. On the political side of the matter, no one can be a total success. Those who succeeded in the highest sense were such persons as the First Emperor of China, Julius Caesar, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, Napoleon, Andrew Jackson and Charles de Gaulle. The price for attaining the reverence of the people of their times is the posthumus ambivalence of the “higher men” of future historians. Of course, one can take the route of Robespierre, Lenin and Mao and invest in a passion politics that rejects native meaning in favor of a supplanting secular ideology. One can also be too forceful in affirming the native meaning of the people, as was the Ukrainian bandit Nestor Makhno and, most extravagantly, Hitler, whose manic devotion to Germans was catastrophic to all non-Germans. To effect a permanent balance in these matters is impossible, for the dialectic of history swallows all individual mortals. But it is clear that some rulers are more successful than others, and the question for the future rulers of the United States is how to protect the native meaning of the people without indulgence in the dangerous excess that produces the mass passion for violence. In this balance is to be found the proper architecture of a people.

I will invoke another of Nietzsche’s doctrines to analyze this dilemma. Nietzsche’s aesthetic theory divided the production of art into the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Nietzsche characteristically defines these terms only by way of analogy. The Apollonian is analogous to the dream-state that intimates a higher, transcendent reality, and promises the possibility of an order to life:

“The Greeks expressed the joyful necessity of the dream experience in their Apollo . . . the higher truth, the perfection of these states in contrast to the only partial comprehensibility of everyday reality, the deep consciousness of nature as it heals and helps in sleep and dreams . . . ”⁸

The Apollonian is fundamentally a civilizing instinct and brings man closer to the comprehension of the regimental order of the heavens. The Dionysian is analogous to intoxication, and to the instinctual passions that cannot be eradicated from animal nature. The Dionysian man ceases to be an organizer of nature, and returns into the disorder of nature:

“Under the spell of the Dionysian, it is not only the bond between man and man which is re-established: Nature in its estranged, hostile, or subjugated forms also celebrates its reconciliation with its prodigal son, man . . . man is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art: the artistic force of the whole of nature.”⁹

The Apollonian passions compel man to explore the hidden nature of things and exercise dominion over the mind and the world. The Dionysian passions compel man to reflect on the devastating powers of fate and uncontrolled desire, and to grimly celebrate what he cannot control. Together, the dynamism produced by the agon between the two drives is the defining attribute of life, and so the fosterer of all great art.

The aesthetic dualism of the Apollonian and the Dionysian is applicable to political life. The common people are bound to Apollonian yearnings because their sense of native meaning depends on the moral order and comprehensibility of the world. But the temptations of the world always emerge from Dionysian impulses of passion. All humans are subject to the basest Dionysian urges, but the people more often succumb to them than the “higher men” of power since power is the ultimate palliative for undignified passion.¹⁰ The persuasiveness of power is always Dionysian, never Apollonian. A rational appeal to order is not sufficient without the generation of the passion for communal preservation. But the practical maintenance of power, and of civilization, is always Apollonian, never Dionysian. The architect of a people must first generate a passion that instils a communal Dionysian resonance among his chosen. Once done, he must maintain the Apollonian discipline to harness this passion for the defense of civilized life. He must never slip into nihilism on account of frustrations with the people, for he sees their hearts, and knows that the life of indulgence is destructive to the sense of native meaning. As a steward, he must exact no more than the people can give. To do this requires that he lay aside his desire to be a skeptical quester (or, if not, he can return to the mountaintop) and merge with the people in the embracement of resonance as the highest truth. The architect must surrender his desire to consternate the people by inducing them to inquire beyond the boundaries of meaning and instead accept the truth that the preservation of the communal sense of native meaning is the highest duty of the highest man. Here is the total devotion to the defense of individual dignity. What does human dignity consist of? It is the freedom to love in accordance with duty. Duty is the pursuit of salvation, of the native meanings inherent to life. The Übermensch of the people is the one who raises up and cherishes all those who sincerely seek for themselves the highest calling of human life.

Redemption of the Rulers

The redemption for all you who wish to rule in the world depends on the righteousness of your stewardship. Did you arouse and preserve for the people the communal resonance that is a portion of their native sense of meaning? Did you work to fashion a society that protected the dignity of those who cherish the nation, uphold the laws, produce the warriors, build the families, and pursue the work of their salvations? Were you faithful to the dearest concerns of God-seeking hearts? You will be judged by your stewardship. Your stewardship consists not only in upholding the order that is necessary to civilized life, but in restoring for the people the sensation of communal kinship smothered by modernity. This is a messianic politics of deliverance, and it returns the people to the earth and to themselves. Witness the despair of the American heartland, the drug deaths, the broken homes, and the suicides, and hear in them the cries of a shattered people who have lost the communal resonance that is necessary to life. Rejoice at the sight of loving marriage and the birth of children among the people, for in their love for you is your redemption.

I conclude with the verses; and to every young seeker of power who would steward the resurrection of the American nation, I say burn them into your heart:

“For the children of this world are in their generations wiser than the children of light. And I say unto you, make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own?”

Notes

1. American Catholics are certainly “Protestantized” compared to Catholics abroad, not in doctrine, but in practice. Serious European Catholics still rigorously observe feast days of saints and venerate relics, go on pilgrimages and take more seriously such holidays as August 15, commemorating the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven (most Protestants do not accept this dogma).
2. The verses in Matthew 6:19-21 and 6:24 are as follows:

“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

The last verse is repeated by Luke at the end of the parable but the effect is different than conveyed by Matthew. In Matthew, the references to “mammon” are wholly negative, and associated with the previous images of worldly covetousness. But in Luke, the “mammon” refers not to sin but to sinful people. If the people themselves are “mammon,” then it follows that “mammon” must be loved.

3. The verse appears in Matthew 25:21 in the context of the parable of the talents. A lord gives five talents (a type of currency) to one servant, three talents to a second and one talent to a third. The first two servants invest the talents and return to the lord with double what they were given. But the third servant buries his single talent in the ground. The first two servants were “faithful” in what they were given but the third servant was not, and is condemned. The parable has similarities with Luke’s parable of the steward but does not feature a “middleman” between the lord and his servants. That is our primary reason for focusing on Luke’s parable.
4. This readily links with the fearsome caution in Matthew 7:21:23:

“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

These verses have been sometimes problematic for Protestants because they could be taken to contradict the idea of salvation by grace alone. This was one of the passages that influenced Calvin to insist on the doctrine of predestination. The impasse has an easy remedy for all denominations if we take it to apply prominently to the “stewards” of the Word. Those spiritual or political leaders who use the name of Christ to willfully sow iniquity are surely not “saved by grace,” for they are freely doing the works of evil.

5. Mark 12:17
6. This was understood by Dante and other medieval writers who interpreted the stable government of Augustus as sanctioned by God. The Messiah came into the world only when the Roman state had achieved the requisite political stability for His message to have the possibility of cosmopolitan resonance.
7. A sampling of the common refrains of “boomer” conservatism include statements like: “Democrats are the real racists,” “Martin Luther King would have been a Republican in 2024,” “Freedom of expression as long as it doesn’t personally affect me” and many other opinions on government that are libertarian in orientation. The problem of old conservatism is that it remains rooted in the liberal idealism of the 20th century. But the advocates of the dissident Right are not going to change the minds of older voters without a convincing change of paradigm that these voters can understand. The emphasis on a Christian culture and people, over the objections of established conservatives who use Christianity as pretense, is the way.
8. The Birth of Tragedy I.
9. The Birth of Tragedy I.
10. This assertion was less true in the ancient world, where power was less a matter of persuasion than of force, but the most functional of ancient states were always subject to this principle. Men like Caligula, Nero and Elagabalus did not last long after becoming monsters of indulgence. In our democratic age, all power is dependent on persuasiveness, and though we have many hypocrites, to forge a new kind of “passion” politics demands an Apollonian discipline that shields the power-seeker against accusations of hypocrisy and abuse.     *