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“And they’ll know we are Christians by our love”

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An oft-repeated theme in Rod Dreher’s lengthy, frequent, and increasingly unhinged posts (no need for links, they comprise around 40% of his voluminous output) about the increasing respect of the full equal citizenship (and humanity) of LGBT people and decreasing respect for those who insist on publicly denying them that status in various way is his insistence (against mounting evidence) that from a Christian (sometimes he remembers to add the ‘orthodox’ or ‘traditionalist’ modifier here, but he often, revealingly, drops it) perspective, rejecting same sex marriage and family formation is simply non-negotiable; it’s too close to core, unchanging and unchangeable Christian teachings. To succumb to social pressure on this issue is tantamount to abandoning Christianity, properly understood. That this position has no merit is obvious in both theory and practice. The reason same sex marriage (and equal rights and social acceptance for LGBT people) has made such progress is primarily because Christians are changing their minds, at more or less the same rate as everyone else. The liberal Christians and Catholics lagged behind non-religious people, and conservative and evangelical Christians lagged behind them, for predictable and easily understood reasons. But what we’re witnessing is the latest iteration of an utterly banal fact of American life playing out yet again: Christianity has always been, its various affectations of countercultural status notwithstanding, a fundamentally and deeply mainstream American identity and set of values, and has demonstrated, time and time again, sufficient flexibility to remain mainstream as the content of American values has shifted over time. And, of course, when the mainstream is split (with respect to, for example, slavery and white supremacy) we see a split in Christianity as well; as it became deeply tied to the defense and the attack of these institutions.

These reflections were motivated by Dreher’s deeply ugly post yesterday about Baltimore and Freddie Gray. Rod Dreher’s reflected on the deadly police violence and its aftermath was to piss on the grave of the recently deceased victim of state violence. If you tried to square this with his avowed devotion to traditionalist, orthodox Christianity by examining the teachings, actions and attitudes of the Jesus as presented in the Gospels, you’d be hopelessly lost. If you tried to square the argument of post with Dreher’s own general mode of social explanation, you’d be equally confused. (His sneering contempt in this post toward societal and structural explanations for social behavior might be easier to swallow coming from someone who didn’t routinely assume that the sexual mores and practices of the upper middle class is clearly and straightforwardly responsible for the broken families of the lower middle class.) The post makes sense only when you remember that solidarity with the downtrodden–the victims of excessive abuses of the power of the state and the choices of powerful economic actors–is tainted by liberals, the declared enemies of American Christendom, properly understood.

Update: fairness compels me to note that Dreher has put up a lengthy and somewhat rambling post that expresses regret over his lack of mercy in describing Gray. While it’s nice to see Mr. Gray removed from the role of scapegoat for Baltimore’s woes, his replacement candidate for that role–the dangerously excessive generosity of America’s social welfare state–provides further support for the point I’m trying make here.

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