Who wants to be a conservative?

Before we get into today’s topic, some exciting news. Learn the Gospel (part one of the new Two ways to live training framework) has finally arrived, and is available for purchase. (In Australia, that is. It will be a few more weeks before the books find their way through the US ports and land in our American warehouse.)

I know many of you have been wondering and waiting for it to be available, and are keen to think how this resource could be used to teach the fundamentals of the gospel in your churches.

To this end, Matthias Media is encouraging churches to run a pilot program in Term 4 (say in two or three small groups) to see how Learn the Gospel fits and works in your context—and offering a friendly bulk price to help you have a go at this. If you’re in Australia, and would like to participate in this pilot, and test the waters for how your church could utilize Learn the Gospel, send an email to Gavin Shume ([email protected]).

(This is an invitation only pilot—just for Payneful Truth subscribers and a few other churches we’re asking.)

But onto this week’s subject …

Who wants to be a conservative?

I’ve lost count how many times over the course of my life that ‘conservatives’ and ‘progressives’ have fought over different issues in my (Anglican) denomination.

Through the fog of time, different figures and controversies rise up and recede in my memory. I see Archbishop Peter Carnley (at that time the Primate of Australia), arguing that the resurrection was a spiritual experience rather than a physical event, and that Christ was not the only path to salvation—and then the godly, gracious Archbishop of Sydney, Harry Goodhew, copping a pounding in the secular press for daring to object (that was in around 2000 I think). I see the radically revisionist Bishop John Spong emerging from the mist, visiting Australia not long afterwards at the invitation of Carnley and the ‘Progressive Christian Network’. And once again the nasty ‘conservatives’ were the ones who criticised Spong’s denial of pretty much every tenet of orthodox Christian doctrine.

Then I think of the long-running skirmishes (starting back in the 80s) over multiple issues—women’s ordination, gay ordination, the blessing of same-sex unions, and more. In each case, the ‘progressives’ or ‘liberals’ sought to change or update the doctrine and morality of Christianity, and in the opposing corner were the ‘conservatives’. And given that on all these issues I found myself barracking for the conservatives, I guess that makes me one. And you too, quite possibly.

So how do you feel about being a ‘conservative’?

I can’t say that the label thrills me to the core.

What’s a ‘conservative’ after all? When we think ‘conservative’, we think of a stick in the mud; a reactionary; a stuffy, buttoned-down member of the establishment who wants things to stay the same. Conservatives are risk averse, change averse, and very likely excitement averse. They wear cream blazers over blue chinos. With their thin, cold and (invariably) white hands, they cling to the dogmas and traditions of the past, in a desperate and doomed attempt to forestall the new and better future that everyone else is longing for.

Just what I always wanted to be—a conservative.

Of course, like many such words in our culture, ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’ are dependent on their predicate (or should be). It’s like being ‘narrow’ as opposed to ‘broad’. It entirely depends what you’re talking about. I would prefer my waist to be more narrow and my shoulders more broad. I’d like my fridge to be conservative of the food inside it, and my five-irons very progressive and if possible in the right direction.

It all depends on what you’re conserving.

Interestingly, this is also true in politics.

British and European political ‘conservatism’ is quite different from American ‘conservatism’, because they seek to conserve different things. I’ve recently been reading George F. Will’s book, The Conservative Sensibility, and he describes the difference like this:

[The European tradition of throne-and-altar conservatism] has generally sought to conserve institutions and practices, such as social hierarchies and established churches, that were produced by the slow working of historical processes spanning many centuries. American conservatism seeks, as Alexander Hamilton did in the Republic’s infancy, to conserve or establish institutions and practices conducive to a social dynamism that dissolves impediments to social mobility and fluency. So American conservatism is not only different from, it is at bottom antagonistic to British and continental European conservatism. The latter emphasizes the traditional and dutiful, with duties defined by obligations to a settled collectivity, the community. Because American conservatism is about individual liberty, it cultivates spontaneous social order and hence encourages novelty.[1]

American political conservatism wants to preserve the norms and principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—which are documents largely designed to protect the freedom of the individual from the tyranny of a monarchical government. European conservatism (on the other hand) is much happier for the king to remain in place and to benevolently rule his subjects for their good, according to the ancient traditions. One of the ironies of history is that today, the enemies of American conservatism are not British monarchs but political progressives, whose ambition is to have the government exercise a greater more monarchical power over the individual and society.

(As for where Australian political conservatism fits into this schema, I’m not sure I can say. It hardly exists as an intellectual force. There’s no throne-and-altar tradition to protect, nor is there a libertarian Constitution to conserve. I suspect Australian political conservatism ends up being a more cautious and practical progressivism. Australians seem increasingly to believe that the government is the most important actor in society, that it is largely to blame for our problems and could solve them if only it had more power and money to spend. The ‘conservative’ side of Australian politics seems content to largely go along with these assumptions, offering an alternative that is supposed to be more cautious and sensible than the other guys.)

But I digress.

The point is: it all depends on what you’re conserving. And on the other side, what is it that you want to change or ‘progress’?

To come back to Christian debates, Anglican ‘progressives’ generally want to improve our doctrine to make it more attractive to the world, while keeping and conserving many of the cultural practices and traditions of historic Anglicanism. And so we have the strange spectacle of modernist Anglican Bishops, spouting ultra-progressive theology, while still clothed in the robes, liturgical practices and church buildings of a centuries-old tradition. Progressive content, conservative style.

The Anglican ‘conser