Secularism and religion have always been in tension. But things are tenser than ever according to New York Post op-ed editor Sohrab Ahmari.
In a piece for First Things, Ahmari slammed a way of conservative thinking that is “more a persuasion or a sensibility than a movement with clear tenets.”
Ahmari calls it “David French-ism,” after a National Review and Time columnist, who supposedly embodies a type that underestimates the stakes of the culture war and rely too much on “individual autonomy.”
“The only way is through,” Ahmari writes. By that he means, “To fight the culture war with the aim of defeating the enemy and enjoying the spoils in the form of a public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good.”
Ahmari’s grievance is ultimately that David French-ism has allowed cultural institutions to suffer for the sake of individual autonomy.
Ahmari is right that government must be ordered toward a common good and that there are indeed higher truths we must espouse in politics because at risk are the ultimate ends of mankind: truth, liberty, and beauty.
But it’s wrong to suggest that Frenchism exalts the atomized individual over the common good. Rather, French understands that one is necessary for the preservation of the other: They are inseparable, especially in a democratic republic.
This reality, of course, has its consequences. Ahmari argues that our secular opponents have taken advantage of autonomy and have used it to push the religious line further and further back. And this is certainly true in some cases. The attempts to de-Christianize anything and everything in the public sphere — and even the private sphere — are relentless as they are absurd. Secularism demands not just tolerance but affirmation. Look no further than Colorado baker Jack Phillips.
So, what then is the solution? Here we can’t turn to Ahmari: He offers only critiques, slamming French, secularism, and autonomy while positing no clear answer of what is enough.
There is no easy solution to the moral void our nation faces, but no amount of government or religious coercion will fill what’s missing.
So what then are we to do? First, Christians must acknowledge that today’s secularism does, in fact, pose a threat to our values. It is a religion in itself — a civil one — and its gods are tolerance, diversity, and social justice. This has, unfortunately, resulted in the trampling of what was once a public square in which the religious and nonreligious co-existed and, yes, clashed.
This trampling means that we Christians must defend and fight for our beliefs in every realm with tenacity, and as French would say, decency. Such decency and common courtesy are “secondary values,” according to Ahmari. But if not grace and respect, then what? Again, Ahmari doesn’t say.
Ahmari suggests that the public square in which religion and liberalism once co-existed has disappeared. This isn’t true: It’s protected by the Constitution and the egalitarian politics by which we are governed. Government has provided us the means to fight for our culture, which means that it is up to us, as individuals, to do so.
Ahmari takes fault with this, but the alternative — giving this role to the government or some kind of other organization — would be catastrophic.
Fighting at the individual level isn’t culture war pacifism. Rather, it’s the realization that allowing the fight to take place at any other level, whether it be corporate or bureaucratic, is a far bigger danger to religious freedom than anything else. Ahmari’s culture war tactics are shortsighted: Trump is president only for so long and no one knows how long the Supreme Court will lean right.
To allow government a larger role in the cultural sphere is to sacrifice the individual means to determine what the good life is, and how to live it.
The Constitution leaves the ends up to the individual, as it must. Because any government that dictates the good life, rather than protecting individuals’ ability to pursue it, is totalitarian.
