Did Liberalism Fail? (2) Vermulle's Christian Strategy

Adrian Vermulle (https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/02/integration-from-within/ is a review of Dineen's book; and see also https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/11/a-christian-strategy) makes a most significant advance beyond the negativism and localism of Dreher (The Benedict Option) and Dineen (Why Liberalism Failed) in his suggestion of a "Christian strategy." He proposes Old Testament figures like patriarch Joseph of Egypt, Mordecai, and Daniel who assumed positions of influence in regimes hostile in many ways to their faith. Without any compromise in fundamentals, they were able to effect policy for the welfare of their people, their values and the common good. He suggests that we avoid pledging our allegiance to a specific party, movement or ideology and so maintain a freedom to form alliances with various actors in ways that do not compromise, but advance our faith and the welfare of the broader society and culture. He is advocating a certain detachment and indifference regarding partisan politics in favor of a freedom to maneuver. More importantly, he is demonstrating a confidence, a hopefulness, a sense of agency that is refreshing in contrast to the gloom shared by Dreher and Dineen. This confidence is warranted: a sober, humbled, and grateful Catholic triumphalism is correct as the wisdom we have received from tradition does provide the bedrock for a good, just society. Given the toxic, shallow, self-destructive nature of "liberalism" (by Dineen's definition) or what I prefer to call "expressive individualism," our world is becoming increasing desperate for what is deeply True and Good and Beautiful. Equally important is that although that negative liberalism has largely won the Culture War in the powerful elite institutions, our society retains immense riches, far more than a mere residue, of faith, truth, value and connection in families, churches, movements, and communities. These powerful streams of goodness continue to permeate local and more distant organizations: schools, police and fire departments, flourishing businesses, and yes even bureaucracies! We do well to heed Vermulle's call to a posture of detached, liberated, confident and assertive engagement, even as we develop our local and immediate communities according to a Benedict Option. Dreher and Dineen represent a strain of anti-modernist, "thick" Christianity (evident in traditional Catholicism as well as Fundamentalist and Evangelical Protestantism) that resists those Enlightenment tendencies that undermine our faith and so counters a "thin" liberal Christianity that embraces the modern order and so mis-remembers fundamentals of our faith. Providentially, there is a third alternative: both Benedict and St. John Paul engaged the Enlightenment and its liberal legacy in a positive, yet critical manner, embracing what is best and resisting what is worst. This suggests a confident, grateful Burkean conservatism that moves forward patiently and hopefully, conserving what is best in our present and retrieving what is best in our past, including the wholesome liberalism of FDR and JFK, the conservatism of Ronald Reagan, and the boundless riches of retro-culture from Gershwin to Peter Seeger to Bruce Springsteen.