Notes from Christendom: Urban, Blue-State, Underclass Christendom

Disclaimer: Those who know me well allege that I am not merely an optimist, but a cockeyed optimist. This essay will strengthen that allegation. I have been living in Christendom now for over 73 years. I will die in Christendom. This statement is sociologically and theologically incorrect: everyone knows that we are now in a post-Christian society. Christendom is extinct: a thing of the past, it peaked in the 13th century, was dealt a blow by the Reformation and Enlightenment and left us in a disenchanted, secular, neo-pagan society. I myself have been soaking myself in this literature since Harvey Cox's The Secular City of 1965. Except that is simply NOT my reality. I live in a Christian society. I have always lived in Christendom: a weakened, shallow, confused, wounded, marginalized, disparaged, often discouraged and even despairing Christendom, but Christendom nevertheless. Christendom is alive!It is in critical condition, but is NOT dead! What is Christendom? Simply: a Christian soicety and culture in which Christian ideals reign, aspirationally if not often actually. It is not that everyone practices these ideals: they are too difficult for us. It is that almost no one practices them consistently and fervently; but almost everyone implicitly aspires to them and admires them. To be clear: my argument is that Christendom is alive, weakened but alive, in the underclasses. In affluent, elite circles (academy, entertainment, law, media, etc.) it is a thing of the past and has been replaced by neo-pagan cultural liberalism. But it survives, underground and wounded and vulnerable, in urban evangelical black communities, in the rural Trumpian heartland, and in what remains of ethnic Catholicism that is still ethnic and still Catholic. Here are three foundational Christian principles which, I argue, are broadly honored, if not very well practiced: prayer, marital fidelity, care for the poor. Well over 95% of people I know and associate with very clearly value these. Prayer is simply personal access to a God who is powerful, close to us and kind to us. We all don't pray consistently and fervently, but pretty much all of us appreciate prayer. In my world, this is quite common: someone is telling me about his father's cancer; I respond that I will remember him in prayer; he thanks me. That is Christendom. Marital fidelity is trickier. The Cultural Revolution of the 60s frontally assaulted the entire edifice of traditional family life: pre-marital abstinence, the unitive/procreative meaning of sexuality, the ideal of chastity, "heteronormativity", the essentiality and intentionality of femininity and masculinity. So, Cultural Liberalism has prevailed in elite culture but not so clearly in the lower classes. Ironically, it has had its most devestating effects on low-income and low-status groups. Nevertheless, my experience is that the ideals of fidelity, monogamy, and chastity are still reverenced, even if not very well practiced, by the working and poor classes. Lastly, care for the poor: in my work in providing homes for low-income women, I continually receive generous support from our donors, some of whom have serious money, but also from volunteers as well as firefighters, police, health care workers, inspectors and others. I don't know of a nefarious "deep state"...the bureaucrats who engage us are almost always reasonable and supportive. Ironically: I live in Jersey City, hyper-blue part of a hyper-blue State. It went 75% for Biden. I am myself the redest red-blooded, red-meat, red-fire-engined, reactionary registered Republican on the cultural-moral issues. The DNC: I despise, renounce, execrate, defy, disparage, detest it! It is the structural, systemic-systematic, institutional enactment of religious toltalitarianism, genocide of the helpless, moral chaos and spiritual despair. But democrats are something else. I know them well. They vote for Biden for reasons such as: compassion for immigrants, care for the environment, health care for the needy, greater economic equality, decrease in gun violence and similiar concerns. These are all of them solid, Christian motivations. Ironic: the viciously anti-Catholic DNC is largely fueled by wholesome, well-intended Catholic motivations. Tragically, these good intentions are paving the path to hell: a grave moral misjudgement is operative here. The vote for Biden objectively advances grave systematic evil. Nevertheless, the subjective motivations are largely worthy. Christendom, in a confused, convoluted form, is still alive. I encounter this in its two basic expressions: traditional Catholic pro-union, strong-government liberalism and Black, evangelical liberalism. Both are rooted deeply in Christian values. Both vote compulsively, ignorantly for the Agenda of Death. A mirror image of my Christendom is, of course, the right wing, white, evangelical Trumpism of the heartland, the South and the Midwest. Here again, fierce Christian energies have been enflamed by Trump against the neo-pagan elite hegemony on behalf of religious liberty, religious authority, traditions involving gender/sexuality/marriage and the preciousness of innocent, incompetent life. But again, a grave moral misjudgment is operative in the support of a man whose personal example is so scandalous. Again: Christendom is alive, but weak, fractured into two opposing political camps, mislead by serious moral error, shallow, and under vicious assault from the Cultural Liberalism of the elite.I do worry, mostly, about our young. The neo-pagan dynamics of the upper class are strengthened by social and other media, technology,the atomization of the individual, breakdown of a essential family-church-community networks, and the cancerous growth of big state and corporation. A good example would be the Black Lives Matter movement. I don't encounter it in Jersey City, but when I drive through affluent suburban Essex county where homes are worth over half a million at least there is a sign on every third lawn. The motivation, from what I can tell, is largely compassion for the inordinate poverty, sickness, imprisionment, of black communities. But it predominates among the affluent and educated. While the motives seem pure, as a moral judgment it is worse than erroneous, it is catastrophic. It is: simplistic, polarizing, police-scapegoating, black-male-emasculating, virtue-signaling, anti-white racist, black-racisim-and-resentment enflaming, violence-encouraging, authority-suspecting, community destroying and victimizing of the black identity. But the widespread support is largely a Christian empathy gone sentimental and confused. My adulthood has been spent in diverse, working class Jersey City, teaching in small scale Catholic schools, running boarding homes for low income women and working for 25 years in blue color UPS. In my cosmos, I don't know any Nietzcheans, or Marxists, or Freudians. I have known a Jungian and a Darwinian or two but those would be psychologists or professors, members of the elite who are under the influence of the Empire. IT is like the Rebel Alliance in the Star Wars saga: in hiding, oppressed, marginalized, in constant danger of being destroyed. But we all know that the energies, the solidarity, and the "Force" are waiting patiently for the decisive, surprising strike against the Death Star. And so it is with our Culture War: the elite institutions are oppressive of our faith but we wait, in the underclasses, quiet, anonymous, calm. The Benedict Option takes on a different form in this perspective: given the weakness of Christendom in its distinct expressions and the violence and power of "The Empire of Cultural Liberalism" we definitely need to bond together in smaller, intense communities of faith, especially to fruitfully pass it on to our young. The survival and revival of Christendom depends upon the vigor and vitality of just such communities. Without them, the Empire will prevail over the Alliance. However, there are grounds for great hope: the residual energies of Christendom are substanital if not ostentatious. Allied with revival communities, Christendom will arise!