Upon reflection of the Easter celebration of the Resurrected Christ, the state of our world, and the influences of politics, particularly with regard to its effects on ‘Liberty’, I began thinking about a personal belief that I’m certain is shared by many, but that is also viewed by some within, and outside, the Establishment as ‘controversial’, particularly in our secular post-modern era. I would contend that Christianity and Conservatism are inseparable. Now that is not to say that one cannot be a conservative if one is not Christian, that is not my intent; rather, my purpose is to point out the integral compatibility between Christian theology and conservative political philosophy. Furthermore, as some would imply that Christianity might weaken Conservatism, I’d arduously profess quite the opposite. Christian principles strengthen Conservatism through one of the most recognized means: a moral order in a civil society.
As The Cornerstone Group blog so accurately states:
Religion, indeed, with few exceptions, has always been a key element in Conservative thinking. Ever since Edmund Burke wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France, conservatism has largely been advanced on the basis of a Christian worldview. For Burke religion was “the basis of civil society”. He called Christianity “one great source of civilisation”.
Considered the “Father of Conservatism”, Edmund Burke maintained a definitive belief in God that wholly encompassed his philosophy. Burke explicitly protested the Age of Reason with his shared thoughts on the Divine. He was expressly outraged at the arrogant dismissals of the so-called ‘Enlightened’, and willfully defended Divine Providence:
“I allow that, if no supreme ruler exists, wise to form, and potent to enforce, the moral law, there is no sanction to any contract, virtual or even actual, against the will of prevalent power… If ye despise the human race and mortal arms, yet remember that there is a God who is mindful of right and wrong… out of physical causes, unknown to us, perhaps unknowable, arise moral duties, which, as we are able perfectly to comprehend, we are bound indispensably to perform.”
Burke also emphasized the importance of a statesman’s Christianity in allowing Providence to guide his political endeavors. The modern liberal notion of ‘separating Church and State’ in Burke’s philosophy would have been preposterous! As Russell Kirk wrote, “…Burke’s was a lofty faith, but it was also the faith of a practical man, joined to ideas of public honor and responsibility. A man who believes that a just God rules the world; that the course of history has been determined, though commonly in ways inscrutable, by His Providence; that individual station in life is assigned by “a divine tactic”; that original sin and aspiration toward the good both are part of God’s design; that the reformer first should endeavor to discern the lineaments of a Providential order, and then endeavor to conform political arrangements to the dictates of a natural justice... These are the religious principles of a man profoundly familiar with the world of experience. And Burke proceeds to make his creed still more a part of private and political life.”
Edmund Burke recognized the negative elements that detach man from Divinity, but to be wise in acknowledging that the establishments of positivity alone do not gain Providential favor. Rather, overcoming ones vices through these principled establishments set man on a more righteous path. He explained conservatism as wisdom attained through Providence and Reason. Burke could repeat from memory a quote of Richard Hooker, “The reason first why we do admire those things which are greatest and second those things which are ancientest, is because the one are the least distant from the infinite substance, the other from the infinite continuance, of God.” And in this shared prescriptive philosophy, Burke found it necessary to restate as Kirk describes, "the premises of men who have faith in an enduring order of life."
Scores of philosophers, and politicians alike, followed Burke in the defense of religion’s role through the constitution of a moral order, and Christianity specifically has been a traditional key element of conservative thought. In one such area that this can be seen, which is also one that liberals poignantly ridicule conservatives for, is in the duty to help the poor. As once again The Cornerstone Group points out:
But few ecclesiastics – at least before the 1960s – identified this with uncritical support for the socialist welfare state as the ideal engine of charity. More authentically Christian is the principle of “subsidiarity”, as defined by Pope Pius XI in 1931 in his encyclical Quadragesimo Anno:
“Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice …to assign to a greater or higher association what lesser or subordinate organisations can do.”
This is entirely at one with Burke’s attachment to “the little platoon we belong to in society” as “the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love of our country, and to mankind.”
The modern liberal contends that conservatives are not advocates of peace, compassion or love, usually by blowing the dust off a Bible and cracking it open to throw out a multitude of verses about the poor, and occasionally but more comically ironic, taxes. But quite to the contrary, conservatives advocate all of these principles, and more, just not with the devices of coercion and force through the State! Individual liberty, or free will, always seems to be the common subtraction from the liberal equation.
Perhaps some might conclude that it is the exclusion of religious principles, along with the inclusion of more secular thought, which has given rise to a decline in Conservatism throughout the turn of the century. Likewise, could it now be that the ‘Faithful’ conservative, who’s been derogatorily dubbed the “Religious Right”, has been the catalyst of a conservative ascendancy? That Christian principles and constitutional liberty go hand in hand? Food for thought as we proclaim, “Christ Is Risen!”
Additional source: The Conservative Mind
ADDENDUM: Renew America also has an extensive article concerning this topic that's worth checking out.
