In
Republocrat: Confessions of a Liberal Conservative, Englishman Carl Trueman discusses American politics. He has a great British humour and an outsider’s perspective. (Oddly his editor must have changed all his British spellings to the American version; his writing is so obviously British, why change the spelling?) Of course, I don’t hold with all Trueman’s political views, but the emphasis of the book is the inappropriateness of wedding Christianity to
any political or economical system.
So as to not yet alienate his primary audience he strikes first at the left in his first chapter ‘Left Behind’. The chapter lays out that today’s left doesn’t hold the same values as the left of yesterday, and has thus lost its way. For example, whereas the old left was concerned with the oppression of the voiceless, now advocates abortion, killing of the most voiceless. Carl Trueman identifies this occurred when the left ‘shifted from material, empirical issues — hunger, thirst, nakedness, poverty, disease — to psychological categories’ and thus any lobby group can vie for their issue to be the Next Big Issue. I especially appreciated Trueman’s writing concerning the left now embracing the very subjective notion of ‘authenticity’ and thereby pushing the actually oppressed poor to the margins.
The second chapter, ‘The Slipperiness of Secularization’ speaks to the American secularization of the church. ‘What?!’ you say, ‘isn’t it European culture that’s been secularized?’ Yes, while secularization of Europe occurred in more obvious fashion, in America secularization in couched in religious language. The will of God has been equated with the foreign policy of America. Trueman states the church has adopted the world’s way of doing business with business strategies for growth and advertising, etc. He makes sound points that these distract us from worshipping Christ, and the church’s mission.
Chapter 3, ‘Not so Fantastic Mr. Fox’ starts with the great line, ‘News media are, by their very nature, informative and annoying in equal measure.’ (p 41) In this chapter, Trueman makes the case that all news media are biased, even Fox News. While reading this chapter, I thought Trueman was arguing against strawmen: who doesn’t believe media are biased, and who doesn’t think Fox is biased to the right? But when I summarized the chapter for a relative, she asked (in all honesty), ‘Is Fox biased?’ (to which her husband replied ‘Of course it is!’ [To those wondering the relative is not Mrs C. T. Hall.]) So in classic Trueman form, he uses humorous overstatement to make his point, but it seems it’s not as much overstatement as I thought.
In the antepenultimate chapter, ‘Living Life to the Max’, Trueman discusses capitalism. First up, Max Weber, author of The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism. Weber wrote that the Calvinist preoccupation with predestination as driving European capitalism since he believed Calvinism linked assurance of salvation with success. (No, this is not how actual Calvinism views assurance, but I’ve heard it repeated in many secular college lectures.) ‘Despite problems with Weber’s thesis, it has proved somewhat attractive to American Christians keen to see a close relation between their theology and a central tenet of the American way — the capitalist free market.’ (p 65) Much like American policy, capitalism becomes God’s way of doing business. Yet one of the major problems is identifying how things are currently done with the way they ought to be done. Trueman is quick to acknowledge that capitalism is the best current system to create wealth, yet warns that every system seem like the system as its height, feudalism, European imperialism, etc. He also points out that capitalism is at odds with Christian morals. The motivator for the markets is profit and as it’s been realized, profit-seeking can interfere with other Christian morals. Consider the economic case for allowing gay marriage and increasing ‘pink dollars’ as part of gay tourism. I think Carl Trueman well explains that this is not what must happen in capitalistic societies but the tendencies are there. Capitalism brings good, but let’s not confuse it with the gospel.
On to chapter 5: ‘Rulers of the Queen’s Navee’. Nothing too earth-shattering here. The author encourages us not to be Manachaen in out political thought. Although we have to vote for one candidate or the other, it should be a painful choice, since no candidate fully embraces biblical principles, we will have to compromise in voting. The author finished the chapter with a lament of the current state of political discussion—is shallow and vapid. Even the presidential ‘debates’ only allow 90 seconds to explain a position. While this chapter did have good reminders there was nothing here that was really new, and is obligatory for every discussion of political discourse to reference the Kennedy-Nixon debate?
The final chapter ‘Concluding Unpolitical Postscript’ as you might suspect concludes Republocat. Trueman also advises that politics and policies move more slowly than campaign promises indicate. He again calls us to be thoughtful in our political thought.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book; the author makes excellent points and stimulates discussion on a wide variety of topics underpinning politics. My only concern is if his book will be read by his intended audience, those Christians who do not think as carefully about politics. To remedy this, I suggest you buy two copies of Republocrat, one for yourself and one to lend out to friends.
