Johann Hari, who made news earlier this month with his interview of Tony Blair, has written a 5,000-word profile of Andrew Sullivan for Intelligent Life, a magazine published by The Economist. The story is filled with glowing praise and unquestioning assertions of Sullivan’s crucial importance:
He was the first well-known writer to become a blogger — and played a key role in smelting the form. Just as Michel de Montaigne played a crucial role in developing the modern essay, Andrew Sullivan will be remembered as pioneering the form of the blog. The now-ubiquitous blog style — short, pithy, personality-inflected posts, offered often — was begun by him.
This, however, is one of Hari’s more laughably overstated sentences: “He is a conservative Christian who rages against the self-proclaimed forces of conservative Christianity.”
Sullivan has long made a legitimate claim to being a conservative in economics and foreign policy. Considering Sullivan’s frequent criticisms of his church’s teachings on sexual morality, and his championing of the word Christianist, it would seem that describing him as a conservative requires a bit of explanation. This is the closest Hari comes to providing such an explanation:
He believes his greatest future conflicts will centre on religion — the topic of his next book. He learned his Catholicism as an altar boy in East Grinstead. For him it is a sacramental religion, all about smell and sight and touch. Ritual is at its core, because “ritual has no point beyond itself. Only ritual can approximate the ineffability of the divine, enact its truth while not purporting to explain or capture it.”
Sullivan feels that this model of religion — filled with a sense of the mysterious, and the unknowability of God — has been replaced in both America and the Vatican by outright fundamentalism. He says he can understand the appeal of this fundamentalism because he went through a phase of it himself. When he first went to grammar school, he was severed from his childhood friends. He became obsessed with doctrinal differences. He would draw little crosses in his exercise book to ward off evil, and in art classes he refused to draw or paint anything that was not somehow related to the Bible. For confirmation, he took the name of Sir Thomas More — the scourge of heretics and Catholic martyr.
“I remember feeling that without the structure of my faith, without my knowledge of its infallible truth, I might have been completely overwhelmed,” he says. Fundamentalism “was a way of sealing myself off from the world”. He sees American Christians turning to fundamentalism as a panicked response to change and doubt too. They have ended up pining for a theocracy that is contrary to his beloved US constitution and basic liberties for gay people.
Liturgically, morally, socially, theologically: How is this the voice of a conservative Christian?
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Comments (38) |
April 19, 2009, at 4:16 pm
Clearly, Sullivan has the word “Fundamentalism” confused with religious obsession, which is more of a personality disorder than a branch of Christianity. This revelation helps explain a lot.
Robert at Bioethike.com
April 19, 2009, at 4:26 pm
In other words, his theology is — sorry Anglicans — essentially from one side of the Anglican world. His faith is defined by the rituals and the words of the rituals, but essentially believes that the words have no doctrinal meaning.
I have always wondered, and asked him once, receiving no answer, why Sullivan has not changed churches.
April 19, 2009, at 4:36 pm
Comparable to Montaigne? Arbiter elegans of the “ubiquitous” blog style?
Granted, Andrew can turn a phrase, but let’s not lose the run of ourselves now!
April 19, 2009, at 4:58 pm
Sullivan is on the record as meeting the first, and most important, criterion of the tmatt trio: He believes in (literal, actual) Resurrection. (He would probably flunk the second - exclusivity of salvation -, and almost certainly flunk the third - sex outside marriage.) This does arguably make him a fairly conservative Christian. (Although I sometimes wonders why he still bothers with the label ‘Catholic’. I can only put it down to a pre-rational emotional attachment, even dependency, that Catholicism tends to foster in those exposed to it at an early age.)
April 19, 2009, at 5:18 pm
Now that gay marriage exists in some states it is necessary to tweak tmatt#3 into something like: Given that marriage exists for his sexual preference, does he believe in marriage as the exclusive legitimate channel for sexual activity?
Rather than “pre-rational” I would call Sullivan’s attachment to Catholicism “sensate.” His rational faculties disagree with the rational faculties of those running the Church. These are two independent functions of the human mind, according to Jung.
April 19, 2009, at 5:34 pm
It’s obvious to me why Andrew Sullivan does not leave the Catholic Church: his criticism of the Church would get far less attention if he no longer claimed to be Catholic.
Andrew Sullivan does not just criticize the Church; he loathes it. He may find the liturgy quaint and charming but, to hear him tell it, the Church itself is shot through with anti-homosexual bigotry.
I am not aware of any belief that Andrew Sullivan holds that would distinguish him from a Protestant. As far as I can tell he rejects papal authority entirely.
Catholicism is not a club or an ethnicity. Catholicism is a creed and it is a creed that Andrew Sullivan does not share in very fundamental respects.
April 19, 2009, at 5:47 pm
Dan, your definition of Catholicism arises from the rational function of your mind. Sullivan’s arises from the sensate funtion of his mind. One reason Catholicism has been so successful for so long is its ability to appeal to all the major mental functions at a deep level.
April 19, 2009, at 5:53 pm
Catholicism is not a club or an ethnicity. Catholicism is a creed and it is a creed that Andrew Sullivan does not share in very fundamental respects.
That’s how the Pro-Vatican side sees it - declaiming any need to heed or serve the voice of (a majority of) the faithful. It’s the inherent problematic of an authoritarian rather than congregational church. When you combine that with powerful techniques for creating emotional attachment, you get the psychodrama of Catholicism - attachment without agreement, dissent without outlet.
The dissenters believe in realising a better, truer ideal of the Church. It’s this ideal of Catholic faith that Sullivan loves (not too strong a word, I’d say). I am not denying that this ideal Church would, in many ways, be more liberal and more Protestant than the current Church. I’m just saying that there is more than one way of reading a tradition, and projecting it into the future.
April 19, 2009, at 5:56 pm
It’s merely further evidence (as if any was needed) that words like “conservative” and “Christian” no longer have consistent, easily identifiable meanings in today’s press.
April 19, 2009, at 5:58 pm
JD -
I don’t think it’s possible “flunk” the tmatt trio, as you say. It seems to me the tmatt trio isn’t graded, it’s meant to discover where the person’s theology lies, outside of trite and vague labels.
Well, I suppose totally incoherent and/or self-contradictory answers might cause the person to “flunk” in a certain way, but I don’t think the tmatt trio is some tool to enforce orthodoxy. It’s descriptive, not prescriptive.
April 19, 2009, at 6:05 pm
@Ivan Wolfe
If we’re grading for conservatism/orthodoxy, then the liberal option constitutes a ‘fail’. That’s all I meant.
April 19, 2009, at 6:10 pm
Dave, I totally agree with you — if I understand what you mean. There’s a strong emotional component to Catholicism, and even what one might term an aesthetic element (as in Gerard Manley Hopkins) that isn’t rational (using the word neutrally, not prescriptively).
April 19, 2009, at 6:38 pm
It’s like me insisting I’m still twenty years old, just because I used to be twenty and my life still includes that experience. I am not twenty, because I’ve lived X many more years than that. And Sullivan is no longer conservative, because he now holds every view but that. He can try to hold onto that identity as much as he likes, but he’s changed too much to make it sound like anything but a delusion, a lie, or a definition of conservatism so different from that of other users of the English language as to be useless.
I feel sorry for him. I miss the old him too.
April 19, 2009, at 7:00 pm
It’s not an abuse of terms to call Oakeshott a conservative, and Sullivan’s (political) philosophy is basically Oakeshott’s. It’s a very English sensibility - a conservatism of organic growth, opposed to hard-edged dogma. An understated acceptance of religion as ritual or habit, the opposite of fervent evangelicalism. So, yes, different from the American uses, but not therefore an abuse of English.
April 19, 2009, at 8:32 pm
One problem many orthodox Catholics have with the MSM is that Catholics, like Sullivan, who are grinding one axe or another against the Catholic Church, are the ones most frequently hired as regular columnists—so the print and the airwaves constantly resound with attacks of one sort of another on the Catholic Faith. And, of course, even if some of the attacks are bizarre or without foundation, or clearly a personal problem (like a loss of faith, but not wanting to lose one’s bully pulpit in the religious arena)—if enough stuff is tossed against a wall (in this case a rock) some of it temporarily sticks.
April 19, 2009, at 8:53 pm
Sullivan does not see himself as grinding an axe. He believes that there is something valuable and essential contained in the Catholic faith, but that the current management is doing a bad job of guarding it.
Hopelessly romantic as an attitude, and not just a little self-serving. I can see why the concept of being a better Catholic than the pope drives the orthodox nuts. I’d still say that it’s a defensible position.
P.S. On Oakeshott - The closest American parallel is Russell Kirk, who is uncontroversially called a conservative. A Paleoconservative, definitely, but don’t paleos have a better claim to the term than, say, the talk radio rabble ?
April 19, 2009, at 9:18 pm
JD, what are you talking about exactly?
April 19, 2009, at 9:41 pm
The answer is short: He doesn’t.
April 19, 2009, at 10:04 pm
DAVE:
It’s been years since I have written on this issue in gay moral theology.
Does anyone argue that gays and lesbians should not have sex before marriage? Of course, I know we could have a debate about what the word “sex” means in that context. Let’s not go there. I will settle for the question that relates to your point about Sullivan.
April 19, 2009, at 10:06 pm
@Susan
The basic question is: Who owns or has the right to define Catholicism ? The orthodox/conservative say: The hierarchy, the magisterium, etc. Sullivan (as I understand him) says: The faithful, all who are committed to some recognisable form of Catholicism.
If you follow the second path, it’s not a big leap to conclude that e.g. acceptance of homosexuality would lead to Catholicism being truer to itself than under current Vatican doctrine.
The Church hasn’t always taught what it teaches now. It hasn’t always been this centralised. There are other options buried in the history of the Church than the one realised by the current people at the top.
Is it possible to combine Catholicism with a different (fallibilist) view of truth/knowledge/authority ? Or are the orthodox right, and Vatican’s view on authority is inseparable from the faith ? What is it - essential of the faith, or perversion of the faith, that’s the question.
Sullivan’s clearly a liberal Catholic, but arguably still a (relatively) conservative Christian - on the Resurrection, on salvation through Jesus, on the importance of monogamous marriage.
April 19, 2009, at 10:14 pm
[…] Clearly, Sullivan has the word “Fundamentalism” confused with religious obsession, which is more… No Comments […]
April 19, 2009, at 10:23 pm
JD, your comments avoid any specifics and stay with abstract generalities. Your underlying assumption seems to be that the Roman Catholic Church has no right to establish a foundational set of beliefs to which anyone calling themselves a Roman Catholic must agree? Do I have that right?
April 19, 2009, at 10:46 pm
Susan, I think your post already contains an assumption that makes any discussion on this issue impossible. When you say that “Your underlying assumption seems to be that the Roman Catholic Church has no right etc.” you’ve already chosen an answer to JD’s question, “Who owns or has the right to define Catholicism?” — you have already closed tight the boundaries of “the Roman Catholic Church.” The discussion about the identity of the Church is thus closed before it ever begins. Obviously, you have your opinion on this question, but if you don’t allow the opposition’s point any validity whatsoever (even at the outset of the discussion), both sides will just continue to shout past each other.
And for the “liberal” position, this is not just some modern redefinition, either. I think JD raises an important point when he says, “There are other options buried in the history of the Church than the one realised by the current people at the top.” Historically speaking, ultramontanism hasn’t always been the status quo.
April 19, 2009, at 11:12 pm
[…] GetReligion- “We are all conservative Christians now” […]
April 20, 2009, at 12:09 am
Terry (#19), since I fall entirely outside the circle defined by the Tmatt Trio, I don’t see any point in my trying to poke at it until it fits the modern scene. I don’t know enough about conservative Christian attitude to know how to tweak #3. What I will say is that, unless and until conservative Christianity gets into contact with the realities of the BGLT world, and learns to articulate what justice means for BGLTs, it will lose them by application of the un-tweaked Tmatt Trio.
April 20, 2009, at 12:43 am
Sullivan’s views are usually thought to be very conservative among gay people. And he has a lot of very hardline GLBT enemies. Any discussion about him in the Gay press rapidly devolves into a shouting match.
His explanation of the RCC matches what I have heard from many who regarded themselves as good Catholics. They respond to the Mystery of the Eucharist, to the ritual of the Mass, to the direct experience of the Church.
The pro-Vatican people seem to argue by holding up an organizational flow chart they call the RCC and then point out who is on top of the chart. They then announce that the people on the top get to have everything, that there word is law. This may work when discussing the Post Office. But it rather fails in explaining mystery.
JD is quit right about the church not always being in the form it is in now. For physical reasons, the RCC has had to be decentralized for most of its history.
April 20, 2009, at 12:52 am
JD, I think I see what you’re getting at, but the crux of the problem is exactly this: “some recognisable form of Catholicism”.
If the faithful dispose of one part of traditional teaching this century, and another part the next, we may have an organic growth in understanding, or we may be junking essential parts of doctrine. This is the problem - who gets to judge what is the core, and what is accretions? And if the majority of the faithful living in country A disagree with the majority of the faithful in county B, which majority wins, or is it “different strokes for different folks”?
If you can say “The Church” (and in this instance, I’m not just talking about the Catholic Church, but the whole of Christianity East and West) “was mistaken in its teachings on sexual morality, through a culturally-bound misreading of Leviticus and the pernicious influence of St. Paul, but the advances in modern science and the deeper sense of the mind of the faithful adjusting to modern conditions means that we have discovered the true meaning of the texts and go by the spirit, not the letter”, then what other doctrines, dogmas or elements may also have been mistaken?
Andrew may be orthodox on the Resurrection, but there are those who would dispute that a physical, literal resurrection took place because this is unacceptable to the scientifically-literate modern mind - the same modern mind that re-evaluates the prescriptions in Scripture as evidence of bias, prejudice, and ignorance.
I admit, I really don’t understand how you can look at “Don’t do this!” and come to the conclusion that “When Scripture says… it really only means…”; either say “It’s completely wrong” or “We don’t agree”, but where there is no grey area - like, for example, no absolute prohibition on abortion - that may be legitimately debated, it looks to me like you’re going on what you want, not what your sources are saying.
April 20, 2009, at 12:57 am
This could also apply to Anglicans, the High Church Party. And to some Lutherans. Add Quakers also. Also this is very much the practice of NeoPagans and Shamanic traditions. It appears that Gay people are disproportionately represented in these groups. So, perhaps it is a Gay way of approaching the Mysteries. Virtually every presentation of Gay and Lesbian spirituality I have ever encountered used this as underpining.
April 20, 2009, at 2:05 am
I hope I’m not out of order posting something other than my own opinions on the way the Catholic Church should be.
I wonder if Andrew Sullivan would describe himself as a “conservative Christian” (and not just a Christian who is also a conservative). If he does identify with that term I’d have liked to read why he belives it applies to himself and what he means by it.
April 20, 2009, at 4:25 am
#25 Dalea, The RCC has always been primarily organized around the authority of local bishops and it is still is. It reflects the nature of the office of bishop.
The Vatican refers to a physical space … it is a City-State created from the Lateran Treaty.
I have never heard a RC use the term “pro-Vatican” … what do you mean by it? (The media uses the term Vatican in an similarly inaccurate and meaningless way.)
When you wrote the “ritual” of the Mass, I assume you meant the liturgy? The “Mystery of the Eucharist” is not based on a person’s “experience” of it. Your comment about the structure of the RCC linked to “failing to explain mystery” is mysterious.
What I thought you were really trying to communicate: People can believe whatever they want to believe and can define themselves however they want to. There is no need of creeds, doctrines, etc. or actually any beliefs in particular. It all about experience and feelings.
That pretty much describes a number of American denominations … but it doesn’t describe the Roman Catholic Church.
April 20, 2009, at 6:17 am
There are two levels, the practical and the theoretical.
On the practical level, following Sullivan and others like him would mean turning the RCC into a copy of the Episcopalian Church, more or less. That’s a position with its own problems, and that’s why I called him romantic.
On the theoretical level, it’s more interesting. There is a division in almost every denomination, on truth and authority. It’s the über-tmatt, in just only question. In laypeople’s terms: Do you believe in absolute truth ? (In technical philosophical terms: Do you believe in a correspondence theory of truth ?)
Superficially, it’s just a philosophical issue, not about Christ, or scripture, or anything specifically religious. So it’s not entirely unreasonable to say: Hey, we switch to a different account of truth, but still keep our faith. That, I take it, is the heart of Sullivan’s position.
But then, on second thoughts, it isn’t so simple. Your philosophical view of truth conditions your entire worldview, has consequences for what authorities you find acceptable, for what you find plausible, for how you’d want institutions to be structured. So there is a reason why religions liberals gather around one view of truth, and conservatives around the other. And there is a reason why the alternative sounds like a Protestant heresy to orthodox Catholics.
BTW, this is not about me. I don’t have a dog a in this fight, I’m just trying to think how Andrew might think.
April 20, 2009, at 6:40 am
I think the sense in which Sullivan is conservative is that he believes in gay marriage not gay whatever. That’s not very conservative, but it is somewhat more conservative than he could be.
Philosophical note:
I take it the other way around. Since I think there’s a noumenal truth, I think all the ordinary “truthes” we deal in are just pragmatically true for the moment and don’t correspond to the absolute truth which is beyond all language…
April 20, 2009, at 8:51 am
sullivan is making his decisions and thoughts on man’s idea of religion, not God’s idea as a christian. What sullivan really means here is that if you read and follow the Bible you are a fundamentalist, which in his eyes, is not acceptable today. The problem with today’s believers is that they look at christianity in the light of the last decade or two. Christianity should stay the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, regardless with what is going on with the “church of what’s happening now”.
April 20, 2009, at 11:28 am
More proof that Catholics (from an outsider’s perspective) have become Protestants. If the Catholic Church hierarchy has no authority to define itself or its teachings then what use is it as an organization? Typical liberal attacks: if a definition doesn’t include us then we will simply redefine.
April 20, 2009, at 12:56 pm
Susan, OK on the local bishop, I agree. However, it used to be that bishops were elected locally. There was no permanent class of bishops-to-be.
Maybe ‘liturgy’ and ‘ritual’ are different things, really don’t know.
April 20, 2009, at 2:29 pm
DAVE:
Forget the trio. I was simply asking a basic theological question and I have followed some of the related debates WITHIN the world of gay theology. I was, I guess, requesting an update.
April 20, 2009, at 3:14 pm
tmatt says:
Will you be posting on this anytime soon? Sounds very interesting.
April 20, 2009, at 4:23 pm
Terry, I’m corresponding with the blogs on my daily cycle at the moment, but I have some kind of cold that is limiting my communication capabilities. Alas, I’m not able to get into the kind of discussion you are seeking. Maybe tomorrow.