The Rifted Portal of Anonverse
A Response to John Ehrett on Protestant Retrieval
Editor’s note: This article is part of a symposium on the current state and future of Protestant retrieval in response to John Ehrett’s article, “The End of Protestant Retrieval.”
John Ehrett’s recent piece, “The End of Protestant Retrieval,” represents a moment of hand-wringing over the supposed exhaustion of a niche scholarly program. As one wag on X put it relative to protestant retrieval “there are dozens of us!” with never-nude Tobias Fünke (Arrested Development) raising his fist in the air. At one point in the recent history of Protestant retrieval, it was indeed a bunch of anonymous nobodies enjoying something little more than a hobby. But that niche interest opened up a portal to another world, and something emerged from that portal and is becoming relevant beyond the small circle of protestant-revivalists. Yet is within that niche, smaller circle, that Ehrett has truly struck a nerve—to his credit! He is attempting to close the now-open portal or at least narrow its aperture. But the reason he has elicited a reaction is twofold.
First, while Ehrett and I don’t disagree, or have never done so in public or private conversation, on any substantive point of Protestant orthodoxy, we may yet still disagree politically, and it is precisely the political dimension of his argument that has caused a response. Ehrett’s position is that many once all-important political, social, and ecclesial structures that supported the common good have disappeared from the stage of history. In light of this any retrieval project that recovers the political and social theories which undergirded those past eras is bound to be recovering something that is at best useless and at worst harmful. That is, to some extent, demonstrably true, as can be seen with various individuals who, once caught up in a recovery project at odds with contemporary norms, are “outed” as a radical or a subversive for whatever faux pas they have committed against the contemporary nomos. Indeed, to even joust with Ehrett along these lines is to risk raising alarm bells against myself or my publisher.
But I protest that I’m merely discussing the concept of politics and history, not about the retrieval of any particular thinker, position, or issue. In fact I agree with Ehrett entirely, even on this. It is simply the case that the social and political teaching of a given time period, the prudential application of the storehouse of wisdom, is not going to be universally transferable from one time period or from one political community to another in a one-to-one method. Any attempt to do so is hazardous to one’s health and career. Political and social teachings are not legos—universally interchangeable baubles to be plugged in wherever we fancy. But the question I would propose to Ehrett, which is not sufficiently addressed, is “so how did we get here?” I do not know, but I imagine, following his hints, he would claim that technology and science, the Industrial Revolution, and the Enlightenment are all bound up in a process that produced the modern world and our state of alienation and dissolution. As Protestants, we are used to this kind of social analysis. This is why, for example, in Germany, the leading social and political theory for Christians in 1500 was nearly obsolete by 1550. New texts had to be written—and they were written! But given that this is the case it is not clear why Ehrett would judge the retrieval project the way that he does. Since he recognizes that politics and social conditions can shift dramatically, there is nothing in principle stopping them from shifting back, or if not back then, at least in a dramatic and thoroughly unexpected direction.
While some texts might be outdated and, in fact, counterproductive for advice on governing or living in a modern liberal republic today, they may yet still find useful application in some as yet unrealized political community that emerges either here or on some other shores. I hear my detractors now—is this a call for regime change?—to which I respond, no, rather I am admitting a truth universally acknowledged, that a republic in decline yet in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a monarch. Which is more or less simply a modern-day paraphrase of Benjamin Franklin, who, after the Constitutional Convention of 1787, was asked by one Mrs Powell, “Well, Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?” to which he sagaciously replied “A republic, if you can keep it.”[1. Or we could go directly to his speech from the closing of the Constitutional Convention which frames the same problem in even more extreme language, albeit less succinctly.] The clarification about the nature of republics v monarchies and how the American people would relate to them in the future was knowledge assumed by the founders. In our day, it is something that must be recovered. To stop retrieval is to resign ourselves to whatever change most naturally comes. And in the event that some dramatic change comes anyway it is perfectly reasonable to prepare for shifting social and political conditions by discussing and understanding them without advocating or encouraging any particular shift. And, after all, one of the actual blessings of liberty is the ability to think about the nature of such shifts and even to talk about them.
Second, more than a mere measured assessment of Protestantism’s intellectual heritage, Ehrett’s piece masks a thinly veiled fear of the very tools that have always carried the Reformation’s torch forward. The thrust of his argument is that we have reached a grand terminus beyond which our old methods of revisiting Protestant sources are effectively useless. He rightly thinks we are experiencing a great fragmentation, and he is right that there are vast social and political changes that separate us from our early Protestant forebears, as well as our national forebears, which inevitably make any retrieval project (and certainly any mass retrieval project for the common good) quite challenging. However, there is a danger he does not directly confront: the root of our fragmentation is the emergence of the digital. Our political, social, and ecclesial situation is a result of technological developments. He takes for granted the Industrial Revolution and its consequences and moves on to other instances of technological disruption, such as “global travel.” I’ll pass over the possibility of an arms race where political communities implement global impediments (speed bumps) to slow the spread of rapid international transit into the political communities as a possible solution and instead aim to discuss what he is getting at generally: technology as embodied by its most ubiquitous development, the internet. It is, in fact, the internet itself, which is the tool causing mass fragmentation and social disruption. Governments are aware of this and variously use it to disrupt foreign enemies or to secure what they see as their own goods for social control at home.
Ehrett’s argument aims to point out the ways in which technology and politics work together to cause an irreparable disjunction relative to the social conditions of a few hundred years ago, but he does not wrestle with the fact that technology, like politics, changes. And indeed, we are living in a time of dramatic change. It isn’t clear yet whether the rise of smart contracts, cryptocurrency, AI, and other web3 technology can help reforge stronger units of social trust and a reformed national identity. But even beyond this, a partial response to Ehrett must be that his concerns relative to technological progress are a step away from the traditional Protestant position in favor of innovation and seeing our capacity to craft as a blessing over which we must wield dominion. In an age of print-on-demand scholarship, high-caliber searchable digital editions, and even large language models that continue our centuries-long calling of translation and exploration, Ehrett’s outlook amounts to a retreat from the Reformation’s original boldness in embracing technological production and the dissemination of knowledge. His hesitance looks like the modern version of huddling by a mud bank, refusing the possibility of pressing words into clay tablets lest the gods judge our acts as hubris.
This is precisely where Protestant identity was forged, in the furnace of technological advancement. Ours is the tradition that embraced the printing press—a cutting-edge piece of tech that turned the printed word of Scripture from an elite artifact into a common good. That this inheritance would now be eschewed under the auspices of “retrieval” gone stale is revealing. Gutenberg’s gift to Europe facilitated the retrieval of the humanists and then the Reformers, who, in turn, ignited a season of populist retrieval and reception. Democratization of communication and media is always destabilizing, and there were then, as there are now, heightened fears of “abuse.”
We Protestants never defined ourselves by withdrawal from the tools of our age, even while we heeded calls to wield those tools with prudence. Rather, our ethos eagerly seized the possibility that the common people might read common texts and uncover truth. Ehrett’s posture of finality and dismissal lurches awkwardly in the opposite direction. It suggests that because the old ways of retrieval have run their course, we should give up on the next generation of technological means. But refusing to press forward—refusing to reimagine retrieval in the digital wilderness—isn’t merely anti-technology, it’s anti-Protestant, and in as much as it is shying away from that pioneering spirit that blazed a trail into an unknown frontier, it is Anti-American.
What Ehrett gives us is the slow shrug of someone who worries that relying on these newer methods will taint the purity of Protestant thought and church life. That is no doubt a concern and one that must be addressed, but I cannot see how to do so as outlined in his essay. The Reformation itself was never “pure” in the sense of remaining hermetically sealed against cultural innovations and changes—indeed, if it were, we would not be engaging here, online, and in these radically different social and political contexts, which would baffle any magisterial reformer. Our tradition grew precisely by translating the faith into new idioms and pressing the best available technologies into the service of truth. That’s the whole point: Protestantism historically thrives when it refuses to be childish about the tools at hand. It doesn’t attempt to explain away its future by demonizing the means of transmission. Instead, it leverages them, confident in a God who governs even the slenderest reed that became our first pen and, now, the algorithm that generates our future translations. Those translations are coming. Ehrett seems to wish this all did not have to happen in his time. But so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. I, for one, will take up the needful burden, and I hope that Ehrett will help me and all willing protestant leaders in this age to bear it well.
The ‘end of Protestant retrieval’ is no terminus at all—unless we allow it to be. History teaches that old frameworks can regain relevance and that technology can serve faith rather than undermine it. Protestantism arose by embracing new means of communication and questioning old assumptions and political norms. Why should we do otherwise today? If we take seriously our Reformation heritage, then the digital revolution, like the printing press before it, may not fragment us forever but serve as a tool to reimagine retrieval—enabling us to carry forward the Protestant spirit with renewed vigor into an eagerly expected future.
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