The Vanity of Christless Conservatism

The Word of God is Light to the Nations

The modern conservative movement came to life in the 1950s around William F. Buckley, Jr. and National Review. In 1980 Ronald Reagan and the Heritage Foundation brought it into the mainstream. When Newt Gingrich and congressional Republicans took back Congress in 1994, it looked like, after only forty years, conservatism was well on its way to becoming America’s guiding principle of governance.

Today, it is obvious that was not the case. Not only has conservatism not taken over America, but conservatism, if we define it as a commitment to limited government, free markets and individual liberty, is not even the guiding principle within the Republican Party.

The responses of Populism and the New Right to the growing dominance of Progressives are understandable. They, too, experienced the failures of modern conservatism and, like all of us, have been scrambling for a fix. And to its credit, the New Right has sought to reassert Christian morality in the public square. But both movements misdiagnosed the problem with modern conservatism, which led to Conservative Inc. The problem was not a commitment to unfettered liberty but a failure to publicly acknowledge that true liberty only comes through Jesus Christ.

Buckley was a Christian and it clearly informed how he approached public policy. But he never sought to fully bring the Word of God to bear in his fight against liberalism in the culture. Reagan took a similar approach. Likewise, I have worked in public policy for over thirty years. And for most of that time I have worked closely with other Christians in Texas and across the country. The public policies we proposed and implemented, more often than not, comported with Scripture. And while that was a good thing, it is not enough today. In fact, it never really was.

America’s post-World War II enlightenment-driven practice of not bringing God’s Word to public discourse means that for seventy years, conservatives have essentially been engaging in a massive educational effort. While there is certainly value in educating Americans on conservative principles, the steady collapse of our country into progressive insanity has proven that Americans need more than just a better education.

What the United States desperately needs is revival; a revival brought about by the Holy Spirit through Christians who do “not shrink from declaring to [our rebellious culture] the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). We don’t need to spend time calling Americans back to conservatism; we need to call them to faith in Jesus Christ.

A Vain Culture in Rebellion

Psalm 2:1 tells us that the kings and rulers of the earth plotted in vain to burst the bonds and chords that bound them to God and His Anointed.  The theme of vanity is picked up again in Acts 4 and applied to “Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel” in the context of Christ’s crucifixion. The vanity and futility described in these passages are much like what has been happening in post-WWII America—a people and their leaders believing they can thrive and prosper without acknowledging the sovereign lordship of Jesus Christ over their lives and culture.

Historian Niall Ferguson described to the Free Press the dynamics that occur when this happens. “It’s fine for a small group of people to say, ‘We’re atheist, we’re opting out,’” he said, “but, in effect, that depends on everyone else carrying on. If everyone else says, ‘We’re out,’ then you quickly descend into a maelstrom like Raskolnikov’s nightmare”—in which Rodion Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, envisions a world consumed by nihilism and atomism tearing itself apart.

Pastor Douglas Wilson explains that a society in the process of opting out can function well for a time, but there comes a point where collapse is inevitable:

Secularism appeared to work for as long as it did because it was a heresy that took root in a culture that still retained enormous amounts of Christian capital. It worked for as long as it did for the same reason that the prodigal son was able to buy drinks for all his party friends for more than just a couple of days. And so that is what he did, but what he was doing was spending his father’s money as though it were money he had earned himself. As long as he was buying, he could tell everybody in the bar that he was a self-made man. But then, when his father’s money ran out, and there was a famine, and there he was, staring at the pig food, he started to realize that more is required to sustain a free republic than to provide your buddies with free beer.

America has come to the point of collapse. We are living in a culture dominated by progressive elites on the left in rebellion against God who believe that abortion is a choice, genders are fluid, and humans–along with the rest of the universe–are the products of random chance. They are determined to cover up the evidence of God’s work by creating a suitable object of worship in His place; in large part, this appears to be the state. 

To be sure, rebellion against God is not a partisan issue. There are plenty of people on the right whose denial of God has contributed to America’s decline. They, too, are engaged in the attempted coverup and replacement of God. Some unbelieving conservatives and moderates have made an idol of prosperity and undermined God’s design for economic growth by turning it over to an amalgam of big government and big business. Many unbelieving libertarians have turned to self-worship and claim that the autonomous self without government (or God) is the solution to our problems. 

These rebellious souls—left and right—don’t know God and are in desperate need of hearing His Word, including the whole counsel of God on public policy issues. Whether Democrats, Republicans, or Independents, education alone will not move them to drop their idol-building endeavors; these people also need to hear the heart-changing Word of God.

Yet there is very little opportunity for these rebellious souls to hear God’s commandments in the context they might be the most receptive to them because too many Christians have abandoned the application of God’s Word to the sphere of civil government. There are two consequences that come from this. First, Christians deprive themselves of the whole counsel of God and thus get confused about what is happening in the culture. Second, the church has, in practice, abandoned an unbelieving culture in desperate need of God’s Word, much like ancient Israel failed to witness to and love the Gentiles as God had commanded them (Leviticus 19:33-34).

We should not be surprised then that things have gone so wrong in our modern culture with the church struggling to obey God’s cultural commissions:

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” (Genesis 1:27–28 ESV)

“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” (Matthew 28:18–20 ESV)

We have no other choice for restoring prosperity: nations and their rulers—pagan or not—must and can—in God’s providence—only be subdued and brought to obedience to Christ through an obedient people of God proclaiming the whole counsel of God to the world.

Bringing God’s Word to the Nations

While this approach may seem radical today, there is nothing new about it. America was built on God’s Word as a regular feature in the public square. 

The Mayflower Compact began with, “IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN.” The rationale for the Declaration of Independence was that the colonists had been “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” which had been violated by George III and the English Parliament. All thirteen original states had either established churches or required their officeholders to profess the Christian faith.

Samuel Langdon, an American Congregational pastor who had recently been president of Harvard, testified to the existence and necessity of America’s Christian character in a 1788 sermon, the year in which the U.S. Constitution was adopted:

[God] has, moreover, given you by his son Jesus Christ—who is far superior to Moses—a complete revelation of His will and a perfect system of true religion plainly delivered in the sacred writings. It will, therefore, be your wisdom in the eyes of the nations, and your true interest and happiness, to conform your practice in the strictest manner to the excellent principles of your government, adhere faithfully to the doctrines and commands of the gospel, and practice every public and private virtue.

In 1824, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court found “Christianity, general Christianity, is, and always has been, a part of the common law of Pennsylvania; . . . not Christianity with an established church and tithes and spiritual courts, but Christianity with liberty of conscience to all men.”

The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed this in 1844 when it concluded, “It is also said, and truly, that the Christian religion is a part of the common law of Pennsylvania.” And as late as 1892, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, quoted this when it found, indeed, the U.S. was a Christian nation:

If we pass beyond these matters to a view of American life, as expressed by its laws, its business, its customs, and its society, we find every where a clear recognition of the same truth (see the quote above). Among other matters, note the following: the form of oath universally prevailing, concluding with an appeal to the Almighty; the custom of opening sessions of all deliberative bodies and most conventions with prayer; the prefatory words of all wills, “In the name of God, amen;” the laws respecting the observance of the Sabbath, with the general cessation of all secular business, and the closing of courts, legislatures, and other similar public assemblies on that day; the churches and church organizations which abound in every city, town, and hamlet; the multitude of charitable organizations existing every where under Christian auspices …

If we are going to return to this America—and make it stick this time, our only hope is for Christians to engage in a massive evangelical effort to change the hearts of Americans.

The place to start is in worship, the center of Christian life. Repenting of the disobedience of not teaching the nations must start in the pulpit. Christian congregations must be equipped with the Word of God faithfully preached, taught, prayed, and sung if they are to faithfully speak prophetically to the culture. Christians who are not being properly equipped this way in their churches might consider seeking a new church.

Though making disciples of the nations is the “mission statement” of the church, individual Christians must not leave this work only to the institutional church. We must also bring the whole counsel of God into whatever spaces we occupy in society, including the sphere of political discourse and civil government. This means going beyond promoting conservative policies that are in submission to God’s wisdom. Individual Christians, politicians, and institutions must start using God’s Word to build and bolster their arguments in public debates over all the ills to which we are subject today.

As we grow in understanding, we must begin applying our knowledge and wisdom to the culture around us. For instance, Christians should have been using the Bible during the COVID-19 lockdowns to oppose the executive orders coming from governors and mayors all across the country in response to COVID-19. Opposition to public education and socialism at the federal and state levels should start with God’s Word. In my home state, Texas legislators should turn to the Bible to help Texans understand why we suffered the massive blackout during Winter Storm Uri; because they haven’t, Texans are being saddled with billions of dollars of subsidies to generators.

Please note that I am not suggesting that Congress, state legislatures, conservative think tanks, and other civil institutions must all become explicitly Christian institutions overnight. Instead, I am suggesting that Christians begin to acknowledge in our words, analyses, and actions the reality that the triune God is the Creator and Ruler of all areas of our culture. In doing this, we will, over time, move nations and kings toward the fullness of their inevitable relationship with the Christian church: “By [the church’s] light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it” (Revelation 21:24).

God’s Word is powerful: it will change the hearts and minds of many of those who promote government policies that stand in rebellion against God. God’s Word is true: it will provide wisdom and insight into our policy problems that secular analyses miss. Employing God’s Word in our public policy debates will play a part in successfully overcoming America’s vanity that has led to the destructive and chaotic forces in our culture. For as God tells us in Isaiah 55:10-11:

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

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