Vision and Abdication - American Reformer

America’s great strength is its ability to master technology. Its besetting sin is a surrender to technology.

Technology played a central role in America’s rise—facilitating our continental expansion and our global power. And while in some ways the last seventy-five years represent a triumph of American civilization, in important ways they also reflect a widespread turn away from its foundational principles. Despite incredible technological and material advances, we see a society that has lost confidence in the justice of its norms and goodness of its vision—a society that in many ways has rejected the cultural tradition that built and defined it, including the Christian faith that animated its life.

A strong, confident society grounded in a proper theology can harness technological competence to pursue the Genesis 1 dominion mandate—God’s call to “fill the earth and subdue it.” This was the story of Western civilization, and especially of America, from the arrival of the first English settlers to our shores. But a society that loses confidence in the goodness of its cause will progressively abdicate its rule. While this may involve abdication to other people from other cultures and societies, an alternative promises to preserve many benefits of existing systems without the messiness and moral complexity of human rule: abdication to technological systems.

This was in many ways the great sin of the Progressive movement. Progressives pushed improvements in many domains of society, with a consistent theme being the replacement of human processes throughout society with “scientific” alternatives. Managerial bureaucracy was advanced as a more objective approach to decision-making than fallible and often corrupt human judgment. While early Progressive efforts were deeply influenced by a Protestant ethic, anchoring many projects and contributing to real successes, the decline of Christianity contributed to a growing detachment from the human. As the twentieth century progressed, managerialism, along with related liberal and globalist impulses, systematically erased traditional elements of human rule and human culture, reshaping nearly every aspect of American life.

Continued digital transformation could accelerate this trend—offering those disillusioned with American culture and rule promises of an escape hatch from the last vestiges of that culture, and perhaps from human culture and human rule altogether.

Another manifestation of this abdication—and abandonment of the American Christian tradition—is a broad pose of skepticism toward technology by many Christian intellectuals and influencers. Rather than seek to shape and influence the development of new innovations, they absolve themselves of responsibility by playing the prophet in the desert, warning about everything from the loss of idealized legacy practices to speculative doomsday scenarios.

If American civilization is to thrive in the digital age, we will need a renewed cultural vision—a turn away from the progressive path that so many see as the only “forward-looking” vision. And we will need a renewed theological vision, both to anchor any digital age cultural (and technological) vision, and to undergird a renewed moral confidence in the goodness of American culture and dominion.

My work at New Founding focuses on the former—in particular, on the entrepreneurial initiatives that can shape and realize critical aspects of this renewed American vision. American Reformer is focused on the latter. We can help shape America’s aspirations and address the heresies that have debilitated American society.

Theological Foundation for Positive Vision

First, Christianity can inform and inspire a positive future vision. Developing such a vision—material and moral—is necessary to move beyond the limitations of a post-WWII American right focused on backward-looking and neutral principles. While movement conservatism rightly recognized the importance of established norms and market principles, it was fundamentally reactionary and had little substantive guidance to offer those focused on innovation, and it sidestepped fundamental moral and theological questions. The left filled these gaps with little contest.

A strong positive vision is particularly important in America: for better and worse, American culture has always embraced aspiration and innovation. John Winthrop saw the Puritan colony as an aspirational model for the world. The American Founders embraced a new model of governance. Tocqueville noted in 1840 how Americans happily built ships expected to obsolesce within a few years. America mastered industrial technology to become the richest and most powerful country on the planet, and then led digital innovation to reinforce this position through the post-Cold War era. In America, a failure to contest the aspirations of the left ensures failure to shape the country.

Fortunately, Christians need not accept the limitations of movement conservatism. Genesis begins with creation, calling us not just to conserve but to fill the earth and subdue it. The Protestant Reformation renewed an appreciation for both theological aspiration and secular vocation. The American Christian tradition is particularly relevant to discussions of vision, offering rich insights to guide everything from political to technological innovation.

American Reformer will build on this tradition to again shape a position Christian vision for America. Many Americans are disillusioned with the dominant post-war narrative, and we can offer a positive alternative grounded in the Christian tradition that formed so much of what they love and appreciate about America—and what, in many cases, they instinctively recognize to be true.

Theological Response to Cultural Heresies

Second, Christianity can address our besetting heresies. The abdication described earlier is a direct rejection of the Biblical command to rule, and stems from both a laziness common in many rich and decadent societies and a loss of moral confidence in the goodness of our rule.

Here, too, the American Christian tradition can address particularly American needs. The Protestant ethic helped produce the wealth that enables this decadence, and a strong Protestant ethic can continue to give purpose to work—including the hard work of human rule—even in a society that is not materially forced to such work. Centuries of American theology have addressed questions around the value of work, the responsibility of citizens, and self-government.

The dynamics around our loss of moral confidence are particularly American. The dominant theology of the incumbent leftist American cultural elite is guilt without grace—contributing to a strand of leftism defined not just by envy but also by abdication. As Joshua Mitchell has noted, Americans, steeped in a culture shaped by Calvinism, are broadly vulnerable to messages framed around guilt. With the decline of Christianity and loss of appreciation for Christian grace, combined with pervasive accusations against America’s historical sins, this can turn into legalistic quests for atonement through demanded abdication of any inherited or earned power or privilege. Even some Christians, sensing resonance with aspects of their faith, succumb to such heresies.

The solution is not, as some suggest, to broadly abandon guilt: this will deny the reality of our condition and will be rejected by many Americans, Christian and non-Christian alike. The solution is to restore the Christian understanding of grace—and particularly that of the American Christian tradition that addressed particularly American conceptions of guilt. Properly framed, this grace will restore our appreciation for our inherited blessings and the importance of stewarding them through responsible rule rather than irresponsible abdication.

With AI offering ever-stronger prospects for transhumanism—the ultimate opportunity for abdication and escape—the need is acute to defeat these heresies and renew a will in Americans to rule these technologies instead of being ruled by them. American Reformer will build on its facility with cultural questions to lead a Christian response to these errors.

Conclusion

Technology and innovation have been defining elements of our culture since America’s foundation. As digital transformation accelerates, reshaping nearly every aspect of life, questions around technology and humanity have become central to American discourse. A response requires a positive vision that can guide this transformation, and it requires answers to pervasive heresies that drive abdication rather than rule.

American Reformer has an opportunity to draw on the American Christian tradition to address both of these critical needs—and to help shape a new Manifest Destiny for the digital age.