David French and the “Talarico moment”
In 1987, the sociologist James Davison Hunter identified a new political posture, an adoption of a new political ethos, amongst the rising generation of Evangelicals, those that now nearly 40 years later lead Evangelical institutions and direct Evangelical thought. It was in this then young generation that Evangelicalism would finally succumb to modernity.
There were two major innovations that Evangelicals came to adopt. First, “religion is segregated from political affairs and this is viewed as the way it should be.” Second, the idea that civil society is tolerant and democratic. Both tenets must be affirmed by anyone who wants to participate in respectable, influential social circles. The two are related, but the latter commitment, in particular, defines elite Evangelical behavior. Dedication to toleration is, Hunter observes, an “inversion.” “Not only are individuals required to be tolerant of others; individuals must also be tolerable to others.” This is what Hunter terms “the ethic of civility” which is defined by “gentility and studied moderation.”
Together, these two tenets “impose profound limitations upon the functioning and expression of religious institutions and ideologies.” Religion is restricted in its mobility and assertions. “For religion to attempt to reclaim authority for itself in the public sphere is a coarse and tactless act of incivility—a breach which could only evoke strong moral sanctions.” This is why Christian nationalism, however defined, is generally considered offensive to Evangelical thought leaders. It is a violation of the ethic of civility because it assumes comprehensive, intolerant moral claims. It is presumptive, aggressive, and unaccommodating. Perhaps worse, it revives an historic image of American Protestantism as chauvinistic, exclusivist, and theocratic. The same was true of the (old) new Christian right of the Moral Majority years.
Much of the behavior of current elite Evangelicals can be understood as an extended reaction to the Moral Majority, a constant distancing from and repudiation of the incivility of Falwell and Robertson, et al. The culture warriors had “violated the moral strictures of civility by crossing over the barriers separating public and private spheres and attempting to retain, through political means, traditional moral standards,” Hunter recalls. “With the relatively forceful reintroduction of conservative Protestant symbols into the public realm, political decorum was besmirched.”
Through a combination of embarrassment and status anxiety, “Evangelicals themselves have embraced this moral code of civility,” a self-defeating development to be sure. The reason that Evangelicals have failed to recapture the energy of the Moral Majority and muster an even larger force is not because Evangelicals have declined in population as the mainline has, nor because Evangelicals have become less serious in their faith or less conservative in their politics. Rather it is because “Evangelicals as a whole have adopted this ethic of civility” in an attempt to shed bad branding, namely, “the image of conservative Protestantism as the embodiment in various degrees of a radically conservative political extremism.”
Last week, a perfect instantiation of the ethic of civility was on display (not for the first time) in David French’s column at the New York Times. French’s praise for James Talarico, the Democrat nominee for the U.S. Senate race in Texas, rightly instigated sharp reactions. Al Mohler, who Sohrab Ahmari once humorously dubbed David French’s pope, was (again, rightly) incredulous. Before French’s public adulation for Talarico, Colin Redemer had written a thorough criticism of Talarico’s progressive Christianity. We’ve seen this movie, the progressive, mainline Protestantism one, before, and we know what’s wrong with it, but that doesn’t explain what is going on with David French.
Talarico is the odd case of what Joseph Bottum called post-Protestant “poster children,” that has, for whatever reason, stayed in his mainline denomination and discovered that, at least it can be weaponized against “theocrats.” He is a post-Protestant, Protestant. Talarico loves the “teachings of Jesus” and he loves “trans children.”
That any conservative Evangelical Protestant could praise the progressive Presbyterian Talarico, who is not only doctrinally heretical but pro-LGBT, pro-abortion, pro-open borders, is shocking… but also not so shocking once the ethic of civility is understood as the controlling public morality for Evangelicals, especially those of French’s generation. Under this ethic, it is not surprising that French, as a self-described Evangelical conservative, can say with a straight face that “Talarico is one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian,” and “one of the most faith-forward politicians in the United States.”
On the flipside, it also makes sense of why Trump and MAGA are so repugnant to French, Russell Moore, and others like them. Third Wayism, the “faithful presence,” cultural engagement model, even Tim Keller himself, have received plenty of critique, but these public postures also are best understood through the ethic of civility.
“Conservatives” like David French have been desperate for a new Obama since Trump descended the golden escalator. The faithful presence thrived in the Obama years because it was a respectable, self-deprecating posture. Things were civil, tolerant, decent. As French has been saying for some time now, the divide isn’t between left and right but between decency and indecency. Trump is not unethical simply because of his past sordid behavior but because he is uncivil.
Talarico, by contrast, is civil. He is tolerant. He is not Trump. He is not a Christian nationalist. It is “exactly backward” to evaluate “Christians in politics” based on their “policy positions,” instructs French. Rather, the proper evaluation for French is intrapersonal behavior. How polite are you? This is what French means by “Christian virtue,” which can never be abandoned “for the sake of the alleged greater good.”
The basis of support for a Christian public figure is not their policies or accomplishments but how meekly and mildly they contend for them. How well do they speak of neighbor love? Do they uphold the dignity of others? Do they preach unity and hope? They might be a woke, abortionist who claims God is a nonbinary hermaphrodite so long as they do it civilly. They might advocate for “abortion care” for “trans women,” and that the word “woman” (“our neighbors with a uterus”) itself is merely an inexhaustive interrogation of patriarchy, so long as they present it calmly, wholesomely, tolerantly. The ethical assessment is not substantive but temperamental.
Of course, while a measurement of temperament and “character,” the civility ethic yields certain substantive results. Prevailing standards of decency and tolerance dictate policy commitments—certain policy positions are simply indecent in themselves—and regulate expression of dissent. Civility still governs incorrect views.
You can be pro-life, for example, which is an intolerant view, but only pro-life like David French is pro-life. He is respectful. He registers the views of pro-abortion counterparts with politeness, affording them legitimacy. He conveys the Evangelical position, the Evangelical concern, not universal moral absolutes. He has no problem working or affiliating with those who disagree. Mere disagreement over policy is nothing to get excited about. What is important is that we are all virtuous. To insinuate that fellow civil citizens who happen to be pro-abortion are morally bankrupt is, in fact, the most uncivil thing to do. To believe that, say, women who receive abortions and doctors who perform them should be prosecuted is the height of incivility in this area.
Christianity, for French, is peak civility because it is compassionate (i.e., tolerant and nice). It is apolitical; it is purely ethical in the sense that its only public significance is intrapersonal. Christianity guarantees politeness. It upholds the norms of a multiethnic, pluralist democratic society. Under this standard, Talarico is right when he claims that Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jews, Muslims, and atheists in the Texas legislature are more Christ-like than Christians he knows. Doctrine and belief are secondary; Christianity is civility. This is why Talarico appeals to French. They might disagree on doctrine but they agree on ethics. In a demonstration of the private-public divide, what matters to French for these purposes is the public expression of Christianity.
Talarico’s Christianity is nice and his God is conscientious. In the Gospel of Talarico, God asked Mary for consent. God is a good ally like that. There is no reason to believe that French has adopted Talarico’s progressive mainline (heretical) doctrine, but there is every reason to believe that the presentation of it appeals to him, because he tells us so. For him, it is about more than Christian PR. The crisis is bigger than that.
For people like French, civilization is synonymous with civility and can only be won and maintained by civility. When French condemns the enemies of empathy (i.e., Joe Rigney) he is being entirely earnest. Within the ethic of civility, civilization is under threat not when androgyny roams free, but when cruelty goes unchecked, not when borders are porous but when “strangers” are unwelcome. These dynamics also suggest an answer to French’s infamous flip-flop-flip on gay marriage. Once “religious liberty” was secured for Christians he felt comfortable endorsing homosexuality’s legal sanction. Why? At both ends civility, mutual toleration, was secured—an optimal result.
“MAGA Christianity,” on the other hand, is unchristian because it is cruel and mean, uncouth and unkind. French has repeated this assessment regularly in his columns at the Times. French, and all true, civil Christians, prefer the “integrity” of Jimmy Carter to the “cruelty and corruption” of Richard Nixon. What distinguishes the two is that Carter “won for all the right reasons.” That Carter’s presidency was an epic disaster is barely relevant. The irony, of course, is that French’s own employer recently published a must-read account of how Nixon was, in fact, the victim of cruelty and corruption.
Evangelical adoption of the ethic of civility explains the thought and behavior of Evangelicals like David French and why, as he repeatedly recounts, he feels increasingly isolated from and frustrated with the Evangelical rank-in-file. The over 80% of Evangelicals who voted for Trump multiple times over represent a turn away from the ethic of civility.
Consider Hunter’s further observations on the ethic of civility and its ramifications for Protestantism:
“The historical irony is that those cultural expressions that were symptomatic of early Protestantism’s moral energy and vitality are precisely those cultural expressions which, on the present scene, are despised by non-Evangelicals and are a source of embarrassment to Evangelicals themselves, particularly the coming generation.”
That “coming generation” was French’s and Moore’s. To be civil is to accept and even prefer that Protestantism has lost the “binding address,” as Hunter terms it, on America’s culture. In civil society, Christianity should not control the socio-political “inner imperative” or set the “inherited rules” for public life. That would be intolerably sectarian. In this light, Moore’s cheers for the decline of the Bible Belt and cultural Christianity make sense.
The problem for French and Moore is that over the past decade the Evangelical base has turned against the civility ethic and its consequences, and they have turned hard, especially the next “coming generation.” This is why French feels so much angst and why, at the political level, theological progressives who are nevertheless civil provide comfort. Talarico embodies a return to normalcy for French. Unfortunately for him, the rest of Evangelical Protestants don’t see it that way. Procedural and rhetorical etiquette no longer satisfies. The ethic of civility has lost the binding address even among its late adopters, Evangelical Protestants. The manner and substance of public Christianity is shifting again.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
