The Case for Christian Conservatism

Leftism is a complex beast — far more intricate and sinister than many realize. Conservatives speak often of communism and Marxism, but leftism is unlike either of these evils. After all, both communism and Marxism have end goals that many could or would agree are good, even though the means they propose to achieve these goods are deeply flawed at best and outright evil in most cases.

Equality sounds like a grand goal to fight for, but it is not worth the cost of destroying the differences that contribute to the unique dignity inherent in each of us and, indeed, in our nations and cultures. Equality of income is an appealing thought when one is salivating over the vast fortunes of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, but it is far less enticing when the breadline is long and the sun is setting. The erasure of class distinctions may sound noble enough to some, but one might sour on the notion upon realizing that it does not mean every pauper is treated as a prince, but rather that every prince is spurned as a pauper.

Even such ideological evils as moral relativism and the New Atheism of the early 2000s were mere forerunners to the behemoth of leftism. Moral relativism, of course, proclaimed that nothing is evil, which effectively means either that nothing is good or that everything is good. New Atheism, in its arrogant hatred for God, derided spiritual realities and the rituals by which the spiritual and corporeal are united.

Although conservatism has opposed each of these epochs of evil at one time or another, leftism seems today to be the greatest threat that it has yet faced. Indeed, it is an existential threat, for if leftism achieves dominance, as it sometimes seems poised to do, then Western Civilization will fall into chaos and decay, and with it will fall conservatism.

Unlike its predecessors, leftism is not merely political or ideological, nor is it an amalgamation of the two. No, leftism incorporates a third aspect, one that atheistic communism tried to crush, moral relativism tried to ignore to the point of annihilation, and New Atheism tried to ridicule into submission: the reality of the spiritual world.

Leftism does not simply propose alternative or radical methods for achieving commonly accepted goods; instead, it presents its own set of values that is divorced entirely from thousands of years of carefully curated principles and passionately defended moral truths. In fact, leftism establishes itself as an alternative to religion by proclaiming a new spiritual reality that directly opposes the spiritual truths safeguarded and preached by Christianity for two thousand years.

The natural law, long adhered to by pre-Christian pagans (at least those in what is today called Europe), was a sort of moral code inherent in the hearts of men across varying and multitudinous cultures, customs, and religions. The basis of natural law, as the author C. S. Lewis explains in his perennially insightful The Abolition of Man, is essentially spiritual. It does not originate from mere fleshly desires or urges but acknowledges a plane of spiritual reality and demands that the body act in accordance with what is good for the soul. Natural law thus found a warm and welcoming home in Christianity, which offered a ferocious intellectual defense of natural law and, in a sense, completed it by uniting body and soul even more intimately, as the 13th-century Dominican philosopher Thomas Aquinas clarified in his Summa Theologiae.

Even in the throes of modern liberalism, Christian morality has been nearly impossible to escape, as it underpins the whole of Western Civilization. The Soviet Union frowned upon divorce, pornography, and homosexuality. New Atheism may hate Christianity but, as its “high priest” Richard Dawkins recently admitted, it cannot abide a culture divorced from Christian morality. In years past, even the atrocity of abortion was not labeled an unequivocal good but was defended by its advocates as an unfortunate necessity that ought to be, in the words of then-President Bill Clinton, “rare.” Western Civilization cannot be sustained without Christian morality.

Leftism, though, does not seek to preserve Western Civilization. Like communism and New Atheism, it abhors God; but while those two prior ideologies sought to preserve at least some facets of the West, leftism seeks to burn it all to the ground in order to replace it with a new civilization. Leftism does not aspire to annihilate three-quarters of Christian morality but maintain the rest: its ambition is to replace Christian morality altogether.

Abortion is no longer an unfortunate necessity but an absolute right — even an absolute good. Devotees of the barbaric practice chug bottles of abortion pills on the steps outside the Supreme Court and boast of the number of unborn children that they have slaughtered. Homosexuality is not some matter of equal rights or freedom to lead a different kind of private life. Obeisance to the rainbow is now demanded in the public square, perversion is regularly paraded through cities and towns both big and small, and debauchery and degeneracy are increasingly enshrined in everything from books, films, and television shows to advertising, sports, and children’s clothing brands. Opposition to racism is no longer a matter of treating all men with equal dignity, regardless of the color of their skin, but of worshiping minority groups due to the perceived victim status of their ancestors, while simultaneously denigrating the majority of the nation’s population on trumped-up charges of historic oppression and cruelty.

Perhaps the most revealing of the new moral tenets advocated by leftism is transgenderism. This practice of renouncing one’s old self, being “reborn” with a new name, and leaving behind one’s former identity definitively marks leftism as a religion rather than just another political movement. Leftism upholds abortion as an absolute good because it proclaims a spiritual reality in which the sacrifice of a child is a good. An entire month is set aside for the ritualistic worship of homosexuality because leftism believes that there is a spiritual reality that demands it. Ancestral victimhood (whether exaggerated or not) is worthy of praise because leftism holds that victims are spiritually superior to non-victims. And gender transitions resemble a sort of twisted version of the Christian sacrament of Baptism.

In fact, all of the practices of leftism appear to be diabolical inversions of Christian sacraments. The philosopher Peter Kreeft once wisely observed: “Abortion is the Antichrist’s demonic parody of the Eucharist. That’s why it uses the same holy words, ‘This is my body,’ with the blasphemous opposite meaning.” Leftism is not just the next wave of communism. It is a religious cult, both a political and a spiritual force, animated by Hell’s hatred for Heaven.

What then can conservatives do to stand against the servants (whether wittingly or unwittingly) of Satan himself? Economic reforms and mass deportations, while a political necessity at present, will not be enough to halt the march of Hell. If leftism is truly recognized for the demoniac onslaught that it is, then conservatism has no choice but to root itself in Christianity.

In recent decades, conservatism has taken a somewhat agnostic approach to the dangers facing the West, seeking to conserve a “status quo.” But which status quo? The social and cultural makeup of the world has shifted rapidly and repeatedly. Is the world of 2010 to be conserved? Of 2008? Perhaps that of September 10, 2001? The West has strayed far from its foundation in Christian morality, though it has not yet succeeded in escaping that morality. If conservatism wishes to effectively conserve anything at all, it must root itself firmly in Christianity, or else it will perish along with Western Civilization.

Christianity alone offers that which will survive the onslaught of leftism: eternity. Christian morality does not change with the times or shift according to consensus surveys. It is eternal, decreed by God Himself, who alone existed before all else. Conservatism must broaden its scope, recognize the plight of the West, and take up the banner of Christian morality. Open war is upon us. We must choose now whether we will try to preserve a moral no-man’s-land or adhere to the moral truths preserved throughout the centuries by Christianity.

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