During this time, I obviously have not gotten around to blogging much. It is not because of lack of thoughts. One thought that I haven't been able to get away from is an essay by James V. Schall sent to me by my friend, Eric Lee, from the Homiletic and Pastoral Review (www.ignatius.com/magazines/hprweb/schall_June2007.htm). The essay reviews and reflects upon Tracy Rowland's excellent book in the Radical Orthodoxy series, Culture and the Thomist Tradition after Vatican II (2003).

The essay begins: "For a number of years, I have argued, in its most succinct statement, pace all other philosophic positions, that the intellectual position of Catholicism [or, in my terms, evangelical, orthodox, and catholic Christianity] in the modern world has never been stronger but is cultural position has never been weaker." As a contemporary academic who is simultaneously a pastor, I have to agree with this observation. The fundamental contradictions in modernity and its nihilistic successor in certain types of post-modernity are deeply apparent in intellectual currents within the world. Yet the modernist, liberal cultural, institutional biases so form contemporary bodies generate a problem of intelligibility for classical Christianity to those outside the church, as well as crises of faith for those within the church.

As Schall argues there is a temptation towards responding by cultural accomodation -- the main program of liberal (in both its "conservative" and "liberal" consumerist forms) and liberationist theological traditions today. Schall writes, "This 'welcome' of a culturally conformed Catholicism may or may not be forthcoming, of course, but what is obvious is that this accomodating itself to the culture would have the disadvantage of eliminating the core of what Catholicism has stood for or said it stood for. Its 'alternative' to the existing culture, perhaps the last one still around, would disappear. Whatever might be left after such conformity, it would not be what the faith had claimed itself to be . . ." And despite the intellectual vacuity of its positions (see the reviews of Dawkin's and Hitchen's atheistic diatribues), these books still end up on the best sellers list -- along with the Left Behind series, itself a profoundly liberal accomodation to the contemporary culture.

The culture thus staggers with political and moral scandal one after another -- without recognizing that such scandals arise in the intellectual incoherence of the institutional system of the liberal nation-state, all the while promising personal freedom and justice that, of course, merely oppresses and fragments persons into combative interest groups. The culture continues to be "largely impervious to any large-scale opening to the essential revelational positions, something that puzzles the proponents of a 'new evangelization' [or church growth theorists], largely because of a underestimation of the issues of the culture of modernity. Many significant individual conversions continue to take place, but the culture is stubbornly unmoved."

How to respond? It seems to me that we have to turn ourselves over to the culture-forming power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ within local congregations. We have to recognize that the liberal culture and the "relational" theological commitments that some use to show the "relevance" of Christianity in liberal terms, needs contested. We have to "up the level" of our discourse, to show its inner coherence and truthfulness in life. This calls for vigorous intellectual work at historical, theological, philosophical, political, and cultural critical work -- extensive reading and writing from the highest levels of reflection. Yet this also needs disseminated into local congregations in authentic but graspable ways. I spent last night reading Chesterton's work on Saint Francis. Already 100 years ago, Chesterton saw this situation emerging (much like John Henry Newman). CS Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkein evidence resources. But the church must become a reading church, forming those in its midst to withstand what seems "natural" within the culture that makes genuine Christian convictions seemingly unintelligible. Finally this must all take place within the particular practices of the Christian faith -- prayer, reading the Scriptures, gathering in worship, the Sacraments, engaging in the spiritual and corporate works of mercy.

We cannot "save" culture. Surprises no doubt lie ahead of us. But we can be "wise as serpents and innocent as doves" within the current culture that we find ourselves in liberal democratic nation-states.