How Should We Then Live Part 10: Final Choices (I)

This final episode was certainly one of the weakest and most dated – and yet also necessary. Schaeffer attempts to tie things together and make his final appeal. This episode differs from the others in that Schaeffer is not talking about art and culture from the vantage point of historic places and museums. It's mostly just him talking and he more or less keeps falling back on a couple of points crucial to his project. This is what the series has been all about. He wants his audience to take away these crucial applications and he more or less devotes an entire episode to them.

One, he argues that in the present milieu – that of the Post-Christian Consensus, there will arise an elite that will rule society on an arbitrary basis with no guiding absolutes. This is (he seems to argue) the harvest of centuries of cultural decline and Christian thinking that has been less than faithful.

He also discusses how this same coming elite will manipulate society. He then offers some suggestions in how to counter this trend and save civilisation. Once again as has been the case throughout the series the audience he directs his comments to is both a conflation of the Church and the culture.

He quotes from several intellectuals like John Kenneth Galbraith to argue that even academia (in the 1970's) was pushing for technocracy and oligarchy. But Schaeffer errs in that he assumes these men are arguing against the Christian Consensus or in defiance of Christian morality – when that's just not the case. They would not even agree with his basic assumptions about the nature and genesis of the present order and so in a sense he's arguing with straw men.

In the decades following World War II society grew ever more complex and intellectuals were concerned that critical decisions were being left in the hands of an easily swayed and manipulated public – a public incapable of making educated reasonable choices. The crisis for these thinkers was not with regard to a so-called failing or obsolete Christian consensus which they all would have (more or less) dismissed out of hand as a question that had been irrelevant for generations or even centuries. Rather the crisis was with reference to liberal democracy and whether it had reached its limits, whether it could in fact function in a nuclear and television age.

Now Schaeffer speaks in ambiguous terms on this point – sometimes liberal democracy is Christian and an outworking of Christian thought and action and in other cases he's clearly opposed to it. As I've explained in earlier pieces for Schaeffer and many like him liberal democracy is laudatory in the context of a Christian consensus – outside of this, it's disastrous and sometimes evil. Schaeffer almost grants this point at the end of the video and yet he's still less than honest in his framing. But ultimately that's what he's saying – democracy will only work in a Christian society. Otherwise it's a bad system.

This of course is in direct contrast to the sentiments of Jefferson and the other Founders who believed these truths to be self-evident and universal – therefore they argued for categories of 'natural law' truths that transcend all religions and can function in all contexts. Whether they were right or wrong is certainly a debate worth having but Schaeffer can't have it both ways. The truth is the Christian consensus democracy he posits is not the democracy of the Founders but a modification – or rather a deviation from it. And in different contexts Schaeffer would reject it altogether which indicates he was not approaching these questions as the Founders were at all. If he's arguing for a different understanding of society, political order and law than the Founders – the Christian consensus argument collapses. If he's equating his views with some kind of patriotic narrative – this too is in jeopardy as many could rightly argue that Schaeffer's views are in fact much closer to the system the Founder's were fighting against than one in harmony with them. In other words his very patriotism and Christian-America narrative would (and should) rightly fall into serious doubt.

So one, we can consider the historical questions regarding Schaeffer's claims. Of course we can also examine the theological assumptions – that such a thing as a 'Christian Consensus' has any actual meaning or Biblical validity. And then, we can begin to interact with his claims regarding 20^th century intellectuals and their concerns regarding democracy, their arguments for technocracy and the like. I'm afraid on all points his claims and assertions are subject to serious dispute.

Of course there's another problem with Schaeffer's opening claims regarding the elite. Prior to 1776, all post-Roman societies functioned with ruling elites. There was no democracy to speak of and the very idea was almost categorically rejected. His documentary series covers roughly 1900 years and yet for 1700 of those years, society was ruled by an elite and evidently in previous contexts (when things were 'Christian') that was just fine – at least for Schaeffer. Feudalism requires no comment in this regard but even The Magisterial Reformation was elitist – lords and clerical councils ran the show and often in a quite authoritarian fashion. These people were not democratic and consensus (if such a term has meaning in that context) was often forged with the sword. People conformed, fled or suffered. But the idea of rights, let along universal rights was simply not present.

Regarding manipulation by the said elite the previous comments also apply. The so-called Christian elite was engaged in heavy manipulation and often resorted to extreme forms of censorship, social coercion and draconian exercise of violence. This is what liberalism was reacting to.

As far as drugs and medication, not to mention his sceptical comments regarding psychological tests for political leaders, I had another one of those moments that I've occasionally enjoyed throughout the series – moments that remind me that I haven't imagined the past. Schaeffer was speaking at a time in which Christians rejected psychology. Obviously today's Evangelicals and Confessionalists would struggle to understand his cynicism as they have almost universally embraced psychology and the utilisation of psychotropic drugs.

It was also interesting to reflect how at that very time – the late 1970's, figures like James Dobson and Tim LaHaye were already beginning to make their mark and over the next 10-20 years they would spearhead a revolution in this regard – leading the Evangelical world to embrace psychology. And today those who reject it are on the fringe, reckoned as fundamentalists and rubes.

As far as drugging the water supply, this (along with his television examples) is a point that makes the series seem rather dated. Schaeffer could not imagine the effects of the Internet or the embrace of psychology and psychological medications. Television continued to degenerate in the decades after his series was produced and it, combined with the Internet, a downgrade in education, an ever stressed, fragmented, and distracted culture and many other factors led to the very effects he speaks about – though obviously not in a way he could have imagined. Dumbed down, ignorant, distracted and in fact unable to focus, the effects on people today are as if someone has drugged the water. The brilliant potency of the modern society and state lies in the fact that people can be manipulated to voluntarily shut down their minds and subject them to atrophy – you don't have to surreptitiously drug their water.

As I've long said, the information is out there. The books are on the library shelves. The state doesn't need to hide things to that extent. This is where authoritarian states exhibit a kind of child-like understanding of human nature. If people are told 'no' they begin to ask questions. It's far better from the standpoint of an authoritarian to condition the people to not even ask or even care – to be so distracted as to not even know what question to ask or be able to follow an argument if it's given to them. If people read the books on the shelves and understood them there would be blood in the streets and leaders strung up from lampposts – but the elites of our age need not fear. The people don't care and increasingly don't really even know what questions to ask or who to be angry with. They don't understand how the system works. It didn't take drugs. It just took about thirty years of television and Internet – and that was before Facebook, a thing Schaeffer could not have conceived of.

As far as scientific evils and the downgrading of humanness there's much of what he said that I agree with and yet I would also argue that this points to the fact that the system replacing the current liberal democracy (as opposed to Schaeffer's claimed Christian consensus) is not arbitrary but we're seeing a new system (and religion) arise – and of course it is largely incompatible with both Classical Liberalism and Christian thought and life. This latter point remains a struggle for many Evangelicals, Confessionalists and other advocates of Christendom such as conservative Catholics. They believe strongly in the philosophical project, in the ability for man (even fallen man) to understand nature and build upon it. They want to appropriate or 'claim' science as their own and remain unwilling to divorce it and various other spheres from their holistic conception of sanctified society.

The pilgrim ethic, the Biblicist mindset, the anti-modern supernaturalist posture of Scripture can approach these questions and dilemmas differently but this requires a very different discussion and framing than what is found with Schaeffer.

Of course more could be said on the inherent contradictions at work within our society with reference to a purely scientific materialist worldview that views humanity as but another animal species – and the humanism which undergirds liberal democracy. What it boils down to is that while many will pay lip service to scientific materialism and Scientism – the truth is that very few believe it and actually are willing to live out its implications. Liberalism, a belief in human rights, a philosophy that attempts to give meaning to concepts such as life and liberty, let alone happiness and even property (as an investment and something that can be passed on to heirs) belies the claims of scientific materialism. It does attach meaning to existence. It does rest its conception of the world within a framework of morality and it does distinguish human as opposed to animal life.  

We can watch a David Attenborough film of a pack of lions tearing apart an antelope and we accept it as part of nature and yet not one of these people will accept such behaviour among humans as moral or justifiable – even though according to them we are just animals after all. If a group of men attacked, violated and tore apart a fleeing screaming woman they would cry foul – and rightly so.

They have no reason for this objection and yet they know better. Of course they do. They have laboured to suppress their consciences but there are limits. Now when those limits are removed as they were at times throughout the 20^th century, that's something to fear.

Again, Liberalism is not Christian and though it's a flawed and in many ways a failed system it has its pragmatic advantages. We need to break with Schaeffer's analysis and approach these questions differently and understanding the Church's place in the world and the limits of what this world can accomplish and what it is meant to accomplish –  then and only then can we better understand society and our place and role within it.

Schaeffer provides a simplistic (though not wholly inaccurate) presentation of how television can manipulate audience perceptions and yet I found his presentation disturbing as he doesn't explain that both scenarios regarding a hypothetical confrontation between police and protestors were wrongly reported. Neither was ethical in its accounting or even attempting to be objective.

The greatest irony is that the so-called liberal media is rarely that blatant in its bias and yet outlets such as FOX often are – one wonders if Schaeffer would approve? Of course once again, FOX, Facebook and the Internet were not on the scene in 1977 and the latter (which is today a primary source of news for the public) has taken the manipulation to an unprecedented and even unimaginable level. This segment while not entirely irrelevant does come across as rather basic and certainly dated.

But of course there's a lot more to the nuances of news coverage than Schaeffer even hints at. News coverage usually carries assumptions and Schaeffer certainly has his own when he talks about international events or when he mentions the Communist bloc. Schaeffer views the world from a Western bias and as mentioned previously some of his analysis of Europe and its culture exposes his deeply American bias.

Other times the media is guilty of not so much overtly lying but in failing to contextualise or in only telling half the story. This is justified by the assumptions of the reporter or editor and yet it does a great disservice to the reader or viewer. These are complicated issues but I'm afraid a further probing would reveal that Schaeffer does not really believe in attempting to be objective. Ironically, (given his warnings in this episode) his disciples and indeed the whole movement seem to suggest that there should be some kind of societal elite who exercise a gatekeeper function – censoring media and controlling its message. In other words while he makes some valid points, his understanding (or at least presentation) is simplistic and on another level disingenuous.

Continue reading Part 10 (II)