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Letter: When Cultural Warriors Collide 6/4/2003 “Christianity is not a philosophy”
The present public debate between two cultural warriors — David Horowitz and Robert Knight — is startling, but instructive. As one who knows both men and believes each to be honorable, the stridency of their differences is all the more disturbing.
Let me begin by commending both of these courageous conservatives for boldly engaging America’s countercultural revolutionaries. In his piece ( “Intolerance and Religion in the Public Square”), Mr. Knight tempered his righteous indignation with reasoned rhetoric, a gracious recognition of Mr. Horowitz’s history of fighting for freedom, and his encouragement to return to first principles.
I have long admired Mr. Horowitz for his soul-searched repudiation of his Marxist past and his zealous dedication to combat the foes of freedom in America, particularly in our culture. In this case, his genuineness is transparent in seeking to help those he believes are being oppressed.
Why, then, have these two warriors on the same side of the cultural divide taken such diametrically opposed positions on perhaps the most contentious issue facing Americans today?
Mr. Horowitz’s second column ( “Render Unto Caesar”) is enlightening in two respects. The first is his interchangeable use of terms: “Christian conservative” = “social conservative” = “philosophical conservative.”
Christianity is neither a social movement nor a philosophy, and Jesus Christ was neither a social reformer nor a philosopher. (That Christians regard Him as the Messiah while Jews are still waiting for theirs may be a factor in this situation.)
The notion that Christianity is a philosophy is a socialist construct that sees a cognitive equivalence between religious faith and philosophical persuasion. This construct ignores the reality that Christian conviction is a matter of the heart, not the head, and that it is spiritually discerned, not intellectually acquired. This construct also implicitly rejects the core belief of Christianity: that Jesus Christ — the incarnate God — died for mankind and was resurrected that we might have eternal life. Theologically, it tries to toss our Savior into the dustbin of history.
Further, this Christian-philosophy paradigm is an underlying element in the culture war that marginalizes Christianity by lumping it together with other ancient “myths” and belief systems, rather than recognizing and revering it as a formative factor in forging the freedom and security we share in America today.
The second intriguing, and interrelated, facet of Mr. Horowitz’s position is his adoption of the liberal “separation of church and state” argument (which is nowhere found in the Constitution). Mr. Horowitz ignores the First Amendment to his, and our, peril.
If religion can only be practiced privately, then religion has no freedom. Our Founding Fathers knew that religious faith cannot be discarded as we leave our homes and enter the public square. The escalating privatization of religion poses a significant threat to our free and open society. Our most fundamental laws (e.g., against murder, theft and the like) have moral (hence, religious) and not intellectual roots.
Privatizing religion expels the religious dimension from the public square — when that dimension precisely undergirds moral precepts, which, in turn, drive political prerogatives.
Once again, injunctions against murder derive, in principle, from the Ten Commandments. Western civilization and jurisprudence have their origins in our Judeo-Christian heritage. There has always been a fusion between religion and politics. The question is really whose values will prevail and how will they inform the political and cultural spheres of life.
David Horowitz has, for years, battled the tyranny of tolerance as found in the form of political correctness, yet he now seems to have accepted their arguments vis-à-vis the “gay agenda” — an agenda which is aimed at radicalizing the “family” and the whole of society, thus achieving Plato’s “canvass-cleansing” approach to cultural transformation. The canvass cleansers seek to replace the old moral values and derivative political prerogatives with new, politically correct ones — all in the name of tolerance.
The “totalitarian state” Mr. Horowitz fears is far more likely to arise from the machinations of the tolerance police than from followers of the Judeo-Christian worldview, which energized the development of our nation in the first place.
As a cultural warrior, it would behoove Mr. Horowitz to reexamine this issue through the lens of morality and the Judeo-Christian principles that he would abandon to the home alone. After all, the political civil rights movement of the ’60s was justified by moral precepts and sanctified by religious convictions (so eloquently espoused by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.).
Mr. Knight is an accomplished authority on homosexuality — its causes and consequences — and I have found his expertise and his motives to be beyond reproach. And Mr. Horowitz has been on both sides of the culture wars, gaining an understanding from the inside out of the aspirations and dynamics of the countercultural revolution. Together they could form a formidable team to stand in the gap for American principles and ideals.
I urge both gentlemen to have a heart-to-heart talk to resolve their differences.
The potential threat facing Americans is too great. The agenda of the homosexual lobby, as exposed by Concerned Women for America, endangers the very fabric of our lives and of our God-given inalienable right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” If implemented, the “gay agenda” — political correctness cloaked in the garb of civil rights — would rend American society from top to bottom.
Yours in liberty,
Daniel Borchers
Borchers is founder and president of Citizens for Principled Conservatism is a nationwide network of citizens seeking the restoration of conservative principles and ideals, goals and behavior within the Conservative Movement. Borchers can be reached by email at PrincipledConservative@yahoo.com or via regular mail at P.O. Box 506, Odenton, MD 21113. He also runs the website BrotherWatch.com. |
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