26 November 2023
Lots of good information in Kevin MacDonald's "Why Are Professors Liberals?" [PDF]. It's a bit long, but well worth your time.
Along with answering the obvious question in the title, it reminds us of the utter necessity of tribalism for Covenant folks. Without a tribal identity, we are quickly overwhelmed by outside forces that are hostile to faith. I hope you'll recognize that this amounts to a secular source confirming biblical principle.
MacDonald says much about the threat of Jewish influence, but he also spills the beans on how they succeed against all their enemies, yet seldom using any violence to conquer. You would think it's a secret, but this is well established in political theory. To the degree other influence groups use it, they tend to be quite successful. It's just a matter of human nature in the aggregate. MacDonald mentions three factors we need to cultivate. Oddly enough, they are in the Bible, as well.
1. A complaint -- We know that with Jews it is antisemitism. Our complaint is that the world ignores our Father's free gift of revelation. Even without Election, humans can and should embrace the divine wisdom that declares the nature of reality. But they all soundly reject it, for as many reasons as their are identity groups out there in the world. Worse, once they become aware of its power, they will do everything they can to keep us from securing our blessings via the Covenant of Christ.
We need to cultivate that sense of threat. They nailed our Savior to the Cross, and we are next. The people who will be first to persecute us would be the mainstream churches, once they begin to witness the power of Covenant blessings on any scale.
2. Tribalism -- We need to separate at some level that allows us to keep our Covenant lifestyle intact. "Come out from among them" is a fundamental principle of being faithful to our God. We need to keep our tribal boundaries intact; observe the boundaries and your convictions even without a tribe. To the degree possible, as the Lord adds to our numbers across the world, we need to way to keep track of each other. We need to create mechanisms to support each other, to show the necessary favoritism that God requires. Know the difference between family, allies and everyone else. The Covenant is a privilege; we cannot simply bleed out the blessings of the Covenant to every fool out there.
The difference is that our boundaries are nearly impossible to fake. Humility, a sense of accountability to Scripture, the warmth of family sharing, the power of convictions -- these things distinguish family from everyone else. We aren't better; we are blessed. Hanging out with each other should be a welcome break from the tension faith creates with a hostile world. We should be constantly healing each other.
3. Citations and referrals -- We need to support each other in the face of global hostility. We need a strong lore of verbal defenses and assertions of faith against the intellectual attacks we all face. Whenever I find someone whose message supports ours, I will feature it here (like the linked article above). How much better it would be if we had a handful of authors within the Radix Fidem community who could provide a more consistent witness across the board, not just useful ideas with a bunch of stuff that isn't pertinent.
For example, I've linked to other blogs and materials written by some of our Radix Fidem folks. Let's grow a community of blogs and other forms of teaching and gospel expression. Let's favor each other in our citations.
Unlike MacDonald's recommendations, we have no interest in taking over any part of the world. That's not why we organize as a tribe. Rather, we seek only to build up the boundaries of faith, community and covenant. Do you understand that survival as a community does not require conquest, only stability? The only thing we seek to "radicalize" is our own community. We need to distinguish ourselves by how we avoid being like everyone else.
Keep your eyes on this goal: As our size and density grows, we can afford to raise the moral barriers higher. We can begin to build a bridge across generations of our own community, and strengthen our obedience, which strengthens our blessings.
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