Lutherans and the Alt-Right

 

"Green Lives Matter"

Xerxes, my larboard columnist friend, is impressed of late that President Harrison of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in the US has come out in opposition to the “alt-right,” condemning it in members of his congregation. Xerxes thinks this is impressive because the LCMS has a reputation as a conservative denomination.

Xerxes is wrong to be impressed. It is no surprise if a conservative Christian denomination denounces the “alt-right.” This is dog-bites-man. 

There is a reason why the “alt-right” calls itself and is called the “alt-right.” Because it is an alternative to the right. There is no reason for a conservative denomination to love it.

Conservatism means wanting to conserve established traditions. In the US that means, pre-eminently, equality and civil rights: respecting and preserving the ideals of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. American conservatism is thus necessarily liberal, in the true sense of that word. It believes in democracy, equality, and limited government. It is anti-authoritarian. An authoritarian or totalitarian American right is therefore a contradiction in terms. Authoritarianism and totalitarianism is a plausible position only on the left. Hence the term “alt-right” for those eccentric American individuals who embrace ideas of a non-orthodox-Marxist but autocratic regime. Not to say that, even in European terms, Nazism or fascism are clearly on the right. An autocratic monarchy might be.

There’s not a big constituency for making America a kingdom.

Accordingly, in condemning the “alt-right,” or “Christian nationalism,” President Harrison of the LCMS is doing nothing surprising or bold; any more than coming out against vampires and werewolves. 

There is nothing so alarming about Christian nationalism. It is the status quo in such liberal democratic countries as the United Kingdom or Denmark. Because of the First Amendment, it has no support among conservatives in the US. I am a news hound, and regularly sample media outlets often accused by the left of being “far right,” like Fox News, Daily Wire, Small Dead Animals, Instapundit, and so forth. Nobody there is talking about Christian nationalism. Nobody there uses the term. The concept seems to exist only on the left.

President Harrison, in condemning the perhaps two or three members of his denomination who are alt-right and have active Twitter accounts, cites advocacy for “white supremacy, Nazism, pro-slavery, anti-interracial marriage, women as property, fascism, death for homosexuals, and genocide.”

Most of what is considered the alt-right is actually trolling; it is practical joking by juveniles to make authorities look foolish for taking it seriously. It is fun, at a certain age, to show up your elders as gullible idiots. Actually, it is fun at any age. I’d guess that is true of all the items Harrison lists here—someone is pulling his leg. 

More alarming than this semi-mythical “alt-right” is the tendency on the left—and not some tiny “alt-left”--to associate such absurd gag views with anyone who is—to quote Xerxes’s own charges--“pro-Bible, anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-abortion, anti-newcomer, anti-vaccine, anti-mask, anti-Trudeau.” 

This is far more nefarious. Take the charge that anyone who is “anti-Trudeau” is “alt-right.” This means calling the majority of Canadians alt-right, and charging them with supporting slavery and genocide. After all, a super-majority of Canadians are anti-Trudeau. They always have been; they have been for the past three elections. 

Being opposed to the current government, and organizing to bring it down, is how democracy works. Oppose this, and it is you who are demanding a totalitarian, fascist government. Not as a gag—in all seriousness.

All Canadians also have a right to freedom of conscience, as the right would insist, and therefore a right to hold and proclaim pro-Bible views. Since all major world religions teach that homosexual sex is a sin, they have a right to hold and proclaim this view as well—just as anyone else has the right to argue the opposite. Feminism is a particular political ideology, a set of political demands, with which, in a free society, people have a right to disagree, and have a right to resist. In a non-totalitarian society, politics may be openly discussed, and people may dissent. So too with abortion; it is an issue we must legislate on, and must discuss, if we are a democracy. So too with immigration levels. Finally, we have a right, as the right insists, to decide for ourselves any medical treatment; this is security of the person. 

It is those on the left who seem to be subverting our rights and freedoms. This is creeping fascism; or perhaps galloping fascism.