In the cultural battles of our day, conservatives always seem to lose. Some say progressives win because of their superior funding, organizational prowess, and cultural dominance. Others say conservatives lose because we are disorganized, factious, and lack an activist spirit. Perhaps they’re right on both counts. But that’s not why we lose. We lose because we have a much more difficult position to defend. We cannot go on thinking the left is acting in good faith for a good purpose, when in reality, conservatives and progressives are completely different projects with different goals and definitions of victory.

Roger Scruton once observed, “Good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.” Take the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, France, for example. It took 183 years to build but was almost completely destroyed by fire in a matter of hours in 2019. This is a fitting metaphor for the modern West, which was carefully built to sustain our civilization for generations, but is now crumbling after decades of relentless attack by a progressive ideology hell-bent on destroying it.
Progressivism is a demon-possessed ideology that seeks to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). The progressive disease has also infected evangelical Christianity, poisoning its bloodstream and spreading the contagion through trusted and once-conservative media outlets and educational institutions.
Conservative Christians, contending for “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), are being assaulted on multiple fronts by openly hostile secular progressives in government, business, news media, and Hollywood, not to mention apostate progressive pastors who claim to represent “the way of Jesus.” 
As Christian schools are overrun by tenured leftist professors and publishers sell cloaked leftist propaganda to unsuspecting conservatives, naive Christians convince themselves that “this too shall pass.” If they keep their heads down, silent and compliant, they’ll leave us alone.
Unfortunately, this is not possible. Sooner or later, conservatives must rediscover our fighting spirit and realize that we cannot play nice with progressives. They do not want to peacefully “coexist” with conservatives. They want to destroy us. Ordinary Christianity is the last major obstacle in their path.
Conservatism Operates Within Reality
Conservatism is only as good as the thing being conserved. In our day, what most needs conserving is nothing less than reality itself. Reality is conservative, and the more one accepts it as such the more conservative one will become. The progressive left is a reality-denying cope for those who would alter reality to match the idealized fictions of their minds.
This puts them at odds with God himself, for God is the ultimate reality. As Joe Rigney recently wrote, “The first imperative is to love the indicative.” We must accept reality as it is, as God made it. Daniel, describing God to Nebuchadnezzar, said, 
He changes times and seasons; 
he removes kings and sets up kings; 
he gives wisdom to the wise 
and knowledge to those who have understanding; 
he reveals deep and hidden things; 
he knows what is in the darkness, 
and the light dwells with him (Dan 2:21-22). 
This is reality. God made the world, set it on its foundations, made springs gush forth, and caused grass to grow. Finally, he entrusted it to the stewardship of man to subdue and exercise dominion (Gen 1:28-29). He orders the world such that it sustains life. God provides for all man’s needs through the ordinary means of discipline, skill, and work.
God also establishes limits, hierarchies and inequalities, and requires man to live within these constraints. These are not the result of the fall, but built-in manifestations of God’s wisdom in creation. Every restriction or inequality is an opportunity to trust God and work within the boundaries he put in place.
This is the world as it truly is, the world as God made it, that which is revealed in God’s word and observed in God’s world, a reality that must be respected for any society to thrive. Conservatism is a worldview of giving, receiving, and blessing. It dignifies work as a legitimate expression of Christian service, and dignifies man by beckoning him to discover the wonders hidden within creation. Such is the glory of God to conceal a thing, and such is the glory of kings to search it out (Prov 25:2).
Any kind of political or social conservatism that does not acknowledge God as the ultimate reality will inevitably fail. Christians are conservative not merely because we admire the constitution or love tradition, but rather for the sake of the transcendent, eternal reality upon which those things stand.
In other words, Christians aren’t merely conserving a nostalgic political worldview, but rather the application of Christian truth to all of life, including our society. Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt 28:18). Paul said, “God” commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). Christ is “highly exalted” and has been given the “name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:9-11).
This is the worldview that built Western society. To be sure, not all of our founding fathers were regenerate Christians, but they did draw upon centuries of Bible-saturated political theology and wisdom. In short, we’re not merely conserving something political, but convictional: we’re fighting to conserve and rebuild a once-respected Christian heritage that is now under siege by a demonic ideology of pagan progressivism. 
The progressive project is not a matter of alternate policy preferences in pursuit of a shared, common vision for society. Progressivism is a political and cultural attack directed squarely at Christianity itself. It is more than a political ideology, it is a rebellion against nature, nature’s God, and an attack on all who worship him.
The Sin of “Equalatry”
Contrary to what we’ve been told, human differences inevitably produce inequalities–divinely established natural hierarchies hard-wired into creation for his glory and our good. While some inequalities can be exploited for sinful gain, a virtuous society organizes them into a productive division of labor that benefits everyone. The most fundamental, inescapable human difference is sexual: God made us male and female from the beginning (Matt 19:4). The inequalities between men and women are a divinely designed gift for the harmonious joining of the sexes in mutual love and the creation of new life. Similarly, other human inequalities are positively presented in scripture as gifts for the edification of the church.
The left cannot accept this fact. Their sin is “equalatry,” which is making equality into an idol. The sin of equalatry is what Murray Rothbard once called a “revolt against nature,” rooted in envy and resentment towards those with superior skills, intelligence, beauty, or accomplishments. It regards all inequality as oppression and all hierarchy as tyranny. Since it bears a superficial resemblance to fairness, a biblical virtue, equalatry makes the left’s demands for “social justice” feel virtuous to Christians. But since the left defines justice as the elimination of all inequality, exceptionalism must not be tolerated.
The left subverts reality through media “narratives” that reward grievance. A man’s feelings of envy are merely a byproduct of his oppression. All inequalities are “privileges,” unjustly acquired. Their propaganda campaign that relentlessly categorizes the whole human experience as an epic struggle between oppressive villains and oppressed victims slowly brainwashes ordinary people into vicious cycles of self-righteous indignance or self-loathing guilt.
Deep down, people intuitively know that society cannot function without the basic virtues of hard work, competence, and honesty, yet they are gaslit into affirming the opposite.  They gradually find themselves nodding along with the guilt-inducing narrative that they are oppressors whose sins can only be absolved by yielding to the irrational demands of the state, BLM activists, and the rainbow mafia. Over time, the propaganda wears them down. One can only resist for so long.
The left regards our Christian heritage as a blight that spawned injustices that can only be remedied by tearing it all down and rebuilding anew. Captivated by the social Darwinist “myth of progress,” humanity must break free from the antiquated shackles of Christianity and march towards their vision of an eschatological, secular utopia.
As Thomas Sowell once said, we have “reached the ultimate stage of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today.” Americans have now reached peak efficiency in our ability to manufacture victims at warp speed through a malicious parade of patriarchs, homophobes, and white supremacists. It doesn’t matter that their thinking is irrational, because they have already determined that rational thought is yet another tool of oppression.
Progressives arrogantly believe reality itself can be bent to their wishes. With enough funding and power, they can refashion the world any way they choose. With enough medical technology, they can overcome the dreaded gender binary. They act with high-handed moral certitude, believing they possess sufficient wisdom to save our planet, end hunger, correct injustice, house the homeless, eliminate suffering, maximize erotic pleasure, turn men into women—you name it. This is delusional, of course, but they can’t see it because their worldview is predicated upon a carefully curated denial of reality.
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The irony is that Prince Harry was not speaking to the UN as someone who was elected by the people, nor as someone who had made his own way in life. Rather he was there because of the greatest white privilege of all – being brought up in the Royal Family! He can hardly speak as the democratic representative of the people.

When King Saul prophesied at Naioth at Ramah, the people were so surprised that it became a proverbial saying: “Is Saul also among the prophets?”
I thought of this when listening to Prince Harry’s speech to the UN last week. He spoke movingly in his sermon – for sermon it was – of his mother and of Nelson Mandela. But then he moved into specific political and moral issues where he delivered the ‘gospel’ according to progressive doctrine. His three points were climate change, disinformation and abortion.
A prophet declares the word of the Lord, so let’s see how prophetic Harry was. On climate change, as with the other list of disasters he mentioned, he spoke of how he understood and knew people’s pain. He was certainly right to point out that it is the poor who bear the brunt, not only of climate change, but also the measures taken by the wealthy to combat it.
Think for example of the people of Sri Lanka, whose super wealthy president decided to enamour himself to his WEF admirers by banning fertilisers. As a result, crops failed, people went hungry, riots ensued, and he was forced to flee the country.
Prince Harry never has to worry about heating or cooling his Californian mansion, or how much trips home to the the UK to see his family will cost. Or indeed, how many holidays he and Meghan can have. His ability to empathise with those who cannot afford heating bills or expensive food is somewhat limited.
Harry on Abortion
Given he was standing on the same ‘green’ ground as his father, Harry obviously felt safe to weigh in with his considered opinion and calculated empathy. But it was when he turned to the politics of his new home country that he displayed a lack of political awareness and of moral probity.Comparing the war in Ukraine with the ruling of the US Supreme Court on abortion, he pronounced that this was “a global assault on democracy and freedom”, and an erosion of constitutional rights.
This is the same Prince Harry who pronounced that the constitutional right to freedom of speech was “bonkers”. Perhaps he has discovered a newfound respect for the US constitution? If so, he should read it before making pronouncements on the world stage.
The US constitution does not mention abortion and there is no constitutional right within it.
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Written by Matthew M. Kennedy |
Monday, March 20, 2023
The contrast between this ethic and the Christian understanding of human nature and God’s law could not be greater. Because we are fallen creatures, we must not look within to find the truth about ourselves. The human heart is darkened. God revealed His law so that, in its light, we might see ourselves clearly. And “through the law,” Paul writes, “comes knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20). The law of God serves as a measure against which the human being is shown to be wanting. We are not good, and we cannot do the good that God requires.

David Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University, once held the classical Christian view that homosexual relationships are sinful. But after his younger sister came out as a lesbian in 2008, he changed his mind.1 The sequence is important. Gushee did not change his mind because of careful biblical exegesis and reflection. His sister came out and then he changed his mind. Gushee later wrote a book about the process, Changing Our Mind (David Crum Media, 2014). As George Guthrie writes in his review of Gushee’s book,
The book constitutes [Gushee’s] own story of encounter, compassion, cognitive dissonance, and existential change of perspective. As he met LGBT couples, sat with children who’d been traumatized at home or church, processed his relationship with his sister who came out as a lesbian, heard from a student who’d been pained by David’s past teaching, he seems to have been backed into an existential corner….The way he’d been reading Scripture seemed increasingly implausible….At the end of the day, then, Changing Our Mind isn’t so much about David’s reasoned abandonment of 2,500 years of Judeo-Christian teaching on sexuality as it is a telling of his story, a story of seeking to pull together the disparate stories in his world.2
“We Know What the Text Says”
In an even more telling transformation, New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson, an able defender of the historicity of the Gospels,3 whose daughter has identified as gay, wrote in Commonweal,
I have little patience with efforts to make Scripture say something other than what it says, through appeals to linguistic or cultural subtleties. The exegetical situation is straightforward: we know what the text says. But what are we to do with what the text says?….I think it important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. And what exactly is that authority? We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience…which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us. (emphasis added)4
It is difficult to find a professing Christian leader who has relinquished the classical Christian position on sexuality on purely exegetical grounds. The most popular voices in the less academic evangelical realm who claim to have changed their minds — Matthew Vines, Justin Lee, and Jen Hatmaker — are either gay or are very close to someone who is.5 The readiness with which these high profile Christians abandon their former convictions in light of personal experiences suggests that they had, perhaps unknowingly, already adopted a worldview that undermines the classical Christian understanding of human nature and the relationship between God’s law and the human heart.
Establishing a Righteousness of Their Own
God made human beings in His own image and declared everything He had created “very good” (Gen. 1:31).6 Then Adam took the forbidden fruit from his wife and ate, and sin rooted itself in the human soul. Consequently, the apostle Paul writes, “No one is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). Jesus, approached by a young man seeking to gain eternal life by his good deeds, declared that “no one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18). The gospel itself — the good news that God became man, lived, died, and rose again to save sinners — is predicated on the truth that human beings are incapable of self-redemption.7
Yet we strive to establish our own essential goodness. The Pharisees sought to do this by following the “tradition of the elders,”8 a system of practices rendering the law of God, which God gave as the chief means to reveal humanity’s sinfulness and need for His mercy,9 doable.10 Referring to this attempt, Paul writes, “seeking to establish their own [righteousness], they did not submit to the righteousness of God” (Rom. 10:3). Their unwillingness to acknowledge their sinfulness blinded them to the good news that Jesus came to save sinners.
The Luminous Self?
The same self-delusion today takes center stage in what might be described as the Gospel of Self. Look within, its apostles urge. Peel back the layers of socially imposed norms to find your authentic self — the true, inherently good, you —and live in accordance with what you find.
The paradigm has become so culturally predominant that in June 2020 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled an employer must affirm an employee’s gender self-identification without regard to his or her biological sex.11 The employee’s inner sense of the core self must be permitted to determine the workplace environment.
One of the clearest expressions of the Gospel of Self can be found in Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile’s best-selling book, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery. They write, “Buried in the deepest precincts of being, I sense there is a truer, more luminous expression of myself and that as long as I remain estranged from it I will never feel fully alive or whole.”12 The human person is not merely good, but a being of luminous light. One may have to dig past culturally imposed norms to find oneself, but once found, the true you is a thing of unspeakable beauty.
While the idea of the luminous self directly contradicts the biblical doctrine of original sin, it gains a foothold in Christian circles when its advocates associate it with the imago Dei.13 The shiny self is the self that has been made in God’s image. The imago Dei is not, as Irenaeus described it, a shattered mosaic, but rather a buried treasure waiting to be unearthed. And once found, any refusal to affirm and celebrate the discovery constitutes a wholesale rejection of the person and God’s image in her.
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Jonathan Merritt, “Leading Evangelical Ethicist David Gushee Is Now Pro-LGBT. Here’s Why It Matters,” Religion News Service, October 24, 2014, https://religionnews.com/2014/10/24/david-gushee-lgbthomosexuality-matters/.
George H. Guthrie, “Changing Our Mind,” The Gospel Coalition, January 9, 2015, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/changing-mind/.
Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus (San Francisco: HarperOne,1997)
Luke Timothy Johnson, “Homosexuality and the Church,” Commonweal, June 11, 2007, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/homosexualitychurch-0.
Matthew Vines and Justin Lee are both quite publicly gay and have been out for some time. Jen Hatmaker’s daughter came out publicly in June 2020, but her family had known “for some time.” “Jen Hatmaker Reveals Her Daughter Is Gay,” Christian Today, June 30, 2020, https://www.christiantoday.com/article/jen.hatmaker.reveals.her.daughter.is.gay/135119.htm.
All Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version.
“Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8).
See Mark 7:1–13.
Romans 3:20; see discussion below.
Following this system, Paul once considered himself “blameless” (see Phil. 3:6).
Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, 590 U.S. ___ (2020). See Melissa Legault, “Landmark U.S. Supreme Court Ruling Prohibits Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity-Based Discrimination in Employment (US),” National Law Review, June 15, 2020, https://www.natlawreview.com/article/landmark-us-supreme-court-ruling-prohibits-sexualorientation-and-gender-identity.
Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press Books, 2017), 23.
The image of God.

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