LatCons Revisited
Further Thoughts on Latitudinarian Conservatism
by David Mills
In writing “Meet the LatCons” I hoped mainly to introduce the phrase “Latitudinarian Conservatives.” My model was Richard John Neuhaus’ title “The Naked Public Square,” which is tossed about by people who have never read the book, because the phrase is a useful summary of the problem of a society in which religion plays no public part.
“Latitudinarian Conservatism” seemed to me to describe a type of conservative American Christian whose peculiar mixture of near fundamentalism and selective relativism has been misunderstood by more dogmatic Christians, liberal as well as conservative, who expect more consistency in principle and practice and therefore cannot understand such a mixture. Liberal Christians tend to notice only the fundamentalism, traditional Christians only the relativism, though both sometimes feel puzzled that LatCons agree with them on other points.
Once given a name, this expression of conservative Christianity could be analyzed and its promise and danger identified. I thought the movement important to analyze because it has and surely will succeed in drawing people into its churches, people leaving more dogmatic forms of conservatism, others looking for a faith more substantial than the ethical religion of skeptical liberalism, and others dissatisfied with the lack of authority and certainty in popular and New Age spirituality. As I suggested in the first article, I think it may well become the dominant form or style of Christianity in this country, because the fruits of the LatCons’ faith are so evident, and so many people today are searching for a truly supernatural religion that is nevertheless conformable with middle-class society. And, at the same time, a more dogmatic Christianity is becoming increasingly counter-cultural and eccentric, while skeptical liberalism is losing its power and effect.
Judging from their responses, which were much greater than I expected, Touchstone readers seem to share the same frustration with the LatCons in their Churches. Whatever Church they belong to, they are frustrated to find them so sound on some questions but so hopelessly muddled or ostentatiously wrong on others, and to be unable to prove to them that they are in error because their authorities and their way of thinking change with the questions.
If my respondents represent them, the “ecumenically orthodox” Touchstone readers are regarded by the LatCon as overly dogmatic, insensitive, and narrow, as people who are trying to sell old wineskins out of a misplaced and probably selfish affection for old leather. It is very hard to convince a LatCon that you assert the doctrine—the biblical marriage discipline, for example—because you believe it to be true, and because true, the source of joy and blessing, however temporally difficult and painful is obedience. They see people in pain, and think you are being unpastoral or insensitive in refusing to let them do what they feel they need to do. If LatCons feel charitable or like you, they will ascribe your arguments to a certain cast of mind or character, while nevertheless assuming that you are allowing your preferences to over-rule the needs of the Gospel today.
Since writing the article, I have had a few more thoughts about Latitudinarian Conservatism, some the result of conversations with readers.
LatCons Are Our Fault
First, the existence of LatCons is to some large extend the fault of more traditional Christians. The rigidity of “traditionalist” Christianity often creates LatCons among those who know movement to be a sign of life, but do not yet have the wisdom to know when to stop bending. LatCon parishes are often large because traditionalist parishes are small: because people who are serious about Christianity see it practiced in the first but not in the second. They would often prefer the second, did they have any hope of a lively faith being practiced there.
The normal Christian judges churches by their obvious fruits and for him traditional Christianity becomes something to be avoided because its obvious fruits are often so few and so small and so shriveled. They see lives changed in LatCon parishes, and traditional parishes which do not grow. They see the first offering all sorts of healing ministries, and in the other people who would faint in horror if someone (someone else, anyway) were actually healed. Traditionalist Episcopalians, for example, love miracle stories from the Middle Ages but are convinced that such things must never happen in their parishes.
David Mills has been editor of Touchstone and executive editor of First Things. He edits the opinion page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
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more from the online archives
18.10—December 2005
on an Apostle’s Encounter with the Son’s Children by Anthony Esolen
27.4—July/August 2014
The Bible, Sacred Theology & the Mind of Christ by Patrick Henry Reardon
28.2—March/April 2015
Man, Woman & the Mystery of Christ
An Evangelical Protestant Perspective by Russell D. Moore
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