Don’t give up on America

“We're just sick of it, you know, and we’re not going to take it anymore. I see a civil war coming," said one Trump supporter at the former President’s October rally in Iowa. Those remarks, reported by MSNBC, soon went viral online.

It seems crazy to talk of civil war—but it’s true that the country is so divided that many on the right are now pining for ways to have an amicable “national divorce.” Along those lines, my friend Rod Dreher has issued a more genteel warning that Christians may have to exercise a “Benedict Option,” where they largely retreat from American civic and cultural life altogether.

But before we all throw in the towel and decide our problems are unfixable, it’s worth pondering a few basic truths. The most divisive ideas among us—think cancel culture, critical race theory, socialism, transgender ideology—are largely being pushed by a small group of influential cultural and political elites.

However, American institutions are foundering under this radical leadership. Whether it’s your local college or the Biden administration, it’s obvious that the progressive left has a huge weakness: If you think pronoun choices redefine biology or that money is an unlimited resource, you’re so detached from reality you can’t govern your way out of a paper bag. American institutions are hemorrhaging credibility and have a diminished capacity to do things we once took for granted. This is a frightening state of affairs.

It also presents a huge opportunity for Christians. Since the days of the Roman empire, we have excelled at providing services for those failed by their government or persecuted by a hostile dominant culture. Now is the time for Christians and their allies to build up their own “parallel polis”—Vaclav Havel’s famous term for a culture that called on his fellow citizens to reject the ideological dishonesty foisted on them by Czechoslovakia’s Soviet control.

Though marginalization and ideological control in America are increasing dramatically, our situation should not be compared to life under communism. Instead of Christians building up our own institutions merely as a bulwark against our own persecution, we have a golden opportunity to market them aggressively as a viable alternative to the millions of citizens afraid of the indoctrination and failure associated with mainstream institutions.

There are limitless opportunities here, as historically Christians have done remarkable work with everything from hospitals to social services. But they are particularly well situated to address one of the most tragic institutional failures in America—education.

On this matter, I speak from a great deal of experience. I have long served on the board of the school run by my Lutheran congregation in Virginia. Around 15 years ago, we decided that our church school wasn’t doing enough to differentiate itself from the other schools in our area. So we adopted a classical curriculum that emphasized Latin, grammar, rhetoric, and logic, in addition to incorporating worship and theology.

The results in the last 15 years speak for themselves. In a politically liberal suburb of Washington D.C., our modest K-8 school went from only 30 kids to 200, and unusually for a parochial school the vast majority of students do not attend our church nor are they Lutheran. In keeping with our mission, we have kept our tuition well below almost all other private schools in the area. There was a successful capital campaign and we doubled the size of the school building. When the local public schools stayed shuttered for over a year as a result of the pandemic, we worked hard to accommodate the local public health authorities and stayed open.

I firmly believe that if America is going to reject being torn apart at the seams, it’s going to come together because of places such as the red brick school building just downhill from my church. Working with parents in my community for years, I’ve seen how years of demonstrating concern for the salvation of a group of kids from politically and culturally diverse backgrounds can bring people together. And in addition to caring for their souls, the fact that hundreds of kids passing through our school leave knowing how to spot a logical fallacy gives me a small measure of hope for the future of American governance.

One school is hardly going to fix everything, but it has at least shown me what’s possible in my own community. Before we throw in the towel and pretend that there’s no fixing America, we should remember things are not so tyrannical that we can’t search for solutions that exist outside our acrimonious politics.

If we ultimately succeed in building up enough new community institutions where others are failing, the result won’t just be a “parallel polis”—it will be a restoration of a unifying American culture built on trust and shared values.