Is Christianity “conservative”?

Catholicism simply is what it is, and shouldn’t be viewed as an instance of generic conservative Christianity. The issue in the Church is not conservatism but orthodoxy.

(Image: Karl Fredrickson / Unsplash.com)

Last month I pointed out serious problems with progressive Christianity, mostly having to do with the progressive rejection of transcendence. To fill out the discussion, it seems I ought to say something about conservative Christianity.

What is it, and how is it different?

The ambiguity of the word “conservative” suggests there may be something odd about the question. “Progressive” has a fairly definite meaning as such terms go. It refers to whatever the people who dominate our public life believe contributes to the long-term trend they see in Western society toward freedom, equality, rationality, and secularity.

In contrast, “conservative” refers to whatever resists change—particularly progressive change—within a particular society or system. But that can include any number of things, from libertarianism to populism to oligarchy. And in religion, it can mean anyone who is not a full-blown progressive.

So it seems to lack a definite meaning. Even so, progressives tend to lump all conservative things together, and that makes sense from their point of view. They rarely see a legitimate reason to disagree with them, so they often believe that anyone who rejects their views is a “fascist”—a selfish, ignorant, or psychologically disordered proponent of oppression, obscurantism, dogmatism, and unjustified privilege.

That view is comprehensible in its way. Progressivism is rather coherent, except by the standard of whether it ultimately makes sense. That is why progressives are able to maintain unity of outlook globally as circumstances and progressivism itself evolves. So it is natural for them to assume that someone who rejects one aspect of their outlook will reject the others as well. And since they have trouble making sense of conservative positions, they are likely to assume that their opponents’ goals and motives are simply the opposite of their own supposedly benevolent ones.

Not surprisingly, their opponents have a different view. Catholicism, for example, has often been seen as the ultimate anti-progressive force. That was the point of Voltaire’s catchphrase écrasez l’infâme—“crush the infamous thing.” And there’s some sense to that view—indeed, I argued in last month’s column that Catholicism is entirely at odds with progressivism.

But that situation doesn’t mean what progressives think it does. A Catholic who rejects the progressive understanding of secularity evidently believes it rational to bring natural law conceptions and some sort of orientation toward the transcendent into public life. That means he rejects the progressive understanding of rationality, which tends toward the technological, and of legitimate freedom and equality, which tends toward the view that goods are a matter of subjective evaluation.

But he isn’t likely to reject freedom, equality, rationality, or even secularity as such. Instead, he is likely to accept them—but understand them differently. For example, he is likely to believe that rationality involves recognition of objective goods, and that legitimate freedom and equality accept that recognition.

As to secularity, he is likely to agree with Benedict XVI that there is a healthy version of it that accepts the relative autonomy of earthly pursuits. The Church does not, for example, prescribe the proper form of government or the conclusions of the physical sciences. Even so, he would insist that ultimate questions matter very much and necessarily play a political and social role.

How that role should play out in the current world is a matter for discussion. But very likely he would believe that, in the best situation, the government would recognize the Church as the ultimate authority on religious and moral questions, rather as it now recognizes institutional scientific consensus as the authority on questions of physical science. (Some consider that principle tyrannical, but it is hard to see how government can be limited except through recognition of a definite higher authority.)

These features make Catholicism deeply anti-progressive. Even so, it is somewhat misleading to call it “conservative” when it is not a response to progressivism and has no a priori allegiance to the status quo. Particular statements of doctrine may, of course, respond to progressivism, but only by restating or stating more fully what Catholics believed long before progressivism became an issue.

Some Catholics do make accommodations to progressives, for example, by accepting the recent emphasis on the “horizontal” aspects of liturgy. Such people are sometimes called “conservative,” to distinguish them from their more tradition-minded brethren while recognizing their orthodoxy. But the term seems a misnomer when the changes relate to secondary matters (which may include ways of safeguarding orthodoxy) and there is no change on fundamental issues.

So Catholicism simply is what it is, and shouldn’t be viewed as an instance of generic conservative Christianity. The issue in the Church is not conservatism but orthodoxy.

Even so, true conservative Christianity does exist—in relation to progressivism. The rise of progressivism required people to make a decision: they might accept it, and become progressive, or they might reject it and stick with orthodoxy. In the latter case, they could, in principle, forget about progressivism altogether. But they might also try to accept some aspects of it while rejecting others. In that case, they could fairly be called moderate or conservative, depending on how much they’re willing to accept.

But partial acceptance is an odd approach in fundamental religious matters. The problem is that Christianity is doctrinal, and appeals to ultimate principles, while conservatism does not. It prefers to appeal to practice and experience rather than doctrine, and worries more about unintended consequences than progressive principles as such.

One of the original neoconservatives said that a neoconservative was a progressive “who got mugged by reality.” He and his associates were secular, and generally left-leaning, but their realization of the limitations of social reform programs and the need for religious and moral tradition led them to adopt many conservative positions.

But that was not enough to achieve anything durable. Prudent skepticism about schemes of reform, and recognition of the importance of informal local social order, are valuable insights but not enough for a political or religious system. Saying “social programs don’t work” only induces people to propose new programs they believe will work better, and noting that religion and traditional morality are beneficial for social order does nothing to promote them.

With that in mind, it’s no surprise that early neoconservatives like Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, who recognized the importance of domestic and social issues, had few successors, and today the tendency seems mostly defined by foreign policy concerns.

Some variation on that story has been the story of conservatism generally. Conservatism thus finds it difficult to dispute ultimate progressive goals, and tends to become progressivism that drags its feet. That is especially true now that progressive goals are generally accepted among socially respectable people.

Man is a rational animal, and doctrine and intellectual coherence eventually tell. And progressivism is doctrinal. If everything is up for debate, and traditional orthodoxy is no longer accepted, then that is the doctrine that will eventually win because it gives intellectual form to such strong tendencies in Western society. Complaining that it goes too far or defies commonsense can’t defeat it in the long run. Many therefore complain that conservatism has never conserved anything.

That is why in the Protestant world mainline denominations and increasingly Evangelical groups have felt a seemingly irresistible impulse to become more progressive in both theology and politics, even though that development destroys their distinctiveness and visibly leads to declining membership and participation.

In the Catholic Church, there have also been problems. Catholic progressivism is certainly real as a sociological matter, and in recent years has made something of a comeback. Even so, the Catholic structure of doctrine and authority arrested—and to some extent reversed—that tendency after the 1970s. It gave the Church a practical way to touch ground, restore herself, and proclaim an orthodoxy that was independent of progressivism rather than a reaction or spiritualized version of it.

Where will all this go?

Even apart from the promise of indefectibility, it’s evident that the Catholic Church is peculiarly well suited to maintain an alternative to progressivism. And if progressivism is ultimately as nihilistic as I argued last month, the Church has a bright future as long as she remains true to herself. May those tempted by progressivism even in its softer forms—including what is commonly called conservatism—take that to heart.


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About James Kalb 159 Articles
James Kalb is a lawyer, independent scholar, and Catholic convert who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of The Tyranny of Liberalism (ISI Books, 2008), Against Inclusiveness: How the Diversity Regime is Flattening America and the West and What to Do About It (Angelico Press, 2013), and, most recently, The Decomposition of Man: Identity, Technocracy, and the Church (Angelico Press, 2023).

27 Comments

  1. We read: “Even apart from the promise of indefectibility…” What promise of “indefectibility”? What we have, instead, is “papal infallibility,” and this guardianship under very precise conditions dealing only with faith and morals, and not as open-range editorial license announcing new revelations.

    Four points:

    FIRST, “The Christian dispensation, therefore, as the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away, and we now await no further new public revelation before the glorious manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ (cf 1 Tim 6:14, Tit. 2:13)” (Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, n. 4).

    SECOND, about the Church’s Social Teaching (CST), then, St. John Paul II explained it this way:

    “Christian truth is not of this kind [a concept to be imposed]. Sin it is not an ideology, the Christian faith does not presume to imprison changing socio-political realities in a rigid schema [….] Chrisian anthropology therefore is really a chapter of theology, and for this reason, the Church’s social doctrine, by its concern for man and by its interest in him and in the way he conducts himself in the world, ‘belongs to the field…of theology and particularly of moral theology” (Centesimus Annus, nn. 46, 55), not secular social science.

    It is the rejection of this clarity and grounding that characterizes so-called “synodality.”

    THIRD, ours is a sacramental and Eucharistic Church centered on the historical event of the Incarnation/Resurrection, as “assembly” of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church (as foreshadowed in the Old Testament “assemblies”), and not as a sola Scriptura (or non-Scriptura?) “congregation” of, say, experts and such as substituted by Martin Luther & Co.

    FOURTH, the legitimate need to understand insights from the social sciences is one thing, the remolding of the perennial Catholic Church into a facilitated, ongoing, ungrounded, inverted, involuted, polyhedral (Babelhedral?), and global Study Group would be quite another. Decades before the Second Vatican Council (above), even the layman G.K. Chesterton got it right (not Left!):

    “Those runners [messengers of the Gospel] gather impetus as they run. Ages afterwards they still speak as if something had just happened. They have not lost the speed and momentum of messengers; they have hardly lost, as it were, the wild eyes of witnesses. . . .We might sometimes fancy that the Church grows younger as the world grows old” (The Everlasting Man).

    • What I had in mind was the promise that “the gates of hell shall not prevail.” The Church however troubled will never cease to be what she is. That was true in the time of the Arian crisis, the reign of Honorius I, Stephen VI, and Alexander VI, and the Great Schism, and it’s true today.

  2. Christianity is conservative if it is truly Catholic. The Catholic – until 1962 – hands on the faith of the fathers as it was received.

    Ecumenical New Church based in Rome is teaching a different belief system in which all religions are on the same level pegging, with no one in need of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for salvation. It is not conservative but progressing downwards and dragging many lost souls with it?

  3. Conservative and Right Wing are not the same. True, classic conservatives embrace reason and logic and seek to preserve what is true and just. Right Wing often eschews logic and reason and embraces racism, fanaticism and absurdity, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene claiming the Government controls Hurricanes.

    I wish the media would try to differentiate conservative and right wing. Neo Nazis and White Supremacy is not “conservative.”

    • Re Media: Today’s main stream Big Media is not meant to inform. Sadly it is a propaganda arm of the left. Their use of terms like right wing etc. and such is only used to disparage opinions the Bid Media disagrees.

    • Nazi’s are Left Wing. Nazi is (German) short for National Socialist Party.
      Neo-nazi’s, white supremacists and the like are similarly socialist.

      • Late to the table, but this article is terrible. The problem with all this is all of you live to put labels on everyone as if we were spices in a cabinet. This because you all cannot see that all of this “Greek ideal” of who is man and what is man is against God. Here is a question Mr. Kalb: Is the Holy Spirit progressive or conservative?

    • And the left tells us men can be women and sodomy should be sacramentalized. They told us standing six feet apart in a big box store with thousands of people was perfectly fine, but having pizza in a local restaurant was a “superspreader” event.

      As for Hurricanes, the idea of human control of weather finds a home in the left every time the left asserts an unusual nature.

      You really should refrain from throwing rocks in a glass castle.

      People come here to discuss serious things, not to be subjected to the berations of hypocrites.

  4. It is my prayerful desire that the Church be and remain fully committed to holiness and to fulfilling the will of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God. That each of his children stand firm in the faith in the face of all the machinations of the evil one. We are in troubled times, but we have been in troubled times and stood firm. Our Faith has produced martyrs and saints in abundance. More importantly, the Faith has produced those quiet members that have given their two pence, their all, unremarked and without fanfare.
    I pray that I may better learn to ignore those who work against the Church and focus on how better to serve our God.
    Thank you for the excellent article.

  5. It is retrograde (not conservative), backwardist, rigid, fundamentalist, extremist, and belligerent. Catholics like these are simply and best called Taliban (not Traditionalist) Catholics.

  6. Linguistic analysis has value within its limitations. Words have practical etymology in two venues, dictionary definition and practice, which in existential practice very frequently defies a written textbook definition.
    Kalb’s distinction of contrast, unwillingness to change vs orthodoxy is quite workable in the current state of affairs. Although in practice can we realistically disassociate conservatism from orthodoxy? There are wide variations of reality in the human intellect, one artfully described by Kalb as the neoconservative, a progressive mugged by reality.
    Perhaps serendipitously today’s second breviary reading is by Saint Vincent Lerins describing progress in doctrine as a reality analogous to a child growing to an adult. Although analogy never defines what it is, it suggests it. That’s our challenge is moving from conservatism to progressivism. There is always a virtuous mean [median] when it comes to the ‘exercise’ of moral principles. There are no magical discernments that reveal that median between excess and defect, rather there’s the inherent apprehension by the intellect of truth. Like it’s said we know it’s pornography when we see it.
    Similarly what St Gregory Nazianzen called synderesis, what is perceived as good or evil in the particular is auto scrutinized by the intellect’s knowledge of universal principles of the good. Orthodoxy in discernment has much to do with the objective rather than subjective conscientious understanding of what is true and good. That true to Lerin’s dictum never obviates its essential definition as revealed by Christ and conveyed by the Apostles. What is evil can never be good as is the converse. Homosexuality can never be considered a good since its essential definition cannot change to a good due to circumstances, nor can the sacrament of marriage differ from union between a biological man and woman. Migration, except as a required refuge from some form of evil, can never violate the rights of nations.

    • Insofar as Justice, exercising it as a virtue, there is no middle road or median. As such justice incorporates all the measurable virtues subject to a median.
      Something is either just or it’s not, it is absolutely good or absolutely evil. As are the perennial doctrinal principles revealed to the Church and affirmed by reason.

  7. Much of this debate seems premised on the notion that what is proclaimed as a program for personal moral conduct should also be enacted into public law and thus enforced by the state. The progressive certainly believes this and therefore rejects the Catholic program of personal moral conduct since it does not translate into the laws they want. The conservative should be much more hesitant to enact personal moral principles into public law, but in practice many seem willing to fight laws with laws.

    But when it comes to the practical business of ruling a fallen race without creating the conditions that lead to rebellion and the fall of the state, history suggests that neither program seems particularly promising.

    This leaves some very hard questions about if and whether laws should be made that the majority do not support, and how the state is to be maintained when it imposes such laws, but perhaps it is the part of the conservative to suggest to the partisans of both orthodoxies that the maintenance of the state is generally to be preferred to its perfection, since the attempt to perfect it invariably destroys it, and in the wake of its fall, all manner of evils are visited upon the remnants.

  8. This is an interesting take on a theory I’ve had for a while — that while Progressivism is easy to define, the definition for Conservatism seems to be all over the map, even within the walls of those who self-proclaim to be exactly that.

    I do think, however, there are concepts at play here that the author does not take into account, but could make his case stronger. For example, if we assert “conservative” as “that which resists change,” we are framing it foundationally in reactionary terms; that it is only against something.

    If we present it in a more timeless context, however, we get a more robust picture. Consider, what did “prophecy” mean in the biblical world? While many in the modern realm of Christianity focus on that as some sort of future-telling ability, if we look at the whole of “prophets” and “prophecy” in the Holy Scriptures, we come to understand that it actually has more to do with a calling back; a sort of “come back to what you were, lest you fall off the path into unrighteousness” mode of thinking.

    In this way, it’s more like a parent-child relationship. When we see our children about to make a huge mistake, it’s not future-telling to know how it’s going to turn out; we just know because we can see it coming. This is made all the easier if we live a Holy and Sacramental life; a life that is timeless and how it has been done for thousands of years.

    Conservatism *must* be founded in this concept, lest it become meaningless (which is where we are today). It is not reactionary; it is a calling back to timeless truths that we know bear fruit. It is a slowed-down, calm, and Holy approach to life in a world of fast-moving, train-wreck-watching calamities that we can see coming a mile away if we are living properly.

    • Well stated. Russell Kirk’s first of ten conservative principles reflects much of that:

      First, the conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent.

      This word order signifies harmony. There are two aspects or types of order: the inner order of the soul, and the outer order of the commonwealth. Twenty-five centuries ago, Plato taught this doctrine, but even the educated nowadays find it difficult to understand. The problem of order has been a principal concern of conservatives ever since conservative became a term of politics.

      Our twentieth-century world has experienced the hideous consequences of the collapse of belief in a moral order. Like the atrocities and disasters of Greece in the fifth century before Christ, the ruin of great nations in our century shows us the pit into which fall societies that mistake clever self-interest, or ingenious social controls, for pleasing alternatives to an oldfangled moral order.

      And:

      Second, the conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity. It is old custom that enables people to live together peaceably; the destroyers of custom demolish more than they know or desire. It is through convention—a word much abused in our time—that we contrive to avoid perpetual disputes about rights and duties: law at base is a body of conventions. Continuity is the means of linking generation to generation; it matters as much for society as it does for the individual; without it, life is meaningless. When successful revolutionaries have effaced old customs, derided old conventions, and broken the continuity of social institutions—why, presently they discover the necessity of establishing fresh customs, conventions, and continuity; but that process is painful and slow; and the new social order that eventually emerges may be much inferior to the old order that radicals overthrew in their zeal for the Earthly Paradise.

      • As noted, conservatism is difficult to define. The version that’s been most influential recently involves skepticism about new initiatives and love of continuity, but not much in the way of enduring truths. Basically, Kirk’s second principle without his first.

        In the column, Kirk’s second principle is called conservatism, because that’s what recent conservatism has mostly been. His first is called orthodoxy.

        My point in the piece is that the first principle truly comes first. It’s indispensable.

      • Carl, I think I have been a conservative all of my life, but I have many issues on how we express it.

        “Moral order”! In a political landscape of disorder? Perpetual disputes about rights and duties. ” the conservative adheres to custom, convention”. WOW! Custom? Disenfranchise voters with the overthrow of a presidential election, invasion of our Capitol, Chinese-made Bible, call for Martial Law against peaceful protesters, threaten those who disagree, and asking for ABSOLUTE IMMUNITY

        Certain Liberals: Support abortion with exceptions. I agree that the life of the woman is primary. No political intervention from politicians.

        “Continuity is the means of linking generation to generation”. Can we rely on a purported conservative Church and politicians to provide continuity? “The problem of order has been a principal concern of conservatives ever since conservative became a term of politics”.

        Today’s “conservative” political platform Project 2025 opens moral issues. Yet the Church supports the politician’s evils therein. Hypocrisy, or the lesser of two evils?

        I have said that politics and religion are an anomaly. The efforts to clearly define either, here, seem futile. Abnormalities and broad-brushing: Conservatives and red states are good, liberals and blue states are evil. It seems we no longer have red, white and blue states.

        We may not be able to sing the songs of freedom and brotherhood…The Pledge of Allegiance, My country is of thee, sweet land of LIBERTY, as long as we involve suspect politicians to give us a moral compass, we will lose. Our political and judicial systems are seriously flawed.

        Congress: Bipartisanship no more, Gerrymandering, false electors, fillibuster, investigating Ad nauseam with no results and costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands, outright in-your-face lies.

        The courts: Aligence of SCOTUS to the one who appointed them. no speedy trials ignoring the people’s day in court. Delays and delays, gag order after gag order, stay after stay with no consequences, inability to conclude a legal matter and sending it to the lower courts. It is becoming clearer that our current jurists are unable to deal with the politicians of today.

  9. God loves us with the Truth of His Word and Sacred Tradition. He established the Catholic Church for us to fully return His love by embracing His Truth in our practice. This can be called orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Living the Faith can also be called faithfulness to God’s Word, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ:
    “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5)
    We have lost our horror of sin. This is why we are tempted to blame God for His Perfection. We attempt to force God to unite to our sins, versus seeking His forgiveness and accepting His grace and healing peace to “go and sin no more.” (John 8)

  10. Any dichotomy between conservative vs progressive Catholicism is contrived. The only meaningful distinction is between a Catholicism that is orthodox in the full and that which is not.

  11. I believe there has been a change in terminology. It used to be conservative vs. liberal. Now it is conservative vs. progressive.
    Progressive seemingly a better sounding word.
    We see the phrase right wind extremist frequently, but not left wing extremist.

    • Oh, stop it. You’re embarrassing yourself.

      We moderate all comments, so it sometimes takes a while. And we’ve been having trouble with the site (or servers) timing out, which means some comments, thought to have been put through, aren’t.

      • A bit off topic (i.e., not related to the article), but I’m relieved to read that it’s your servers that have been timing out. Several times I’ve tried to post comments only to receive notification of a time out. Sometimes the comment goes through, sometimes not. I’ve wondered if the problem was on my end. I live in NW Vermont, where Internet service can be sketchy, to say the least.

  12. The real problem is in Catholicism being taken as an edifice – a historical structure rather than a living and enlivening faith. There has always been a struggle with restive social forces in the middle ages and the pre-reformation.

    In our times, people are content with political positions in psuedo theology without applying and living Church Teachings. The decline in the sacrament of marriage is one. The decline in Catholic Education even among Catholics is another wreacking havoc in the name of inclusion and diversity, language that is not of progressives but used by Catholics.

    For far too long has a spirit of complacency been the norm, critical engagement taken as troublesome. The empty spaces had therefore been taken by other forces. To fail to highlight this is give cultural demons to set the social agenda and blindly reclaim the ground that Satan has lost. Such ground should not be left empty.

    But it is: Major feasts are passed by- ignored for the restive now, St. Hildegard Von Bingen, St. Francis, St. John XXIII and many others all these are passed by in Catholic Media and by Priests in celebrating Mass. What do expect: for the world to be still and await glorious Church Teachings that we ourselves do not practice and live by?

    This is what Saint Pope John XXIII pointed out in opening the Second Vatican Council, 61yrs ago. “The great problem confronting the world after almost two thousand years remains unchanged. Christ is ever resplendent as the center of history and of life. Men are either with Him and His Church, and then they enjoy light, goodness, order, and peace. Or else they are without Him, or against Him, and deliberately opposed to His Church, and then they give rise to confusion, to bitterness in human relations, and to the constant danger of fratricidal wars.”

    John XXIII meant to open the Church to the World and the World to the Church, that the spirit of the world may be healed and the world to to repair to the Church of Christ. This is not happening.

    “To mankind, oppressed by so many difficulties, the Church says, as Peter said to the poor who begged alms from him: “I have neither gold nor silver, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise and walk” (Acts 3:6). In other words, the Church does not offer to the men of today riches that pass, nor does she promise them a merely earthly happiness. But she distributes to them the goods of divine grace which, raising men to the dignity of sons of God, are the most efficacious safeguards and aids toward a more human life. She opens the fountain of her life-giving doctrine which allows men, enlightened by the light of Christ, to understand well what they really are, what their lofty dignity and their purpose are, and, finally, through her children, she spreads everywhere the fullness of Christian charity, than which nothing is more effective in eradicating the seeds of discord, nothing more efficacious in promoting concord, just peace, and the brotherly unity of all.”

    Let us just accept our languour and from multi-generational derilictions the need for internal cohesion. It is pointless to point out the external problems – in ourselves and in society, when they emanate from hardness of hearts and incorrigibly politicised mental outlook.

    Gladly, the Church offers penance daily.

  13. Dr. Kalb, you have made an important distinction between the generic desire to conserve Orthodoxy, and the conservative ideology which arose during the Enlightenment. The latter is characterised, first and foremost, by scepticism in all fields (it championed the strand of Enlightenment scepticism against Enlightenment rationalism). Following on from this scepticism is its faith in society as the source of truth. Obviously, this “truth”, like society, evolves, and so does Conservatism. Whether one talks of Burke, de Maistre, Kirk or Scruton, all rejected the notion that all societies must be subject to the same universals known through reason, like natural law. The influence of Conservatism over religion during the last two centuries has played a huge (and ignored) role in the undermining of faith.

  14. It’s a privilege to be able to read and comment on the essays of Mr. Kalb, and I am grateful to CWR for the opportunity to do so.

    It’s a a very big topic being discussed.

    One thing that comes to mind about “progressive” and “conservative” categories of ideas is the issue of “time.”
    The pathology of the progressive ideology is driven by the judgment that what is new is inherently good, and what is old is inherently bad. Conversely, the pathology of the conservative ideology is that what is old is inherently good, and what is new is inherently bad.

    The pathologies flow from the assumption that all “values” (what we think is important) are bound up in time.

    The danger of pathological ideologies is the temptation to impose an “ideological sharia” on men and women, and threaten them unless they submit to these pathologies.

    In contrast, as we profess that God exists, and unlike us creatures is not bound by time or space, truth is unbound by time or space.

    In humility in the face of the vastness of the reality we are born into, our task is to discern what is true, by exploring and finding what laws transcend space and time.

    As is said in the Word: “The good steward beings out of the storehouse both what is old, and what is new.” Thus we are challenged to conserve what we have already learned is true, and to continue progressing towards what we have yet to learn, which is already in the mind of God.

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