As described in earlier posts in this series, R. R. Reno believes that what he calls the strong gods must return to public life. This isn’t something he sees as desirable, per se – it is something he sees as inevitable. One way or another, the strong gods will return:
We yearn to join ourselves to others, not only in the bonds of matrimony but in civic and religious bonds as well. The “we” arises out of love, a ferocious power that seeks to rest in something greater than oneself…Our hearts remain restless. They seek to rest in loyalty to strong gods worthy of love’s devotion and sacrifice. And our hearts will find what they seek.
This will take work, and active effort. One key feature that separates unifying strong gods from divisive weak gods is that the unifying strong gods require sustained commitment and effort:
The solidarity found in the “we” is always political in the broadest sense. Because the “we” is not natural – that is, it is not simply a consequence of our shared humanity or a biological dynamic of genetic connection – its particularity requires intentional effort to create, guide, and sustain. In short, the “we” does not just happen.
The same cannot be said for the dark gods of identity politics:
They do not require free activity to sustain and promote a shared love. They are gods of identity, not of political community…That memory and that flourishing require human agency, for what has been endured must be retold, and the bonds of solidarity must be renewed. By contrast, the brute fact of shared skin color requires no such human agency, although in the artificial environment of universities an ersatz “we” has formed around grievances and theories of systemic injustice.
So what will ensure the return of strong benevolent gods, rather than strong dark gods? Reno has a few suggestions. People must be motivated not by grievance, nor by a merely negative notions of vices that should be avoided, but by a shared sense of love – “love of the divine, love of truth, love of country, love of family…It impels us outside ourselves, breaking the boundaries of me-centered existence. Love seeks to unite with and rest in that which is loved.”
But, Reno says, these uniting loves are treated with disdain by the elites – they are “loves which the powerful seem not to share.” For example, elites “take concerns about the stability of the family in twenty-first century America to be expressions of ‘patriarchy’ or ‘heteronormativity.’ Patriotic appeals are ‘unmasked’ as racist or xenophobic…In these and other ways, our leadership class treats unwelcome political challenges as phobias to be denounced rather than ideas to be grappled with on their own terms.’”
Reno, by contrast, sees patriotic loyalty as an essential strong god for holding the people of a nation together:
Our shared loves – love of our land, our history, our founding myths, our warriors and heroes – raise us to a higher vantage point. We see our private interest as part of a larger whole, the “we” that calls upon our freedom to serve the body politic with intelligence and loyalty. As Aristotle recognized, this loyalty is intrinsically fulfilling, for it satisfies the human desire for transcendence.
True patriotism is also a counterweight against the rise of strongmen and dangerous leaders:
For deprived of true and ennobling loves, of which the patriotic ardor is surely one, people will turn to demagogues and charlatans who offer them false and debasing loves.
Family loyalty and religious communities are also strong gods that must be emphasized – not least of which is because they too serve as a countervailing force against the strong gods of a perverse nationalism:
Modernity encourages us to give our hearts to politics and the nations, which is why ideological passions are so easily triggered. We easily imagine the nation as more than our civic home; it is our savior. To combat this idolatry, we need to nurture to primeval sources of solidarity that limit the claims of the civic “we”: the domestic society of marriage and the supernatural community of the church, synagogue, and other communities of transcendence.
When these three social forces are all treated with the right kind of reverence, they achieve a kind of harmony that brings out the best in all of them:
Throughout the history of the West, communities of transcendence have pinioned the nation from above, while the marital and domestic bonds of family loyalty have pinioned it from below. Let us learn from this history: The best safeguards against the dangers of love’s perversion are the loves that ennoble us and give us rest. The solidarities of domestic life and religious community are not at odds with the civic “we.” On the contrary, the strong gods can reinforce each other, preparing our hearts for loves many devotions.
Reno thinks there “is a political component to this restoration. Tax and employment policies can have effects on the margins.” But political policy cannot be the main driver – “cultural politics are more important.” Those who seek to ensure that the noblest versions of the strong gods return must become engaged and drive the conversation forward:
Our task, therefore, is to restore public life in the West by developing a language of love and a vision of the “we” that befits our dignity and appeals to our reason as well as to our hearts. We must attend to the strong gods who come from above and animate the best of our traditions. Only that kind of leadership will forestall the return of the dark gods who rise up from below.
This wraps up my summary of Reno’s book. In the next posts, I’ll be outlining what I think Reno gets right, and where I think he goes wrong.
