I read Auron MacIntyre's new book (1) with interest. When in 2020 the most substantive global imposition against personal liberties arrived, nothing happened. Most sat on their hands and complied. The state piped, the people danced, and the Bill of Rights took a vacation. MacIntyre inquires:
Those who cannot express the opinion in public, who cannot raise their children in their own values (or, in many cases, afford to have children at all), see themselves as ambassadors of freedom to the world. Those who can be forced to wear a mask, have their businesses and churches shut down, and be functionally trapped in their homes, while groups favored by the ruling class are allowed to burn and loot cities, still cling to the narrative of ever increasing liberty.(2)
Why were people so compliant? How do a people who uphold representative democracy as the foundation of their civilization permit themselves to be locked down? MacIntyre's book analyses how changes in the culture interacted with myths we have about how the government works.
Something changed. As the author says,
When newspapers had a monopoly on information distribution, they could be relied on to deliver a plurality of voters armed with the correct opinion. You didn't have to fool all the people all the time, just meet a threshold high enough to maintain power. This meant the government did not have to seek total hegemony. It was the Internet that changed this in a dramatic way. (3)
Our friends, co-workers, and fellow travelers implicitly signal to us not only that we should not express wrongthink, but have clear expectations about what rightthink we ought to deliver. A decentralized network of organizations and individuals manufacture a cultural consensus that MacIntyre calls "the Cathedral."(4) The cathedral is almost—a church:
The university serves as the modern church. No conspiracy is required to coordinate the actions of those who manufacture the narrative of our civilization because they all go to the same house of worship.(5)
But it is an atheistic church:
As odd as it sounds, we are governed by a decentralized atheistic theocracy, a religious system, without an official holy book or central church, but a religious system of moral assumptions, all the same. It is particularly difficult for Americans to perceive this due to our understanding of the public/private distinction. We are trained to think that formal power, officially centralized under the law by the government, is the only path to tyranny. If power is distributed among non-state actors, it is thus difficult for Americans to see as a threat. This is understandable as the founding fathers never envisioned a secular society where the ruling class received moral instruction exclusively from progressive universities before taking jobs that allow them to deliver a narrative to a small box and every Americans pocket 24/7, but this is the world we live in.(6)
According to MacIntyre, the many separate social spheres that were alive and functional two hundred years ago have mostly shrunk and collapsed. One by one the state has absorbed their functions. Those separate spheres of influence were especially important in the totality of formal and less formal checks and balances to power. But,
It is the collapse of these competing socials spheres that has allowed government to centralize and grow more totalitarian while making the individual feel more liberated.(7)
The government "replaced the competing social spheres that had previously served to check the power of the state and removed the extensive personal commitments they had entailed."(8)
MacIntyre rightly notes, "There are in society, in addition to the state and the individual, social authorities as well, which also claim from the human being there due of obedience and services."(9)
The impotence or operational absence of these spheres of influence leaves people subject to the government unchecked. It is able to exercise power with no substantial constraints. Recent history bears this out:
The government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic is an instructive example of this. The entire ordeal perfectly demonstrates how quickly the illusion of individual rights and limited government that modern liberal democracies of constructed can be hand-waved away when the total state identifies an opportunity to expand its power. With no intermediate spheres of social influence competing for allegiance, the total state can use emergencies to swiftly rationalize exceptions to individual liberty and seize power with little to no resistance.(10)
Some have wondered how it is that such dramatic shifts in the collective understanding of what is right and what is wrong can be occurring so rapidly. But shame requires a shared ethical framework.(11)
The doctrine of individual rights has been treated as the moral bedrock of the west since at least 1945, but that has not stopped this rapid expansion of state power. Instead, it has often facilitated it. When individual rights enabled government power to liberate the individual from competing social spheres, it was considered convenient, but as soon as it became a hindrance to the further expansion of the state, those rights were redefined without hesitation. The attempt to appeal to a shared principle of individual liberty or equal application of the law by conservatives failed spectacularly because they had assumed that they were competing on a level playing field with opponents who had a similar moral framework.(12)
So,
When the state had a monopoly on politics, it's corrosive influence was confined to that domain. Different social spheres, like church, community, and family could remain apolitical because control of them was unnecessary for the state to maintain power. These institutions could assert influence and demand loyalty inside their own spheres. With the rise of democracy as the legitimating mechanism of state, total control of all social institutions became essential to the centralization of power. (13)
As MacIntyre's book points out, "By acting as the sovereign, determining hierarchies, and handing down law, the state mirrors of the role of metaphysical deity, translating its relationship with the people into temporal institutions."(14)
There is a scene recorded in the book Early Writings where Ellen White sees Jesus represented in vision as moving from the holy to the most holy place in heaven. When He leaves, Satan comes and seats himself on the throne. Many remain to worship Satan in a different place than where Jesus is now ministering.(15) Some may be unaware of the rapid changes in our world, even mistaking Relevation's false prophet (America under the strong influence of apostate Protestantism) as being in league with the Lamb of God. More alert worshippers can remain undeceived, cooperating more closely with Jesus.
The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany operated forceful state-run mechanisms of propaganda and narrative control. The more subtle Western system has lasted longer and appears to more effectively suppress individual thought. After all, as MacIntyre notes, "The Pentagon, the New York Times, Harvard, Facebook, and Apple, all think in lockstep and are all eager to wield their influence, despite only one of them being a formal government institution."(16)
With our protective responsibilities (caring for our aged, our children, and the dissadvantaged) handed off (not actually but in theory) to the state, the churches sphere of influence is equivalently diminished.
We fed the state. It has become larger than ever before. And now,
In the total state, there can be no competing moral values, no cultural differences, no alternative conclusions. The regime's experts have already determined what the correct conclusions are.(17)
Has the Church nothing to say to this age? It seems as though the corrupt age is doing most of the talking. Some know more about the latest political developments and products available for purchase, than they do about Jesus' present ministry for them in the heavenly sanctuary.
In conclusion, it seems that too many Protestants have a blind spot when it comes to the state. The state is supposedly neutral, even a referee on our side to protect our liberties and rights. But absent the spiritual influence the church should provide, the state has moved on to the promotion of its currently preferred "values." The church grows weaker; the state stronger. MacIntyre helps us assess more realistically the appetite of the very large and cold "prophet" some still hope to be protected by.
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Larry Kirkpatrick serves as pastor of the Muskegon and Fremont MI Seventh-day Adventist churches. His website is GreatControversy.org and YouTube channel is “Larry the guy from Michigan.” Every morning Larry publishes a new devotional video.
Notes
1. Auron MacIntyre, The Total State: How Liberal democracies Become Tyrannies (2024, Regnery, New York, 184 pp.)
2. Ibid., p. xx.
3. Ibid., p. 5.
4. Ibid., p. 10.
5. Ibid., p. 14.
6. Ibid., p. 15.
7. Ibid., p. 19.
8. Ibid., p. 19.
9. Ibid., p. 20.
10. Ibid., p. 25.
11. Ibid., p. 32.
12. Ibid., p. 33.
13. Ibid., p. 55.
14. Ibid., p. 58.
15. Ellen G. White, Early Writings, p. 54-56.
16. Ibid., p. 70.
17. Ibid., p. 101.
