Lewis-olatry and Statist Salvation

Well, someone has been blogging up a storm at the Japery. (Is “Father Jape” a collective nome de blog for various contributors? That’s my suspicion…)

Anyway, here we have a response to S. M. Huthchen’s piece on C. S. Lewis’ Protestantism (which I mentioned the other day). Fr. Jape notes the obsession many evangelicals and Catholics seem to have with discerning where Lewis would stand on the great issues of today:

In the end, the whole argument about Lewis is silly. He is yet again an imaginary proxy for the ideal learned evangelical and perhaps for Pearce, an almost ideal Catholic. What Would Jack Do? This, of course, is code for “what should we (orthodox, thinking Protestants) do–or at least strongly consider doing?”

Also, a pointed response to William Stuntz’s call for an evangelical/professorial axis on economic issues:

William J. Stuntz, an (ex?) “Evangelical” and Professor at Harvard Law School, thinks “there is a large, latent pro-redistribution evangelical vote, ready to get behind the first politician to tap into it. (Barack Obama, are you listening?).” Opines the Professor, “These men and women vote Republican not because they like the party’s policy toward poverty — cut taxes and hope for the best — but because poverty isn’t on the table anymore. In evangelical churches, elections are mostly about abortion. Neither party seems much concerned with giving a hand to those who most need it.”

If the Democrats would just lean further to the left and return to statist social welfare agendas… indeed, that is the ticket. This sort of thinking ought to be encouraged. Hillary and Obama is the way to go! And if this is their official campaign music, they are a shoe-in in 2008.

Yet, in all seriousness, there is probably more than a grain of truth to the Professor’s view of Evangelicals, who consistently lack the deeper insight and cultural resources on “values” issues that would fortify them against the temptation of the liberal statist salvation gospel and press them to define an authentic conservatism, or simply a politics of truth and justice, which is not on offer in any political party today.

Spoken like a true sectarian!