Welcome to Commonwealth Dispatches
Regular updates on my new work at EPPC
Hello friends,
Welcome to my new Substack! If you’re receiving this, it’s because your previous expressions of polite interest in what I had to say have given me some reason to hope that you might enjoy a more regular point of access to my thoughts, and updates on the exciting work I’m doing now at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
If you’re not interested, you can just click Unsubscribe and I won’t be offended! If, on the other hand, you love this Substack, then please spread the word! For my sanity and that of those around me, I’m not very active on social media, so this will probably be my primary platform for sharing my work on theology, ethics, politics, and technology going forward. I’ve entitled this Substack “Commonwealth Dispatches” in the conviction that our politics and common life urgently needs to recover the concept of the “commonwealth” (the Anglo-Saxon version of “republic”) to reforge our identity and guide our deliberations in this troubled time. (For more on this “commonwealth” vision, see here.)
If you’ve followed me at Davenant in the past, you might be wondering just my new role at EPPC entails. Well, that is still very much under construction—in graciously inviting me to join the team here at EPPC full-time, Ryan Anderson has given me wide scope to develop and define my role, and to build a platform for Protestant retrieval and renewal here at an organization that has had too few Protestant voices in recent years. Suffice to say, though, that you’ll see a lot of continuity with my past writing (e.g, Richard Hooker and the Protestant natural law tradition; considerations of the nature of freedom and authority; reflections on liberalism, public religion, and the American Founding), along with the development of some newer themes (First Amendment law; the relationship of technology and freedom; and practical ways that law might advance public morality in a pluralistic society). Although this may in due course mean some program-building and event-planning, for the moment I’ll mainly be doing a lot of researching, writing, and speaking—indeed, I’m shooting for over 100 publications and appearances over the coming year, and if you want to find them all in one place, this Substack is your best bet!
Here you will also find weekly thoughts from what I’ve been reading or events I’ve been attending (such as this week’s National Conservatism conference, which starts today!), along with notes on publications in the pipeline and articles I highly recommend. I’ll try to keep things lively and conversational, and please don’t be shy about responding—I want to hear from you! I can’t promise I’ll have time to reply to every email, but I know I’ll benefit from hearing your comments and disagreements.
All that by way of introduction—now, on to the first newsletter!
An Inspiring Tale
To kick off my summer reading, at the recommendation of a friend I picked up Stephen Tomkins’s The Clapham Sect: How Wilberforce’s Circle Transformed Britain. And wow—what a timely tale of perseverance and hope! If you’re like me, you probably already had a general idea of William Wilberforce’s campaign to end the slave trade; indeed, you may even have seen the film Amazing Grace and found it deeply moving. But, if you’re like me, you probably also tend to take it a bit for granted, figuring he was bound to succeed, and discounting the huge obstacles that had to be overcome along the way. So it is here; given that most countries around the globe outlawed not just the slave trade but slavery itself during the 19th century, Wilberforce’s campaign can seem to have an air of inevitability—if he hadn’t done it, someone else would’ve soon enough. Maybe. But quite possibly not; and certainly it would have taken far longer. The simple fact that it took so long—twenty years to outlaw the slave trade and another twenty-six to abolish slavery itself—tells you something about just how little British society was for such seemingly utopian ideas. Sure, plenty of other countries soon followed suit, but chiefly only in response to Britain’s example—or, often as not, under her significant diplomatic pressure.
An inspiring tale, no doubt—but is it of any use now? After all, Wilberforce had the benefit of living in a Christian society; we’re in Negative World. Wilberforce was able to work within the beautiful, well-functioning English Constitution that Edmund Burke extolled; we live in a post-constitutional order where only a counter-revolutionary mindset is likely to get us anywhere. Wilberforce and his political opponents at least agreed on the Tao, the basics of human nature; today, we’re arguing about trans-ing kids! Conventional wisdom among Christian conservatives could be summed up by one of my favorite Despair.com demotivational posters: “HOPE . . . is not warranted at this point.” The outlook for us today, we are told, is uniquely bleak, and it’s time to give up on normal politics and start weighing other options (let your imagination fill in what this means).
But after reading Tomkins’s book, I’m skeptical. The fact is that our concept of 19th-century Britain as a deeply Christian society was in many ways the result of the Clapham Society’s labors. When they started, few Englishmen were regular churchgoers and even fewer took the faith with any seriousness either in their personal lives or political lives. Victorian Christianity was downstream of a slow-burning national revival catalyzed in large part by the witness of Wilberforce’s circle of evangelicals. But what about the vaunted British constitution? In reality, Westminster in 1790 was a system more corrupt and undemocratic than anything we can imagine in America in 2024: the vast majority of legislators were toadies of a handful of rival aristocratic factions, their elections bought and paid for by mass bribing of voters. And even when the House of Commons could be mobilized by public opinion to do something decent, entrenched special interests in the Lords could be counted on to kill any reform on the spot—something Wilberforce repeatedly experienced. And as for the idea that trans-ing kids is a moral evil more grotesque than anything Wilberforce faced . . . have you ever read anything about the actual conditions of Caribbean slavery and the slave trade? No, they did not agree on the basics of the Tao—because they believed a large share of humanity deserved to be treated like humans.
And yet, Wilberforce won in the end. And he won, believe it or not, by scrupulously constitutional means. At no point did he say, “That’s it—this evil is too grave to tolerate a moment longer; let’s take matters into our own hands.” He won the hard way, the long way. And that’s the only reason his accomplishment lasted, and changed the entire world. It should not have been possible, given what he started with in 1788, but it happened. Maybe, just maybe, Christian political action can achieve something similar today.
Newly Published
“Get Back to Governing,” WORLD Opinions, July 1: In this piece I use George Packer’s recent Atlantic cover story to reflect on how conservative governors and legislators can approach basic sustainability questions not as a distraction, but as a way to build a political mandate to tackle more hot-button cultural issues.
“How Now Shall we Vote?,” WORLD Opinions: With the zaniest presidential election of our lifetimes approaching, Christians are bombarded with demands about how they should vote. But what does it mean to vote? Is it ever OK not to vote? Is voting third-party “throwing away your vote”? I offer some concise reflections on these thorny questions here.
Coming down the Pipe
My latest column for WORLD Opinions considers what lessons Christians should draw from Jonathan Haidt’s #1 bestseller on kids and smartphones, The Anxious Generation. Look for this column to appear this week.
A couple weeks ago, I wrapped up a big essay I’d been working on for National Affairs, “The Four Causes of Liberalism.” In it, I seek to cut through the fog of debate around “liberalism” and “postliberalism” using the age-old heuristic, Aristotle’s four causes. It turns out that a lot of the critics and defenders of liberalism are talking past each other, and if we want to defend the American liberal order as it has been handed down to us, we need to be a lot more pragmatic and empirical in our approach. Look for this article to appear in late September.
I’ve recently had a pitch accepted for American Compass’s Compass Point on “what conservatives can learn from the battle against Big Tobacco in our generation’s battle against Big Tech.” Sounds fun, eh? I credit Sam Goldman with giving me the idea. If you’re wondering when I became an expert on the battle against Big Tobacco, the answer is—hopefully a couple months from now! Looking forward to the research! Look for this article to appear mid-Fall.
On the Bookshelf
Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation (2024): I just finished reading this last week, and yes, it justifies all the buzz. “The Great Rewiring of Childhood,” as he calls it, is perhaps the great social and political issue of our generation. Yes, I know that’s a bold claim. What about the really big issues, like trans-ing kids? I’d argue they’re closely connected. Watch this space for more thoughts in the coming weeks and months.
Oliver O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations (1996): Although I’ve dipped into particular sections from time to time, I confess I haven’t read this classic of modern political theology cover-to-cover since grad school. Boy have I been missing out! It’s exciting (and humbling) to discover in its pages loads of thoughts I’ve had since that came subconsciously from its pages.
James Davison Hunter, Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis (2024): You’ve probably heard of Hunter’s classic To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. This book is every bit as much a must-read. Offering a grand overview of America’s struggle to hold together a shared national vision between its more Christian and more Enlightenment-liberal strands since its Founding, Hunter is quite pessimistic about the prospects for reversing fragmentation today.
Recommended Reads
Mark David Hall and Aaron Renn have offered interesting contrasting perspectives on the recent Louisiana law prescribing the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Although neither article was written in direct response to the other, they make for good counterpoints, and I found myself agreeing with both. Mark is certainly right that the law is, from a historical standpoint, thoroughly constitutional and in fact quite modest compared to what used to be normal. Aaron, however, makes a compelling case that from the standpoint of political prudence, it’s going to do more harm than good. Both pieces are thought-provoking and worth a few minutes of your time.
This article by John Shelton, “A Family-Focused Fusionism,” is also worth your time, though you’ll have to give a lot more of it. Although I’m not quite as sanguine as John about the coherence of fusionism (see here), his basic points are well-taken: (1) if the New Right would stop bashing their fathers and look at what Reagan-era conservatives actually did to promote morality and the family, they might be surprised and impressed; (2) “If factions on the right would stop resorting to infighting as a fundraising tactic and start thinking more strategically about how to work with one another to advance and enact policies that matter, conservatives could deliver significant victories.” Sure, there are really substantial differences on the Right these days between its more libertarian and more “postliberal” wing—but believe it or not, there are plenty of worthwhile legislative battles worth fighting and winning that don’t require resolving those difference.
Get Involved
If you like this Substack, please spread the word with others. I’m just starting out, and steering clear of social media for now, and so would love to grow my subscribers through word of mouth! For now, this Substack will be totally free, but if you like the work I’m doing, please consider donating to it here by supporting EPPC and mentioning my name in the Comments.
If you have any questions or comments or pushback on anything you read here today (or recommendations for research leads I might want to chase down), please email me (w.b.littlejohn@gmail.com). I can’t promise I’ll have time to reply to every email, but even if you don’t hear back from me, I’m sure I’ll benefit from hearing your thoughts and disagreements.