C. S. Lewis on the problem with Big Government

  • cslewis_essays-book.jpgMore fun from a col­lec­tion of his essays in this book. This essay is called “On the Trans­mis­sion of Chris­tian­ity” and was a pref­ace to a book pub­lished in 1946 called “How Hea­then is Britain?” The theme of how in the world Chris­tians can hope to pass on the faith in a cul­ture that seems so hell-bent is one we can all relate to, and Lewis’ opin­ion on how things were going is prophetic, given that he wrote this 60 years ago in the post-war days that Amer­i­cans tend to look back on as a much bet­ter time for Christianity.

    One of Lewis’ points in par­tic­u­lar jumped out at me. Speak­ing of the thin hope of reach­ing new gen­er­a­tions of school­child­ren, he writes this (empha­sis mine):

    It is unlikely that in the next forty years Eng­land will have a gov­ern­ment which would encour­age or even tol­er­ate any rad­i­cally Chris­t­ian ele­ments in its State sys­tem of edu­ca­tion. Where the tide flows toward increas­ing State con­trol, Chris­tian­ity, with its claims in one way per­sonal and in the other way ecu­meni­cal and both ways anti­thet­i­cal to omni­com­petant gov­ern­ment, must always in fact (though not for a long time yet in words) be treated as an enemy. Like learn­ing, like the fam­ily, like any ancient and lib­eral pro­fes­sion, like the com­mon law, it gives the indi­vid­ual a stand­ing ground against the State. Hence Rousseau, the father of the total­i­tar­i­ans, said wisely enough, from his own point of view, of Chris­tian­ity “I know noth­ing more opposed to the social spirit.”

    Amen! This is my prob­lem with the idea some Chris­tians have that they can keep the lib­eral notion of a benev­o­lent state and leave behind the sec­u­lar aspects. Quite sim­ply, I think they’re fool­ing them­selves. You can’t have one with­out the other. The State will never be benev­o­lent to actual Chris­tian­ity — they’re in com­pe­ti­tion. A robust Nanny State can’t pos­si­bly exist along­side the kind of vig­or­ous Chris­tian­ity that views itself not as an after­thought or hobby but as a cul­tural force, “an army mighty with ban­ners.” In try­ing to com­pro­mise, Chris­tians have already ceded too many points that are essen­tial for the spir­i­tual well-being of the gen­er­a­tion we hope to reach.


    Related posts:

    1. Government-regulated Chris­tian­ity
    2. C. S. Lewis on the love of God
    3. Tran­scend­ing morality
    4. Laws for the sake of laws
    5. Refut­ing “The Judas Gospel”

    October 15th, 2007 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • margi 10.15.2007

    My grandma left Rus­sia in 1928 with my mother in a back­pack (or so the fam­ily story goes) and she believed, to an extent, in the wel­fare state because of its anon­im­ity. Yet at the same time she always called the state “an army with­out ban­ners” because one never knows what it is really about or what it will do next. I am happy to believe in the sense of com­mon pool­ing and I am happy to pay for edu­ca­tion for chil­dren I don’t have or health care oth­ers gen­uinely can’t afford but at the same time cen­tral­i­sa­tion ter­ri­fies me. It seems humankind can’t cope with a via media though — every­thing is either sink or swim by your­self or be con­trolled to the last fir­ing of your last synapse by Nanny State. Sad.

  • Grace

    I tend to agree. We tend to go to extremes, I sup­pose just by (fallen) nature.

    And maybe the rule of the wheat grow­ing up along­side the tares applies here as well. There are some ben­e­fi­cial things that can come from good gov­ern­ment — some of which can only come from a good gov­ern­ment — and maybe it’s impos­si­ble not to have the bad things as well. It’s a mat­ter of opin­ion whether the good out­weighs the bad, and I think that a person’s life expe­ri­ence (and cer­tainly your grandmother’s) will enter into that.

    And I should be clear: when I talk about the wrong type of align­ment with a sec­u­lar cul­ture, I’m not talk­ing about pub­lic edu­ca­tion, or even a sane and equi­table solu­tion regard­ing health­care (if one can be found). But there has been a mar­riage of cul­ture and pol­i­tics in this coun­try that means that there’s a lot of rhetoric com­ing our way that isn’t just bad pol­i­tics, it’s down­right het­ero­dox. That’s the sort of thing I mean.

  • Grace

    After­thought, by the way — I think your grandmother’s expres­sion about the state being an army with­out ban­ners is quite profound.

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