The good is up for grabs.
American liberals had their shot — and failed. As Ross Douthat put it, recent years have provided “a case study in how a seemingly hegemonic worldview can pass very rapidly from consolidating power to squandering it, from riding roughshod over its enemies to galloping off a cliff.” As liberalism became woke it became even more incoherent and immiserating — a sort of scolding, moralistic relativism that disdains basic competence and lacks any real vision of the good, true, and beautiful. And so the more they tried to impose their vision on the rest of us, the more repulsive it was.
Americans have had enough, and so MAGA is back in power and the cultural hegemony of woke liberalism has been broken. But though a shared hatred for wokeness rallied a winning electoral coalition and instigated a cultural vibe shift, it is not a sufficient governing agenda or unifying vision. The anti-woke alliance agrees on being free from woke liberalism, but not on what freedom otherwise is or what we should use it for.
Brad Littlejohn’s timely new book, Called to Freedom: Retrieving Christian Liberty in an Age of License, offers answers on where we should go from here. After a brief rundown of various dimensions of freedom, and the need for balance between them, he turns to the fundamental problem of our existence, explaining that “all true freedom must start by resolving the problem at the heart of human existence: the alienation between God and man due to sin.”
Contrary to what liberal political theorists have claimed, Christianity teaches that we are not born free, but are instead born into bondage; slavery to sin is our birthright. Unless this is resolved, political liberty will be short-lived, because “a people in bondage to sin, death, and fear will only ever have a pale shadow of political freedom.”
Drawing upon the Reformed tradition, especially Luther, Littlejohn argues that, “Unless we can be free from the bondage of sin within, we will never be free in any sense that really matters.” If he is right, then efforts to make America great again will founder unless there is a renewal of spiritual freedom; ending our alienation from God is the basis for enduring moral and political freedom. Thus, this brief, yet profound volume grounds true freedom in Christ, who liberates us from sin and death.
The Tyranny of Arbitrary Will
This spiritual freedom in turn enables genuine moral freedom, which consists of the self-control by which our desires and impulses are brought into right order as we seek to do good and avoid evil. This moral struggle is common to all, but Littlejohn argues that Christianity transforms our experience of it. Both Christians and ancient philosophers saw freedom in terms of a rational self-control that provides the capacity for meaningful action.
The great pagan philosophers sought to establish this self-control by setting parts of the self against each other, with reason commanding the others. Christians recognize wisdom in this, but Christianity goes beyond elevating reason to a supernatural transformation of the self. Christian self-control is rooted in a new self, as we become more like Christ.
In contrast, Littlejohn echoes the intellectual historian Carl Trueman in arguing that “sexual freedom has become the paradigmatic form of freedom and self-expression in the modern world.” The political implications of these contrasting visions are clear. Modern liberalism views freedom as the ability to indulge oneself, whereas Christians see freedom as rooted in control over oneself and one’s desire.
Littlejohn thus argues that self-government requires governing the self — we cannot govern ourselves politically if we will not govern ourselves personally. Enduring political freedom requires a people possessed of the moral freedom of self-control. As the political theorist Claes Ryn has noted, it is not enough to have a constitution, we need people with a constitutional character to go with it.
This theoretical argument is born out, Littlejohn claims, in the Christian, and especially Reformation, roots of American political liberty. And he joins those such as Patrick Deneen who criticize both the Democrats and the Republicans of recent decades for pushing freedom as a matter of relativistic and rootless individual autonomy. Littlejohn instead offers an alternative rooted in the American heritage, one that rejects the tyranny of arbitrary will, whether in the individual soul or in government.
Unfortunately, this exploration of political freedom suffered the most from the book’s brevity, which, though often commendable, was taken too far here. It is not just that Littlejohn did not cite obvious relevant figures (Leo Strauss here, Edmund Burke there) but that he rushed too quickly from point to point. It is precisely because there are so many obvious veins of insight to be mined in this book that this portion in particular needed to be longer, especially its concluding reflections on Christian serenity in the face of politics.
Though readers may have been left wanting more here, there is the consolation of the next chapter — the best in the book — in which Littlejohn turns to the application of his ideas. He begins with technology, which is simultaneously “a God-given tool for mitigating the pain of the curse” and “a manifestation of our original calling to take dominion over the world” and “a means by which we try to turn creation itself against the Creator, straining against the limits of our finitude so that we might be as gods.” His concern is with the latter, as the freedom technology promises lures us into bondage, in which we are dominated by our desires and the terms of our existence are set by those who know us only as numbers on a spreadsheet or as data for the algorithm.
Littlejohn has a welcome willingness not only to tackle controversial cultural issues such as pornography and transgenderism, but also subjects that will discomfit many otherwise sympathetic conservative readers. For instance, he writes “Infertility … is a great suffering for many couples, but accustoming ourselves to the manufacture of embryos is a greater evil.” This is a necessary stand in a culture in which even many Christians are comfortable with humans being made, not begotten, but it is unlikely to win him many friends, especially with MAGA going all-in on IVF.
He remains provocative when he turns to free markets. He denounces an ideology in which “we have left ourselves with nothing to guide us but desire,” and that therefore encourages us to seek the satisfaction of “seemingly boundless psychological needs.” But there is nothing free about a life dominated by the fear of missing out, or the endless quest for new positional goods. And so Littlejohn concludes, echoing his comments on political freedom, that “a truly free market is possible only among truly free people,” which is to say, those who are not enslaved by sin.
‘A Fragile Achievement’
Finally, Littlejohn considers the subject of religious liberty, which poses at least two challenges. The first is that if right religion is as important to the enduring health of the state and its people as Littlejohn claims, then is religious freedom ultimately self-destructive? After all, as Littlejohn notes, Christians have not always championed religious liberty. Second, there is the risk that our “modern intuitions about liberty” may be misleading, and that “If we are not careful, we will find ourselves advancing a godless vision of personal autonomy under the noble banner of religious liberty.” A Christian cannot ground religious liberty in religious indifference that presumes that religion doesn’t really matter.
Consequently, Littlejohn outlines a theory and history of religious liberty that is rooted in the Reformers, especially Luther, and that he believes can sustain a broad religious liberty without being indifferent to religion. As he explains, “Over time, Protestant rulers came more and more to the conclusion that only the most dangerous forms of false teaching and grotesque forms of corrupt religious practice should be restrained by threat of punishment.” We can trust God to deliver justice upon those who reject Him, while confining government interference in religion to those points where there it has a legitimate earthly interest.
This approach relies on the recognition that “enforced conformity will never please God. Only true faith … makes any ultimate difference. And if that is so, religious coercion makes much less sense, and can only be justified in limited cases for temporal, not eternal, purposes.” The government does not need to pretend that there is no difference between God and Satan, but it also does not need to compel the true worship of God.
As this careful balance reveals, religious liberty depends on a people who believe in spiritual freedom. It is therefore “a fragile achievement” that “depends on a distinction between ultimate and penultimate things” and a recognition of our limitations.
In a book that is rich with insights, this reminder of the connections between religious freedom and religious truth might be the most important. Though Littlejohn’s strong Reformed views may annoy some readers, they also ground his theory and connect it to the religious environment and views of colonial and Founding-era America. His brevity is both blessing and curse. It makes this an excellent volume for stimulating thinking on a variety of points, but each chapter could have easily been a book. It is a book that is designed to provoke discussion and reflection, rather than to end it.
Nonetheless, this is an important treatment of freedom, politics and faith, at a time when we need it. Though it was not written specifically to respond to the current political landscape, it is a needed reminder that making America great (again, and again, and again) is impossible unless freedom is ordered toward the good. Nominal political freedom will not avail us, nor last long, if we are in slaves to sin.
Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a fellow in the Life and Family Initiative at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Jesus Christ is King
