Cultural Elites and Confessional Churchmen

Cultural Elites and Confessional Churchmen

          The Daily Beast offers a piece entitled “Hollywood Conservatism vs. Hollywood Liberalism.”  See the article below.  This issue—and larger questions--have been percolating for a while.  What is the role of the Hollywood elites in the formation of popular opinions and culture?  How should an educated Christian Churchman or Churchwoman think of these things?  Preliminarily, we will suggest that we are just beginning to ponder this—as a sociological question for the future.

          In the interest of vetting authoritative and intelligent blogs, books, media, etc.,  here at Reformed Anglicanism and in relation to the larger question of paragraph one,  what “backgrounds” and “resumes” justify Hollywood elites thinking—assuming, believing, thinking—that  they have something significant to offer on a host of issues for which they have no training or background?  Yet, they offer public commentaries without footnotes, books, and scholarly inquiries—day by day, night by night and year without end.   One almost needs to be a “cultural exegete” and sociologist to sort through it all.

          Illustrative questions.  What background, for example, does Sean Penn--a real ignoramus--have for his political and moral views?  Or, Demi Moore, marvellous in a skirt but offering little from between the ears?  Or, Barbara Streisand, long on vibrato-exfoliations and short on scholarship?  Or, Mel Gibson on historical questions?  Or, Clint Eastwood or moral matters with illegitimate offspring along the west coast of CA?  Or, the ever-voluble and opinionated Joy Behar?  We ask the same questions about Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and others?  Or, horrors, the ignorant Glenn Beck?  Or, how about Limbaugh on “conservatism” with five marriages on the books, one shy of Henry VIII’s six marriages?  Or, horror of horrors, that manifold monster of massive ignorance and noise, the “Rev. Al Sharpton?”    The latter bufoon hasn’t completed even one year of undergraduate education.  Sharpton is one bold ignoramus!   Educated?  Are these Hollywood elites learned in philosophy, theology, literature, law, business, sociology, psychology, economics and the great classics?  The answer is quickly answered, but inadequately applied.  Manifold ignorances cascade like the Niagara Falls from Hollywood and media elites.   Perhaps the need exists to further vet the bios and resumes on these elites thinking they have something intelligent to say.

          As educated Churchmen, as Reformed Anglicans, we unabashedly insist on thinking Biblical inquiry, Biblical Confessions of the Reformation, and solid liturgy.  That’s in our DNA.  As a corollary, we insist upon educated clerics; unlike outfits like "Sovereign Grace Ministries," whom we studied at length and vetted as Baptacostalist enthusiasts, half-whacks that long tolerated ignorant narcissists-in-the-lead, we have insisted upon the opposite.   Over the last generation, as Anglicans, we have been disappointed in our own circles, but the ideal is not gone.  It remains.  Reformation Anglicanism has historically impugned anti-intellectualism in American religion, notable amongst evangelicals, Baptacostals, Pentecostals, but also, increasingly, amongst mainliners.  We insist on educated clerics.  By parallel, as educated Churchmen, this insistence needs to be ruthlessly applied to these talking heads in Hollywood, on TV, and on radio.

          If we might revise and extend on the above, we insist on the varied professions being educated.  One goes to a physician for a surgery, not a Constitutional law professor.  One goes to a lawyer rather than an airline pilot for issues pertaining to estate, realty, commerce, criminal, civil, bankruptcy and other issues.  If for issues about Gettysburg, one goes to an historian, preferrably a specialist on the “Civil War,” rather than the licensed hair stylist for tactical developments over three days in 1863. The argument is handily extended to “reasonable persons” of common sense.  Back to the topic, and we listen to Hollywood elites because….?  And their resumes are...?  And we listen to them because...?
          The churches themselves have contributed to the problem.  We briefly interacted here:  http://reformationanglicanism.blogspot.com/2012/05/doctrinal-ignorance-megachurch-new.html.  Rick Warren and Billy Graham have contributed to ignorance.  Also, we preliminarily interacted with “Triablogue: Political Will, Cultural Elites and Confessional Churchmen” at: http://reformationanglicanism.blogspot.com/2012/05/triablogue-political-will-cultural.html.  The latter blog by Triablogue was a little negative and desperate, but, largely, was correct.  We concluded the Confessional Churchmen need to be educated and influence elitist centers where they can.  Educated Churchmen, even in days of vast darkness, kept the lights burning! 

           Why?  Because, as Confessional Churchmen generally go, we are elites with influence...at least, the better amongst us.  We stress education and are educated.  Brother-Scholar-Pastors, keep reading, thinking and assessing.  Protect the flock, especially the weak, the vulnerable, the poor and the injured.  Especially take care of the weak, widows and vulnerable.  Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest.  "Preach the Word in season and out of season" (2 Tim. 4.2).  "Baptise and disciple" (Mt. 28.18-20) with covenantal baptism and education.  "Teach, reprove, correct and instruct in righteousness" with longsuffering and patience (2. Tim. 3.15-16).  Insist upon memory work in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, Heidelberg Catechism, and "Morning Prayer," "Evening Prayer," and several collects of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.  Catechetize, memorize, ponder, speak and live it yourself.  Confessional brothers and fellow Elders in Israel, you are the hope of hopes for the truly catholic, confessional, biblical, and holy church.  Like the old Princetonian theologians of the late 19th century, we don't run from academic fights, but engage them (e.g. witness how Prof. W. H. Green won the Graf-Wellhausen debate, 1895-1897, and it took 100 years to validate the old Princetonian).  Relatedly, it is time for a review of a host of illiterate talking-heads in our culture...people without these backgrounds, as we have.  This includes vetting ignorant journalists, lawyers speaking in areas in which they are not trained, etc., and especially the "talking heads."
          Again, what credentials are offered by the Hollywood elites?  They offer themselves as thinkers and leaders.   Let's investigate that.  This question needs vetting.  These sundry questions need “theological reviews” also. 
          Here’s an article from The Daily Beast.  It's not very helpful, but it is suggestive. See: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/10/david-mamet-hollywood.html

Hollywood Conservatism vs. Hollywood Liberalism

by David Frum May 10, 2012 3:00 PM EDT

In the acknowledgements of The Secret Knowledge, David Mamet writes: "I had never knowingly talked with nor read the works of a Conservative before moving to Los Angeles, some eight years ago."

It shows. Mamet is very much the product of the Hollywood conservative subculture—embattled, militant, and defiant. All politics is local, the saying goes, and this seems especially true of the politics of the entertainment world. What Mamet appears to be reacting to, in his born-again anti-liberalism, is the liberalism of his immediate environment.

For sure, that immediate environment must be irritating in all kinds of ways. Hollywood is notorious for its environmentalists who only fly in private jets; for its egalitarians who truckle to superiors and brutalize underlings; for its brave dissenters who abjectly conform to peer-group norms. You can see how life in the film colony would drive an independent-minded person to seek alternative views.

But alternative to what?

Hollywood deals in representations of things, not in things themselves. Except in the very rarest cases (and such cases do exist), Hollywood politics is image politics. In reaction, Hollywood's conservatives have developed their own politics of counter-images, of counter-representation.

Have you ever noticed how a certain kind of conservative uses the phrase, "the culture"?

Think for a moment how curious that phrase is.

It's common to speak of "a culture" or else "the culture of (fill in name of relevant population group here)"—thereby recognizing the many different folkways of a big country on a bigger planet.

It's common, if less common than it used to be, to speak of "culture" without any article at all, meaning roughly "the arts."

But "the culture"? What does that mean? One thing for certain: it does not mean very many of the things that anthropologists mean when they talk about culture. The spread of hand sanitizers beyond hospitals is a cultural practice, but it's not part of "the culture." "The culture" refers to the output of the entertainment industries. If you live and work in those industries, "the culture" is all the culture there is.

David Mamet is a man in revolt against "the culture," and it is that revolt that drove him from left to right.

The trouble is, however, that "the culture" is only a very small portion of all that constitutes America. Mamet's (often understandable and appropriate) reaction against the way Hollywood represents business, or represents American history, or represents designated heroes and villains offers an inadequate substitute for a politics that deals with things as they are, before they are represented.

Conservatism has always contained a good measure of cultural critique, oftentimes a very sophisticated cultural critique in the work of thinkers like Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, and Allan Bloom.

But the conservatism celebrated in The Secret Knowledge claims a larger mission for itself than criticism only. This conservatism is a method of governance. To the reader who invited me to compare my own political evolution to Mamet's, I'd answer that in my opinion, governance is evaluated by results—and it has been my experience with those results that have moved me.

Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.

David Frum is a contributing editor at Newsweek and The Daily Beast and a CNN contributor.

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.