Liberalism is the idea that everyone is equal and that through the exercise of our inherent rights the world is made more open, enjoyable, and good. It rejects love of nature, blood and heritage, tradition and religion; in other words, it rejects the world as God has made it, good but fallen in sin, situating us within human families and history under His providence. It rejects the revelation of Himself, His ways, and His will for us in biblical religion. Classical liberalism, with its optimism about ideology and human nature bringing about openness and equality, has morphed over the centuries into a more social, political, and global liberalism. It believes that through concerted human action we can create just and free societies in which all people are equal and experience the joy of life equally. It papers over the hellscapes we have lived in since the Enlightenment: progressive genocides upon genocides written off as the cost of progress and freedom. Technology covers up (and at the same time expands) despair. Free markets are not free, but instead control and dominate all human life. Minds are liberated from the shackles of the tradition of Western thought into the impenetrable bondage of chaos, with the all-dominating mantra: “Every man MUST do what is right in his own eyes.”
For Christians who are disquieted and opposed to the degradation of life brought about by classical liberalism in its ecclesiastical, social, cultural, economic, and political forms, there is a peculiar comfort found in sectarianism. Wrapping oneself in the security of a chosen church agreement about who we are, what we should think, and what we should do provides a reprieve from the chaos of navigating the modern world alone. As Christians, we know the general course of the world is evil and that we need the support of the church to get through it well. And where do we find this church—this pillar and ground of the truth, this mother to the faithful?
When we look to all national bodies of Christians—those that number in the millions rather than the thousands—we find a wholehearted embrace of liberalism: essentially the religion of unbelief in God and His Word and, in its place, faith in humanity. In this regard the rot is universal; there is no green pasture ecclesiastically. So Americans follow our pilgrim impulse and pull away from such institutions. Unable to found a new nation (a family of families) in a new place, we form smaller and smaller, ever-fractured movements—denominations of denominations and fractures within them. By dividing into ever-smaller factions and adopting their peculiarities as if they are the preserved substance of “true religion,” the conservative Christian shields himself temporarily from the discomforts of the chaos produced by every man doing what is right in his own eyes by instead doing what is right in the eyes of his sect. He frees himself from the truly unbearable burden of life alone with only God and no natural supports.
The conservative sect becomes the comfort of a shrinking inner ring, an ever-narrowing fellowship and approval, maintained by defining ourselves against those who are “not quite as pure as we are.” But the irony is this: the instinct that drives this sectarianism is not actually traditional, does not end up conserving anything, and is not stable. It is profoundly modern. It is simply liberalization in a slower, fussier ecclesiastical form.
American Christian conservatives have learned to survive our liberalizing order not by opposing it directly and chopping it at the roots, but by either more slowly joining in while persecuting those who don’t, or by more subtly adopting and adapting to its fundamental premise: that everything good comes from choice, progress, and self-constructed identity. So Conservatives believe they serve a good future by either slowly compromising in unbelief OR by willfully forming smaller and smaller groups, each boasting more precise shibboleths, defined boundaries of fellowship, and zealous gatekeepers.
These are the marks of a people understandably seeking safety, yet finding it in the very world of the self-creative self-destruction they claim to resist.
Our focus in this article is the sectarian response and how it is a comfort reflex against liberalism that actually ends up promoting it by conserving nothing. Sectarianism is a refuge for the anxious—not in truth, but in branding and personality cults, and branding and rebranding are among liberalism’s native languages.
Sectarianism as a Conservative Species of Liberalism
Modern conservatism usually proves to be just the slow and fussy version of liberalism. It is not opposed to liberalism at the root; it is simply more hesitant to reject the past, moves more slowly, and tends to be more “stuffy.” One of liberalism’s most characteristic impulses is the idea that meaning, identity, and community are things we create through purposeful action rather than gifts that are received, nurtured, and passed on intact. So the liberal man opens himself up to his chosen friendships; the conservative sectarian retreats into smaller self-chosen ones, suspicious of the latest changes in fashion, ethics, or norms.
But the retreat is still toward a self-chosen fashion, ethic, and norm—it is determined by the chosen beliefs of the leaders and people forming a movement toward the future, a new expansion of the one ancient thing: the human spirit moved forward by the invisible hand of God. And with the confidence that the sect is the movement of God, all the idiosyncrasies of these small factions become charged with religious zeal and fervor, with denunciations, anathemas, and cultic interpersonal control in their wake. It is the story of classical liberalism morphing into social and global liberalism—the purity spiral eventually morphing into its own suicide, all in service of the liberalizing order in which the vast majority of Christians move into greater unbelief (an essential aspect of liberalism).
Self-selected tribes have just enough eccentricities to feel unique and just enough boundaries to feel secure. This is why sectarian groups so often develop:
Idiosyncratic shibboleths elevated above the weightier, permanent matters of doctrine and life.
Fear of “right-wing boogeymen”—a liberal anxiety dressed in conservative language, terrified of being mistaken for someone less respectable than oneself.
Personality cults around charismatic leaders or obscure theologians and schools of thought whose names become badges of belonging.
Above all, an escape from the burden of being sons of real fathers, members of real communities, loving the actual people God has given us as family and neighbor—replacing them with the distant and foreign, out of a love not for the life God has given, received, nurtured, and passed on intact, but for a life created by human will and action.
Conservative sectarianism offers the appearance of security but furthers the decline of the West as a species of liberalism. Instead of catholicity with its dogged commitment to the people of God past and present, it redefines the people of God who really matter as those associated with or promotive of our peculiar brand. The real people of our congregation and community are replaced with an ideological faction spread thinly among other ideological factions, all slower or faster versions of the liberalizing order. A living heritage of honoring fathers, their doctrines, and practices is replaced with a skin suit put on to justify our current compromises. Humility as a people who have received the deposit of faith is replaced with half-baked anathemas on the one hand and surprising compromises with the world on the other.
And so the drama of conservative Protestantism becomes a tragicomedy: each group trumpeting its opposition to liberalism while living out its logic more consistently than its supposed enemies.
The Lost Loves of a People Without Roots
What is lost in the comforts of sectarianism is precisely the natural, received, embodied Christianity of our fathers. The true faith descends from heaven in the gospel and grows in a cultural soil—a family of families—over time. What is gained is the ability of a family or individual to imagine himself as the one on whom the kingdom has descended, and then to find others who will agree that his version of the kingdom is the best one.
In these ever-fracturing sects we lose the love of nature and the created order in which God planted us in creation and providence. We lose the love of blood and heritage: the grateful reception of ourselves as sons of fathers is exchanged for a judgmental evaluation of them as those from whom we must move on. We lose the love of tradition, bringing it out for a song and dance to stir feelings of nostalgia, but unmoored from its patterns of soul and life. We lose religion and piety, replaced by salesmanship, polemics, brands, and legalism.
And we lose catholicity of heart and mind, which is the fruit of gospel humility and the recognition that Christ’s kingdom is broader and older than our small tribal identities. Sectarianism shrinks the world until nothing remains but a mirror into which individuals gaze at their self-created image.
A Better Way: Ordered Loves and the Courage of Catholicity
If churches are to recover strength in our age of degradation, anxiety, and fragmentation, they must resist both liberal unbelieving downgrades and fracturing rivalries that end the same way. These are, in my view, the twin errors of the ecclesiastical modern age—enticing us away from continuing the wisdom and life of our fathers and leading us to embrace and further the seeds of folly sown in their day.
As individuals, families, and governments need ordered loves, so do churches—love that knows what comes first, second, third, fourth, etc. Love that receives, nurtures, and passes on life rather than creating it by the ascendant will.
First: Love of God in Christ—His truth, the faith once delivered to the saints. The revelation of Christ, His gospel and commands, in His Word and to our souls. All Christians say this, but it must be true of us. God above all.
Second: Love of the church catholic across space and time, whom our churches must love even when she embarrasses us. The universal church in history and heaven is our mother and teacher—our fathers and friends in time and glory—our living deposit of teaching, testimonies, examples, prayers, and monuments. Their life is ours, to be received in love and continued in our own souls and lives.
Third: Our own traditions and confessions should be seen not as weapons but as treasures to be used and shared broadly. If our particular church has a particular blessing, it makes us the friend and servant of other Christians who need that gift. It does not make us their lord. It does not make us the winner of a competition for being the “best sliver of the church left.”
Fourth: Our local churches must prioritize the families and communities they are made of and serve—above the theoretical or self-chosen communions and movements in which we may also find fellowship, service, and support. The current arrangement of the churches into thousands of competing factions loyal to little Romes scattered across the world is a massively liberal concept: the self-chosen taking the place of the real. The people worshiping next door are not magically not part of the local church. The church throughout our cities—and the real people she serves—should have more priority in our hearts than the extension of our sect.
And by the way: A man rooted in these loves does not fear or malign the emerging “right-wing boogeyman” any more than he fears a person confused by the liberalizing order, nor does he need to escape into boutique sects. He has the courage to stand against sins as sins, rather than as a defense mechanism for the reputation of the sect or for appeasing the world and its liberalizing order. Shepherding and Christian love can replace cruelty. Christian doctrine and ethics can replace brand strategy.
Conclusion: The Call Back to Our Fathers
We need not cave to the liberal reinvention and abandonment of Christianity nor carve out ever-smaller enclaves to prove our faithfulness and comfort our anxieties. We do not need to imitate the liberal order’s obsession with identity and control. We can return to nature, heritage, tradition, fathers, and our faith. Sectarian comfort is a false security for a people who have forgotten how to receive life from God’s hand. It will take Spirit-given Christian courage in an age of liberals and sects to grow deeper roots and provide a more secure and fruitful future for new generations.