I loved Culture11 in the time that it lasted. But I fear First Things Online is turning into a Culture11-lite, absent the qualities of Culture11 I enjoyed. … except PomoCon.

Moreover I have no interest in insulting FT. I merely want it to be honest about what it is and what its mission really is, that’s all.

And as I made clear in my response, I was not directing the focus of my critique to any individual contributors (other than the crazy one, about which I make no apologies). I certainly never said that you or anyone else’s interpretations of the gospel were unimportant to them.

But they are unimportant to FT. That’s my point. What is important to FT is that there be lots of posts about the inevitable onset of euthanasia, abortion, gay marriage, and why the Iraq war was a good thing. If I’m somehow off my nut to call such a fixation neoconservative, you’ll have to do a better job of showing me how.

Also, I’d advise you to take a page from your own book of pretentious blog put-downs and maybe read some more of my posts prior to high-handedly speculating about what I couldn’t possibly understand. But if superior, down-the-nose glares are what you are most interested in doing, then so be it.

But if that is how you truly feel, then I guess there isn’t much left to say.

If it was unclear, I’m not really concerned with the fact that there are fundamentalists and Catholics who write for FT. What I care about is what this means as far as what the magazine is really up to. It masquerades, in your words as “a place where those issues can be argued about rather just glossed over.” However that just isn’t what goes on there. The very obvious truth about FT today is that difference over “those issues” (like the meaning of the gospel and the nature of the church) is not important. What is important is that all (or the utterly vast majority) who write there share a common conservative ideology.

Now, if FT presented itself as intentionally trying to propagate a reactionary conservative ideology rooted in the American project, I would at least laud them for being honest. As it is however no such honesty is to be found. Rather people there claim, as you do, that it is a place of public debate over political issues in which theology is supposedly important. However this is simply not true. There is no debate, only conservative posturing. Theology is unimportant, only acquiescence to conservative positions. That is what I have a problem with. At least Commonweal is honest about what it is.

And, believe it or not I did somehow manage to read the posts that have been put forth in the young life of your fledgling blog. I hope that comforts you. I should be clear that my critique is not directed at individual contributors, many of whom write some good stuff in the blogosphere and have for some time (see my comment in the original post about the occasional emergence of something valuable from the quicksand that is FT). What I find troubling is the way in which FT has become nothing more than a vehicle of contemporary neoconservative ideology while still falsely claiming to be a place of reason and debate. It simply is not and the publication should be up front about what really is. That’s all.

So to answer your initial question, I’m not mad that FT isn’t liberal. I’m disappointed that it feels the need to obfuscate about being an advocate of neoconservative ideology.

Nevertheless, I feel it necessary to make a few clarifications. Let’s start with the mission of FT: To advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society. Despite the misperceptions some people have—fostered by the magazine itself, I admit—we are not a Catholic journal. We are now what the magazine has always been—interreligious.

You seem to think it is odd that someone who is “ardently anti-Catholic” would be allowed to contribute. I’m not sure why. It shouldn’t come as any secret that Catholics and Protestants disagree on theological issues. FT wants to be a place where those issues can be argued about rather just glossed over.

You also say, “At the most fundamental level the “first thing” which this publication concerns itself is simply  neoconservatism.” Perhaps if you had bothered to actually read the posts on the new blog rather than passing judgment based on the masthead you would have seen about like this one (http://firstthings.com/blogs/evangel/2009/10/funny-i-dont-feel-neoconnish/ ) about . . . not being a neocon. (How did we let that guy slip in?)

There is also this strange point: “You can be an Ultramontane Caesaropapist or a Fundamentalist who thinks the pope is the antichrist as long as you’re both glad to be conservative together.” Um, yes, why not? If we were a theological Catholic journal than it would indeed be out of place. But if the mission is to come to an agreement about public philosophy then why shouldn’t divergent theological points of view be allowed? Conservatives are damned for being too narrow and damned for being too inclusive. We just can’t win.

I also don’t understand you complaint that “… the most central claims of the church’s life and doctrine are swept aside so that all can come together in the embrace neoconservative ideology, the master story that supersedes all religious and theological trivialities.” The most central claims of which church. If I understand correctly you yourself are not a Roman Catholic. Also I suspect that by “master story” you don’t mean the Gospel since the new evangelical blog has had a dozen post already on that topic (and its only been online for two days). Maybe a little more reading of what we actually say would be useful before rushing to judgment.

I, for one, have always thought it was shit…at least as long as i could understand it.

also, it seems that biola-style worldview evangelicals and benedict-lovin’ catholics share certain epistemological assumptions which they simply locate in different things (ie bible/ church tradition) and the triumphalist narrative of Christendom.

quite a scary combo, which I as a Yoderian really can’t get into. (It seems, though, that some at Duke Div can, as I can attest from personal experience and can be deduced from Rusty Reno’s gushing praise of the school.)

I sort of had a feeling that that’s what you were driving at. It almost deserves its own terminology though, since I feel like the Straussians own that term. Palinism?

-a tendency to see the world in binary good/evil terms
-readiness to use military force against perceived threats
-fixation on common socially conservative issues like sex, abortion, gay marriage, etc
-advocacy for unilateral American action & a disdain for multilateral organizations or accountability
-being strongly pro-Israel and anti-palestinian
-inconsistent but rabid defense of neoliberal economics & common appeal to socialism or totalitarianism as inevitable dangers to the West

I think that’s a least something of an accurate summary.