Join us online on March 20th, 2021, from 10:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. ET to learn about the cult of modern identity politics and the unique threat that this new religion poses to society. These times are unlike any other in American history, but Rod Dreher, Joshua Mitchell, and Daniel Mahoney are the perfect guides as you navigate this new era.
Schedule of Events:
10:00 Daniel J. Mahoney: “The Ersatz Religion of our Time”
11: 15 Joshua Mitchell: “2021: The Year of the Scapegoat”
12:15-1:00 Lunch
1:00 Rod Dreher: “Living in Truth”
2:15 Roundtable discussion with Mahoney, Mitchell, and Dreher
Soviet-bloc Christians who lived through the "hard" totalitarianism of the Communist era offer warnings for contemporary Christians in the West about the softer forms of totalitarianism rising here today. What are the similarities, what are the differences, and how should faithful Christians meet the moment with clear eyes and clean hearts?
Rod Dreher is a senior editor at The American Conservative and author of five books, including the New York Times bestsellers Live Not By Lies (2020) and The Benedict Option (2017), which won ISI's Conservative Book Of The Year Award. He is an Eastern Orthodox Christian who lives in Baton Rouge.
The "identity politics of innocence" now sweeping the nation will not abate now that the ostensible object of its cathartic rage, President Trump, has left office. It will turn next against those who in any way supported him. That is because unlike Christianity, which offers up Christ as the divine scapegoat who "takes away the sins of the world," identity politics, an immanent version of Christianity, seeks to take away the sins of the world by scapegoating actual persons and groups. Once its primary object has been purged, it must find a new person or group on which to vent its cathartic rage. Now consuming the nation, identity politics will not bring about the unity of the nation. Its objective is not unity; its objective is purity.
Dr. Mitchell is currently a professor of political theory at Georgetown University. He is a Washington Fellow at the Claremont Institute Center for the American Way of Life. His most recent book is American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time.
The “religion of humanity” is the ersatz religion of our time. This ‘religion’ combines doctrinaire egalitarianism, aggressive secularism, and an increasingly fanatical humanitarianism that has become the substitute for transcendental religion, sober political thinking, and for realism and moderation in human affairs. Too many contemporary Christians accommodate this new religion, treating the Christian Church as if is were an activist, humanitarian NGO that no longer mediates the grace and goodness of God. Only by recovering a sense of transcendental purpose, and moral and political prudence, can Christians resist the toxic brew of facile relativism and coercive moralism that defines the humanitarian ethos of our time. This is not our religion, and we must firmly resist it.
Daniel J. Mahoney holds the Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship at Assumption University. He has written or edited fourteen books, including The Idol of our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity. He is a specialist on totalitarianism and anti-totalitarian thought, and has spoken at over one hundred colleges and universities and participated in well over two hundred academic or intellectual forums and conferences.
