I am not American. I am from the Commonwealth, where being a believer is a somewhat odd thing, and believing is to be subversive to the elite. The publick religion of the Commonwealth is a Unitarian belief in the equivelence of all experiences and a deep sense of politeness: the greatest sin is to offend.

If that be the Church, I want no part of it. But that is not the church. That is a some form of ersatz event: the form of religion but not he power thereof. And those who deny Christ will find that Christ is done with them.

American Christianity has its own “going their own way” movement: The Dones. They aren’t done with Christianity, but they are done with the institutional church, or what is commonly known as “churchianity.”
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Why they are leaving has variously been described in two ways:

1. They can no longer tolerate the poor doctrine being taught from the pulpit, or they believe the modern institution of church has veered away from God’s plan for his church—the body of Christ
2. They are fatigued with the routine; they don’t feel they get anything out of going to church and don’t feel church is relevant to them today

Here is where the MGTOW movement and The Dones movement have some similarities. When you read stories by people who are done with church, invariably the focus is on #1—doctrine and the church as the body of Christ. When you read stories by critics of The Dones, they focus on #2. Often the critics use shaming language—calling The Dones selfish, ignorant, deluded, and even lazy—in an effort to berate The Dones into returning to the institutional church.

Both MGTOW and The Dones have rational and logical reasons for their actions. Reasons they are willing to talk about and debate with others in a calm and intelligent manner. Both groups are open to fixing the problems that caused them to “go their own way.”

Unfortunately, the critics of both MGTOW and The Dones either don’t get it, or don’t want to get it. They don’t want to debate the issues and they certainly don’t want to discuss the idea that they (the critics) might be part of the problem. They simply want things to go back to the way they have been.

Well, there is a way forward. For we are not supposed to avoid church, We all need the accountability of sitting under the word weekly, if not more frequently. But church is not about us. It is about declaring the gospel. It is about praising God.

Poor doctrine is as rife as sopranos without intonation.

And activism without the power of the gospel is mere politics. In my experience politicians lack the zeal to bring about reform, and their complacency is the breeding ground of revolution.

The trouble is that we tend to use the tools of the world. Paul knew better. He knew that the gospel was a stumbling block to the traditionalists (Jews: for whom the Torah alone mattered) and foolishness to the Greeks, who worshiped reason alone.

We need to be clear thinking. Including on where we have limits.

The great divide between the past and modern world lay in our understanding of reality, Positivism was a reduction in recognition of the scope of it. The pre-moderns, and most of the world bar the West, holds the view that there is more to reality than can actually be “accessed” by our biological senses. Religion was the principal access path to these other verities and hence the importance of it in non-Positivist societies. Non-Positivist NRx, (-NRx) takes religion into account by explicitly rejecting the implicit limitations of Positivism and views religious insight as akin to empirical data. As mentioned in a long previous post, Faith is a sensory modality.

Relgious faith, particularly the religious faith of the West serves therefore as another dimension of information in the analytic of -NRx. -NRx doesn’t reject the empiricism of Positivism, rather it sees its data set as incomplete. -NRx needs to be thought of not as anti-positivist, rather it is supra-Positivist. Science still matters, but so does the “faith” data. In -NRx there is NO conflict between faith data and empirical data, rather, reason aims to find a reconciliation with both since the truth is a singularity, incapable of contradiction.

It needs to be understood that Positivism’s unrelenting march throughout the late 19th and early 20th Century came about because it was the first to consistently apply the principle of the primacy of empirical data over theory, despite its simultaneous reduction of the scope of it. It insisted on reason being “calibrated” to real world findings. Tradition and custom were unable to achieve this calibration and thus were pushed aside as Positivism “delivered the goods” in the form of technological progress. The tragedy of the 20th Century has come about because traditionalism was unable to deal with Positivistic success.

-NRx takes the principal of the primacy of empirical data over theory and incorporates it into a wider data set. -NRx is a sort of fusion between traditional concepts of the scope of empirical data with the positivist insistence on the primacy of data. It’s a fusion product. This, however, puts -NRx explicitly against traditionalism, insofar as traditionalists elevate custom above the truth. This, itself is not a bad thing, given traditionalism’s utter failure to combat the Left. New approaches need to be tried.

I personally don’t think any political program on its own is going to work. What is needed is a spiritual renewal of the West but the traditional spiritual “institutions” have proved themselves unable to face the challenge of modernism. It is my hope that -NRx will act upon these institutions to instill a “bottom up” renewal of Western society, instead of a “top down” Franco like solution which has failed in the long run. Politics matters as well, but the primary task now is to reform the religious institutions of the West, still I feel -NRx has a role in stopping the “feels” right from drifting and becoming too crazy.

C.S. Lewis was converted from logical positivism: Principia Mathematica positivism. The standard position of the pre war intellectual: the non standard (and now standard) position was Marxist. The current accepted position of the elite: progressives and neo marxists alike, is a form of positivist materialism: the more rational tend towards the libertarian, while those who can tolerate Hegel tend towards Gramsci and the politics of identity.

But neither consider that the church is more than a human institution. This is an error. We are but two days from Easter and the proclamation of the resurrection — which without we are to be pitied, for our efforts are in vain.

So I have confidence in the church, but not in the churchians. Although I prefer my worship plain and my theology undiluted, I know but this.

The church belongs to Christ. Being done with Christ will damn me.

So correct the preacher, coach the musicians who cannot stay in tune, and disavow the apostates: commune not with them, fund them not.

For they worship the elite. Be not them. Be not like them.