Thread by @martensmatt1

Trey raises an issue about which I’ve been thinking a lot recently, namely the coherence of a politically conservative ideology.

Conservatism seeks to conserve (thus the name) traditional ideas. It is, in essence, a defense of the status quo.
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https://twitter.com/pastortrey05/status/1448623114951315459

But this view doesn’t strike me as either intellectually coherent or consistent with Christian teaching.

One argument made in favor of conservatism is the importance of stability to the functioning of society. People can’t order their lives in the face of changing rules.
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While stability is important, it can’t be a higher value than justice. Particularly as Christians, we can’t observe a traditional social arrangement that is unjust and refuse to remedy it on the ground that change would be disruptive.
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To do so would be to commit the same moral error as was made by opponents of the Civil Rights Movement. The argument made by conservatives in the 50s and 60s was that swift change to the unjust system of racial discrimination would be socially disruptive and destabilizing.
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The result was that professing Christians more committed to conservatism that to biblical justice fought to preserve the status quo in the American South rather than fighting in favor of upending tradition to accomplish racial justice.
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Conservatism is also problematic because it assumes that ideas are right because they are old. To be sure, we shouldn’t dismiss ideas simply because they were held by ancient societies we view as more “primitive” and thus un-enlightened. That’s the error of presentism.
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At the same time, there’s no necessary reason to think that ideas are more likely to be right just because they are old. Cultures of the past didn’t face the economic and technological challenges of today. There’s no reason to assume that ideas of the past fit today.
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Still further, as Christians, we know that people of all ages are sinners. They, like us made errors and suffered from blind spots that require correction. To unduly venerate the past is to overlook the persistent sinful condition of humanity.
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All this to say that, particularly for the Christian, I don’t think political conservatism is an available option. It *is* possible as a Christian to share some of the same policy views as conservatives, but not for the same reasons that conservatism offers./end

** Meant to say that conservatism is the mirror opposite error of presentism.