The Way of the Warrior

Preparing to fight the Woke Cult requires we rediscover why we fight and how to fight.

“In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
as modest stillness and humility;
but when the blast of war blows in our ears,
then imitate the action of the tiger;
stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
disguise fair nature with hard-favor’d rage.”
—Henry V by William Shakespeare

“Be of good courage,
and let us play the men for our people,
and for the cities of our God:
and the LORD do that which seemeth him good.”
—2 Samuel 10:12

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth.
I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
—Matthew 10:34

The Warrior, or more specifically the Christian Warrior, is a necessary part of Western Civilization. You cannot have civilization and the benefits it provides without the sweat, and very often the blood, of its patriots. Unfortunately, the virtue, or the way of life of the warrior, is now universally despised in the West. We must rediscover why and how to fight.

We hate our heroes

In both the abstract hero of history and the living heroes of today, the West despises the hero. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and even Abraham Lincoln are tossed aside as relics of white supremacy. And our contemporary heroes fair no better. Pedro Gonzalez writing for the American Greatness said this of how America treated Sgt. Jonathan Pentland of the US Army:

“It’s hard to avoid coming away with the impression that the Army, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, and the mob have destroyed Jonathan Pentland’s life, put his family in danger, and destroyed his name. For protecting his community when called upon, the 10th Mountain Division with whom Pentland served called him an ‘extremist.’ Who would die for this? America loved its heroes in the past… But America now appears to hate heroes.”

This is true. The hero reminds the rest of society of its decadence.

And contemporary America is decadent. Our greed and lusts make us less like the Puritan dream of America as “a Shinning City on a Hill” and more like drunken Babylon before its destruction.

A decadent society has no place for heroes. In fact, it has no real place for men.

The Virtue of Patriarchy

Recently, I sarcastically noted that the more lady preacher, err Bible teacher, Beth Moore talked, the better patriarchy sounded.

I will not attempt to redefine and rehabilitate patriarchy. Some critiques raised by its critics were accurate. But, despite its flaws, patriarchy did one thing and did it well—it required men to fill roles and perform duties—in other words to act like men.

In times past, there was no time for endless video games while sitting alone in a parent’s basement. Responsibilities drove men to labor.

The division of labor between men and women is natural, that is to say rooted in biology. In general, men are stronger and unencumbered by the biological fact of menstruation and pregnancy. These facts are kind of important on the battlefield.

And since most leaders in the West historically arose from the military class, there was a very definite martial character to leadership.

Even when kings and princes and presidents no longer sat the head of armies, elements of the martial character still defined leadership, and thereby how men should act. With power came a set of responsibilities. Jordan Peterson does a good job explaining some of the basic expectations—like standing up straight.

Of course, the fight against the new Woke cult is not for men alone. It requires men and women. However, some battlefields of this fight require men to step up and play the men for their people.

So, how do we play the men? Or, put another way, how do we fight?

The Southern Baptist refusal to fight

The biggest problem in the Southern Baptist Convention is its 11^th Commandment. It declares that one must never speak ill of an SBC leader—or else. The “or else” part implying the end of one’s career.

Combine this civility with the other Christian virtue of humility and you have a recipe for docile, manageable masses.

However, the Church is not always to be helpless. God puts guards to tend the flock. He also tells His children to be wise as serpents along with a duty to be discerning. We are not to welcome error. Rather, we are to cast it out from us.

That is not docile. It is confrontational. It is, for want of a better word, manly.

Generations of pastors and patriots understood some things were worth fighting for—for example, Truth. It was truth after all that spurred Luther and Calvin and Cramner and Knox.

It would spur Luther to declare, “I lift my voice simply on behalf of liberty and conscience, and I confidently cry: No law, whether of men or of angels, may rightfully be imposed upon Christians without their consent, for we are free of all laws.”[1]

The Reformer and later secular political philosophers recognized that without liberty, people will have a much harder time finding the truth. Thus, liberty is a crucial battlefield for truth.

It is our obligation as free men and Christians to resist all tyrants—be they tyrants in politics or religion.

A Radical Conservative

Conservatives are rarely radical. The preference for the status quo is a tough habit to break. While there was a Tea Party and an American Revolution, just as often, conservatives tolerate the intolerable. Some of this is temperament. Some of this is that we do not know how to fight the type of war we now face.

Conservatives are too often using the wrong tactics and wrong strategies like the US military during Vietnam. The US Army wanted to provoke a direct confrontation with North Vietnam, so the superior arms and tactics of the US would destroy the North Vietnamese. For most of the war, North Vietnam was too wise to engage in this type of direct action (though the Tet Offensive showcased how effective the US would be in direct battles.) Instead, the war was a guerrilla one. Something the US was unaccustomed and temperamentally unsuited to fight.

So, it is with Conservatives. At this moment, every institution is arrayed in battle against you. We must imitate the fox and think more like General Washington.

For a generation, the acid of Neo-Marxist critique did its work at colleges and finally in corporate HR Departments. Conservatives did nothing to resist. Hey, Free Market. Build your own airline, railroad, information superhighway, etc.

Look at the results. Laissez-faire only works when everyone is playing by the same rules of the game. Leftists believe the rules are racist, immoral and also in their way.

Conservatives are also in their way. So, conservatives will be hunted with tenacity and treated to the same due process of witches in Salem.

The choice will be to bend the knee or as Rod Dreher urged—Live Not By Lies.

For some that will mean fighting—and by fighting I do not mean Bunker Hill. I am talking about jumping into the Culture War with the passion of unwashed Parisian students angry at de Gaulle.

Thus, we need Culture Warriors. While Russell Moore declared the surrender of Christianity to the Culture War—the conservative, says, “Not so fast.”

The conservative knows surrender is not an option for it means the end of our liberty and the purity of our faith.

The conservative knows the only way to balance force is force. So, conservatives must build the sinews of resistance.

In other words, conservatives must care about politics and the Culture War. However, some research leads us to a very pessimistic view: Conservatives do not really care very much about politics.

This complacency allows Leftists, progressive and their fellow travelers to march through our institutions—including our churches, seminaries and even K-12 Christian schools.

This must change.

The Power of Misbehavior
Or How to Fight

A case study in conservative complacency and inability to fight is the Southern Baptist Convention. The largest Protestant denomination is composed of pro-Trump voting conservatives. However, the leadership included many vocal Never Trumpers along with many who now promote Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality. The SBC Elite even passed a resolution approving the use of CRT/I as “analytical tools.”

Resolution 9 was the moment that jolted conservatives. When SBC Elites pushed that resolution through approving the tools of Racial Identity Politics, people could no longer ignore what was happening. It provoked many responses including new ministries and even organizations like the Conservative Baptist Network. These are good and necessary strategic approaches to the problem of fighting entrenched elites. However, I want to focus on two recent examples of how the individual can fight (to borrow from Winston Churchill) “the long, dismal, drawling tides of drift and surrender.”

A Small Church sends a big message: Bethel Baptist Church in Ellicott City, Maryland is a 60-year-old church with attendance of about 120 before the pandemic and now about 62 on Sunday mornings.  

“Our convention remains at stake and dangerous decisions are being made,” said Pastor Kenneth Cavey in an email to the Capstone Report.

The church was angered by the radical nonsense of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Committee (ERLC) and the abuses of the North American Mission Board (NAMB). In particular, the egregious actions of both entities against Will McRaney (a court case that NAMB appealed to the Supreme Court.) The ERLC even lied in multiple court filings–how very Christian of the ERLC and its head Russell Moore!

“We voted to suspend any payments to the SBC until they take some decisive corrective actions,” Pastor Cavey said.

$$$. That is a language the SBC Elites can understand.

A sign of the times: A conservative activist placed signs around the campus of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary mocking its use of these Analytical Tools of Racial Identity Politics. Five signs were placed around campus on public streets written in a Soviet-era script.

It is a small, personal act of resistance. It sends a message to Elites: “We know what you are doing.”

It sends a message to fellow conservatives: “You are not alone.”

It is brave because even when placing a few signs, it comes at the risk of being caught, interrogated and worse, canceled by the Wokeocracy.

We need more acts like these. The Elites consider it misbehaving. So, aim to misbehave—to quote Malcolm Reynolds.

If you do not, only a dystopia awaits.

[1] Martin Luther as quoted by Daniel L. Dreisbach, Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers, p. 114.