Chesterton on Progressivism and Barbarism

As G.K. Chesterton observed what was happening all around him in England, he was led to conclude that there were historical moments when what he termed “over-civilization” and what he termed “barbarism” were close to becoming one and the same thing. Virtually the same thing might be said of America today.

Just where is our modern age of progress leading us? We have been living in this age for better than a century now, so surely we ought to have an answer. And just as surely it’s a fair question to ask, given the power of the progressive movement, not to mention the clout that accompanies that very word “progress.”

After all, who could possibly be opposed to progress? Why, conservatives of course. Then again, perhaps not. As G.K. Chesterton pointed out in the early, heady days of modern progressivism, the job of progressives was to make mistakes (otherwise defined as the law of unintended consequences), while the task of conservatives was to prevent those mistakes from being corrected.

Thoughts like that may explain why Chesterton preferred to think of himself as a reactionary, rather than a conservative. But reactionary-wise or otherwise, Chesterton was not opposed to progress—so long as there was a standard against which to measure whether or not such a thing as progress had actually been achieved.

For that matter, Chesterton thought that one had to be a reactionary in the first place before one could be called a progressive in the second place. All of this was consistent with his decision to become a Catholic. To be sure, Chesterton converted because he had come to accept the truths of the Catholic faith. He also joined the Church because he had decided that Catholicism was the “only fighting faith.”

Finally, he had come to believe that the Catholic principle of subsidiarity provided the proper standard for organizing a good society; hence his commitment to what came to be called distributism, which he thought was not just entirely consistent with the thinking of Pope Leo XIII as expressed in his encyclical Rerum Novarum, but the answer to both capitalism and socialism.

So, yes, Chesterton was a reactionary in that he held out for a society built according to the principles of subsidiarity, a society that was closer to realization in the Middle Ages than in the modern age. And, yes, Chesterton was a progressive in that he worked toward building such a society in the post-modern age. He certainly didn’t believe that progress dictated an ever-larger state or ever larger concentrations of economic power that would in turn call into being an even more powerful state.

More than any of that, Chesterton could see progressivism already going off the rails in its infancy. In other words, it didn’t require today’s progressive idiocies, such as “men can have babies,” for Chesterton to see that there was something fundamentally wrong with the progressivism of his day.

For example, let’s turn to an essay Chesterton penned in 1909 for the London Illustrated News. Titled “Taboos and Prohibitions” in the Ignatius Press Collected Works, this essay finds Chesterton mystified and worried, but not without an answer. He saw his own England becoming “stranger by the day,” as well as strangely “barbarous.” The fads of the “cultured” were coming more and more to resemble the “habits of the barbarian.” And all of this was happening in the name of something called progress.

As Chesterton observed what was happening all around him in England, he was led to conclude that there were historical moments when what he termed “over-civilization” and what he termed “barbarism” were close to becoming one and the same thing. Virtually the same thing might be said of America today.

Perhaps it’s time to define just what Chesterton meant by barbarism. Its “essence” wasn’t simply the absence of clothes or the presence of a diet of “nuts and roots.” It wasn’t even the manifestation of this or that savage behavior.

Not at all. For Chesterton, the essence of barbarism was “idolatry.” And what was idolatry but the setting up and worshipping of “false gods.” More than that, it might also mean the setting up and fearing of “false devils.”

Actually, the progressive idol worshippers of his day were already specializing in the business of setting up false devils—and all in the name of making their fellow Englishmen ever more fearful. These idol worshippers had not yet hit upon our modern progressive fear of something called climate change, but Chesterton observed them promoting all sorts of fears, including fear of war, fear of alcohol, and fear of cigarettes. And of course all of this was done in the name of creating a better (not to mention better-policed) as well as a healthier (not to mention an expert-dominated) future.

Chesterton opposed all fears of these false devils of his day. He also thought that people would be far better off if they developed far healthier fears, such as a fear of “cowardice” or a fear of “spiritual corruption”—or even a fear of the health police themselves.

Once on the subject of false devils, Chesterton couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the progressives of his age and the “original Moslem.” After all, both were essentially “puritans.”

The original Moslem contended that there is “no God but God.” The modern, secular, progressive-minded “idolater and abstainer,” otherwise referred to by Chesterton as “the modern medicine man,” was far from inclined to think, much less worship, along similar lines. But their own puritanical bent was progressively taking them in the wrong direction in another way. After all, if they could not believe that there is “no God but God,” they also refused to believe that there is “no Satan but Satan.”

For the sake of his fellow Englishmen it was good that Chesterton was on hand to remind them of the error of their ways. And for us? We still can benefit from Chesterton’s wisdom. If progressive-minded idol worshippers of Chesterton’s day needed his reminders, environmental-minded progressive idol worshippers of our day—our modern medicine men—could stand to benefit from a similar reminder. And then everyone else might benefit as well, and in all sorts of ways.

Here’s one. It isn’t exactly “theology on tap,” but it could be called “theology meets the pump.”

Instead of seeing “false devils,” whether they be oil producers or oil consumers, whether they be miners or frackers or simply gas-guzzling drivers, they should stop long enough to come to the realization that there is “no Satan but Satan.” As should we all.

Without such a realization, we will continue to “progress” our way away from our Christian heritage and toward a spiritually unhealthy embrace of barbaric idol worship—and not just of false gods, but of false devils as well. And if reversing all of that also leads to lower prices per gallon, so much the better. There’s nothing wrong with a nice little extra. Call it a version of the law of unintended consequences, here defined as the law of accidental bonuses.

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The featured image is a portrait of G.K. Chesterton taken no later than 1903, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.