All Religious Claims Are Religious Claims

The above title may seem like a truism, but it contains a powerful analytical tool to help us grapple with post-modern analyses, including that of "elite theory."

Elite theory is all the rage these days in online circles. It offers a powerful set of conceptual and intellectual tools with which to examine the current political moment. The problem with being philosophically trained is that you are forever going around examining the common usage of phrases and ideas, subjecting them to unwanted scrutiny. I get why people might have wanted to get rid of Socrates. He was a pest. But the thing is pests like him serve a valuable function. When you use and throw around ideas in an unexamined way, you may not realize how you are being used and manipulated by said ideas. And when they accumulate, they can form mental maps which are actually quite destructive. Boomer libertarianism is a good example of this. A society can survive one or even a handful, but a whole generation of them?

When one engages the process of challenging these mental maps, there is a temptation to take the position of the outsider looking in on things. Some will even go a step further and try to disengage from all positions, to claim a place of neutrality. When examining the realities of politics, you will hear people say that they are engaging in “value free analysis.” In common parlance, what they mean is that they intend to do an analysis that does not advocate for any particular power position or political party. I am not trying to get this or that guy elected. I don’t want one party or the other to win or lose. I don’t have a dog in this fight. I am just doing value free analysis. On one level, you can accept this. Elite theory holds out the promise of giving people a set of intellectual tools free from political aspirations. But, I am of the mind it is important to understand that there is no value free analysis and that elite theory is making a set of claims which always has political, and believe it or not, religious implications. If this is true, what might we offer, as Christians, as a set of counter claims?

We can’t give a comprehensive introduction to elite theory here. But there is a short work by Vilfredo Pareto titled, The Rise and Fall of Elites which gives a good introduction to the themes and contours your will find in other works considered broadly to be part of the elite theory canon. A dominant theme across elite theory is its relative cynicism. Advocacy for any particular political form, system or content should be looked at with suspicion. Pareto distinguishes then between “form” and “substance.” The “form” is the present manifestation of politics. It involves the rationales which justify the policies, the parties and even the system by which they are expressed. Beneath all of this, he argues, is the “substance” of the workings of power that can be observed regardless of the particular “form” that power takes. This "substance” is the subject that elite theorists wish to bring to the foreground and discuss.

An early observation of Pareto is that politics is not really rational. It is not logical. Rather, politics originates in emotional sentiments.

“Man, although impelled to act by nonlogical motives, likes to tie his actions to certain principles; he therefore invents these a posteriori in order to justify his actions.”

This is vital to understand. Any time you see people giving reasons for the political actions they take or the political systems of governance they put in place, they are always developed after the fact as explanations for what was done and why, argues Pareto. Themistocles may have convinced the Athenians to build a fleet of ships, but whatever the real reasons were, they were masked in a narrative that the Oracle of Delphi revealed to him that it is the gods who wanted the fleet build and that by doing so they were acting in harmony with the will of the gods, thus bringing their blessing on the ship building initiative. In every instance where you examine things rationally, Pareto tells us, you will see that in politics, economics and even in religion, the reasons people give for their decisions are post hoc justifications. God never tells you to do things. You just do them and then justify them in your mind and to others by saying that God wanted this done. Pareto says that most people are sincere in their beliefs, but that does not change the reality that they are after the fact justifications. God didn’t tell you to do things. You just make that up and believe it because you are driven by sentiment and not reason.

Pareto understands the Christian faith as a “form,” that is, it offers a set of justifications for what is actually happening in politics, the “substance” of things. Generally speaking, this is a common theme in Elite theory. At the same time, he also sees both “socialism” and “nationalism” not as “substances” but as “forms.” Like Christianity, they constitute the visible epiphenomena, but are actually a gloss over what it really happening, the “substance” of political dynamics.

For most people this is jarring to hear, as we typically think of nationalism and socialism as two substantively different political systems. They do appear different on the surface, Pareto would argue, but under the hood, they operate exactly the same. That said, he argues that the “form” of nationalism is the one capable of resisting the “form” of socialism. As we will see shortly, Pareto views socialism and Christianity as related “forms.”

The key observation of Pareto, the one that guides the main contours of The Rise and Fall of Elites, is that all societies are dominated by a ruling elite. It is this elite, and not the general population, that determines politics. Populism is not a thing for Pareto. Democracy is not really a thing. It is just a “form.” Ideas like “the will of the people” are all just “forms” used to justify the rule of a particular elite.

“Except during short intervals of time, peoples are always governed by an elite.”

Who are the elite? They are:

“The strongest, the most energetic, and most capable — for good as well a evil.”

They are not necessarily the richest or the people who occupy certain positions, although they can be. The elite are those who are the strongest, most energetic and capable across a range of fields, disciplines and positions.

The other cornerstone assertion that Pareto makes is that elites do not last. There is a cycle of elites. Some are rising. Some are falling. But there is always movement. You can observe times in which the circulation of elites is ongoing, natural and peaceful. But there are also times in which there are violent, jarring and sudden changes of elites where the current set of elites as a group are almost entirely replaced by another group of elites who unseat them. When this happens, it almost always comes with a new or emergent “form” that justifies the change.

“The new elite which is to supersede the old one, or merely to share its power and honours, does not admit to such an intention frankly or openly, instead it assumes the leadership of the oppressed … of course, once victory is won, it subjugates the erstwhile allies, or, at best, offers them some formal concessions.”

You can see Pareto’s cynicism at work here. No one who is seeking to rise into the elite, or to become the new elite, does so for altruistic reasons. They might tell you that they went to Harvard so as to better help the disadvantaged or marginalized, but the truth is they got their elite degree to help themselves obtain position, wealth, power and prestige. They may even believe their reasons, but they are lying to themselves and to you. Everything is downstream from power. Some of you might be thinking already that this sounds very similar to postmodern critical analysis. You would be right in that assessment, I would argue. This does not mean that elite theory is thereby without value. It would be silly to think that. Is its postmodernism problematic? Of course. But we will get to that. Remember, here at Seeking the Hidden Thing we argue that postmodernism must be embraced and worked through. As is often said on the online right, “The only way out is through.”

A strong elite welcomes challengers and integrates them. I would even go so far as to argue that the best elite groups are actively recruiting, cultivating and elevating people into the elite. This serves to refresh and renew the elite class while at the same time giving capable people an outlet and a real belief that they too might be able to rise and join, becoming one of the elites. A weak elite closes the door to people rising up to join their ranks, making them fight for entry. At the extreme, this will lead to a violent overthrow and replacement of the current elite by those just below the elite who are now kept out of their ranks. The interesting thing is that as an elite weakens and closes their doors to new membership, they are also becoming more sentimental and altruistic, just not towards the competitors just below them. This sentimentality, though, has disastrous consequences for society. Additionally, it gives the rising elite cause to champion those most negatively affected by the sentimentality of the current elite.

A change in elite is always preceded by a rise in religious sentiment. Pareto’s definition of religion is quite broad, correctly so, I think, enough to encompass modern ideologies. Thus, socialism is a religion. In Germany and Italy the religion was nationalism or fascism. In England it was British imperialism. In France, it was French nationalism or Gaullism. In the United States, the religion, says Pareto, is jingoist patriotism. When a society is in a period of religious ascent, religious activities, whether traditional, grounded or crazy are not restricted to the few and the faithful, but spread and contribute to the general movement of society. The “form” of this religion does not matter, he argues. All that is important is that some form of religious sentiment is on the increase in society.

“You can still choose the religious form to which you wish to sing a hymn, but that hymn must be sung; otherwise the public will not buy the [hymn]book, and hence no publisher will want to print it.”

Pareto argues that man must submit completely to a religion. It’s “form” is irrelevant. All that matters is that he has a belief system to which he adheres completely. Politically, those who are working to seize power will have all kinds of justifications they will give you, arguments that seem rational to them, but these arguments do not drive their actions. Rather, they are a posteriori justifications for the things they are going to do anyways for reasons of status, position, power and wealth. But, even if these sentimental reasons are not driving the elite, what is important is that they fully believe that they are. The important thing to a rising elite is that they have faith. Which faith they have is irrelevant.

The end of the 19th century and the opening of the 20th, Pareto argued, was dominated by the religion of socialism across the west. Protestantism was allowed to exist as long as it remained in the background and it was subservient to socialism and worked to support its religious aims. Thus Protestantism adapted to serve the idea, in various forms and manifestations, of managerial progressivism, that is, socialism. When a religious sentiment is in the ascendency, it will naturally gather into its ranks many hypocrites who embrace it largely for the honours, power and wealth it will bring them. Additionally, in the ascendant period, society generally has a greater religious unity and social harmony.

Pareto observes that as the elite begins to shift from its ascendant period into decline, two signs signal this shift. They become softer, milder, more humane and less apt to defend their power. At the same time, they do not lose their rapacity and greed for the goods of others. This desire for wealth is one of the real, substantial motivations for their pursuit of power in the first place, regardless of their stated reasons. Thus, as they move into a decline phase, they begin to circumvent laws and conventions to devour the patrimony of the nation. This is the “loot the treasury” phase. They are concerned for today and for maximizing their material gains now without regard for building for the future. This makes the yoke on the people heavier at a time when they as elites have less strength to maintain their position. This sets them up for catastrophe and creates the conditions for violent revolutions.

“In short, there must be a certain equilibrium between the power a social class possesses and the force at its disposal to defend it. Domination without that force cannot last.”

Elites, Pareto argues, gradually become effete over time. They become passive. They rely more on the structures of power to sustain them, but they lack the active courage to wield hard power against their own citizens in the same ways that brought them to power. They forget that the maintenance of society is more important than the lives of a handful of offenders, challengers and fools. He asserts that the primary purpose of any government is the preservation of order through the use of force. If you are unwilling to use that force, you are preparing for your own downfall. Unwilling to put them in their place violently, the old nobility gave way to the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie gave way to the managers, the socialists, for the same reasons. In both cases, the old elite wanted the benefit of the abilities of their challengers without a willingness or ability to absorb them and incorporate them among their own. They were shoved aside and remained as relics of what was. The question today is to what will the managers give way? It is obvious that they are now effete, ossified and feckless, losing their grip on power. But what group will shove them aside? Just as the bourgeoisie toppled the old forms of feudalism, it is likely that with the demise of the managers, their system of governance will go with them.

What is interesting about the rise of the managers as the dominant elite group is that they are inherently not a strong form of governance. Adept at wielding law and policy, they govern by indirect means rather than through the direct use of power. There power flows from their ability to develop, instantiate and manipulate the managerial system of institutions, rules, policies and so forth towards the goal of improving outcomes, in both government and business, by means of the system itself. In some sense, a part of the religious impulse of the managers is a belief in the system itself under the banner of “human progress.” Its “strength” was “competence” and not its martial prowess, just as the power of the bourgeoisie was in its commercial abilities and success. In this regard, Pareto seems to argue that in the move from the old aristocracy to the bourgeoisie to the managers, each new group has been weaker than the last, making the system inherently unstable over the long term. The managers/socialists came to power with the religious promise of fixing problems created by the bourgeoisie and the Industrial Revolution. It was based on “compassion” and was inherently feminine from the outset:

“The influence of feminism and of theatrical eloquence is seen clearly in the novel and in the press, all in favour of the prostitute.”

Its a biting quote, in both its characterization of managerial socialism and its assumptions about what the managerial elite are cultivating in women and more broadly in society. An elite in decline promises the good deed but lacks the strength to execute or realize it because the excesses of humanitarian sentiment among its ranks prevent them from completing it. The elite in decline cannot deliver on the promises which brought them to power, nor the narratives used to justify it. This very weakness induces a religious crisis. Pareto asks of managerial socialism, that while it is understandable to offer compassion to thieves, murderers and prostitutes, does not the honest man, the father of a family, and an honest woman and mother also deserve compassion? The “kindness” of a declining elite is, he argues, more seeming than real.

“None is more cruel and violent than the coward. Strength and violence are two entirely different concepts.”

As examples, Pareto points to Trajan as a ruler who was strong, but not violent; offering Nero as an example of a ruler who was violent, but not strong.

In response, the weakening elite begin to react to their growing weakness by closing the door to the natural elevation of the capable up into their numbers. This blockage creates a problem, one that usually results in a sudden, sometimes violent, elevation of those with potential who have been kept down, while simultaneously a significant percentage of the current, weak elites are dispossessed of their wealth, power and prestige, and they fall down into the masses.

The emergent elite will lean on the people, offering themselves up as their champions, encouraging the new religious sentiment among the people. Catholicism was the religious sentiment of the old aristocracy. Protestantism was the religious sentiment of the bourgeoise. And socialism is the religion of the managers. Pareto argues:

“Where industry is highly developed, the working class is bound, sooner or later, to acquire great power.”

This is not populism. There emerges out of the working class a separation between some trades and other trades, some skills and other skills and within the working class a stratification occurs. The top members of the working class in an industrial society began to separate themselves from the rest of the plebs and began banging on the door of the established bourgeoisie elite. It was the very business interests of the bourgeoisie themselves that enabled this new group to emerge as skilled managers from within. They were essentially running things already, but they wanted the power, prestige and rewards of the people who actually owned the businesses.

In a healthy elite, they actively select and elevate people. Pareto says it this way:

“To have a good mathematician one must select him; by no means can you make a mathematician out of a moron by giving him a good education.”

A new elite, a vigorous elite is active in the selection of its own. They also actively apply discipline to keep the unworthy out. A vibrant elite is dignified, straightforward and disciplined. An old decaying elite in decline, he says, would sell you out for 30 pieces of silver. Pareto argues that this is a constant cycle, the circulation of elites. Initially, the new rising elite will seem open to all, but this is an illusion. As it consolidates power, it will become more rigid and exclusive, thus setting up the next round of abrupt and/or violent turnover in elites.

More could be said, but this should give the reader unfamiliar with elite theory enough of a background to understand the point that I ultimately want to make here. It is easy to miss what is happening when the cynic talks to you about religious sentiment as the “form” or the surface layer of what is really happening in the deeper “substance” or structure of events. The claim that Pareto, and all of the elite theorists that I have thus far read, is that the “neutral” observer can discern patterns to history and even current events that are independent of the stated political and religious commitments of the people. It pretends to make no evaluation of the truthfulness of the reasons why people, elites in particular, say they engage in the actions they do. He just assumes they are all fake and made up. Pareto even goes so far as to admit that they believe the story they tell themselves sincerely. But, a rational observer will see right away that these are not the real reasons they act, merely the fine sounding justifications after the fact. They will not admit to you that they are seizing power because what they really want is money, power and prestige; no, they will spin fanciful tales of God looking out for the poor and the downtrodden.

The problem with this is that the authors have exempted themselves from their own analysis. Pareto will tell you that he is merely a disinterested and detached observer of the habits of other men. But Pareto is making a specific religious claim that is buried within his sociological analysis of the circulation of elites, that all religious claims are essentially false, mere justifications for people’s actions. There was nothing more to Catholicism than its role in supporting the ruling nobility. They might have believed it was real, but all serious thinkers know that this is not the case. Protestants might think their beliefs were genuine and driving the political events of the day, but this is not the case. Protestantism is all made up in the minds of its adherents to provide them with the justification for what they are doing. As far as Pareto is concerned, it does not matter what the religion is, what matters is that the elites believe it and with them the people. This is a religious claim. The claim is that ALL religions are fake and merely the post hoc rationalization for power. It is not that much different from the idea promulgated by post modern critical theorists who say that religion and morality are downstream from power and are merely tools of oppression by the elite to maintain social and political control over the masses.

The denial of the reality of the religious claims of any elite group is itself a religious claim. It is also the denial that there could actually be a religious “substance” that has the potential, perhaps, to break the cycle of elites. And even if it can’t break that cycle, there might be a religious explanation that gives an alternative understanding of why elites rise and fall, that the circulation of elites has a real spiritual and metaphysical set of causes and effects. These are real and drive events, as much or more that does mere sociological forces. Or, rather, that Pareto has it backwards, or at least partially backwards, that what he considers the surface phenomena, the “forms," are in actuality the true “substance” of elite turnover.

Before proceeding further, we must acknowledge that the observation that religious sentiment is used by the powerful to justify their acquisition of power, money and prestige has truth to it. It is not unreasonable to make the observation that Protestantism made certain adaptations in doctrine to the Christian faith which eased the transition to mass market capitalism, industrialization, mass democracy and even managerialism. Chief among these was its rejection of much of the “superstitions” of the Catholic faith. Christianity became a rational faith for a rational age. Stripped down. Practical. Utilitarian in its outlook. From a chicken and egg perspective, one can reasonably question whether or not the merchant class emerged as a result of Protestantism; or did Protestantism emerge because of the general societal disposition and sentiments of the merchant class? Before you dismiss this question out of hand, you need to confront it honestly if you are going to deal with the religious claims of someone like Pareto.

What if you discover that Pareto was not entirely crazy in his observations? Hint: he wasn’t. Does that thereby deny the claim that there can be a substantive religious foundation for society, for elites and the plebs together that is a “substance” and not merely a “form”? I would argue that there is such a foundation in the Christian faith and the Biblical writings. This does not mean that there is a Biblical pattern, some buried set of constitutional principles, once elucidated, will give people the power to structure society such that the circulation of elites is eliminated once and for all. I don’t believe, in this life anyways, that such a singular structure or form exists. But what I do believe is that there is set of spiritual realities, when properly understood, offer an explanation for and an answer to the problem of the circulation of elites.

We need to begin at the beginning. We live in a world where evil and human sinfulness are ever present realities. Everything is tainted and corrupted by sin. The people are corrupted and sinful. The leaders are corrupted and sinful. Pareto just takes it as a reality that elites hunger for power, wealth and prestige and are by default exploitative. He puts that forward as an unchanging reality that is always present and is always central to elite formation and circulation. He just states this a fact, an indisputable reality of life. But he never explains why this is the case. His slight of hand in regards to calling religious sentiment a “form” is that he does not thereby have to deal with religious arguments as to why this is the case. This is why we must understand that he is, in doing this, making a claim about the nature of the universe and the human condition. This is just the way things are, he says, and the way that elites behave, and they use all that religion nonsense to justify what they are doing.

But the Christian can push back and say that, no, the reason why your leaders doing this is that they are sinful men who would rather pursue money, power and prestige more than they want to do what is right, what is obedient to ways of God. This claim remains intact even when the leaders use religion as a cover for their desire for money, power and prestige. Even when they are using religious reasons post hoc they are doing this because they are sinful, corrupt men. The Christian argument is that man’s abuse of power is not fundamental to his nature, but rather arises out of a corruption of his nature. The abuse of power is the “form.” Man was created good so that he might live in a right relationship with God. The desire to seek power, wealth and prestige instead of a right relationship with God is not essential to our human nature. It has come upon us because of sin and disobedience.

This is why the Biblical story of God’s relationship with his people and the kings who were anointed by him to rule over them is a story of God entering into a relationship with a specific people so that they might be a light to the nations. They were to be a model on how to live before God, how the people were supposed to act and how elites were supposed to act. Deuteronomy 7 is one of many passages that lay out the structure of this basic relationship:

The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. ⁸ But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. ⁹ Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. ¹⁰ But

those who hate him he will repay to their face by destruction;
he will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate him.

¹¹ Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws I give you today.

¹² If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your ancestors. ¹³ He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land—your grain, new wine and olive oil—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you. ¹⁴ You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor will any of your livestock be without young. ¹⁵ The Lord will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all who hate you.

In the middle of a sinful world where other nations see their elites rise and fall and the peoples go through turmoil, God makes an agreement with one people to be an example to the others, so that if they do what is right in his eyes, if they are righteous, then they will reside under the blessing of God. This is a specific religious claim. You have to believe that God really spoke to his people and really gave them these words and really made a covenant with a specific people. If you don’t believe this, I suppose you will still have elite theory to lean on. But if you do, then it sets the foundation for how a people should live with each other and before God.

Primarily, it argues that a just and good society is possible, if its people and its elites live before God in obedience and place a right relationship with God and each other ahead of things like power, money and status. Doing what is good is more important. Everything else is downstream from this basic righteousness. This is the “substance.” Everything else is mere “forms.”

What happens when things get off track? After all, we began this by saying that the world is sinful. People are going to sin. This is one of the God-given roles of the leadership, specifically the king: to punish the wrong doer so as to discourage the behaviour in others. Another God-given role is the prophet. The role of the prophet is to call the elites to account for their bad behaviour. Generally, they give the message that if the elites, and the people who follow them, do not repent and change their ways, they will lose power and be punished by God. From a Christian perspective, the circulation of elites is a sign of God’s judgement the current elite. They could have avoided this fate by repenting of their ways, turning so as to seek God and his ways ahead of money, power and prestige. This is why it is important to understand that all religious claims are religious claims. Elite theory and Christian teaching have fundamentally opposite claims about what is happening. For the Christian, the religious is the substance of what is happening to elites. For an elite theorist, the religious is merely a form, a surface phenomenon.

For the Christian, the claim is always the same. If things are going awry with your elites, it is because they are not in a right relationship with God. The message to the elites of our day is the same as it was in ancient times. You are where you are at the sufferance of God. Righting the ship can only come through a process of repentance, faith and obedience. It does not come through fixes to the system or another new set of laws, even ones developed based on “Christian principles.” They tried that in the Enlightenment and look where we are today. What does repentance look like in the modern era? There is a good Biblical story that catches the flavour of it:

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. ² A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. ³ He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. ⁴ So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

⁵ When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” ⁶ So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

⁷ All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

⁸ But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

⁹ Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰ For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Some might argue that the Christian vision is just as utopian as anything a modern technocratic progressive might spout on about. Yes and no. Again, we are dealing with religious claims. Christians believe that a new heaven and a new earth is coming, but whatever it is and however it looks, and what life will be like, that is all up to God. That is his work. For us, it enough to repent and believe and know that “in Christ” we have been made new and for now our life is hidden “with Christ.” We believe that we have been made new. We believe that we have already been raised from the dead. Today, we fix our eyes on Christ and allow him to reveal, even if just in a small way, who we are “in him.” “In Christ” the world has already been saved. We are just waiting for that to be fully revealed. And if people instead wallow in the ways of the world rather in the ways of God, the path remains the same: repent and believe.

This is why it is important for Christians to understand that there are no neutral claims. All truth claims are truth claims. All religious claims are religious claims. It is important to hold those that would deny religion to the reality that they cannot escape that their belief system is every bit as much a belief system as ours. There is no explanation for anything that can escape this reality.

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