As described in earlier posts in this series, R. R. Reno believes that what he calls the strong gods must return to public life. This isn’t something he sees as desirable, per se – it is something he sees as inevitable. One way or another, the strong gods will return:
We yearn to join ourselves to others, not only in the bonds of matrimony but in civic and religious bonds as well. The “we” arises out of love, a ferocious power that seeks to rest in something greater than oneself…Our hearts remain restless. They seek to rest in loyalty to strong gods worthy of love’s devotion and sacrifice. And our hearts will find what they seek.
This will take work, and active effort. One key feature that separates unifying strong gods from divisive weak gods is that the unifying strong gods require sustained commitment and effort:
The solidarity found in the “we” is always political in the broadest sense. Because the “we” is not natural – that is, it is not simply a consequence of our shared humanity or a biological dynamic of genetic connection – its particularity requires intentional effort to create, guide, and sustain. In short, the “we” does not just happen.
The same cannot be said for the dark gods of identity politics:
They do not require free activity to sustain and promote a shared love. They are gods of identity, not of political community…That memory and that flourishing require human agency, for what has been endured must be retold, and the bonds of solidarity must be renewed. By contrast, the brute fact of shared skin color requires no such human agency, although in the artificial environment of universities an ersatz “we” has formed around grievances and theories of systemic injustice.
So what will ensure the return of strong benevolent gods, rather than strong dark gods? Reno has a few suggestions. People must be motivated not by grievance, nor by a merely negative notions of vices that should be avoided, but by a shared sense of love – “love of the divine, love of truth, love of country, love of family…It impels us outside ourselves, breaking the boundaries of me-centered existence. Love seeks to unite with and rest in that which is loved.”
But, Reno says, these uniting loves are treated with disdain by the elites – they are “loves which the powerful seem not to share.” For example, elites “take concerns about the stability of the family in twenty-first century America to be expressions of ‘patriarchy’ or ‘heteronormativity.’ Patriotic appeals are ‘unmasked’ as racist or xenophobic…In these and other ways, our leadership class treats unwelcome political challenges as phobias to be denounced rather than ideas to be grappled with on their own terms.’”
Reno, by contrast, sees patriotic loyalty as an essential strong god for holding the people of a nation together:
Our shared loves – love of our land, our history, our founding myths, our warriors and heroes – raise us to a higher vantage point. We see our private interest as part of a larger whole, the “we” that calls upon our freedom to serve the body politic with intelligence and loyalty. As Aristotle recognized, this loyalty is intrinsically fulfilling, for it satisfies the human desire for transcendence.
True patriotism is also a counterweight against the rise of strongmen and dangerous leaders:
For deprived of true and ennobling loves, of which the patriotic ardor is surely one, people will turn to demagogues and charlatans who offer them false and debasing loves.
Family loyalty and religious communities are also strong gods that must be emphasized – not least of which is because they too serve as a countervailing force against the strong gods of a perverse nationalism:
Modernity encourages us to give our hearts to politics and the nations, which is why ideological passions are so easily triggered. We easily imagine the nation as more than our civic home; it is our savior. To combat this idolatry, we need to nurture to primeval sources of solidarity that limit the claims of the civic “we”: the domestic society of marriage and the supernatural community of the church, synagogue, and other communities of transcendence.
When these three social forces are all treated with the right kind of reverence, they achieve a kind of harmony that brings out the best in all of them:
Throughout the history of the West, communities of transcendence have pinioned the nation from above, while the marital and domestic bonds of family loyalty have pinioned it from below. Let us learn from this history: The best safeguards against the dangers of love’s perversion are the loves that ennoble us and give us rest. The solidarities of domestic life and religious community are not at odds with the civic “we.” On the contrary, the strong gods can reinforce each other, preparing our hearts for loves many devotions.
Reno thinks there “is a political component to this restoration. Tax and employment policies can have effects on the margins.” But political policy cannot be the main driver – “cultural politics are more important.” Those who seek to ensure that the noblest versions of the strong gods return must become engaged and drive the conversation forward:
Our task, therefore, is to restore public life in the West by developing a language of love and a vision of the “we” that befits our dignity and appeals to our reason as well as to our hearts. We must attend to the strong gods who come from above and animate the best of our traditions. Only that kind of leadership will forestall the return of the dark gods who rise up from below.
This wraps up my summary of Reno’s book. In the next posts, I’ll be outlining what I think Reno gets right, and where I think he goes wrong.
READER COMMENTS
steve
Feb 26 2025 at 10:33am
I think it’s way too late for the religious community to be much of a positive. Much of it has jumped into bed with politics and when religion and politics join its religion that loses. There are individual churches that remain positive forces for their members and their communities but as a whole churches are not the positive force they might have been in the past.
Steve
Roger McKinney
Feb 26 2025 at 11:26am
So you’re saying religious people should stay out of politics? What evidence is there that the irreligious do a better job at running the government?
Kevin Corcoran
Feb 26 2025 at 11:53am
You’re misunderstanding what Reno is saying. Reno isn’t calling for religion to join with politics, any more than he is saying that family life should be joined with politics either. He’s arguing that widespread religious observance (or “communities of transcendence”) can act as a countervailing force against making politics the end-all-be-all of people’s public facing or communal lives. Hence why he says both of these kinds of social bonds (faith and family) “pinion” the nation and political life – he’s saying that these things clip the wings of politics from both above and below, not that they should be joined with politics. And many sociologists have observed that as religious belief has diminished and religious communities have evaporated, many people substitute religion with political engagement as a source of personal meaning and transcendence. But, Reno argues, faith and family can help us “combat” the “idolatry” that encourages people to “give our hearts to politics and the nations”. So his claim is pretty close to the opposite of what you’re taking it to be.
steve
Feb 26 2025 at 10:03pm
I was keeping my comment short but that is my concern now about the role of religion. Religion cannot act as “a countervailing force against making politics the end-all-be-all of people’s public facing or communal lives” since so much of it is now inseparable from politics. Its not a matter of religious or irreligious people being better at government its rather that religion has lost much of its power as a positive force in the community since it has been co-opted by politics. To be clear, this is true on the let and right. From my POV I would say this was worse on the left until maybe 20-25 years ago and now it’s worse on the right, but it’s still an issue on the left.
Also, to be clear, it’s not that most churches are dens of iniquity though some are pretty awful (just follow the all too common sex scandals) , but rather that as I said before that churches are dens of politics.
Steve
john hare
Feb 27 2025 at 4:23am
My “dens of iniquity” comment was not even referring to the scandals. Some actual quotes.
If it doesn’t say “Church of Christ” on the building you are going to hell.
It’s not Gods fault that those people have never heard of this church and are going to..
Evolution is false or there would be monkeys …
6,000 years
The bible has all the answers and nothing else is true or necessary.
Those from the pulpit and far worse from the believers. And many more that deny the reality that I see around myself. As well as the pervasive “praise God for everything good, but any failings are your fault”. Which is a heads I win and tails you lose argument.
Similar to me walking out of a “conservative” 912 group after I finally figured out that they didn’t want to investigate any answers other than it’s the Democrats/liberals fault.
Kevin Corcoran
Feb 27 2025 at 12:12pm
It’s far from clear to me that this is the case. History is replete with examples of societies where religion and politics were deeply intertwined – indeed, far more so than they are in the present day United States – and nonetheless managed to successfully disentangle from each other and go on to operate in the manner described by Reno. I don’t see any particular reason to assume that current circumstances are somehow a special exception.
steve
Feb 27 2025 at 12:50pm
I owed agree that there is a pendulum of sorts and that religions have often gone on to disentangle themselves. I hope it happens again here in the US. However, while they are entangled, and they clearly are at present, they lose a lot fo their ability to be that countervailing force. There are way too many examples to cite but since I live with an amateur medievalist I think you can make a good case that the Catholic church was so heavily involved in politics in that age that it undermined its positive effects. That led to the emergence of Protestantism which at least for a while was a countervailing force.
Steve
john hare
Feb 26 2025 at 5:20pm
To me, it is not so much politics as the willful disregard of any facts that don’t align with the particular theology. I sampled many churches when in my 20s an walked out of them all. Agreeing with you that some of them can be a positive. Might be disagreeing with you in my opinion that many churches are dens of iniquity.
I doubt it’s necessary to give examples?
nobody.really
Feb 27 2025 at 3:07am
1: Reno postulates the dynamics of “Strong Gods” (drives that promote cohesion) and “Weak Gods” (drives that moderate cohesion in the interest of defending autonomy). But does Reno believe in “freedom of religion” such that people can CHOOSE whether to embrace a Strong God? Or does the very concept of embracing a Strong God imply that adherents will disparage non-believers, or even coerce them? For example, we can recall when the God of traditional marital norms was stronger; see The Scarlet Letter. Does Reno want to return to those norms? If not, what would he change?
2: Reno seeks to exclude identity politics from the list of Strong Gods by arguing that it does not require sustained commitment and effort. But WWHS (What Would Hayek Say?). Hayek argues that human values arise from three sources: those that evolved within hunter/gatherer societies (a/k/a tribalism), those that were synthesized by individuals (a/k/a religions), and those that evolved through market discipline. I associate identity politics with tribalism. Various scholars argue that tribal discrimination persists only because people can afford to practice it—and when competition becomes sufficiently fierce, people find they must abandon it. (E.g., Racist baseball team owners capitulated to hiring black players when confronted with competition from other teams that were hiring black players; the US abandons various racist public policies when confronted with accusations of hypocrisy by its rival, the USSR.) See research involving the Ultimatum Game, showing that people in tribal communities tend to offer, and demand, a small share of the game’s pot, whereas people in market-based communities tend to demand a more equal distribution of the pot. This illustrates that market-based norms tend to drive out tribal norms. Only those who are truly committed to tribalism will hang onto it in the face of stiff competition.
3: While I find the Strong/Weak Gods concept helpful, this book summary does little to clarify the myriad other adjectives:
So a Strong God entails memory, for what has been endured must be retold, and bond so solidarity must be renewed. Whereas identity politics entails an ersatz “we” formed around telling stories of grievance. See the difference?
Thus we have quotes about “light” gods and “dark” gods and “perverse” gods, about “true and ennobling” loves and “false and debasing” loves—but it starts to sound like a No True Scotsman defense. Reno trots out laudatory adjectives for whatever he likes and stigmatizing adjectives for whatever he dislikes—but once we clear away the fog of adjectives, do we find anything other than a list of Reno’s political preferences?
Kevin Corcoran
Feb 27 2025 at 10:05am
Yes.
No.
Not quite. Reno considers a race-centered identity (or “the brute fact of shared skin color”) to be a weak god. But a race-centered identity, in an of itself, is not the same thing as an active engagement in identity politics, which is a strong (and dark) god.
It depends on what level you’re talking about, I’d say. For strong gods vs weak gods, and what distinguishes them, I think Reno has made it fairly clear what separates the two ideas. Granted, his explanation is hardly one that can be measured with scientific precision – but such explanations or definitions within political philosophy are vanishingly rare. The borders between concepts will always be fuzzy at the very best, and some judgment calls are required for such cases. But I doubt, for example, that even the most ardent supporter of identity politics would claim that it serves as a unifying force that brings a nation together.
Regarding what makes these gods (whether strong or weak) benevolent gods or dark gods does, in fact, track with Reno’s political preferences. That is, in a book where he’s advocating for a particular political philosophy, he believes that the things he’s advocating for are good, and he labels them as such. Perhaps that’s a flaw in his method, but if so, it’s one that’s virtually universal in political philosophy.
But he does suggest ways to distinguish dark vs benevolent gods. I’ll touch again on this a bit more in an upcoming post, but as a preview, he argues that “liberal theories suggest a useful test of the strong gods of public life: Are they humanizing or dehumanizing? Do they lay waste or bring flourishing? Shared loves that abandon individuals to the rapacious, dominating, bloodthirsty impulses of others are surely malevolent, as are the strong gods that imprison on a whim, employ thought police, and confiscate property.” Again, these terms are hardly scientifically precise – what exactly characterizes a shared love that “brings flourishing”? While these kinds of things defy being defined precisely, I think we can also understand them well enough to discuss them usefully.
Monte
Feb 27 2025 at 9:22pm
Looking forward to your critique of Reno’s ideas.
I would like to believe that an event like Pearl Harbor or 9/11 would reinvigorate the strong gods of unity and national purpose, but I’m skeptical. The dark gods of political division and cultural fragmentation have, I fear, grown to broad and deep. Compounding that is a social media that has us retreating into our respective ideological silos by creating echo chambers and filter bubbles through various partisan news agencies.
It will take something truly extraordinary to re-animate what Reno defines as “the best of our traditions.”
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