Belinda wrote: You cannot be both a follower of Jesus and also a conservative.
At first blush it would seem to me that original Christianity must be described as a radical movement. It was resisted as such and seen as subversive to the established order and was repressed for that reason. It was radical as well because it demanded a substantial ethical change which, in those early days, was overseen (policed even) by a hierarchy of Christian persons. So at that point it could hardly be described as 'conservative' insofar as it was not interested in conserving but in transforming.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jul 07, 2022 1:53 pm If you suppose that, you don't know what a "conservative" is, I would think. It isn't a religious category, but rather a vague orientation to the past, to an unspecifiable set of possible "traditions" or "legacies" in civilizational history. It's another extremely broad generalization, and to suppose it's impossible to be within that generalization and Christian at the same time would need proving.
Now however -- and making vast leaps over historical periods -- Christian metaphysics, even when rather murky and non-specified, is definitely associated with social Conservatism. It is often described as backward and retrograde if it is not also described as a mental illness.
When people get nervous and unsettled about the powers and processes (strains of radical ideation) that are undermining all that was once understood to be solid and non-controversial, they naturally turn back to structures and structuralism that can, as they hope, act as an 'anchor'. The winds of change, the currents of change which have been set in motion by strains of ideas (or are these less ideas and more emoted impulses? I am unsure) pull at all such 'anchors'. And thus to define an 'anchor' is to define something conservative. You have to establish definitions as to what is being 'conserved' (and why).
The figure of Jesus Christ thus appears on both sides of the equation under consideration. In India today (I am not versed in the Christianization of India and know just a bit) the intrusion of the Christian form into Indian culture is not a manifestation of 'traditionalism' necessarily, but a manifestation of radicalism. To indoctrinate people in a new and different way of understanding metaphysics, seeing social hierarchies, power-relations and much else. So how could it not be described as 'radicalism' once again? and as it was (more or less) originally?
Real 'conservatism' (if you-all will permit the italic emphasis) can only be defined through different forms of traditionalism. In any case I cannot see how a conservatism would not be traditionalist in one degree or another. And if traditionalism is defined as an acceptable category it is not 'vague' necessarily, though it could be romantic and romanticism is normally defined) but is always grounded in strong definitions. So when Conservatism of a grounded and traditionalist sort defines itself through hard and strict definitions it then becomes a form of traditional radicalism -- if radicalism is taken in its original sense.
[Middle English, of a root, from Late Latin rādīcālis, having roots, from Latin rādīx, rādīc-, root; see wrād- in Indo-European roots.]