The Protestant Kirk

W.H. Chellis

I posted this on a Russell Kirk discussion group and got some good feedback. I thought it might be worth while to post here.

I object to Protestantism being denied the right to defender the
natural law.

While I agree that Kirk was not so much a Thomist as an Augustinian
you will find that the Reformers were also men deeply indebted to
Augustine. This does not necessarily mean that Kirk was closer to
Protestants for Roman Catholics like Christopher Dawson were also
deeply Augustinian (as was Tolkien) and they shared Kirk emphasis on
the moral imagination. Of course, some of the Protestant
Scholastics, like Peter Martyr Vermigli, Jerome Zanchius, and John
Owen were Thomists. All were defenders of natural law as has been
recently demonstrated by the Acton Institutes’ Stephen Grabill’s
Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics.

I do think that Kirk’s thought patterns were deeply influenced by his
cultural protestantism. He descended from a line of cultural
Protestants with roots in New England Puritanism and Scottish
Presbyterianism. Although the theological foundations had descended
into unitarianism, Swedenborgianism, and the strange specter of
spiritualism there is an undeniable cultural inheritance.

To Frank Purcell’s point, all I can recall is this passage that
recounts the story of Annette bring home Clinton Wallace:

A few minutes later, Annette burst upon Russell, who lay abed–

being too frequently given to indolence on the Sabbath, the charge
brought against his Pilgrim ancestor Abraham Pierce– and
shouted,
“Russell, do you want to meet a bum? (pg. 351).

Notice how the shadow of Protestantism, even Puritanism is interlaced
in the passage? He speaks of his Pilgrim ancestor but also of the
Sabbath and his personal sin of indolence. This is deeply suggestive
of a man who owned his Protestant and Puritan heritage even as he
took comfort from his Roman Catholicity. Of course, authentic
confessional Protestantism cannot be blamed for Kirk’s sleeping in
while his wife attended Mass. Failure to attend public worship and
the means of grace are matters of church discipline even for those
who believe that we are justified sola fide (how does this relate to
the relationship of faith to works in justification?). The heart of
the situation is Kirk’s conservatism and his recognition that even in
converting to Rome he could not escape the haunting inheritance of
the faith of his fathers. I do not have the reference at the tip of
my finger but I recall that Kirk answered the question about the
man’s ultimate meaning by alluding to the First Question of the
Westminster Shorter Catechism: What is Man’s Chief End? Man’s chief
end it so glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

BTW John Randolph of Roanoke is included in the Conservative Mind
and in Kirk’s biography he makes the point that that Randolph’s
Anglicanism was deeply evangelical and influenced by Samuel Davies.
That places Randolph’s protestant faith to the left of Old Light and
Old School Presbyterianism. Of course, we would also have to note
that many of those “atheists” in the Conservative Mind were
“Protestant” atheists (I use to word loosely) including John Adams,
Fisher Ames, ect. and all the men in the chapter on New England,
ect. Some of the “atheists” were Roman Catholic “atheists” like
Santayana. My point is that Kirk’s Conservatism transcended the
breach between Rome and Geneva/Canterbury/ Boston and made common
cause with all defenders of Anglo-American traditionalism (especially
those traditions that he could feel in his blood).