With religious diversity as with many other forms of diversity, we are dealing with an “Irishman’s Two Stoves” problem. From a Christian standpoint, indeed, it might at first seem that the truly ideal polity would be one that was 100% Christian. But we know that this side of the eschaton, even the church itself will be full of tares, so a “100% Christian” society would be only nominally so, and experience shows that without some outside challenges, without some religious competition, to keep Christians on their toes, the quality and sincerity of Christian faith and practice would decline. 

In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis, like any good Irish-born Englishmen, tells a memorable little joke about the Irish : “It is like the famous Irishman who found that a certain kind of stove reduced his fuel bill by half and thence concluded that two stoves of the same kind would enable him to warm his house with no fuel at all.” Lewis applies the principle to the onward advance of technology, which in its quest to conquer nature by treating all things as mere matter and energy finally turns its efforts on humanity itself:

“The wresting of powers from Nature is also the surrendering of things to Nature. As long as this process stops short of the final stage we may well hold that the gain outweighs the loss. But as soon as we take the final step of reducing our own species to the level of mere Nature, the whole process is stultified, for this time the being who stood to gain and the being who has been sacrificed are one and the same” (71).

And indeed, this is an indispensable framework to think about technology, which so frequently seduces us with the idea that if two or three steps towards a cliff edge improves our view, two or three more steps will be even better. The development of a new tool for a time improves the capacities of the craftsman, but then beyond that point, may put him out of a job and lead to the disappearance of the craft altogether. Facebook might begin by improving and leveraging your network of real friendships, but beyond a certain point, crowds them out and leaves us all “alone together.” Joshua Mitchell has articulated a very similar point in his brilliant 2018 essay, “When Supplements Become Substitutes: A Theory of Nearly Everything,” to which the subtitle of this post was a shoutout.

And yet I am not here today to talk about technology, even if I have often used the “Irishman’s Two Stoves” analogy in that context. For it really is a theory of nearly everything. Consider the topic of religious pluralism.

I found myself considering that topic on Tuesday night as I sat in the audience of an EPPC “Crossroads of Conservatism” debate featuring Rusty Reno and Avik Roy, debating the proposition: “Resolved: Religious Diversity Has Weakened America.” (You can watch the whole video here.) It was a great conversation, a classic Prov. 18:17 debate where Rusty seemed to be winning the debate running away after his opening statement and then Avik seemed to have him on the ropes after his. Both gentlemen (both devout Christians, mind you) mounted sound and eloquent arguments in favor of, respectively, the importance of a Christian religious consensus (Reno) and of robust religious pluralism (Roy) to American public life.

And yet, as the debate went on, it became increasingly frustrating, for it quickly became clear that neither man was an absolute purist for their position; both, being intelligent and experienced men of affairs, tacitly recognized the truth of George Will’s great dictum: “the most important four words in politics are ‘up to a point.’” Reno certainly did not believe that America would be the strongest, best version of itself if populated 100% with conservative Christians—certainly not of the same denomination. He freely granted, not only that the coexistence of Protestants and Catholics within the same polity was a healthy thing, not only that the Jewish element in American society and public life had been a source of strength and enrichment, but even that a relatively small minority of other faiths posed no real threat to American institutions and could even contribute to American greatness.

Read More