War on Two Fronts

The Lord condemned religious authorities of his own day who used orthodoxy as a mask for heteropraxy.

This is different from the post-Enlightenment opposition of liberal and conservative, which, translated into the world of religion, is the opposition of Judeo-Christianity to a neo-paganism that has appropriated its vocabulary and symbols. As J. Gresham Machen, C. S. Lewis, and other heroes of this journal have noted, the liberal church (of which the "priestess," for example, is a function) is no church at all.

The struggle against Pharisaism, however, is something that goes on within the church against the malfeasance of lawfully constituted authorities whose fundamental teachings are not incorrect, but whose applications of those teachings are erroneous and harmful—as in the application of "mercy" to the detriment of justice, or the promise of wealth to the faithful in this world.

—S. M. Hutchens

S. M. Hutchens is a Touchstone senior editor.

more on culture from the online archives

32.5—September/October 2019

Must Say No

on When Christians Can't Compromise by Joshua Steely

31.2—March/April 2018

Millennial Mission

The Transmission of Christianity Is Not a New Task by Nathanael Devlin

18.2—March 2005

Long Shadows of Eden

On Conservatism as Vexation, Vanity & Near Impossibility by Graeme Hunter

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