Contributing to Christian Democracy Magazine

David Russell Mosley

Eastertide
Octave of the Ascension
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire

Dear Friends and Family,

While I have mentioned this before, things are just different enough for me to make another announcement. A while back I wrote a post on distributism and hobbit society for Christian Democracy Magazine. It was, I am told, a fairly popular (at least in terms of views) essay. Well, some things have been shifting at Christian Democracy and they are now going to a monthly schedule. Each month a slew of articles will be posted at once, you know, like a real magazine. I have been asked to be a regular contributor to this new format and have accepted.

So what does this mean?

I will, of course, still be writing here at Letters from the Edge of Elfland. This blog, since its days as Letters from Nottingham, holds a special place in my heart and serves as a great platform for my literary, sacramental, liturgical, and other interests. Christian Democracy Magazine will likely see the majority of my essays on distributism, politics, and Catholic Social Teaching (but by no means all of them since I only have to write one essay a month for them). Christian Democracy Magazine, will simply be a new place where you can regularly find me on a specific subject.

I’m still trying to think what my second essay will be. The first issue of the new schedule will likely come out in July with many other (and on this subject probably better) writers as well. I’ll post links to some of my previous essays on the topics of distributism and politics/economics, feel free to peruse and let me know if there’s anything there that piques your interest and you’d like to see more on, let me know.

Until then I remain

Yours,
David

On Food: Growing and Eating and Hobbits 

Anti-Artisanal: Budweiser, Craft Beer, Hipsters, and Distributism 

On the Papal Address to Congress and the Kingdom of God 

The Distributism of C. S. Lewis: Some Reflections on That Hideous Strength and Mere Christianity 

Beginning a Path toward Distributism: A Brief Definition

Can I Have This, but without the Jesus Part? Orthodoxy and Catholic Social Teaching

On The Economics of Elfland: In Honour of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Birthday 

An Answer to the Call for the Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything

David Russell Mosley

Eastertide
Octave of the Ascension
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire

Dear Friends and Family,

A few days ago a new acquaintance (really a kindred spirit and therefore friend, though we’ve not yet met) of mine, Michael Martin, wrote an essay on the Angelico Press blog entitled, “The Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything.” For those unfamiliar with Martin, he is the Assistant Professor of English and Philosophy at Marygrove College and has written several works, the only one of which I have read thus far is The Submerged Reality: Ophiology and the Turn to a Poetic Metaphysics. Martin is like me, a believer in faërie, a poet (though a far better one as I understand it). I think we both can sign off on this line from an interview with theologian John Milbank, “I mean, I believe in all this fantastic stuff. I’m really bitterly opposed to this kind of disenchantment in the modern churches.” So I was overjoyed when Martin decided to put tires to pavement in a new way (he’s been living this stuff for some time now) when he wrote this essay.

Martin’s essay is a clarion call to those who are like minded in this endeavor which he calls the radical Catholic (and I would add catholic) reimagination of everything, or one might it even call it the C/catholic unveiling of sacramental ontology, for, ultimately, this is what Martin is driving at. At the beginning, Martin, a proponent of sophiology (something on which I hope to write more as I understand more), notes the call to Wisdom (Sophia) that appears at key moments in the Byzantine Liturgy. He then turns to another part of the liturgy, a hymn called  Megalynarion, “The Magnification of Mary.” You can read those for yourself in Martin’s essay. What I want to draw your attention to is this line from Martin:

“My investigation here is not about the liturgy, however, but about the ways in which phenomenology and sophiology discover the same phenomenon: the shining that illuminates the cosmos. This shining speaks in the languages of poetry, languages that take on a myriad of forms and are sometimes mistaken for science, sometimes for theology.”

Martin is calling us to a different way of seeing, but also a different way of doing, of being, simply put of living in reality. Martin understands that certain strains of theology do not allow for this kind of sight. He notes, via Hans Urs von Balthasar, that Neoscholasticism denuded itself of attention to the Glory of the Lord and that this proper attention was passed through certain poets, philosophers, and scientists while it was lost by the theologians. Even were one to disagree with this genealogy, one need only look at trends in theology today to see that this attention the Glory, to Sophia, to sacramental ontology has been ignored by many (though it is making something of return as theologians find themselves once again desiring to return to the sources).

In the end of his essay Martin issues a call to “poets, artists, scientists, adventurers, teachers, communitarians, distributists, scholars, and visionaries who hanker for something more living in Catholic culture.” He does not desire mere theory, men and women sitting in a room talking about how great it would be if. However, it should be obvious that Martin is not against the study of these issues in order to better inhabit these ideas and live this reality. Rather, Martin wants us to act as we talk. Theoretike and Practike must be united. Some may be Marthas and others Marys, but we need both and we need most of all those who are willing to live the hard life being both at once.

And so this is, in my own small way, my answer to Martin’s call. I am a poet, an author, a theologian, a gardener, a distributist, a husband, and a father (and more besides); I am all of those things bound up together and suspended as one made according to the Image. I am ready not simply to think about a sacramental ontology but to live it. This will be hard, already have I been confronting ways in which my habits did not accord with my beliefs and my knowledge, but I will answer this call. I must answer this call, I can feel it in the very blood that flows through me that this is right, that this is how reality really is. Confronting my son’s cancer was the first step for me in coming not simply to believe that these fantastic elements of the faith are true (I already believed), but to experience them. Yet I have let the shadows overcome me and make me believe that those moments are rare and that real life is lived without experience of the Glory. Well I say no more. I say that that way of living is ultimately damned (though we can be saved from it). Root and branch, twig and bough, I am in. Join me, as I join Martin and others and we radically (which remember means to return to one’s roots) and catholicly reimagine everything.

Sincerely,
David

On Food: Growing and Eating and Hobbits

David Russell Mosley

Lent
25 February 2016
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire

Dear Friends and Family,

Writing to you about food, and not about fasting, feels a bit odd during this Lenten season. However, it is always important to remember that Christianity is primarily a feasting religion which fasts to remind us that we depend on God, not food, for our existence. Nevertheless, today I have read two excellent articles on food that I thought I would share with you, with a little commentary.

The first article I read today came from The American Conservative, an excellent news and opinion source, in my personal opinion. Here author Gracy Olmstead writes an article entitled “Why Cooking Matters.” Olmstead is looking primarily at the work of author Michael Pollan––author of such works as The Omnivores Dilemma and Cooked––to see what importance cooking, even spending much of our time in the cultivation (or hunting) and preparation of the food we eat. For Pollan it is not only good but necessary that we begin to return to older methods of food cultivation and preparation. Failure to do so will result in loss of traditions which will in turn lead to loss of a proper connection to the land.

There are are critics of Pollan, however. Olmstead notes that of New York Times’s Neil Genzlinger who argues that Pollan’s views are too gentrified, unavailable to poor. Olmstead responds that the problem has less to do with this not being available to the poor for financial reasons “but, rather, because we’ve largely lost the skills associated with this work.” Now here I do think Olmstead and Pollan are overlooking the fact that much of this may not be available to those who have to work three full-time jobs just to make ends meet. Rather than the handwringing of Genzlinger, however, I would argue that this is reason enough to fight for political changes to make it easier for the poor among us to have access to good, healthy food and the means to cultivate and prepare it. This may also require re-education and new habits to be formed. We have been so habituated to the processed that for many the organic tastes bad. It took me a long time to love the flavor of organic vegetables or even grass fed beef. Nevertheless, I think these things worth our time.

The second article I read was an older article from The Distributist Review by Robert Hutchinson entitled, “How to Eat like a Hobbit.” Hutchinson begins by reminding us of the importance of food in Tolkien’s work. Hutchinson notes, that, “there is more eating than fighting in The Lord of the Rings.” And many are often either driven mad, or to laughter, by how often Bilbo is pining after bacon and his larder in The Hobbit. Hutchinson notes that unlike our industrialized farming of today, hobbits and the other free folk of Middle-earth benefit from what can only be called organic small farms (albeit there were no pesticides in the third age so to call the farms organic is certainly anachronistic on my part). Not everyone was a farmer, but what farmers there were were the primary source of food in the local economies. This Hutchinson sees as a good, and I agree.

Hutchinson then transitions his article from hobbits to our own situation. He notes that even when we see numerous brands on the grocery store shelves many, if not all, of them come from the same farms, are packaged in the same factories, and are distributed by the same distributors. “[B]y some estimates,” Hutchinson writes, “just four companies now produce 90% of the food consumed in the United States: Cargill, Tyson Foods, General Mills and Kraft.” This is not a good, says Hutchinson. This leads to bad growing practices, to a desire for uniformity which causes sellers and growers to use artificial means to keep their food “looking nice” when they hit grocery store shelves. Hutchinson, however, is not content simply to detail the woes, but offers real solutions we can take as individuals, families, and local communities. I will reproduce those in full here:

“1. Go organic. Whenever possible, begin buying organic food, especially when it comes to meat and dairy products. Organic products are more expensive so every family and individual has to adjust their purchases for their own economic situation. Many people believe that, for health reasons, switching to organic, free-range meats and dairy is more important than organic vegetables because of the use of growth hormones and antibiotics in meat and dairy.

2. Buy local only. Almost every town and city in North America and Europe hosts farmer’s markets where the few remaining family and small farms come to sell locally grown produce. There are now also hundreds of websites where you can quickly and easily identify stores in your area that sell locally grown produce.

3. Eat in season. This is the hardest step of all to take. That’s because globalization means that consumers in prosperous nations have gotten used to eating whatever they want, whenever they want it, regardless of the season. But again, convenience comes at a high cost: the fruits you buy in January are picked unripe and artificially ripened with ethylene gas or calcium carbide (yum, yum!). Buying foods in season, however, has the effect of encouraging a far more diverse diet than would otherwise be the case: apricots in April, cherries in May, blueberries and raspberries in June.

4. Start your own garden. One reason to start your own garden is because it sensitizes you to what you’re missing by eating only mass-produced industrial food. Anyone who has ever tasted a homegrown heirloom tomato grown on the vine has trouble going back to the tasteless, “pre-ripened,” dyed-red globules sold in most supermarkets. Even if you only have a few green pepper plants sprouting on your balcony in your high-rise apartment, it is a vivid reminder of the Shire and why you should go out of your way to find “Hobbit-grown” foods whenever you can.

5. Join the Urban Chicken movement. Thousands of families in urban and suburban settings have set up small chicken coops in their back yards, sometimes disguised as children’s playhouses. The fun of growing chickens is heightened by getting dozens of “farm fresh,” organically produced, nutritious eggs.

6. Eat less meat. Hobbits are not vegetarians and neither are most human beings. Yet their favourite foods are grown in the wild, particularly mushrooms. Many people are finding that a return to the so-called “paleolithic diet,” the diet of our hunter-gather ancestors, can result in surprising health benefits and even weight loss. This is a diet made up primarily of fruits and vegetables with occasional lean meat dishes.

7. Lobby for labeling. The industrial food lobby, aided by most national governments, has fought tooth and nail against food labelling requirements. The Big Food lobby has been especially fierce in its opposition to labels for Genetically Modified (GM) foods since so many consumer food products today now contain genetically altered plants, such as corn. It is also opposed to mandatory labelling for products that contain growth hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and so on. That’s because the food industry does not want consumers “voting with their pocketbooks” and choosing organic foods that do not contain these chemical additives.”

While not every individual or family will be able to do all of these at once, I do want to encourage you to do what you can. I said at the beginning that writing about food during Lent felt odd. However, there is at least one upside to writing about this at the tail end of February. For many of us these suggestions will be easier to follow as Spring inches nearer. My wife and I are already planning out our allotment for this season, so we can grow at least some of the food we eat. We are also fortunate to live in an area with many small or at least non-industrialized farms nearby so that as the season begins we can buy fresh, local, and often organic produce, we can even pick our own and jam and can. What is important, however, is that these things are good to do. They are good because they are often healthier options; they are often more economically and environmentally viable options. More importantly, however, they are more Christian options. We are called to be stewards of Creation. What is more, we act as priests for the rest of physical creation at least (I think also for angelic, but that’s another subject for another day). It is our job to offer back our gratitude and our very selves to God as priests offering sacrifices. For this reason we must find more just ways to cultivate and consume our food. The two articles above, if we read them and take them to heart, can help us do precisely that. Cheers.

Sincerely,
David

Anti-Artisanal: Budweiser, Craft Beer, Hipsters, and Distributism

David Russell Mosley

Ordinary Time
5 October 2015
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire

Dear Friends and Family,

Today as I was on Facebook, I came across a rather funny video lampooning “hipsters” and the “artisanal” movement. You can find it here. In the video we see two men, an owner and an apprentice, who run an artisanal firewood shop with pieces of firewood costing upwards of $1200. The satire was really quite spot-on, but I couldn’t help but wonder what more was underlying it. Of course artisanal firewood is ridiculous, especially the way the video portrayed it. It reminded me of the hilarious video from the television series “Portlandia”, Dream of the 1890s. You can watch it below.

The video looks at “hipster culture” and sees it for part of what it is, namely a desire to go back to a simpler way of living, without necessarily leaving behind all the true advantages of our present time. This video too is somewhat satirical, as if having funny facial hair were as essential to this way of life as making things from scratch. Which of course it isn’t, though it is an added bonus for the follicularly robust such as myself. But both videos are now, for me, place in the context of this one from Budweiser.

Viewed in this light, the satirical video on artisanal firewood takes on new meaning for me. Perhaps rather than a good-natured ribbing given to some of the oddities of the artisanal and hipster movements, it’s a satire against being artisans of any sort. Perhaps some of this comes from the relationship between the artisanal movements of recent decades and the hipster movement which has been alive since at least the 1950s with both the greasers and beatniks. Perhaps something about the present ironic nature of many “hipsters” has led to a general degradation of any attempts to create things on one’s own or on a micro-level.

The Budweiser video wastes no time in suggesting that craft-beer is merely for the pretentious and not for the person who simply likes a good glass of beer. They act as though the brewers of craft-beer are simply looking to put together odd flavors and act as though they taste good when, in reality, they do not. And this is true of some craft-beer, believe me, I’ve tried (Banana Bread Beer is disgusting). But does this in turn mean that mass-produced beer where the primary fermenters are corn rather than the traditional barley or wheat is by nature better? Or, does Budweiser begin to realize that people are actually beginning to prefer good, solid craft-beer, especially when they can find it locally made, to their mass-produced alcohol that only tastes good ice cold, because it tastes of nothing?

So the big corporation tries to pretend it is the friend of the working-class (because its cheap) and not the affluent millennial hipsters. Even the artisanal firewood video makes this point when we see the $1200 price tag on a single piece of firewood and a well-dressed white woman comes in to buy it. According to these videos, the artisan is a charlatan, by his beard and leather apron he makes himself appear as a working class man, but he isn’t since he caters to the bourgeois. But are really to believe that the big corporation is friend to the proletariat? Now it’s true that many artisanal items, including the organic, are often beyond the price range of many such as myself. For the artisanal this is usually because of the labor required to make the item or items that would normally be machine made. For organic food it often also has to do with paying for the title organic. Now David Cooney over at Practical Distributism reminds us that we need to start re-thinking price when it comes to our purchases (often the long-term price of cheaper items is higher than the short-term price of those of better quality). I’ll let you read his essay for his arguments.

My emphasis in this letter is rather on the need for craft, for micro-productions. Not only are these often more economic in the long run, since they will last longer, but they are usually more sustainable. A leather company that hand makes it’s goods will not go through nearly so many cows as an industrialized one. A micro-brewery will not require industrialized farming to grow the necessary ingredients to make delicious beer which in turn means that the land used to grow those ingredients can be better cared for, will require less water, etc. Now it’s true that I currently don’t buy as much as I’d like from small producers in my area, nor do I create much. These are the plagues of the underemployed, that price must factor in when you don’t make enough to support your family without extended family assistance. Still, we do what we can. However, if more small, artisanal-style, businesses could and did open, it would eventually be easier to buy from them, perhaps not easier than buying from the big box stores, but easier than it is currently. This will never happen, however, unless at least three conditions are met. First, the big corporations will either have to stop abusing the craft industry or else we will have to disabuse people of the false conceptions big corporations are spreading. Second, we as consumers have to change the way we think about buying. We have to stop thinking only in terms of short-term costs and start thinking in terms of long-term costs. Third, we may have to petition our government for certain deregulations that make it more difficult for small businesses than for large ones. Big business can afford certain costs related to many regulations that small or individually owned businesses cannot. These regulations should not favor the big over the small.

So I return to these videos. Two clearly meant as satire and, I hope, satire that is friendly, that is self-effacing because the people creating the satire are the people who believe in these ideas, if not their oddities. The other is much more malicious. It seeks to make us think big business is our friend and the craftsmen are pretentious snobs and therefore our enemies. Let us not buy into that lie.

A final note, if we want to see the changes in society put forward by distributism (and admittedly many of my correspondents do not), we need to stop eschewing the millennials and hipsters and bring them into our folds. Hopefully we can rid them of the chaff of irony and help them keep that kernel of craft.

Sincerely,
David

On the Papal Address to Congress and the Kingdom of God

David Russell Mosley

Ordinary Time
25 September 2015
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire

Dear Friends and Family,

Yesterday Pope Francis became the first pope to address the United State’s Congress. His address, despite the feelings of some, was rather warm and welcoming. Pope Francis, it seems, desired not to alienate his audience by simply telling them that they are doing the wrong things as regards the common good, human dignity, the importance of the family, or the importance of caring for our common home. Instead, the Pope used the United States against itself. Instead, particularly by highlighting four outstanding citizens of this country––Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton––the Pope showed us where we have done well in spirit or in desire and called us to live out those desires. There is much I wish the Pope would have elaborated on, but his message was clear: America, in fact the world, needs to move forward in a spirit of solidarity and subsidiarity. These principles, along with an emphasis on the family, are the keys to Catholic Social Teaching in general and one of its many expressions, distributism. So, for the rest of this letter, I want to highlight some key passages from the Pope’s address, providing a little commentary and attempting to draw out the binding thread which is the Kingdom of God.

The Pope began his address by speaking first to the members of Congress directly. He reminds them that “the chief aim of all politics” is “to defend and preserve the dignity of your fellow citizens in the tireless and demanding pursuit of the common good.” According to the Pope, “a political society” can only “[endure]  when it seeks, as a vocation, to satisfy common needs by stimulating the growth of all its members, especially those in situations of greater vulnerability or risk.” In essence, the Pope reminds the members of Congress of what their job is meant to be. Their job is not to get reelected. It is not to obey the demands of money: “If politics must truly be at the service of the human person, it follows that it cannot be a slave to the economy and finance.” This can only be achieved, however, by “love of the common good and cooperation in a spirit of subsidiarity and solidarity.”

The Pope goes on to remind us that many of us are the ancestors of those who immigrated here. And that our ancestors did not always treat well those who were here before us: “Tragically, the rights of those who were here long before us were not always respected.” He reminds us that we too were once strangers, aliens in a foreign land, and that we ought to welcome the alien who desires to come here: “Nonetheless, when the stranger in our midst appeals to us, we must not repeat the sins and the errors of the past. We must resolve now to live as nobly and as justly as possible, as we educate new generations not to turn their back on our “neighbors” and everything around us. Building a nation calls us to recognize that we must constantly relate to others, rejecting a mindset of hostility in order to adopt one of reciprocal subsidiarity, in a constant effort to do our best. I am confident that we can do this.” By these early comments we ought to be made to think of much of the Old Testament, especially Isaiah and God’s commandments to his people to care for those on the margins, the poor and the oppressed, the widows and orphans, and the aliens among us.

This leads the Pope to discuss human dignity in general (after also dealing with the present refugee crisis). While perhaps some on the pro-life side might be dissatisfied that abortion only gets a vague reference from the Pope––”The Golden Rule also reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development”––we should keep in mind that this aspect of Christian faith is one that has been at the fore for many years. I think it likely that Pope shifts the conversation to the abolition of the death penalty, “This conviction has led me, from the beginning of my ministry, to advocate at different levels for the global abolition of the death penalty,” because until we understand that the lives of those, even those who hate us, are also to be protected as much as possible we cannot come to an understanding that the unborn are also in need of our protection. In other words, until we can understand that even the worst possible humans still have dignity (read made in the image and likeness of God) we cannot understand that unborn humans also share in that dignity.

The Pope then moves from human dignity to care for our common home, the earth. He connects, as he does in Laudato Si‘, care for our planet with care for the poor and oppressed. The Pope understands that much effort is needed to raise humans out of poverty and “that part of this great effort is the creation and distribution of wealth. The right use of natural resources, the proper application of technology and the harnessing of the spirit of enterprise are essential elements of an economy which seeks to be modern, inclusive and sustainable.” Here it would have been nice to see the Pope elaborate some on the means by which this might be done, for instance turning from industrialized farming of one or two crops to a return to small family owned farms, or turning from large, monopolizing corporations to small, family owned businesses, and other aspects traditionally associated with distributism. Nevertheless, the Pope reminds us that the common good, as well as the Good News, is not only for humans but for the whole planet:

“For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8.19-23).

The Pope concluded by turning to the family, that supra-political society at the heart of political society. The Pope recognized the importance of the family to the foundation and “building of this country! … Yet I cannot hide my concern for the family, which is threatened, perhaps as never before, from within and without. Fundamental relationships are being called into question, as is the very basis of marriage and the family. I can only reiterate the importance and, above all, the richness and the beauty of family life.” The Pope reminds us that we need to look in particular the problems facing the young (like my family) in this country. “Their problems are our problems,” he says. “We cannot avoid them. We need to face them together, to talk about them and to seek effective solutions rather than getting bogged down in discussions. At the risk of oversimplifying, we might say that we live in a culture which pressures young people not to start a family, because they lack possibilities for the future. Yet this same culture presents others with so many options that they too are dissuaded from starting a family.” In other words some families, like my own, are bogged down by bad financial circumstances, that discourages them from having children at all or having more (in California, it can cost anywhere from $3,296 to $71,000 depending on the kind of birth and the hospital). Others in more affluent circumstances, however, are discouraged from beginning families due to a surfeit of options. Women are encouraged to freeze their eggs so they can have careers first, and some women and men work so many hours, pursuing often some other dream (promotion, a new house or car, etc.), that little or no time is left to consider having children. The family is central and its centrality is being lost.

Pope Francis concludes by reminding us of those four great American individuals: Lincoln, King, Day, and Merton and how their spirits are the keys to a great nation: “A nation can be considered great when it defends liberty as Lincoln did, when it fosters a culture which enables people to “dream” of full rights for all their brothers and sisters, as Martin Luther King sought to do; when it strives for justice and the cause of the oppressed, as Dorothy Day did by her tireless work, the fruit of a faith which becomes dialogue and sows peace in the contemplative style of Thomas Merton.”

In the end, the Pope’s address was a call to join ourselves to the Kingdom of God, to work alongside God to bring about his kingdom and will “on Earth as it is in Heaven.” For those who feel the centrality of Christ was missing from this address, it needs to be understood that the whole of the Pope’s address was about living out the life of discipleship. Christ is at the center of the kind of society the Pope described. He must be, even if all members of that society don’t recognize it. The Pope understood his audience, and did what Jesus and Paul did, he incarnated himself, to the citizens of the United States, he spoke as a citizen of the United States, reminding us of what is good about us to call us to be better, to be aligned with the will of Christ.

Sincerely,
David

Fairy Tales and Distributism: A Quotation from G. K. Chesterton

David Russell Mosley

Ordinary Time
Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire

Dear Friends and Family,

I’ve finally started reading Chesterton’s The Outline of Sanity in earnest and wanted to share this quotation, a day late for Labor Day, but perhaps not inappropriate for the feast of the birth of Mary:

“About fifteen years ago a few of us began to preach, in the old New Age and New Witness, a policy of small distributed property (which has since assumed the awkward but accurate name of Distributism), as we should have said then, against the two extremes of Capitalism and Communism. The first criticism we received was from the most brilliant Fabians, especially Mr. Bernard Shaw. And the form which the first criticism took was simply to tell us that our ideal was impossible. It was only a case of Catholic credulity about fairy tales. The Law of Rent, and other economic laws, made it inevitable that the little rivulets of property should run down into the pool of plutocracy. In truth, it was the Fabian wit, and not merely the Tory fool, who confronted our vision with that venerable verbal opening: ‘If it were all divided up tomorrow.’

“Nevertheless, we had an answer even in those days, and though we have since found many others, it will clarify the question if I repeat this point of principle. It is true that I believe in fairy tales––in the sense that I marvel so much at what does exist that I am the readier to admit what might. I understand the man who believes in the Sea Serpent on the ground that there are more fish in the sea than ever came out of it. But I do it the more because the other man, in his ardour for disproving the Sea Serpent, always argues that there are not only no snakes in Ireland, but none in the world. Suppose Mr. Bernard Shaw, commenting on this credulity, were to blame for believing (on the word of some lying priest) that stone could be thrown up into the air and hang there suspended like a rainbow. Suppose he told me tenderly that I should not believe this Popish fable of the magic stones, if I had ever had the Law of Gravity scientifically explained to me. And suppose, after all this, I found he was only talking about the impossibility of building an arch. I think most of us would form two main conclusions about him and his school. First, we should think them very ill-informed about what is really meant by recognizing a law of nature. A law of nature can be recognized by resisting it, or out-manoeuvring it, or even using it against itself, as in the case of an arch. And second, and much more strongly, we should think them astonishingly ill-informed about what has already been done upon this earth.“

Sincerely,
David

The Distributism of C. S. Lewis: Some Reflections on That Hideous Strength and Mere Christianity

David Russell Mosley

Ordinary Time
13^th Sunday after Trinity
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire

Dear Friends and Family,

As many of you know I have, over the last few years, become particularly interested in things like Catholic Social Teaching, localism, agrarianism, some aspects of the artisan movement (at least insofar as it represents a return to making things ourselves and usually by hand or using less mechanized means of production), etc., in short that I have become interested in distributism. This is much to the chagrin of some I know, but all I can really say is that it is my faith that has led me here. I don’t say this to judge the faith of those who have not come to at least similar ideas (I know many committed Christian socialists with whom I agree on several issues as well as many committed Christian capitalists with whom I agree on several issues), but just to say that my interest and increasing commitment to the ideals of subsidiarity and solidarity are an outflow of my faith and study. Now that preamble out of the way, I want to talk about distributism in C. S. Lewis.

I am not, for certain, the first to connect Lewis to distributism and what I write today is merely a first blush, an introduction based on passages that have always stuck with me and my annual re-read of Lewis’ Cosmic Trilogy. Some others on this subject can be found here, “Was C.S. Lewis a Neo-Liberal“; and here, The Scientifiction Novels of C.S. Lewis: Space and Time in the Ransom Stories.

I have finally gotten to That Hideous Strength in my Cosmic Trilogy re-read and have to say that it is increasingly becoming one of my favourites. Perhaps it’s that I’ve loved Arthurian legend for a long time now and Lewis gives me more of that; perhaps it’s the way Lewis was able to predict and counter the transhumanism of today; perhaps it’s that it is a fairy-tale for adults and I am an adult who loves fairy-tales. Whichever, or whichever combination, it may be, as I began to re-read this book I came across a passage the shocked me for I had forgotten about it. Towards the beginning of the book one of the somewhat unwilling protagonists of the story, Mark Studdock, is learning some uncomfortable truths about how he got his fellowship at Bracton College. As it turns out, an old colleague of his, Arthur Denniston nearly got the position. However, Curry, the Sub-Warden of the College notes that Denniston ultimately would not be a good fit.

“‘Yes,’ continued Curry, passing another train of thought. ‘One can see now that Denniston would never have done. Most emphatically not. A brilliant man at that time, of course, but he seems to have gone quite off the rails since then with all his Distributivism and what not. They tell me he is likely to end up in a monastery'” (17)

While the final sentence seems untrue given that Denniston is married with a child on the way, as we later find out, it is fascinating that even the Bracton group would not have liked Denniston for his ideas concerning labor, wages, food, etc. Of course, this passage should not have shocked me. I myself have preached a sermon where I quoted at length a later passage in the book where the resident skeptic in the group for good notes that all they seem to have done being not much more than “‘feeding pigs and raising some very decent vegetables'” (368). So, Lewis seems to have been a proponent of distributism like Tolkien, both of whom, of course, were indebted to G. K. Chesterton one of the founders, if you will, of the movement. Lewis’ distributism, however, becomes even less surprising when one considers the third chapter in part 3 of Mere Christianity, “Social Morality”.

In this chapter Lewis begins talking about a society which is based on the golden rule, “do as you would be done by” as he puts it. If you’ll allow me, I will quote at length a few passages from this chapter. In the first, Lewis is writing what he thinks the appropriate role of the Church in all this:

“People say, ‘The Church ought to give us a lead.’ This is true if they man it in the right way, but false if they mean it in the wrong way. By the Church they ought to mean the whole body of practising Christians. And when they say that the Church should give us a lead, they ought to mean that some Christians––those who happen to have the right talents––should be economists and statesmen, and that all economists and statesmen should be Christians, and that their whole efforts in politics and economics should be directed to putting ‘Do as you would be done by’ into action” (83).

In this first passage, Lewis is arguing against the notion that bringing about a Christian society ought to lay solely or even primarily (insofar as economics and politics are concerned) in the hands of priests and bishops (or whatever you may call your clergy). Instead Christian novelists ought to write novels, Christian economists ought to work on the economy, etc. This isn’t to say that our clergy or lay theologians ought to have no voice in this (for who else would provide the moral, theological, and philosophical framework on which our Christian society is to be built?) but that there’s ought not to be the only or final voice, that we need people not split in the interests or vocations but singularly focused.

Lewis goes on to argue for the New Testament understanding of society:

“All the same, the New Testament, without going into details, gives us a pretty clear hint [how paradoxical, a clear hint] of what a fully Christian society would be like. Perhaps it gives us more than we can take. It tells us that there are to be no passengers or parasites: if a man does not work, he ought not to eat. Everyone is to work with his own hands, and what is more, everyone’s work is to produce something good: there will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and then of sillier advertisements to persuade us to buy them. And there is to be no “swank” or “side”, no putting on airs. To that extent a Christian society would be what we now call Leftist. On the other hand, it is always insisting on obedience––obedience (and outward marks of respect) from all of us to properly appointed magistrates, from children to parents, and (I am afraid this is going to be unpopular) from wives to husbands. Thirdly, it is to be a cheerful society: full of singing and rejoicing, and regarding worry or anxiety as wrong. Courtesy is one of the Christian virtues; and the New Testament hates what it calls “busybodies”” (84).

Before anyone thinks Lewis is against welfare, it should also be noted that one of the key reasons everyone is to work is in order to provide for the poor through charitable acts such as almsgiving (86). Of course, once a society such as the one described existed for long enough there ought to be few or no poor in it nor around it, as the charity reached further and further out. Also, note Lewis’ paradoxical nature, on the one hand no one is to think him- or herself better than another, yet we ought to properly obey and respect those who are better, in some way, than us. One can see, perhaps, a notion of the proper deference given to a member of the royal family or other such outward marks of respect at the back of this. In a sense, one is to think oneself as no better than another and to think others better than oneself.

Well, this missive has gotten too long and so I want to end with this. Lewis clearly liked distributism and tried to embody it (perhaps in another letter I’ll write about ways we can see Lewis attempting to live a distributist life). For Lewis, as for the Christians who “created” what we now call distributism, distributism is a way of living out the Christian faith, a way of living out the Golden Rule which Christ gave us. He believed it so much that he even worked it into his fiction like Tolkien and Chesterton before him and, in many ways, Wendell Berry and others after him.

Yours,
David

Beginning a Path toward Distributism: A Brief Definition

David Russell Mosley

Eastertide
Ascension Day
The Edge of Elfland
City, State/County

Dear Friends and Family,

As various previous letters of mine have indicated, I am increasingly becoming swayed by the arguments of distributism. However, so many of you my friends and family don’t quite know what I mean when I say distributism. Now, it should be stated upfront that there is often not one definition of distributism, it has different expressions and slightly different emphases with different people or groups. Yet they all share a core and an origin and it is that I want to share with you now. Hopefully, I will do it justice and perhaps convince some of you to at least spend more time reading distributists as I have been doing when taking much needed mental breaks from my thesis (like right now).

Distributism, as the name would suggest, is about distribution, but distribution of what you might ask? Well, I’ll tell you, the distribution of property and by property, I mean land primarily. Distributism holds as its seminal text the papal encyclical Rerum novarum written by Pope Leo XIII on 15 May 1891. The Pope Leo, in this text, is writing concerning the woes of both capitalism and socialism. His concern is primarily with the working classes desiring justice for them as he writes: ‘Among the many and grave duties of rulers who would do their best for the people, the first and chief is to act with strict justice––with that justice which is called distributive––toward each and every class alike.’^⁠1 The pope was concerned with the working man’s ability to own land. It is worth quoting him at length:

‘It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, and thereafter to hold it as his very own. If one man hires out to another his strength or skill, he does so for the purpose of receiving in return what is necessary for the satisfaction of his needs; he therefore expressly intends to acquire a right full and real, not only to the remuneration, but also to the disposal of such remuneration, just as he pleases. Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and for greater security, invests his savings in land, the land, in such case, is only his wages under another form; and consequently, a working man’s little estate thus purchased should be as completely at his full disposal as are the wages he receives for his labor.’^⁠2

While the pope doesn’t specify to what end this land should be used in this passage, he has in mind that it is to be used toward self-sufficiency by the growing of fruits and vegetables and the raising of some little livestock (chickens, a few pigs, and/or a cow).^⁠3 For the pope, the right to possess property is a natural right (one can perhaps see some Locke behind this, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of property, which the Declaration of Independence altered to happiness, but I’m not sure the pope is following a Lockean line of thinking; I’ll need to study this more myself).^⁠4 Much of the pope’s understanding here is based in the family as the foundation stone for society.^⁠5 Society begins in the family and moves out from there, this gives the individual family a State-like status. Again to quote him at length:

‘A family, no less than a State, is, as We have said, a true society, governed by an authority peculiar to itself, that is to say, by the authority of the father. Provided, therefore, the limits which are prescribed by the very purposes for which it exists be not transgressed, the family has at least equal rights with the State in the choice and pursuit of the things needful to its preservation and its just liberty. We say, “at least equal rights”; for, inasmuch as the domestic household is antecedent, as well in idea as in fact, to the gathering of men into a community, the family must necessarily have rights and duties which are prior to those of the community, and founded more immediately in nature. If the citizens, if the families on entering into association and fellowship, were to experience hindrance in a commonwealth instead of help, and were to find their rights attacked instead of being upheld, society would rightly be an object of detestation rather than of desire.’^⁠6

So society exists in order to help safeguard against this mistreatment of the working class, of the family, and to help ensure that as many people as possible can become landowners. There’s much more to Rerum novarum, but you’ll just have to read it and the other documents that make up Catholic Social Teaching for yourselves (I have a group on Facebook which is doing just that, so feel free to join us). This is where the distributists come in.

G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc are the two names that come up most often when one searches out information concerning distributism. These British men and Christians, along with others sought to put the pope’s ideas into practice in turn of the century England (and elsewhere, the Catholic Workers Movement in America founded by Dorothy Day is an American example of these same ideals). Through various writings and periodicals, many of which can be found at the currently dormant Distributist Review, these men and others sought to spread the sensibility of distributism. At the end of the day, this is what distributism is: a sensibility. It is not a political party nor even, strictly speaking, an economic system since it is more about a way of living. Chesterton believed that you could not impose distributism on people, you could only encourage them to live it. How does one begin to live it, though?

I think the answer to this must be incrementally. One must begin with the family. I don’t think it can truly begin at any smaller stage, individuals can do much, but this is an inherently social sensibility (Artur Rosman has written convincingly on the idea that the Church ought to replace the Family; and so one could suggest that the church, locally speaking, would also be a valid starting point). The family, and/or the church, ought to strive to live locally, to support local businesses, local farmers, and help local families get land on which to grow food. My wife and I, for instance, since we don’t even rent our own home but are living with family while I finish my PhD, have rented a 300sqft plot of land on which to grow our own fruits and vegetables. It’s our first time with a plot this large and we may very well fail, but beginning is almost more important than succeeding, at first anyway. From the family level one perhaps should move to the local community, your town or county encouraging locally owned businesses to come in and thrive, in general to encourage local-mindedness. Where it goes from there? I don’t know. But we must take the first steps.

If you have any interest in distributism, please do get in touch (especially if you happen to live near me in the greater Nashua area in New Hampshire) and in the mean time check out some of these online resources. I’ll likely be posting about this again as I will be having several discussions with friends and strangers who have an interest in or are even already proponents of distributism (to those for whom this will mean something, I will be meeting with Dr William Edmund Fahey, president of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts here in NH soon to discuss Chesterton and distributism).

Distributist Links

From Letters to the Edge of Elfland

The Enchantment of Creation Or, I Do Believe in Faerie

On The Economics of Elfland: In Honour of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Birthday

Cottage Economy: A Mini Book Review

From People Who Know More than I Do:

The Distributist Review

Practical Distributism

Distributism on Ethika Politika

Sincerely yours,

David

¹ Pope Leo XIII,Rerum novarum [Encyclical on Capital and Labor], Vatican Website, May 15 1891, 33, accessed 14 May 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html.

² Pope Leo XIII,Rerum novarum [Encyclical on Capital and Labor], Vatican Website, May 15 1891, 5, accessed 14 May 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html.

³ Pope Leo XIII,Rerum novarum [Encyclical on Capital and Labor], Vatican Website, May 15 1891, 9, accessed 14 May 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html.

⁴ Pope Leo XIII,Rerum novarum [Encyclical on Capital and Labor], Vatican Website, May 15 1891, 6, accessed 14 May 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html.

⁵ Pope Leo XIII,Rerum novarum [Encyclical on Capital and Labor], Vatican Website, May 15 1891, 12, accessed 14 May 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html.

⁶ Pope Leo XIII,Rerum novarum [Encyclical on Capital and Labor], Vatican Website, May 15 1891, 13, accessed 14 May 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html.

Can I Have This, but without the Jesus Part? Orthodoxy and Catholic Social Teaching

David Russell Mosley

Feast of St Mark 2014
On the Edge of Elfland
Beeston, Nottinghamshire

Dear Friends and Family,

Last night I had the opportunity and pleasure to lead the small group gathering of my Missional Community at Church. I’m part of 20’s-30’s missional community whose goals are to encourage, edify, and disciple one another as we reach out to our non-Christian friends. In our monthly small group meetings we have been going through what are called the Life Shapes (developed by Mike Breen and others). I won’t go into exactly what I talked about or what I think about Life Shapes in general. However, there are some thoughts I want to share inspired, in part, by last night’s gathering.

In the course of our discussions, I brought up something I’ve heard several members of our Missional Community say. Whenever they’re non-Christians friends see the kind of community we’ve developed here, many ask, ‘Can I have this, but without the Jesus part?’ In short, my answer is no. Now, one our members pointed out that he has seen one of his non-Christian friends grow as a person, particularly as related to spending time with people with learning or developmental disabilities, and this without becoming a Christian. However, as we both acknowledged, that still is not having that community without Jesus. Our Lord is still the reason this young man is growing into a better person as he moves a few steps closer to God.

This, however, has led me to think about a similar question related to Catholic Social Teaching. Put simply, Catholic Social Teaching is concerned with human dignity, human life and work, and finding a Third Way between unfettered capitalism and communism (primarily Marxist). But one could easily ask, can’t we have all this without Jesus?

Pope Leo XIII (papacy: 1878-1903) writes in his encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891) which in many ways kicks off modern Catholic Social Teaching, ‘We have insisted, it is true, that, since the end of society is to make men better, the chief good that society can possess is virtue. Nevertheless, it is the business of a well-constituted body politic to see to the provision of those material and external helps “the use of which is necessary to virtuous action.”(Thomas Aquinas, On the Governance of Rulers, 1, 15 (Opera omnia, ed. Vives, Vol. 27, p. 356). Despite the quotation from Aquinas, this is something many political thinkers today could agree with whether Christian or not. However, for the Pope, the reason this is so is because of his theological commitment to God as creator of the cosmos and bestower of our dignity:

No man may with impunity outrage that human dignity which God Himself treats with great reverence, nor stand in the way of that higher life which is the preparation of the eternal life of heaven. Nay, more; no man has in this matter power over himself. To consent to any treatment which is calculated to defeat the end and purpose of his being is beyond his right; he cannot give up his soul to servitude, for it is not man’s own rights which are here in question, but the rights of God, the most sacred and inviolable of rights.

The Pope even goes so far as to suggest that the end for which work and the acquisition of virtue tends toward is the Kingdom of God. He writes:

To sum up, then, We may lay it down as a general and lasting law that working men’s associations should be so organized and governed as to furnish the best and most suitable means for attaining what is aimed at, that is to say, for helping each individual member to better his condition to the utmost in body, soul, and property. It is clear that they must pay special and chief attention to the duties of religion and morality, and that social betterment should have this chiefly in view; otherwise they would lose wholly their special character, and end by becoming little better than those societies which take no account whatever of religion. What advantage can it be to a working man to obtain by means of a society material well-being, if he endangers his soul for lack of spiritual food? “What doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?”(Matt. 16:26).This, as our Lord teaches, is the mark or character that distinguishes the Christian from the heathen. “After all these things do the heathen seek . . . Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice: and all these things shall be added unto you.”(Matt. 6:32-33) Let our associations, then, look first and before all things to God; let religious instruction have therein the foremost place, each one being carefully taught what is his duty to God, what he has to believe, what to hope for, and how he is to work out his salvation; and let all be warned and strengthened with special care against wrong principles and false teaching. Let the working man be urged and led to the worship of God, to the earnest practice of religion, and, among other things, to the keeping holy of Sundays and holy days. Let him learn to reverence and love holy Church, the common Mother of us all; and hence to obey the precepts of the Church, and to frequent the sacraments, since they are the means ordained by God for obtaining forgiveness of sin and for leading a holy life.

Of course, I don’t want to deny that non-Christians can desire many of the same ends of Catholic Social Teaching without excepting the underlying theological and metaphysical principles. However, I would argue that even their desire to do so is because the underlying theological and metaphysical principles of Catholic Social Teaching (and Christianity in general) are true.

The lesson I led last night ended with a look at a passage from C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. In the chapter I quoted from, Lewis was talking about the necessity of Christian writers and Christian economists. He ends the chapter by writing:

A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian. I may repeat ‘Do as you would be done by’ till I am black in the face, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbour as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbour as myself till I learn to love God: and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey Him. And so, as I warned you, we are driven on to something more inward––driven on from social matters to religious matters. For the longest way round is the shortest way home (87).

Lewis’s answer to the question, can I have this (be it community or a better social order) without Christ is no, not fully. Perhaps this will always remain the case until we see as we are seen and have been deified. But if so, then it is all the more reason to strive toward that end in this life for by so doing we will lead more people and more of the world to Christ.

Sincerely yours,
David Russell Mosley

On The Economics of Elfland: In Honour of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Birthday

David Russell Mosley

Tenth Day of Christmas
3 January 2014
On the Edge of Elfland
Beeston, Nottinghamshire

Dear Friends and Family,

There are a few topics that up until now I have refrained from mentioning in these letters: specifically, homosexuality, abortion, and politics. The first two topics, while often linked quite closely to the third, are frankly too emotional and complicated for me to feel they can be appropriately dealt with in a blog post. The third I avoid often due to ignorance on my part as well as a lack of certainty about where I stand in the midst of the various debates. That being said, since today is J. R. R. Tolkien’s one hundred and twenty-second birthday, I thought I would post some musings on politics/economics garnered from the works primarily of Tolkien, Chesterton, Alison Milbank, and Catholic Social Doctrine.

Pope Francis has recently been under fire from certain Republicans, particularly Rush Limbaugh but comments have been made by John McCain and Sarah Palin as well as many others. The reason the Pope has caused such an uproar is for his indictment of trickle down economics and the mistreatment/oppression of the poor. Francis’s ideas are not new, the Old Testament Prophets are particularly interested in the care for the poor and oppressed. However, it is not just the Bible but the Catholic Tradition that finds these topics important. Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Rerum Novarum, wrote about the conditions for the working class and the need for the wealthy and the state not to oppress, but to protect our working classes. Pope Leo XIII writing in the nineteenth century penned these words which are equally true today: ‘Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition.’ Pope John Paul II in his Centesimus Annus, written for the hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, writes: ‘”If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accepts harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.” Would that these words (from Pope Leo XIII), written at a time when what has been called “unbridled capitalism” was pressing forward, should not have to be repeated today with the same severity.’

I bring up these notions of Catholic Social Doctrine because this seems to have been the driving force behind Tolkien’s work (as well as G. K. Chesterton’s). For Tolkien and Chesterton, indeed for most fairy-stories, the economics of Elfland, a play on Chesterton’s ethics of Elfland, is based in gift giving. Gawain and the lord he later learns is the Green Knight he has been sent to seek, share a game in the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. During his stay at the Green Knight’s castle, each day the knight will hunt and give as a gift whatever he catches. In return, Gawain will give the lord whatever he wins during the day (in the poem he wins kisses from the lord’s wife).

In Tolkien this gift economy sets the rules for birthdays in the Shire. Bilbo is a bit extravagant in giving a gift to every party-goer, but nevertheless, birthdays in the shire centre around gift exchange. What’s more, Shire economy seems to have little to do with money. Some is spent, particularly for Bilbo’s birthday, but it doesn’t seem to be the driving force of the economy or society in the shire; that place seems to be occupied by the consumption of food, alcohol, and pipe tobacco. Alison Milbank writes in her Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians, ‘The Shire in particular, while having employees, seems to allow its people some land for the odd cow or pig and the appearance of Hobbiton bears some resemblance to the interwoven village, field and homestead pattern that can still be seen today at Laxton in Nottinghamshire, where the old fieldstrip system that allowed country people to be partially independent of a cash economy still survives in a modified form’ (128).

Hobbiton is not a socialist society, there are some people, like Bilbo, who have more than others, like the Gamgees. Yet, there still seems an implicit notion that one can own too much. Farmer Cotton in explaining to the world travelers how things got as bad as they did in the penultimate chapter of The Lord of the Rings notes that Lotho Sackville-Baggins owend, ‘a sight more than was good for him.’ Ted Sandyman in the same chapter is berated for allowing his father’s mill to be sold and torn down in order to make one too large for the needs of the society and becoming a workman in it rather than its owner and master. It seems the Shire is meant to be both a unit, a society that is in some way governed, but governed in such a way that families can remain relatively independent. In this way they can help each other as Farmer Cotton does with Sam Gamgee’s father Ham is thrown out of his home.

Alison Milbank writes concerning Tolkien’s politics, ‘While Tolkien’s political views do not easily correspond to any political party of his day, as a devout Catholic with his own ethnological interests Tolkien in his fiction can be seen as seeking a more humane, less alienated form of sociality in the manner of Catholic social teaching of the early twentieth century, and its emphasis on a middle way between capitalism and communism.’ This is what I’m looking for. My life’s ambition, in many ways, is to be a small holder with my family. To have chickens and pigs and maybe a cow or two and to grow my own fruit vegetables is what I desire. Yet I don’t simply desire this for myself. I would see a society built on living locally, on taking care of each other. I believe this is part, though not the whole, of the vision of the Kingdom of Heaven. This is the Gospel, or at least part of it. We pray in the Lord’s Prayer for God’s Kingdom to come and his will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. A middle road between capitalism and socialism, one built on justice and virtue, one built on making virtuous citizens, which is to say citizens who desire to be happy, which is to say citizens who desire the Good, which is to say citizens who desire union with God through Christ in deification, this is the economics of Elfland.

Sincerely yours,
David Russell Mosley