As a Christian and a father I not infrequently find myself faced with a certain moral dilemma. Specifically, my income is pretty good and I’m in the position of deciding what to do with it.
Of course, there is no end of uses for money. Our family is growing and we need a bigger, better home. The sort we want in our area will run us about $6k/month in rent, or $1.2m to buy. The public education system is less ‘broken’ than it is actively ruinous (but both), so private schooling and tutoring considerations apply. There’s retirement planning in the face of an increasingly cartoon economy.
My parish, naturally, wants tithes. They want a whole ten percent! Off the top! And in fairness, if my dollar was the one to determine whether it thrived or failed, that would be the best investment I could make. Our community is amazing and the only place I’d want to raise my children. We run a thrift store (like Goodwill) that is an absolute lifesaver for many of the area’s poor. Also, we practice almsgiving, which is acts of charity above and beyond tithing, if not always monetary.
But many other mouths cry out to be fed as well, from crook-smiled politicians who nonetheless are important to support over the other guy to NGOs trying to staunch an arterial rupture of human tragedy with the equivalent of band-aids for want of bigger budgets.
And life’s finer things are to be considered as well. I like good art, soundly-crafted furniture, stylish clothing (important for my job too), high-quality ingredients for cooking, and the occasional getaway to see family, friends, or just interesting places. The kids want enrichment also, and while I’m not going to call this demand a pit, it certainly is bottomless. Too, there is the notion of self-care; that it’s important to expend enough resources on my own well-being that I continue to be able to generate the income.
Only, as all of these are valued in dollars, they directly trade off against each other. And in the way of autists, I can’t help but grope my way down the thing toward the root of the problem. It has taken me to some pretty intense places.
~All human societies hold in common an understanding that it is a father’s duty to protect and provide for his children. This is enshrined in law, culture, and everywhere else. Of course a father would do anything to save his child — rob, murder, cheat, lie, or give up his own life without hesitation. To do otherwise would be reprehensible.
This principle is not without its exceptions. Men in office, for example, are expected to set aside their familial obligations when acting in their official capacity (And, actually, one could find far worse yardsticks of a people’s worth than their ability to hold to this standard consistently). If a soldier on the front lines receives word of a family emergency, efforts are often made to excuse him to attend to it, but where this conflicts with operational considerations he is expected to stay put, and failure to do so is generally agreed to be worthy of capital enforcement, even if our hearts are understandably with him.
I have heard a saying along the following lines attributed to the Bedouin of the deep desert:
Me and my tribe against the world
Me and my clan against the tribe
Me and my cousins against the clan
Me and my brother against our cousins
Me against my brother
If my daughter and the neighbor-kid are both starving I am expected to feed my own and let the other die. So with my nieces and nephews over my second-cousins’ kids, all the way up the enumerated hierarchy. This is understood. This is a human universal. Most, I expect, would agree that this is the very foundation of morality, though as we will see I am not so sure.
Where exceptions come in it is because a man has taken upon himself the role of father to a greater family than that of his immediate. We honor enormously the Patriarch who puts the good of the clan above his own children. We remember with fierce admiration the Emperor who adopts a competent successor as his son while consigning his own degenerate offspring to some idle pleasure dome in the countryside. We exalt the young man who gives his own life in the trenches while his pregnant wife waits for him anxiously back home. We depend upon such men. We call them heroes. This, too, is moral. It is perhaps even a higher sort of morality.
A messiah is one who brings such benefit to his People at the grandest scales. A typical Christian narrative on the subject goes something like: The Jews were conquered by one hostile nation and then another, denied their own homeland, constantly at risk of enslavement and extermination, and were able to survive all of this by virtue of their hope in a coming promised messiah. They had many specific expectations of what he would be like, too. He would bloodily uproot the foreigners, bring the earth under his dominion, and elevate his own race to lordship, never to be so threatened again. When Jesus came to Jerusalem the people laid down palm fronds that he (or his mount(s)) might tread upon these instead of the dirt. They were elated. They knew exactly what was coming, and they were ready as only centuries of bitter anticipation can make a people. And then the State executed him in their ugliest fashion and he didn’t even attempt to resist. Even the disciples, whom Christ had tried to prepare for this over and over again, understood that all was lost and that Jesus was not the messiah. Messiahs do not lose. They conquer.
Let me shift gears now and talk about Hitler. There is no figure more reviled in our culture. He serves as our icon of utmost evil; of the worst aspects of human nature. To publicly question this in the slightest is to run a very real risk of losing everything and, in many Western countries, even runs up against laws that will land one in a jail cell.
Why?
Yes, I realize that I’m committing an unspeakable breach of social etiquette by asking. Yes, I know that many of us, even here, have an uncontrollable disgust reflex on the topic. Even those who are more or less comfortable with discussing differences in average racial IQs or impulse control, or personality trait variances between men and women.
Why?
The usual answer for someone in such circles is, “Because such discourse is controlled by the Jews, etc., yada yada yada” and while there is certainly something to this it is, at least at this resolution, entirely beside the point I’m trying to make. So please bear with me — that is not where I’m taking you.
One day a few months ago I, in the way of autists, asked myself what exactly was so unusual about Hitler that he should occupy the mythological position that he does. One can of course enumerate a long list of terrible atrocities for which he was responsible. Only, as I went through them, I couldn’t help but notice that not only were they all basically par for the course for the Father, the would-be messiah of a people, but that worse examples of each can be found (both quantitatively and almost always qualitatively) in the biographies of other leaders — including, not to put too fine a point on this, those seen often enough on t-shirts in public without ruffling anyone’s feathers particularly.
So, finding myself at a loss, I escalated the question to some trusted friends, and discovered that while it was extremely upsetting to most of them, none even attempted to answer, but rather clucked at me while shaking their heads in horrified exasperation. These are people, you understand, whose capacity for decoupled analysis I generally respect very greatly. Disconcerting, to say the least. Can’t you pick as a mascot, one said, someone other than the craziest and most evil man in history?
Only, I cannot fathom how anyone sees this when they look at Hitler. Here was a man who sincerely held the best interests of his People in his heart. He came of age in a time when his nation was — historical aggression notwithstanding — brutally, horrifically, oppressed. Countless of his countrymen, women and children, starved to death needlessly under spiteful, vindictive post-war Allied blockades. The economy was so saddled with reparation debt that rebuilding would take generations if it were ever possible at all. The people had no hope. Men and women who wanted families faced down a seemingly-insurmountable challenge in doing so. The risk of watching their babies die of starvation was all too real. And what chance had those children of decent lives even if they did survive to adulthood? They would end up de facto slaves, servants to the sneering foreigners who now controlled everything.
Germany’s culture — within living memory arguably the pinnacle of human achievement — was brought low, rapidly to be replaced with this new post-war thrust which we can now recognize as the antecedent to the sort of moral and cultural disintegration with which we are today so familiar.
And this man! This man was nobody. He was a failed art student. But he decided that he was not going to let that happen. He was going to save his people or die trying. Yes, in pursuit of this goal he engaged in some of the most reprehensible methods imaginable. But in what sense was he not playing the highest, most honorable role for his people — that of a messiah? Was the alternative really any more moral? Are we clutching our pearls and sobbing because it was mean to kill political opponents when what he should have done was to suffer the children of his nation to starve to death in the streets while foreigners feasted in the beautiful homes built by his forefathers? Can we really suppose for one moment that the Jewish zealots of AD 66 would have had any problem with Hitlerian tactics were the shoe on the other foot and being executed by Eleazar ben Simon against the Romans? Yes, Hitler was a mess and riddled with countless inexcusable flaws, but are we truly to believe that he did what he did simply because he enjoyed causing others pain? The man was a vegetarian for goodness’ sake!
Now contrast this with Stalin (or Lenin). How explicit do I need to be here? Whether they acted more out of lust for power or a sincere ideological commitment to, idk, ‘the working class’ (imo doubtful), these guys did not act out of love for their people, and did not hesitate to consign millions of them to starvation in pursuit of power.
And they killed so many more. So many more. But our politicians can admire them openly and the common man has only the haziest idea of why this might be a problem. And while, sure, the opposition will attempt to make much hay of this, the younger generations increasingly seem uninterested in what they have to say about it.
Last night a friend told me,
my opinion is that you've been brainpoisoned into calling evil good and good evil and rather than leaning into the caricatures of your enemies by using the word 'hitlerism' to refer to good things you should not do that
(Not that I was — it’s precisely the distinction that I’m trying to draw, but we’ll get to that.)
So on the subject of ‘my enemies’, let me tell you a few things I notice about them.
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They get abortions
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They permanently sterilize themselves, or
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They take pills to trick their bodies into thinking they've just lost a baby because this spiritual distress is preferable to them over the prospect of actually reproducing.
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They purchase chihuahuas, and pekinese, and felines, and portage them around in equipment intended for human children which will never exist
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They agonize over the irresponsibility of their own kind having children, but gasp in horror at anyone who suggests that African birthrates might become a problem
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They desire to privilege children of other races above their own, ceding educational access, preferential employment, etc.
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They get nervous at portrayals of healthy white families with several children
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They will loudly insist that they do not have a culture
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They really don’t like borders and seem to think that it’s their responsibility to feed and clothe the world
This list could be ten times as long, of course. You get the idea. So to circle back around to my original point —
My enemies do not feed their own children first. My enemies sell their children at the market and immediately donate the proceeds to the worst, most irredeemably valueless people they can find. And if they can’t find one close enough to hand, they go looking. And it’s disgusting. It’s reprehensible. It offends me to a degree that I have difficulty conveying without jumping up and down and screaming until I’m red in the face and collapsing into a pile of tears. Only, I seem to remember Jesus telling us to do what my enemies are doing — or it’s at least close enough that I can’t help but notice.
Which brings us back to my daughter. As her father, where does my responsibility to her end? At what point should I give a dollar to feed notional children on the other side of the world rather than investing it in her future? How stiff will her competition be? How can I know in advance which investment will turn out to make all the difference?
Consider the following scenario. I am walking down the street and notice my neighbor’s two year old breaking free from her front door and running into traffic. Of course if I can safely rescue her I should, but suppose I’m not sure that I can without endangering my own life in the process, and leaving my children fatherless? I could maybe look her parents in the eye afterward and say “There just wasn’t anything I could do” and they’d likely catch the nuance and understand and even bitterly sympathize.
But supposing I had plenty of time to save the child, and just choose not to because this would mean I don't have time to read my daughter a bedtime story. Is that equivalent to murder? I say yes. Trying to delineate between the two is an unseemly thing for a man to do and belies a womanly discomfort with agency. But when I spend a few extra bucks to get her the pink scooter someone, somewhere, is going hungry, and in aggregate dying.
Or imagine that I’m the chieftain of one of two small tribes on a small island. Resources are getting scarce and everyone knows that at some point soon it’s going to be us or them. Does a good leader, a good father, wait for the threat to ripen, for the enemy to choose the place and time for battle? Or does he strike preemptively? It will be either our children or theirs who die. We will eat their babies or they will eat ours. Shouldn’t a father make sure of which it is? Isn’t that what a good father does?
The reason our society is so reflexively disgusted by Hitler is because we have mostly internalized the notion that our children should die that others might live, and the man with the tiny moustache represents the polar opposite of that.
Hitler seems to me, at heart, a very good father. If I emulated him, I should not hesitate to feed my own child first, even upon the corpses of my neighbors’ children. I should lie and cheat and steal and murder in game-theoretically optimal ways to bestow upon my children as many resources as possible, that they should not themselves end up in chains or on the dinner plate. The notorious Fourteen Words — “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” — make the connection so explicit and unassailable that the Left dares not to look upon it.
But the icon-stand in my heart labeled “Father” does not have Hitler’s portrait in it. Actually the picture there is blank, ha ha, but that’s another story, and the point is that Christ fills in pretty well. My Father does not feed His own child first. He feeds His child to us. Bit by blood-soaked bit, forever. I can struggle with the apparent discrepancy between disinheriting my daughter to feed what looks to me like a total waste of the Imago Dei, but there it is. I am certain that the difference between my girl, whom I can assure you I adore unbearably and who always seems to have a beam of sunshine on her in my eyes — that the difference between her and the most contemptible human being ever to exist, is as nothing compared to the difference between God’s son and my daughter, or myself.
But the gorge does rise in my throat when I consider failing to protect what seems, to me, the most beautiful person, and the most beautiful People, ever to exist in favor of… that. Every cell in my body says that I should sooner glass an entire foreign continent rather than allow harm to befall one hair upon my daughter’s perfect golden head.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
And we can’t even expect the problem to go away. The least of these will always be among us. He said so. Maybe the only clean way out of this is to not have children in the first place. I’m afraid He might have said that too.
I try to console myself with precedent. I try to believe. We have established two types of morality: A baseline morality of feeding one’s own children first, and a higher morality of sacrificing one’s children for the greater good of the People. But Christ would seem to indicate a third sort, which is to love the foreigner's child more than one’s own. This is, after all, what God did.
And for a minute there humans actually did it too! As Scott says,
The early Christian Church had the slogan “resist not evil” (Matthew 5:39), and indeed, their idea of Burning The Fucking System To The Ground was to go unprotestingly to martyrdom while publicly forgiving their executioners. They were up against the Roman Empire, possibly the most effective military machine in history, ruled by some of the cruelest men who have ever lived. [...] this should have been the biggest smackdown in the entire history of smackdowns.
And it kind of was. Just not the way most people expected.
Food for thought, I guess.
So it seems to me that if I'm to be a Christian, this directly implies feeding my child to the dogs. And if I'm to do otherwise, this fully generalizes to Hitler. Either way I had better get serious about whatever it is I'm doing here.
Long story short, I’m currently trying to decide between this apron and this one for my daughter for when she’s painting at her easel. The first is a little bit cheaper, but she’ll like the second one better because it has unicorns. Hoping someone can offer some insight here.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I've wrestled with similar questions. Life was simpler before I had kids! The following is something I wrote a few months ago around Christian's response to culture:
I have been struggling with what Christianity’s role should be in a West that becomes increasingly culturally incompatible with the traditional teachings of the Church. I have read Christ and Culture by Neihbur and To Change the World by Hunter. I have perused the writings that are at least adjacent to Rod Dreher’s Benedictine Option. When it comes to Christianity’s role in the broader culture, I see three typical approaches. First, what are we commanded to do. As Jesus summarized the law, “Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself”. And the dual creation/commission mandate: “Be fruitful and multiply. Go into all the world and make disciples”. Second, how did Jesus himself engage with the culture and politics of his time. Third, what is the strategic direction we should take to maximize our impact on culture.
I have listed these three in descending order of importance. God’s commands should trump our perception of how Jesus engaged with the world (this perception being tainted by our predispositions and bias). Jesus’ example (even through our tainted perception) should certainly be given more weight than mere strategic direction especially since political strategists would (and in fact did) recommend a vastly different approach than Jesus took.
Of course, interpretation plays a key role in all three of these approaches. The words “as yourself” and the meaning of “love” can be read very differently. Some modern protestants may see this as a command to help both Christians and non-Christians along a journey of self-actualization. Calvin may have seen this as a command to ensure orthodoxy and right thinking in the population he was responsible for, even if it meant burning heretics at the stake.
All three of the authors I mention above interpret the “commandments” approach similarly and in a manner compatible with orthodox Christianity. I will delve into my own perspective in more depth later in this essay.
Neihbur focuses more than the other authors on the depth and unexpectedness of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Reading through the Gospels while attempting to remove our cultural expectations of Jesus is eye-opening: Jesus is caustic, frustrated, exasperated, and something of a pre-internet troll. He overturns money tables in a one-man riot. He is repeatedly the target of lynch mobs. What Jesus did not do was set up an earthly kingdom or impose God’s law through state force despite continual temptations (and certainly the ability) to do so.
The strategic direction is where the authors have the most disagreement. Hunter thinks we need to change the culture by being present yet different. He points to the success of small groups of people in changing opinions and culture especially through the influence of elite thought. Elites command outsized soft power and a compelling narrative that can be adopted by the elite will do more than any other political or cultural power to make society more aligned with God’s good design. Hunter wrote in the early 2010s, a simpler time when elites were left-leaning but not despised by millions of Americans. Dreher probably would agree with Hunter on the power of elites, and this may be a reason he calls for withdrawal. The elites are lost, and thus the culture is lost. The best option is to at least shield our children from the culture.
Commentary on God’s commandments
If I was offered the opportunity to be dictator what would I do? Would I, like Jesus, decline the option? My scope of effort is local and transient while Jesus’ was eternal, so I could not directly appeal to “WWJD” in this case. Indeed, if part of my call as a Christian is to encourage societal flourishing I could not decline such an opportunity. What would be the form of government and the laws which I would enact? Certainly I would not presume to know more about a flourishing society than God, so I would have to set up something very similar to a theocracy following God’s laws.
The very concept of theocracy is anathema to modern sensibilities, both Christian and non-Christian. Part of the reason for this is that “love” is often conflated with, or is considered inclusive of, “acceptance” and “tolerance”. Hence a call to love our neighbors is interpreted as an acquiescence to moral pluralism. But note the fallacy here: we have let a fallen and hedonistic culture (footnote 1) define love for us, and then have allowed them to hold us to their standard of love. Broad acceptance of immoral behaviors have negative societal impacts, as one would expect from a culture that deviates so strongly from God’s laws and good purpose.
The creation mandate is to be fruitful and multiply. Christians can and should have a strong voice against declining birth rates. It is one of the few moral areas surrounding sex and procreation that Christians can demonstrably practice what we preach. Yet we don’t hold any stigma for childless couples, late marriages, and women who prioritize their careers over motherhood. Our society also has frustrated singles, historically high levels of depression, and a sense of unfulfillment and loss. Christians have adopted the cultural milieu in this area unthinkingly. By prizing and enabling individual self-actualization we have begat physical and emotional barrenness. In a sense, “loving our neighbors” has led us to not having neighbors.
The creation mandate by itself is sufficient (though not necessary, since the Bible repeatedly describes Godly behavior on these issues) to explain orthodox Christian positions on many issues. Cohabitation and homosexuality are implicitly anti-natalist. Abortion is explicitly anti-natalist. Infertility via “sex changes” is anti-natalist. A society that is accepting of these lifestyles is one that is embracing death rather than life.
The great commission extends the creation mandate to proclaiming the gospel. This commandment directly contradicts Dreher’s approach for removing ourselves from society: it is hard to proclaim the good news when not involved in the world.
Commentary on Jesus’ example
Jesus took issue with the legalism and hypocrisy of the religious leaders of his time. He also fraternized with those were outcast by society either due to moral failings or by their socio-economic status. Both John the Baptist and Jesus led populist, anti-elite movements that shook Palestine and its leaders to its core. This runs directly contrary to Hunter’s suggestion for Christian engagement with the cultural elite. A modern equivalent may be a tent revival at the Talladega Speedway. Importantly, this fraternization did not extend to accepting or tolerating immoral behavior but changing it. The women of loose morals altered their lifestyles after their encounters with Jesus.
One point in Dreher’s favor is the argument that paying taxes into a system that supports abortion and gay marriage makes us complicit in society’s evil. I am personally very sympathetic to this argument. Every time I hear a snide commentator on NPR denigrate everything I believe in I grind my teeth. My hard work paid for those who wish my destruction. Yet Jesus tells us to render to Caesar’s what is Caesar’s; paying taxes that went to pay the very soldiers who nailed him to a cross.
Commentary on our strategic approach
There are two additional concerns I have with Hunter’s approach to Christianity’s engagement with culture. The first is simply that “faithful presence” is exposing oneself to intense temptation to conform to the world (see footnote 2). I would put Tim Keller in the very small group of Christians with a successful “faithful presence” but even he does so while fully engaged in ministry. The second is that a “faithful presence” is not the tactical win that he thinks it is. The grassroots radicalism of the Black Power movement led to the introduction of those ideas into the academy, and has now spilled back into the culture as if from the “elite”, but the “elite” only paid attention due to the initial populism.
While I disagree with Dreher’s conclusion that we should sequester ourselves on grounds that it is being disobedient to Christ’s calling, it is also transparently a strategy of failure. In the best case scenario it is a Christian “Atlas Shrugged”; where we let Sodom and Gomorrah burn while we create a new Christian society from the ashes. Far more likely we will become another Amish, with their cultural irrelevancy.
My tentative suggestion
I think that faithful, populist, grassroots movements is the most compatible with God’s commandments, with Jesus’ ministry and example, and is close to an optimal strategic approach. Christians certainly need to be engaged with the elite as Hunter suggests , but the biggest impact will be through converting already existing elites. This will happen more naturally and organically as the elite inevitably contact and confront the societal undercurrents of such a Christian movement.
1
I am aware that not all Christians believe that culture generally, and our culture specifically, is diametrically opposed to Christianity. I believe all earthly culture is tainted by the fall, just as all individuals are tainted by the fall. That said, some earthly cultures align more closely with God’s design than others. A culture that is 80% Christian will be more aligned with God’s design than one that is 10% Christian. One of my key concerns is that cultures move slowly, and we adopt new aspects to a culture assuming that it retains the same relative alignment with God’s design even as it moves farther away in actuality.
2
I also find it unavoidable to notice how apparently self-serving the “faithful presence” proscription is to an academic like Hunter.
I think a huge issue is just how far it’s drifted from anything remotely like what the very early church taught. And I think therein lies the problem. Divorced from the roots, what remains is credalism— as long as you confess the Nicean Creed then all is well. I don’t think the apostles had such a thing in mind. A vague belief about a heavenly home, a thought that simply believing the “right” things about god— this isn’t what Jesus taught. All your heart, soul and mind isn’t “just pray to Jesus and do an altar call.”
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I agree with the vast majority of this, including the recommendation for grassroots first; I don't want to say where, but I've moved to such a community myself. But a few points jumped out at me in the post; speaking from a Catholic perspective...
Abortion isn't just anti-natalist, it's taking a life that we have no right to take. Natalism or no natalism, capital punishment or no capital punishment, a Catholic must be pro-innocent-life.
There's also the presence or absence of a particular vocation: some (at least, again, in the Catholic understanding) are called to be celibate priests or religious; others to marry, and so become parents; some have no particular vocation, only the general vocation to holiness. The call to chastity is obligatory outside the married state, while there's certainly such a thing as marital chastity as well; I've found that prayers to the Holy Spirit help enormously. The birth of children or not is in God's hands, but the only requirement for sexual relations within marriage is no reproductive impediment.
But the culture of death is certainly a painfully real thing.
Jesus was also a frequent dinner guest of the Pharisees and Sadducees, that is to say the religious and cultural elite; they regarded Him as someone whose views were worth engaging with, if only to refute.
Of course, engaging in dialogue with cultural elites requires elite willingness to engage in that dialogue. The Pharisees and Sadducees cared enough about Jesus' ideas to argue with Him, even to try to trap Him with preposterous thought experiments ("now, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be?"); I don't see that will to dialogue, at least not with conservative Christians, in the elites today.
Shaking a place and its leaders to its core is a vague term, but I would think that such a shaking would come to the attention of the political and military authorities, and I think there's evidence in the Gospels, especially in St. John's Gospel, that Jesus did not come to Pilate's attention that way over the course of His ministry. When the Sanhedrin hands Jesus over to Pilate, they have to explain to him who He is; then Pilate's "interrogation of a rebel against the state" turns into "awkward but earnest theological discussion in his third language" and he breaks it off, declaring to the crowd that whatever kind of person Jesus is, He isn't the kind who needs to be crucified. (John 19:37-40) Pilate infamously loses his nerve after that, but "I find no guilt in him" isn't what one says of someone who one is already aware of and concerned about.
And it's not like Pilate had no experience with rebels. The Holy Land was a dangerous, restive place; the two "robbers" crucified with Jesus were Zealot rebels, and Wroe, following Josephus, mentions many other incidents when Pilate put down Jewish rebellions. So Pilate knew what a Jewish messianic rebel was like, and when he met Jesus, he concluded that He wasn't that kind of figure. Jesus shook the foundations of morality and personal conduct to their core, but He permitted changes to politics to come along at their own pace.
I see the point of this argument, but it's a tall order to avoid paying taxes. One can at least make charitable contributions to good causes, vote when one can, shop at good businesses, invest wisely (no iShares/Blackrock or other liberal investment firms) if one's in position to invest, and do what one can to fix the culture.
Eventually, a society ends up so far gone that one has an obligation to emigrate, or even to rebel if the other criteria for just war are met, but I think we still have a long ways to fall before then. Read Sarah Ruden's Paul Among the People (the preface is eye-rolling, but it gets better fast when she engages with the core subject), and remember that canonized saints, like St. Maurice and St. George, fought in the Roman legions nonetheless. They didn't endorse the evils of classical civilization -- the slave women forced to be prostitutes, the open pedophilia, the witches starving children to death to grind up their livers for love potions (we can only hope, with Ruden, that this one never actually happened) -- but they also didn't pull on a turban and defect to Parthia. "Far enough gone that the obligation to leave kicks in" is pretty far gone, although I think there were Christians who emigrated to the openly Christian kingdoms of Ethiopia and Armenia.
But one part of being far enough gone is that one can no longer preach the Gospel. I think there was an obligation to escape Tokugawa Japan; I think the Tokugawa Shogunate thought that too, given all the effort they put into keeping Christians from escaping. I don't rule out the possibility that this obligation might kick in in the United States at some point, but I think we're still a long way from that.
I apologize for writing such an enormous post on a small number of minor disagreements! But I hope you find these subjects interesting. I certainly agree that we need grassroots first, rather than elite dialogue, given that the elites aren't in a very talkative mood right now. I'd add that there are areas that already have a sort of Benedict Option going, and those are worth moving to; if you're Catholic, any parish with a Traditional Latin Mass is likely to host such a community. A less atomized world is a good thing in general, and I think it's a strong path forward for the Faith.
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