The HOUSEHOLD

And the War

for the cosmos
Recovering a Christian Vision for the Family

C. R. WILEY
 CONTENTS

Foreword by Nancy Pearcey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Preface by Anthony Esolen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
PA RT O N E: P IE T Y
1 The Deluge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2 Whatever Became of Piety? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3 Aeneas, Abraham, and Pietas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
PA RT T WO: T H E WA R F OR T H E COSMOS
4 Waging Peace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
5 Lost and Found in the Cosmos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
6 House Stewards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
7 The Cosmos 2.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Epilogue: Guerrilla Piety Made Plain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
 For Marla,
For her worth is far above jewels
 FOREWORD
By Nancy Pearcey

W H E N I WA S Y O U N G E R , I WA S AT T R A C T E D
to feminism. I scoured the shelves of the local library for
feminist books, and always had one or two on my night
stand. I read all the feminist classics and thought each was
better than the one before.
My flirtation with feminism continued even after I
married and gave birth to my first child. Especially af-
ter I had a child. At the time, I was attending seminary,
and having a baby meant having to drop out of school.
It seemed that I faced the bleak possibility of never ful-
filling my deepest interests and calling. It struck me as

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decidedly unfair that men, when they become fathers, do

not have to face the threat of losing their access to educa-
tion and a vocation.
That made me wonder, Why do the paths for men and
women diverge so sharply when they have children? As I re-
searched the subject, I discovered that it was not always so.
Before the industrial revolution, when economic work was
performed within the household, both men and women
spent most of their time in the home and its outbuildings.
Fathers were able to be far more involved in childrearing than
today. And mothers were able to be involved in economically
productive work without putting the kids in day care.
Work was not the father’s job, it was the family in-
dustry. Often the living quarters were in one part of the
house, with offices, workshops, or stores in another part
of the same house. Husband and wife worked side by side,
not necessarily at identical tasks but sharing in a common
economic enterprise.
That struck me as a much more balanced arrangement.
How did we lose this vision of an integrated household?
The change started with the industrial revolution,
which took work out of the home. The household was
no longer the center of economic activity. Fathers had no
choice but to follow their work out of the household and
into factories and offices. As a result, they were simply not
present at home enough to continue the same level of in-
volvement in teaching and disciplining their children.
 PREFACE
By Anthony Esolen

M A N I S H A R D O F H E A RT A N D D O E S N O T
easily forgive. If only his mind were as tenacious as that.
But he finds it easy to forget. It is often to his immediate
advantage to do so, because it relieves him of many a heavy
duty. So goes that sad song of Shakespeare’s:

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky

That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot.*

Christopher Wiley is calling upon us to remember that

we have duties that go by the name of piety, what those
* As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7.

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duties are, why they have gone unregarded in our time,

how they are founded in our human and bodily nature,
and why they are essential for the Christian to practice. He
does so in a way that engages the reader regardless of his
education, but that is also informed by the best of ancient
pagan wisdom, and the truth of the Scriptures. And he is
cheerful about it, more cheerful by far than our oblivious-
ness deserves.
This is not a Christian self-help book. Thank God for
that. It is a call to wisdom and to action. “But my relation-
ship to Jesus is personal,” you may say, “and I don’t see what
it has to do with any other duties you might name.” To be
personal is already to be enmeshed in a web of responsibil-
ities, in the duties of gratitude and love. Aeneas carried his
crippled old father Anchises on his back, as Wiley shows
us, not just because he had a peculiar love for the old man,
but because that is what the pious son must do. If we lose
this sense of filial piety, we might as well cease calling our
God by the name Jesus teaches us to call Him: Father. And
many a self-styled Christian has done so, Christians daring
to imply that they are wiser than Jesus. At which point the
faith staggers and falls, and what is left? A social club for
old ladies with a taste for spirituality, no more significant
than that; a beauty mark on the cheek of a dowager.
But God is our Father, “from whom all fatherhood in
heaven and on earth is named,” as Saint Paul says. God is the
author of nature, and of our human nature, fallen though it
 PREFACE xix

may be through the sin of Adam. It makes no sense to think

that we could ever understand the fatherhood of God with-
out human fatherhood as its derivative and its image. Just as
we cease to think of God as Creator, losing a strong sense of
the ordered goodness of creation the more we ensconce our-
selves in plastic and in the contra-natural habits of the sexual
revolution, so the Father fades from our vision as patriarchy
among us fades. The piety that God demands of us when
He says, “Honour thy father and thy mother” (Exod. 20:12,
kjv) is at one with the piety of the first commandment of
all: “I am the Lord thy God . . . thou shalt have no other
gods before me” (Exod. 20:2–3, kjv).
Piety tells us the truth about ourselves, too, in ways
that contemporary man cannot easily recognize. “Honour
thy father and mother,” says Saint Paul, is “the first com-
mandment with promise; that it may be well with thee,
and thou mayest live long on the earth” (Eph. 6:2–3, kjv).
That is fitting. Piety acknowledges the promise, in both di-
rections of time. I am here and I am who I am because my
father and mother, and their parents before them, made
promises to one another, promises which they kept for one
another and for their children. And I in turn have made
the same promise to my wife, and that promise is made
manifest in our own children and the care we have given
to them. Man is not a flea in time. He dwells in a histo-
ry, even that which goes back to Adam and extends to the
end of time itself and its consummation in the heavenly
xx T H E H O U S E H O L D A N D T H E WA R F O R T H E C O S M O S

Jerusalem. Man dwells also in a place, a nation, and owes a

debt of gratitude to all who came before him to give him
what he, as an individual, can never repay. We are born the
receivers of gifts: we are in debt from the start. Every breath
we take is lent to us, and gratitude, pious gratitude, is the
creature’s share in the free abundance of the Creator.
What I’ve said here is just a part of what Christopher
Wiley has said in this book, with all the verve of his man-
ly spirit and the wealth of his experience as a husband, a
father, a careful thinker about our social troubles, and a
faithful Christian pastor. Read it, and remember that the
one economy we are all called to join, the truest and most
glorious economy, is that which cheers the pious psalmist’s
heart: “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the
house of the Lord!’” (Ps. 122:1).
PA R T O N E

PIETY
 1

THE DELUGE

T H E S E E D O F T H I S B O O K WA S A T A L K
that I delivered in 2018 at the annual conference spon-
sored by Touchstone Magazine on the campus of Trinity
University in Deerfield, Illinois. The conference included
many excellent speakers, among whom were Nancy Pearcey
and Anthony Esolen. I was honored to be included.
It was Nancy who encouraged me to begin this book by
repeating some of the remarks I made when I introduced
my talk. Those remarks were intended to help my listeners
understand the reason for my interest in the things I write
about, and on that day, spoke about.
My interest in households arises from the fact that I nev-
er really lived in one until I built one together with my wife.

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My earliest memories of home are full of tension and sad-

ness. My parents had folded in on themselves; this was the
1960s, when turning inward was encouraged. Things went
from bad to worse for the family, and we were downwardly
mobile. We moved from rented house to rented apartment,
to smaller apartment. Piecing things together, I believe this
was due to my father’s interest in spirituality. He was a seek-
er, like the great herd at the time. Everyone was seeking, but
few were finding. To our impoverishment my father finally
found himself in the Church of Scientology.
In case you have not heard, it is very expensive to be a
Scientologist. Soon my parents were broke, and their mar-
riage broke soon after that. Then my father disappeared,
and in her own way, my mother did too. By the time I
was eleven years old I was pretty much on my own. I lived
in a housing project and I had a short stint in foster care.
My teenage years were bleak. My only consolations were
drawing—I dreamed of becoming a comic-book artist—
and my best friend. My friend was a pastor’s son. It was
through his friendship that I eventually became a friend
and follower of Christ.
When it was time for me to become a husband and
eventually a father, I thought I should read up on those
subjects, seeing as I had had little in the way of day-to-day
experience witnessing a man performing those roles. Well,
I am sorry to say that I didn’t find much worth reading in
 THE DELUGE 5

the Christian bookstores that I visited. Most of the stuff

was pop-psychology with a Jesus gloss.
I wanted to get down to the roots of things. That’s how
I came to read people like Allan C. Carlson, Christopher
Lasch, and Robert Nisbet. But even more helpful have
been Aristotle, Xenophon, and Virgil, as you will soon see.
Of course, above them all stands the Bible. Once you
know what a household looks like you can see that the
Bible is a kind of handbook for households.

THE LEVEE IS BROKEN

I’m not the only person in the world to come from a bro-
ken home. The experience is so common these days you
could almost say that it is the norm. What started as a crack
in the levee of social standards has become a wide breech,
and a torrent of chaos has poured through. Our civiliza-
tion is washing away. Although my parents were too old to
be hippies in the 60s, they felt the early effects of the turn
away from norms that had seemed so solid right into the
1950s. That solidity was an illusion. We know that now.
The foundation of those norms was already deeply com-
promised by the time I was born.
In the part of Connecticut where I live today we liter-
ally have crumbling foundations everywhere. The reason
is a mineral that went undetected in a concrete mix from
a local quarry. For years this quarry churned out the bad
mix and no one knew—not even the owners of the quarry.
6 T H E H O U S E H O L D A N D T H E WA R F O R T H E C O S M O S

In some cases million-dollar homes that look fine from the

street stand condemned.
Metaphorically, something similar has occurred in our
culture. Western civilization still has curb appeal. Things
like economic growth, advances in medicine, and an em-
phasis on human rights seem to indicate that things are in
good shape. But something has been added to the mix that
serves as the intellectual and spiritual basis for our society.
The institutions at the foundation of our way of life don’t
seem solid any longer. And the most important of these
institutions is the household.
Paradoxically, many of the other institutions in our
society that once relied upon the household have turned
against it. Everything from multi-national corporations to
public schools now dismiss traditional household norms
as retrograde and even oppressive. And I am sorry to say
that even evangelical Christianity increasingly looks like a
fair-weather friend.
Just in case you’re tempted to write this off as alarmist,
consider the following:

1. Marriage has been reduced to a lifestyle choice.

I can remember when politicians called traditional marriage
the “foundation of our society.” Hardly anyone calls it that
today. Instead marriage is a matter of taste. And apparently
fewer people have a taste for it these days, if the numbers
can be trusted. Across the world the average age of a person
 THE DELUGE 7

getting married continues to go up even as the percentage

of people getting married goes down. Mark Regnerus, a
sociologist at the University of Texas, documents some star-
tling data. Consider this: in 1980 91% of Czech women were
married by the time they were 30 years old. Today it is 26%.
And it is the same everywhere. In 1980 81% of Australian
women were married by 30 years of age, in Finland, 66% of
women, in Italy, 76% of women, and in the Netherlands,
81% of women. Today the numbers are between 20% and
30% in each of those countries.

People are also experimenting with marriage. There’s so-

called “gay marriage”—but that’s almost passé. There’s
polyamorous marriage, and open marriage, and marriage to
vegetation (I heard of a woman that married a tree), and
marriage to inanimate objects (I heard of another woman
that married a bridge). I recently read of a woman who
actually married herself. I could go on, but that would be
tedious.

Many churches are eager to bless all of this. Since God loves
us unconditionally, He (or She, once you start thinking this
way) blesses everything. And even ostensibly conservative
churches focus more on emotional satisfaction than on the
functions that marriage once performed. If you don’t know
what I mean, pick up just about any book on marriage from
an evangelical press.
 2

WHATEVER BECAME OF PIETY?

W H Y D O N ’ T P E O P L E TA L K A B O U T P I E T Y
these days? In the circles where the word was once common
currency it is kept locked up, perhaps waiting for the day it
will be valued again, although I doubt that this is the intent.
I suspect it has more to do with embarrassment, or perhaps
puzzlement, like when you’ve come across some odd tool in
your grandfather’s garage and you have no idea what it is for.
I have a friend that collects old tools, manual drills and
such. Some of them are quite exotic. When I’m at his place
and I see them on the wall I make conversation by specu-
lating on their former uses. To imagine what they were for,
you have to enter a lost world, and sometimes my guesses

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make my friend smile. Other times he’s just as puzzled by

the tools as I am.
Piety is like that. For some people anything that seems
old-fashioned is dismissed with an indifferent shrug. The
more literate may sense its religious connotations. But just
what it was good for is anyone’s guess.
Providentially, as I was working on this chapter, I was
sitting in the lobby of an automotive repair shop waiting
for my Jeep to finish its emissions inspection. I was writing
in a notebook and next to me sat an elderly woman. “What
are you writing?” she asked. I looked up and forced a smile.
“A book,” I said, thinking that would be enough to allow
me to go back to my writing. It wasn’t. “Oh, about what?”
she said, moving to the edge of her seat. “It’s about piety,”
I replied, again thinking that this would be the end of it. If
the subject of religion can’t end a conversation, what can?
I was wrong again. “What’s piety?” she asked.
Think about this for a second. Here was a woman who
looked to be in her seventies and she didn’t know what piety is.
“It is something related to religion,” I told her. At last,
the conversation ended. Then the guy behind the desk said
my Jeep was ready.
I am old enough to remember when preachers pro-
moted piety—particularly those whose vocabulary had
been formed by reading 18th century evangelists like John
Wesley or George Whitfield. In the old days people be-
lieved in the meanings of words, and they stuck with them.
 W H AT E V E R B E C A M E O F P I E T Y ? 15

And if a person didn’t understand a word, you defined it

for them. And if he didn’t like its meaning, you’d try to
help him see the value of the word anyway. Imagine that.
I can recall when people changed their minds about
the word piety. Younger men began to prefer younger
sounding terms. The word devotions was popular. Later,
more sophisticated people preferred the term spiritual
disciplines. Publishers really ran with that for a while. But
folksy youth pastor types liked Quiet Time, QT for short.
There has been something of a downgrade here, even
with spiritual disciplines. Can you detect it? Words re-
tain an aftertaste, even when the old meanings are lost.
Originally, piety said something like a mode of life. QT is
for your to-do list.
This reveals something about the state of religion in
our time. Now, religion is another word that has fallen out
of favor. The Latin root, religio, means to bind. Is it any
wonder that the apostles to popular culture now insist that
“Christianity is not a religion; it is a relationship”? You
may have heard that slogan somewhere. But is it so? Does
that do religion justice? The reason for bringing this up is
what has happened to piety has also happened to religion.
Both have been downgraded.
As wonderful as a personal relationship with Jesus is,
the people that show the most enthusiasm for it do not
give much thought to all the things that have to be in place
in order for it to be possible. Take the Bible, for instance,
16 T H E H O U S E H O L D A N D T H E WA R F O R T H E C O S M O S

or the sacraments, or the creeds, or even prayer. All of these

things must be in place before you can even imagine hav-
ing a personal relationship with Jesus. Without archivists,
and translators, and publishers, we wouldn’t have Bibles
that tell us about Jesus. Then there are Church councils
that gave us the creeds which summarize what the Bible
says about Jesus and His divine nature. And this is just a
start. Even beyond those things, just consider all the ways
that the Christian religion has influenced Western civiliza-
tion for the good. Think about how the arts, the sciences,
and our laws, customs, and holidays wouldn’t even exist
in their current forms without the Christian religion. No,
you cannot reduce Christianity to a relationship; it is bigger
than that. Religion really is a better word than relationship
for describing what it is.
And I believe that the same goes for piety.

EVERY WORD MATTERS

If you ask someone to define the word synonym the defini-
tion you get will probably be something like, “a word that
can substitute for another word.” But there really aren’t
any true synonyms in this sense. Each word has its own
history, and subtle things about it that distinguish it from
similar words. Relationship doesn’t really substitute for re-
ligion, and devotions won’t do as a substitute for piety. The
drive to find substitutes for old-fashioned words uninten-
tionally eliminates meanings. We can see how it works it in
 W H AT E V E R B E C A M E O F P I E T Y ? 17

the book 1984. There we have a fellow named Syme speak-

ing to another fellow named Winston about the glories of
“Newspeak” and their labors together at the Ministry of
Truth:

It’s a beautiful thing, the Destruction of words. Of course

the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are
hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t only
the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what
justification is there for a word, which is simply the opposite
of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself.
Take “good,” for instance. If you have a word like “good,”
what need is there for a word like “bad”? “Ungood” will
do just as well—better, because it’s an exact opposite, which
the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version
of “good,” what sense is there in having a whole string of
vague useless words like “excellent” and “splendid” and
all the rest of them? “Plusgood” covers the meaning or
“doubleplusgood” if you want something stronger still. Of
course we use those forms already, but in the final version
of Newspeak there’ll be nothing else. In the end the whole
notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six
words—in reality, only one word. Don’t you see the beauty
of that, Winston? It was B.B.’s idea originally, of course,” he
added as an afterthought.*

* George Orwell, 1984 (1949; New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,

2017), 49.