A surprising number of people, including those who cherish similar cultural goals, find it convenient to dismiss the Southern Agrarians and their critique of industrialism as motivated by nostalgic fantasies about an imaginary antebellum utopia, or perhaps a naive, why-can't-we-go-back-to-simpler-times approach to economics. This kind of dismissal must surely result from a failure to actually read the Agrarians' work, because it bears no resemblance to what they stood for.
In fact, they are best seen as the Southern wing of a larger critique of modernity that began to show up in the early part of the twentieth century. Ransom, Tate, Lytle, et al., were collaborators and sometimes colleagues with men such as T. S. Eliot, Hilaire Belloc, W. H. Auden, and G. K. Chesterton. Their oustanding literary output, their attacks on industrialism and unfettered capitalism, their reflections on Christianity, myth, order, and the nature of culture, are indispensable parts of the impressive body of Christian cultural thought in the twentieth century.
To that end, here is a quote from Allan Tate reflecting on the Agrarian symposium I'll Take My Stand:
I never thought of Agrarianism as a restoration of anything in the Old South; I saw it as something to be created, as I think it will in the long run be created as the result of a profound change, not only in the South, but elsewhere, in the moral and religious outlook of western man. The South is still a region where an important phase of that change may take place; but the change will not, as I see it, be uniquely Southern; it will be greater than the South. What I had in mind twenty years ago, not too distinctly, I think I see more clearly now; that is, the possibility of the human life presupposes, with us, a moral order, the order of a unified Christendom. (Quoted in
Southern Renascence, "Allan Tate," p. 364.
If the symposium itself is any indication, Tate is not here maintaining that a new moral order would require a complete about-face from what the Old South stood for. He is only emphasizing the broader connections of the Southern tradition. He is saying that the work of the Agrarians was not an exercise in nostalgia, but a real effort at developing a new philosophy of culture out of certain principles at work in the Old South.
Now, however, that there are legitimate attempts to start building such cultures based on the achievements of the old Christendom, I think it is becoming equally important to emphasize a corollary to Tate's quote--the fact that a general revival in the West can only happen in particular instantiations. For each culture has its own nature. A wise reformer seeks to develop virtues out of the nature he has been given. Those working toward this goal in England, for instance, should ask how it can be achieved through historically English institutions and habits, and they ought to take as their model peculiarly English thinkers. And those in the South should be looking at peculiarly Southern modes of life.
Now, however, that there are legitimate attempts to start building such cultures based on the achievements of the old Christendom, I think it is becoming equally important to emphasize a corollary to Tate's quote--the fact that a general revival in the West can only happen in particular instantiations. For each culture has its own nature. A wise reformer seeks to develop virtues out of the nature he has been given. Those working toward this goal in England, for instance, should ask how it can be achieved through historically English institutions and habits, and they ought to take as their model peculiarly English thinkers. And those in the South should be looking at peculiarly Southern modes of life.
One of my largest concerns with bringing reformation to the South today is the number of pastors and thinkers in the area who are now ignorant of the powerful, native traditions that are already in place. They preach and teach a worldview they have drawn largely from books about the New England Puritans (or maybe--hopefully--if we are luckier, C.S. Lewis). Now I do think these men can bring needed insights and correctives to the Southern tradition, but I can't help thinking we make a grave mistake when we try to transplant customs peculiar to other nations into the South and "make" them grow there, contrary to all nature. They will flourish only at the expense of what the South is. We will not have achieved not a reformation but a conquest.
