Dr. Steele, an African-American, is himself a veteran participant in and commentator on the Civil Rights years of the 1960's and 1970's. In "White Guilt" he tells his own heart-rending story of development into what he calls, somewhat bitterly, a black conservative. He describes the loneliness and the irony of that identity.

Here is my own paraphrase of Steele's argument throughout his writings. White America basically "got" the message of racism in the 1960's. The age of White Supremacy, defined loosely as making excuses for segregation and the continued victimization of blacks, rendered America's claim as "the land of the free" false and incoherent, the very point brought to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by Dr. Martin Luther King. American society needed to redeem itself on many levels.

Here is the betrayal which Dr. Steele chronicles. What began as the promise of equality--understood historically as an equality of opportunity--shifted to equality of outcomes. Since that was unworkable apart from a blanket redistribution of goods by a totalitarian government, America settled for a moral and political spoils system. Whites learned to barter absolution for the guilt of racism through a selective preferential treatment of blacks, particularly in the public sector (e.g., politics and education).

The spoils system is what accounts for the indigenous character of American political liberalism in the closing decades of the 20th century and in the early years of the 21st. To paint in broad strokes, politics in America is mainly about former elites (i.e., the white majority) earning their absolution and maintaining their elite position through the ritual repetition of redemptive moments.

Note the shift in beneficiaries of redemption under the new system. The ritualizing of redemptive moments indicates that the focus of political action has shifted from those in need of political and material redemption to those in need of social and spiritual absolution.

Hence the relentless contrivance of new "liberations" beginning in the late 1960's: blacks, women, gays, animals, the environment, and so on. Not that these are invalid concerns. The tragedy and betrayal observed by Steele and others is that the issues have not been remedied materially but only symbolically and rhetorically. For the elites touting the cause of the oppressed (since they are unaffected by the latter's circumstances), rhetoric and symbolism are sufficient. This explains why no one is held accountable for results but only for good intentions. Liberal policies are not endorsed because of any proven track record but because of their utility as a display of social righteousness.

Now recall the past forty years of liturgical renewal in the Episcopal Church. Changes have been wrought in every area of that Church's life, always in the name of justice and always by bureaucratic decree. A new ritual of atonement had been revealed, one that could be manipulated at will by a process that would be become increasingly refined. A need for social transformation was assessed in relation to prior experience filtered through an evil eye of suspicion. Evidence for injustice was produced by emotionally charged anecdotal evidence.

For example, in the early 1970's it became a matter of great urgency for women to be ordained as priests. What was at stake? Primarily the credibility of the Episcopal Church as a dispenser of social redemption and righteousness, and not so much as a matter of principle but as a matter of moment. The debate was decided by the merits of a contrived urgency with an eye to the response anticipated by the public. A defining moment was in danger of passing. Having broken a new barrier Episcopalians could be proud that their church was more righteous than former generations of those who were not equipped with the wisdom made manifest in the 1960's.

The unstated motto of the liberal denominations since then has been "More righteous than Jesus, and proud of it." The church had been transformed from a hospital for personal transformation into a laboratory for social experimentation. One shibboleth after another would have to be sacrificed according to a familiar pattern--sitings of oppression followed by an urgent mandate, so urgent that it must overrule normal due process, such as the illegal ordinations in Philadelphia in 1974. From then on those who subverted church law would see themselves as standing in the direct moral lineage of the biblical prophets.

The liturgy of the church became an easy target in this mania of self-absolution. A precious heritage was quickly scuttled for a pottage of self-absorbed relevance. The fact that the new liturgies constituted a doctrinal Trojan Horse was no coincidence but is beside the present point. The point is this: the Me Generation had redefined the function of Christian worship as the absolution of the social conscience that was awakened in the 1960's.

Hence the need to update services almost by the hour. No sooner is one collection approved when another emergency is declared based upon the pastoral needs of another victim. Another trial use is commissioned, and an already tired history repeats itself.

This is the Nanny Church. It would be one thing if the new rites healed the social wounds that ran so deep rather than treating them "carelessly" in the interests of a false dealing priestly class (Jer. 6:13-14). In the case of social redemption, it is criminal that those most in need are set apart for a merely symbolic role in their masters' ritual of absolution.

---The Rev. Canon J. Gary L'Hommedieu is Canon for Pastoral Care at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida, and a regular columnist for VirtueOnline.