At the Touchstone Magazine 2023 Conference, part 3 – final thoughts

All in all, I really enjoyed myself at this conference. It was amazing to be able to step away from the “real world” for a couple of days and meet with other people who absolutely take their Christian faith seriously. It was more than a little bit uplifting, and I don’t think that there are too many places where Catholics and Protestants and Orthodox do things together like this.

In some sense, it was almost like there was the official conference, and there was the unofficial conference. The organizers did good to not overdo it on the number of presentations in a row, and to be liberal with the breaks, especially on Friday’s full day. The breaks allowed people to stretch their legs, check out Eighth Day Books’ books, and to meet and chat with people. On Friday, there were two breaks that were at least two hours; these went over meal times, but being as many people were staying at the La Quinta across the street, I’m sure there were a few who went back to rest in their rooms during those times as well.

There were several people whom I knew who attended, and it was a little weird, because some of them were from completely different phases of my life. One was even from my church in Idaho! *L* It was nice, though. Once upon a time, I probably would have stuck to talking to them mostly, but I’ve outgrown that for the most part. I had a blast chatting with people – sometimes for 20 minutes or more – who were strangers just a few minutes before. It’s funny to hear myself say that the socializing was probably my favorite part of the whole thing. I think it was genius to rent the La Quinta meeting rooms for the after-conference reception. It not only was another chance for people to get to talk to each other, but it was the place where most people had the opportunity to talk with the speakers as well, if they wanted.

The speakers were good, though I think Adam Macleod and Rod Dreher were the best of the lot. My biggest issue with the speakers is a weird one to try to articulate – it’s obvious that the audience is a very intelligent and educated lot. I *enjoy* that it’s intellectual and stretches the mind. However, even for me, it seemed like many of the speakers went too far into citing sources or getting into the nitty-gritty of other people’s arguments to really appreciate the larger picture of what they were getting at. I don’t know if that comes from the fact that some of these people were college professors and seemed to almost go into lecture mode for their speeches, but I think this really narrows who would be interested in going in future years. This was driven home to me when I was chatting with a priest friend of mine and he asked if I was following the talks. I think I said something to the effect of, “for the most part, I think so”, but he said that he felt a good amount was going over his head. I’m sure he wasn’t completely lost, as he’s a really smart man, but if he felt so, and I felt so, I bet there were more than a few people who also felt the same way. I think Rod Dreher hit the balance better than others; he’s obviously an extremely smart guy, but he’s used to talking to non-academic groups without dumbing down the material. We desperately need people who don’t necessarily talk to each other most of the time to come together in the community of Christ, but one shouldn’t feel like one needs to have a degree in theology or ancient history to feel like part of this.

To me, that the whole conference was in a chapel felt odd; I know many Christian groups have no qualms about using chapels and such for things that aren’t church services, but it’s been so long since I’ve been to an event in such a setting, I’d almost forgotten that it happens all the time.

I absolutely loved that Eighth Day Books was on site. I went there once in 2005 or 2006, and it was an amazing experience. Unfortunately, heading out to Wichita, Kansas, just for a bookstore is not something that I can necessarily justify. However, their “small” selection was probably 1000 books, and a *lot* of stuff you’re not going to see at Barnes & Noble. (No slight against B&N – I used to work at a great location – but it’s not easy to curate a bookstore – or even sections – into what Eighth Day books has done.)

In my last post, I already mentioned what my least-favorite thing about the program was, that being the panels. I don’t necessarily think that the panel thing is a bad idea, but there’s got to be somebody up there asking the questions who can make the questions more to the point and more equitable to all the people up there, otherwise there just is no point.

Again, I don’t know if any of this was spoken about on Thursday night, but since the conference was about authority, I kept thinking about the Exodus series from Jordan Peterson, specifically talking about types of authority and from whence it came. Peterson and Pageau, in particular, talk about the structure of authority, and how, in the time of Moses, there’s already this structure being set up by God where He is the ultimate authority, then there’s Moses, as prophet, then Aaron as more of a political leader, etc. There was the one speech (Douglas Farrow) that touched on the different layers of law – Eternal law, natural law, God’s delivered law, civil law – but I guess I would have liked to have heard that be spelled out more clearly, insofar as authority is an inescapable component of order. The other thing I would have liked to have heard would have been something along the lines of linking authority and responsibility.

The meals were good, and there were non-meat options for those of us not eating meat on Friday. There were a couple of donation pitches, which I understand, having been in fundraising, but the “for just $85 a month, you too can donate $1000 a year,” seemed a little odd. Yes, there are people who respond to that, but for most people, making it more incremental makes it less intimidating and less like they’re only interested in the big donations. You know, the “Donate $100 and get a t-shirt. Donate $250 to sponsor a seminarian at this conference.” That type of thing. When the only ask is really at the $1000 level, it makes me wonder if I’m at the right event; I’m certainly not in the class who can just write a check for $1000 because I want to sit at the VIP table in the mansion as opposed to the cafeteria.

Let’s see… I’ve found out that both my spelling has suffered a lot since I took a lot of notes in college. There were words like “totalitarianism” that I have to hear in my head to spell, and I was going too fast for that to happen, and then there were words that I knew I spelled wrong that I just had to leave to keep going. Back in the day, that wasn’t nearly so much a problem.

Yes, I went to the conference because of Rod Dreher, but it was a joy to actually meet and chat with him as well. I asked him to sign a copy of Live Not By Lies for friends of mine, and he was really gracious about doing that as well.

There are plans to do another conference like this next year; I think there’s a lot to be gained in connecting with the wider Christian community, but I think there ought to be some effort made to make it a little bit more open to people who want to hear the ideas and think about them without getting lost in the academic details. This year, I was very hesitant about going, and waited at least a month after finding out about the conference before I started looking into buying tickets and making arrangements to go. I think, too, that each of us who were there really ought to be doubling down on building that Christian community of like mind in his or her own little corner of the world.

This is the third part to my thoughts on the Touchstone Magazine 2023 conference; the first part can be found here: https://breathofhallelujah.com/2023/10/17/at-the-touchstone-magazine-2023-conference-part-1-day-2/ and part two can be found here: https://breathofhallelujah.com/2023/10/20/at-the-touchstone-magazine-2023-conference-part-2-day-3/

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