In Carl Trueman’s book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, he interacts heavily with the philosopher Charles Taylor’s concept of mimesis and poiesis. Poiesis comes from the Greek word for “creation” and has to do with the emergence or formation of something that did not previously exist. Mimesis, on the other hand, comes from the Greek word for “imitation” and has to do with corresponding or conforming to an original design. In mimetic worldviews, the world is created with a sacred, inviolable order and the responsibility of the individual is to discern that order and then conform to it—like a waltz that you learn and join. In poietic worldviews, the world lacks any inherent order until it is created by the individual or society. The role of the individual in that world is then to fashion and create meaning and identity—like a breakdancer showing off.1
The story of Western culture is the story of how ideas and technology have led to a transition from a mimetic to a poietic world; from discerning God’s will, to “living your truth.” The emphasis on selfhood and identity—particularly as it is found within the psychological and sexual recesses of the mind—along with the digital revolution / internet age, have played a large part in liquifying the world around us into so much malleable glop. Everything can be edited, altered, uploaded, and trimmed to showcase or indulge the carefully curated persona we wish (at this moment) to present. Trueman writes:
The point I am making is that we all live in a world in which it is increasingly easy to imagine that reality is something we can manipulate according to our own wills and desires, and not something that we necessarily need to conform ourselves to or passively accept. (p. 41)
With enough technological power and ideological influence, you can make your own meaning, be your own person, follow your heart. This is poiesis.
And in that rushing stream of ephemeral transience, a young Roman Catholic dropped a block of concrete.
The Speech
On May 11th, Harrison Butker, the 28 year old kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, delivered the commencement address to the graduating class of Benedictine College, a small Catholic liberal arts school in Kansas. You can listen to the whole speech here, or read the transcript here. The speech was an articulate summons for the graduating class of young Catholics to embrace traditional Catholic doctrine “authentically and unapologetically” as they enter the world.
And it has generated no small amount of controversy.
There were plenty of things you would expect from a conservative criticizing liberal culture: abortion, attacks on masculinity, gender-ideologies, COVID lockdowns, Pride month, etc. What was surprising was that Butker made all these comments not as a pundit for some Ben Shapiro enterprise, but as a professional athlete—someone working in an industry under the auspices of woke-capitalism. Nevertheless, Butker dug a knuckle into many of the painful knots in the back of American culture, garnering praise and hatred. As of now, Butker’s jersey sales have skyrocketed, while there is a petition with over 200,000 signatures calling for his removal from the Chiefs. People have specifically latched onto his remarks aimed at women in the audience, encouraging them to embrace their calling as wives and mothers:
For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives. I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. How many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.
I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I'm on the stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation. I'm beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.
Of everything else Butker said, his commendation of the vocation of being a homemaker is what has outraged most. It feels like Butker stepped out of an episode of Leave It to Beaver. But Butker is a conservative Catholic, speaking to a group of conservative Catholics, about what it means to live as a conservative Catholic today. He also spends a great deal of time speaking about what makes a good priest, defending the Latin Mass, and the Catholic rejection of birth-control. None of his comments should be that surprising. In fact, after he praised his wife’s role as a homemaker, there were eighteen seconds of uninterrupted applause.
So, why is there outrage? One could speak about the growing cultural divide between conservatives and liberals. Or the break-neck speed of the shift in pop-news-media values over the past couple of decades regarding gender, marriage, and sex that have left most normal Americans—those who buy their clothes at Old Navy and aren’t arguing on Twitter—behind. Or the lopsided emphasis on women being girlbosses, but virtually no acclaim given to women who devote themselves to the one thing that has kept the human race in existence, the one thing that no man can do: bear children. It is telling how little our culture values mothers when this is how someone is treated when they dare to suggest that being a mother is more important than becoming a titan of industry.
But at the heart of the issue is two very different ways of seeing the world and the role a wife and mother play in it: a mimetic world or a poietic world.
The Vocation of Wife and Mother
Thirteen times in his speech, Butker uses the word vocation. Butker is speaking from a mimetic world that is suffused with a sacred order given by God. The wider culture (the one Butker is criticizing) is thoroughly poeitic, where the individual fabricates their own sense of self. This creates two functionally different and contradictory definitions of the word vocation.
Mimetic Calling
In a mimetic world a vocation is a calling given to you by God. God has decreed what it means to be a man, a woman, a family, a church, etc. And God is the One who summons you, who calls you to use the gifts He has given to serve His kingdom. Sometimes men and women fulfill this vocation by pursuing a calling at the expense of marriage or children (1 Cor 7:6). But normally God has called men and women to pursue marriage and raise children (Gen 1:28; Ps 113:9). Precisely how a woman pursues that calling—whether she becomes a stay-at-home mom or attempts to balance work and home—requires wisdom and latitude as each woman discerns how to respond to God’s call on her life. The praiseworthy wife in Proverbs runs a business (Prov 31:18, 24) while also looking after her home (Prov 31:27). But the center of gravity for a wife and mother is to “love their husband and children…[while] working at home,” (Tit 2:4; cf. 1 Tim 5:14). And a husband is called to “nourish” his wife and provide for the needs of his family (Eph 5:28-29; 1 Tim 5:8). The “diabolical lie” Butker refers to in his speech is the rejection of this vocation.
But in the mimetic worldview, especially a Roman Catholic one, nature itself teaches the goodness of this design. Only women can bear children. This creates a unique bond between mother and child that is asymmetrical to the father. Fathers certainly must care for their children (Eph 6:4), but the irreducibly biological reality of the mother-child connection is indicative, not incidental, to the design, the sacred order given by God.
Poietic Calling
In the poietic worldview, on the other hand, vocation is not given from an external authority, but culled from an internal desire. If God exists, He (or She/Them/It) is there to encourage you in discovering yourself; to put wind in the sails of your own making so you arrive at the destination of your own choosing. The only order or design in your life is the one you create. So if you want to be a wife and mother and work at home, that is fine. But if you would rather pursue a high-power, high-status career that eats up your evenings and weekends? Then don’t get married. And if you do, don’t have children. And if you do have children, don’t sacrifice your career—if that’s what you want. And the point of this worldview is precisely that: what you want; choice; autonomy. Don’t diminish your calling, your life, your truth by sublimating it to other demands.
Carl Trueman again helpfully lays out the implications of this worldview:
If society/culture is merely a construct, and if nature possesses no intrinsic meaning or purpose, then what meaning there is must be created by human beings themselves…[This perspective] intuitively placed human beings as the sovereigns at the center of a universe to which they could give shape and significance. (p. 195-96)
The reason there has been so much heat and crackle over Butker’s comments is because they are interpreting his mimetic worldview through a poeitic lens. There is no divine order, only created order. Butker is foisting his own desires and calling—to be a macho patriarch—on his wife and on the young college graduates before him, and defending it by saying this is God’s design, the “Truth.” But there is no design given by God for women to be a homemaker. There is no “Truth.” “Truth,” Nietzsche says, “is an illusion about which it is forgotten that it is an illusion.” There is only the old regime of a bygone era that relied on this illusion to keep women dependent, diminished, and disenfranchised. So, when Butker claims that his wife’s life “really began” when she embraced her vocation as a homemaker, the poeitic world sees this as a power-play by Butker, not a humble submission to a divine design.
At least, that is what is humming under the hood of much of the invectives and vitriol flying his way, even if many of the haters wouldn’t consciously articulate it like that.
Unless It Is True
This reminds me of a comment I once heard regarding the exclusivity of Christ:
The belief that you must believe in Jesus Christ, that He is the Son of God, that His work on the Cross is the only means of salvation, that every other religion is wrong, is incredibly close-minded and arrogant.
Unless…of course, it is true.
If there is no meaning, no order, no design, then it is fair to criticize Butker as whatever version of evil you want to name him. In fact, we should criticize anyone as a monster who ever stops us from pursuing whatever end we desire.
But if there is a design? If the universe is not only sound and fury, but light and beauty; not only chaos, but order? If there is a grain of the universe that you can cut with…or against? Then it is not arrogant to submit to that design; it is arrogant to reject it. If the mimetic worldview is correct, and there is a God who has called us to live out the different vocations in life, then a clear-eyed submission and embrace of it is not evil or cruel, but life-giving. God’s Law is not given to crush us, but to keep us from being crushed.
Christians and others may disagree with Butker from within a mimetic worldview, may quibble with the premise that being a homemaker is the end-all-be-all of what a wife and mother should be. But to do so, they need to appeal to the design—they need God’s Law, as revealed in Scripture and Nature. They need to be able to demonstrate that Butker is incorrect because God has spoken differently, because Scripture actually teaches something else. But simply saying: how dare he tell other women what to do with their life, is relying on the poietic worldview, the assumptions of the world, not of the Lord.
While I am not Roman Catholic, I found Butker’s comments praising the roles of husband and wife a breath of fresh air. May God bless many more public figures to speak clearly about the goodness of God’s design for marriage and family. While it is possible to imagine a society that over-emphasizes the role of a homemaker, that is, by no faintest stretchy-stretch of the imagination, anywhere near where our own currently stands.
“Roger Scruton notes the shift in the understanding of selfhood relative to forms of dance. Commenting on earlier forms of dancing, he observes that such typically assumed live music, formal steps that needed to be learned, and a meaning or pleasure derived from the individual being part of a coordinated whole, a social group. Such dancing was thus deeply social, and the ways in which the individual expressed his or her identity was communal. He contrasts this with modern nightclub-style dancing, in which the individual simply—to use the colloquial phrase—does his or her own thing. The former, he says, involves dancing with others, the latter at others. “Dancing Properly,” in Confessions of a Heretic: Selected Essays (Widworthy, UK: Notting Hill Editions, 2016), 50-64.” - fn. 13 in Rise and Triumph, p. 46