Germany has so much energy coming from solar panels that it’s outpaced consumer demand and pushed energy prices into a steep nose dive — even going past zero into the negative, according to Business Insider, creating an Alice in Wonderland energy market in which consumers of electricity can be paid to use the extra power.

Clausewitz recommends war planners identify “the ultimate substance of enemy strength,” to find the “single center of gravity” of the enemy’s combat power. For Sauron, this is the One Ring and its place of origin, the fires of Mount Doom. Gandalf and Lord Elrond are clear-eyed: the West’s only hope is to get the Ring to Mount Doom and have it thrown into its fires. Clausewitz approves: “In war, the subjugation of the enemy is the end, and the destruction of his fighting forces the means.” About this concept, Clausewitz writes, “A center of gravity is always found where the mass is concentrated most densely. It presents the most effective target for a blow; furthermore, the heaviest blow is that struck by the center of gravity. The same holds true in war.” The Ring is the center of gravity of Sauron’s army, and, for the allies, Frodo is most able to deliver the “heaviest blow.”

The rootedness of Hobbits, twinned with Frodo’s patience and open, compassionate spirit, is “where the mass [of the West] is concentrated most densely.” Rootedness secures cohesion—a property under constant threat in war—and the moral forces so basic to combat power, according to Clausewitz. This is what leads Elves to dub Frodo “Elf-friend.” Frodo sets out on his quest for love of the Shire, but it is his gentleness towards Gollum, and his ability to grasp the higher things hinted at in Gandalf’s words about Sméagol, that gain final victory. It is a strategic advantage to the West that they know Sauron’s center of gravity, but he is ignorant of theirs. He only learns of the existence of the Shire late, once the die of the war is already cast, and he takes no time to learn its character, preoccupied as he is with finding the Ring’s whereabouts. The same ignorance undermines Saruman. He mocks Gandalf for his interest in the ways of the Shirelings, but it is Hobbits that trigger the Last March of the Ents.

In a letter, Tolkien says of Frodo:

Frodo undertook his quest out of love. … His real contract was only to do what he could, to try to find a way, and to go as far on the road as his strength of mind and body allowed. He did that. I do not myself see that the breaking of his mind and will under demonic pressure after torment was any more a moral failure than the breaking of his body would have been—say, by being strangled by Gollum, or crushed by a falling rock.

Clausewitz says all war is a series of duels and it is striking that Tolkien depicts the duel between Sauron and Frodo in terms of gravity. Long time bearer of the Ring, Gollum goes about on all fours—“Look at him! Like a nasty crawling spider on a wall. … Like some large prowling thing of insect-kind”—and Frodo is drawn to the ground, increasingly hunched over by the weight of the Ring about his neck. “In fact with every step towards the gates of Mordor Frodo felt the Ring on its chain about his neck grow more burdensome. He was now beginning to feel it as an actual weight dragging him earthwards.” Ultimately, Frodo will be prostrate on the ground, unable any longer to contend with the Dark Lord. This is when Sam, the gardener—expert in raising things from the soil—lifts Frodo up and carries him to Mount Doom.

Russell Kirk, whose The Conservative Mind remains a classic text of the modern right, once said: “The issue of environmental quality is one which transcends traditional political boundaries. It is a cause which can attract, and very sincerely, liberals, conservatives, radicals, reactionaries, freaks, and middle class straights.” While some conservatives such as Roger Scruton, author of How to Think Seriously about the Planet: The Case for Environmental Conservatism, still demonstrate the truth of Kirk’s sentiment, a squeamishness about being seen with liberals has led most to abandon the field. What’s more, many now feel it is their duty to disparage those conservatives who stayed behind.

Political tribalism split apart concerns that, as Schaeffer demonstrated, can be held consistently and passionately within a biblical worldview. Schaeffer wrote of once going out of his way to compliment the residents of a lushly landscaped hippie commune which stood on the other side of a deep valley from a treeless Christian school campus he was visiting. Those who warmly greeted him noted that he was the first to come from “across the ravine.” In the decades since, the chasm between socially conservative evangelicals and planet-conserving environmentalists has only grown wider. […]

Can we then just ignore politics if we hike the Appalachian Trail, switch to pastured eggs and grass-fed beef, wrap our water heater, and put solar panels on the roof? Not quite. Even if too much emphasis has been put on politics during recent decades, in a democratic republic Christians do not have the option of simply washing their hands of public affairs.

Of course, the relationship of Christians to politics has often been a point of friction between Anabaptists and the more politically engaged wings of Christianity. Some would argue that we serve Christ better by being “the quiet in the land” rather than by putting signs in our hands. Perhaps the tension is overstated, though. Ron Sider, for example, has spent decades as an Anabaptist activist, and has done so without contorting his beliefs to toe a party line. Operating primarily in political circles on the left, the founder of Evangelicals for Social Action has nevertheless continued to affirm the importance of things such as evangelism, unborn life, and traditional marriage. Though one may disagree with some of Sider’s political priorities and policy suggestions, his witness bespeaks a man striving first for fidelity to the kingdom, not a party.

Sider told Christianity Today in 1992 of a trip to Switzerland he initiated after being criticized by the post-Schaeffer leadership at L’Abri. Unable to crack their perception that he was a dangerous man, an exasperated Sider later lamented, “Francis Schaeffer – I’m so close to him!” At least on the protection of unborn children and the care of creation, the views of the godfather of the evangelical left and the godfather of the religious right were indeed rather close. It is time for their political progeny to get close again. Instead of arm-wrestling with itself, the body of Christ should be extending both hands to a broken culture and a broken ­creation.