The human experience of combat

I have never served in the military and, consequently, have no personal visceral knowledge of the experience of, or cost to, those who have. My knowledge of war comes entirely from books, movies, and documentaries. I just came across, at Five Books, a military historian's recommendations of books he believes convey the experience of combat. I have read three of them, portions of a fourth, and have seen films and documentaries based on all but one. My sense is that the ones I've read are pretty accurate. One that I lent to a Korean War veteran, came back with lots of notations very much agreeing with its author. The historian making these choices is Iain MacGregor, author of Battle: The Moments that Transformed Warfare from Ancient Greece to Ukraine. He writes about his book:

What I discovered was, the more research I did—whether it was ancient history, medieval, Tudor, Napoleonic, World War Two—that while the tactics and technology have changed radically, the human dimension is always the same. It’s about human beings.

Whether it’s the commanders, or the line officers on the ground, or the soldiers, they’ve all got the same frailties you and I have got. It doesn’t matter whether they’re a Greek hoplite, a Tudor English sailor, or a Ukrainian soldier on the front line today, you’re still scared. It’s about how you react under pressure. If you’re a commander, it’s about the timing, about how you deal with sudden events.

That hasn’t changed ever, and writing this book over this whole timeline really confirmed that to me.

One of the books he recommends, The Face of Battle (1976), is one I've read, and is the book my Korean War veteran friend approved. I've posted about it before. From MacGregor's comments:

John Keegan’s The Face of Battle is arguably the most influential work of military history written in the last fifty years. It radically altered the next generation of published historians coming through.

Before Keegan—and I’ve read a lot of books that came out before—it was always about the great people, generally men of military history. You’re looking at warfare or the battle itself from the top down. You learn about the great strategist who might have won or lost the battle, but not what life was like on the front line for the ordinary person doing the fighting. That’s what Keegan brings to it. ....

It gives you an insider’s idea and appreciation of what they were facing. How ferocious was the fighting? Did the tactics work? Did they fail? Was the weather that big of a factor? Was the longbow that big a factor? He brings it to the page in the way that someone like Bernard Cornwell would do in fiction. He really brings it alive, and you want to find out what’s happened to this person he’s writing about, or that unit. That’s what I’ve always found captivating.

Another I've read is The Price of Glory (1962) by Alistair Horne. It's about the First World War battle of Verdun.

The Battle of Verdun was a ten-month-long ordeal in which France and Germany sacrificed hundreds of thousands of men for a few miles of devastated ground. It’s why the Battle of the Somme was necessary to the north, as we, the British, were trying to relieve the pressure on Verdun, which lay to the southeast of our own trenchlines. ....

Far from the fighting in Belgium, the sector had been relatively quiet, which was precisely why the Germans chose it. Their aim was not simply to seize ground, but to destroy France’s will to continue the war. As one German commander put it, they would ‘bleed France white’.

The battle opened on 21 February 1916 with one of the heaviest bombardments the world had yet seen. Around a million shells crashed onto French positions on the first day alone. For weeks the Germans seemed unstoppable. Fort after fort came under attack, French units were hurled into the line and shattered by artillery fire, and Verdun became an industrialised slaughterhouse on a scale scarcely imaginable. By the spring of 1916, it appeared possible that the Germans might break through altogether.

Yet Verdun produced the opposite result from the one Berlin expected. Instead of crushing French morale, it hardened it. ....

The other recommendations include a novel I know well, The Killer Angels (1974) by Michael Shaara, about Gettysburg, With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge, a Marine veteran of the Pacific in World War II, and a book that is unfamiliar to me: A Soldier’s Song (1992) by Ken Lukowiak, a veteran of the Falklands War.

It seems a pretty good reading list. I am curious what combat veterans would think of them.

"The best books on Battles," Five Books, Sept 27, 2026.

Savoring the real beauties

Is reading a book more than once a waste of time? Not if it was worth reading the first time. From C.S. Lewis' essay "On Stories" (1947):

It is usual to speak in a playfully apologetic tone about one's adult enjoyment of what are called 'children's books'. I think the convention a silly one. No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty--except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all. A mature palate will probably not much care for crême de menthe: but it ought still to enjoy bread and butter and honey. ....

An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only. There is hope for a man who has never read Malory or Boswell or Tristram Shandy or Shakespeare's Sonnets: but what can you do with a man who says he 'has read' them, meaning he has read them once, and thinks that this settles the matter? Yet I think the test has a special application to the matter in hand. For excitement....is just what must disappear from a second reading. You cannot, except at the first reading, be really curious about what happened. If you find that the reader of popular romance—however uneducated a reader, however bad the romances—goes back to his old favourites again and again, then you have pretty good evidence that they are to him a sort of poetry. ....

Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties. Till then, it is like wasting great wine on a ravenous natural thirst which merely wants cold wetness. The children understand this well when they ask for the same story over and over again, and in the same words. They want to have again the 'surprise' of discovering that what seemed Little-Red-Riding-Hood's grandmother is really the wolf. It is better when you know it is coming: free from the shock of actual surprise you can attend better to the intrinsic surprisingness of the peripeteia ["a sudden or unexpected reversal of circumstances or situation especially in a literary work" Merriam-Webster]. ....

C.S. Lewis, "On Stories," Of Other Worlds, 1968.

“Every country gets the government that it deserves”

Many non-MAGA conservatives and Christians voted for Trump because he seemed the lesser of evils and promised to do things that they valued. But as his tenure approaches its end, a reassessment of the damage he has done is underway. Conservatives, and especially conservatives who are Christian, once valued good character when deciding who to support. R.R. Reno, the editor of First Things, someone I have thought was inclined to rationalize Trump's behavior:

The Trump family’s exploitation of every opportunity to enrich themselves demoralizes me, as I’m sure it does many readers. Don Jr. and Eric Trump are the Uday and Qusay Hussein of our unhappy times, harvesting great sums from investors who seem interested in influencing the White House. (Kevin Williamson made this observation back in 2016.) Earlier this year, it was revealed that powerful figures in Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates invested $500 million in World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture. This is by no means the only infusion of large sums into Uday and Qusay’s enterprises. I find myself wondering if America’s Middle East foreign policy is for sale.

More than two centuries ago, the wry political thinker Joseph de Maistre quipped, “Every country gets the government that it deserves.” This dictum should inform our assessments of Donald Trump’s now decade-long dominance of American public life. We must consider his regular recourse to fabricated facts and his family’s misuse of public office along with actions we’ve supported in these pages, such as his judicial appointments, measures to encourage re-industrialization, and anti-DEI executive orders. The good and bad in this administration are difficult to untangle.

Perhaps all administrations are corrupt to some degree. But the present situation is unique in its blatant character....

“Everyone is doing it” is never a legitimate excuse for prevarication and misuse of office. And furthermore, everyone is not trading on his power and position to enrich himself. My point is that the rot runs deep. Repair will require leaders who value honor over wealth. (more)

R.R. Reno, "The Stench of Corruption," First Things, Sept. 25, 2026.

Counterfeit Aslan

Hardy surprised to read "...that members of [C.S. Lewis'] family are 'very upset' by Meryl Streep's casting as Aslan in Netflix's upcoming Narnia adaptation and are attempting to 'regain control' of the company that manages the literary and media rights to Lewis' works." Greta Gerwig was probably not the best choice to direct an adaptation of The Magician's Nephew:

Gerwig, who grew up as a Unitarian Universalist, has said she envisions her adaptation of The Magician's Nephew to be "a rock opera," claiming, "David Bowie saved my life. Paul McCartney saved my life. David Gilmour saved my life. Pete Townshend saved my life. Jimmy Page, Robert Plant. ... Narnia is literally a world made out of music. It is a world sung to life by Aslan."

In a 2018 interview, Gerwig said she feels "uncomfortable around 'Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior stuff,' I find that creepy, but I go to church every Sunday." She claimed she would attend multiple services across different denominations on the same day, but noted she appreciates prayers to the Virgin Mary because "it feels like this 'God the Father' thing is a bit alienating for me."

Liel Leibovitz, at The Free Press, explains "Why You Should Care That Aslan Is a Woman":

To understand why, it helps to first know Aslan.

Read the series’ first novel, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and you’ll learn the following about everyone’s favorite leader of the pride: Sacrificing himself to save the sinful boy Edmund, he allows himself to be bound to a stone table and slain. Then—no spoiler, I hope, for a book published 76 years ago—he comes back from the dead because of the deeper magic he possesses, which he inherited from his father, Narnia’s supreme spiritual being, who is known only as Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who Aslan is meant to emulate. Any fifth grader could point toward Jesus—which is precisely what a class full of actual fifth graders argued in a letter to Lewis in 1954. The author, however, wrote back right away, telling the children they had it dead wrong.

“I did not say to myself ‘Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia,’ ” Lewis wrote from his office in Oxford Magdalen College. “I said ‘Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as He became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.’ If you think about it, you will see that it is quite a different thing.”

.... All the author did was project Christ into a different world, where, he told another correspondent, “He would really have been a physical object...as He was in Palestine and His death on the Stone Table would have been a physical event no less than His death on Calvary.” And if little boys and girls walked away from the books loving Aslan, then the faithful author would’ve achieved his goal....

Lewis, in fact, was so eager for his readers to understand this point that he had Aslan deliver it forcefully and clearly in the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the fifth novel in the Narnia series. In one climactic moment, Aslan tells the children that he exists in their world, too. “But there,” he adds, “I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.” ....

I may yet, of course, be wrong. Gerwig’s Magician’s Nephew may reveal itself to be a faithful and respectful adaptation. But all signs point to the contrary. ....

[Gerwig]’s not merely telling us that the Ghostbusters now ought to be women because #girlpower. She’s taking the most beloved, prominent, and resonant bit of Christian storytelling created in the past 100 years and seemingly turning it into something not only radically different but anathema to the original. (more)

The illustration is Pauline Baynes' from The Last Battle, of the ape "Shift" with the donkey "Puzzle," who is wearing a lion suit: a "counterfeit Aslan"

Liel Leibovitz, "Why You Should Care That Aslan Is a Woman," The Free Press, Sept. 25, 2026.

Friends and rivals

When Tolkien's memorial is placed in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey next year, it will be near that of C.S. Lewis. "[H]e and Lewis will be, in death, within pipe-lighting distance of each other – at least in spirit." Philip Womack in The Telegraph:

.... Lewis and Tolkien bore many similarities: Lewis was also conservative and deeply Christian.

.... Both fought, and were scarred by, the First World War. They also both enjoyed smoking a good pipe.

Their rivalry took many forms, as they sized each other up from opposing sides of a bitterly fought war in the Oxford English department. Tolkien sprang from the unfashionable school of philology, and thought anything after Chaucer was too miminy-piminy to be the proper subject of a degree. This rankled with Lewis, whose works of literary criticism on Renaissance writings still stand strong today.

Tolkien saw his work as an act of “sub-creation”, inspired directly by God. His Middle Earth was built up from language itself, extrapolated into a unified whole. Its purpose was to resonate as mythic history for the English, filled with Anglo-Saxon echoes. Surprisingly, Middle Earth’s spiritual aspect is pre-Christian: no Christ figure walks alongside the hobbits, breathing strength into their steps.

Lewis, on the other hand, adopted a hodge-podge approach which, on the whole, Tolkien disliked. How, for example, can Father Christmas exist in Lewis’ Narnia, a mythical world of talking animals, when Christ did not visit it? Aslan the lion is the Narnian version of the Son of God, with different functions to Jesus (he appears, for example, at the Creation of the World.)

There’s also the mixed bag of fauns, hags, dryads and so forth, drawn from numerous sources. Even Bacchus pops up. ....

Their most powerful link, though, was their shared faith, manifested in particular in the idea of joy. In his writings, Tolkien was interested in what he termed “eucatastrophe”, or a “sudden joyous turn”, demonstrating the existence of God’s Providence. Lewis explored a similar idea of “joy” in his memoir, Surprised by Joy. Whenever Aslan appears in Narnia, characters become overwhelmed with the emotion. .... (more)

Philip Womack, "Tolkien and CS Lewis were the best of frenemies," The Telegraph, Sept. 24, 2026.

Willy Wonka in Narnia

Those of us who value The Narnia Chronicles have already read enough to be dubious about Netflix's upcoming 2027 version of The Magician's Nephew. It is entirely unnecessary to be a Christian believer to entertain that doubt. The production appears to have made many bad decisions, quite apart from messing with Aslan's gender. From The Telegraph, by someone obviously familiar with the books:

Uncle Andrew and Jadis

As anyone who has read the book will know, the Edwardian setting is crucial to its tone – self-consciously setting it before the First World War at a time England is still innocent and the horrors of the Somme have yet to rise out of some great hellish pit.

That prelapsarian quality is key to the story, which is essentially the origin tale of Professor Digory Kirke, the eccentric owner of the wardrobe which grants access to Narnia in later books. The Magician’s Nephew is in its essence a book set Before The Fall. At the start of the story, the wicked Jadis is trapped in suspended animation in a post-apocalyptic alternative dimension, Narnia has yet to be created by Aslan and Britain is looking forward to a century of peace. But then two children – Digory and his friend Polly – muddle around and everything changes utterly. Jadis is unleashed, evil is free and tranquility is shattered – literally so, when the future ruler of Narnia runs amok in London in scenes that have the quality of a steampunk Grand Theft Auto.

That is in contrast to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which unfolds against the background of the Blitz and where readers can infer that the children are quietly traumatised by the horror of war – one reason why they leap so readily into the great unknown of the wardrobe. But if you shunt The Magician’s Nephew forward to the post-war austerity of the 1950s, then that dynamic is changed utterly: the calm-before-the-storm aspect of the Edwardian period is missing.

If Jadis is the monster in this story, then the part of pathetic villain is played by Digory’s eccentric Uncle Andrew, a self-involved boffin who tricks Polly into disappearing into another dimension by having her touch a magic ring – then blackmails Digory into setting off to rescue her. The “Magician” in The Magician’s Nephew, as written by Lewis, has few redeeming features. Yet in Gerwig’s film he’s played by the charming Daniel Craig; judging by new images, he will be a lovable boffin, a sort of Willy Wonka of the Lewis-verse. .... (more)

Ed Power, "Netflix’s $280m ‘rock opera’ Narnia film is even madder than it sounds," The Telegraph, Sept. 20, 2026.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away...Blessed be the name of the Lord

Patrick Kurp quoted a portion of a Samuel Johnson essay on his blog this morning. He linked to it, and I followed the link. Johnson himself suffered from many infirmities, both physical and vexatious:

So large a part of human life passes in a state contrary to our natural desires, that one of the principal topicks of moral instruction is the art of bearing calamities. And such is the certainty of evil, that it is the duty of every man to furnish his mind with those principles that may enable him to act under it with decency and propriety. ....

That life has many miseries, and that those miseries are, sometimes at least, equal to all the powers of fortitude, is now universally confessed; and therefore it is useful to consider not only how we may escape them, but by what means those which either the accidents of affairs, or the infirmities of nature, must bring upon us, may be mitigated and lightened, and how we may make those hours less wretched, which the condition of our present existence will not allow to be very happy. ....

The great remedy which heaven has put in our hands is patience, by which, though we cannot lessen the torments of the body, we can in a great measure preserve the peace of the mind, and shall suffer only the natural and genuine force of an evil, without heightening its acrimony, or prolonging its effects. ....

In those evils which are allotted to us by Providence, such as deformity, privation of any of the senses, or old age, it is always to be remembered, that impatience can have no present effect, but to deprive us of the consolations which our condition admits....

The chief security against the fruitless anguish of impatience, must arise from frequent reflection on the wisdom and goodness of the God of nature, in whose hands are riches and poverty, honour and disgrace, pleasure and pain, and life and death. A settled conviction of the tendency of every thing to our good, and of the possibility of turning miseries into happiness, by receiving them rightly, will incline us to bless the name of the Lord, whether he gives or takes away. (more)

Samuel Johnson, "No. 32. The vanity of stoicism. The necessity of patience," The Rambler, July, 1750.

Aslan

I've been reading and enjoying The Narnia Chronicles for a very long time. They are great children's books and, like all good children's literature, are enjoyed by adults. C.S. Lewis, who authored the Narnia books, once wrote: “I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story.” There is, of course, Christian allegory in the books, but I once suggested that to a class of 9^th graders, many of whom had grown up with the books, and was greeted with shocked denial. The books are enjoyed by kids whether or not the underlying Christian sensibility is recognized.

I have enjoyed some television and film adaptations of these books. I had been looking forward to the upcoming Netflix adaptations, but am increasingly skeptical. First, a minor objection is that they have chosen the wrong book to adapt first. The first story should be from the first book published, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. That is because reading (or watching) The Magician's Nephew first destroys the magic of LWW by, among other revelations, telling the reader who Aslan is. Nevertheless...

A more serious objection for me arose this week when I learned that Meryl Streep will voice Aslan. Aslan is male. He has a mane. Female lions do not, and I am very doubtful that the film will portray a lioness. Aslan has a mane:

"Are you ill, dear Aslan ?" asked Susan.

"No," said Aslan. "I am sad and lonely. Lay your hands on my mane so that I can feel you are there and let us walk like that." ....

“Stop!” said the Witch. “Let him first be shaved.”

Another roar of mean laughter went up from her followers as an ogre with a pair of shears came forward and squatted down by Aslan’s head. Snip-snip-snip went the shears and masses of curling gold began to fall to the ground. Then the ogre stood back and the children, watching from their hiding-place, could see the face of Aslan looking all small and different without its mane. The enemies also saw the difference. ....

“We have a long journey to go. You must ride on me.”

And he crouched down, and the children climbed onto his warm, golden back, and Susan sat first holding on tightly to his mane, and Lucy sat behind holding on tightly to Susan. And with a great heave he rose underneath them and then shot off, faster than any horse could go, downhill and into the thick of the forest. .... (from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, emphasis added)

No doubt I will watch it when it comes, but I am increasingly apprehensive.

The picture is by Pauline Baynes, Narnia's original illustrator.

"Mercy" killing

Several countries, among them Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, and now also some of the more "progressive" American states, have adopted "medically assisted suicide." But not, so far, Great Britain. "How Britain Escaped Assisted Suicide" explains some of the reasons, and they are good reasons:

In June 2025 Janet Daby, the Member of Parliament for Lewisham East, started having nightmares: terrible images of death and dying that disturbed her sleep and haunted her conscience. She didn’t need a psychotherapist to interpret them. That month she had joined 313 other MPs in voting through an assisted suicide bill. She was beginning to think she might have made the wrong choice, and the 291 MPs on the other side might have made the right one.

There was one conversation that added to Daby’s doubts: someone she knew who had HIV and AIDS, and who many years before, with a bleak prognosis, had wished for the swift exit of an assisted death; but who had since found the right drugs, and made a decent life for himself. The kind of person who might be swallowed up by a state suicide service before he or she had the chance to find help. That was the kind of person she had endangered with her vote. And now it was too late.

But the British constitution, like life, sometimes gives you a second chance. ....

A lot of people assumed that the Lords (who are appointed, not elected) would have to wave through a bill of such importance, given that elected representatives had approved it. The Lords themselves were less persuadable.

And as they examined the bill, over a long period in late 2025 and early 2026, they began to uncover the same kind of problems as Janet Daby. The Royal College of Psychiatrists pointed out, to a committee convened by the Lords, that if people were depressed, the state would help them kill themselves—without asking too many questions about what help they needed. Experts in coercion observed that if people were being psychologically terrorized by an abusive partner, the state would help them kill themselves. One organization after another pointed out that if people fell through the gaps in Britain’s rickety health and care system, the state would help them kill themselves. ....

What swung the result? Perhaps less one issue than a steady accumulation of doubts. Hospices and care homes might be closed or defunded—this was explicitly threatened by one of the main proponents of the bill. Disabled people would come under pressure. People would die because the health system had failed them. The high costs of care would provide a powerful incentive for death. .... (more)

Dan Hitchens, "How Britain Escaped Assisted Suicide," First Things, Sept. 11, 2026.

Baptists

As I followed links looking for something I eventually didn't find, I happened upon "Why I Am a Baptist" by Albert Mohler. Mohler is a Southern Baptist; in fact, the president of their largest seminary, but I found his description of what makes Baptists distinct completely unobjectionable (however argumentative we Baptists may be). Some excerpts from a much longer, but very readable article:

Every great movement probably begins in an argument of some sort, and the Baptists emerged in the context of an argument that was intense, significant, and sometimes deadly. Luther had started it. The Calvinists believed he had not taken it far enough. The English Puritans likewise became convinced that the moderately reforming Church of England was not taking the argument far enough. The Separatists (who would include Congregationalists and Presbyterians) believed that the Puritans who remained in the Church of England were not taking it far enough. The Baptists then separated from the Separatists because they were not taking it far enough. Since then, Baptists have not stopped arguing. They often argue among themselves, but more urgently, they argue for the necessity of conversion, for the believers’ church, for the baptism of believers alone, and for liberty of conscience.

The Baptists did not claim to have reestablished Christ’s church, but instead saw themselves as continuing the process of reforming the church through the establishment of true and godly congregations of visible saints—each entering into the covenant fellowship of the congregation by personal testimony of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and personal commitment to obey Christ in baptism and faithful discipleship. ....

In 1646, Baptist churches in London defined saving faith in these terms:

Faith is the gift of God, wrought in the hearts of the elect by the Spirit of God; by which faith they come to know and believe the truth of the Scriptures, and the excellency of them above all other writings, and all things in the world, as they hold forth the glory of God in his attributes, the excellency of Christ in his nature and offices, and of the power and fulness of the Spirit in his workings and operations; and so are enabled to cast their souls upon this truth thus believed.

Such saving faith, the Baptists continued, “is ordinarily begotten by the preaching of the gospel, or word of Christ.” When you find real Baptists, you will find the preaching of the gospel—the declaration of the great good news that salvation and the forgiveness of sins are bestowed upon all who hear the word of Christ and believe, who rest from their labors to make themselves worthy of salvation and by grace through faith receive the mercy of God, by the merits of Christ alone. ....

The definition of Christ’s church as wholly regenerate is perhaps the most radical of all Baptist doctrines. The necessity of conversion leads to the affirmation of the church as the body of those who are converted, who have heard the gospel and been saved. Others among the Puritans and Separatists approached this affirmation, but the Baptists plowed right through the arguments, insisting there could be no other notion of Christ’s church than that it comprises the twice-born, regenerate believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, who have individually professed their belief in Christ and demonstrated their regeneration through obedience to Christ and his commands. ....

The rightly ordered church is a body of regenerate believers, gathered by common faith and common confession and a church covenant that defines the commitments of church membership. This rightly ordered church appoints the elders and pastors needed for its ministry and organizes its work on its own authority.

One of the most venerable of our Baptist church covenants explains:

As we trust we have been brought by divine grace to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ, and by the influence of his Spirit to give ourselves up to him, so we do now solemnly covenant with each other, that, God enabling us: we will walk together in brotherly love; that we will exercise a Christian care and watchfulness over each other, and faithfully warn, rebuke, and admonish one another, as the case shall require; that we will not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, nor omit the great duty of prayer, both for ourselves and for others; that we will participate in each other’s joys, and endeavor, with tenderness and sympathy, to bear each other’s burdens and sorrows; that we will earnestly endeavor to bring up such as may be under our care in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; that we will seek divine aid to enable us to walk circumspectly and watchfully in the world; denying ungodliness and every worldly lust; that we will strive together for the support of a faithful evangelical ministry among us; that we will endeavor by example and effort to win souls to Christ; and, through life, amidst evil report and good report seek to live to the glory of Him who hath called us out of darkness into his marvellous light.

As others have noted, the Baptists have not been ardent ecumenists. But they have always recognized that there are true Christians in other churches and communions. ....The practice of baptizing only those persons who personally profess faith in Christ became the defining issue for Baptists. Reading the New Testament, they concluded that infant baptism was no real baptism and that baptism, like the Lord’s Supper, was not a sacrament but an ordinance—an act commanded by Christ. The new believer, having given evidence of saving faith and a commitment to follow Christ, is baptized into the fellowship of the church, with the waters of baptism the context for the believer’s profession of faith. Baptism is also the ordinance of entry into the membership and fellowship of the congregation. .... (more)

R. Albert Mohler Jr., "Why I Am a Baptist," First Things, August 1, 2020.

The most oppressive tyranny

When "omnipotent moral busybodies" control power:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

C.S. Lewis, "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment," God in the Dock, Eerdmans, 1970.

"Angst, animosity, and contrarianism"

I'm old enough to remember November 22, 1963. September 11, 2001 was equally horrible, and a lot more people died. I read that 40% of the population has no memory of that day because they were not yet born. That means, among much else, they have no sense of the reaction—how unified the country felt in the immediate aftermath. We have lost that. Erick Erickson today:

We remember the unity that followed, too, but 25 years later, I wonder if we can admit the unity of late September 2001 was cheap. Everyone was frightened at the same time and grateful at the same time. Standing together when a building has just fallen on your neighbors requires no virtue at all. The unity worth something is the kind that survives disagreement, that holds when nothing is burning and we still can’t stand each other’s politics. We have always struggled with that one, and 25 years later we are further from it than we were on September 10th.

Unfortunately, we now have an algorithm in our lives and a class of people across party lines who make their living widening the gap between us because the algorithm rewards the clicks generated by angst, animosity, and contrarianism. You can find these malcontented souls driven by algorithmic profit in both parties, and inside every faction of both, and the only thing they reliably have in common is that peace between us would put them out of work. Every one of them is asking you to sort yourself into a smaller tribe, and then into a faction inside that tribe. ....

Erick Erickson, "Climbing the Stairs," Sept. 11, 2026.

Labor Day

On Labor Day, I return to Gene Edward Veith's post about "vocation" (the link to his blog post no longer works):

.... The word is simply the Latinate term for “calling.” Perhaps the best summation of the concept is in 1 Corinthians 7:17: “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.”

God “assigns” different kinds and places of service for each Christian and then “calls” each Christian to that assignment. The Reformation theologians fleshed out this concept with other biblical teachings about God’s workings in society and the Christian’s life in the world (e.g., Ephesians 5:6, Romans 12:13).

The great theologian of vocation was Martin Luther, who developed the teaching in his battles with monasticism—the view that the spiritual life requires withdrawal from secular life—and in defining “the priesthood of all believers.”

For Luther, vocation, like justification, is ultimately God’s work. God gives us our daily bread through the vocations of the farmer, the miller, and the baker. God creates new human beings through the vocations of fathers and mothers. God protects us through lawful magistrates.

Vocation is, first of all, about how God works through human beings. In His providential care and governing of His creation, God chooses to distribute His gifts by means of ordinary people exercising their talents, which themselves are gifts of God.

Thus, God heals by means of doctors, nurses, and other medical vocations. He makes our lives easier by means of inventors, scientists, and engineers. He creates beauty by means of artists, authors, and musicians. He gives us clothing, shelter, and other things we need by means of factory workers, construction contractors, and others who work with their hands. He cleans up after us by means of janitors and garbage collectors.

God thus looms behind everyone who provides us with the goods or services that we need. In one of Luther’s many memorable lines, God milks the cows through the hands of the milkmaid. This means that all work and all workers deserve honor. Whereas the world might look down on milkmaids and garbage collectors, they actually bear the sacred presence of God, who works in and through them.

God created us to be dependent on others—meat processors, manufacturers, journalists, lawyers, bankers, teachers, parents—and, through them, we are ultimately dependent upon God Himself.

Just as God is working through the vocation of others to bless us, He is working through us to bless others. In our vocations, we work side-by-side with God, as it were, taking part in His ceaseless creative activity and laboring with Him as He providentially cares for His creation. ....

“I die the King’s good servant, but God’s first”

Last night a friend and I re-watched A Man for All Seasons (1966). It's a great film with important lessons, whether or not its portrayal of Thomas More accurately reflects the real man. Today I read a review of Studies in Machiavellian Political Philosophy by Michael Anton. The reviewer doesn't agree with Anton's strategy for reversing Machiavelli's influence on modernity and contrasts it with More's principles. Choose More, not Machiavelli:

Anton argues not only that the Italian presaged post-religious modernity, but that his ideas, especially in their cynical, adversarial relationship to Christianity, are vital to understanding our contemporary sociopolitical distemper.

“Machiavelli intimates that Christianity’s promises are worse than false,” writes Anton. “Those fooled by Christianity do not receive what they are promised and end up worse off than when they started.” The Christian faith, the Italian believed, engenders weakness by persuading men to rely not on themselves but on outside forces.

Moreover, Machiavelli sees Christianity as deceiving the masses into believing that they can attain a transcendent peace and personal success that the ancients believed was reserved only for a glorious few. Anton explains:

Worst of all, Christianity promises all believers a serenity of mind or superiority to fortune that classical philosophers considered the possession of only the best of men, acquired through much effort.... Christianity attempts to make a simplified version of this state of mind available to all, arguably without any effort. After all, how hard is it to die when you are promised an eternity in Paradise?

For Machiavelli, this simplification not only dilutes “true” philosophy, but strips it of its potency, sophistication, and nobility. Christianity makes men complacent, resigned to a humble life, disinterested in human glory. It promotes “ambitious idleness” (Machiavelli’s words), in which men do little more than pray. And, in a “pious cruelty,” it tyrannizes people into belief via threat of eternal damnation. ....

Thomas More, perhaps Machiavelli’s greatest humanist contemporary, offers an illuminating foil. More also penned an influential treatise in the early sixteenth century, Utopia, which, while critiquing a corrupted Christendom, also provoked much debate, given that many of his suggestions—such as easy divorce, euthanasia, and married priests—contradicted the Catholic teaching he held dear (and, indeed, died for). Regardless of whether Utopia is a satire of humanist political theorizing, More is antithetical to Machiavelli....

More’s is the nobler path. Men may recognize the this-worldly success of the statesman who schemes and exploits to achieve his ambitions, but he is typically hated rather than loved, his glories tarred by a destructive legacy. More’s light still shines bright, however: Not only was he principled and courageous, but he was also prudent, performing his state duties, honoring his king, and selling his property to provide for his family. His declaration from the scaffold in 1535 continues to inspire: “I die the King’s good servant, but God’s first.”

Modeling Machiavelli may achieve political objectives that are (ironically) anti-Machiavellian. Doing so, however, risks further undermining whatever virtue remains in contemporary public service. And if we are concerned about the welfare not only of the polis but of our souls, More is our man. (more)

Casey Chalk, "Unmaking Machiavelli’s Modernity," First Things, Sept. 4, 2026.

Ordinary evangelicals

Many of us who have long identified as evangelicals now avoid the label because it has become understood as a political, i.e., Trumpian, rather than a theological stance. "The Monstering of Evangelicalism," by Bonnie Kristian, an editor at Christianity Today, argues that the "monstering" of evangelicals is unfair to most of them:

.... Then came Trump. Like many educated evangelicals, especially in the media, I was immediately put off by him at every level: morally, theologically, politically, aesthetically. I never considered voting for Hillary Clinton (or, later, Joe Biden or Kamala Harris), but I was dismayed at Trump’s clumsy pandering to evangelical voters and even more dismayed when it worked. That year and in the years to come, I wrote often about Trump and evangelicals, thinking through how it could be that we were so linked to him in the public mind.

I’m still dismayed, to be honest. Though I’ve come to hold that dismay in tension with the reality that many evangelicals have defensible, understandable reasons for their Trump votes, this isn’t a story about how I learned to stop worrying and love the Donald. ....

...[C]riticism of evangelicals has undeniably intensified since around 2015, during a decade when the rise of Trump coincided with the exvangelical phenomenon, including widespread public renunciations of evangelicalism; with rapid changes in American norms and laws around sex and gender; with a string of high-profile evangelical scandals; and with rising ignorance of religion in general. ....

Like any movement on this scale, evangelicalism has its freaks and fringes. There are any number of prominent figures, people with big churches (or at least big beards and big podcasts) with downright abhorrent beliefs and behavior. It’s not hard to find these folks, nor is it wrong to want to avoid any association with them.

I’m not talking about them, though. I’m talking about the millions of people who make up ordinary American evangelicalism, people who are overwhelmingly kind and faithful, with normal (which is to say: low) levels of political engagement and expertise. They don’t want their church or their identity to be focused on politics; they want both to be focused on Christ.

They’re sincerely trying to bring their faith to bear in a fast-moving, polarized, two-party system with no good options. It doesn’t always go so well. But they are trying to follow Jesus, and they are trying to do the right thing. They do not merit contempt. (more)

Bonnie Kristian, "The Monstering of Evangelicalism," First Things, Sept 2, 2026.

"Every Man a King"

Some years ago I bought and read T. Harry Williams' biography, Huey Long (1969). It's a long, thorough, and very readable book about the politician who, if he had not been assassinated, probably would have run against FDR for the Democratic nomination for President in 1936. Long was a populist, governor, and then Senator from Louisiana, creator of a political machine that dominated Louisiana politics for decades. He was corrupt, authoritarian, and very popular in his state. Robert Penn Warren's novel, All the King's Men (1946), was a fictional account of Long's rise to power. I would be very concerned about any political candidate who viewed Long favorably. In the WSJ today:

JD Vance has a new populist muse. Speaking at an Ohio steel plant on Aug. 21, he appealed to Huey Long, Louisiana’s Democratic governor from 1928-32. Long, Mr. Vance said, pursued a policy agenda to make “every man a king.” While the vice president connected this phrase to the importance of public safety, it also seems to reflect his own broader political vision. As a Louisianan, I can attest that every American should be wary of the impossible promises of Long-style populism.

In the Pelican State, we’ve been dealing with consequences of Long’s agenda for nearly a century. Despite his rhetorical promise to make kings of the people, the politician nicknamed “Kingfish” cemented the state government’s king-like power. ....

In his Ohio speech, Mr. Vance at least acknowledged that Long was “kind of a crazy guy.” But the same can be said of Long’s policy agenda, which is quite similar to the populist vision of politicians like J.D. Vance. Long’s genius was persuading people that concentrating power in his hands was the same as empowering them. A century later, Louisiana is still paying the bill for that con. .... (more)

I posted about Long once before here. Years ago, at our church conference, I had a chance to talk with Senator Jennings Randolph (WVa), who had served a couple of years in Congress when Long was a Senator. As I recall, his recollections—Jennings was a great storyteller—were mostly about Long's flamboyant attire—he mentioned ties—and speaking style. A few years ago, my brother and I visited the Capitol building in Baton Rouge that Long had built, and where he was killed. A statue of Huey Long rises above his grave in front of the building. While there, we were approached by a Louisiana couple who continued to admire Long for what he had done for the state.

Daniel Erspamer, "From a Hillbilly to a King," The Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2026.

Alienation

Anyone who has visited my apartment would suspect that I am something of an Anglophile. They would be right. On the walls, they would find pictures of village scenes, a map of the London Underground, reproduction posters for RMS Aquitania and the Night Scotsman, a mirror from a pub, and more. Someone reading my bookshelves will find many mysteries and thrillers by British authors, from Buchan to Sayers, Allingham, P.D. James, Dick Francis, Conan Doyle, Frederick Forsyth, and John le Carré, among others. Other favorite authors include Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Bernard Cornwell, Churchill, George MacDonald Fraser (Flashman), P.G. Wodehouse, Richard Adams (Watership Down), A.A. Milne, Kenneth Grahame, Robert Louis Stevenson. I enjoy reading British history and watching documentaries about it. Much of my favorite music is British: Ralph Vaughan Williams, The Scottish Psalter, Anglican hymns, hymns written by Charles Wesley. I listen often to The Rolling Stones and Van Morrison. I like English-style beers, Scotch whisky, bangers and mash, fish and chips, etc. And that's not exhaustive. I am an Anglophile, but mostly, I think, of a Britain past rather than the one since, maybe, the 1990s, when I was last there. Carl Trueman, who grew up in England, writes "The England I Knew Is Gone":

Leslie Poles Hartley famously dubbed the past “a foreign country.” This summer, for the first time, I sensed that the present can be one too. My annual visit to the land of my childhood and youth exposed me to a culture very different from the one that nurtured me. Growing up as a grammar schoolboy in 1970s and ’80s England, I absorbed the importance of personal restraint; emotional self-control in public; privacy; acting with honesty and fairness, even to one’s own hurt; and respecting others regardless of their social status or opinions. At the level of society, such personal values promoted freedoms—of speech, of religion, of expression. All of that is gone, at least from the class that presumes to define the country’s mores and morals. ....

England exemplifies the political shape a country takes when expressive individualism grips the imagination of its ruling class. It is impossible for any culture to allow everyone to be who they want to be, from transgender activists to traditional Christians. Somebody therefore has to bring order to the potential chaos, and as expressive individualism tends strongly toward the transgressive, with its core notion that personal authenticity lies in breaking with the herd (that is, the social expectations of the past), the culture-makers will typically favor those who want to demolish received ideas and traditions deemed stumbling blocks to self-realization. This turns morality on its head. Yesterday’s virtues have become today’s oppressive vices, as the moral register has shifted in a psychological direction—most notably in the trivialization of trauma, which in some cases has come to mean little more than “somebody somewhere said something hurtful about me.” Sadly, the Church has often proved little different. ....

And this is not an English monopoly. It is a Western malaise. .... (more)

Carl R. Trueman, "The England I Knew Is Gone," First Things, August 27, 2026.

"Giving God his due"

From "Feeling Good Is Not the Point of Worship":

When does worship become more about the worshipers than the one being worshiped? If weekend worship is designed primarily to be a sort of emotional therapy, do we really need God for it?

No doubt, worship often leaves us feeling better. Sharing space with like-minded believers, opening God’s Word, singing hymns, partaking of Communion—how could such practices not yield beautiful byproducts? I hope my parishioners and I leave church better off than when we came in. Moreover, the emotional side of our lives is vital in worship (just read the Psalms). It seems to me that Christians too often forget we are embodied selves whose hearts are crucial to true worship, so emotional worship can be a welcome corrective.

Even so, there are dangers of emotional excess in worship—in emotion sought for its own sake. Or, perhaps, more precisely, there are dangers in myopic and clichéd pursuits of emotion in worship. ....

Is the church that makes us feel better making us be better? What is the long-term fruit of experience-driven worship? Are congregations becoming brighter lights and sturdier bastions of faith in an increasingly dark and hostile world? Do these worship habits help Christians become more like Christ? ....

Hyperfocus on feeling is a dangerous path to tread. Feelings ebb and flow. It is no knock on emotion to say it is not the foundation of faith, even if it often plays a significant role in our relationships with God and each other.

“Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about,” C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity. “He will give us feelings of love if He pleases. We cannot create them for ourselves, and we must not demand them as a right. But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not.” ....

Have you have seen the work of the Holy Spirit equated with sensation? Next time someone in a pulpit or worship band says, “The Spirit is really moving today,” ask yourself what, specifically, that person means.

Nothing in Scripture suggests you can tell you’re experiencing a movement of God’s Spirit if you feel positive affect and overpowering sensation. Rather, biblically speaking, the Spirit is the one who makes us more like the crucified Jesus, the one who leads us into sacrificial suffering, by whom we cry, “Abba, Father” (Rom 8:12–17). If we say, “The Spirit is really moving today,” we ought to be witnessing something closer to Good Friday than Woodstock.

Don’t hear me wrong: Experience and emotion matter. These are good gifts from God and have their place in worship. But what we do at church must be far more than emotion and experience. ....

Worship is fundamentally about giving God his due, the glory and honor he deserves. We worship because God is God, whether or not we get anything out of it. Recall the words of the prophet: “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior” (Hab. 3:17–18). .... (more, probably behind a paywall)

Matthew D. Love, "Feeling Good Is Not the Point of Worship," Christianity Today, August 27, 2026.

"Forget yourself"

Carlos Carvalho is President of the University of Austin, a very young institution admitting its first class in 2024. It is tuition-free, and admission is intended to be by merit. The following are excerpts from the address its president delivered to this year's entering class. If this reflects the school's intent, I hope it is met, and that the school prospers.

.... The pilgrims and pioneers were the most self-reliant people on Earth. They persisted against nature and starvation to set up the colonies; they headed west on wagon trains even as they buried their children on the Oregon Trail. They formed volunteer fire brigades before any government services existed. They ran their own towns without deferring to a distant capital. They carved farms and opened shops and built railroads. They turned wilderness into civilization. Their grandchildren stormed the beaches at Normandy, and their great-grandsons walked on the moon.

That kind of relentless pursuit of greatness was self-uninvolved. It was strong and persistent, and the opposite of introspective. ....

These great achievements begin, however, with the recognition that there’s something greater beyond us; that much of life’s meaning comes from duties imposed on us and loyalties we did not choose. To strive beyond ourselves, we first need to understand ourselves, and that means fully understanding our inheritances before we presume to improve or criticize them.

Greatness starts with recognizing that we incurred a debt to the past, to the family that raised us, to the founders of our country, to the dead who built everything around us and fought our enemies so that we can live in freedom and prosperity. Greatness starts with the recognition of virtue. ....

So, to the class of 2030, the whole world will keep telling you to find yourself. We’re hoping for something better: that you forget yourself and discover the durable joy of being absorbed in something greater than you. .... 

Years from now, you’ll be in a room where something serious is on the line. Maybe a dinner table where a troubling question gets asked, or a courthouse where a big decision is made, or a board meeting where a serious mistake is about to be made. Those rooms will need at least one person who knows how to think through hard things. We want you to be the person the rest of the room quietly turns to.

...[W]e turn to you and ask you to forget yourself. We want you to read books that have no interest in your identity, and to wrestle with facts that don’t care how they make you feel. We want you to help your classmate at an inconvenient hour, to listen and learn from the professors, and to find ways to contribute to this young university without demanding that it conform to you. Forget yourself and find something greater than you. .... (more)

Carlos Carvalho, "What College Is Really For," The Free Press, August 25, 2026.

"He almost deserved it"

I am making slow but regular progress through The Chronicles of Narnia and have just begun reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Eustace Clarence Scrubb, a cousin of the Pevensies, is introduced in this book. I enjoyed Lewis's description in the first chapter:

THERE was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. His parents called him Eustace Clarence and his schoolmasters called him Scrubb. I can't tell you how his friends spoke to him, for he had none. He didn't call his father and mother "Father" and "Mother," but Harold and Alberta. They were very up-to-date and advanced people. They were vegetarians, non-smokers and teetotalers and wore a special kind of underclothes. In their house there was very little furniture and very few clothes on the beds and the windows were always open.

Eustace Clarence liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead and pinned on a card. He liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools.

Eustace Clarence disliked his cousins, the four Pevensies—Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. But he was quite glad when he heard that Edmund and Lucy were corning to stay. For deep down inside he liked bossing and bullying; and, though he was a puny little person who couldn't have stood up even to Lucy, let alone Edmund, in a fight, he knew that there are dozens of ways to give people a bad time if you are in your own home and they are only visitors. ....

C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 1952.