A New Years' prayer

Samuel Johnson on New Year's Eve, 1749/50:

ALMIGHTY GOD, by whose will I was created, and by whose Providence I have been sustained, by whose mercy I have been called to the knowledge of my Redeemer, and by whose Grace whatever I have thought or acted acceptable to Thee has been inspired and directed, grant, O Lord, that in reviewing my past life, I may recollect Thy mercies to my preservation, in whatever state Thou preparest for me, that in affliction I may remember how often I have been succoured, and in Prosperity may know and confess from whose hand the blessing is received. Let me, O Lord, so remember my sins, that I may abolish them by true repentance, and so improve the Year to which Thou hast graciously extended my life, and all the years which Thou shalt yet allow me, that I may hourly become purer in Thy sight; so that I may live in Thy fear, and die in Thy favour, and find mercy at the last day, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.

"On eagles' wings"

I had always assumed we already had a national bird. Apparently, I was wrong:

President Biden last week signed a unanimously approved bill that officially names the bald eagle America’s national bird. Few have paused to reflect on the deeper meaning of this iconic creature.

When the Founding Fathers considered designs for a national emblem after the Declaration of Independence, they considered depictions of Moses parting the Red Sea and the children of Israel in the desert. In 1782 they chose a bald eagle, clutching in its talons an olive branch and arrows—biblical symbols of peace and war.

In the media coverage surrounding the eagle last week, our national bird’s religious significance was overlooked. The Bible mentions the eagle at least 30 times, including in Exodus, Deuteronomy, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Hosea, Jeremiah, Obadiah, Samuel and Revelations. Isaiah 40:31 declares: “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles.” Exodus 19:4 describes God carrying the Israelites “on eagles’ wings.” .... (more)

Eli Federman, "The Bald Eagle Is Heaven-Sent," The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 31, 2024.

"I heard laughter"

I retired from teaching before the cell phone took hold with high school students but I live among today's college students. On the elevator in my building, walking on the street, in a restaurant, wherever, their eyes are down and they are watching something, texting, or talking on the phone. I read that is also true in the high school classroom. That is changing. From "How Jonathan Haidt Won the Fight Against Smartphones in Schools":

This fall, when Suzanna Kruger walked into her biology classroom, she noticed something strange: Two dozen students were staring back at her.

“They were willing to make eye contact,” Kruger, a 55-year-old high school teacher in Seaside, Oregon, told me. “They even said hello.”

It was something she hadn’t seen since before the pandemic. “If a kid had their phone in class, I could just simply walk up to them, and they would hand it over,” Kruger said. But by the fall of 2021, when students returned from a year of distance learning, she said she had started feeling like the teacher from Charlie Brown.

“They looked at me like I was just going ‘wah, wah, wah,’ ” Kruger said...

This past fall, the Seaside School District became one of the first in Oregon to ban cell phones for both middle and high schoolers, forcing kids to lock their devices in pouches near the school entrance until the end of the day. Seaside has joined thousands of schools nationwide in recently banning smartphones, as a growing body of evidence shows they’re linked to falling test scores and rising rates of teen mental illness. ....

Haidt spells out four “foundational rules” to inspire a “Great Rewiring of Childhood.” They are: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16, no phones at school, and more unsupervised play and independence for kids. ....

For nearly a decade, Seaside High School principal Jeff Roberts said he’d been “dancing around” a phone ban. There was no question phones were causing “constant turmoil” at his school. But after he read Haidt’s book, he went to the school board to propose a ban from “bell to bell”—throughout the entire school day.

It’s been only one semester since the ban has taken effect, but Roberts says the school’s failure rate has fallen by 30 percent, meaning a full third of students who would have likely flunked a class are now on track to pass. Just as important, he says, is a sound he’s lately been hearing in the school cafeteria, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean. It’s a sound he says he’d almost forgotten.

“I heard laughter,” he said. “And I mean laughter. And there wasn’t a single phone in sight.” (more)

Olivia Reingold, "How Jonathan Haidt Won the Fight Against Smartphones in Schools," The Free Press, Dec. 30, 2024.

A Complete Unknown

I may wait until it is streaming, but I will see A Complete Unknown. From a Wall Street Journal review of the film:

Among the many music greats who’ve gotten the biopic treatment, Bob Dylan presents an especially tough multiple choice problem. He’s an artistic deity whose output made a real mark on history. He’s also a living cartoon character with a rasp and patter that has inspired countless bad impressions. And he’s a shapeshifter with many musical phases and a habit of tweaking his own mythology. ....

“[Timothée Chalamet] was really excited to be the one to be able to introduce this music and these lyrics to a new generation.” Chalamet, who has said he knew little about Dylan before landing the part, got good enough with the material to do some 35 songs live on camera, including guitar and harmonica work, and for those on-set performances to make the final cut, the filmmakers say. ....

He’d been practicing the music since 2018, when he was cast in the role, and had extra time to get better thanks to pandemic and Hollywood strike delays. Along the way, he became the movie-star equivalent of that dude in your college dorm who was always noodling on a guitar. His “Dune” co-star Oscar Isaac has said that Chalamet demonstrated his stuff by playing “Girl From the North Country” for cast-mates. ....

“When someone does an impersonation of Dylan, what they’re often missing is the sincerity with which he sings those lyrics,” Vetro says. “He was getting a message across, and that’s what people gravitated to, not because they were like, ‘Oh, I love that nasal voice.’”

Chalamet studied Dylan’s vintage performance footage as well as his body language and his attitude in press conferences. “We’d be watching an interview and Timmy would start speaking the lines just like Bob did. So then he would go into singing it like Bob, but the Bob of that specific time period” ....

...“A Complete Unknown” focuses on four precipitous years. The story starts with a 19-year-old Dylan’s arrival in New York City and ends with the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where he rocked out with a band and blew up his image as a lone prophet with an acoustic guitar. ....

Dylan, who is now 83, never got involved in Chalamet’s performance, Mangold says, but the singer reviewed the screenplay. He circled instances of people calling him “Bob” in the script, and changed that to “Bobby” for most characters. Dylan also crossed out a section of lyrics to “Masters of War” that he would skip when singing it live, the director recalls. “He was like, ‘Oh man, I never did this verse.’”

When they met (in a Santa Monica coffee shop that was closed to the public during the pandemic), Dylan said the decision to go electric at Newport had been less about shaking up the music scene than his craving for the camaraderie of playing in a rock band. .... (more)

John Jurgensen, "How Timothée Chalamet Learned to Sound Like Bob Dylan," The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 24, 2024.

"Mem’s of 7th day B’pt Church"

For some reason, this came to mind today. Matthew Bracewell and his wife may have been Stonefort Seventh Day Baptist Church members. Pope County is the southernmost county in Illinois, across the Ohio from Kentucky. Reposted:

Dissenting took more political courage in the days before the secret ballot. In "Abraham Lincoln and Pope County" C.A. Crisp, who has a "hobby of finding cemeteries" in Pope County in southernmost Illinois, notes reference to an 1860 voter who was distinctly in the minority — and proud of it.

"…The 1860 election records show that Abraham Lincoln received only 127 votes in Pope County, while Stephen A. Douglas, received 1,202 votes…Opposition to Lincoln’s election in 1860 was so strong that one farmer in the northwestern section of the county was assaulted physically at the polls when he showed up to vote for the 'Rail Splitter.' Matthew Bracewell lived to a ripe old age and never regretted the way he cast his vote…" Pope County History and Families, Vol. 2, page 16, ‘The Civil War in Pope County’ - submitted by Ricky T. Allen.

The small cemetery where Matthew Bracewell and Irenne, his wife, were buried is located almost 4 miles west of Delwood. It is in a small grove of trees surrounded by a field. On his tombstone it reads:

"Mem’s of 7th day B’pt Church" ....

Matthew’s ripe old age was 81 years 1 month and 5 days.

Abraham Lincoln and Pope County | Pope County, Illinois Cemeteries

In the bleak midwinter

In the bleak midwinter,      frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron,     water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow,     snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, long ago.	Angels and archangels may     have gathered there, Cherubim and seraphim     thronged the air; But His mother only,     in her maiden bliss, Worshiped the beloved with a kiss.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him,     nor earth sustain; Heaven and earth shall flee away     when He comes to reign. In the bleak midwinter     a stable place sufficed The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.	What can I give Him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd,     I would bring a lamb; If I were a Wise Man,     I would do my part; Yet what I can I give Him:     give my heart.
Enough for Him, whom cherubim,     worship night and day, Breastful of milk,     and a mangerful of hay; Enough for Him,     whom angels fall before, The ox and ass and camel which adore.

 Christina Rossetti, 1872

The Truth sent from Above

Ralph Vaughan Williams, "Herefordshire Carol":

This is the truth sent from above, The truth of God, the God of love; Therefore don’t turn me from your door,    But hearken all both rich and poor.	And at that season of the year Our blest Redeemer did appear; He here did live, and here did preach, And may thousands he did teach.
The first thing which I do relate Is that God did man create; The next thing which to you I’ll tell Woman was made with man to dwell.	Thus He in love to us behaved, To show us how we must be saved; And if you want to know the way, Be pleased to hear what He did say.
And we were heirs to endless woes, Till God the Lord did interpose; And so a promise soon did run That He would redeem us by his Son.

There are more verses, including:

"Go preach the Gospel," now He said,
"To all the nations that are made!
And he that does believe on me,
From all his sins I'll set him free."

O seek! O seek of God above
That saving faith that works by love!
And, if He's pleased to grant thee this,
Thou'rt sure to have eternal bliss.

God grant to all within this place
True saving faith, that special grace
Which to His people doth belong:
And thus I close my Christmas song.

A love of reading

Lamenting the decline in reading for pleasure by the young, this Telegraph column explains why "Reading is vital for our children":

One of the greatest gifts my grandad ever gave me was a love of reading. From an early age he handed me book after book. Beatrix Potter, Sherlock Holmes, Treasure Island – I couldn’t get enough.

But my favourite was the Chronicles of Narnia. I stumbled through the back of the wardrobe with Lucy Pevensie, into the world of Aslan the lion, Maugrim the wolf, Mr Tumnus and the White Witch. I was hooked from the first page.

Books hold a special power to light up children’s imaginations. Generations have flown off to Neverland and leapt down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. They’ve run through the hundred-acre wood and snuck into the secret garden. From tea with tigers, to picnics with hungry caterpillars – the magic of children’s books can cast a spell on us all. ....

Reading is vital for a child’s language and cognitive development. And it brings a raft of emotional and social benefits. Reading carries children into different worlds and transports them into the minds of others. They can experience different perspectives, helping them to build empathy and connect with people unlike them. All told, these benefits bode well for a child’s future – from employability to earnings. ....

The books we read as children become part of who we are as adults. From the days I spent in the land of Narnia I learned about friendship, loyalty, forgiveness – and the dangers of accepting Turkish Delight from strangers. But it was the magic of children’s stories that gave me a lifelong love of reading. My grandad understood the value of that. He understood that reading could set me on the path to success. And now it’s our duty to make sure the next generation of young readers don’t miss out on that wonderful gift. (more)

Bridget Phillipson, "Reading is vital for our children," The Telegraph, Dec. 20,2024.

More Dickens Christmas

Christmastide at 600 College St. when I was young: candles in every street-facing window, a wreath on the front door and a festooned evergreen in the front window (first real, then later, artificial), large-format Christmas Ideals on the coffee table, Christmas cards taped to the kitchen wall by Mom, and more. Records came out, too. We had a recording of A Child's Christmas in Wales read by Dylan Thomas himself. The record I remember best was a 45rpm of Lionel Barrymore as Scrooge in Dickens' Christmas Carol. He had performed that role year after year on the radio in the 40s and 50s. Listening to the record was one of our family Christmas traditions. I transferred the recording to CD years ago and just found it among my collection of Christmas music. The original record sleeve:

 And this, provided by YouTube, is the recording:

The rightful king has landed...

C.S. Lewis on the Incarnation:

• 
  …the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left. (God in the Dock)
• The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this. (Miracles)
• In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down;…down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature he has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. (Miracles)
• The Incarnation…illuminates and orders all other phenomena, explains both our laughter and our logic, our fear of the dead and our knowledge that it is somehow good to die, and which at one stroke covers what multitudes of separate theories will hardly cover for us if this is rejected. (Miracles)
• But supposing God became man—suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person—then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God…. But we cannot share God’s dying unless God dies; and He cannot die except by being a man, That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all. (Mere Christianity)
• Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.” (Mere Christianity)

"Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days"

From Dickens' Pickwick Papers.

...[N]umerous indeed are the hearts to which Christmas brings a brief season of happiness and enjoyment. How many families, whose members have been dispersed and scattered far and wide, in the restless struggles of life, are then reunited, and meet once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual goodwill, which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight; and one so incompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world, that the religious belief of the most civilised nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the first joys of a future condition of existence, provided for the blessed and happy! How many old recollections, and how many dormant sympathies, does Christmas time awaken!

We write these words now, many miles distant from the spot at which, year after year, we met on that day, a merry and joyous circle. Many of the hearts that throbbed so gaily then, have ceased to beat; many of the looks that shone so brightly then, have ceased to glow; the hands we grasped, have grown cold; the eyes we sought, have hid their lustre in the grave; and yet the old house, the room, the merry voices and smiling faces, the jest, the laugh, the most minute and trivial circumstances connected with those happy meetings, crowd upon our mind at each recurrence of the season, as if the last assemblage had been but yesterday! Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveler, thousands of miles away, back to his own fireside and his quiet home! ....

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, Chapter 28.

Heaven

Joni Eareckson Tada reflecting on the hymn "When We All Get to Heaven":

.... Shining in brilliant beauty, with no more pain or sorrow, dementia, or disability. We will shed these travails as we would a heavy coat slipping from our shoulders, and we'll finally comprehend that the whole plan of redemption—all the suffering—was the Father's way of securing for his Son a wonderful gift: a radiant bride. And to think we can brighten that radiance, for it will be made plain how our suffering prepared us for such shining glory! Charles Spurgeon writes:

We make too much of this poor life, for the trials that now weigh us down will soon vanish like morning dew. We are only here long enough to feel an April shower of pain, then we are gone among the unfading flowers of the endless May. So, put things in order. Allot to this brief life its brief consideration, and to everlasting glory, its weight of happy meditations.

Now picture it. You and I among great multitudes of the redeemed, pulsing with joy and infused with light. We are surrounded by the angelic host, and we happily press in line with the great procession of the saved, streaming through gates of pearl, an infinite cavalcade from earth's wide bounds and the oceans' farthest coasts, all in one joyous parade countless generations, all lifting our diadems before God. ....

Joni Eareckson Tada, Songs of Suffering: 25 Hymns and Devotions for Weary Souls, Crossway, 2022.

"Our list of allies grows thin"

First Things is a magazine that has always had Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish contributors. Carl Trueman, a Protestant, is one of them. He was recently asked why he isn't a Catholic. Part of his answer:

Many issues are important in my commitment to Reformed Protestantism: authority, salvation, the nature of the ministry, and the significance of sacraments are just a few of the more obvious. And while I am open to the criticism that Protestantism hasn’t given Mary her due, I believe the Catholic Church has given her a significance that is well beyond anything the Bible would countenance. But above all, at the current moment, Catholicism doesn’t appeal to me because of the man at the top: Pope Francis. In my answer, I did try to be respectful of my audience, but I could not help but observe that the present pope seems to be nothing more than a liberal Protestant in a white papal robe. ....

J. Gresham Machen, the Presbyterian controversialist who came to prominence in the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, argued that confessional Protestantism and Roman Catholicism were separated from liberal Christianity by, among other things, their commitment to supernaturalism. (Both agreed that the tomb was really empty on the third day.) In other words, the former were species of Christianity while the latter was a completely different religion. ....

Confessional, orthodox Protestants should take no satisfaction in Rome’s increasing resemblance to the old enemy of liberal Protestantism. Rome still has the money and institutional weight to make a difference in these great struggles over what it means to be human. If Rome equivocates and falls on these issues, the world will become colder and harsher for all of us. To quote Elrond, our list of allies grows thin. And Pope Francis is not reversing that process. (more)

Carl Trueman, "Why I Am Not Catholic," First Things, Dec. 12, 204.

Intellectual humility

The author of The Certainty Trap describes the problem:

...[T]he easiest way to recognize it is by how we feel when we’re in it. We know we’re in this trap when we demonize, dismiss, or otherwise view with contempt people who disagree—especially on heated issues. ...

Avoiding the trap means understanding that, when we judge as hateful or ignorant someone who sees the world differently, it’s because certainty has paved the way for us to do so.

To see how this can work, consider the claim that biology and gender are entirely distinct. Certainty on this point clears the path for the conclusion that saying “a trans-woman isn’t a woman” is transphobic. Similarly, certainty that inequality is caused by systemic racism, past and present, paves the way for the conclusion that questioning the role of systemic racism is itself racist. And certainty that, for instance, immigration is good for the economy makes possible the judgment that anyone who favors immigration restrictions is xenophobic.

To be sure, people holding any of the positions just mentioned may well be transphobic, racist, or xenophobic. For that matter, so might people who hold none of the opinions listed here. The problem is that certainty means other possible explanations are dismissed. ....

The Certainty Trap is made up of three fallacies.

The first is the Settled Question Fallacy. It refers to the way we treat our knowledge about the world as final, rather than provisional. It also describes our tendency to treat our preferred policy or decision as though it has no downsides, or at least none worth taking seriously.

The second is the Fallacy of Equal Knowledge. This is the assumption that, if we all had the same information, we’d agree on issues like abortion, Black Lives Matter, and immigration.

Finally, there’s the Fallacy of Known Intent. As the name implies, it means we’ve made an assumption about the other person’s motives. Avoiding each of these is required for avoiding the problem of certainty. ... (more)

Ilana Redstone, "Beware the Certainty Trap," Martin Center, Dec. 11, 2024.

Someone came to find us

Advent began this past weekend. Walter Russell Mead reflected on the meaning of Advent in "The Coming":

.... If there is no Christmas, there is no Cross, no answer to the problems of sin, separation, failure and pain. Advent is a time to think about what life would be like if we didn’t have faith in a Redeemer, a Savior who was ready, willing and able to complete the broken arc of our lives, forgive what is past and walk with us step by step to help us build something better in the time that is left.

Advent is a time to remember that we need something more than what we can summon with our own resources to make our lives work. It’s a time to remember how lost we would be if Someone hadn’t come to find us. .... The preparation for Christmas begins by reflecting on what kind of world this would be, and what kind of lives we would have, if Christmas had never come.

There are worse ways to start your preparation for Christmas than by using this prayer from the old Episcopal Church Book of Common Prayer:

ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.

The Coming | Via Meadia

Being a Christian means something definite

Jake Meador exited the church he grew up in at age seventeen, "angry and confused." Reading Sheldon Vanauken's A Severe Mercy helped him come back, not to that church, but to the faith.

...[T]he Vanaukens, both before and after their conversion, knew that being a Christian meant something definite—most of all it meant a definite affirmation of the resurrection of Christ. But other Christians across time would remind us as well that it meant a definite resolve to submit to Christ, no matter the consequences. This seriousness meant the materialistic "Christianity" I so often encountered as a child was best rendered in scare quotes and must be strictly distinguished from the real thing. More recently, it also strikes me that a seriousness about Christianity inherently excludes the sort of utilitarian or consequentialist reasoning so ascendant in our own unhappy day. Jesus did not attach conditions to our discipleship. He knew nothing of conditions under which hatred of enemies could be allowed, for instance. So neither should we. ....

Vanauken was seeing where a life of moral seriousness and quiet devotion to the good could lead one–and it enthralled him. More than that, it told him what he was meant for—not perfectly or completely because it was still lacking the ultimately necessary reality of Christ. But it showed him something true and real nonetheless.

These qualities, of course, aren't the essence of catholic Christianity—the essence, I think, is found in the Scriptures, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the decalogue, and the common practices of the Christian church, carried on down through the centuries. You can have a kind of seriousness without catholicity. But the package that Vanauken encountered at Oxford and that I encountered in Vanauken and which, though I didn't realize it at the time, permanently defined my intellectual trajectory, can't be had without catholic Christianity, I think, for the lofty thing we ultimately are meant for is Christ himself, of course, and we voyage toward him through a life of moral and intellectual seriousness and find in him the spaciousness that so captivated the Vanaukens. At one point they speak of realizing what precisely Eliot meant when he described the Christian life as one of "complete simplicity / costing not less than everything." What they learned from Eliot, I learned from them.

When I first opened A Severe Mercy nearly 20 years ago I had needed a vision of Christian faith that was unapologetically devoted to Christian doctrine without being materialistic, more American than Christian, and completely uprooted from history. .... (more)

Jake Meador, "Constructing Toward Catholicity," Mere Orthodoxy, Dec 2, 2024.

Pagan, or not?

I put out my Christmas wreath this weekend. I've known Christians who choose not to celebrate Christmas. Kevin DeYoung explains why at least some of the oft-cited reasons don't stand up. From "Is Christmas a Pagan Rip-off?":

We’ve heard it so many times that it’s practically part of the Christmas story itself.

The Romans celebrated their seven-day winter festival, Saturnalia, starting on December 17. It was a thoroughly pagan affair full of debauchery and the worship of the god Saturn. To mark the end of the winter solstice, the Roman emperor established December 25 as a feast to Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun). Wanting to make Christianity more palatable to the Romans and more popular with the people, the church co-opted these pagan festivals and put the celebration of the birth of their Savior on December 25. For whatever the Christmas holiday has become today, it started as a copycat of well-established pagan holidays. If you like Christmas, you have Saturnalia and Sol Invictus to thank.

That’s the story, and everyone from liberal Christians to conservative Christians to non-Christians seem to agree that it’s true.

Except that it isn’t. ....

...[T]here is good evidence that December 25 was not chosen because of any pagan winter holidays. This is the argument Andrew McGowan, of Yale Divinity School, makes in his article “How December 25 Became Christmas” (first published in Bible Review in 2002). Let me try to distill McGowan’s fine historical work by addressing three questions.

The three questions:

• When did Christians first start celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25?
• When was it first suggested that Christmas grew out of pagan origins?
• Why do we celebrate Christmas on December 25?

The answers.

Kevin DeYoung, "Is Christmas a Pagan Rip-off?," Gospel Coalition, December 15, 2020.

The miracle at Cana

From "And They Began to Be Merry" by Kevin Williamson:

Jesus’ first miracle isn’t about transmutation of beverages—it is about social anxiety. It is about shame. Some relations have not planned well for their wedding, and they are going to be embarrassed, and probably gossiped about, when they run out of wine to serve their guests. Shame related to such an occasion was a big deal in that world. This is, emphatically, not Jesus’ problem. But Jesus has a mother, and mothers of the kind He had have a good way of making things that aren’t our problem our problem, and so Jesus’ mother gives Him a nudge. Jesus is not obviously ready to be nudged, and replies: “Woman, what concern is this to us?” Mary, deploying a classic passive-aggressive maternal strategy, tells the servants: “Do whatever he tells you.” ....

And so Jesus launches the public part of His career on someone else’s schedule in order to spare some relatives embarrassment. ....

The miracle is that the Ruler of the Universe cared about such a little thing as the social anxieties of a bunch of nobodies in an obscure little corner of the world of no particular importance, and that He loved them the way a father loves his children—and what kind of father offers just enough at a time like that when he has, at his disposal, the very best? The best robe, the gold ring, the fatted calf, the wine that was better than any wine the local whatever-was-Hebrew-for-sommelier had ever tasted? The supernatural stuff is one thing, but consider the magnificence of that gesture, the sheer audacious style of it. I do not care if you are the most cynical atheist walking the Earth—it is impossible not to admire the panache. He bends reality into a new shape, makes the universe follow new rules, to help out a friend, and He does it cool—nobody even knows what happened except for the waiters. .... (more)

Kevin D. Williamson, "And They Began to Be Merry," The Dispatch, Nov. 28, 2024.

Marcionism

An ancient heresy returns again in support of political bigotry. From The Free Press:

.... Like a boil on the backside of the body politic, there has been an ugly irruption of Jew-hating foolishness over casting in the upcoming Netflix film Mary, about the life of Jesus’s mother. People are outraged—outraged!—that director D.J. Caruso cast an Israeli Jew, Noa Cohen, to play the title character. ....

...[E]very Christian knows from the Bible that Mary was a Jewish maiden visited by the Archangel Gabriel, who told her that, though a virgin, she would conceive by the Holy Spirit and bear Israel’s long-awaited messiah.

“Behold, the handmaid of the Lord,” she replied. “Be it done unto me according to thy word.” (Luke 1:38)

The Gospel of Matthew begins with a recitation of the long lineage of Jesus, to demonstrate that the Nazarene son of Mary descended from both Abraham and King David. This is not coincidence: It is necessary to establish Jesus’s messianic credentials according to the Hebrew Bible.

Of course Jews don’t accept this, but believe that the messiah is still to come. The point is simply that it is impossible to extricate Jesus and his mother from Judaism. ....

To deny the Jewishness of Jesus is not only to negate the clear and unambiguous testimony of Scripture but to render as nonsense the entire salvation narrative.

Indeed, as Jesus himself told the Samaritan woman, God sent salvation to all of humanity through the Jewish people. No Jews, no Jesus. Though from the Christian perspective, Jews today reject the divinity of Jesus, as did their ancestors—while from the Jewish perspective they have merely remained true to their covenant with God—followers of Jesus cannot reject the Jews without being guilty of a serious, even fatal, heresy.

That heresy is a very old one, and it is called Marcionism. Marcion was a wealthy second-century Christian who, under the influence of Gnosticism, taught that the God of the New Testament was not the God of the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew god was, according to Marcion, a god of wrath; the Christian god was a god of love. These are two distinct deities, he said, and the Christian god is sovereign. ....

Marcionism was strongly condemned by the Church fathers, who defended the legitimacy and necessity of the Hebrew scriptures. In Marcionism, Christianity replaces Judaism; in Christian orthodoxy, Christianity fulfills Judaism. “Don’t misunderstand why I have come—it isn’t to cancel the laws of Moses and the warnings of the prophets,” said Jesus (Matthew 5:17). “No, I came to fulfill them and to make them all come true.” ....

...[W]hat all authoritative Christian traditions share is an irrevocable, undeniable testimony that God chose the Jewish people to make Himself known to all of humanity, and that without Hebrew Scripture and tradition, the Christian faith would make no sense at all. .... (more)

Rod Dreher, "On Mary and the Mob," The Free Press, Dec. 1, 2024.

As Thanksgiving approaches

For food that stays our hunger,
For rest that brings us ease,
For homes where memories linger,
We give our thanks for these.

Assisted death

In the British Parliament:

MPs are due to vote next week on a private member’s bill to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales. MPs have been given a free vote, meaning individuals rather than parties will decide whether to back or reject the bill. (The Guardian)

Former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown has expressed opposition to the bill:

‘Assisted suicide is an emotive issue where I personally disagree with what is now becoming a majority position…I worry about legislation that requires a doctor whose role has always been to preserve and extend life, to administer death as the final act of a bureaucratic procedure and I worry too about the pressures to agree such a process that in a fit of depression people may choose a course they might later regret and I worry too if older people feel they have become a burden on their relatives and put themselves under pressure to end their life.’

Brown’s decisive intervention this weekend, in his monthly comment piece for the Guardian which opened movingly with the tragic death of his and his wife Sarah’s baby daughter, was carefully thought through. ‘The experience of sitting with a fatally ill baby girl did not convince me of the case for assisted dying; it convinced me of the value and imperative of good end-of-life care,’ he wrote, before going on to call for a commission on improving palliative care instead of a law change. .... (more)

James Macintyre, "Gordon Brown’s assisted dying intervention could be decisive," The Spectator, Nov. 23, 2024.

Nicaea

Philip Jenkins, always worth reading, on "The Nicene Myth," in which he argues that the Council of Nicaea wasn't the inflection point that many historical accounts suggest. Here he describes the council, but the essay is much longer (do read it all, if you have the time):

The story of Nicaea is quickly told. In 312, Constantine consolidated power in the Roman Empire and granted toleration to Christianity the following year. He accepted some leading Christians as his advisors on religious matters and felt the need to demonstrate his leadership of the larger church when it fell into crisis or division.

Such a situation developed in Alexandria, where the presbyter Arius argued that Christ the Son was not fully equal to God the Father. Because the Father was unique in being unbegotten, he must be different from the Son, who was begotten in time, and through whom the Father created the world: “There was a time when He [the Son] was not.” Just how directly these ideas stemmed from any one individual such as Arius is much disputed, but it is rhetorically useful to label any given teaching as the quirky sentiments of one lone individual, rather than a broad intellectual current. It should be noted, though, that Arius was actually not departing too far from views held by eminently respectable earlier thinkers.

Even so, as the Alexandrian church debated the issue, it was Arius personally who attracted the stigma for venturing on dangerous ground, and he was condemned. To resolve the spreading controversy, Constantine summoned a great council from the whole world, the oikou mene, which thus became the church’s first “ecumenical” council.

Between 250 and 300 bishops gathered at Nicaea, representing a minority of the 1,800 or so who then held that office; only five came from the Western church. Tensions ran high during the month or so of debate, and legend holds that Arius was publicly slapped by Bishop Nicholas of Myra—the historical original of Santa Claus. Ultimately, Arius was condemned, with only two bishops prepared to speak up for him. Christ’s full equality with the Father was proclaimed in a new creed, which declared him to be of the same substance, homoousion.

With their mission duly accomplished, the Fathers dispersed to their homes, and every one, we assume, lived orthodox-ly ever after.

That history seems straightforward, and far too much so for many tastes. Through the centuries, Nicaea has become a potent symbol of whatever later believers wished to find: it offers a splendid hook on which to hang whatever trends or facts need to be stigmatized. .... (more)

Jenkins on Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code should convince readers to never rely on thrillers for historical knowledge. Jenkins also addresses, and corrects, errors from other, more serious sources.

Philip Jenkins, "The Nicene Myth," Modern Age, Nov. 18, 2024.

Reading in Bed

Norman Rockwell 1920

Outside the bubble

I didn't vote for President this year but am interested in why things turned out the way they did. More 2024 election data from a graph I came across a few days ago based on exit polling, so it is preliminary given mail-in voting and probably other factors. Indicative, though:

Financial Times

The GOP margin increased for every group in these categories except white college women and voters over 65.

From David Brooks in The New York Times on "Why We Got It So Wrong":

Many of us are walking around with broken mental models. Many of us go through life with false assumptions about how the world works.

Where did we get our current models? Well, we get models from our experience, our peers, the educational system, the media and popular culture. Over the past few generations, a certain worldview that emphasizes racial, gender and ethnic identity has been prevalent in the circles where highly educated people congregate. ....

The crucial assertion of the identitarian mind-set is that all politics and all history can be seen through the lens of liberation movements. Society is divided between the privileged (straight white males) and the marginalized (pretty much everyone else). History and politics are the struggle between oppressors and oppressed groups.

In this model, people are seen as members of a group before they are seen as individuals. When Biden picked his running mate in 2020, he had promised to pick a woman, and when he picked his Supreme Court nominee in 2022, he had promised to pick a Black woman. In both cases her identity grouping came before her individual qualities.

In this model, society is seen as an agglomeration of different communities. Democrats thus produce separate agendas designed to mobilize Black men, women and so on. The goal of Democratic politics is to link all the oppressed and marginalized groups into one majority coalition. ....

This is the idea that a person’s ideas are primarily shaped not by individual preferences but by the experience of the group. It makes sense to say, “Speaking as a gay Hispanic man …” because a person’s thoughts are assumed to be dispatches from a communal experience. ....

It turns out a lot of people don’t behave like ambassadors from this or that group. They think for themselves in unexpected ways.

It turns out that many people don’t see politics and history through the paradigm of liberation movements. They are concerned with all kinds of issues that don’t fit into the good-versus-evil mind-set of oppressor versus oppressed.... (more)

David Brooks, "Why We Got it So Wrong," The New York Times, Nov. 14, 2024.

Voting against

I taught high school political science electives for over three decades. That didn't make me a political scientist. I am actually skeptical of the possibility of political "science." But I like analysis that seems to understand voter behavior. Today I read Yuval Levin on what the Presidential election results likely do not mean. Some excerpts:

The immediate aftermath of an election is a terrible time for political punditry. Everything the winner did looks brilliant, everything the loser did looks dumb, and even widely predicted results feel shocking when they actually materialize. There is no way to avoid these analytical vices, but maybe one way to minimize them is to think about what isn’t all that different or surprising about the outcome—and to trace out what the election doesn’t seem to mean. ....

Approaching this election from that angle first of all clarifies the continuity of our peculiar political era. The 2024 election was very much of a piece with our 21^st-century politics: It was a relatively narrow win owed almost entirely to negative polarization.

Preliminary exit polls reveal an electorate deeply unhappy with the status quo, just as in the last several elections. Voters were not so much excited about what Donald Trump was offering as they were upset at Joe Biden (and by extension Kamala Harris) for mishandling key public challenges, and above all the economy. ....

The exit polls suggest that family policy wasn’t high on voters’ minds in this election. Ukraine, one way or another, was not a priority either. The constituency for dispatching Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take fluoride out of our drinking water is non-existent. People around Trump—even in the more distant reaches of his camp—are all inclined to think they’ve won a mandate for their pet cause even though voters have no idea who they are or what they want, and likely wouldn’t be on board if they did. Most of what Trump himself is most eager to do, from mass deportations to steep tariffs, would likely prove fairly unpopular when actually put into practice.

This is the trap that our 21^st-century presidents have tended to fall into. They win elections because their opponents were unpopular, and then—imagining the public has endorsed their party activists’ agenda—they use the power of their office to make themselves unpopular. ....

It would therefore also be a mistake to imagine that this election victory is an endorsement of Donald Trump’s character and behavior. In the exit polls, just 43 percent of the electorate said Trump has the moral character to be president. Fifteen percent of his own voters said he didn’t. And 67 percent of voters blamed him for the violence at the Capitol after the last election. ....

Of course, seeing what this election does not mean should not take away from what it does mean. This win has put Trump at the peak of his power. Its achievement and reach should not be underestimated, and its implications for the future of American politics are quite significant. But a peak is followed by decline, and Trump’s win does not mean that he is the future of the right or of our politics. He will return to the White House as a 78-year-old lame duck, and he has not brought American politics out of its 21^st-century deadlock. That work will have to follow in his wake. (more, possibly behind a subscription wall)

Yuval Levin, "What Trump’s Win Doesn’t Mean," The Dispatch, Nov. 11, 2024.

November 11

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918 an armistice, ending combat between the armed forces of the Allied Powers and Imperial Germany. The day is observed variously as Armistice Day, Veterans Day, or Remembrance Day. It is a day to honor all veterans, living or dead. When I was in elementary school the class paused for a minute of silence at eleven o'clock.

When a Progressive is illiberal

When I studied American history in high school and college Woodrow Wilson was taught as one of the great Progressive Presidents. Opinions have changed. Blaska's blog pointed me to a review of a biography of Wilson. Quoting from that review:

The Wilson depicted by Mr. Cox didn’t simply hold conventional views on race and sex that later generations would find offensive. He was deeply committed to the doctrine of white racial superiority and had unyielding contempt for the intellectual abilities of women. He was also, according to this assiduously researched biography, inveterately dishonest, hopelessly pretentious, cruel to the women he professed to love, heartless in the face of human suffering, humorless except when doing bad imitations of Southern blacks, indifferent to constitutional constraints, and utterly third-rate as a thinker and scholar. His chief merits, in Mr. Cox’s account, were an ability to say just enough to assure interlocutors of his good intentions without committing himself to any course of action, and an ability to look and sound—as we would say—presidential. ....

Wilson took a dim view of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Throughout his life he preferred Britain’s parliamentary system, in which the party in power does what it wants with few restraints, to America’s system of checks and balances. In 1911, as the governor of New Jersey, Wilson delivered a speech in which he asserted that the opening phrases of the Declaration—that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”—were mere rhetorical flourishes, not to be taken seriously. ....

At the president’s April 1913 cabinet meeting, Postmaster General Albert Burleson suggested that the time had come to introduce segregation “in all Departments of the Government.” This, Burleson said, would be “best for the negro.” The president agreed, and soon restrooms and dining halls throughout Washington were labeled “white” and “colored”; black officials at Treasury and elsewhere—appointed by Wilson’s Republican predecessor, William Howard Taft—found themselves demoted or their positions eliminated. ....

That Wilson has largely escaped vilification by liberal historians is no doubt a consequence of the Progressive-era reforms accomplished during his eight years in office (1913-21): the creation of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Trade Commission; the passage of the income tax and child-labor laws. Wilson’s leading role in the founding of the League of Nations during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919-20 has earned him the approbation of liberal internationalists and other advocates of transnational governance.

The usually unstated view seems to be that Wilson’s white supremacy and disdain for women were departures from his progressive outlook. ....

Was there a contradiction, though? At the core of progressivism, both in its original form and in the present day, is the belief that most people lack the wisdom to govern themselves and require a class of educated elites to organize society according to a shifting set of ideals. Wilson’s warped ideas on race and sex weren’t departures from progressivism but variant expressions of it. .... (more)

From Birth of a Nation, a film that gloried the KKK, and that Wilson had shown in the White House

 Barton Swaim, "Woodrow Wilson Review: Liberty Limited," The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 8, 2024.

Read "The Lord of the Rings"

Five Books recommends reading Tolkien because the books are a different experience than the films:

These are stories of adventure that have the epic feel that the movies capture, but against a backdrop of conviviality and the pleasures of eating, drinking and telling stories by the fireside as you gather with your companions. Notably, the books are filled with poems that are composed and told by the main characters and pay homage to an oral storytelling tradition that has largely disappeared from our culture but Tolkien clearly admired.

The Hobbit is the recommended first read. I have known people who could not get through it and consequently went no further. I did read it first and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Hobbit introduces the creature known as a hobbit, about half the height of a human, beardless, and with hairy feet. In particular, the book introduces the figure of Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit in his 50s who enjoys eating, smoking his pipe and taking it easy, and who is very emphatically NOT in search of an adventure. Unfortunately, a visit from Gandalf, a wizard, and 13 dwarves changes all that. Mr Baggins is dragged off from his comfortable home on a quest to recover a treasure.

The Hobbit is fun and light-hearted but has a slightly two-dimensional feel—featuring elves, goblins and dragons: creatures you might expect in a magical story for kids. It does not yet have the epic and ‘real’ feel of The Lord of the Rings. However, it’s in The Hobbit that a magical ring first makes its appearance, as does the creature who is obsessed with it—called Gollum because of the strange noise he makes in his throat when he talks. It’s clear that the ring’s power and the role it would play in the narrative of The Lord of the Rings had yet to take shape in Tolkien’s mind.

Continue "Lord of the Rings Books in Order" here. If you have read the books there are no surprises. But the descriptions may intrigue those who haven't without giving too much away.

"Lord of the Rings Books in Order," Best Books for Kids, Nov. 2, 2024.

All Saints

From a few years ago, a few thoughts about the significance of All Saints' Day:

For over a thousand years, many Christians have celebrated November 1 as All Saints’ Day. In America, the day is best known for the preceding day: All Hallows’ Eve or Halloween. On Halloween we try to scare each other and dress up as what we are not. On All Saints’ Day, we encourage each other by remembering who we are. ....

Like any holiday, All Saints’ Day means various things to various people. Holidays are like that. They carry many meanings. As I see it, All Saints’ Day has three themes: (1) the union of all Christians, living and dead, in one organism, the body of Christ, (2) the inspiring example of other Christians, especially those who have died, and (3) remembering those who are no longer physically with us. ....

For me, there are two essentials for worship on All Saints’: the collect (or opening prayer) for All Saints’ Day and singing six or more stanzas (to Ralph Vaughn Williams’s tune) of William How’s hymn “For All the Saints.” ....

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

.... All Saints’ Day is a day when we remember that we are by God’s grace one body in Christ Jesus, united with Christians around the world and in heaven in praising and serving God. .... (more)

David Bains, "All Saints’ Day: Three Themes," Samford University, Oct. 28, 2020.

The great cloud of witnesses

October 31st is Reformation Day and the day following is All Saints' Day: 

Reformation Day is the anniversary of Martin Luther's challenge to debate his 95 theses—not the beginning of the Reformation but an important point in it. Halloween is All Hallows Eve, the evening before All Saints’ Day. Days were thought of as evening to evening so the eve was the beginning of the next day—think New Year’s Eve or Christmas Eve. Although today most approach it as a secular holiday that wasn’t its origin and for Protestants, all believers are “saints” and All Saints’ Day is when we acknowledge “the great cloud of witnesses” who have passed on. So on Halloween, we can celebrate both the Protestant Reformation and all those believers who have gone before.

Therefore being justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:
By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand,
and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Romans 5:1-2 [KJV]

The sky is falling

I would describe myself as a philosophical pessimist, but a temperamental optimist. As the election approaches an argument against despair:

Some Americans will wake up next Wednesday in despair. Half the country—or at least a sizable part of the losing half—will feel that all is lost, every ounce of their hope and hard work has been wasted. The candidates themselves trade on these themes. ....

Both sides are treating this election as a potential apocalypse. Everything is on the line. The party is over for good if the wrong party wins. But is it? Is the American experiment really so close to the edge?

Not from where I’m sitting. If you zoom out—and I mean way out—things are going pretty well in the land of the free and the home of the brave. We are on the cusp of our 250th birthday. We still have our republican form of government, our Constitution and Bill of Rights, despite some close calls. Roughly 2% of the population lost their lives in the Civil War—the equivalent of 6.5 million people today. In the 20th century we made it through two world wars, a great depression, the assassination of two presidents and the resignation of another, the trauma of Vietnam and the fall of communism. Even after all that we stood tall as the world’s sole superpower.

Sept. 11, 2001, didn’t kill us. Neither did the housing collapse nor the financial crisis. We beat Covid. We even survived the ugly Trump administration and its uglier backlash. ....

Something about how our Founders went about their work has set us up for centuries of success, and the end isn’t remotely in sight. There’s life left in Lady Liberty, plenty of it. The United States of America is still the last best hope on earth.

All the evidence you need is piling up at the southern border. People from everywhere risk everything to get here—to work, to raise their children, to make a future. China doesn’t have this problem.

If you’re a candidate for high office, there may be some political value in running around with your hair on fire, shouting like a street preacher about the end of democracy and the loss of the country. The stakes are highest during the waning days of a losing campaign. But don’t fall for it. The pendulum always swings. All is never lost. .... (more)

Matthew Hennessey, "The Election Will End. The World Won’t," The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 30, 2024.

Conservatism in the wilderness

In a recent Facebook comment I indicated that I was a conservative, and consequently most often voted for Republican candidates. I'm not planning to vote for President this year—neither candidate promises to deal with the most pressing problems endangering the Republic. Neither do I have any confidence in their character or competence. Charles C.W. Cooke is dispirited by the prospects of the next four years, whichever candidate wins the Presidency, but he is less pessimistic over the long term:

For a conservative classical liberal such as myself, this election season has been alarming and grotesque, and I am convinced that, one way or another, we are destined to pay a price for it. But I do not worry about conservatism in the longer term, because I believe that the central insights of conservatism are correct. Human nature is immutable. The world is a dangerous place. Ambition must be channeled productively. We cannot spend more than we make. There are no solutions, only settlements. Equality under the law is superior to the alternatives. Practice is a better indicator of success than theory. Power corrupts less when it is shared between competing institutions. Government ought to be as close to the people as possible. That which cannot go on forever will stop. From time to time we take a vacation from these truths, but a vacation is all it can be, for, eventually, reality will kick in — yes, even in Washington, D.C. (more)

Charles C.W. Cooke, "Will Conservatism Recover?," National Review, Oct. 24, 2024.

When things fall apart

Every Sunday at The Free Press Douglas Murray writes about "Things Worth Remembering." This Sunday his choice is from T.S. Eliot's play, Murder in the Cathedral:

.... In the time between its first staging, in 1935, and the completion of The Waste Land in 1922, Eliot had recovered somewhat from the fragmented mindset that had defined his early work—though he would spend the rest of his life periodically confronting despair. His personal revival was in large part, or perhaps entirely, due to a personal religious revival. He converted to Anglican Christianity in 1927.

Murder in the Cathedral is shot through with the struggle against hopelessness. It is a dramatization of the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, who was the archbishop of Canterbury in the twelfth century. History tells us that he clashed with England’s reigning king, Henry II, as church and state so often do. Many suspect that it was at the orders of the monarch that Becket was assassinated in 1170—in Canterbury Cathedral. ....

Murder in the Cathedral has lines as memorable as the most memorable lines of his poetry. The soon-to-be martyred Becket receives this warning, for instance, from a narrator, known as one of the Tempters, who come along to test him:

The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

These lines require some thinking about.

But there is one passage from Murder in the Cathedral that I often think about, and sometimes say to myself. It is spoken by Becket, in a meeting with another of his Tempters. And although it may seem bleak, it is, to my mind, somewhat consoling:

We do not know very much of the future
Except that from generation to generation
The same things happen again and again.
Men learn little from others’ experience.
But in the life of one man, never
The same time returns. Sever
the cord, shed the scale. Only
The fool, fixed in his folly, may think
He can turn the wheel on which he turns.

We always live in tumultuous times. That seems to me to be the nature of things. As Eliot’s fellow convert, C.S. Lewis, said—in another speech I have quoted in this series—even the historical eras that seem most placid turn out, on closer inspection, to have been filled with alarms and crises. .... (more)

Douglas Murray, "Things Worth Remembering: T.S. Eliot Put His World Back Together Again," The Free Press, Oct. 27, 2024.