Disruption

I taught in public high schools for almost forty years. I didn't have serious discipline problems in the classroom. When I introduced myself to a new class of 9^th grade US History students, I would tell them something like, "You've been in school for eight or nine years. You know the behavior teachers expect. If you misbehave, I'll assume you're doing it on purpose." I had very few behavior issues. I retired twenty years ago. I wonder whether that would work today. From "How Public Disorder Starts":

[Schools] are the institutions where we teach the next generation how shared spaces work.

Schools confront the dilemma of inclusion every day to a degree outsiders may not fully appreciate. They are less visible than churches and other spaces; you cannot wander into a school uninvited. Yet inside those walls, maintaining order has become increasingly difficult. Inappropriate student behavior has long been a chronic challenge in American schools, but many teachers report the problem has grown more acute in the years since the pandemic disrupted schooling and children’s social development. The RAND American Teacher Survey, for example, finds that teachers report increased classroom disruption and student misbehavior, with managing student behavior ranking among their top sources of job-related stress.

Disorder doesn’t arrive in schools as a single incident. It spreads gradually, and behaviors once considered unacceptable become tolerated, then normalized. Eventually, the culture of the school bends around accommodating disruption. When that happens, learning becomes secondary to managing chaos. Reflecting on my own experience teaching in a low-performing South Bronx elementary school in my book, How the Other Half Learns, I wrote:

A single disruptive child can bring a classroom to a halt. Put three or four such children in a single room and even minor misbehaviors can have a cascading effect, bleeding away a teacher’s time and attention and student learning. When multiple children with serious behavior problems share a classroom, a level of disorder can ensue that tests the patience and skill of all but the most gifted teachers. When those behaviors become common across classes and grades, an entire school soon groans under its weight.

This is not a mere philosophical concern. Surveys consistently rank student behavior issues among the leading reasons teachers leave the profession. Predictable consequences ensue: Teacher turnover destabilizes schools, instructional continuity disappears, and new teachers arrive unprepared for the conditions they encounter, with many leaving as quickly as they came. Over time, the institution itself begins to falter and fail to serve its primary purpose: educating children. Faced with these pressures, many schools have responded not by reasserting norms of order and academic purpose but by subtly redefining their mission. ....

Again from How the Other Half Learns:

When a school or teacher fails to engage or manage disruptive behavior, children are cheated. But who, exactly? The disruptive child who is suspended and excluded from class? Or the diligent student whose education bleeds away hour after hour, while her teacher responds to antisocial outbursts, or focuses on her classmate to prevent them? The weight of education policy and practice, as enshrined in impulse, empathy, and the law, comes down on the side of the disruptive child.

Schools occupy a unique place in this debate because they do more than simply reflect social norms—they help create them. Public transit works only when riders respect basic rules of conduct. Courts function only when citizens accept procedures and verdicts. Workplaces operate only when adults can tolerate standards and correction. Where do those habits come from? School. .... (more)

Robert Pondiscio, "How Public Disorder Starts," The Dispatch, March 26, 2026.

"Losing ourselves altogether"

From "The Philosophers and Churchmen Who Fell for Fascism." This is a lesson for any believer who comes to prioritize political commitment above first things:

“Everything begins as a mystique and ends as a politique,” [Charles] Péguy wrote. By “mystique” he meant the transcendent commitment to a certain ideal. One enters into public life inspired by notions of justice, liberty, fairness, and right, but in the actual action of politics, one faces repeated temptations to compromise, to put victory above truth and virtue. The great danger is that this process can be imperceptible to the person undergoing it. “An action begun as a mystique continues in politics, and we do not notice that we are crossing the dividing line. Politics devour the mystique and we fail to jump out.” Without knowing it, we make little choices to compromise on telling the truth, or to use underhanded means to achieve our ends, or to slander our opponents. As time goes on, the compromises get deeper and deeper, and we risk losing ourselves altogether.

It is possible, however, to jump off this terrible train at any point. Maritain did it. Péguy wrote that a person with his or her heart in the right place can discern, finally, where the dividing point is that separates support for one’s ideals and the embrace of the brute political power struggle. If a person chooses to jump out, he will be called a traitor by his political compatriots. But for those who stay on board the train of moral compromise, Péguy had harsh words: “The real traitor, in the full sense of the word, in the strong sense of the word, is the man who sells his faith, who sells his soul and gives himself up, loses his soul, betrays his principles, his ideal, his very being, who betrays his mystique and enters into its corresponding politique.”

Nathan Beacom, "The Philosophers and Churchmen Who Fell for Fascism," The Dispatch, March 23, 2026.

"Why do you hide your face from me?"

From "The World Needs to Recover True Lament. Christianity Can Teach It"

In the psalms, lament is a structured form of prayer that follows a discernible pattern: crying out to God, complaining, requesting, remembering God’s works, and—perhaps most surprisingly—often ending in praise of God. And for much of contemporary American Christianity, which we know best and have been studying for years, it has quietly disappeared. ....

...[O]nly about 4 percent of contemporary Protestant Christian worship songs reflect the kind of lament modeled in the psalms, despite the fact that nearly 40 percent of the biblical Psalter consists of laments. The hymnal of Israel was saturated with honest complaint. Ours largely is not. At some point—and this has been well-documented by theologians like Soong-Chan Rah, Todd Billings, and Walter Brueggemann—much of American Christianity internalized a triumphalist posture toward suffering: one that emphasized victory, gratitude, and praise, and grew increasingly uncomfortable with the raw petition and protest that fill the psalms. ...

When churches ask suffering people to outwardly project trust rather than speak truth, they are asking a particular kind of thing from a particular kind of person: the person for whom Sunday morning is often the loneliest hour of the week. The cancer patient. The grieving parent. The one whose life has come apart. Even if unintentionally, they are often the ones being asked to manage their presentation, to signal resilience, to express gratitude before they have had space to grieve. When we silence the pain of our most vulnerable members, we are telling them that their full reality does not belong in the community of faith. ....

The psalmists knew the value of inconvenient honesty. The two fundamental questions of lament, as musician and author Michael Card has written, are “God, where are you?” and “God, if you love me, then why?” Jesus prayed a lament psalm (Psalm 22) from the cross, crying “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” These are not questions the psalms treat as spiritually dangerous. They are questions that Scripture itself models—and models prolifically. Lament is not the opposite of faith. It is one of its most ancient expressions. To deprive suffering people of this practice is to withhold from them a resource that Scripture provides precisely for moments like theirs. ....

There is a difference between complaining to God and complaining about God. The psalms of lament do the former. They bring honest anguish, protest, even anger—directly into the presence of God. This is not the same as griping about God to others. The counterintuitive truth is that complaining to God can be an act of faith: It demonstrates that you still believe God is present, that God hears, that the relationship can bear the weight of honest expression.

This is what lament does. It does not offer an explanation for suffering. It does not promise that circumstances will change. It offers something more basic: a structure for telling the truth about pain in the presence of a God who, the psalms insist, does not despise or ignore the cry of the afflicted. .... (more)

"The World Needs to Recover True Lament. Christianity Can Teach It," The Dispatch, March 22, 2026.

An Evangelical?

I usually describe my theological position as "orthodox" rather than evangelical partly because of the political associations the latter now has. Evangelical was a category of Christian theology, not a political label. Orthodox (lower case "o") to me means being able to honestly and sincerely say the Apostles Creed without crossing my fingers, but, if the description below is the understanding of evangelical, I am one. From "The Real Difference Between Evangelicals and Liberal Protestants":

Some historians have wrongly suggested that evangelicals should be defined by their political or cultural orientation. Other historians (myself included) have used the Bebbington quadrilateral to define evangelicals. As David Bebbington has argued for the past 35 years, evangelicals are Protestant Christians who believe in the supreme authority of the Bible, salvation through the atoning work of Jesus on the cross, the necessity of a born-again conversion, and a Christian life that is characterized by activism, including evangelism. Those four points have characterized evangelicals in both Britain and America for the past 300 years, Bebbington argues.

I agree with the Bebbington quadrilateral, but I think there may be a simpler way to explain evangelical belief to those who find evangelicalism puzzling.

Here’s my definition: Evangelicals are Protestant Christians who believe that the fundamental human problem is individual sin and the fundamental human need is individual justification or reconciliation with God.

So, the test of whether a Protestant Christian is an evangelical is to ask whether they agree with these two statements:

1. The primary human problem is individual sin.
2. The greatest need that each person has is to be saved from sin through faith in Christ.

If a Protestant Christian agrees with those two statements, they’re probably an evangelical. If they disagree, they may be a mainline or liberal Protestant or some other variety of Christian, but they are not likely to fit into evangelicalism, even if they might use the term “evangelical” to describe themselves. (more, including his definition of liberal Protestantism)

Daniel K. Williams, "The Real Difference Between Evangelicals and Liberal Protestants," The Dispatch, March 15, 2026.

The Facebook deputy and the Twitter sheriff

I often foolishly read comments that I know will annoy me. I almost always refrain from commenting myself. About online behavior:

Like you, I’ve been watching friends and acquaintances go after one another online with the same recycled takes on the latest predictable—or conveniently manufactured—controversy. Each current event becomes a referendum on national decline. Any headline can morph into amateur constitutional law. Takes on DEI, foreign policy, vaccines—nothing is too complex to be resolved in 280 characters, preferably accompanied by moral urgency and a link to a partisan source no one will read.

The cynic in me asks: Who appointed you? Who authorized you—doomscroller, catechized by cable news—to determine when immigration becomes immoral, how election security is assessed, which historical narratives deserve canonization, or which media outlets are to be labeled heretical? What, exactly, qualifies someone for this level of cultural adjudication?

One possible answer: Dwight K. Schrute.

Rainn Wilson’s portrayal of Dwight on The Office is brilliant precisely because Dwight is so convinced of his own authority—and so oblivious to its absence. ....

But here’s the uncomfortable possibility: what if we’re more like Dwight than we think? What if we’re not in on the joke—but are instead unwittingly the punchline?

To be clear, many issues matter deeply. Addressing them is not the problem. It may be morally necessary. The problem is something closer to the Dunning–Kruger effect: low ability overestimating itself; armored with confidence, baptized in moral language, and amplified by platforms that reward certainty and drama rather than wisdom. What we are witnessing in public is not merely division but deformation—of judgment, discourse, and the virtues required for social cohesion.

This is the rise of the Facebook deputy and the Twitter sheriff: self-nominated authorities armed with fragments of information and an audience just large enough to feel consequential. ....

It may offend modern sensibilities to say this, but it remains true: not all opinions are created equal. People share equal dignity, but public judgments are not equally credible. If everyone is an expert, no one is. We can be sincere and yet wrong. Passionate and ignorant. Some speak because they have something to say; others speak because they simply have to say something. .... (more)

The whole essay is an enjoyable (to me anyway) and instructive read.

Justin D. Detmers, "We Are All Dwight Schrute Now: The Rise of the Facebook Deputy," Mere Orthodoxy, March 9, 2026.

What about evolution?

A recent article at Mere Orthodoxy describes the results of a "Pew Religious Landscape Survey" on American beliefs about evolution. The choices offered were:

1. Humans have evolved over time due to processes such as natural selection; God or a higher power had no role in this process. (“pure evolution”).
2. Humans have evolved over time due to processes that were guided or allowed by God or a higher power. (“intelligent design”).
3. Humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time. (“creationist view”).

Breaking it down:

The article, "What to Learn from the Decline of Young Earth Creationism" intends to be read as analysis rather than advocacy. But it does advocate tolerance among Christians of varying views:

It seems that a central argument of some young-earth creationists is this: “If you deviate from the panoply of interpretations we offer on Genesis 1-11, it is because you are succumbing to secularism and downgrading the authority of the Bible.” But, as soon as you find Christians who deviate from their interpretation, but have demonstrably not been animated by secular science nor have abandoned their high view of Scripture’s authority or the historicity of the miraculous…then the argument starts to fall apart. If young-earth creationists want to regain ground on this issue with the wider culture, it might, paradoxically, come from being more open-minded towards other Christians who disagree with them.

When Copernicus and Galileo strove to demonstrate that the earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around, the church was able to provide sophisticated (if not convoluted) Biblical and naturalistic arguments to refute the claim. But they were wrong. And, in time, the Church realized this and adopted heliocentrism. This wasn’t a concession that science had more authority than God's Word, but an admission that they had simply interpreted the Bible incorrectly.

This realization did not diminish what God’s Word told us about the rising and setting of the sun or the foundations upon which the earth rested, but it moved us closer to seeing what the author originally intended when he used those word pictures. Similarly, if we approach Genesis 1 assuming that its primary function is to refute figures like Darwin, we will miss the meat and marrow of what the Divine Author intended for us to receive from His Word and therefore may fundamentally misunderstand His world. (more)

Marc Sims, "What to Learn from the Decline of Young Earth Creationism," Mere Orthodoxy, March 6, 2026.

The loud and troublesome insects of the hour

This post from some time ago has recently reappeared in the "popular posts" section of this blog. I appreciate the reminder, especially in times like these.

From Farnsworth's Classical English Metaphor: Edmund Burke in 1790.

Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number, or that, after all, they are other than the little, shriveled, meager, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.

Gateway to history

I have commented before about historical novels I have enjoyed. I dislike those that take liberties with what is actually known about real people and events, but the good ones don't. The Telegraph presents a selection of "The 20 greatest war novels." The writer, himself an author of historical fiction, introduces his choices with reference to one of my favorite historical novelists:

As a boy, I devoured the historically accurate and side-splittingly funny Harry Flashman novels by George MacDonald Fraser, which track the disgraceful adventures of the notorious Victorian soldier-cad as he skulks and whores his way through the major conflicts of the 19th century. They stayed with me. And so shortly before writing my first novel, Zulu Hart, set during the Anglo-Zulu conflict of 1879, I interviewed Fraser. “Do you ever manipulate historical facts to suit your plot?” I asked.

“I try not to,” he replied. “The trick with real historical figures is to be honest and stay true to their spirit.” One of the few times he broke his rule was not being “quite fair” to Otto von Bismarck, the architect of German unification, in Royal Flash, the second of the Flashman series. “But he was such a swine anyway,” explained Fraser, “that I figured that was all right.”

To me, a good war novel should do exactly this: remain faithful to history while taking canny artistic licence to create convincing characters. It should rattle along at a decent pace and contain universal truths, jeopardy (no outcome is inevitable), and act as a gateway for readers to explore “proper” history. ....

Most of the twenty fictions are more serious than this one, but Fraser's ability to entertain made learning history fun:

Flashman (1966) by George MacDonald Fraser

Presented as the discovery of the long-lost Flashman Papers (a literary device that even deceived some American academics at the time), this hilarious, superbly researched book chronicles the army career of the notorious bully from Thomas Hughes’s popular Victorian novel Tom Brown’s School Days. Expelled from Rugby School for drunkenness, young Harry Flashman joins the infamous Lord Cardigan’s 11th Hussars and later becomes a reluctant secret agent in Afghanistan. Somehow our cowardly anti-hero emerges from the disastrous Retreat from Kabul with his skin intact, his reputation enhanced and his eye for the ladies unimpaired.

Saul David, "The 20 greatest war novels," The Telegraph, Feb. 28, 2026.

"That'll be the day..."

Re-posted:

Philip Jenkins on why we are certain March 1 was the day the patron saint of Wales died and why "death days" were so important:

St David's, Pembrokeshire, Wales

March 1 is the feast of David, the early medieval bishop and missionary who became patron saint of Wales. We actually know strikingly little of David apart from that date, of March 1, but I’m going to suggest that represents a good deal in its own right. .... 

A death about 590 is a reasonable guess, but we could easily slip fifty years either way. Oddly though, we can be sure that he died on March 1, whether in (say) 532 or 632 AD. Through the Middle Ages, hagiography was a vast area of cultural effort, when almost any outrageous achievements could be credited to a saint. (No, David did not really make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he was ordained by the Patriarch). The one thing that we know these writers did keep faithfully was the death day — the date not the year — because that marked the hero’s ascension to glory, the promotion to heaven. In a particular church or community, those days were critical, as marking the annual celebration of the beloved local saint.

Argue as much as you like, then, about precise years, achievements, martyrdoms and areas of activity, about the number of lepers cured and tyrants opposed — but don’t quarrel with death days.

Death days.

It’s an interesting term. I know my birthday. I also know that at some future point I will die, and that that will befall on a particular date. Let me be optimistic and assume that it will be a distant event, say on July 23, 2049. Each year, then, I pass through July 23 happily unaware that I am marking my Death Day, surely as significant a milestone as my birthday, but not one I can ever know with certainty until it occurs. Nor is it something we really ever contemplate, as we all know, in our hearts, that we are immortal.

I suppose though that it is something we can learn from those medieval monks, that the Death Day is not just a key event in anyone’s life, but literally the only one we can take with absolute confidence.

THAT’LL BE THE DAY THAT I DIE