Legislating morality

Kevin DeYoung has been thinking about when the government should legislate morality and in "Abortion and the Duty to Legislate Some Morality" argues that there are times when it definitely should:

.... Everyone, except anarchists, wants the government to legislate some morality, and everyone, except full blown recontructionists, want the government to stay out of some issues. For example I want the government to prohibit stealing but I don't want the government to prohibit the worship of Shiva, even though I think both are grave sins.

But what about abortion...? Is it enough that no one is forced to have an abortion ("Don't like abortion? Don't have one.")? Is abortion a personal issue that involves freedom over one's body? Do the difficult emotional, financial, and psychological situations that pregnant women sometimes find themselves in necessitate that abortion be at least an option, though not an ideal one?

These are common questions but not really germane to the issue. The question is not whether a woman has a right to choose what do with her body or whether a woman might suffer greatly if she brings the child to term. The question is whether "the unborn entity, from the moment of conception, is a full-fledged member of the human community", to quote Francis Beckwith. If the fetus is a human person, then abortion is prima facie morally wrong, and a moral wrong that ought to prohibited by the state. If the fetus is not a member of the human community, then we can debate whether the mother can terminate the pregnancy or not. ..... We don't talk about a man's right to choose to shoot his wife, or the right of a parent to suffocate her 4 year old, or the right of a 55 year old to push his aging mother in front of a car. These are not rights because in each case an innocent human person is being killed. If the fetus is a human person, then how can abortion be a right? ....

.... My wife and I had our 20 week ultrasound last week for our fourth child. We had an earlier ultrasound around 12 weeks because we feared a miscarriage. At both ultrasounds, and every other one we've had with our other three children, we've seen a little child rolling around, kicking its legs, moving its head, bending its arms. We've seen the baby's spine, 10 fingers and 10 toes, and a little heart racing. If my wife went into preterm labor right now (heaven forbid), our doctors and hospital would do everything to save the life of our child. And if the child died (heaven forbid), the nurses and doctors and staff would mourn with us, and no one would think such a loss to be a small grief.

And yet, many Americans, and not a few professing Christians, would think nothing of ending this child's life on their own. And still others would think it a travesty not to have the "right" to do so. ....

Either the unborn child is a human person or not. And if the fetus is a human person, then it is has a right to live whether we want it to or not. Which brings me to the main point: the government has no greater responsibility than protecting the lives of those who do not deserve to die. .... [more]

DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed: Abortion and the Duty to Legislate Some Morality

"This nation, under God...."

Today is the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.

Although most Americans revere him as our greatest President, he remains controversial in some quarters. In the midst of civil war, he suspended habeas corpus, had arrested individuals considered seditious, and did what he thought necessary to win. He would have agreed that "the Constitution is not a suicide pact." In fact, he did these things precisely because they were necessary to ensure that this nation might "have a new birth of freedom."

At City Journal, Michael Knox Beran considers "Lincoln and the Moral Imagination", comparing Lincoln to Bismarck as statesmen and concluding that the differences are significant. Both men used force to accomplish their ends, but the purposes served were very different.

.... Lincoln believed that if the United States were broken up by internal dissension, the result would be a setback for the cause of free democratic government from which it might not soon recover. The question, he said, was

whether a constitutional republic, or a democracy—a government of the people, by the same people—can, or cannot, maintain its territorial integrity, . . . whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration, according to organic law, . . . [can] break up their Government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon earth. . . . When ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be no successful appeal, back to bullets; . . . there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections.

Lincoln’s point was that if you can opt out of a democracy whenever you lose an election, democracy will never work. The moral case for the Union was even stronger, he believed, given that those who were trying to break out were doing so not because their liberties had been violated, but because they insisted on a perpetual right to take slaves out of their own states and into the national territory. .... [more]

At the Weekly Standard, Edwin M. Yoder, Jr. celebrates "Lincoln the Rhetor: As he saved the Union, he savoured the English language."

.... That Lincoln wrote splendidly is hardly news to anyone. He was so persuasive when putting pen to paper that he outclassed all other noted public rhetors in our past—even Jefferson, even Madison, even Hamilton.

The ultimate proof lies in his two great inaugural addresses, and to my taste, the subtle letters he dispatched to military commanders obsessed with their own importance and foolishly blind to his.

Who can forget his laconic note to Gen. George McClellan when, in October 1862, the dilatory Union commander complained that his horses were too few and too tired?

I have just read your dispatch about sore-tongued and fatigued horses. Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigues anything?

And this, a few months later, to McClellan's overconfident successor, General Hooker?

I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the government need a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success and I will risk the dictatorship.

(Hooker is mainly remembered today as the boastful general who was utterly routed by Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville a few months later.)

Yoder compares language suggested for Lincoln's First Inaugural Address by Seward with Lincoln's final version. The substance is essentially the same, but ....

Seward, who was no slouch as a writer himself, proposed:

I close. We are not and must not be aliens or enemies. .  .  . Although passion has strained our bonds of affection too hardly I am sure they will not be broken. The mystic chords which proceeding from so many battle fields and so many patriot graves pass[ing] through all the hearths in this broad continent of ours will yet again harmonize in their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angel of the nation.

Lincoln's burnished an immortal version:

I am loth to close. We are not enemies but friends—we must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

As Lincoln uttered these words the slave states were already seceding and the preservation of the Union was in doubt. Four years later, after enormous sacrifice and bloodshed, as the war approached its end with the unity of the Republic preserved, he said:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

At Between Two Worlds Justin Taylor provides an interesting and informative annotated list of the Lincoln books in his library.

Lincoln and the Moral Imagination by Michael Knox Beran, City Journal 11 February 2009, Lincoln the Rhetor, Between Two Worlds: Reading on Lincoln

Too Christian

There are those who doubt the exclusion of Christianity from the public square. Their doubt has to be willful—at least with respect to academia:

Wiley-Blackwell, a major academic press, was set to release its four-volume Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization this month. According to the encyclopedia’s editor, George Thomas Kurian, the set had been copy-edited, fact-checked, proofread, publisher-approved, printed, bound, and formally launched (to high praise) at the recent American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature conference. But protests from a small group of scholars associated with the project have led the press to postpone publication, recall all copies already distributed, and destroy the existing print run. The scholars’ complaint? The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, they have reportedly argued, is “too Christian.” “They also object to historical references to the persecution and massacres of Christians by Muslims,” Kurian says, “but at the same time want references favorable to Islam.” ....

The memo also claims that the “words or passages [the critics] want deleted” include “Antichrist,” “BC/AD (as chronological markers),” “Virgin Birth,” “Resurrection,” and “Evangelism.” “To make the treatment ‘more balanced,’” the memo says, the critics “also want the insertion of material denigrating Christianity in some form or fashion.” .... [more]

‘Too Christian’ for Academia? by Edward Feser on National Review Online

"Hard-wired" for faith?

Long ago, St. Augustine said of God, "You have made us for yourself and our heart is restless until it rests in you." Later, Pascal argued:

What is it then that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself. [Pensees]

Now science seems to affirm that there is a "natural inclination" to believe in God, although the researchers hardly attribute it to His actual existence. From New Scientist, "Born believers: How your brain creates God":

.... It turns out that human beings have a natural inclination for religious belief, especially during hard times. Our brains effortlessly conjure up an imaginary world of spirits, gods and monsters, and the more insecure we feel, the harder it is to resist the pull of this supernatural world. It seems that our minds are finely tuned to believe in gods.

Religious ideas are common to all cultures: like language and music, they seem to be part of what it is to be human. ....

"There's now a lot of evidence that some of the foundations for our religious beliefs are hard-wired," says Bloom.

Much of that evidence comes from experiments carried out on children, who are seen as revealing a "default state" of the mind that persists, albeit in modified form, into adulthood. "Children the world over have a strong natural receptivity to believing in gods because of the way their minds work, and this early developing receptivity continues to anchor our intuitive thinking throughout life," says anthropologist Justin Barrett of the University of Oxford. ....

Based on these and other experiments, Bering considers a belief in some form of life apart from that experienced in the body to be the default setting of the human brain. Education and experience teach us to override it, but it never truly leaves us, he says. From there it is only a short step to conceptualising spirits, dead ancestors and, of course, gods, says Pascal Boyer, a psychologist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. Boyer points out that people expect their gods' minds to work very much like human minds, suggesting they spring from the same brain system that enables us to think about absent or non-existent people. .... [more]

To which Tom Gilson responds:

The New Scientist article proposes two cognitive features of humans as sources of our religiosity: the way we mentally treat living things as opposed to non-living things, and an “overdeveloped sense of cause and effect.” There’s no need to doubt these are true of humans, from childhood on. There’s also no need to doubt that they contribute to beliefs in that imaginary world. But is there a need to assume that the explanation for religion is entirely natural and evolutionary? ....

Referring to the common human desire for an afterlife, C.S, Lewis made an argument that could be just as well applied to "a natural inclination for religious belief":

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. .... [Mere Christianity]

Evolutionary theories about why people are naturally inclined to believe don't exactly exhaust the possibilities.

Born believers: How your brain creates God - science-in-society - 04 February 2009 - New Scientist, “Born believers: How your brain creates God — New Scientist” - Thinking Christian

The god within

One of my favorite quotations from G.K. Chesterton:

Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows any body knows how it would work; any one who knows any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognised an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.
[Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908]

The "god within" is apt to be God as I want Him to be—a creature of my own creation and not God at all.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Always personal but never private

Catholic Archbishop Chaput of Denver is one of the most vigorous advocates for Christian political involvement when moral issues are at stake. From an address delivered in Dublin:

Critics like to say that religion is divisive, or intellectually backward, or that it has no proper place in the public square. … But this is nonsense. Democracy depends on people of conviction carrying their beliefs into public debate — respectfully, legally and non-violently, but vigorously and without apology. If we are uncomfortable being Christians in a public debate, then we've already lost the war. In America the word "pluralism" is often conjured up like a kind of voodoo shield to get religious people to stop talking about right and wrong. In reality, our moral beliefs always shape social policy. Real pluralism actually demands that people with different beliefs should pursue their beliefs energetically in the public square. This is the only way a public debate can be honest and fruitful. We should never apologize for being Catholics.

And this ought to be equally applicable to any Christian, Catholic or not.

Later he addressed those who believe the political battle over abortion has been lost and that we should accommodate ourselves to that political reality.

“Don't create or accept false oppositions,” the archbishop cautioned as he waded into a topic that has caused great debate in the American pro-life community.

“During the last U.S. election,” Chaput recalled, “we saw the emergence of so-called pro-life organizations that argued we should stop fighting the legal struggle over abortion. Instead we should join with ‘pro-choice’ supporters to seek ‘common ground’.”

“Their argument was simple: Why fight a losing battle on the legal, cultural and moral front since — according to them — we haven't yet made serious progress in ending legalized abortion? Let's drop the ‘divisive’ political battle, they said, and instead let's all work together to tackle the economic and health issues that might eventually reduce abortions,” he explained.

But this argument doesn’t sync with history, Archbishop Chaput stressed.

“Did Americans take a gradual, social-improvement road to ‘reducing’ racism? No. We passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” he pointed out.

Taking the logic a step further, the Denver prelate said, “Nor have I ever heard anyone suggest that the best way to deal with murder, rape or domestic abuse is to improve the availability of health care and job training. We make rape illegal — even though we know it will still sometimes tragically occur — because rape is gravely evil. It's an act of violence, and the law should proscribe it.

“Of course, we also have a duty to improve the social conditions that can breed domestic and sexual violence. But that doesn't change the need for the law.”

“Likewise,” Chaput reasoned, “if we really believe that abortion is an intimate act of violence, then we can't aim at anything less than ending abortion.

“It doesn't matter that some abortions have always occurred, and some will always occur. If we really believe that abortion kills a developing unborn life, then we can never be satisfied with mere ‘reductions’ in the body count.”

Charles J. Chaput, from the introduction to his book Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life:

People who take God seriously will not remain silent about their faith. They will often disagree about doctrine or policy, but they won’t be quiet. They can’t be. They’ll act on what they believe, sometimes at the cost of their reputations and careers. Obviously the common good demands a respect for other people with different beliefs and a willingness to compromise whenever possible. But for Catholics, the common good can never mean muting themselves in public debate on foundational issues of human dignity. Christian faith is always personal but never private. This is why any notion of tolerance that tries to reduce faith to private idiosyncrasy, or a set of opinions that we can indulge at home but need to be quiet about in public, will always fail.

Thanks to Insight Scoop for the reference.

‘Abortion reduction strategies’ ignore half of the problem, Archbishop Chaput warns

Forsake me not when my strength is spent

Congress is about to pass a Stimulus Bill containing much besides stimulus [and probably not much of that]. Among its provisions, apparently, are policies that will affect the health care of older Americans. The policies will lead to the rationing of treatment following the prescription of President Obama's once intended Secretary of Health and Human Services:

.... The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.

Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost-effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council.

The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

If the Obama administration’s economic stimulus bill passes the Senate in its current form, seniors in the U.S. will face similar rationing. ....

Hiding health legislation in a stimulus bill is intentional. Daschle supported the Clinton administration’s health-care overhaul in 1994, and attributed its failure to debate and delay. A year ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly before critics mount an opposition. “If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,” he said. “The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.” [more]

Older Americans should have the ability to decide whether to accept medical care or not. But pressure to end life and get out of the way from friends or family, much less the government, is morally abhorrent. Dashle's proposals would permit the government to decide whether or not treatment would be given.

If you're old and sick, hurry up and die — you cost too much.

Of course Dashle and his ilk - as well as those who will be making the decisions - are usually prosperous enough to be exempt from such calculations.

"Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long
in the land that the LORD your God is giving you." [Ex 20:12]

Bloomberg.com: Opinion

Honoring Lincoln

A friend just called my attention to this bicentennial stamp issued to celebrate Lincoln's birthday this week. There are apparently four such stamps. This one shows the President conferring with his most successful generals, Grant and Sherman, on the steamer River Queen in 1865. The original picture also included Admiral David Porter sitting on the right.

Lincoln postage stamp unveiled in Lincoln / Photo - Projo 7 to 7 News Blog | Rhode Island news | The Providence Journal

The habit of virtue

My initial introduction to Edmund Burke was in Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, in which Burke is identified as the first and most important in a line of British and American conservative thinkers. Kirk motivated me to read more about Burke and then to read Burke himself. Burke, like C.S. Lewis, is one whose writings have become so much a part of me that I am constantly in danger of failing to make appropriate attribution.

The current New Criterion includes an essay by Gertrude Himmelfarb in which she describes how her evaluation of Edmund Burke as political thinker has improved since she first wrote about him. Burke is sometimes characterized as a reactionary. Himmelfarb:

.... No one could attach that label to the Burke who, as a Whig, not a Tory, sided with parliament and party against the King and his ministers. Nor does it apply to the Burke who was a friend and disciple of Adam Smith, who is reputed to have said that Burke was “the only man who, without communication, thought on these topics [a free economy] exactly as he [Smith] did.” Nor does it apply to the Burke who defended John Wilkes, the radical Member of Parliament who was expelled from the House of Commons for libeling the king. Nor to the Burke who conducted a long campaign against Warren Hastings and the East India Company for abusing their charter and exploiting the people of India. Nor to the Burke who joined William Wilberforce in the campaign to abolish the slave trade. Nor, most notably, to the Burke who was an eloquent champion of America before and during the American Revolution.

Burke believed that traditions—the habits of a culture—are often the wisdom of generations and that it is foolish to discard them without discovering their origins. Since religion embodies many of those traditions, it is important to society quite apart from its spiritual claims. Human beings are religious creatures and the vacuum created by the absence of religious belief will be filled, often by something very bad indeed. Himmelfarb:

In my early essay, I had quoted derisively his remark “superstition is the religion of feeble minds.” But that bald statement is preceded by the warning that an excess of superstition is a “very great evil.” And it is followed by the assertion that an “intermixture” of superstition and religion is desirable, “else you will deprive weak minds of a resource found necessary to the strongest.” This idea, of an “intermixture” of superstition and religion, seemed to many at the time (as it still seems to many today) demeaning to religion, and, worse, demeaning to those in need of religion—religion pour les autres, for children, or servants, or others with “weak minds.”

As if anticipating that criticism, Burke went on to say that religion is not “a mere invention to keep the vulgar in obedience.” On the contrary, it is a “resource” for the “strongest” as well as the weak. Indeed, religion is of the very nature of man: “Man is by his constitution a religious animal.” To deprive man of his religion would be to create a void that could only be filled by “some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading superstition,” a superstition that would not complement and support religion but rather subvert and degrade it.

As religion and superstition are a part of a continuum, so are reason and prejudice—by “prejudice” he meant not what we mean by it, hostility against particular people or races, but rather all those conventional beliefs and popular opinions that do not meet the strict test of reason. It is in this sense that he spoke of the church establishment as “the first of our prejudices.”

We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages. Thoughtful men [instead of exploding prejudices] … try to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them, [and] think it more wise to retain the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but the naked reason. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.

This was an audacious idea to present to enlightened men in an enlightened age—a challenge to those French philosophes who would indeed leave men with nothing but their “private stock of reason,” their “naked reason.” It was all the more audacious because Burke’s continuum of reason and prejudice—prejudice with the “reason involved,” with the “latent wisdom” in it—had the effect of creating a commonality among human beings. It was the “common feelings,” the “natural feelings” of men, the “wisdom of unlettered men,” that permitted him to speak so confidently of “the true moral equality of mankind.” [more]

Anyone interested in political theory will find the essay instructive.

Reflections on Burke's Reflections

The Choir of St. John's

Nathaniel Peters at First Things has discovered that the Choir of St. John's College has placed recordings of their services online. Many services are available [look down the right-hand column], for example this complete Evensong from Sunday, October 26.

The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge

"If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong"

The current National Review, published during the week of Lincoln's birthday, includes an article by Allen Guelzo, a respected Lincoln scholar, titled "Our Lincoln" and arguing that Lincoln's principles were conservative principles, among them a belief in equality of opportunity as a natural right. That was the basis for Lincoln's conviction that slavery was wrong. From the article:

...[T]he promise of self-improvement was only one corollary of equality, and it might turn out to be empty unless it was accompanied by equal liberty and an equal voice for all the governed in their government. For this reason, it was the hooting shame of America that while it talked of equality and free labor, it legalized the enslavement and dehumanization of blacks. “When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life, free society is such that he knows he can better his condition,” Lincoln argued; “he knows that there is no fixed condition of labor, for his whole life.” But slavery fixed an entire category of human beings in precisely that hopeless situation, politically and economically, on no basis other than color. For that reason alone, Lincoln was “naturally anti slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” ....

Above all, however, slavery was a violation of natural law, because a man’s right to “eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns” was indissolubly linked with the natural right to liberty that Jefferson had recognized in every human creature (and that made Jefferson uneasy about the slaves he himself owned). Anyone who stopped his ears and tried to pretend that blacks were excluded from that natural right was “blowing out the moral lights around us...and eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty in this American people.”

.... “The doctrine of self government is right—absolutely and eternally right,” Lincoln said. But “if the negro is a man, is it not to that extent, a total destruction of self government, to say that he too shall not govern himself?” There was a line that even the power of majorities could not cross, a line drawn by nature and nature’s God that no amount of talk about “choice” could ever really efface.....

If to love liberty, to hate slavery, and to believe that free labor holds out the best hope of “self-improvement” and “advancement” do not exemplify what American conservatism ought to be, then I am at a loss to know what does. Nor can I imagine what would offer better proof of Lincoln’s conservative credentials than his advocacy of procedural equality, freedom, and an open society. What I do know is that the same voices that twisted liberty into “choice” and clamored for privilege and security rather than openness and mobility have not changed all that much since they were raised in defense of slavery.

The politics of race and blood, and the culture of hedonism and the unbridled personal will, serve inevitably to plant “the seeds of despotism around your own doors.” For Lincoln, moral principle, as captured in the Declaration of Independence and in natural law, is all, or almost all, that unites us, and all that ensures that this nation under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

National Review, February 23, 2009, pp. 27-28.

Only God is God

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver writes about the danger of thinking that scientific knowledge or technological progress will lead to a more just society—and refers to my favorite author:

The First Commandment—I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before me—is the bedrock of Judaism and Christianity. All of our Western beliefs about the sanctity of life, human dignity and human rights ultimately depend on a Creator who guarantees them. In other words, we have infinite value because God made us, and no other human being or political authority can revoke that infinite value. Only God is God, and there is no other God but the God of Israel and Jesus. Every other little godling that poses as an answer to human suffering and hope—from Wicca to fortune telling to pop psychology to political messianism to cult spirituality—is finally an impostor and a road away from God’s light. Only God is God. There is no other.

I mention this because we live in an age that sees itself as scientific, reasonable and enlightened. In a sense it is. It’s certainly true that science and technology have improved the quality of life for millions of people. But as C.S. Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man and his novel That Hideous Strength, science doesn’t necessarily kill off superstition or barbarism. In fact, the three can get along quite comfortably. As the Christian moral consensus has declined over the past century, and science has made spectacular strides, people haven’t become more logical or morally mature. The opposite has happened. The 20th century was the bloodiest in history, and today the occult is flourishing in developed nations—especially among young people who’ve lost the vocabulary to understand the gravity of the forces they play with. Knowledge is merely knowledge. Power is merely power. Nothing inherent to knowledge or power guarantees that it will translate to wisdom or justice or mercy. ....

Only God is God. There is no other. The rightful place of science, like all human activity, is in the service of human dignity, and under the judgment of God’s justice.

C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man:

.... I have described as a `magician's bargain' that process whereby man surrenders object after object, and finally himself, to Nature in return for power. And I meant what I said. The fact that the scientist has succeeded where the magician failed has put such a wide contrast between them in popular thought that the real story of the birth of Science is misunderstood. You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak. There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the 'wisdom' of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious—such as digging up and mutilating the dead. .... The true object is to extend Man's power to the performance of all things possible. He rejects magic because it does not work, but his goal is that of the magician. .... No doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those whose love of truth exceeded their love of power; in every mixed movement the efficacy comes from the good elements not from the bad. But the presence of the bad elements is not irrelevant to the direction the efficacy takes. It might be going too far to say that the modern scientific movement was tainted from its birth: but I think it would be true to say that it was born in an unhealthy neighbourhood and at an inauspicious hour. Its triumphs may have been too rapid and purchased at too high a price: reconsideration, and something like repentance, may be required.

Thanks to Insight Scoop for the reference.

Archbishop's Column

This much we know

This morning the President participated in the National Prayer Breakfast and delivered some remarks, including these:

There is no doubt that the very nature of faith means that some of our beliefs will never be the same. We read from different texts. We follow different edicts. We subscribe to different accounts of how we came to be here and where we're going next - and some subscribe to no faith at all.

But no matter what we choose to believe, let us remember that there is no religion whose central tenet is hate. There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know.

We know too that whatever our differences, there is one law that binds all great religions together. Jesus told us to "love thy neighbor as thyself." The Torah commands, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow." In Islam, there is a hadith that reads "None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." And the same is true for Buddhists and Hindus; for followers of Confucius and for humanists. It is, of course, the Golden Rule - the call to love one another; to understand one another; to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth.

It is an ancient rule; a simple rule; but also one of the most challenging. For it asks each of us to take some measure of responsibility for the well-being of people we may not know or worship with or agree with on every issue. Sometimes, it asks us to reconcile with bitter enemies or resolve ancient hatreds. And that requires a living, breathing, active faith. It requires us not only to believe, but to do - to give something of ourselves for the benefit of others and the betterment of our world. [more]

"There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know." Good words, although perhaps rather optimistic, there seem to be religious believers who disagree. One might wish that the President would apply his "this much we know" to the lives of innocent unborn human beings.

Update: The President's speechwriters made a mistake. From Julia Duin at the Washington Times:

.... At one point, the new president said, in his National Prayer Breakfast speech this morning, "The Torah commands, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow."

That is not in the Torah, aka the Old Testament. It's from the Talmud, specifically a quote from Rabbi Hillel in the book Talmud Shabbos. (The Talmud, a 20-volume biblical commentary, was compiled by Jewish sages in second-century AD Babylon.) ....

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Obama's Remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast, Obama's faith list and Torah misquote - Duin - Religion Commentary - Washington Times

Slogans

Via First Things, inspired by the atheist bus slogans in London, a "Bus slogan generator" that may inspire you to develop your own dispiriting motto for public consumption. An instance from the site:

With apologies to Insight Scoop:

Bus slogan generator

Something or other, somehow

Fred Sanders at The Scriptorium Daily

“Christ did something or other, which, somehow or other, had some connexion or other with salvation.” That really nails some bad preaching I’ve heard. .... On the subject of the atonement, I freely confess that whenever a teacher wanders too far from theme of vicarious punishment, I lose the thread of the argument and have trouble following what it is Christ did that has some connection with salvation. “Christus Victor inaugurates the kingdom and demonstrates God’s love by recapitulating humanity in vicarious repentance…” Yes, I believe all those things, but my mind finds no theological rest until I can center those statements on Jesus Christ paying for sin. All I hear is “Christ did something or other, which, somehow or other, had some connexion or other with salvation.” [more]

Christ Did Something or Other | The Scriptorium Daily: Middlebrow

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake."

Christianity Today reports on a study of the persecution of believers in the world today:

Open Doors has released its list of countries where Christians are most persecuted. Their 50-question survey asks both about Christians' legal status and what actually happens to them.

North Korea is at the top of the list for the seventh year in a row. ....

They list Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq, Mauritania, Algeria, India, Nigeria (North), Indonesia, Bangladesh and Kazakhstan as countries where Christians’ freedom has deteriorated. [more]

[click on the image]

The WorldWatch list, with commentary and detail, is available as a pdf here.

Where Christians Are Persecuted | Liveblog | Christianity Today

Our Flag

Several years ago I was part of an exchange with secondary teachers from Japan. The Japanese teachers spent some time with us in Madison and in our schools and we did the same in Japan. As preparation for the experience, all of us spent some time together in Washington, D.C., learning about each other, getting acquainted, and trying to bridge some of the cultural differences. In one of the sessions a Japanese teacher asked why Americans seemed to place so much emphasis on our flag. Many Japanese are, for understandable historical reasons, very skeptical of anything smacking of nationalism. I explained that in our case we have no national figure—no queen or emperor—who symbolizes the nation. Nor does the flag stand for blood or soil. It stands for our ideals—"the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." It stands for what we believe in and aspire to be as a country. We honor the flag because it represents the Constitutional system that protects our freedoms and our rights.

In my files I just came across a pamphlet, undated, published by the Marine Corps, titled How to Respect and Display Our Flag. A stamp on it indicates that it was distributed by the "Marine Corps Recruiting Sub-Station" in Janesville, Wisconsin. Since the flags in the illustrations have forty-eight stars, it must be from the late 1950s. The rules it specifies seem almost quaint after the events of the last half century. The flag has been burned and trampled by Americans. It is flown night and day in good weather or foul—even by those who intend to honor it. A colleague used to put one on the floor of his classroom, inviting students to decide whether to walk on it. How one treats the symbol became partisan, expressing a political rather than a patriotic allegiance.

Here is the section from that pamphlet titled "How to Display the Flag":

Respect your flag and render it the courtesies to which it is entitled by observing the following rules, which are in accordance with the practices approved by leading flag authorities:

The National flag should be raised and lowered by hand. It should be displayed only from sunrise to sunset, or between such hours as may be designated by proper authority. Do not raise the flag while it is furled. Unfurl, then hoist quickly to the top of the staff. Lower it slowly and with dignity. Place no objects on or over the flag. Various articles are sometimes placed on a speaker's table covered with the flag. This practice should be avoided.

When displayed in the chancel or on a platform in a church, the flag should be placed on a staff at the clergyman's right; other flags at his left. If displayed in the body of the church, the flag should be at the congregation's right as they face the clergyman.

Do not use the flag as a portion of a costume or athletic uniform. Do not embroider it upon cushions or handkerchiefs nor print it on paper napkins or boxes.

1. When displayed over the middle of the street, the flag should be suspended vertically with the union to the north in an east and west street, or to the east in a north and south street.
2. When displayed with another flag from crossed staffs, the flag of the United States of America should be on the right (the flag's own right) and its staff should be in front of the staff of the other flag.
3. When it is to be flown at half-mast, the flag should be hoisted to the peak for an instant and then lowered to the half-mast position; but before lowering the flag for the day it should again be raised to the peak. By half-mast is meant hauling down the flag to one-half the distance between the top and the bottom of the staff. On Memorial Day display at half-mast until noon only; then hoist to top of staff.
4. When flags of states or cities or pennants of societies are flown on the same halyard with the flag of the United States of America, the latter should always be at the peak. When flown from adjacent staffs the Stars and Stripes should be hoisted first and lowered last.
5. When the flag is suspended over a sidewalk from a rope, extending from house to pole at the edge of the sidewalk, the flag should be hoisted out from the building, toward the pole, union first.
6. When the flag is displayed from a staff projecting horizontally or at any angle from the window sill, balcony, or front of a building, the union of the flag should go clear to peak of the staff (unless the flag is to be displayed at half-mast).
7. When the flag is used to cover a casket, it should be so placed that the union is at the head and over the left shoulder. The flag should not be lowered into the grave or allowed to touch the ground.
8. When the flag is displayed in a manner other than by being flown from a staff, it should be displayed flat, whether indoors or out. When displayed either horizontally or vertically against a wall, the union should be uppermost and to the flag's own right, that is, to the observer's left. When displayed in a window it should be displayed in the same way, that is, with the union or blue field to the left of the observer in the street. When festoons, rosettes or drapings are desired, bunting of blue, white and red should be used, but never the flag.
9. When carried in a procession with another flag or flags, the Stars and Stripes should be either on the marching right, or when there is a line of other flags, our National flag may be in front of the center of that line.
10. When a number of flags of states or cities or pennants of societies are grouped and displayed from staffs with our National flag, the latter should be at the center or at the highest point of the group.
11. When the flags of two or more nations are displayed they should be flown from separate staffs of the same height and the flags should be of approximately equal size. International usage forbids the display of the flag of one nation above that of another nation in time of peace.

A federal law provides that a trademark cannot be registered which consists of, or comprises among other things, "the flag, coat-of-arms or other insignia of the United States, or any simulation thereof."

Take every precaution to prevent the flag from becoming soiled. It should not be allowed to touch the ground or floor, nor to brush against objects.

When the flag is used in unveiling a statue or monument, it should not be used as a covering of the object to be unveiled. If it is displayed on such occasions, do not allow the flag to fall to the ground, but let it be carried aloft to form a feature of the ceremony.

On suitable occasions repeat this pledge to the flag:

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

The pamphlet also has the words of our National Anthem. We almost never sing anything beyond the first verse. The third is particularly good:

Oh, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand,
Between their loved home and the war's desolation;
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Power that has made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust";
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Accompanists to the congregation's praise

John Stackhouse writes a "Memo to Worship Bands" at Christianity Today including "five...reasons to turn it down a notch." He concludes:

.... By the time church music matured into Palestrina and Co. in the 16th century, it had become too demanding and ornate for ordinary singers. So Christians went to church to listen to a priest and a choir.

The Protestant Reformation yanked musical worship away from the professionals and put it back in the pews. Luther composed hymns based on popular melodies, including drinking songs. Calvin insisted on taking lyrics from the Psalms. This was music in which almost anyone could participate. The problem today, to be sure, is rarely elaborate music. We could use a little more artistry, in fact, than we usually get with the simplistic and repetitive musical figures of many contemporary worship songs.

No, the contrast with the Reformation is the modern-day insistence that a few people at the front be the center of attention. We do it by making six band members louder than a room full of people. But a church service isn't a concert at which an audience sings along with the real performers. Musicians—every one of them, including the singers—are accompanists to the congregation's praise. They should be mixed loudly enough only to do their job of leading and supporting the congregation.

Now, I like Palestrina and I like good Christian rock. So, church musicians, if you want to perform a fine song that requires advanced musicianship, by all means do it. We will listen and pray and enjoy it to the glory of God.

But when you are leading us in singing, then lead us in singing. And turn it down so we are not listening to you—or, even worse, merely enduring you. I know that is not what you want to happen. But I am telling you that's what is happening. [emphasis added]

Memo to Worship Bands | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Hollow at the core

Kevin DeYoung, co-author of Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be, and pastor at the University Reformed Church in East Lansing, Michigan, has a fine new blog. An early post is about the importance of theological unity in the local church, "The Crust and the Core":

.... There are many Christians and churches that don’t deny any cardinal doctrine of Christian faith, but they still don’t have a theological core. They have, instead, a musty statement of faith they barely understand and hardly believe and wouldn’t dare preach. They are animated and motivated by politics, church growth, relational concerns and the like, but the gospel is merely assumed. “Yes, yes—of course we believe in the Virgin Birth, and the atonement, and the resurrection, and heaven and hell,” they say. But its all periphery, not core. It’s all assumed, not all-consuming. Theologically hollow congregations and pastors may like to think they will bequeath a gospel legacy to the next generation, but the truth is we only pass on what is our passion. New converts and new kids won’t think and live and love like mature Christians, let alone be able to articulate the Christian story, if our beliefs rest in a pamphlet and not in our hearts. ....

....There is so much talk around the broader church about being missional Christians that it’s easy to think the church should be missional-centric. And in one sense, mission is certainly at the center of what we do. But mission itself is not what ties us together or fires us up. It’s only when the mission is defined and it’s genesis is proclaimed that we can rally around mission.

What I mean is that we should be, first of all, Christocentric; that is, centered on the cross of Christ. Christ is our identity, our passion, and our hope. And because of this identity, passion, and hope we pray, and evangelize, and do missions. But missions is not the center. Christ is—which shapes, defines, and launches us into mission. It’s like John Piper’s famous line: “Mission is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is.” Being missional is not a sufficient basis for unity. One, because I’m never quite sure what missional means. Two, because the blazing hot center of Christian identity, passion, and hope is not that we are all doing things in Jesus name. Of course, we should be doing things in Jesus’ name. But the blazing hot center is what God has already done for us in Christ. ....

But, he warns, keep the theological correctness in proportion.

.... Some Christians allow evangelism to trump all other considerations, others size up fellow Christians by their attention to social justice concerns, but a lot of us do our judging with theology. If the theology fits, the lack of mission, prayer, and compassion doesn’t matter much. But if a few theological pieces are misplaced in the puzzle, see you later and don’t let Hymenaeus and Philetus door hit you on the way out.

Striking the balance is not easy. But let’s try hard to be discerning and grounded without always looking for the next theological misstep in our friends, our family, or the songs we sing. And let’s be able to tell the difference between wandering sheep and false teachers. We must delineate between a slightly ill-informed wording of a phrase and a purposeful rejection of truth. We must pursue a passion for fidelity to Scripture and a winsomeness that sweetens the already honey-like drippings of the word of God. .... [more]

DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed: The Crust and the Core

Lincoln in context

This month I will be among the many who celebrate the two hundredth birthday of our greatest President. In "Lincoln the Great, Though He Didn’t Look That Way at the Time", Wilfred McClay reminds us that many of the President's contemporaries took a more jaundiced view.

.... To see a statesman in full, and thereby learn something about the nature of statesmanship, one needs to see him not only in the overly clear light of retrospection, but in the shadowy and inconclusive light of the conditions he faced as they were unfolding. “I claim not to have controlled events,” Lincoln mused during the course of his presidency, “but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”

When standing before the Lincoln Memorial, we should remember the depth and breadth of Lincoln’s unpopularity during his entire time in office. Few great leaders have been more comprehensively disdained or loathed—or underestimated. The low Southern view of him, of course, was to be expected, but it was widely shared north of the Mason-Dixon line. As David Donald put it, Lincoln’s own associates thought him “a simple Susan, a baboon, an aimless punster, a smutty joker”; he was, in the view of the abolitionist Wendell Phillips, a “huckster in politics,” and “a first-rate second-rate man.” When he delivered the Gettysburg Address, one of the great speeches of human history, he was completely overshadowed by the two-hour-long speech of famed orator Edward Everett that preceded his. There was little or no applause for him as he concluded his two-minute speech and sat down. ....

We also need to remember how likely it seemed to Lincoln and others that he would lose the 1864 election, and thereby experience ignominious defeat and see the disintegration of the Union cause as he had fought for it. Had it not been for the miracle of Sherman’s and Grant’s decisive victories in the field, such a defeat at the polls would have been likely, as the American people had grown weary of this frustrating struggle. Add to this bleak outlook the weight of Lincoln’s relentlessly self-examining and depressive temperament and his constant, lonely struggles with a crippling sense of failure, and the sheer resiliency of the man becomes awe-inspiring, in ways a marble temple could never convey. ....

Statesmanship is not an abstract skill, but a contextual one, highly specific to the circumstances it finds. It is irresistible to wonder what kind of leader Lincoln would have been had there been no secession attempt after his election, or had he lived to be a postwar president. That the question is almost impossible to answer intelligently, though, tells us a great deal. Lincoln was above all a war president. Like it or not, that condition of history defined him. He was not elected to be such a president. He might have been no more effective in peacetime than Andrew Johnson was. And he might well have found out, as Winston Churchill or George H. W. Bush later did, that voters prefer very different kinds of leaders in times of peace and war. We will never know. In any event, such was not to be his destiny. (more)

Lincoln