Religious liberty in a liberal democracy

The dispute over Brit Hume's recommendation to Tiger Woods has inspired some good commentary about the nature of religious liberty in our democracy. Yesterday, it was Ross Douthat in The New York Times:

Liberal democracy offers religious believers a bargain. Accept, as a price of citizenship, that you may never impose your convictions on your neighbor, or use state power to compel belief. In return, you will be free to practice your own faith as you see fit — and free, as well, to compete with other believers (and nonbelievers) in the marketplace of ideas.

That’s the theory. In practice, the admirable principle that nobody should be persecuted for their beliefs often blurs into the more illiberal idea that nobody should ever publicly criticize another religion. Or champion one’s own faith as an alternative. Or say anything whatsoever about religion, outside the privacy of church, synagogue or home. ....

This doesn’t mean that we need to welcome real bigotry into our public discourse. But what Hume said wasn’t bigoted: Indeed, his claim about the difference between Buddhism and Christianity was perfectly defensible. Christians believe in a personal God who forgives sins. Buddhists, as a rule, do not. And it’s at least plausible that Tiger Woods might welcome the possibility that there’s Someone out there capable of forgiving him, even if Elin Nordegren and his corporate sponsors never do.

Or maybe not. For many people — Woods perhaps included — the fact that Buddhism promotes an ethical life without recourse to Christian concepts like the Fall of Man, divine judgment and damnation is precisely what makes it so appealing. The knee-jerk outrage that greeted Hume’s remarks buried intelligent responses from Buddhists, who made arguments along these lines — explaining their faith, contrasting it with Christianity, and describing how a lost soul like Woods might use Buddhist concepts to climb from darkness into light.

When liberal democracy was forged, in the wake of Western Europe’s religious wars, this sort of peaceful theological debate is exactly what it promised to deliver. And the differences between religions are worth debating. Theology has consequences: It shapes lives, families, nations, cultures, wars; it can change people, save them from themselves, and sometimes warp or even destroy them.

If we tiptoe politely around this reality, then we betray every teacher, guru and philosopher — including Jesus of Nazareth and the Buddha both — who ever sought to resolve the most human of all problems: How then should we live? .... [more]

Op-Ed Columnist - Let’s Talk About Faith - NYTimes.com

"Lord, have mercy"

From Alan Jacobs in "Man of Sorrows: Samuel Johnson and the power of sympathy":

.... Few people need the consolation of Christian faith more than Johnson did, but, then, few could have as much difficulty receiving it. As strongly as he lashed himself for his indolence in writing, he was fiercer still in his condemnation of his religious life. "I have made few improvements," he wrote in his journal on his fifty-sixth birthday. "Since my resolution formed last Easter I have made no advancement in knowledge or in goodness; nor do I recollect that I have endeavored it … . I have done nothing, the need of doing therefore is pressing, since the time of doing is short." Four years later he wrote, before going to bed, "On this day little has been done and this is now the last hour. In life little has been done, and life is very far advanced. Lord, have mercy on me."

In these moods, and in others, Johnson made a habit of writing prayers after the manner of the great collects of the Book of Common Prayer. Some of these match the collects of Thomas Cranmer in depth and wisdom and eloquence. When his mother's maid, Catherine Chambers, was dying, Johnson came to her bedside and prayed:

Almighty and most merciful Father, whose loving-kindness is over all thy works, behold, visit, and relieve this thy Servant, who is grieved with sickness. Grant that the sense of her weakness may add strength to her faith, and seriousness to her Repentance. And grant that by the help of thy Holy Spirit after the pains and labours of this short life, we may all obtain everlasting happiness through Jesus Christ our Lord, for whose sake hear our prayers. Amen.

He added in his journal, "I then kissed her. She told me that to part was the greatest pain that she had ever felt, and that she hoped we should meet again in a better place. I expressed with swelled eyes and great emotion of tenderness the same hopes. We kissed, and parted. I humbly hope, to meet again, and to part no more."

We are very far here from the Great Cham of Literature. It is characteristic of Johnson that the sufferings of this poor woman—who, as a mere servant, would have been ignored utterly in her dying by many men of that time—brought forth from him not only eloquence but also warmheartedness. It is also characteristic that as he prayed for her, he also prayed for himself, since he knew he was in need of the same mercy. .... (more)

Many of Johnson's prayers are collected in Daily Readings in the Prayers of Samuel Johnson

Man of Sorrows: Samuel Johnson and the power of sympathy

Anthropomorphism

The cover article in Time, September 8, 1947, was about C.S. Lewis, and it remains a very informative article. I have discovered that it was written by another of my favorite authors, one of Time's best writers, Whittaker Chambers, who would become much better known a few years later as a result of the political controversies surrounding Soviet espionage in the United States. There is a website that links to an enormous number of resources by and about Chambers at which I expect to find more good stuff. From the article about Lewis:

Whittaker Chambers

.... C.S. Lewis' new book, to be published in the U.S. this month, is called Miracles, A Preliminary Study (Macmillan; $2.50). Its tightly constructed theological argument: that the miraculous ("interference with Nature by supernatural power") not only can exist but has existed in human history. "Naturalists," who see nature as "the whole show," with no room for a creative God in the picture, will be baffled or repelled. But those who accept the basic Christian concept of a Creator-God will be rewarded with a full measure of the quality Lewis' devotees have come to expect—a strictly unorthodox presentation of strict orthodoxy.

Lewis (like T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, et al.) is one of a growing band of heretics among modern intellectuals: an intellectual who believes in God. It is not a mild and vague belief, for he accepts "all the articles of the Christian faith"—which means that he also believes in sin and in the Devil. After sneezing, he was once heard to murmur that it was "because of the Fall." He was referring, not to the season, but to the Fall of Man, which Christian theology holds responsible for the major disorders of mankind. Lewis is scornful of many modern intellectual and moral fashions: he thinks a Christian can do worse than imagine God as a fatherly ancient with a white beard. He writes:

...When [people] try to get rid of manlike, or, as they are called, 'anthropomorphic,' images, they merely succeed in substituting images of some other kinds. 'I don't believe in a personal God,' says one, 'but I do believe in a great spiritual force.' What he has not noticed is that the word 'force' has let in all sorts of images about winds and tides and electricity and gravitation. 'I don't believe in a personal God,' says another, 'but I do believe we are all parts of one great Being which moves and works through us all'—not noticing that he has merely exchanged the image of a fatherly and royal-looking man for the image of some widely extended gas or fluid.

A girl I knew was brought up by 'higher thinking' parents to regard God as perfect 'substance.' In later life she realized that this had actually led her to think of Him as something like a vast tapioca pudding. (To make matters worse, she disliked tapioca.) We may feel ourselves quite safe from this degree of absurdity, but we are mistaken. If a man watches his own mind, I believe he will find that what profess to be specially advanced or philosophic conceptions of God are, in his thinking, always accompanied by vague images which, if inspected, would turn out to be even more absurd than the manlike images aroused by Christian theology. For man, after all, is the highest of the things we meet in sensuous experience. .... (more)

Religion: Don v. Devil -- TIME, Whittaker Chambers: Witness, Anti-Communist, Spy, Communist, Editor, Journalist, Intellectual, Writer, Poet

A strange view of pluralism

In his column at the Washington Post, Michael Gerson enters into the discussion about Brit Hume's offense against liberal sensibility. The only reasonable argument I have heard or read thus far against what Hume said is that it would have been more effective and politer if privately expressed. Gerson responds to the criticisms that have been most vehemently advanced, and, in the process reminds us of certain basic truths about freedom:

.... The assumption of these criticisms is that proselytization is the antonym of tolerance. Asserting the superiority of one's religious beliefs, in this view, is not merely bad manners; it involves a kind of divisive, offensive judgmentalism.

But the American idea of religious liberty does not forbid proselytization; it presupposes it. Free, autonomous individuals not only have the right to hold whatever beliefs they wish, they also have the right to change those beliefs and to persuade others to change as well. Just as there is no political liberty without the right to change one's convictions and publicly argue for them, there is no religious liberty without the possibility of conversion and persuasion.

Proselytization, admittedly, is fraught with complications. We object to the practice when an unequal power relationship is involved — a boss pressuring an employee. We are offended by brainwashing. Coercion and trickery violate the whole idea of free religious choice based on open discussion.

But none of this was present in Hume's appeal to Woods. A semi-retired broadcaster holds no unfair advantage over a multimillionaire athlete. Hume was engaged in persuasion. ....

The root of the anger against Hume is his religious exclusivity — the belief, in Shuster's words, that "my faith is the right one." For this reason, according to Shales, Hume has "dissed about half a billion Buddhists on the planet."

But this supposed defense of other religious traditions betrays an unfamiliarity with religion itself. Religious faiths — Christian, Buddhist, Zoroastrian — generally make claims about the nature of reality that conflict with the claims of other faiths. Attacking Christian religious exclusivity is to attack nearly every vital religious tradition. It is not a scandal to believers that others hold differing beliefs. It is only a scandal to those offended by all belief. Though I am not a Buddhist or a Muslim, I am not "dissed" when a Muslim or a Buddhist advocates his views in public.

Hume's critics hold a strange view of pluralism. For religion to be tolerated, it must be privatized — not, apparently, just in governmental settings but also on television networks. We must have not only a secular state but also a secular public discourse. And so tolerance, conveniently, is defined as shutting up people with whom secularists disagree. Many commentators have been offering Woods advice in his travails. But religious advice, apparently and uniquely, should be forbidden. In a discussion of sex, morality and betrayed vows, wouldn't religious issues naturally arise? How is our public discourse improved by narrowing it — removing references to the most essential element in countless lives?

True tolerance consists in engaging deep disagreements respectfully — through persuasion — not in banning certain categories of argument and belief from public debate. .... [more]

Michael Gerson - Brit Hume's Tiger Woods remarks shine light on true intolerance - washingtonpost.com

A fleeting glimpse of Joy

Tonight I once again watched the film of C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Lewis and Tolkien were very good friends. As it ended I was reminded of Tolkien's argument in "On Fairy Stories" that the happy turn in the story—what he names the "eucatastrophe"—is true in the sense that it, in the art of the "sub-creator," replicates the genuine Happy Ending which has already been achieved in actual history.

...[T]he "consolation" of fairy-tales has another aspect than the imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires. Far more important is the Consolation of the Happy Ending. Almost I would venture to assert that all complete fairy-stories must have it. At least I would say that Tragedy is the true form of Drama, its highest function; but the opposite is true of Fairy-story. Since we do not appear to possess a word that expresses this opposite—I will call it Eucatastrophe. The eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function.

The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous "turn" (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially "escapist," nor "fugitive." In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the "turn" comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality. ....

Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it. If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: "inner consistency of reality," it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality. The peculiar quality of the "joy" in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a "consolation" for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, "Is it true?" The answer to this question that I gave at first was (quite rightly): "If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world." That is enough for the artist (or the artist part of the artist). But in the "eucatastrophe" we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world. The use of this word gives a hint of my epilogue. It is a serious and dangerous matter. It is presumptuous of me to touch upon such a theme; but if by grace what I say has in any respect any validity, it is, of course, only one facet of a truth incalculably rich: finite only because the capacity of Man for whom this was done is finite

I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: "mythical" in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the "inner consistency of reality." There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.

It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be "primarily" true, its narrative to be history, without thereby necessarily losing the mythical or allegorical significance that it had possessed. It is not difficult, for one is not called upon to try and conceive anything of a quality unknown. The joy would have exactly the same quality, if not the same degree, as the joy which the "turn" in a fairy-story gives: such joy has the very taste of primary truth. (Otherwise its name would not be joy.) It looks forward (or backward: the direction in this regard is unimportant) to the Great Eucatastrophe. The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is pre-eminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous. But this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.

But in God's kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the "happy ending." The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation. All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know. (J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories)

J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories

When tolerance isn't

This is a pretty common bumper sticker around here:

Wiser Time:

You’ve seen these, right? They make me mad. Why? Because they don’t really mean what they say.

Let’s break it down. [and he does, here.]

Coexist? « Wiser Time

Infantile happy talk

"That of course is the advantage of being a pessimist; a pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant." Nero Wolfe

There is every reason for positive thinking that is founded on the knowledge that "God so loved...." But it is idiotic for a Christian to think that means trouble will not come — or that when it does happy thoughts will make it go away.

From a review of Barbara Ehrenreich's new book:

.... All the Oprah-ready gurus you would expect to populate this polemic show up to share some advice—here’s Joel Osteen warning us never to “verbalize a negative emotion,” there’s Tony Robbins exhorting us to “Get motivated!” In turning the United States into a 24-hour pep rally, charges Ehrenreich, these professional cheerleaders have all but drowned out downers like “realism” and “rationality.” Their followers are trained to dismiss bad news rather than assimilate or reflect upon its importance. ....

Ehrenreich weighs down her argument with dubious chains of causation and ponderous overstatement, but her central point still shines through the mess. Platitudinous happy-talk seems so harmless that most of us barely notice it, yet it can be a burdensome, even bullying, attempt to enforce emotional conformity. Consider, for instance, the “pink-ribbon culture,” a rose-tinted world Ehrenreich steps into when she is diagnosed with breast cancer.

“Positive thinking seems to be mandatory in the breast cancer world,” she writes, “to the point that unhappiness requires a kind of apology.” Dour pathology slides are out; “remembrance” teddy bears are in. The women Ehrenreich encounters insist that cancer isn’t a morbid tragedy but a life-transforming “gift.” The words “victim” and “patient” are frowned upon; the preferred terminology is “survivor.” Survivors “battle” or “fight” toward their “survivorhood,” while those who die from the disease, in Ehrenreich’s telling, are barely mentioned at all. When she posts a mildly angry message on an Internet message board, she is chastised for her “bad attitude” and told to “get help.”

.... She resents—rightly, I think—the attempts to coach her into infantile gratitude for a disease that threatens to kill her. (As she points out in a fascinating summary of the literature, the supposed link between optimism and cancer survival rates is mostly myth.) ....

It’s no surprise that I was first told to smile while sitting in a church pew. The world of positivity is one of preachers, sacred books, incantations, revival meetings, and mystical teachings, all emanating from the idea that happy thoughts have the power to transform the physical world. .... Positivity is a secular religion. Sometimes it takes a village atheist to remind us that we can choose not to believe.

There is, of course, a kind of positive thinking that does not minimize suffering or trivialize death:

...[W]e rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
(Romans 5:3-5, ESV)
It Takes a Village Atheist - Reason Magazine

He can't say that!

Mollie Hemingway at GetReligion.org posts about the splenetic media reaction to Brit Hume's recommendation that Tiger Woods ought to consider converting to Christianity which, Hume said, has something to offer that isn't available from Buddhism. Obviously advocating the Christian faith [as Tebow could also testify] is far less acceptable in public than the denunciation of those who do. She reports that Keith Olbermann [I know, I know] "apparently said Fox News and Brit Hume were trying to force conversions and were 'just like Islamic extremists'" and Tom Shales of the Washington Post instructed Hume that if he "wants to do the satellite-age equivalent of going door-to-door and spreading what he considers the gospel, he should do it on his own time, not try to cross-pollinate religion and journalism and use Fox facilities to do it."

For engaging in comparative religion and making a recommendation, Hume gets accused of intolerance, proselytizing, and bigotry. This is another example demonstrating that many, especially in the media, don't get out much among people unlike themselves.

Hume, by the way, moved from reporting and anchoring to commentary the year before last.

This is what Brit Hume said:

The GetReligion site that Hemingway is writing for was created because of the sense that most journalists actually don't "get religion," i.e. they haven't a clue and are immediately out of their depth when reporting stories about religion — any religion. The site hasn't gone wanting for material.

She comments on several of the news accounts, including a favorable reference to the reporting of Cathy Grossman at USA Today and also this blog post from Grossman:

...Grossman quotes a Buddhist journalist simultaneously criticizing Hume and conceding that he’s right about the differences between Buddhism and Christianity vis-a-vis forgiveness:

However, Mr. Hume is right, in a sense, that Buddhism doesn’t offer redemption and forgiveness in the same way Christianity does. Buddhism has no concept of sin; therefore, redemption and forgiveness in the Christian sense is meaningless in Buddhism. Forgiveness is important, but it is approached differently in Buddhism…

Hemingway goes on to say:

I would love more discussions of the substantive differences between religions. The religious literacy in most newsrooms and, indeed, throughout the country, means that many people are unable to articulate the differences between major world religions. People who are religious or even simply religiously literate probably don’t have a problem acknowledging that each religion has different teachings.

Read the whole thing — it's instructive.

Hume can’t say that! » GetReligion

Set your minds on the Spirit

Trevin Wax interviews N.T. Wright about his new book, After You Believe, including this about "being true to oneself":

N.T. Wright:...[W]e modern westerners — and even more postmodern westerners — are trained by the media and public discourse to think that “letting it all out” and “doing what comes naturally” are the criteria for how to behave. There is a sense in which they are — but only when the character has been trained so that “what comes naturally” is the result of that habit-forming training.

The book’s main target is ... the ideas of “spontaneity” and “authenticity” which have a grain of truth (Christians really should act “from the heart”), but which screen out the reality of moral formation, of chosen and worked-at habit-forming prayer and moral reflection and action, which gradually over time form the Christian character in which “authentic” behavior is also truly Christian behavior, not simply “me living out my prejudices and random desires”.

The point about “virtue”, then, is that it flags up something which is central in the New Testament but marginal in much western Christian reflection, namely the fact that

1. Behavior is habit-forming,
2. Christian behavior is supposed to be habit-forming and hence character-forming,
3. There is a long and wise tradition of reflection on all this which most modern Protestants in particular simply don’t know,
4. It isn’t, as has often been thought, a danger to the gospel of God’s free grace and love,
5. It is therefore time for the whole notion of virtue, as the habit-forming strength of character, to be “reborn,”
6. and that all this is what you need to grasp “after you believe,” to answer the big question of “what now”? [more]
   

The Rebirth of Virtue: An Interview with N.T. Wright : Kingdom People

Doubt

Nathan Martin has posted the third, and last, portion of his interview with Os Guinness. I like this quotation from Guinness:

.... I met so many Christians who felt guilty of doubting, as if doubt was the opposite of faith, and that’s not true. The opposite of faith is unbelief. Doubt is a halfway stage, it’s being of two minds, you half believe and you half don’t believe. Like a spinning coin, it’s going to come down one way or the other. Doubt is either going to be resolved and go back to faith or be left unresolved and move on to unbelief.

Last Call: Where Have All the Evangelicals Gone? » Evangel | A First Things Blog

Music as politics

I graduated from high school in 1964. The music I bought and played obsessively was "folk music" by groups like the Kingston Trio, the Chad Mitchell Trio, Peter, Paul & Mary and the New Christie Minstrels. I was offended when older people I worked with at the local museum rather contemptuously, I thought, dismissed my enthusiasm. What I thought was folk music was not what they thought it was. They were pretty much right. It didn't even occur to me that the music I liked might have any political implications. I had never heard of Pete Seeger or even of Bob Dylan. At First Things, Lauren Weiner writes about what led up to that brief period when folk music was popular music.

.... The folk revival—a fad sandwiched between the beatniks and the hippies—may have been brief, but it was also the baby boomers’ coming of age, and its echoes have been lasting. Bruce Springsteen made a splash in 2006 with his Seeger Sessions. Ry Cooder paid homage to Woody Guthrie in the 2007 release My Name Is Buddy. Sheryl Crow told Billboard magazine that her song, “Shine Over Babylon,” is “very environmentally conscious, in the tradition of Bob Dylan.”

It’s curious how much the postwar children of prosperity enjoyed hearkening back to hard times. Dylan’s early compositions were full of Dust Bowl references. Odetta was on television rendering the sounds of the chain gang while bathed in a glamorous cabaret spotlight. The Gordon Lightfoot song “Early Morning Rain” (1964) complained that “you can’t jump a jet plane” as easily as you hopped a freight train back in the good old, bad old days. “Green, Green,” Barry McGuire’s 1963 top ten hit, had the perky coeds of the New Christy Minstrels belting out the plea of the Great Depression: “Buddy, can you spare me a dime?” ....

Superficiality did not hinder the music. It sold like hotcakes (at least until the Beatles arrived and made rock ’n’ roll king), and the secondhand quality escaped those of us working up third-hand versions, strumming along with our phonograph records. ....

For me, folk music was just what people my age were listening to — and we were about to move on. But the fad had a background. The article is about the political purposes of those who promoted folk music from the '30s to the '60s. A musical style isn't guilty even if it is favored by adherents of a particularly hideous ideology. Wagner's operas can be [and are] enjoyed by people who hate what Wagner believed. The Nazis admired Beethoven. It wasn't his fault. Stalinists promoted folk music. That doesn't discredit it. But "folk music" was also written as propaganda and many folk musicians functioned, self-consciously, as propagandists:

.... “However loathsome and psychotic” J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI was, according to Dave Van Ronk, they “got one thing right: The CP[USA] was the American arm of Soviet foreign policy, no more, no less.” Alan Lomax, broadcasting down-home American music over the radio, did his bit to promote Moscow’s interests, at least in small ways. A Lomax-produced radio show out of CBS in New York called Back Where I Come From, for example....

Premiering in August 1940, Back Where I Come From featured, according to historian Robbie Lieberman, “socially conscious songs and stories, even though not explicitly ‘left’ stuff. For example, someone would sing ‘John Brown’s Body,’ and Lomax would comment, ‘There was a war that was worth fighting’”—implying, the American Civil War was good, but England’s fight against Stalin’s 1940 ally Hitler was bad. One could trace in Lomax’s comments “the CP line during the period of the Nazi–Soviet pact,” writes Lieberman. Lomax’s comrades were even louder on the point: While the pact was in force, Seeger and Guthrie wrote vitriolic anti-Roosevelt songs for the Almanacs to sing about the pointless sacrifice that lay ahead should the president send American boys against the Nazi war machine.

The party line changed when panzer divisions rolled across Russia’s western border in June 1941. This had musical ramifications. Guthrie quickly began inserting anti-Hitler lyrics into his old songs. (He also joined the Merchant Marine, and Seeger was conscripted into the Army.) .... [more]

This was, of course, months before Pearl Harbor brought the US into the war. This reversal—from vehement isolationism to equally vehement interventionism—was a marker that distinguished Moscow-lining American Communists from others on the Left who continued to argue that the US should stay out of the war as well as those who had previously been interventionist.

This is, at least to me, a very interesting article—dealing with largely forgotten politics. I recently had a conversation with a young adult who had never heard of the Berlin Wall and didn't know that there had even been an "East" Germany — much less Americans willing to sacrifice their integrity at the behest of Communist directives. I grew up in a period when Communism was the most serious threat to human rights in the world [the Fascists having already been vanquished], and when domestic Communists were regaining a certain respectability [Joe McCarthy having thoroughly discredited naming one - even accurately]. Where you stood on Communism mattered a lot, and I find it impossible to admire Americans who were its acolytes.

I still enjoy folk music, although more authentic varieties, and I'm grateful that, whatever their motives, people like Lomax did a lot to preserve it. I also enjoy some songs by ideologically driven "folk singers." For instance, "This Land is Your Land," even knowing it was written as an answer to "God Bless America," which I also like. And many folk songs have little to do with politics at all. Everything isn't political — something Bob Dylan realized long ago—even before he went electric—to the chagrin of the true believers.

Where Have All the Lefties Gone? | First Things

"Mere Christianity" Christians

Chaplain Mike at Internet Monk asked his readers to discuss whether "'Mere Christianity Christians,' i.e. Christians who emphasize the smaller, more minimal and broadly efficient vision of C.S. Lewis and some of the early church fathers personified in the Apostles’ Creed" are a threat to Evangelicalism. One of the commenters provided this from Lewis's Mere Christianity:

I hope no reader will suppose that ‘mere’ Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of the existing communions—as if a man could adopt it in preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else. It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall I shall have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in. For that purpose the worst of the rooms (whichever that may be) is, I think, preferable.

It is true that some people may find they have to wait in the hall for a considerable time, while others feel certain almost at once which door they must knock at. I do not know why there is this difference, but I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you do get into your room you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise. But you must regard it as waiting, not as camping. You must keep on praying for light: and, of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house. And above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and paneling.

Conversion brings the new believer into the hallway — "mere" Christianity" — orthodoxy — and what he concludes about other doctrines determines which denominational door he enters. Lewis was critical of those who insist on excluding as non-Christians those who choose one door off the hallway rather than another. That is not to say that there are not very important differences between rooms, but they are not differences that put the occupants outside the house of faith.

I was reminded of Albert Mohler's notion of "theological triage":

.... A discipline of theological triage would require Christians to determine a scale of theological urgency that would correspond to the medical world's framework for medical priority. With this in mind, I would suggest three different levels of theological urgency, each corresponding to a set of issues and theological priorities found in current doctrinal debates.

First-level theological issues would include those doctrines most central and essential to the Christian faith. Included among these most crucial doctrines would be doctrines such as the Trinity, the full deity and humanity of Jesus Christ, justification by faith, and the authority of Scripture. ....

.... The set of second-order doctrines is distinguished from the first-order set by the fact that believing Christians may disagree on the second-order issues, though this disagreement will create significant boundaries between believers. When Christians organize themselves into congregations and denominational forms, these boundaries become evident.

Second-order issues would include the meaning and mode of baptism. Baptists and Presbyterians, for example, fervently disagree over the most basic understanding of Christian baptism. The practice of infant baptism is inconceivable to the Baptist mind, while Presbyterians trace infant baptism to their most basic understanding of the covenant. Standing together on the first-order doctrines, Baptists and Presbyterians eagerly recognize each other as believing Christians, but recognize that disagreement on issues of this importance will prevent fellowship within the same congregation or denomination. ....

Third-order issues are doctrines over which Christians may disagree and remain in close fellowship, even within local congregations. I would put most of the debates over eschatology, for example, in this category. Christians who affirm the bodily, historical, and victorious return of the Lord Jesus Christ may differ over timetable and sequence without rupturing the fellowship of the church. Christians may find themselves in disagreement over any number of issues related to the interpretation of difficult texts or the understanding of matters of common disagreement. Nevertheless, standing together on issues of more urgent importance, believers are able to accept one another without compromise when third-order issues are in question. .... (more)

My denominational affiliation is clearly the result of "second-order" doctrines including baptism and the Sabbath. The most destructive arguments among Christians, it seems to me, result from insisting that secondary and tertiary issues be considered essential.

Open Mic at the iMonk Cafe: “Mere Christianity” Christians | internetmonk.com, AlbertMohler.com

"Yet will I trust in Him"

Via Jared Wilson's The Gospel-Driven Church, a quotation from David Brainerd's journal:

I am the subject of depressions of spirit so fearful that I hope none of you ever get to such extremes of wretchedness as I go to, but I always get back again by this—I know I trust Christ. I have no reliance but in him, and if he falls I shall fall with him, but if he does not, I shall not. Because he lives, I shall live also, and I spring to my legs again and fight with my depressions of spirit and my downcastings, and get the victory through it; and so may you do, and so you must, for there is no other way of escaping from it. In your most depressed seasons you are to get joy and peace through believing . . . Do stick to this, dear friends, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him" (Job 13:15).

The Gospel-Driven Church: (re)New Year

Government of the people, by the people and for the people

One of the lessons of modern history is that democratic nations seldom (almost never) engage in war with one another. The prospect of peace among nations would probably be a sufficient non-ideological, pragmatic, reason to promote democracy in the world, even if there were no others. But, of course there are other reasons. Moral reasons — because democracies do rather better than dictatorships and authoritarian regimes at protecting human rights, and, it turns out, human well-being. Churchill's famous statement (delivered after a political defeat) that "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" is an anti-utopian justification. Democracy doesn't promise perfection — the systems that do have generally come closer to delivering hell. Now there comes another positive reason to favor a system that delivers government "by the people." Democracy and the rule of law are the best way to mitigate poverty and create societies that can feed, clothe and shelter their own. "What Makes a Nation Rich? One Economist's Big Answer":

.... People need incentives to invest and prosper; they need to know that if they work hard, they can make money and actually keep that money. And the key to ensuring those incentives is sound institutions — the rule of law and security and a governing system that offers opportunities to achieve and innovate. That's what determines the haves from the have-nots — not geography or weather or technology or disease or ethnicity.

Put simply: Fix incentives and you will fix poverty. And if you wish to fix institutions, you have to fix governments.

How do we know that institutions are so central to the wealth and poverty of nations? Start in Nogales, a city cut in half by the Mexican-American border fence. There is no difference in geography between the two halves of Nogales. The weather is the same. The winds are the same, as are the soils. The types of diseases prevalent in the area given its geography and climate are the same, as is the ethnic, cultural, and linguistic background of the residents. By logic, both sides of the city should be identical economically.

And yet they are far from the same.

On one side of the border fence, in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, the median household income is $30,000. A few feet away, it's $10,000. On one side, most of the teenagers are in public high school, and the majority of the adults are high school graduates. On the other side, few of the residents have gone to high school, let alone college. Those in Arizona enjoy relatively good health and Medicare for those over sixty-five, not to mention an efficient road network, electricity, telephone service, and a dependable sewage and public-health system. None of those things are a given across the border. There, the roads are bad, the infant-mortality rate high, electricity and phone service expensive and spotty.

The key difference is that those on the north side of the border enjoy law and order and dependable government services — they can go about their daily activities and jobs without fear for their life or safety or property rights. On the other side, the inhabitants have institutions that perpetuate crime, graft, and insecurity.

Nogales may be the most obvious example, but it's far from the only one. Take Singapore, a once-impoverished tropical island that became the richest nation in Asia after British colonialists enshrined property rights and encouraged trade. Or China, where decades of stagnation and famine were reversed only after Deng Xiaoping began introducing private-property rights in agriculture, and later in industry. Or Botswana, whose economy has flourished over the past forty years while the rest of Africa has withered, thanks to strong tribal institutions and farsighted nation building by its early elected leaders.

Now look at the economic and political failures. You can begin in Sierra Leone, where a lack of functioning institutions and an overabundance of diamonds have fueled decades of civil war and strife and corruption that continue unchecked today. Or take communist North Korea, a geographical, ethnic, and cultural mirror of its capitalist neighbor to the south, yet ten times poorer. .... (more)

What Makes a Nation Rich? One Economist's Big Answer

Unto the least of these

St. Augustine warned Christians against becoming so attached to a particular interpretation of Genesis that, if that interpretation is discredited, the faith itself is brought into question:

In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines our position, we too fall with it.

Marilynne Robinson wrote that "Creationism is the best thing that could have happened to Darwinism" — because it gives more credibility to the arguments of Darwinist ideologues than they deserve. By "Darwinist ideologues" I do not mean those who have concluded that the earth is very old or that species developed through natural selection, but rather the adherents of what amounts to an alternative religion. A distinction needs to be made between scientific study of origins and the arguments of the New Atheists and their disreputable antecedents. From the first chapter of Marilynne Robinson's The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought [1998]:

.... What, precisely, this theory called Darwinism really is, is itself an interesting question. The popular shorthand version of it is "the survival of the fittest." This is a phrase coined by the so-called Social Darwinist, Herbert Spencer, in work published before the appearance of the Origin of Species and adopted—with acknowledgment of Spencer as the source—in later editions of Darwin's book. There is an apparent tautology in the phrase. Since Darwinian (and, of course, Spencerian) fitness is proved by survival, one could as well call the principle at work "the survival of survivors." This is not, strictly speaking, tautological, if the point is to bless things as they are, insofar as they are a matter of life and death. (The words "competition" and "struggle" are grossly euphemistic, since what is being described in Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population [1798], the winnowing that inspired Darwin, was the withholding of very meager sustenance from those who would die without it. Nothing more heroic was called for than closing one's hand, or turning one's back, both of them familiar and congenial exercises in Darwin's time, and both of them what Spencer was commending when he coined this phrase.) ....

.... Creationism is the best thing that could have happened to Darwinism, the caricature of religion that has seemed to justify Darwinist contempt for the whole of religion. Creationism has tended to obscure the fact that religion—precisely as the hope of the powerless and the mitigator of the abuse of the weak—has indeed come under determined attack by people who have claimed the authority of science, and that Darwin's work was quite rightly seized upon by antireligionists who had other fish to fry than the mere demystification of cosmogony. I am speaking, as I know it is rude to do, of the Social Darwinists, the eugenicists, the Imperialists, the Scientific Socialists who showed such firmness in reshaping civilization in Eastern Europe, China, Cambodia, and elsewhere, and, yes, of the Nazis. Darwin influenced the nationalist writer Heinrich von Treitschke and the biologist Ernst Haeckel, who influenced Hitler and also the milieu in which he flourished.

If there is felt to be a missing link between Darwinism and these distinctive phenomena of modern history, it is because we pretend that only Darwin's most presentable book would have had circulation and impact. Reading The Descent of Man, one finds Darwin the obsessive taxonomist marveling that Hindus, who are apparently so unlike Europeans, are in fact also Aryans, while Jews, who look just like Europeans, are in fact Asiatics. This sort of language is a reminder of the kind of thinking that was going on in Europe at that time, which Darwin's cheerful interest in the extermination of races, and his insistence on ranking races in terms of their nearness to the apes, could only have abetted. ....

It does bear mentioning in this context that the full title of his first book is On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. However generously this title is interpreted, clearly it does not assume that biological systems evolve by chance and not design, as Darwin is always said to have done. It clearly implies that whatever is is right, and—even less tenably—that whatever is is the product of raw struggle, and—still less tenably—that there is a teleology behind it all, one which favors and preserves. Darwinists seem unable to refrain from theology, as the supplanters of it. The old God may have let the rain fall on the just and the unjust alike, but this new god is more implacable in his judgments, and very straightforward, killing off those who die, to state the matter baldly. What need of this theology except to imply that there is wisdom and blessing and meaning in "selection," which the phenomenon itself does not by any means imply? ....

Darwinism is harsh and crude in its practical consequences, in a degree that sets it apart from all other respectable scientific hypotheses; not coincidentally, it had its origins in polemics against the poor, and against the irksome burden of extending charity to them—a burden laid on the back of Europe by Christianity. The Judeo-Christian ethic of charity derives from the assertion that human beings are made in the image of God, that is, that reverence is owed to human beings simply as such, and also that their misery or neglect or destruction is not, for God, a matter of indifference, or of merely compassionate interest, but is something in the nature of sacrilege. Granting that the standards of conduct implied by this assertion have rarely been acknowledged, let alone met, a standard is not diminished or discredited by the fact that it is seldom or never realized, and, especially, a religious imperative is not less powerful in its claims on any individual even if the whole world excepting him or her is of one mind in ignoring it and always has been. To be free of God the Creator is to be free of the religious ethic implied in the Genesis narrative of Creation. Charity was the shadow of a gesture toward acknowledging the obligations of human beings to one another, thus conceived. .... [more]

Several months ago Christianity Today reviewed Gary B. Ferngren's Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity describing the difference early Christianity made for those toward whom the ancient pagans — like the eugenicists and Social Darwinists — felt no compassion:

.... When an epidemic struck in the ancient world, pagan city officials offered gifts to the gods but nothing for their suffering citizens. Even in healthy times, those who had no one to care for them, or whose care placed too great a burden on the family, were left out to die.

Christians found this intolerable, and they set about to take care of these people and others similarly afflicted. They did so because, Ferngren writes, "Early Christian philanthropy was informed by the theological concept of the imago Dei, that humans were created in the image of God."

This led not only to a belief in the responsibility to aid others and the inherent worth of every human being, but also to a belief in the sacredness of the body itself. "It was to save the body that Christ took on flesh in the Incarnation. Not only the soul, which in traditional pagan thought was eternal, but the composite of body and soul, which constituted man, was to be resurrected."

The idea of imago Dei also led to a redefinition of the idea of the poor. Rights in a city or society were given to members, and all members received benefits. Those outside were offered none. Christianity, in addition to seeing all people as "neighbors," developed a special consideration for the poor. Just as God demonstrated in the Incarnation his solidarity with those who suffer, so the members of his "body" must demonstrate their solidarity with the suffering poor. .... [more]

Most of today's disciples of Darwin are as altruistic as any religious believer, but their altruism is a legacy from a Christian heritage — not a logical inference from their ideology.

Thanks to Justin Taylor for the Robinson reference, and Gene Veith for the reference to the book review.

The Death of Adam, The Health Care Debate, Early Church Style | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

"If there were enough like him..."

The scrollwork along the edge of the porch roof was wet with the fog. The fog dripped from the Monterey cypresses that shadowed off into nothing towards the cliff above the ocean. You could see a scant dozen feet in any direction. I went down the porch steps and drifted off through the trees, following an indistinct path until I could hear the wash of the surf licking at the fog, low down at the bottom of the cliff. There wasn't a gleam of light anywhere. I could see a dozen trees clearly at one time, another dozen dimly, then nothing at all but the fog. I circled to the left and drifted back towards the gravel path that went around to the stables where they parked the cars. When I could make out the outlines of the house I slopped. A little in front of me I had heard a man cough.

My steps hadn't made any sound on the soft moist turf. The man coughed again, then stifled the cough with a handkerchief or a sleeve. While he was still doing that I moved forward closer to him. I made him out, a vague shadow close to the path. Something made me step behind a tree and crouch down. The man turned his head. His face should have been a white blur when he did that. It wasn't. It remained dark. There was a mask over it. .... (Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep)

Several of my friends read fantasy or science fiction for relaxation. I've always preferred mysteries and crime novels. Several — both new ones and old friends — lie on the stack of books I intend to read. Right now, though, I'm reading P.D. James's book about such books: Talking About Detective Fiction. She describes, once again, how the American "hard-boiled" school of detection forever changed the genre and the contempt Raymond Chandler had for the portrayal of detection in books by such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. I've always enjoyed both kinds of story and agree with James that one isn't really any more—or less—fantastic than the other. The very best of the "hard-boiled" school was Raymond Chandler and now, on the fiftieth anniversary of his death Mick Hume at Spiked gives us "Why Marlowe is still the chief of detectives."

For some of us there may be no such thing as a bad detective novel, but there are none as good as Raymond Chandler’s. Even if you are unfamiliar with Chandler and have not read his Philip Marlowe novels, such is the shadow he cast that you will recognise his universe: a dark corrupt world where men are weak-hearted tough guys, women are available vixens and Hollywood dreams are dashed by ugly reality, while a wisecracking, chain-smoking detective hero stands up for what’s right. ‘I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country’, says Marlowe in a crisis: ‘What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and left the room.’ ....

.... At the centre is Marlowe, a man who is not himself mean, a ‘common man and yet an unusual man’, often lost and alone but never defeated, making a stand against ‘this strange corrupt world in which we live’, run by crooks, crooked cops and rich parasites. Chandler wrote that ‘P Marlowe has as much social conscience as a horse. He has a personal conscience, which is an entirely different matter'....

Marlowe — the definitive detective — has a strong sense of morality, though his morals are not those found in the Bible or the Bill of Rights. His personal conscience believes that law and justice are not necessarily the same thing...and that violence and law-breaking can be the right thing to do. Chandler established the detective as a very human hero. As Colin Dexter, author of the Inspector Morse novels, has noted, Marlowe has ‘a big streak of integrity down his spine and a moral code of his own. But he is no super-hero, acknowledging as he does his fallibility and his fears’. ....

The fiftieth anniversary of Chandler’s death seems a timely excuse for introducing them to ‘P Marlowe, a simple alcoholic vulgarian who never sleeps with his clients while on duty’ and ‘marks high on insubordination’. ....

Chandler’s conclusion about the hero detective in his essay ‘The Simple Art of Murder’ might sound a touch corny to modern ears, but it rings true down the years: ‘If there were enough like him, the world would be a safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.’ .... [more]

sp!ked review of books | Why Marlowe is still the chief of detectives

"Brilliant" films

Nile Gardiner of the Telegraph nominates "The Top 10 Conservative Movies of the Last Decade." I've seen almost all of them and enjoyed them enough to seriously consider watching the two I haven't. Quite apart from politics, there is a lot of good entertainment here. Gardiner describes his choices as "all brilliant movies that conservatives can be inspired by, and which are guaranteed to offend left-wing sensibilities in one way or another" but not "a list of films made only by conservative filmmakers, who are, it has to be said, few in number." The first three:

1. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir, 2003)

Peter Weir’s unashamedly old-fashioned and visually stunning adaptation of Patrick O’Brian’s novel is one of the greatest odes to leadership ever committed to celluloid. Australian director Weir has made many terrific films, including Gallipoli, Dead Poets Society, The Year of Living Dangerously, and Witness, but Master and Commander was the pinnacle of his career so far. Nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture, it should be essential viewing for any commander-in-chief. Russell Crowe delivers a powerhouse performance as Jack Aubrey, Captain of HMS Surprise, a British warship that hunts and ultimately captures a far larger French adversary during the Napoleonic Wars. Set in 1805, it is an epic tale of heroism and love for country in the face of incredible odds, and a glowing tribute to the grit and determination that forged the British Empire.

2. Black Hawk Down (Ridley Scott, 2001)

Sir Ridley Scott’s searing depiction of the ill-fated US raid on Mogadishu in 1993, which left 19 American servicemen dead, was released just months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States and the launch of the War on Terror. Based on the book by Mark Bowden, it won Academy Awards for Best Film Editing and Sound, and Scott was nominated for Best Director. Many critics enthusiastically dubbed Black Hawk Down an anti-war film, and it is in some respects a cautionary tale about the perils of nation-building. But I regard it above all as an extraordinarily powerful and deeply patriotic tribute to the heroism and bravery of the US military, faced with overwhelming odds in a hostile city dominated by brutal Somali warlords. It is essentially a story of incredible sacrifice and camaraderie in the heat of battle, and ranks alongside Zulu, Saving Private Ryan and A Bridge Too Far as one of the greatest war films of all time.

3. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Peter Jackson, 2001, 2002, 2003)

All three parts of the Lord of the Rings trilogy were great pieces of cinema – The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and finally The Return of the King, which won Best Picture at the 2004 Academy Awards. J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of Lord of the Rings, was a devout Catholic and conservative, and a close friend of C.S. Lewis at Oxford. His vision of a mighty battle between good and evil in the realms of Middle Earth was brilliantly transferred to the screen by New Zealand director Peter Jackson, perfectly fitting a post 9/11 world where the forces of freedom found themselves pitted against a barbaric enemy.

.... (the rest)

The Top 10 Conservative Movies of the Last Decade – Telegraph Blogs

The symbolism of the pulpit

The Wittenberg Door regrets "The Loss of Symbolism," specifically what seems an aversion to the pulpit, which the pastor once ascended to preach the Word. He argues that the pulpit symbolized something very important in Christian — and particularly Reformed — doctrine.

The pulpit comprises a lectern standing upon a raised platform. Being the most important piece of “furniture” in the church, it is positioned in front of the congregation, with all pews facing it. Its symbolic importance can be summarized as follows:

• It’s central—The pulpit’s central placement is important because it is from there that God addresses His people via the preached word. Therefore, it commands the most prominent place in the church.
• It’s raised—The pulpit is elevated because it is upon the lectern that the minister’s bible rests, symbolizing the word of God being over the people.
• It’s solid—The lectern is made of solid wood, symbolizing the sure foundation upon which God’s word stands. Moreover, it’s large enough to obscure most of the minister’s body, thus keeping the focus on the word. For this reason, Reformed ministers stay behind the lectern, so as to stay behind the word of God. ....

Things have changed, though. Pulpits are considered outdated, and even stifling. Like nature, the church abhors a vacuum. In the pulpit’s place sprung the Plexiglas stand, allowing the “minister” to be seen in all of his glory. But this too is seen by some as cumbersome. Why let anything stand in front of the minister, hindering his ability to work the crowd...?

Too harsh? Perhaps. But the transition from the pulpit to more modern elements is symptomatic of a greater problem: a shift from the glory of God to the glory of man; ... a shift from the preached word as a Means of Grace to the advent of a new sacrament—the minister himself. ....

The Wittenberg Door: The Loss of Symbolism

"Shallow and trendy and transient"

Nathan Martin at Evangel has transcribed an interview he did with Os Guinness and titles it "Where Have All the Evangelicals Gone?" Guinness, an old associate of Francis Schaeffer (and a member of the brewery family), has some interesting things to say about the state of American Evangelicalism. It's a lengthy interview that is being posted in parts. These are a few of the questions and answers from the segment today (I have reformatted somewhat):

Many of these agnostics/atheists turn to Genesis when they are trying to undermine the foundations of Christianity, should we meet them in Genesis or should we be focusing on the character of Christ and moving out?

We have to do both.

There’s no question that the relationship between faith and science is one of the great weaknesses in the American church. You’ve got three positions, the young earth creationists, most of whom are frank embarrassments to actual scientists, and yet the majority position among most Christians. Then, you’ve got the intelligent design, and there are very many serious believers and scientists in that. My quarrel with them is that they are politicizing this issue and you’ve got lawsuits and things. That is a science issue and it should be fought humbly and graciously between scientists. Then there are theistic evolutionists like Francis Collins and most serious thinkers in Europe, and I think that the real argument is between Theistic Evolution and Intelligent Design. But that is not an argument that should be politicized, like in the Dover case and so on. So, overall, the American church, mainly Evangelicals have made a huge issue over this and we have to put it right. ....

Now looking back at the Jesus movement, you were optimistic about it…?

Actually I didn’t, I criticized the Jesus movement. I was a strong critic of the counter-culture and all those movements in the 60s, but I was the strongest critic of the Jesus Movement because it was very shallow and trendy and transient, and that’s what it proved to be. I’m critical of a lot of these trendy and transient things, including the extremes of the emergent church which are equally trendy and transient.

What are some of the biggest problems of the emergent church?

I have two main criticisms of those extremes. One, they were much stronger on the negative than the positive. Now, the Reformers, for example, were very strong on the negative, the selling of grace by indulgences, they attacked it up hill and down dale, it was vile. At the same time, they were even stronger on the positive, Sola Gratia, by grace alone.

Whereas a mark of the emergent church, its extremes and the work of some people, whom I won’t mention, they are still getting over the hang-ups of the churches that they grew up in, and they aren’t as strong on the positives of the gospel, and that’s tragic. My other problem is that they are very critical of modernism, quite rightly, but they are uncritical of post-modernism, wrongly. ....

R.C. Sproul was asked what the greatest theological problem facing the Christian church would be, he answered with regards to Christology and the personhood of Christ, what would you see as the greatest problem facing the church?

The biggest problem is not specific theological issues, like grace or Jesus or whatever, it is theology itself. In other words, modernity shifts theology from authority to preference. Karl Barth used to put it like this, “Theology once had binding address,” it addressed you and then bound you, so there was a link between belief and behavior. Now, that link between belief and behavior has eroded. So now, what people believe and how they behave, who cares?

Take Evangelicals, Evangelicals have never had a higher, sharper, clearer view of Scripture, things like statements of inerrancy. But Evangelical behavior on the ground is permissive chaos. The fact is, it’s just a matter of preference. And everyone describes their freedom, including the emergent church. As soon as you can say the views you don’t like, the uptight, stuffy traditional views, legalistic or whatever and you throw out what you don’t like, it’s just a matter of preference. And you get what social scientists call a cafeteria spirituality, or a salad bar spirituality. In other words, you can go down the bar, and decide you like cabbage not lettuce? Fine. You like radishes not carrots? Fine. You like love, not hell? Fine. Check out hell, take out love, that’s fine. .... (more)

Where Have All the Evangelicals Gone? » Evangel | A First Things Blog

Bible reading with discipline and grace

Justin Taylor has several links up today about Bible study. One of them takes us to ten ESV Bible Reading Plans including a variety of ways to access them. But the recommendation that interested me the most was the "Bible Reading Plan for Shirkers and Slackers," which sounds like it was designed for me. Taylor links to this pastor's description of the approach:

.... Therefore, let me suggest a new kind of reading plan for 2010, one that writer Margie Haack calls 'The Bible Reading Plan for Slackers and Shirkers' (I love that title!). Advantages to this plan include:

1. Removing the pressure to 'keep up' with getting through the entire Bible in a year.
2. Providing variety throughout the week by alternating genres.
3. Providing continuity by reading the same genre each day of the week.

In a nutshell, here's how it works:

Sundays: Poetry
Mondays: Penteteuch (Genesis through Deuteronomy)
Tuesdays: Old Testament history
Wednesdays: Old Testament history
Thursdays: Old Testament prophets
Fridays: New Testament history
Saturdays: New Testament epistles (letters)

The advantage of this plan is that it provides guidance as we read each day but does not put us on an internal guilt trip if we miss a day - we just pick up with the next reading on the day it happens to be. Also, this plan allows us to see the many interconnections between sections of Scripture. So, as Margie puts it, on the same day you may be reading about God's covenant with Abraham in Genesis and a few days later read Paul's commentary on the Abrahamic covenant in Romans.

Many Bible reading plans are good, but I find this one unusually helpful, for it combines two biblical values which seem to diverge in most plans: discipline and grace. ....

Taylor provides this link to a pdf download of the plan.