Klavan

Andrew Klavan announces that his young adult series may be filmed:

Summit Entertainment–makers of Hurt Locker and the Twilight movies–have optioned Andrew’s Homelanders series of young adult thriller novels for film. Lorenzo di Bonaventura, producer of Transformers and Stardust, will produce. The series deals with teenager Charlie West’s quest to find out why he’s become the target of jihadist terrorists and the police.

I've enjoyed the two books in the series that have been published thus far. They are full of the kind of action that I assume would translate into a very intense, exciting film — and perhaps one I could enjoy without moral and political qualification, although as Klavan notes:

Those who know the movie business know that I will have precious little control over whether the Homelanders films will, if made, reflect the values of the novels. But who knows? It could happen. And if it did, it would be less amazing now than, say, ten years ago.

Not long ago it was announced that Klavan would write three more young adult thrillers for Thomas Nelson after completion of the four Homelander books. All this in addition to his books for adults, which I also enjoy.

The other things I've posted about Klavan.

Klavan's Homelanders Optioned for Film

"To want what He wants"

Almost twenty years ago I read Ben Patterson's Waiting: Finding Hope When God Seems Silent. It had a profound effect on my attitude about "the problem of pain." As a result it is one of those books I keep on hand to give away. Today Kevin DeYoung recommends a couple of books Patterson has written about prayer, including God's Prayer Book: The Power and Pleasure of Praying the Psalms from which he provides this quotation:

Prayer is more than a tool for self-expression, a means to get God to give us what we want. It is a means he uses to give us what he wants, and to teach us to want what he wants. Holy Scripture in general, and the Psalms in particular, teach us who God is and what he wants to give.

When the members of his synagogue complained that the words of the liturgy did not express what they felt, Abraham Heschel, the great philosopher of religion, replied wisely and very biblically. He told them that the liturgy wasn’t supposed to express what they felt; they were supposed to feel what the liturgy expressed. To be taught by the Bible to pray is to learn to want and feel what the Bible expresses—to say what it means and mean what it says. God’s Prayer Book, 7

On the basis of that [and previous experience], another Patterson book I will definitely read.

Ben Patterson on Prayer – Kevin DeYoung

"Jiminy Cricket Christianity"

Bob Spencer adds another, a "number nine" to Michael Patton's "eight things I hate...":

...I'll add one item, number nine, which I'll call "Christian positive thinking" [CPT]. That's when a Christian thinks of the positive outcome he or she is hoping for and then concludes, "I'm believing it will happen."

• "I'm believing this rain will end and the game won't be postponed."
• "I'm believing the tumor will just disappear."
• "I'm believing the Sox are going to win it all this year."

You get the picture. I always want to say, "Why should I care what you're believing, pal?" It's all about faith, these people say, and maybe they quote the late Tug McGraw: "You gotta believe!" Where do they get this notion that faith in God equates to all good things coming to you, as long as you believe! It's Jiminy Cricket Christianity, for crying out loud.

Christian Positive Thinking often includes positive thinking about oneself, emphasizing just how wonderful we are. Oh, there's usually a brief nod to the Lord and a humble admission that it was God who made us so dang awesome, but the subject of CPT is usually the wondrous self. CPT worship songs are always about how much we love God, how dedicated we are to loving people, etc. ....

Wilderness Fandango: Christian Positive Thinking

The most difficult doctrine

In his account of returning to the faith, Peter Hitchens described his fear of Hell as a factor:

No doubt I should be ashamed to confess that fear played a part in my return to religion, specifically a painting: Rogier van der Weyden's 15th Century Last Judgement, which I saw in Burgundy while on holiday.


Click on the picture to enlarge.

I had scoffed at its mention in the guidebook, but now I gaped, my mouth actually hanging open, at the naked figures fleeing towards the pit of Hell.

These people did not appear remote or from the ancient past; they were my own generation. Because they were naked, they were not imprisoned in their own age by time-bound fashions.

On the contrary, their hair and the set of their faces were entirely in the style of my own time. They were me, and people I knew.

I had a sudden strong sense of religion being a thing of the present day, not imprisoned under thick layers of time. My large catalogue of misdeeds replayed themselves rapidly in my head.

I had absolutely no doubt that I was among the damned, if there were any damned. Van der Weyden was still earning his fee, nearly 500 years after his death. ....

Michael Patton, while noting that "...[T]here are many more things I love about Christianity than what I hate," lists "Eight Things I Hate About Christianity." Counting down, the number one thing he "hates":

Hell. This is hands down the most difficult doctrine in the Christian faith. We believe in a loving God who sees fit to allow his creation (his children) to suffer in a place we call hell—a place, by the way, that affords more suffering than anything imaginable. A place, by the way, that is never-ending. It is not as though I don’t believe it. I do. It is not as though I look at God in judgment. I don’t. It is simply something that confuses me. While I completely disagree with any form of “Christian” universalism (i.e. all people are going to make it to heaven), second-chance theories (i.e. unbelievers will experience a second chance to escape hell in the after life), or the idea of annihilationalism (i.e. the belief that hell, along with all its inhabitants, will eventually be annihilated forever), I understand and sympathize with the reason why they go in this direction. If I could find some sort of loop-hole to get out of believing in the doctrine of an eternal hell, I would. If there was such a thing as a Christianity that did not necessitate a belief in hell, I would submit my resume. (And believe me, I have tried). Oh, closely connected to this are the cliché answers Christians give about hell. Many Christians I have encountered act as if hell does not bother them in the least. Of all the things you can be cliché about, don’t be so here.

One of the responses to this unattractive doctrine is [as Patton notes] universalism. This morning Mike Pohlman at the Gospel Coalition's blog, responding to a request, posted a collection of resources about universalism, and, of course, Hell.

Parchment and Pen » Eight Things I Hate About Christianity, Responding to “Christian Universalism” – The Gospel Coalition Blog, How I found God and peace with my atheist brother: PETER HITCHENS traces his journey back to Christianity | Mail Online

"Keep Christopher Hitchens away from my oxen"

Not long ago I posted about "The other Hitchens": Christopher Hitchens' brother Peter who is a believer. Christopher, who is emphatically not a believer, recently took on the task of re-writing the Ten Commandments in his column at Vanity Fair — deleting some [the first three], accepting others [with qualifications] and making additions [isn't a magazine called Vanity Fair the perfect place for this sort of thing?]. Benjamin Dueholm, a friend and Chicago area pastor, has a blog called "The Private Intellectual" where he recently suggested that Hitchens is ill informed biblically, historically, and theologically. The beginning of Ben's "The Ten Commandments x2":

.... Naturally he shakes the whole array of debating points into his blunderbuss and lets fly. There are multiple versions of and references to the Mosaic commandments! Remarkable. But considering that the Bible was written over a long period of time by many editorial hands, what's remarkable is less the diversity than the relative uniformity of the commandments. Some of his points are merely the artifacts of unimproved ignorance. The commandment against graven images, he imagines "seems to discourage Christian iconography, with its crucifixes, and statues of virgins and saints." Of course it seems to. Why didn't we think of that! Oh, wait—we did. Turns out there was a long and rather nasty debate about icons. Got rather ugly. One side won and one side lost, for a lot of reasons, including some musty arguments about incarnation and Jesus and all that. The iconoclastic controversy, and the recurring disputes over images, are not exactly entry-level topics, but they can be mastered to a satisfactory degree if you read about them. "Scholars differ," Hitchens says in his Sunday-best "I read about this stuff" voice—about the epoch during which the Jewish people decided on monotheism," but crucially scholars do not differ on the date of the Second Council of Nicaea, which settled the issue of icons for most of the Christian world.

But anyway, a better way to counteract this stuff is to say a little bit about what the commandments are and what they aren't. I can think of two broad ways to do this. The first I'll call "commandment minimalism." .... [much more]

Enjoy:

Part One: Commandment minimalism
Part Two: Commandment maximalism

The Private Intellectual: The Ten Commandments x2 Part 1, The Private Intellectual: The Ten Commandments x2 Part 2

"In Whose sweet praise I all my days could gladly spend"

Re-posted because Ray Ortlund, whose blog posting originally called it to my attention, does so once more. It is a wonderful hymn, always appropriate, but particularly in this season:

My song is love unknown,

My Saviour’s love to me;

Love to the loveless shown,

That they might lovely be.

O who am I, that for my sake

My Lord should take frail flesh and die?

He came from His blest throne

Salvation to bestow;

But men made strange, and none

The longed-for Christ would know:

But O! my Friend, my Friend indeed,

Who at my need His life did spend.

Here might I stay and sing,

No story so divine;

Never was love, dear King!

Never was grief like Thine.

This is my Friend, in Whose sweet praise

I all my days could gladly spend.

Samuel Crossman, 1664

YouTube - My Song Is Love Unknown

Nathaniel Bailey's dictionary

In the course of reviewing two recent biographies of Samuel Johnson, Jack Lynch notes an error in one of them:

Meyers writes that Johnson's Dictionary "gathered more words than anyone had ever done before," but Nathan Bailey, Johnson's most important predecessor, defined almost 50% more words.

Nathan Bailey was, of course, Nathaniel Bailey [16_-1742], a Seventh Day Baptist. A copy of his dictionary resides in the museum of the Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society.

A 19th Century book, English Dialect Words of the Eighteenth Century as shown in the "Universal Etymological Dictionary" of Nathaniel Bailey [1883], contains some information about Bailey's Seventh Day Baptist connection. The author, E.A. Axon notes that:

Chalmers rather doubtingly states that: Bailey was believed to have been a Sabbatarian. The meaning of this word has rather changed, and, as used by Chalmers, it meant a member of the sect of Seventh Day Baptists, or Sabbath-keepers, who, like the Jews, observe Saturday as the day of rest. It occurred to me that if so he must probably have been a member of the Mill Yard Church in Whitechapel. The Rev. W. Mead Jones, the Minister of the Seventh Day Baptist Congregation, immediately confirmed my conjecture. The name of Nathaniel Bailey is on the church books, and there is a tradition identifying this name with the lexicographer. [p. xiii]

Axon continues with this about the Mill Yard Seventh Day Baptist Church [which has existed continuously since well before Bailey's day]:

The Seventh Day Church in Mill Yard has a strange and interesting history. .... The members of this struggling, isolated sect—an oasis of "Sabbath-keepers" in the midst of the desert of "Sabbath-breaking" London—have included Dr. Peter Chainberlayn, Thos. Bampfleld, the Speaker of the House of Commons, the two Stennets, William Tempest, F.R.S., and that late accomplished antiquary, the Rev. W. H. Black, F.S.A. The present minister, the Rev. W. M. Jones, is the editor of the 'Sabbath Memorial,' and is reprinting the rare seventeenth century tract which records the judicial murder of the Rev. John James, "a Sabbath-keeper," whose death is one of the many blots upon the reign of Charles II. Mill Yard Chapel is in pleasing contrast to the squalor by which it is surrounded, and with its other memories we may now associate the name of Nathaniel Bailey, the author of a Dictionary, of which the weakest parts are those in which he avowedly depended upon others, whilst the excellence of the plan and the spirit and industry with which it is executed are his alone. [p. xv]

The Claremont Institute - Lives of Johnson, English Dialect Words of the Eighteenth Century as shown in the "Universal Etymological Dictionary" of Nathaniel Bailey

"Wherefore do readers turn to these books?"

First Things once again makes available Alan Jacobs' "review" of the Collected Works of Kahlil Gibran.

Expansive and yet vacuous is the prose of Kahlil Gibran,
And weary grows the mind doomed to read it.
The hours of my penance lengthen,
The penance established for me by the editor of this magazine,
And those hours may be numbered as the sands of the desert.
And for each of them Kahlil Gibran has prepared
Another ornamental phrase,
Another faux-Biblical cadence,
Another affirmation proverbial in its intent
But alas! lacking the moral substance,
The peasant shrewdness, of the true proverb.
O Book, O Collected Works of Kahlil Gibran,
Published by Everyman’s Library on a dark day,
I lift you from the Earth to which I recently flung you
When my wrath grew too mighty for me,
I lift you from the Earth,
Noticing once more your annoying heft,
And thanking God—though such thanks are sinful—
That Kahlil Gibran died in New York in 1931
At the age of forty-eight,
So that he could write no more words,
So that this Book would not be yet larger than it is. .... [much more]

On the Works of Kahlil Gibran | First Things

When you pray, pray like this

Robert Spencer, on praying with the emphasis where Jesus put it [Matthew 6:7-13]:

.... There are ten lines in this little poem-like prayer. The first five embody a longing for the Kingdom of God. That's what the whole first half of the prayer is about. Only then does the prayer turn to immediate personal needs of the one doing the praying, and I would add they are as much spiritual needs as temporal.

Note: the prayer is not an encouragement to self-absorption. It is not a litany of personal needs. More importantly, it puts first things first. The need above all other needs, the supreme subject of prayer, we might say, is the Kingdom. "Your kingdom come." The personal prayer requests (such as "daily bread," which is a far cry, by the way, from praying for prosperity) come after, and within the kingdom context.

I learn to understand my real need, when I see this prayer aright. .... [more]

Wilderness Fandango: On putting the kingdom first

The other Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens is one of the best-known of the "new atheists." Less well-known, at least in the United States, is his younger brother Peter, author of a new book, The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith, which was excerpted in the Daily Mail: "How I found God and peace with my atheist brother." In it Peter Hitchens describes his own journey back to faith as well as some of the reasons he finds his brother's arguments unpersuasive:

....[A]s with all atheists, he is his own chief opponent. As long as he can convince himself, nobody else will persuade him. His arguments are to some extent internally coherent and are a sort of explanation - if not the best explanation - of the world and the universe.

He often assumes that moral truths are self-evident, attributing purpose to the universe and swerving dangerously round the problem of conscience - which surely cannot be conscience if he is right since the idea of conscience depends on it being implanted by God. If there is no God then your moral qualms might just as easily be the result of indigestion. ....

One of the problems atheists have is the unbelievers' assertion that it is possible to determine what is right and what is wrong without God. They have a fundamental inability to concede that to be effectively absolute a moral code needs to be beyond human power to alter.

On this misunderstanding is based my brother Christopher's supposed conundrum about whether there is any good deed that could be done only by a religious person, and not done by a Godless one. Like all such questions, this contains another question: what is good, and who is to decide what is good? ....

For a moral code to be effective, it must be attributed to, and vested in, a non-human source. It must be beyond the power of humanity to change it to suit itself. ....

It is striking that in his dismissal of a need for absolute theistic morality, Christopher says in his book that 'the order to "love thy neighbour as thyself" is too extreme and too strenuous to be obeyed'. Humans, he says, are not so constituted as to care for others as much as themselves.

This is demonstrably untrue, and can be shown to be untrue, through the unshakable devotion of mothers to their children; in the uncounted cases of husbands caring for sick, incontinent and demented wives (and vice versa) at their lives' ends; through the heartrending deeds of courage on the battlefield. .... [more]

Thanks to Nick Kersten for calling my attention to this article.

How I found God and peace with my atheist brother: PETER HITCHENS traces his journey back to Christianity | Mail Online

Women and children first

One struck an iceberg in 1912. The other was torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1915. Both were ocean liners carrying civilian passengers, large numbers of whom drowned as the ships sank. Albert Mohler:

The Titanic took hours to sink, leaving time for a remarkable human drama on board the sinking ship. The Lusitania sank in just eighteen minutes....

As it turns out, there was another crucial difference. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looks at the difference in the behavior of the men aboard the two sinking ships. The difference was remarkable. Aboard the Titanic, the men generally behaved with great concern for women and children, doing their best to get the women and children into the precious and insufficient seats in the lifeboats. Hundreds of men died with the Titanic, demonstrating a commitment to put the welfare and lives of women and children above their own.

Aboard the sinking Lusitania, the scene was very different. Women and children were less likely than men to survive that disaster, because the men used their natural strength and speed to take the spaces on the lifeboats, with women and children forced out of their way. ....

Women and children had a significantly greater chance of survival on the Titanic than on the Lusitania. The difference was male behavior. Why did men behave so differently in such similar situations only three years apart?

The researchers looked at several factors, but settled on one that appeared more obvious as they considered the question — the length of time it took the ship to sink. As the report explains, on the Lusitania "the short-run flight impulse dominated behavior. On the slowly sinking Titanic, there was time for socially determined behavioral patterns to reemerge."

Put plainly, on the Lusitania the male passengers demonstrated "selfish rationality." As TIME explains, this is "a behavior that's every bit as me-centered as it sounds and that provides an edge to strong, younger males in particular. On the Titanic, the rules concerning gender, class and the gentle treatment of children — in other words, good manners — had a chance to assert themselves." ....

Aboard the Lusitania, young males acted out of a selfish survival instinct, and women and children were cast aside, left to the waves. Aboard the Titanic, there was time for men to consider what was at stake and to call themselves to a higher morality. There was time for conscience to raise its voice and authority, and for men, young and old, to know and to do their duty.

The Christian worldview based in Scripture explains this in terms of God's revelation of moral order within the structures of creation, and especially in what we call conscience. Even in our fallen state, this moral knowledge speaks to us, and there is a moral knowledge within us that calls us to do what we otherwise would never do — even what is plainly not in our direct self-interest. .... [more]

At least if we are given enough time "for conscience to raise its voice."

Women and Children First? A Tale of Two Ships - AlbertMohler.com

"Slow to speak, slow to anger"

Comments on this blog are moderated. That means they will not be posted until I've read them. I decided to do that after receiving too many that were simply splenetic outbursts of rage entirely failing to make any kind of argument (and often showing no evidence of having read or understood the entry). According to Theodore Dalyrmple in "Thank You For Not Expressing Yourself," that kind of response is much more frequent at internet sites than anywhere else. Anyone who has spent any time reading the comment sections of unmoderated sites would agree. Dalyrmple:

.... No subject is too recondite to provoke the insensate rage of those who disagree with the view the author has taken of it. Indeed, it sometimes seems as if fury leading to ill-mannered personal abuse and foul language is the predominant mode of disagreement in our society, at least among those who append their comments to an article that appears on the internet. ....

The immediacy of the response which the internet makes possible also means that people are able to vent their spleen in a way which was not possible, or likely, before. The putting of pen to paper, to say nothing of the act of posting the resultant letter, requires more deliberation than sitting at a computer and firing off an angry e-mail or posting on a website. By their very physical nature, then, letters are likely to be less intemperate than e-mails.

The question now arises as to whether it is a good thing that people should be able now so easily to express their rage, irritation, frustration and hatred. Here, I think, we come to a disagreement between those of classical, and those of romantic, disposition.

According to the latter, self-expression is a good in itself, irrespective of what is expressed. Indeed, such people are likely to believe that any sentiment that does not find its outward expression will turn inward and poison the person who has not been able to express it. Better to strangle a new-born babe and all that.

The person of more classical disposition does not believe this. On the contrary, he believes that there are some things that are much better not expressed at all. He counterbalances his belief in the value of freedom of opinion with that in the value of freedom from opinion. He believes that rage will not decrease with its habitual expression, but rather increase with it.

By now it should be clear which of these two viewpoints seems to me to be the more accurate. The habit of not containing your rage is likely to lead you to easily provoked enragement. And, as almost everyone knows who has taken the trouble of self-examination, there is a great deal of pleasure to be had from rage, especially when it supposes itself to be in a righteous cause. .... (more)

One of the reasons I decided to reduce my Facebook interaction was that I discovered in myself a tendency to respond immediately, without much consideration, and in ways I would not have done face-to-face.

Thank You For Not Expressing Yourself - New English Review

"A nice knock-down argument"

Inspired perhaps by the occasion of the new Alice in Wonderland film — which apparently borrows from both Alice and Through the Looking Glass — Lewis Carroll's books are receiving well-deserved attention. Theodore Dalrymple gives us an appreciation of Carroll in the current National Review [March 22] noting, among other things, his lasting relevance:

Having proved that un-birthday presents are superior to birthday presents because they can be given on 364 days of the year instead of only one, Humpty Dumpty says:

“There’s glory for you!”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’” Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

...[J]ournalists, will recognize Humpty Dumpty’s statement that the question of language boils down to who is to be master only too well in the activities of politically correct sub-editors, who change Mankind for Humankind, and chairman for chair or chairperson (though never hangman for hang or hangperson). By changing what can be said, you eventually change what is and can be thought; by changing what is and can be thought, you change the composition of the elite, that is to say the elite that must form in a society above the hunter-gatherer stage of development, any ideological commitment to egalitarianism notwithstanding. An amusing passage in Through the Looking-Glass, then, is pregnant with meaning and significance; it anticipates the development of Orwell’s Newspeak, but lightheartedly, without foreboding.

Sonny Bunch, reviewing the film, characterizes it as an "interesting failure":

.... For a while, events track relatively closely to the original’s narrative – food and drink grow and shrink Alice, there’s a tea party and a talking caterpillar, and a smiling, evaporating cat makes an appearance – until, all of a sudden, Burton seizes the reins and sends the story in a different direction. Instead of the whimsical wordplay and nonsense imagery that dotted Carroll’s book (and the original cartoon adaptation from Disney), we veer into a puffed-up world of martial combat. ....

This isn’t to say that there’s nothing to admire in this movie; as with most Burton features, it looks fantastic. He has a real eye for set design and a visual panache that is almost unmatched by other fantasy filmmakers. The creature design – from the Jabberwocky to the Bandersnatch to the Red Queen's playing card soldiers – is all quite impressive – menacing and lifelike yet still clearly rooted in fantasy. ....

Still, the movie never quite gels into a convincing narrative. By trying to tame the underlying anarchy in Carroll’s original work and stuff it into a more conventional narrative, much of the joy is lost. It is an interesting failure. .... [more]

Sounds interesting enough to see.

The illustrations are the classic ones by John Tenniel which obviously have influenced all of the portrayals since.

National Review, March 22, pp. 47-49, Alice in Wonderland | The Weekly Standard

Dawn Treader

The producers of the films of C.S. Lewis's Narnia books (Walden Media, now partnered with 20th Century Fox) recently previewed the next film in the series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, for a few of those most likely to care about its content. Christianity Today reports that those invited found the experience encouraging. For instance:

Kathy Keller, wife of Redeemer Presbyterian senior pastor Tim, arguably has the most personal ties to Narnia of the invitees: She corresponded with Lewis in her young teens (four of his replies are printed in C.S. Lewis' Letters to Children), became a Christian solely as a result of reading Lewis, wrote her college thesis on "C.S. Lewis' Mythopoetic Understanding of Literature," and today regards the author "as my personal mentor, my touchstone for clear and effective writing, and my private possession."

Keller is most concerned "that they get Aslan right" in Dawn Treader, and says she was mostly satisfied with what she saw and heard. "I'm glad the final interaction between Aslan and Lucy was there in its unadulterated entirety, because I consider that the pinnacle of the entire seven books." (Near the end of book, Lucy is sad that Aslan is sending her back to her world, and sobs, "How can we live, never meeting you?" Aslan assures Lucy that he's very much in her world, where he has "another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.") ....

Keller says that they got another critical scene right: The "un-dragoning" of Eustace, which many consider the highlight of the story. (In the book, the selfish boy Eustace turns into a dragon due to his greed; it is only through confession and penitence, and the Christ figure Aslan's help, that he is able to shed the dragon skin and become human again.) Keller says she learned that writers originally wanted Eustace, still in dragon form, to fight a sea monster and "earn" his return to human form. But she says Flaherty, a committed Christian, "put them straight that you don't earn grace, you receive it once you are humbled and aware of your need." .... (more)

Dawn Treader is expected in theaters in December. And after that? NarniaWeb.com reports:

They are definitely planning on producing The Silver Chair next in the series. After that, it's still up in the air. Cary Granat of Walden Media has mentioned twice that they're considering The Magician's Nephew next instead of The Horse and His Boy, probably to give the Pevensie actors time to age a bit more before filming. On the other hand, Douglas Gresham has mentioned on different occasions filming either The Magician's Nephew or The Horse and His Boy next, so clearly the production has not decided for sure yet.

Will The Dawn Treader Float? | Movies & TV | Christianity Today, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader | NarniaWeb.com

The role of Christians in political life

Almost fifty years ago John F. Kennedy, running for President, spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. The speech was an effort, largely successful, to persuade Protestants that electing the first Catholic President of the United States would be no threat to religious liberty. Speaking to a forum at Houston Baptist University, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver finds fault with JFK's speech. One consequence, Chaput argues, was "privatizing personal belief" and, consequently, "Too many Catholics confuse their personal opinions with a real Christian conscience. Too many live their faith as if it were a private idiosyncrasy – the kind that they’ll never allow to become a public nuisance. And too many just don't really believe. Maybe it’s different in Protestant circles. But I hope you’ll forgive me if I say, 'I doubt it.'"

I find everything Chaput writes or says about the relationship of faith and politics to be worthwhile. "The Vocation of Christians in American Public Life" asserts that genuine Christian faith must affect every part of our lives, including our citizenship.

... Catholics and Protestants have different memories of American history. The historian Paul Johnson once wrote that America was “born Protestant.” That's clearly true. Whatever America is today or may become tomorrow, its origin was deeply shaped by a Protestant Christian spirit, and the fruit of that spirit has been, on the balance, a great blessing for humanity. But it's also true that, while Catholics have always thrived in the United States, they lived through two centuries of discrimination, religious bigotry and occasional violence. Protestants of course will remember things quite differently. They will remember Catholic persecution of dissenters in Europe, the entanglements of the Roman Church and state power, and papal suspicion of democracy and religious liberty.

We can't erase those memories. And we cannot – nor should we try to – paper over the issues that still divide us as believers in terms of doctrine, authority and our understandings of the Church. Ecumenism based on good manners instead of truth is empty. It's also a form of lying. If we share a love of Jesus Christ and a familial bond in baptism and God’s Word, then on a fundamental level, we're brothers and sisters. Members of a family owe each other more than surface courtesies. We owe each other the kind of fraternal respect that “speak[s] the truth in love” (Eph 4:15). We also urgently owe each other solidarity and support in dealing with a culture that increasingly derides religious faith in general, and the Christian faith in particular. ....

.... Tonight I want to focus in a special way on the role of Christians in our country’s civic and political life. The key to our discussion will be that word “vocation.” It comes from the Latin word vocare, which means, “to call.” Christians believe that God calls each of us individually, and all of us as a believing community, to know, love and serve him in our daily lives.

But there’s more. He also asks us to make disciples of all nations. That means we have a duty to preach Jesus Christ. We have a mandate to share his Gospel of truth, mercy, justice and love. These are mission words; action words. They’re not optional. And they have practical consequences for the way we think, speak, make choices and live our lives, not just at home but in the public square. Real Christian faith is always personal, but it’s never private. ....

.... Christianity is not mainly — or even significantly — about politics. It's about living and sharing the love of God. And Christian political engagement, when it happens, is never mainly the task of the clergy. That work belongs to lay believers who live most intensely in the world. Christian faith is not a set of ethics or doctrines. It's not a group of theories about social and economic justice. All these things have their place. All of them can be important. But a Christian life begins in a relationship with Jesus Christ; and it bears fruit in the justice, mercy and love we show to others because of that relationship.

Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets” (Mt 22:37-40). That's the test of our faith, and without a passion for Jesus Christ in our hearts that reshapes our lives, Christianity is just a word game and a legend. Relationships have consequences. A married man will commit himself to certain actions and behaviors, no matter what the cost, out of the love he bears for his wife. Our relationship with God is the same. We need to live and prove our love by our actions, not just in our personal and family lives, but also in the public square. Therefore Christians individually and the Church as a believing community engage the political order as an obligation of the Word of God. Human law teaches and forms as well as regulates; and human politics is the exercise of power — which means both have moral implications that the Christian cannot ignore and still remain faithful to his vocation as a light to the world (Mt 5:14-16). ....

.... As I was preparing these comments for tonight, I listed all the urgent issues that demand our attention as believers: abortion; immigration; our obligations to the poor, the elderly and the disabled; questions of war and peace; our national confusion about sexual identity and human nature, and the attacks on marriage and family life that flow from this confusion; the growing disconnection of our science and technology from real moral reflection; the erosion of freedom of conscience in our national health-care debates; the content and quality of the schools that form our children.

The list is long. I believe abortion is the foundational human rights issue of our lifetime. We need to do everything we can to support women in their pregnancies and to end the legal killing of unborn children. ....

All of these issues that I’ve listed above divide our country and our Churches in a way Augustine would have found quite understandable. The City of God and the City of Man overlap in this world. Only God knows who finally belongs to which. But in the meantime, in seeking to live the Gospel we claim to believe, we find friends and brothers in unforeseen places, unlikely places; and when that happens, even a foreign place can seem like one’s home.

The vocation of Christians in American public life does not have a Baptist or Catholic or Greek Orthodox or any other brand-specific label. John 14:6 – “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me” – which is so key to the identity of Houston Baptist University, burns just as hot in this heart, and the heart of every Catholic who truly understands his faith. Our job is to love God, preach Jesus Christ, serve and defend God’s people, and sanctify the world as his agents. .... [read it all]

Thanks to Insight Scoop for the reference.

Vocation of Christians in American Public Life

The Last Lion

Kevin DeYoung highly recommends Paul Johnson's new, short biography of Winston Churchill and lists some lessons Johnson draws from Churchill's life:

1. “The first lesson is: always aim high. As a child Churchill received no positive encouragement from his father and little from his mother. He was aware of his failure at school. But he still aimed high.”
2. “Lesson number two is: there is no substitute for hard work…Mistakes he constantly made, but there was never anything shoddy or idle about his work.”
3. “Third, and in its way most important, Churchill never allowed mistakes, disaster – personal or national – accidents, illnesses, unpopularity, and criticism to get him down.” ....
4. “Fourth, Churchill wasted an extraordinarily small amount of his time and emotional energy on the meannesses of life: recrimination, shifting the blame onto others, malice, revenge seeking, dirty tricks, spreading rumors, harboring grudges, waging vendettas…There is nothing more draining and exhausting than hatred. And malice is bad for the judgment.”
5. “Finally, the absence of hatred left plenty of room for joy in Churchill’s life…He liked to share his joy, and give joy. It must never forgotten that Churchill was happy with people.” .... [more]
   

DeYoung writes "This is a terrific book. If you’re not interested in Churchill (and how could you not be?) at least read the Epilogue. There’s more wisdom in the last six pages than you’ll find in 600 pages from most other books."

I've read several Churchill biographies — including the Manchester volumes referenced by the title of this post — and, having ordered this one very much look forward to reading it. (Update, 3/22: I have now read Johnson's book and I very much liked it. He has a particular ability to choose the precise anecdote or illustration to make a point. It is a short book, but covers all the essentials and may well whet the appetite for one of the more thorough biographies.)

The picture is taken from a collection edited by perhaps the definitive Churchill biographer, Martin Gilbert, Churchill at War: His 'Finest Hour' in Photographs, 1940-1945

Churchill’s Greatness – Kevin DeYoung

Parting

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss: Your Long Journey:

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Sant

Today is St David's Day. It is the national day of Wales, the country from whence came some of my ancestors. Wikipedia explains who the man was:

Dewi Sant – St. David was born towards the end of the fifth century. He was a scion of the royal house of Ceredigion, and founded a Celtic monastic community at Glyn Rhosin (The Vale of Roses) on the western headland of Sir Benfro, at the spot where St. David's Cathedral stands today. David's fame as a teacher and ascetic spread throughout the Celtic world. His foundation at Glyn Rhosin became an important Christian shrine, and the most important centre in Wales. The date of Dewi Sant's death is recorded as 1 March, but the year is uncertain – possibly 588. As his tearful monks prepared for his death St David uttered these words: "Brothers be ye constant. The yoke which with single mind ye have taken, bear ye to the end; and whatsoever ye have seen with me and heard, keep and fulfill."

For centuries the first of March has been a national festival. St David was recognised as a national patron saint at the height of Welsh resistance to the Normans. ....

More, from James M. Kushiner at Touchstone Magazine:

We don't know a great deal about David, and while you will find the usual skeptical opinion—"he is so shrouded in legend and overlaid with later hagiography that maybe he never existed"—there is enough historical evidence to believe that he existed, that he taught in Wales, and that he made a mark that lasted and spread. (The earliest surviving reference to him may well be an early 7th-century inscription on a gravestone: "Here lies Idnert, the son of Jacob, who was killed defending the church of holy David from pillage.") ....

We see someone who takes the Gospel seriously, gives his or her entire life to living it and spreading it, counting themselves as servants of Jesus Christ, and a previously pagan society some years or generations later has become populated with churches, monasteries, scriptural knowledge, increasing literacy, with a downturn in things such as human sacrifice and infanticide. .... (more)

Saint David's Day - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments: David of Wales

Where is it written that an atheist doesn't have to pray?

In a fascinating review of a new Hebrew-English edition of the Jewish Prayerbook, the reviewer, Hillel Halkin, provides not only a short history of Jewish worship and the development of the liturgy, but also writes about the difficulty of praying — and a possible benefit of prayer even for those who don't believe. An excerpt:

.... The struggle to keep prayer—“the language of the soul in conversation with God,” to quote Sacks again — from becoming a routine activity is intrinsic to every religion that makes praying a regular duty. In The Ethics of the Fathers is the saying, attributed to the 1st-century sage Shimon ben Netanel, “Be punctilious in reciting the ‘Hear O Israel’ and the other prayers, and when you pray, make your prayers not rote but mercy cries to God”; yet a punctilious cry for mercy is not easily achieved. The 4th-century church abbot Agatho, when asked what the hardest part of the religious life was, replied that it was prayer, since the demons who hated God put more effort into thwarting it than into anything else.

Whoever has ever prayed regularly and not just at rare moments of personal crisis knows what these demons are: they range from difficulty in concentrating and the disturbance of distracting thoughts to religious doubts and the inability to identify with the words one is saying. The observant Jew is tempting prey for them. A devout Catholic attends a once-a-week mass that has a great deal of pageantry to hold his attention and in which his role is limited to brief responses to the longer utterances of the priest. In most Protestant services, congregational participation consists largely of hymn singing, an expansively enjoyable activity. Though Muslims pray five times a day, each prayer is brief, a few pithy formulas declaring God’s greatness accompanied by frequent changes of physical position. Only Jews must recite every morning, “The incense contained eleven kinds of spices: balsam, onycha, galbanum and frankincense … myrhh, cassia, spikenard and saffron …twelve manehs of costus, three of aromatic bark; nine of cinnamon,” ....

Nothing, however, can keep one focused on one’s prayers when one loses faith in the God to whom one has been praying. This happened to me midway through adolescence. Although since then I have attended many synagogue services, I have never really been able to pray. ....

There were times when I prayed mechanically then, too. There were times when I didn’t pray at all. But there were times when I felt like a priest in the Temple, binding my soul to the altar and offering the daily sacrifice at its appointed time and place. It was the intensity of that experience that makes me feel like an impostor when I take part in a synagogue service today. Like anyone skilled at playing a role, I alone know I am playing it. I go through the motions of prayer as proficiently as do the men around me. You don’t forget such things any more than you forget how to swim or ride a bicycle.

And yet I sometimes wonder how many of these men are having an experience more intense than my own. Not a large number, to judge by outward appearances. Most seem to be engaged in what they are doing without overly troubling themselves about it. They take pleasure in being together, as people take pleasure in any group activity—folk dancing, say, or a sing-along. I do not say they have no feeling of uplift. Clearly they do. But it is an uplift that could also be mine if I allowed it to be, which may be why I place no great value on it. ....

My father, who prayed with great kavanah yet was adamant about having no religious beliefs whatsoever, had a different answer. “It’s what a Jew does,” he would say. He once told me a story about a man standing in the street outside a shtibl, a little synagogue, looking for a tseynter, a tenth Jew to add to the nine waiting inside to say the afternoon prayer. Spotting a likely-looking candidate, he asks: “Excuse me, mister. Are you Jewish?” “Yes, I am,” says the Jew. “What can I do for you?” “You can join a minyanmincha,” the man says. “I’m afraid that’s impossible,” answers the Jew. “Why?” asks the man. “Because I’m an atheist,” says the Jew. The man gives the Jew a withering look. “And where,” he inquires, “is it written that an atheist doesn’t have to say mincha?”

In fact, it’s written nowhere. As far as Jewish law is concerned, an atheist has to pray like anyone else.

Maybe my snobbery, then, has less to recommend it than I think. I have always considered it a form of respect for the God I once believed in to refuse to dishonor either of us by mouthing empty words to Him. But the God of Judaism would rather have empty words than none. Mitokh she-lo lishma ba lishma, the rabbis said: the deed not initially performed for its own sake will come to be for its own sake if persisted at. .... [more]

This article, "Endless Devotion," is one of several available online from the first issue of a brand new magazine, the Jewish Review of Books. Another that I enjoyed is "Why There Is No Jewish Narnia".

Endless Devotion > Publications > Jewish Review of Books

The apostle in context

Rod Dreher is enthusiastic about a book that could help us understand Paul in the context of his times:

The most exciting book of historical analysis I've read in ages — indeed the most exciting book period — is the Classical scholar and translator Sarah Ruden's Paul Among the People (Pantheon) which attempts to defend St. Paul against his modernist critics (e.g. those who consider him an impossible troglodyte for his views on women and homosexuals) by explaining the Greco-Roman social and cultural context in which he composed his letters. It's quite eye-opening, and remarkable in part because Ruden is a research fellow at Yale Divinity School (no bastion of Christian conservatism), as well as a Quaker pacifist. What makes reading Ruden such a pleasure, aside from the quality of her thinking and her prose, is her willingness to question settled truths, and to do it with such a lightness of spirit. She doesn't cast herself as a culture warrior, as such, but as someone who simply thinks that Paul gets a bad deal from contemporaries, who judge him by the standards of our own time, heedless of the cultural realities of his era, that the Apostle addressed in his letters. In short, she's sticking up for a man who in some leading circles is an underdog. .... [more, including an email exchange between Dreher and Ruden]

Thanks to Ross Douthat for the reference.

Sarah Ruden, a joyful iconoclast - Rod Dreher