Still Smokin'

Published on by D. G. Hart

In an effort to make back issues of the Nicotine Theological Journal available on-line, readers may be interested to see that volume one of the journal glorified newsletter has been added to our page of back issues. (Please beware that the PDF versions will not capture the original layout in WordPerfect.) To tempt readers to take a gander, here is an excerpt from the lead article, “Calvinism, Ethnicity, and Smoke,” from issue number 2.

Old School Presbyterians who grew up within or on the edges of American evangelicalism — we write autobiographically — generally came to regard the Christian Reformed Church with awe for her robust expressions of Reformed piety. To be sure, Dutch-American Calvinists were never completely spared the piety of fundamentalism. But it was always a fundamentalism with a difference. While they may have frowned on such worldly amusements as card-playing or the theater or the dance hall, they continued to drink and smoke. “Sin came from the heart, not the environment,” they generally insisted, and they were usually right. So when you walked into the Calvin College coffee shop twenty years ago, it was not coffee that you smelled, but the pervasive scent of burning tobacco. Then there was the habit of the elders of the Wheaton CRC who smoked on the church lawn after Sunday morning worship, conveniently applying a jolt of nicotine to bus loads of stunned evangelical college students who were returning from church and knew next to nothing about Dutch ways, let alone Calvinism.

This brazen dismissal of artificial morality seemed so, well, healthy. For between puffs these elders could readily produce sound and sophisticated theological arguments on Christian liberty, the true nature of Christian virtue, and serving God in all walks of life. Yes, healthy, and more than a bit intimidating. Mark Noll well described the shock of seeing professing Christians smoke for the first time in his life, when he traveled to Calvin College as a Wheaton basketball player for his team’s annual “ritualistic slaughter.”

SUCH NICOTINE-STAINED PIETY, however, rapidly seems to be becoming a thing of the past. Visiting teams no longer suffer the effects of second-hand smoke on their travels to Grand Rapids. Recently the oldest college of the CRC held a “Great Calvin Smoke-Out.” Anti-smoking support groups have been launched, and smoking is now prohibited in all buildings on campus. (Though our spies report that some faculty are quietly practicing civil disobedience in the privacy of their offices.)

The new CRC morality was on graphic display in the January 6, 1997 issue of the Banner. In its “Worldwide” news column, the Banner reported on the combined efforts of the American Cancer Society and the National Jewish Outreach Program to encourage Jews in converting Saturdays into “Smoke-Free Sabbaths.” We are not persuaded that the pleasures of smoking are forbidden on the Lord’s Day. Still we would pause to commend the Banner at least for recognizing the increasingly quaint principle that some things are inappropriate on the Sabbath.

25 thoughts on “Still Smokin'”

  1. As one similarly wooed by the carnal piety of the CRC (students and faculty hunkered outside the sem exit smoking and legends of beer vats in the commons) but then steadily turned off by the worldviewry, etc., it only gets worse: by the time we left we were chasing gluten-free bread with grape juice.

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  2. When my parents had a brief flirtation with the CRC my junior year of high school I remember seeing a man named Vander Mey, an assistant county prosecutor, having a smoke outside between Sunday school and church. An attorney and a smoker. I encountered no such thing at the Southern Baptist Church my parents landed at next. 27 years later I am back in the URC where cigars and reasonable alcohol consumption are welcome. We even usually have a few beers in the church refrigerator for the Sunday evening meal after the worship service. No cigarette smokers that I know of, however.

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  3. Some of the best moments at seminary came behind the chapel, which I usually skipped to discuss the finer points of lectures, as the rising-glory-cloud of Basma and smooth Latakia filled the air.

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  4. There are two places on campus one can smoke: the so-called smoker’s pit, right near one of Dante’s levels in popular estimation, and directly outside the Calvin bookstore. To my knowledge no faculty smoke in their offices, but then again this is from the archives.

    I frequent neither campus locale, preferring to carcinogenate away from hoi polloi.

    The legend is that when Rich Mouw taught philosophy here he would lecture with a cigarette in one hand and chalk in the other, and sometimes confuse the two midstream. Some OldLifers may have been at Calvin then.

    I believe there is a causal link between this steady tobacco consumption and the Dutch predilecton for Wilhelmina mints.

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  5. To be sure, there are some convivial bonds that come from the aroma of smoke floating in the air. But, at least in my former area of the world (Texas – which is not the South, for the unwashed among you) we also have chewing tobacco, and “snuff.” Not as refined, but equally stimulating and less invasive toward those who don’t want the 2nd hand smoke. I know of an ARP minister (yes he served in NC) who wasn’t averse to clandestinely having a pinch between the cheek and gum not only between services but also in services. That is liberty.:-)

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  6. David, not so sure sure about the causal link. I’m pretty sure all Dutch Reformed children are born grasping a roll.

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  8. David, how old do you take us Old Lifers for? (BTW I had a logic prof at Temple who smoked while lecturing, along with half the class. That’s how old I am.)

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  10. It’s my understanding that an upcoming Obamacare regulations may create a 50% insurance surcharge on anyone who uses tobacco in any amount, even those who indulge only in a fortnightly stogie! http://wapo.st/VQrGZv

    Is this a direct assault on OLDLIFERS?

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  11. Zrim, that’s one part of Dutch culture I like, the mints. I don’t mind a good two-mint sermon twice in a while either.

    Darryl, was that Solomon’s Temple or Herod’s?

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  15. Pingback: SMOKING ON THE LORD’S DAY? « CREDE, UT INTELLIGAS

  18. I am neither smoker nor drinker of spirits. Tell me what good thing I missed and I will give you a long list of sorrows I never suffered. Love, Old Bob

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  20. Old Bob,

    If you had been a friend of Machen’s at Princeton you would have missed out on some good oranges.

    In reading the NTJ back issues I have figured out what 39 Alexander Hall means but SC88 is still a mystery.

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  22. Erik – IIRC that pic of Dick Allen smoking in the dugout was taken during a rain delay and wound up being printed on baseball cards. Why they picked that one I’m not sure. Although there was a certain amount of animosity against him back then.

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  24. Erik – sigh, it was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It was the time when rock music groups performed at their best – no doubt about it. Nor long after that it was a short down hill trip to punk rock and similar vocal regurgitation. Be careful what you wish (time machine) for…

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  25. Wow, Darryl, When I was a student @ WTS 60+ AN-Yos ago (Never say AN-os!) 🙂 My teachers, great students of Machen, taught me not to generalize. You say, “Smokers aren’t self righteous”. Wow! I encountered not a few @ OLT. These led by a windy, highly critical young fellow (56, 57 by now?) I never found a humble word out of the billions (?) from his pen or mouth! Another thing you may not have noticed, (though I mentioned it)– That Tim Keller and Ed Clowney were good buddies. Read Keller’s “Prodigal God”, first noting carefully his binary definition of “prodigal”. Love, Old Alexian counsellor, Bob

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