Legalism, Ecclesiastical and Political

Published on by D. G. Hart

You may disagree with H. L. Mencken, but he sure could spot a major weakness when the pursuit and prosecution of vice goes from the duties of pastors and elders to magistrates and reformers:

Moral endeavour, in brief, has become a recognized trade, or rather a profession, and there have appeared men who pretend to a special and enormous knowledge of it, and who show enough truth in their pretension to gain the unlimited support of Puritan capitalists. The vice crusade, to mention one example, has produced a large crop of such self-constituted experts, and some of them are in such demand that they are overwhelmed with engagements. The majority of these men have wholly lost the flavour of sacerdotalism. They are not pastors, but detectives, statisticians and mob orators, and not infrequently their secularity becomes distressingly evident. Their aim, as they say, is to do things. Assuming that “moral sentiment” is behind them, they override all criticism and opposition without argument, and proceed to the business of dispersing prostitutes, of browbeating and terrorizing weak officials, and of forcing legislation of their own invention through City Councils and State Legislatures. Their very cocksureness is their chief source of strength. (Book of Prefaces, “Puritanism As a Literary Force,” 245)

If that doesn’t sound like the kind of moral activism favored by some “conservative” Protestants these days, I don’t know what does. In fact, this is the kind of engagement with “culture” that seems to go with heavy doses of the law and attacks upon antinomianism. It makes me wonder if the moralists our there really want a return to the kinds of constraints that Mencken faced as an editor (where books like Theodore Dreiser’s The “Genius” could land you in court). Here’s Mencken on his considerations as an editor of the Smart Set circa 1915:

I am, in moments borrowed from more palatable business, the editor of an American magazine, and I thus know at first hand what the burden is. That magazine is anything but a popular one, in the current sense. It sells at a relatively high price; it contains no pictures or other baits for the childish; it is frankly addressed to a sophisticated minority. I may thus assume reasonably, I believe, that its readers are not sex-curious and itching adolescents, just as my colleague of the Atlantic Monthly may assume reasonably that his readers are not Italian immigrants. Nevertheless, as a practical editor, I find that the Comstocks, near and far, are oftener in my mind’s eye than my actual patrons. The thing I always have to decide about a manuscript offered for publication, before ever I give any thought to its artistic merit and suitability, is the question whether its publication will be permitted —not even whether it is intrinsically good or evil, moral or immoral, but whether some roving Methodist preacher, self-commissioned to keep watch on letters, will read indecency into it. Not a week passes that I do not decline some sound and honest piece of work for no other reason. I have a long list of such things by American authors, well-devised, well-imagined, well-executed, respectable as human documents and as works of art—but never to be printed in mine or any other American magazine. It includes four or five short stories of the very first rank, and the best one-act play yet done, to my knowledge, by an American. All of these pieces would go into type at once on the Continent; no sane man would think of objecting to them; they are no more obscene, to a normal adult, than his own bare legs. But they simply cannot be printed in the United States, with the law what it is and the courts what they are. (276-77)

This was not Rome in the 1860s when Protestant worship could get you in trouble with the Roman Inquisition or Constantinople in the 1880s when converting from Islam to Christianity had significant penalties. This was the greatest nation on God’s green earth, established to promote life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, by Jove!!

25 thoughts on “Legalism, Ecclesiastical and Political”

  2. I don’t get the sense that the New Yorker’s editorial team feels particularly browbeaten these days. And doesn’t the exhortation to “approve what is excellent” invite objective critique?

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  5. Lefty “secular” finger waggers and righty religious finger waggers are kindred spirits. Can’t invite either for a cigar and Robert Johnson.

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  7. Dear Friends, Listen in on the link (below), especially at 38:00 or so past 40:00, 41:00 to hear:

    ……..that “churches are not built on the sacraments…..but are built upon prayer and the Word”.

    This is an hour long SermonAudio from the Gospel Reformation Network, but well worth the time to listen to see ‘what’s under the hood’. I’m glad for your thoughts on it.

    http://www.sermonaudio.com/playpopup.asp?SID=62314107148

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  10. MG, sure. Just look at the name. The older CRC crowd invariably referred to American evangelicalism after getting off the boat as “Methodist.” Works for me.

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  12. Erik Charter
    Posted July 2, 2014 at 7:01 pm | Permalink
    Then there’s Presbyterian elder William Hays and The Studio Code:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Code_Hollywood

    Exc, EC. Our neighborhood is running a 1930s film festival and “San Francisco” [1936] was the first choice. Quite vanilla, with saloon owner Clark Gable running as a reformist for supervisor and an appallingly simpy Jeanette McDonald vacillating between him and the old rich guy. It ends with the battered survivors of the 1906 earthquake singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

    Oy.

    Mrs, TVD & I tried to explain exactly what you post here, that pre-Hays [din’t know he was a Presbyterian]

    films in the late 1920s and early 1930s included sexual innuendo, miscegenation, profanity, illegal drug use, promiscuity, prostitution, infidelity, abortion, intense violence, and homosexuality. Strong women dominated films such as Female, Baby Face, and Red-Headed Woman.

    Gonna print out your Wiki link. Ace stuff, cheers.

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  13. Tom,

    I suspect your neighborhood is far better for film than mine.

    Kent’s (Toronto) is better, too.

    “The Big Lebowski” is coming back to town soon, though.

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  14. I’ll tell you guys what we do have here, though – beautiful corn fields. We have been getting lots of rain and the lush green corn (and bean) fields are unbelievable right now. It feels like the garden of Eden when I drive to and from work (15 mile trip through the country) each day.

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  17. Sure, New Yorker, if the dictates of conscience/God the Holy Spirit compel one against it. Or anything. What’s the problem with a friendly pastoral reminder that some things can’t be unseen, or unread, artistic merit notwithstanding?

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  24. You said, “…when the pursuit and prosecution of vice goes from the duties of pastors and elders to magistrates and reformers.”
    I’m just wondering how you make the distinction between vices better left to pastors and those more appropriately handled by the magistrates.

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  25. kp, take gluttony. Do you want pastors and elders warning believers about its dangers or do you want Mayor Bloomberg legislating oversized servings of soda?

    Like a lot of life, there’s no easy answer. But to turn legislation and politics into the pursuit of sinners — as opposed to maintaining a common standard for order — has not worked well for Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Muslims.

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