Author: D. G. Hart

Did Evelyn Waugh Write Brideshead Revisited to Transform Culture?

Published on by D. G. Hart31 Comments

In case anyone wondered what happened to Rick Santorum, the once rising-star of GOP politics from the virtuous commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a news story puts those questions to rest. He’s starting a movie company.

“For a long time, Christians have decided that the best way to fight the popular culture is to keep it at bay, to lock it out of their home. … That’s a losing battle,” Santorum said in an interview at America’s Center Convention Complex, where he was attending the International Christian Retail Show.

With “the pervasiveness of (media) right now, the content just seeps through. The only option is to go out into that arena and try to shape the culture, too.”

Santorum said one problem with Christian-themed films was that they’ve traditionally been aimed at just Christian audiences, rather than attempting to appeal to audiences that don’t necessarily share the movie’s messaging going in.

He blamed that limited appeal on what he said were often the “hokey” and “cheesy” feel of such films, with all the filmmakers’ attention focused on the message and not enough on artistic quality.

“Quality. Quality acting, quality directing, quality scriptwriting. That is going to be a watchword for me,” Santorum said at a news conference talking about the studio’s pending projects. He said the goal was to produce movies “that rival any good Hollywood film.”

Aside from the entertaining thought of inserting Santorum into Barton Fink, I am snickering at the proposition that the better way to respond to worldliness is by making the worldliness wholesome rather than fleeing it. I understand that the petri dish that produced Mrs. Hart and me, the fundamentalist mentality of not drinking, dancing, smoking, or going to movies, is a tough sell. It was tough even in the 1960s and it had limited success (obviously) since I became a film studies major. Major DOH! Still, even if the prescriptions weren’t air tight, we did have a sense that worldliness existed and that it was something to avoid. (Just as when it came to worship we had a sense that God could be offended and that we shouldn’t offend him — a sense seemingly lost on worship leaders and members of their bands.) And we also had productions that some believers thought could compete with mainstream culture. (Seriously.) Aside from Billy Graham’s production company, Ralph Carmichael‘s musicals, like “Tell it Like it Is” which Wikipedia describes as a “folk musical about God” (Laugh track, please) were the occasions for relief from not having to endure a sermon.

So I have serious doubts whether Santorum and company will figure out the right mix of piety and entertainment. A major reason is that producing quality rarely is so self-conscious. If you are committed to producing the best thing possible, you are not also calculating its broader effects on society. I can’t prove this but it does seem self-evident about most creative efforts. Only after finishing such a work do its wider consequences become evident. But if you start with the idea of influencing society, you’ll end up not with The Wire but The Restless Ones.

Better to stick with the catechism (especially one that comes in less than 140 questions — that way, there’s time for milk and cookies).

Is Infant Baptism (or the Mass) a Life-Style Choice?

Published on by D. G. Hart7 Comments

George Weigel comments on the anniversary of the Edict of Milan (313). I agree with this (though leveling the dangers of coercion to Protestants and Roman Catholics when Inquisitions were a Roman Catholic reality until 1870 is a bit much):

The immediate effects of the Constantinian settlement, both good and ill, were limned with customary wit and literary skill by Evelyn Waugh in the novel Helena. After 313, the tombs of the martyrs were publicly honored; so were the martyr-confessors, often disfigured by torture, who emerged from the Christian underground to kiss each other’s wounds at the first ecumenical council. Before those heroes met at Nicaea in 325, though, grave theological questions had gotten ensnared up in imperial court intrigues and ecclesiastical politics. Later unions of altar and throne led to a general cultural forgetting of Lactantius’ wisdom, as the Church employed the “civil arm” to enforce orthodoxy. Protestantism proved no less vulnerable to the temptation to coercion than Catholicism and Orthodoxy; one might even argue that the seventeenth-century Peace of Westphalia, which ended the European wars of religion by establishing the principle of cuius regio eius religio (the prince’s religion is the people’s religion), reversed the accomplishments of the “Edict of Milan”—and was, in fact, the West’s first modern experiment in the totalitarian coercion of consciences.

But then he shows the addling effects of preoccupation with the political outcomes of faith:

Very few twenty-first-century Christians would welcome a return to state establishments of religion as the accepted norm. So however much the Constantinian settlement led Christianity into what some regard as a lengthy Babylonian captivity to state power, the “Edict of Milan” also affirmed truths that have proven stronger over time than the temptation to use Caesar for God’s work. Today’s challenge is quite different: it’s the temptation to let Caesar, in his various forms, reduce religious conviction to a privacy right of lifestyle choice.

What about when Christ’s followers reduce religious conviction to a privacy right? What Weigel doesn’t see is that the churches are as complicit in privatizing religion as the Obama administration. When Manhattan Declarationists, including Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox, defend religious freedom in the name of the gospel, when the Gospel Coalition understands its union of Presbyterians, Baptists, and independents as defending the gospel, or when participants at Vatican II recognize Muslims, Jews, and Protestants as on the way to salvation, the particularities of Christianity like baptism and the Lord’s supper fall into irrelevance almost as quickly as it takes to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

Now lest I fall prey to the same error of leveling George Weigel to President Obama’s status, I will grant that the Manhattan Declaration, the Gospel Coalition, and Vatican II mean/meant well. Then again, so does the president. And in both cases the means of grace, word, sacrament, and prayer, that I spend so much time defending (as part of my private responsibilities) make as much difference to the Declarationists, the Allies, and the Cardinals (and their ecumenical observers) as the Seventy-Sixers do to professional sports.

Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Christianity

Published on by D. G. Hart14 Comments

Anthony Esolen has a usually provocative post about the inconsistencies of our times. He calls this the Contradictory Values Syndrome.

. . . on Monday, the harridans of the National Organization for Women announce their great discovery that it is a bad thing for men to beat women black and blue. We wonder what took them so long to discover it. APPLES FALL TO THE GROUND, runs the headline, with the helpful addition, Effects on Agriculture Undetermined. So terrible a thing it is for women to be beaten that they must promote a national law, the Violence Against Women Act, to ensure the safety of women against the fist of a brawling boyfriend.

Then on Tuesday, the same harridans announce the great discovery that it is a good thing for women to join the infantry, to confront not boyfriends, but enemy men who will be at the peak of their physical prowess, armed to the teeth, and filled with the rage of killing and plunder and rape. The chivalry or plain common decency that once protected a woman against brawling—or war—is derided as a masculine plot to keep women in subjection. . . .

On Wednesday, the keepers of our national morality inveigh against a priest or a coach who entices a teenage boy into sodomy. On Thursday, the same keepers inveigh against the Boy Scouts, for shying away from scoutmasters who might do the same.

I am not about to take on Esolen, especially since the flip-flops he notices would be hard even for Ethan Coen to script. At the same time, I am a tad sensitive about consistency. One reason is that being a Protestant and belonging to conservative circles appears to be contradictory. Another is that practically every post the Baylys or Rabbi Bret writes in derision of 2k contains a huff about how inconsistent 2kers are who oppose homosexuality in the church but not in the public square.

At the same time, I wonder what the advocates of consistency make of the consequences of their quest (or if they notice that Roman Catholics and neo-Calvinists, both forged in the fires of the French Revolution, pursue the same end of a society rooted in Christian convictions — as opposed to the other kind [read secular]). The way I figure, consistency between faith and politics or church and the public square lands you in one of two places. The first makes society Christian (as in theonomy) and leaves no room for the un-Christian (read Jew, Protestant or Roman Catholic, Mormon, Muslim). Here society must conform to God’s law, a demand that is seriously at odds with the United States’ founding as well as the experience of Jesus and the apostles. The second makes Christianity conform to society (as in liberal Christianity) and regards non-Christians as Christian as long as they conform to Christian behavior. Both places feature the Christian moral code as essential to Christianity, though the theonomic morality is more tough minded than the liberal Christian (think adultery as a capital offense). Another difference is that the theonomist may actually acknowledge that a member of a Christian society needs to be regenerate to have any chance of observing God’s law. The liberal Christian generally conceives of human nature as sufficiently good to comply with the demands of biblical or ecclesiastical standards.

Since most moderns don’t want to exclude people from their societies (with the exception of undocumented aliens), theonomy is a tough sell. But the liberal Christian response is so common that even the pope can sound like he is giving into it.

The takeaway here is that the gospel cannot be applied “consistently” to society. Grace, mercy, and forgiveness are not the goals that motivate foreign or domestic policy (though the Amish may be giving it a run). Now, of course, someone may want to say that grace, mercy, and forgiveness are not of the essence of Christianity. Instead, the law is, and so making a society conform to Christian law is how we arrive at a Christian society. The problem with that logic, aside from Protestantism and all that material-principle-of-the-Reformation-business, is that it completely ignores what happened to the Israelites where the law did not lead to human “flourishing” but to human diaspora.

The other takeaway is that morality does exist without Christianity. We used to call this civic as opposed to spiritual (or true) goodness. Whatever the reasons for such goodness, it exists, whether in Sweden or at a street corner where a tatted and severely pierced twenty-something waits for a light to signal he can cross the street. Calvinists generally want to encourage the civic virtues for the sake of social order and the safety of the church. But the orthodox ones have always been careful to distinguish civic from Christian virtue.

Works done by unregenerate men, although for the matter of them they may be things which God commands; and of good use both to themselves and others: yet, because they proceed not from an heart purified by faith; nor are done in a right manner, according to the Word; nor to a right end, the glory of God, they are therefore sinful, and cannot please God, or make a man meet to receive grace from God: and yet, their neglect of them is more sinful and displeasing unto God. (WCF 16.7)

Without that distinction you lose the fall, regeneration, salvation, and the third-use of the law (for starters). So the next time someone objects to the inconsistencies of 2k advocates, say “bless those 2kers for their gospel inconsistency.”

Quote of the Day (too long to tweet)

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

This came in the further discussion between PCA and URC ministers about a footnote in the revised Belgic 36 (June 17, 11:50pm):

But in the end, I agree with all “sides” (I hate to use that term regarding brothers who agree on far, far more than they disagree) that this particular issue will not solve the Two Kingdoms-Neo Calvinist discussion one way or another. I found what Herman Kuiper said in his minority report to the CRC Synod in 1946 very helpful on this issue: “it must be said that there is no communisitic [one agreed upon] opinion in Reformed circles as to what the precise duty of the State with reference to the first table of the law may be, nor as to what the reciprocal obligations of Church and State are, and that is reason enough why it is unwise at this time to try to incorporate any deliverance touching these matters in our confession which should be the expression of our common faith.”

All About Calvinism (and me)

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Self-promotion alert!

Today Calvinism: A History is available in stores (including on-line sellers). To mark the occasion the good folks at National Review Online (courtesy of John Miller) have posted a podcast interview that John did with me a week or so ago.

And to sustain the Calvinism momentum, the editors of Engaging with Keller have encouraged us contributors to publicize the book’s publication. To that end, an excerpt from my chapter (I don’t have access to the others, really):

. . . Tim Keller would hardly be the first Presbyterian pastor not to follow the conventions or strictures of Presbyterian polity. But his popularity and especially his influence within the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) make his Presbyterian identity worth closer scrutiny. On the one hand, Keller has strong connections to leading figures in the world of young Calvinism through the Gospel Coalition. His presence among this mix of leaders, such as John Piper and D. A. Carson, greatly encourages evangelicals to think of themselves as Reformed even when they do not belong to Reformed churches. On the other hand, Keller’s highly visible parachurch activities and interdenominational cooperation has diminished the influence of Old School Presbyterianism, at least among younger ministers and church planters, within his own denomination, the PCA. In each of these cases Keller’s impoverished ecclesiology, combined with the success of his congregation in New York City, has encouraged many Protestants in the United States to conceive of Reformed Protestantism as something distinct from ecclesiology, an irony to be sure considering that the church government term, Presbyterian, always finds its way into Keller’s biography thanks to the name of his congregation.

In the Peace of Bryan

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Bryan Cross does not apparently understand that effective blogging includes short posts (as opposed to publishing essays), but his latest encyclical (in word processing this piece ran to ELEVEN!! single-spaced pages) is not only a tad wordy but also tendentious. The bias comes in the typical Cross manner — affirming virtue, peace, charity, and sincerity, while missing how such an affirmation calls attention to your own righteousness (and so misses your own bias). Anyone who has seen The Big Kahuna knows that Bryan is the perfect on-line embodiment of the character, Bob.

The post in question is about ecumenicity and how dialogue should transpire. Since the Callers seem to direct their call to Protestants, I suppose the dialogue Bryan has in mind is that between Roman Catholics and Protestants. I suppose if conversations went this way, perhaps they would be more beneficial. (Beneficial for what is the big question. Is the dialogue supposed to bring Protestants into the Roman Catholic fold? If it is to identify differences, the interactions that seem to lack Cross’ virtues have been highly beneficial.) Here’s one sampling from the high minded and pietistic world of virtuous dialogue:

Each person entering into genuine dialogue must therefore intend to enter into this shared activity with its singular telos, together with those who disagree with him or her, not merely attempt to defend or oppose a position or argument. If a person merely intends to advance, defend or oppose a position or argument, he is engaged in his own activity, not yet having entered into the dialogue. In order to enter into the dialogue, he must take up as his own not only the goal of the dialogue, but also enter into the particular social activity by which this goal is pursued in dialogue, namely, the mutual pursuit of agreement in the truth through a cooperative process of evaluating the evidence and argumentation. So entering into dialogue requires not merely embracing the goal of “agreement in the truth,” which any lecturer or apologist could make his own goal, but also entering into a shared singular activity in which agreement in the truth is pursued together with other persons with whom one disagrees. Being an apologist is insufficient for entering into dialogue, because the activity of dialogue requires virtues and skills in addition to the ability to defend one’s own tradition. Apologetics can be done in the mode of debate, but dialogue cannot, for reasons I will explain in the next section below. Similarly, being a journalist is insufficient for entering into dialogue because the journalist can offer criticism or praise from a disengaged third-person distance, while dialogue requires the transition to self-invested and self-disclosing second-person engagement.

Entering into the mutual pursuit of a singular goal within a singular activity requires not only a choice but a disposition of sociability and a stance of willingness to collaborate to achieve that goal. . . .

In addition to the virtue of sociability, in order to enter into genuine dialogue one must also believe that the other persons entering into the dialogue are capable of engaging in the activity of mutually exchanging and evaluating evidence and argumentation for the purpose of reaching agreement concerning the truth of the matter under dispute. And one must believe that the other persons sincerely intend to enter into this very same activity. In this way a good faith belief about the capacities and intentions of the other persons is necessary, and this belief itself requires the stance of charity toward those who would participate.

By contrast, a stance of suspicion and distrust concerning the motives of the other persons, or an assumption that the other persons are incapable of pursuing the truth in dialogue or rightly evaluating evidence and argumentation prevents the one having this stance from entering into dialogue with those he distrusts or assumes to be so incapacitated. If, for example, I believe that the other persons are only out to convert me, I cannot enter into dialogue with them, because I do not believe that they are engaged in dialogue. Similarly, if I believe that the other persons are blinded by sin or the devil, I cannot enter into dialogue with them, because I believe them in their present condition to be incapable of doing that which is essential to dialogue, namely, sincerely examining the evidence and argumentation with an aim to discovering and embracing what is true. To be sure, if in the course of attempted dialogue the other persons show themselves to be intending only to advance their own position, or to be incapable of evaluating evidence and argumentation, they show themselves to be incapable of entering into dialogue. If, however, one begins with this assumption about others, one cannot enter into dialogue with them.

Of course, what makes this rich is that anyone who has been run over by Bryan’s rules of logic, or his failure to understand why some just don’t get motives of credibility would say — check out that log in your own eye, Dr. Cross. Even if the Callers are not trying to convert Protestants (yeah, right), when has Bryan shown the least capacity to enter into a Protestant outlook or see that his formulaic citing of church dogma or flag-throwing on logic’s rules is preventing dialogue (as he defines it)?

And anyone who has heard from Bryan that he (that would be I) does not have the right paradigm, has to be scratching his head about Cross’ picture of entering into dialogue since Bryan has not once in my interactions allowed for the validity of another paradigm (even for the sake of conversation — watch, I’ll be told that conversation is not the same as dialogue and that I just committed some logical fallacy). Paradigmatic thinking does come up, but I am hardly sure what to make of it:

Participation in genuine dialogue requires in addition the disposition to listen so as to understand accurately the positions and perspectives of the others participating in the dialogue. In speaking of the disposition to listen, I am referring not to the unqualified disposition to listen, and not to the disposition to understand-so-as-to-criticize, but rather to the disposition to understand-so-as-to-come-to-agreement-in-the-truth. This disposition is an intellectual virtue that corresponds to empathy. By it at the proper time one silences not only one’s tongue, but also one’s mental movements directed toward any activity other than receiving the communication of one’s interlocutor, so that one can represent more accurately and thereby more perfectly achieve the view from within his paradigm, ordering each newly discovered detail in its place in that paradigm. Through this virtue one restrains even the internal movement to critical evaluation until the other paradigm has been fully comprehended and perceived from within. Rooted bitterness or deep animosity toward the other position or person does not allow the development or exercise of this virtue. Similarly, the vice of a “short attention span” prevents its possessor from developing and exercising the disposition to listen deeply.

If this means that I am supposed to find empathy from Bryan when discussing, say, papal infallibility, I’m not holding my breath.

But one smart reader wondered about Bryan’s commitment to paradigmatic thinking when she (maybe he) commented:

You consider the intention to “come to agreement concerning the truth regarding a disputed question” as a prerequisite of dialogue rather than debate. Yet this dispisition seems to be easier if you exercise private judgment on each issue (i.e. in the protestant paradigm), so that you can easily change it in view of new evidence or logical reasoning. We, Catholics, once we accept the Church’s claim to true teaching (Catholic paradigm), we follow the Church teaching rather than forming our own private judgment on particular matters. Hence, we are often accused by our protestant cousins that no dialogue is in fact possible with us, as we will ex definitione not change our views if such a change would go against the Church teaching. How can you reconcile strict adherence to the Church teaching (rather than private judgment) with the true intention to consider arguments to the contrary and “come to agreement concerning the truth” (as we Catholics believe that the Church already knows the true answer on a great number of subjects)?

Exactly. Jason and the Callers are always following church teaching even when they “dialogue” with Protestants, though I wonder if they are more successful with pietistic Protestants who fall for the earnestness and professed sincerity of such “dialogue.” Jason and Bryan always tell us how private opinion is what is wrong with Protestantism. So how is it that Cross could ever give up his paradigm to entertain the outlook of his dialogue partner? Turns out it is easy peasy for those with the right virtues.

I agree with you, of course, that Catholicism comes as a whole package, and that we [Catholics] cannot treat each particular doctrine as if it is something we can pick or choose while in the Catholic paradigm. But that doesn’t make it impossible for Catholics to enter into dialogue with Protestants regarding particular Catholic doctrines that Protestants do not accept. One doesn’t have to believe that one’s present beliefs are false in order to be committed to following the truth, even the truth that comes to light through dialogue. This is why I said in the post, “The intention to hold on to what is true and the intention to reach agreement in the truth through the mutual exchange and evaluation of evidence can both be maintained simultaneously without contradiction.” In my experience, this is not easy for some people to see, and so they see dialogue as presupposing a sort of skepticism about the truth, and/or a willingness to compromise regarding the truth. But I’m claiming that one can enter into genuine dialogue (as defined in the post above) without believing that one’s present beliefs are false, and while firmly intending not to compromise what one believes to be true.

There you have it. Bryan Cross engages us thinking he does so empathetically, believing he is having genuine dialogue, but never once compromising his beliefs, always pointing out our dogmatic and logical flaws. It is like having a dialogue with a wife after a party where you decided to hang with the guys for most of the night. But in Bryan’s world, it is genuine, peaceful, and from the heart.

What's In Your Wallet?

Published on by D. G. Hart54 Comments

Will it still be there after the resurrection? Will you still have a wallet?

I do not think it is gnostic to believe that Christians will not have access to their pre-resurrection savings accounts in the new heavens and new earth. In fact, countless Christian organizations and ministries solicit donations precisely because practically every Christian on this earth knows that what he now owns he will not possess once he dies. Now, maybe we get it all back (with interest?). But since wills and other legal arrangements see every believer make provisions to zero out his books, so that all his possessions go to someone else, does the idea of redeeming the material world indicate that most Christians need to reconsider how they prepare to meet their maker?

Believe me, when Matt Tuininga argues for continuity between the pre- and post-resurrection world, I am tempted. After all, if the books I have written (which are part of the material world) will survive the end of the world, perhaps I’ll have a chance to present a copy of Defending the Faith to J. Gresham Machen (not to mention being able to show my parents what I wrote since they went to be with the Lord). But I have no more confidence that the circumstances of the new heavens and new earth will include the contents of my curriculum vitae any more than that of my wallet.

Maybe Matt’s case for environmentalism only extends to God’s possessions and not to mine. So the fields and streams and cattle and trees, which all belong to the Lord, may show up in the world to come because they are God’s. What belongs to those who won’t be glorified, remains with those who need no glorification. But since much of the world that ultimately belongs to the Lord, provisionally belongs to farmers, developers, and investors, then the material world to survive the world’s end may be reserved to those remotest parts of Canada, Brazil, and Siberia, where ownership does not apply.

But if the point is that the human body, which is part of the material world, will be resurrected and so functions as an example of other material things that will be saved, redeemed, or resurrected, then why not my cash, credit cards, books, cats, house, and herb garden?

Or maybe we only see through a glass darkly.

Should Muslims Try to Legislate Their Morality?

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For most residents of the United States, the idea of Sharia law establishing the standards for civil law at the state or federal level (even before 9-11) is unthinkable. But lots of Protestants and Roman Catholics in the U.S. hardly blush when someone puts the question the way the Allies recently did — Should Christians Try to Legislate Their Morality?

On the ordinary playing field of fairness and equality before the law, the notion that Muslims and Jews and Roman Catholics should not try to legislate their morality but evangelicals may is nonsensical. The only way the premise behind the Allies’ question makes sense is if you think either that only the true religion may be legislated (say hello to 1650 Europe and goodbye to 1776 Philadelphia), or that the United States belong to the people who first settled it (say hello to Peter Marshall and David Barton and goodbye to David Hackett Fischer).

To say that Christians should not try to legislate their morality (if the followers of other religions may not) is not to affirm that civil society without religion as the social glue will be easy. Current debates about marriage are indicative of the problems that the American founding set into motion. But neither was life in Christendom easy for Muslims, Jews, and Protestants. So Americans tried to separate religious considerations as much as possible from civil society in establishing a constitutional republic. That led to secular society, a novos ordo seclorum (new order for the ages). Does such a society imply disrespect for God? Perhaps. But its explicit aim was not to deny God’s dominion but to make room for people from diverse faiths (or no faith) to try to live together (and please remember that even the Puritans did not welcome Baptists or Presbyterians). Legislating one religious group’s morality upsets the original agreement. Why Christians still don’t see this hurts my head the way drinking a curry squishee too fast does.

To be fair, I did not watch the Allies’ video. I’m a text guy when it comes to blogging. But if the discussion did highlight “the question of final authority” or as the post puts it: “As Christians, how do we help people find an authority outside of themselves?”, then I’m not sure the Allies are doing justice to the diversity of the American people (or to the United States’ law for that matter). We the people are sovereign through our representatives. This constitutional republic was established as a rebuttal to “final authorities” who dominated people and abused power. I understand that finding an authority outside ourselves is a proper basis for a w-w, a good philosophical way to refute secularism, and a habitual response of Roman Catholics and neo-Calvinists to the French Revolution. But the way I read the United States, we were not a philosophical republic but a polity that adapts pragmatically for the sake of protecting the security, peace, and legal standing of all its citizens (no matter what their faith). As for those citizen’s morality, they needed to conform to the laws that their representatives enacted, and those legislators represented people of diverse faiths.

In which case, we have moral problems in the United States and advocates of Christian morality (from the Baylys to the Allies) are not helping.

Postscript: I understand that Apu is likely not a Muslim.

Tim Bayly Does His Impersonation of Joseph Stalin and Alger Hiss (all in one)

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Tim thinks this exchange between Erik’s brothers’ Darryl/ell proves that 2k advocates are using theology for a political agenda. What it actually reveals is that Tim is afraid his followers will read the other side (e.g. Stalin). And worse, he cannot answer the question (e.g. Hiss) of why he supports the magistrate enforcing the sixth commandment but doesn’t apparently care about laws to preserve the first, second, third, and forth commandments.

R2K men aren’t Christians with a certain political argument but libertarians with a certain Christian argument by which they hope to shore up their political philosophy of each man doing that which is right in his own eyes.

And he thinks 2k advocates hide a political agenda behind Reformed theology?!? In the words of Tom McGinnis, “are you kidding me?”

What's Good for the Turks is Good for the Protestants

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Part of what makes studying the Ottoman Empire and Turkey fascinating is that you see aspects of civil society and political development that we in the West mostly take for granted. It is like studying a foreign language. I never understood English grammar as well as when taking Greek and Hebrew in seminary. To use English I never really needed to know the grammar. Not true for reading Greek (and faking my way through) Hebrew. The same goes for understanding the way western societies operate. We may take a civics class, but that doesn’t mean we understand the history behind or the choices made that resulted in a democratic and federated republic.

This is a way of introducing a poignant comment by Walter McDougall about the Turkish republic’s origins:

[Ataturk] set out to separate the state from Islamic religion, liberate women, define Turkish citizenship by residence rather than ethnicity, Westernize the legal system, promote economic development, and pursue peaceful relations with all of its neighbors.

In other words, Turkey accomplished in the 1920s what the United States did in the late 18th century. And Turkey also carried out some of the political outcomes that prevailed in Italy in 1870 when the papacy lost temporal authority over the Papal Legations. What was crucial in all three cases was for the laws of Turkey, Italy and the United States to be separated from the laws of Islam, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism respectively.

But apparently, some Protestants have not learned this lesson politics. They still insist that the state enforce God’s law. They also insist that they have no resemblance to Islam or Pius IX. In fact, one of the great ironies of U.S. history is that Protestants used a high-wall conception of the separation of church and state against any Roman Catholic attempts to receive state funding for parochial schools. When the courts then applied that same argument to public schools and removed prayer and Bible reading, Protestants (mainline, evangelical, and fundamentalist) cried foul. Apparently, separation of church and state is needed for Muslims and Roman Catholics, but not for our team.

Of course, the contemporary opponents of the secular may be right. The Bible may require a union of religion and politics and a return to Old Testament Israel. But are those contemporary critics of 2k and the secular willing to identify themselves as anti-American (not simply opposed to the U.S. of Obama but also to the republic of George Washington)? And are they willing to admit that they are anti-Western (in a way similar to political Islam)? Or do they want all the benefits of a constitutional republic in the West with whining rights about godless secular societies?