Author: D. G. Hart

Even the Cats Are Surfing the Net for Showtimes

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The next installment of the Up Series is showing in the theaters (but I can’t find any place in the old Northwest Territory that is screening it). Here is how Randall Stephens describes the documentary:

. . . it’s time for another installment of the perennial favorite UP Series, which has followed the lives of over a dozen English men and women since they were 7. (The latest is running on PBS this month.) Granada Television first aired the program in 1964. Other updates came in 1970, 1977, 1984, 1991, 1998, 2005, 2012. The brainchild of Michael Apted, the series has tracked the participants hopes, fears, interests, successes, failures, and more. It ranks as one of the best, most original documentaries of the 20th century.

Fifty years ago Apted hoped to shine light on the deep class divisions in England and to see how that would shape the lives of these individuals as the grew into adulthood.

He adds this description from the Guardian:

What couldn’t have been predicted was that a programme devised with the modest intention of giving viewers “a glimpse of England in the year 2000” would grow, over the years, into a candidate for the most affecting piece of television ever made. Births, deaths, marriages, divorces; mental illness; thwarted and realised ambitions; infidelity and its accommodation. That nothing extraordinary happened to the participants only made the series more profound, a dizzying and, at times, existentially terrifying examination of what it is to be alive, unfolding in a kind of emotional time-lapse photography.

People who have not had to wait every seven years for another edition of these British lives will have a different experience (just as the making of the documentary itself has has a Heisenberg-like affect on the lives of the subjects). But I can think of no other production that captures this well how our lives are works in progress (or regress). This is highly recommended for anyone (pastors, elders, parents, teachers) who believe and may be discouraged that a person’s current attitude, disposition, and circumstances will abide. Life goes on. People grow up. They (generally) remain resilient.

Blame It On the Reformation (Part 4): Jerusalem and Athens All Over Again

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On the subject of morality (chapter four in The Unintended Reformation), Brad Gregory performs a sleight of hand that is well-nigh remarkable since Protestant-Roman Catholic differences on ethics may be the most important feature of the break among Rome, Geneva, Wittenberg, and Canterbury. Gregory says:

This chapter argues that a transformation from a substantive morality of the good to a formal morality of rights constitutes the central change in Western ethics over the past half millennium, in terms of theory, practice, laws, and institutions. (184)

He goes on:

The fundamental historical realities that drove the central change were the religious disagreements and related sociopolitical disruptions of the Reformation era, because in the late Middle Ages, Christianity — with all its problems — was Western Europe’s dominant, socially pervasive embodiment of a morality of the good. As we have seen, Protestant rejections of the authority of the Roman church produced an open-ended range of rival truth claims about what the Bible meant. Correlatively, they yielded rival claims about what the Christian good was and how it was to be lived in community. (185)

What Gregory fails to consider is that his baseline for Christian ethics was precisely what was at issue in the medieval church and that the virtues Rome advocated were distinct from biblical morality. He fails to consider this because the stable Christian ethics that the Reformers abandoned were actually a synthesis of pagan and biblical truths — in other words, an unstable compound for the so-called good life.

Gregory argues that Christian ethics before the Reformation were synonymous with Aristotelian virtue ethics. What occurred over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was an abandonment of Aristotle:

. . . Aristotelian final causes were rejected and replaced by a conception of nature as a universal mechanism of efficient causes that encompassed human beings, and thus subsumed morality. Yet the elimination of any natural teleology from human life rendered not just problematic but incoherent the related notion of moral virtues as precisely those acquired human qualities and concrete practices whose rational exercise enables the disciplined reorientation of human passions and impulses, and thus the realization of the human good. If there are no final causes in nature, and human beings are no more than a part of nature like everything else, then there is not such thing as human nature conceived teleologically in Aristotelian terms. (181)

And perhaps if human nature conceived teleologically along Aristotelian lines leaves no room for discussing the work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and sanctification. Sorry, but where exactly is the Christian conception of the good in this standard by which to evaluate early modern moral philosophy? Gregory doesn’t appear to suffer the anguish described by Paul in the Epistle to the Romans because the Notre Dame historian is seemingly more concerned with community (Europe) than with the individual (creature) who stands condemned by God’s law:

Based on logically antecedent truth claims about reality and history, late medieval Christian ideals were laden with other truth claims about how human beings should act so that they might pursue the common good in this life and be saved eternally by God in the next. In other words, Christianity on the eve of the Reformation entailed an eternally ramifying ethical discourse based on a metaphysics that was disclosed through a history and embedded within a politics. With its teleological ethics rooted in God’s self-revelation through his creation and his covenant with Israel, above all in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, medieval Christianity involved reciprocally related moral rules, the practice of moral virtues, and a moral community — the church — all of which were supposed to foster the common good and the salvation of souls. (190)

All of this reflection on virtue may have been valuable for European society. And this is why two-kingdom folks don’t mind a dose of Aristotle when it comes to talk about a shared life together with other persons. But when it comes to the elephant in the Christian room — namely, “what must I do to be saved?” or “who can stand in that great day?” — Aristotelian or Thomistic accounts of human flourishing just won’t comfort sin-sick souls like Martin Luther who saw a difference between the proximate goods of social virtues and the absolute good of keeping God’s law perfectly, entirely, and perpetually.

I'll Take Transformation over Redemption

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If anyone wants evidence of the expanding meaning of redemption to the point of obscuring “the only redeemer of God’s elect,” take a look at Christianity Today’s list of 2012’s most redeeming movies:

Our annual Most Redeeming list . . . represents the year’s best movies that include stories of redemption. Several feature characters who are redeemers themselves; all have characters who experience redemption to some degree. Some are feel-good flicks; others, less so. Several are rated R and PG-13 and are not intended for young viewers, so please use discretion.

Of those on the list, I have only seen Argo, which is good and paradoxically a feel-good movie about the CIA (when does that happen? When the agency fights political Muslims, seems to be the answer.) But I would not call it a movie about redemption, a topic which has a much more definite meaning.

The lesson may be that when you begin to expand claims about Christianity’s comprehensiveness, break down distinctions between the holy and the common, regard all of life as “religious,” you wind up with a movie made by a Jewish-American about a predestinarian heterodox president turning out to be redemptive.

Does a "Big" and Bloated Denomination Need to Lose Some Weight?

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The bloggers at Vintage 73 have been silent for a while but they returned to eprint with a vengeance by asking whether the PCA should divide. Sam DeSocio has the nerve to ask the question and he suggests the benefits are several:

If instead of one larger theologically conservative Presbyterian church we were three such smaller groups, it might make it possible for us to better cooperate with many other denominations. What I’m suggesting is that maybe for the sake of framing a larger church we first need to do some demo.

This might also give us a much need opportunity to reassess how we have interacted with other ethnic and cultural groups in America. Right now the dominant cultural paradigm of the PCA is a White South Suburban perspective (consider why we don’t have General Assembly outside of the south east but once or twice a decade.) Maybe such a shake up would produce a healthier inclusion of Black Christians, Asian Christian, Latino Christian etc.

The Second potential benefit of a partitioning is the chance for local church leaders to assess their hopes for the church at large. Quite honestly, I believe that many of the problems of the PCA come down to ostrich-itis. Local church leaders are unsettled with certain things going on in the PCA (shifts to the right or to the left), but many shrug their shoulders and give up. They see the stalemate. So, they simply give up participating at a denominational level.

One intriguing aspect of this post is that it conflicts with Tim Keller’s own assessment of the PCA (from a piece no longer available on-line “Why I Like the PCA”):

TThe history of conservative Presbyterianism in the U.S., Scotland, and the Netherlands over the last 125 years is a painful account of bloody splits and the formation of many new, smaller, and weaker denominations. Let me assert right here that there is nothing wrong with smallness per se. (Pietists and culturalists often sneer at smallness as being intrinsically inferior, and I think this one of their inherent spiritual blind spots which rightly makes doctrinalists furious.) Splitting a church over an issue of truth and conscience can sometimes lead to theological and spiritual renewal. The best example of this, I think, was the original Disruption of 1843 of the Church of Scotland, led by Thomas Chalmers, after which the new Free Church of Scotland grew in both quality and quantity, reaching out across the land in an explosion of both new church development and a renewed sense of social responsibility. In this case, the new ‘schism’ church was truly a healthy new Reformed church with all its historic impulses intact.

Nevertheless, such fruit from church splits is rare. A more normal result of church splits is the pruning off of branches in a way that both wounds and yet, ironically, does not last. Something of this pattern, I think, can be seen in the history of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.20 Early in its history, after the death of J. Gresham Machen, the OPC went through a split in which its New Side/New School branch left, led by J.Oliver Buswell of Wheaton College and Carl T. McIntire. But, no surprise, by the 1970s the OPC had grown a new ‘pietist/revivalist’ wing under the influence of Jack Miller. The New Life Churches and their Sonship course was classic revivalism, and it did not fit well with the more doctrinalist cast of the OPC. While not a formal split, like that of 1937, the New Life churches were made to feel unwelcome and nearly all left in the early 90s to swell the pietist ranks of the PCA.

Whenever a Reformed church purifies itself by purging itself of one of its impulses, it finds that within a generation or two, its younger leaders are starting to at look in a friendly way toward the lost parts.

I happened to use Keller’s piece in concluding my course at WSC this week and find that his perspective on Presbyterian history is decidedly fanciful — the Free Church hardly resulted in a communion with quantity. Either way, DeSocio’s idea that a split may be valuable and Keller’s that the PCA needs to remain a big take tent is another indication that the younger generation is not following the PCA’s celebrity pastor and may be willing to figure it out for themselves.

One other point to notice is this prevalent idea that the PCA is large. I know that it looks big from the perspective of the OPC (30,000) and the RPCNA (6,000). But 300,000 (the PCA’s rough membership) makes them a piker in American Christianity. The Evangelical Lutheran Church (one of the U.S.’s top ten) has roughly 5.5 million members (last I checked). The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod has about 2.6 million. The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod has approximately 400,000 members. The ELCA is to Lutheranism what the PCUSA is to Presbyterianism, just at the LCMS is the Lutheran equivalent of the PCA, which leaves the Wisconsin Lutherans the Lutheran version of the OPC. In other words, the small Lutheran denomination — WELS — has 33 percent more members than the PCA. And I bet the Wisconsin Synod folks think of themselves as small. So why is the PCA so impressed with its size? Comparing yourself to the OPC is not wise.

This Week in California and the Danger of Unconverted Ministers

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I am glad to see that discussions continue at Oldlife without input or posts from (all about me). Apologies for not spending more time on-line, but I am in the midst of a week-long course on American Presbyterianism at Westminster (California).

I do not know how many times I have taught this material but I continue to be amazed by the consequences of the piety and concerns that prevailed in the First Great Pretty Good Awakening. The different understanding of conversion that the awakenings introduced — an immediate encounter with God versus the life long mortification and vivification taught in the Heidelberg Catechism (88-90) — as well as a different conception of qualifications for ministry, were huge for the future of Presbyterianism in the United States and beyond.

At the heart (no pun intended) of these differences is a piety geared more to subjective experiences as the ground for authenticity as opposed to objective promises and means. Arguably one of the best examples of this is to contrast Gilbert Tennent’s sermon, “The Danger of an Unconverted Minister,” in which he argues that critics of revivals are unconverted, to the Second Helvetic Confession on preaching done by wicked or evil ministers:

Even Evil Ministers Are To Be Heard. Moreover, we strongly detest the error of the Donatists who esteem the doctrine and administration of the sacraments to be either effectual or not effectual, according to the good or evil life of the ministers. For we know that the voice of Christ is to be heard, though it be out of the mouths of evil ministers; because the Lord himself said: “Practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do” (Matt. 23:3). We know that the sacraments are sanctified by the institution and the word of Christ, and that they are effectual to the godly, although they be administered by unworthy ministers. Concerning this matter, Augustine, the blessed servant of God, many times argued from the Scriptures against the Donatists. (ch. 18)

That also explains why ministers have power by virtue of the office as opposed to their character:

The Keys. For a lord gives up his power to the steward in his house, and for that cause gives him the keys, that he may admit into or exclude from the house those whom his lord will have admitted or excluded. In virtue of this power the minister, because of his office, does that which the Lord has commanded him to do; and the Lord confirms what he does, and wills that what his servant has done will be so regarded and acknowledged, as if he himself had done it. Undoubtedly, it is to this that these evangelical sentences refer: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 16:19). Again, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:23). But if the minister does not carry out everything as the Lord has commanded him, but transgresses the bounds of faith, then the Lord certainly makes void what he has done. Wherefore the ecclesiastical power of the ministers of the Church is that function whereby they indeed govern the Church of God, but yet so do all things in the Church as the Lord has prescribed in his Word. When those things are done, the faithful esteem them as done by the Lord himself. But mention has already been made of the keys above. (ch. 18)

George F. Will Still Rocks

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I know it is in my files somewhere — a letter from George Will to me in which he declined my services as an assistant or researcher. Once he wrote to me, complete with his address, I could find where he lived and one night in a somewhat creepy instance of stalking while my wife and I were leaving D.C. for Baltimore we turned down Will’s street in Bethesda. I found his house, parked across the street, and actually saw the man walk from one room to another. I did not go to the door or dig up a piece of turf.

I am reminded of this instance for two reasons. First, yesterday, thanks to a lighter load between semesters, I rediscovered the top of my desk (not to mention several interesting articles and essays that had been heaped on top). I wish I could say finding Will’s letter was that easy.

Second, (thank to one of our correspondents) I recently read a talk that Will gave at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics. I do not read Will regularly. Nor do we see him on the Sunday shows since our sabbath observance has improved (but oh the motives lurking). But Will continues to sound smart, witty, self-deprecating — and he has been doing this for as long as U2 has been making recordings. Long before Rush, Sean, Fox News and other outlets in the conservative media, George Will was a sane, responsible, learned, and accessible voice for conservatism.

I’d still work for him (as long as he could pay me until retirement).

Here is an excerpt from his talk, Religion and Politics in the First Modern Nation, in which he contrasted James Madison and Woodrow Wilson and implicitly cautioned against politicians who stray too far from human nature in hopes of changing the cosmos (I wonder if Kuyper would have liked Wilson):

This is the Creator who endows us with natural rights that are inevitable, inalienable and universal — and hence the foundation of democratic equality. And these rights are the foundation of limited government — government defined by the limited goal of securing those rights so that individuals may flourish in their free and responsible exercise of those rights.

A government thus limited is not in the business of imposing its opinions about what happiness or excellence the citizens should choose to pursue. Having such opinions is the business of other institutions — private and voluntary ones, especially religious ones — that supply the conditions for liberty.

Thus the Founders did not consider natural rights reasonable because religion affirmed them; rather, the Founders considered religion reasonable because it secured those rights. There may, however, be a cultural contradiction of modernity. The contradiction is that while religion can sustain liberty, liberty does not necessarily sustain religion. This is of paramount importance because of the seminal importance of the Declaration of Independence.

America’s public philosophy is distilled in the Declaration’s second paragraph: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Notice, our nation was born with an epistemological assertion: The important political truths are not merely knowable, they are self-evident — meaning, they can be known by any mind not clouded by ignorance or superstition.

It is, the Declaration says, self-evidently true that “all men are created equal.” Equal not only in their access to the important political truths, but also in being endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Next comes perhaps the most important word in the Declaration, the word “secure”: To secure these rights, government are instituted among men.” Government’s primary purpose is to secure pre-existing rights. Government does not create rights, it does not dispense them.

Here, concerning the opening paragraphs of the Declaration, is where Woodrow Wilson and progressivism enter the American story.

Wilson urged people not to read what he called the preface to the Declaration, and what everyone else calls its essence. He did for the same reason that he became the first president to criticize the American Founding. And he did not criticize it about minor matters; he criticized it root and branch, beginning with the doctrine of natural rights.

I would likely quibble with Will over lunch (if I worked for him) over some of his points, not to mention the irony of a president who conducted a War for Righteousness criticizing politicians who were not as devout as he was. But among the options in American politics, not to mention world history, the American founding is pretty darned terrific. It merits at least as many cheers as George Will.

Forensic Friday: Talking about Holiness with a Protestant Accent

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The following excerpt from Martin Luther’s 1525 sermon (W.A. 17.1.155f) should be a reminder to would-be perfectionists and neo-nomians about the dangers of misconstruing personal righteousness:

This is the main article which we have to learn. It gives us authority, even if we feel the lust of our flesh or even fall into sin, to say: “Howbeit, it is my will to be rid of the Law, neither am I still under the Law or sin, but I am devout and righteous.” If I cannot say this, I must despair and perish. The Law says: “thou art a sinner.” If I say, “Yes,” I am lost; if I say “No,” I must have a firm ground to stand on, to refute the Law, and uphold my “No.” But how can I say it, when it is true and is confirmed by Holy Scripture that I was born in sin? Where then shall I find the “No”? Of a truth, I shall not find it in my own bosom, but in Christ. From Him I must receive it and fling it down before the Law and say: “Behold, He can say ‘No’ against all Law, and has the right to do, for He is pure and free from sin, and He gives me the ‘No,’ so that though if I look on myself I should have to say ‘Yes’ because I see that I am a sinner and could not stand before the Law, and feel that there is nothing pure in me, and see God’s wrath, yet I can say that Christ’s righteousness is my righteousness, and henceforth I am free from sin.” This is the goal, that we should be able to say, continually, we are pure and godly, for evermore, as Christ Himself can say, and this is wrought through faith.

Luther explains well why some of us find faith in Christ to be much more comforting than the terror that comes from pursuing righteousness as sin-bedeviled saint. (I hope you’re reading Doug and Richard.)

The Bible's Forked Tongue?

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Put simply, the Bible speaks narrowly to the church but broadly to believers. This, at least, is the unexamined logic of neo-Calvinism.

Two-kingdom proponents and neo-Calvinists both distinguish between the institutional church and its members. This distinction allows us to recognize that Christians properly do things that the church can’t do. Christians work as artists, parents, plumbers, bankers, and bakers. The church does not produce or rear children, lacks its own currency, uses bread from common sources for the Lord’s Supper. So far so good.

But the hiccup for neo-Calvinists comes when they insist that Christians must have biblical warrant or use the lens of Scripture for all that they do. In Kingdoms Apart, Timothy R. Scheurers, puts it this way:

Where . . . proponents of the Two Kingdoms perspective go wrong, however, is in their failure to distinguish adequately between the work of the church (as an institution) and the cultural activity of Christians who are simultaneously citizens of heaven and earth (church as an organism). The Two Kingdoms doctrine neglects the biblical command that in every area of public living, believers should apply the principles and values that shape their distinctiveness as Christians. If fails to provide a biblical and helpful paradigm for cultural living by limiting the unique identity and spirituality of believers in this world. . . .

Scripture nowhere hints that we are to live a compartmentalized life in which we relegate our Christian convictions to Sunday observance only. Romans 12:1 declares that for those who have been renewed by the Spirit of God, it is entirely reasonable and fitting for them to offer up to God their whole person, both body and soul, in an act of worship. . . . If we accept the Two Kingdoms assertion that the Christian’s secular activities are “thoroughly common,” and that it is improper to “apply” the gospel to our work in the common realm, it would seem a type of Sunday Christianity remains for us. However, if we are transformed by the gospel, then it is profoundly relevant for how we conduct ourselves as Christians in the civil realm, for “the very essence of Christian faith includes a grace-produced identity that comes to manifestation in the way we live our lives every day of the week.” (144-45)

And thus we see another example of neo-Calvinism’s bloated rhetoric for admirably pious reasons.

Here is the rub: if the essence of the Christian faith is a grace-produced identity for every area of human existence, then the church (institute or institutional) lacks this Christian essential. After all, the corporate church does not take stands on matters in which Christians engage throughout the week — plumbing, baking, banking, gardening, ditch-digging. No Reformed church has produced a chapter or chapters in its creeds about algebra, Greek, or photosynthesis. That does not seem to bother neo-Calvinists since the work of the church is different from that of the believer.

But if neo-Calvinists are content with churches that lack the essence of Christianity, why do they demand more of believers than of the church? Churches don’t confess articles of faith about hydrogen or dangling prepositions because the Bible does not speak to such matters. The Reformed creeds summarize biblical teaching and if Scripture taught trigonometry or Asian history, churches would be expected to teach what God’s word reveals.

And yet, under the logic of the comprehensive sweep of Christianity and biblical testimony, neo-Calvinists claim powers for believers what the church lacks, namely, the ability to apply biblical norms to all walks of life. We do not let ministers preach sermons on tax rates, rotation of crops, exercise, or television game shows. But now along come neo-Calvinists to tell us that any Tom, Dick or Mary, who has no training in biblical exegesis or may not even be catechized, is going to tell us how the gospel transforms cat litter, Alfred Hitchcock movies, and meteorology?

And people wonder why the institutional church ends up suffering in neo-Calvinist contexts, or why the convoluted notion of kingdom-work has given every member a ministry.

As I say, neo-Calvinists intentions may be admirable. But Calvinists, who put the T in TULIP, were not supposed to be suckers for good intentions.

Old Life New Year Revelries

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Celebrating New Year’s Day is always mixed with sobriety (talk about paradoxes) thanks to January 1 being the anniversary of J. Gresham Machen’s death (1937). He died of pneumonia at 7:30 Central Standard Time in a Roman Catholic hospital in Bismarck, North Dakota.

To honor the man, here is an excerpt from his defense of his vote against a motion before the Presbytery of New Brunswick to support Prohibition (which by the way bears on this matter of the Bible speaking to all of life and the flip side of Christian liberty):

In the first place, no one has a greater horror of the evils of drunkenness than I or a greater detestation of any corrupt traffic which has sought to make profit out of this terrible sin. It is clearly the duty of the church to combat this evil.

With regard to the exact form, however, in which the poser of civil government is to be used in this battle, there may be difference of opinion. Zeal for temperance, for example, would hardly justify an order that all drunkards should be summarily butchered. The end in that case would not justify the means. Some men hold that the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act are not a wise method of dealing with the problem of intemperance, and that indeed those measures, in the effort to commplish moral good, are really causing moral harm. I am not expressing any opinion on this question now, and did not do so by my vote in the Presbytery of New Brunswick. But I do maintain that those who hold the view that I have just mentioned have a perfect right to their opinion, so far as the law of our church is concerned, and should not be coerced in any way by ecclesiastical authority. The church as a right to exercise discipline where authority for condemnation of an act can be found in Scripture, but it has no such right in other cases. And certainly Scripture authority cannot be found in the particular matter of the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act . . .

In making of itself, moreover, in so many instances primarily an agency of law enforcement, and thus engaging in the duties of the police, the church, I am constrained to think, is in danger of losing sight of its proper function, which is that of bringing to bear upon human souls the sweet and gracious influences of the gospel. Important indeed are the functions of the police, and members of the church, in their capacity as citizens, should aid by every proper means within their power in securing the discharge of those functions. But the duty of the church in its corporate capacity is of quite a different nature. (“Statement on the Eighteenth Amendment,” J. Gresham Machen: Selected Shorter Writings, 394-95).

What Kind of Witness Do Presbyterians Have Anymore?

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Over at the Imaginative Conservative I ran across this intriguing tidbit of church history:

Did you know that Christmas celebrations were banned in Scotland until 1958? I certainly didn’t, not until my son started working on his sixth grade “Christmas around the World” report. I haven’t looked up what the English did in this regard (Scotland always has had a good deal of autonomy within Britain, and never stopped following its own legal code). But it seems the good Presbyterians of the established Church of Scotland (“the Kirk,” ironically enough for traditional conservatives) thought Christmas was a Catholic holiday, best stamped out with criminal penalties for unwholesome celebrations (pretty much anything outside of church), along with persistent tolling of bells to make sure everybody went to work on the day.

Bruce Frohnen, the author who uses this piece of trivia to introduce reasons for celebrating Christmas and Epiphany, goes on to say that times have changed and the old reasons for Presbyterians not celebrating Christmas have changed as well:

None of this is intended as a complaint against Presbyterians. In our secular age those of us who’ve “got religion” need to let bygones be bygones—especially when it comes to wrongs with their origins dating back a long way, and which aren’t really relevant to the character of people or religious practice today. What’s more, as they say, “at least they took us seriously.”

This is a curious line of reasoning since it suggests that those who take religion seriously (the “got religionists”) have no reason to take the old reasons for differences between Presbyterians and Roman Catholics seriously. But if the “got religion” crowd does believe religion to be important, then doesn’t that belief extend beyond a generic conservative Christianity doing battle with secularists and egalitarians? Doesn’t it lead all the way to what traditional Presbyterians and traditional Roman Catholics have believed traditionally about practices like the church calendar (redundancy intended)? This is not to say that beliefs change. Presbyterians (in the U.S. anyway) revised their confession in 1789 on the subject of the civil magistrate. Roman Catholics “developed” their doctrine of the church at Vatican II such that salvation now is possible outside the Roman Catholic Church. Still, despite changes and developments, what is a traditional Presbyterian to do who still objects to the “doctrines and commandments of men” implied in the liturgical calendar used by Rome, Moscow, and Canterbury (not to mention Dort)? Can confessional Presbyterians find a seat at the pro-religion, cultural conservative table if they bring up objections to other conservative faiths on the basis of their own conservative faith?

This is, by the way, an important example of why religion — at least conservative faith — is not glue that keeps cultural conservatives together that many scholars and journalists suppose. The religion of the culture warriors (in James Davison Hunter’s old categories) may bring them together, but it is more likely going to be some kind of ecumenical, broadly tolerant religion that stresses morality (the way the old liberal Protestants did), not one that tells Protestants they are in danger if they don’t fellowship with the Bishop of Rome or that tells Presbyterians they should not observe man-made holidays.

Either way, it is remarkable that even mainline Presbyterian churches like the Kirk as little as a half-century ago would not observe the liturgical calendar. Not even the Orthodox Presbyterian Church had that kind of tenacity — just look at the hymns devoted to the birth of the baby Jesus in the Trinity Hymnal.

But if you are thinking about holidays and wondering how to bring in the New Year with a good movie, the Harts recommend Hudsucker Proxy (1994), a Coen Brothers production that ranks right up there with Miller’s Crossing. Hudsucker is set at the end of 1958 — talk about harmonic convergence — the year that the Kirk started observing Christmas, and stars Tim Robbins and Paul Newman. We are planning on some sparkling shiraz to go with the popcorn and should be in bed by 10:30. Woot!