Category: Are They On Their Meds?

Maybe This Explains the Appeal of Independence to the Scots

Published on by D. G. Hart8 Comments

Wow!

Here is what England is:

She is more than a thousand years of uninterrupted Christian faith, from St. Alban, the first English martyr, killed during the Roman occupation in the 3rd century, to the martydrom of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More in 1535. She is the hundreds of martyrs killed during the penal times following Henry VIII’s usurpation of the church in England. She is Beowulf and “The Dream of the Rood”; she is Sir Gawain and Chaucer; she is Byrd and Tallis; she is Walsingham and Glastonbury; she is Austen and Dickens, Newman and Hopkins, Chesterton and Belloc, Waugh and Wodehouse, Lewis and Tolkien. She is Shakespeare! This is the England of our dreams, and our dreams are so much more real, in any meaningful sense, than the nightmare that the modern inhabitants of England seem to prefer. This is the England to which I owe my allegiance; the England of the saints and martyrs; the England of the poets and bards; and the England of the Greatest Bard of all. I will conclude by letting the Bard wax lyrical on the England of my dreams:

This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in a silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

This may explain why Rod Dreher had a point:

The intellectual arrogance identified by Alan that exists within certain Catholic circles is something I once was guilty of, without realizing it. To me, as an adult convert to Catholicism, the intellectual and aesthetic riches of the Catholic faith were so blindingly obvious that I couldn’t see that the Protestant traditions were worth taking seriously, except in a political and personal sense. That is, I respected Protestants as serious Christians and good people with whom we could and should work on causes of mutual concern, but I didn’t trouble myself to take them seriously on the intellectual front. This was an example of my unearned pride. As far as I was concerned, I had joined the intellectual A team of American Christianity, and Father Neuhaus was our Joe Torre. At the time I didn’t realize it, but looking back, I can see that the only conversations I thought really mattered were between Catholics.

As I write this, I remember a professor telling me years ago at a conference that he might have left Protestantism for Catholicism, except for the fact that his Catholic convert friends were so intellectually haughty in their newfound Catholicism that they kept him away from the Roman church. What that man experienced is a constant temptation for intellectual converts to Catholicism.

Political Theologians Pleading Specially

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

Why does Peter Leithart find this encouraging, uplifting, or persuasive? Why does the inadequacy of secularism somehow prove the sufficiency of God-drenched conceptions of the world?

The task is not simply to expose the inadequacy of a world without God or to show the collaborative spirit of religious engagement in the common good. It surely must more specifically be to demonstrate the unique power and thrilling wisdom of the logic of God in Christ and to reconceive tired issues in the light of the shape of Christ’s coming. The authority and the credibility of the public theology rest not so much on the theologian’s insight, intelligence, or subtle grasp of complex issues (wondrous as each may be) as on the ability – respectfully, lucidly, and accessibly – to show how Christ redefines human nature, transforms death, and overturns the givens of life; to show what only God can do and only God has done; and more intriguingly, to highlight the way that questions in public life today reflect and recall issues faced by the church in shaping and embodying Christian doctrine.

Who said secularism was going to figure it all out? Who says that Christendom ever did? In fact, if Peter Heather is correct about the appeal of the Roman Empire to Christian Emperors — Constantine, Justinian, and Charlemagne — then the European world even in its most Christian phase was responsible for a lot of senseless war:

. . . a restored empire that captured the essence of the Roman original had become completely impossible by the year 1000. Not only had Islam broken apart ancient Mediterranean unity, and the balance of power in Western Europe shifted decisively north of the Alps, but, still more fundamentally, patterns of development were now much too equal across the broader European landscape. Thanks to this equalization of development, you might say, the scene was set for the thousand subsequent years of fruitless warfare which followed as Europe’s dynasts intermittently struggled to achieve a level of overarching dominance that was in fact impossible. In that sense, it took the nightmare of two world wars in the twentieth century before the European Dream was finally called into existence to try to put a stop to the process of endless armed competition between powers that were always too equal for there to be an outright winner. (The Restoration of Rome, 294-295)

And let’s be clear, these were dynasts with Christian motivations (at least in part — Hegel’s w-w had not come along yet). So why does Leithart think that putting God into the questions surrounding public life will do any good? This time, he thinks, the politicians, inspired by his guy Constantine, will get it right?

And if anyone ever wants to argue for Christendom as an example of politics accomplished Christianly, or that the Christian society secured human flourishing, s/he should merely consider the fundamental dynamic of medieval monarchy — gain control and keep it by taxation, warfare (and don’t forget leaving behind an undisputed heir). According to Heather:

In the small-state world of early medieval Europe, expansionary warfare replaced large-scale taxation as the source of renewable wealth that was necessary to maintaining a powerful central authority in anything but the very shortest of terms. . . . All of which prompts one final question: if expansion was so crucial to the longer-term exercise of central authority, filling the massive gap in royal finance created by the end of taxation, why did later Carolingian monarch allow it to end? . . . A more profitable route into the problem is to consider expansionary warfare in terms of cost-benefit equations which governed it. Expansionary warfare would bring in profits, but also involved costs, not just in financial terms (food, weaponry, etc.), but also in personal terms since some of those participating would certainly die. If you think about it in this way, then the ideal profile of an area ripe for expansion is easy enough to construct: it needs to be economically developed enough to offer a satisfying level of reward both in terms of moveable booty and potential land-grabbing, but militarily not so well organized that too many of your expeditionary army, on average, are going to die winning access to the prize. . . . On every corner of the frontier, the cost-benefit equation was starting to deliver a negative answer, either because the enemy was too formidable (Spain), or because the likely benefits were not that great (the Balkans), or some combination of the two (southern Italy and the Southern Elbe region). (288-90)

When you think about empire and government in those terms, the modern secular nation-state surely does seem to have its advantages. That’s not because it doesn’t go to war or because it’s run by a bunch of virtucrats. Instead, say what you will about capitalism and its appeal to baser human motivations, it does generate the kind of internal wealth that many times prevents nation-states from having to conquer another people who will pay the government’s bills. Not to mention that constitutionalism and enumerated powers are a much better way of gaining consent than intimidation by force (cheaper too).

Who Needs Sanctification if Everyone (except the politicians) is Innocent?

Published on by D. G. Hart47 Comments

In The Prospect this morning (my effort to sample British magazines) I ran across and op-ed about Detroit’s bankruptcy. Lynn Paramore invoked the notion of faultlessness to understand who’s at fault and how isn’t in Detroit’s (and Michigan’s) financial mess:

Americans, like their counterparts elsewhere, had already watched innocent people pay deary for the 2007-08 financial meltdown, while financial institutions got special protection. Was it going to happen again?

Americans (not sure about their counterparts elsewhere), including Christian ones who may know better, like to think of the American people (read ourselves) as virtuous, hard working, salt of the earth, while the big financial and political institutions hold down the duties of villainy. After all, a standard trope in American politics is that Washington corrupts politicians, just as Wall St. brings down — whom? the ambitious graduates of prestigious MBA programs? Sure.

The same sort of demonization seems to be following Ben Sasse who is by no means innocent but whose very good Yale dissertation has gotten a lot of attention from journalists who are suspicious of the Tea Party and are looking not only for chinks in Sasse’s armor but appear to be inclined to see Ben stripped naked (like Job?).

The latest (after Sarah Posner) to unclothe Sasse is Heather Digby Parton, a name that sounds less than innocent of those hardworking Americans just minding their business. At Salon she takes aim at Ben’s dissertation and by virtue of his associations with the Tea Party turns Sasse into David Barton:

. . . it’s a fascinating treatise on the origins of the modern religious right in America. Unlike most historians, he believes that the conservative movement grew up in the 1960s not out of rebellion against the civil rights stances of the Democratic Party but rather the “secularization” of the culture in the wake of the Supreme Court rulings banning school prayer and Bible reading. He even goes so far as to claim that rather than a cynical decision to stoke the flames of Southern racism with the Southern strategy, it was Richard Nixon’s deep understanding of the Christian culture that led him to persuade evangelicals and conservative Catholics to join the GOP and usher in the era of conservatism in the last decades of the 20th century. It’s a novel understanding of that history, to say the least. Most historians cite Nixon’s pursuit of blue-collar Catholics as part of the strategy to peel off working-class votes with racial resentment. But Sasse’s dissertation is evidently persuasive in at least some respects.

But regardless of his level of accomplishment as a scholar, Ben Sasse clearly sees the world through the lens of a conservative Christian crusader. According to his website, he is a proponent of the most radical interpretation of religious freedom that’s in circulation today on the far right:

Ben Sasse believes that our right to the free exercise of religion is co-equal to our right to life. This is not a negotiable issue. Government cannot force citizens to violate their religious beliefs under any circumstances. He will fight for the right of all Americans to act in accordance with their conscience.

One wonders if he believes the child molestation at Warren Jeffs’ polygamous compound or Shariah Law honor killings are also non-negotiable religious beliefs that the government cannot force those people to violate under any circumstances. In any case, he is certainly a proponent of the Christian right manifesto, the Manhattan Declaration, which aims to change the strategy of the religious right from a purely moral argument to a legal doctrine that exempts religious adherents from following the law of the land.

So what do we have here? A writer for a progressive publication that refuses to trust the faculty at Yale University for awarding Sasse a degree? Somehow Sasse hoodwinked the history department at Yale into believing his concocted account of the Religious Right’s origins. For what it’s worth, I’ve read the dissertation and know that Sasse did not portray Nixon as having a “deep understanding” of Christians. Nixon did understand that Billy Graham was popular and respected and courted the evangelist. That’s not particularly deep, but given the media’s treatment of Graham and American revivalism, Nixon may have been as profound as his journalist watchdogs. And for double what it’s worth, if Ms. Parton is going to invoke a right to life as perhaps more sacred than religious freedom, has she told that to her pro-choice friends?

But the inconsistencies don’t matter when politics turn not only figures into cardboard cutouts but Yale dissertations into campaign literature. Thankfully, some historians can look past the politics to see that Sasse made a real contribution in his dissertation and that it has no direct bearing on electoral politics (which tends to be the money pit of American life). Charlie McCrary, a graduate student at Florida State University who should be careful about running for public office, should get the last word:

One of Sasse’s most enduring contributions is his demonstration of how the idea of “secularism-as-religion” made its way into popular (or what he calls “grassroots”) consciousness. Billy Graham and other religious leaders in the 1950s propagated the clash between Christian (or “tri-faith”) America and godless communists. What Sasse’s work helps to illustrate is how this model was re-purposed in the 19060s by non-elite middle class Americans to create the “religious right” and “secular left.” The Cold War abroad; the culture wars at home. “For though we may often forget this reality,” Sasse and/or his subjects remind us, “God is real, and there are ultimately only two places for us to stand–with him or against him” (189). Whereas all of America had been “with him,” a number of Americans were beginning to perceive an “enemy within.” Thus, the Supreme Court’s decisions tin the school-prayer cases Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington v. Schempp (1963), “kicking God out of schools,” only confirmed what people like New York Congressman Frank Becker already had seen coming: looming secularization.

To make this argument work, Sasse first narrates the complicated and contingent process by which the Engel and Schempp verdicts were reached. His second and third chapters provide the best and most thorough treatment of these cases that I’ve read. They’re not only worth reading but worth assigning, especially in upper-level courses on American religion, law, and politics. In these chapters it is particularly clear that Sasse does not argue that secularizers constituted a coherent, self-conscious movement. Instead, what was going on was a shift in the very understandings of the meanings of the words like “sectarian,” “nonsectarian,” and “religion” itself. In other words, this was the Supreme Court trying to stretch the Establishment Clause to apply to a type of pluralism–not to mention a style of argumentation–it wasn’t written to handle. It’s a complicated historical moment that Sasse, like many recent historians, zeroes in on, recognizing its seminal importance in the story of American religion and law.

Nuanced discussions like this, though, had little purchase with grassroots Americans. After all, you’re either with God or against God. Sasse cites polls showing 65-85 percent of the country opposing the Schempp decision, if not fully understanding it. The Supreme court, these folks concluded, must be against God. But why? Someone somewhere, an “enemy within,” was secularizing America. At least one person was willing to be that enemy, to adopt–and thus perpetuate–the either/or culture-war worldview; in so doing, in the following years and decades Madalyn Murray O’Hair “solidified her place as the human face of secularization” (315). Some commentators, as well as some Supreme Court justices themselves, especially Tom Clark, tried to amend this stark rendering. “Clark failed to grasp, however, that most citizens were not listening to his or other elites’ narrow explanations of what these cases meant,” Sasse writes. “They were mesmerized instead by Madalyn’s–and her preacher-opponents’–broader explanations of what the cases implied about the future of American life (331).

This figuration didn’t happen overnight, but it didn’t take very long either. Initially, Sasse argues, evangelicals were mixed in their reception to the decision and to countering legislation like the Becker Amendment (which declared that “Nothing in this [U.S.] Constitution shall be deemed to prohibit” Bible reading, prayers, or references to God in public institutions). However, amidst rhetoric of a state in open rebellion against God, many evangelicals, including Christianity Today, came to oppose the Supreme court’s decisions and support the Becker Amendment. Billy Graham, for example, “had regularly pointed to the Supreme Court’s prayer decisions on the stump as Exhibit Number One in support of his allegations of a belligerent secularist movement, a conspiratorial ‘anti-God colossus of materialism at home and of Communism abroad” (247). Using language resonant with David Sehat’s work, Sasse argues, “Religious Americans understood atheists not only as intellectual threats seducing individuals, but as threats to the moral order” (285).

The linking of “secular” with “left,” and the depiction of that combination as dangerous, became further solidified in the 1970s. It was then, too, that the party politicians started to use this dichotomization to their advantage. (This is an important component of the dissertation, since Sassee wants to demonstrate the bottom-up character of anti-secularization; thus, politicians pick up on the rhetoric only later, rather than manufacturing it themselves.) Sasse shows how Republicans like Nixon and McGovern used campus demonstrations and anti-Vietnam-War protests to stoke the fears of “Main Street,” “a middle America horrified at creeping permissiveness and the possibility of widespread social disorder” (345). Spiro Agnew, bombastic and sometimes off-putting though he was, struck a certain chord with middle Americans, many of whom were evangelicals. After the rhetoric surrounding the Engel and Schempp decisions, Time’s 1966 Death-of-God cover, the publicity of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, and now the student protest movements, Billy Graham noted in 1968 that many in his flock were beginning to move right politically (355). In short, the “silent majority” was taking shape.

Here, Sasse’s interpretation is different from, for example, Matthew Lassitner’s 2007 book The Silent Majority, though not directly contradictory. As Posner notes, Sasse certainly gives short shrift to the racial, pro-segregationist movements that helped to form the religious right, as Lassiter and others, such as Randall Balmer, have shown. Perhaps this is because Sasse has a nostalgically rosy picture of his subjects. Or, perhaps he was less aware of these factors, much clearer after a decade of historical work than they were in 2004. Or perhaps his focus was elsewhere, and he saw these topics as less relevant to his specific argument about anti-secular rhetoric. In any case, Sasse’s work only adds to these explanations of the effectiveness of the rhetoric of a silent (and “moral”) majority. He is in agreement with Lassiter, Balmer, and others, in his overall point: “if one wants to identify the single most momentous marker in the transformation of formerly Democratic white religious Americans into reliable Republican voters in presidential contests, that moment is not 1980 or 1984, but 1972” (410). This pre-history of the religious right and Moral Majority, focusing on Nixon’s supporters and the culture of 1970s evangelicalism, looking for historical explanations beyond myopic focus on the “Reagan revolution,” compliments other recent and upcoming work from Darren Dochuk, Leslie Durroughs Smith, Mike McVicar, and many others.

So, what does the Weekly Standard or Posner see in this work? If Sasse’s dissertation is a polemic against anyone, it’s against academic historians who too frequently have either ignored the religion of middle America or assumed it to be unworthy of study. When making these points, though, Sasse is not clear about exactly who does this. He complains about the blind spots of “academic historians” who ignore religion and assume its “retreat” after the Scopes Trial. His citations, though, are mostly of U.S. history surveys. For example, he argues, “After the 1960s, survey text religion must be rushed quickly off the stage” (417). In this section he echoes some arguments from Jon Butler, his dissertation’s co-advisor, in his article “Jack-in-the-Box Faith,” which was published the same year as Sasse’s dissertation. In the final pages, Sasse rails against “historians as a whole,” who are unconvinced of religion’s ability to be a real motivating factor in people’s lives, anything more than a “veneer” for other interests.

Sasse’s use of terms like “middle America,” “grassroots,” and “Main Street” do sound like politically and perhaps racially charged rhetorical devices in 2014 (because they are), but the terms were in use in the period Sasse is describing. He could interrogate the categories better, or lay out clearer definitions, but the decisions to use his subjects’ terminology as his own is methodologically defensible. Furthermore, Sasse does frequently appear sympathetic to his conservative evangelical subjects (or maybe, to use a phrase I often hear but don’t really understand, he’s just “taking them seriously”), and the final section’s indictment of twenty-first-century academic “elites” resonates with his picture of 1960s elites’ departures from middle America’s sensibilities. Sasse does believe that the 1960s and 1970s were in fact times of secularization, at least among the Supreme Court, academics, and the New York Times, though certainly not among middle America, but he also recognizes, and demonstrates persuasively, how the label “secularization” worked to link together a variety of ideas, movements, and people that otherwise would not fit in the same category. Indeed, Sasse argues, “other segments of the population,” that is, not white evangelical middle America, “represented visibly by the ACLU, the Northeastern legal establishment, and most Jewish groups” did in fact try to secularize Aemrica (448).

To what extent this is true, and what it means, is up for debate and discussion. But the main point Sasse makes is not this one; it’s that many Americans believed all these secularizers to be in league with one another, part of a coherent secular agenda, a program represented of even spearheaded by O’Hair–even though almost no one involved in these groups would see it that way. This is a persuasive argument, and it helps to answer a central question: How is it that conservative white evangelicals have come to see their worldview, their politics and practices, as coherent? A primary way has been in defining a common enemy. And thus, what it meant to be “religious” in 1964 or in 1972 or 1980 (or 2014?) was not much of a positive assertion but rather an act of negative definition. “Religious” means not secular or anti-secular: “anti-Madalyn.” Sasse argues this explicitly, saying “it is more accurate to conceive of much of grassroots white America as being repelled by a secular left, than as attracted by the particular policy visions of the religious right” (450). In this way, the construction of the “secular left” enabled the construction of a religious right.

Without 2k, Thomas Sowell becomes an Orthodox Reformed Protestant

Published on by D. G. Hart109 Comments

Celebrants of America’s Christian founding take note.

Our Protestant Rabbi interlocutor sometime back came to the defense of Bill Evans’ critique of 2k. I understand in part the frustration with 2k for folks like Rabbi Bret because it denies the certainty that supposedly comes with finding the solutions to social woes in Scripture, which in turn gives the Christian pastor leverage in the culture wars over skeptical citizens, policy makers, and Democrats. The problem (as if there is one) is that opponents of 2k never practice what they teach. They can’t. This isn’t a matter of hypocrisy. I’m tempted to wonder if it’s a question of intelligence but that is not a very charitable explanation either. It is a problem of thinking this antithetical w-w all the way through.

Observe the following. Rabbi B (why is B so prominent in the critics of 2k? The BBs William B. Evans) takes issue with (all about) me on the following grounds:

It is R2K that destroys the Gospel. R2K allows an alien theology to shape the zeitgeist so that all our thought categories are conditioned by that alien theology. Then Darryl expects that, despite that alien theology creating a culture hostile to Biblical Christianity, that the Church will remain unaffected by that hostility and false theology so that it can herald a clear Gospel message. Our contemporary setting screams that Darryl is wrong. Church Growth, Emergent, Pentecostal, Arminian, R2K,etc. churches all demonstrate that the zeitgeist pagan theology is shaping our Churches and so our Christianity. Pentecostalism is shaped by animistic theology. Emergent by cultural Marxist theology. And R2K by libertarian / Anabaptist theology. In point of fact the only Christian Churches which are swimming upstream in this miasma of lunacy are those Churches who understand the Biblical Christianity makes truth claims that impact every area of life.

Wow! Destroys the gospel. Pretty strong stuff. Pass the Rabbi some Paxil (which he must take when he goes to meetings of Classis).

But notice how the good Rabbi destroys the very same gospel he professes to defend when he offers a seminary (SEMINARY!) course on economics:

The purpose of this course is to allow Reformed presuppositions and a Reformed Christian Worldview to mold how we think about money and economics. The emphasis will fall on some of the various paradigms that have been offered concerning Economics focusing especially on the Austrian School, the Ropke Third way and the Distributionist schools. Keynesianism will not be considered except to critique it, as Keynesianism is to Economics what Rap is to Music. The Student will be learning the Macro approach to Economics.

Note — This is a course to familiarize the Seminary Student in Basic Economic theory. It is not intended as a Masters level course for one who is receiving their Masters in Economics.

Main Texts

1.) Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy – Thomas Sowell
2.) Economics In One Lesson — Henry Hazlitt

Required Reading

1.) Applied Economics; Thinking Beyond Stage One — Thomas Sowell
2.) The Social Crisis of Our Time — Wlhelm Ropke
3.) The Law — Frederic Bastiat
4.) What Has Government Done to Our Money? — Murray N. Rothbard
5.) Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis — Ludwig Von Mises
6.) Cliches of Socialism — Anonymous
7.) The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve — Em Griffin
8.) Road To Serfdom — F. A. Hayek
9.) Baptized Inflation — Ian Hodge
10.) Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators: A Biblical Response to Ronald J. Sider
David Chilton

11.) Three Works on Distributism — G. K. Chesterton
12.) The Servile State — Hilaire Belloc
13.) A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market — Wilhelm Ropke

In Rabbi B’s manichean world where the kingdom of Satan vies with God’s kingdom, where exactly do the likes of Sowell and Von Mises reside? If they are on the side of truth, they must be in God’s kingdom since the kingdom of Satan only produces falsehood and deceit. But I missed the press release about Sowell and Von Mises joining a NAPARC communion. In fact, both economists proceed in their craft and analysis not by referring to God’s law or divinely revealed truths but by relying on — in the anti-2k w-w — their autonomous reason. Remember, their economics do not proceed from a regenerate heart or from reading Scripture.

Now, a 2ker can account for Rabbi B’s attraction to free market economists by chatting up the common realm and general revelation and the image of God even in fallen creatures. But how can Rabbi B account for the truths that non-believers, people who belong to Satan’s kingdom, see? And how can he conceivably promote instruction in anti-Christian ideas — remember, Sowell and Von Mises for all we know are citizens of Satan’s kingdom — for seminarians? Without some recognition of a common realm somewhere between the City of God and the City of man, he can’t, especially when he construes the kingdoms this way:

First, you have Christ’s Kingdom where all the believers are (Church). Then you have every place else that is “not Christ’s Kingdom” (i.e. — “The World”) However, unlike the Anabaptist paradigm in the “Not Christ’s Kingdom” you have both believers and unbelievers cheek by jowl. Let’s call that the mixed or common Kingdom.

Now, here’s the question? Where is Satan’s Kingdom in this two Kingdom model? Darryl and R2K tell us specifically that the World (presumably planet earth outside the Church) is neither Christ’s Kingdom nor Satan’s Kingdom but a common (neutral?) Kingdom. What we need to ask here then is ‘Where is Satan’s Kingdom?’ You know… the Kingdom of Darkness that Colossians 1 talks about Christians having been translated from? It can’t be the case that when men are translated from the Kingdom of Darkness to the Kingdom of God’s dear Son, that they have been translated from the R2K common Kingdom since believers and unbelievers exist together in the common Kingdom.

Rabbi B suffers from invoking the antithesis when he wants to beat up 2k, but then fails to apply it to himself when he reads in economic and political commentators. He should know that 2kers affirm the antithesis and that they also believe this side of the eschaton the antithesis is not a category that believers use meaningfully to make sense of the world except when it comes to church membership. In other words, Christians enjoy fellowship only with Christians within the confines of the visible church. But outside the church, Christians enjoy a host of friendships and relations with non-believers thanks to the life they share outside the Christ’s kingdom. Without that context for understanding of the antithesis, Rabbi B is left with an arbitrary notion of common grace where the insights of unbelievers remarkably coincides with whatever Rabbi B approves. Say hello to the new Protestant pope.

Postscript: Rabbi B also thinks he gets mileage out of 2k’s flawed understanding of the kingdom. He has yet, however, to consider (again, an issue of intelligence?) that God’s kingdom is not the same as Christ’s kingdom. I do not understand what is so hard to understand about the notion that God’s providential rule over all things (even over Saddam Hussein) is different from the rule that Christ extends over his people. Again, if he wants to simplify the kingdoms and extend Christ’s redemptive rule to figures like Saddam Hussein, he has some ‘splainin’ to do with affirmations like the following:

Q. 45. How doth Christ execute the office of a king?
A. Christ executeth the office of a king, in calling out of the world a people to himself, and giving them officers, laws, and censures, by which he visibly governs them; in bestowing saving grace upon his elect, rewarding their obedience, and correcting them for their sins, preserving and supporting them under all their temptations and sufferings, restraining and overcoming all their enemies, and powerfully ordering all things for his own glory, and their good; and also in taking vengeance on the rest, who know not God, and obey not the gospel. (Larger Catechism)

If that leads to an expansive view of God’s kingdom outside the church, then I wonder about Rabbi B’s reading comprehension. But extending Christ’s rule as described here to non-believers would make sense of regarding Thomas Sowell as an orthodox Reformed Protestant.

How To Tell If Your Religious Liberties Are Under Siege

Published on by D. G. Hart214 Comments

Our Pennsylvania correspondent sent word of this post which contains this chart:

religiousliberties

This is helpful and puts the difficulties that North American Christians face in a category different from the one Eritrean Christians endure.

But isn’t the issue for most neo-Calvinists and subscribers to w-w ideology that you know your rights are being violated when you see Christ’s Lordship being denied? The irony is that these folks don’t rail on themselves as much as they do the public schools, secular elites, or the Obama administration.

This is So Un-American

Published on by D. G. Hart58 Comments

While Rome burns with Pentecostal fire, Jason and the Callers continue to play mind games.

The latest Protestant to try to ascend Bryan’s holy cap is Mark Hausam, who is, according to his blog, “a member at Christ Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, UT, a catechumen with the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, an instructor in Philosophy at Utah Valley University in Orem, UT, and an instructor at the New Geneva Christian Leadership Academy. I am a husband and a father of seven. I am an officer in the Reformation Party.” (I had not heard of the Reformation Party. It does not look like it is “a par-tay.”)

Mr. Hausam tried to show — it was a fairly long-winded piece — that Rome did an about-face on the matter of religious liberty of freedom of conscience. I don’t know why this is such a hard point to grasp. Protestants also did an about-face. Consider justifications for executing Servetus (or heretics in general) versus Witherspoon’s support for a Constitution that tolerated heretics (as Presbyterians understood them). What many fail to grasp — maybe even Mr. Hausam but certainly Bryan Cross — is that modern notions of freedom of conscience are strikingly different from pre-modern ones. For the Puritans, for instance, someone’s conscience was free if his conscience was rightly formed. If someone’s conscience was in error, then it was no infringement of liberty to coerce a poorly formed conscience. In other words, your conscience was free if it knew and followed the truth. If it didn’t, it needed to be bound. Today, in civil society we make no judgment about the right or wrong of someone’s opinions. We simply protect them under the umbrella of freedom of conscience.

Whether this is an improvement depends on your conscience, I guess. But I do think I’d rather have the modern version if or when a ruler who comes to power does not approve of my opinions.

Be that as it may, Mr. Hausam tried to interact with Bryan on the changes that have taken place in Roman Catholic teaching, especially at Vatican II. And what did Mr. Hausam receive? The classic Nun-like wrap across the knuckles with the ruler of logic. It even came to this riposte from one of the Callers:

The problem with Mark’s article is that his explicit purpose is to establish a formal contradiction within irreformable Catholic teaching. Establishing a formal contradiction requires great precision in the use of terms and in the construction of argument. Long paragraphs laden with assertions make it difficult, if not impossible, for the reader to pick out the actual premises which are supposed to establish the formal contradiction. I simply do not understand why you or Mark, in the context of an article whose express purpose is to establish an exact logical fault, namely a formal contradiction; would continue to resist calls to package the verbiage of the article into a logical form where the formal validity of the argument as such can be easily established, so that interlocutors may then proceed to fruitfully explore the truth of the various premises.

Well, if this is the problem, then logic is an impertinent bystander to the issue at hand. If Roman Catholic teaching is irreformable, then no amount of syllogisms or premises could possibly show a contradiction. It is impossible, which is sort of the situation when trying to have a conversation with the Callers.

Word to the wise: Vatican II happened. It embraced modernity, complete with the sort of debates and diversity that modern societies have negotiated. If Jason and the Callers want to return to a time when debates were simply an indication of infidelity, they may want all they want. It is a free country. But they should also realize that this was the debating posture that made many Americans wonder if Roman Catholics — the ones really really loyal to the pre-Vatican II papacy — were capable of living in a free republic.

Would the Papal States Have Fielded a Bobsled Team?

Published on by D. G. Hart12 Comments

The question is of course anachronistic since the International Olympic Committee did not start until 1894, a good quarter of a century after the papacy lost its temporal powers. Even so, if ever Christians had wanted to root for a Christian team in the Olympics, the Papal States would have come the closest to integrating faith, politics, and sport since in that context the church was running things.

The reason for this little venture in wonderment was a recent story at Christianity Today about God and country at the Olympics in Sochi (in contrast, this one avoids nationalism):

It’s nice to find fellow Christians among the 230 men and women who make up the 2014 Team USA delegation to Sochi, Russia. We don’t root for them because they’re on “Team Jesus,” but all the same it’s nice to see people at the peak of their field, on the world’s biggest athletic stage, turn the credit back to the One who gave us bodies to run and jump and spin on ice and imaginations to push the limits of those bodies to run faster, jump higher, and spin faster than we ever thought possible.

Here are a few Christians to watch as they compete for Team USA in Sochi. Many of them are medal contenders; all of them know that no matter what happens over the next two weeks, God will still be good.

The question this article raises is the one that 2kers constantly ponder: to whom do I have a higher allegiance, the temporal city (Team U.S.A.) or the eternal city — no, not the Vatican — the church? It may be a two-fer to have an American and a Christian on one of the Olympic teams. But why would American Christians be more interested in U.S. Christian athletes than believers on Team France, Team China, or Team Brazil? And how about Reformed Protestants pulling especially hard for the nations that gave us the Reformed churches — Team Switzerland, Team Netherlands, and Team United Kingdom?

At the same time, since God has little to do with the Olympics, since the teams arise from temporal polities not from spiritual ones, why should U.S. Christians root any harder for believers on Team U.S.A. than for the non-believing team members? The answer is, there is no reason, unless you think — like the transformers, theonomists, and neo-Calvinists — that “neutral” realms may not exist and religion needs to be part of everything. Oh, the inhumanity of the IOC and Russian officials not acknowledging God (and for shame on the BBs and Rabbi Bret for not raising a ruckus about the secular Olympics)! If realms like the Olympics need religion, then Christianity Today’s article makes perfect sense. But then so does reducing the kingdom of God to the earthly, fleeting, and spurious politics of the IOC and the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Discerning the Spirit (or swallowing Him feathers and all)

Published on by D. G. Hart53 Comments

Since I managed to attract the experimental Calvinists’ attention with a few questions about the need to read the Bible in a way that inflames readers, maybe the glowing ones can help with a question I posed once before but never received a convincing answer. (BTW, isn’t it a good thing if someone simply — sorry for the adverb — reads the Bible? Am I inadequate if I don’t guzzle the words of life? And for those who cite the Psalms to defend an earnest reading of Scripture, I sure wish they could keep in mind that this desire came at a time when Bibles were not exactly handy — cheap or widely distributed.)

Here’s the question, if earnestness is so desirable, even necessary (?), why does it not prevent the likes of Jonathan Edwards from seeing the problems of a four-year old who goes through what Phebe Bartlet did to obtain the effects of a conversion? The fans of Edwards generally gloss over Phebe’s conversion, but Edwards did not since it was a prime example of the positive benefits of the awakening in Northampton:

She was born in March, 1731. About the latter end of April, or beginning of May, 1735, she was greatly affected by the talk of her brother, who had been hopefully converted a little before, at about eleven years of age, and then seriously talked to her about the great things of religion. Her parents did not know of it at that time, and were not wont, in the counsels they gave to their children, particularly to direct themselves to her, being so young, and, as they supposed, not capable of understanding. But after her brother had talked to her, they observed her very earnestly listen to the advice they gave to the other children; and she was observed very constantly to retire, several times in a day, as was concluded, for secret prayer. She grew more and more engaged in religion, and was more frequent in her closet; till at last she was wont to visit it five or six times a day: and was so engaged in it, that nothing would at any time divert her from her stated closet exercises. Her mother often observed and watched her, when such things occurred as she thought most likely to divert her, either by putting it out of her thoughts, or otherwise engaging her inclinations; but never could observe her to fail. She mentioned some very remarkable instances.

She once of her own accord spake of her unsuccessfulness, in that she could not find God, or to that purpose. But on Thursday, the last day of July, about the middle of the day, the child being in the closet, where it used to retire, its mother heard it speaking aloud; which was unusual, and never had been observed before. And her voice seemed to be as of one exceedingly importunate and engaged; but her mother could distinctly hear only these words, spoken in a childish manner, but with extraordinary earnestness, and out of distress of soul, pray, blessed Lord, give me salvation! I pray, beg, pardon all my sins! When the child had done prayer, she came out of the closet, sat down by her mother, and cried out aloud. Her mother very earnestly asked her several times what the matter was, before she would make any answer; but she continued crying, and writhing her body to and fro, like one in anguish of spirit. Her mother then asked her, whether she was afraid that God would not give her salvation. She then answered, Yes, I am afraid I shall go to hell! Her mother then endeavored to quiet her, and told her she would not have her cry, she must be a good girl, and pray every day, and she hoped God would give her salvation. But this did not quiet her at all; she continued thus earnestly crying, and taking on for some time, till at length she suddenly ceased crying, and began to smile, and presently said with a smiling countenance, Mother, the kingdom of heaven is come to me! Her mother was surprised at the sudden alteration, and at the speech; and knew not what to make of it; but at first said nothing to her. The child presently spake again, and said, There is another come to me, and there is another, there is three; and being asked what she meant, she answered, One is, Thy will be done, and there is another, Enjoy Him for ever; by which it seems, that when the child said, There is three come to me; she meant three passages of her catechism that came to her mind.

After the child had said this, she retired again into her closet, and her mother went over to her brother’s, who was next neighbor; and when she came back, the child, being come out of the closet, meets her mother with this cheerful speech; I can find God now! referring to what she had before complained of, that she could not find God. Then the child spoke again and said, I love God! Her mother asked her, how well she loved God, whether she loved God better than her father and mother. She said, Yes. Then she asked her, whether she loved God better than her little sister Rachel. She answered, Yes, better than any thing!

So many problems here, among them publicizing a piety that is a tad self-righteous — “I love God more than my parents do.” If any minister today wrote about a four-year old conversion in this manner, chances are his session or consistory would advise against publication, and the parents might ask for the pastor to stay away. Who wants to see a four-year writhe out of spiritual anguish (who wants to see a twenty-two year old writhe during conversion?)? But Edwards gets a pass because he is — well — Edwards. Yet, what kind of discernment did he show in his observations about Phoebe or having them published internationally as evidence of the awakening’s benefits? Furthermore, is this lack of discernment what comes with a quest for zeal? As long as someone is moved, quickened, earnest, we don’t raise questions about the manifestations of that zeal?

Some people seem to think I need help. I am asking for it.

Is Scripture Like Sweetbreads or Broccoli?

Published on by D. G. Hart163 Comments

Danny Hyde makes a case for reading Scripture in a way that will “inflame.” It could be (all about) my cold heart, but I’ve always been wary of getting close to fire. It may shed light, but it also consumes (as in our God is a consuming fire). Still, what struck me as curious about Hyde’s piece was his invoking the experimental Calvinist vocabulary of earnestness (see John Piper).

I should read the Word with earnestness: “with desire to know, believe, and obey the will of God revealed in them.” When Moses called the Israelites to assemble to hear the words of the Lord, it was so that they would “do them” (Deut. 4:1).

This is vital for us to meditate upon. It’s so easy for us to read the Word looking for doctrine, looking for the theological argument the Apostles make, and looking for the proofs we need to persuade others to believe in Christ. We so often focus on the word Word when we speak of the “Word of God.” But don’t forget that it is the Word of God. The Word is the means that God has chosen to reveal Himself to us. When you sit down to read it, then, you are coming not to an it, but to a Him. This should make us earnest and desirous to read because we are having fellowship with the Lord in the reading and in the doing.

Hyde is not wrong to call his readers to have fellowship with God, to do so through reading the word, or to combine doing with reading. But where does the Larger Catechism actually talk about earnestness? Or why can’t my reading Scripture or attending the ORDINARY means of grace be routine, as in weekly? Why should I feel like I have failed if my worship or Bible reading has been ordinary, lacking in earnestness?

If you do a word search on earnest in the Westminster Standards, you obtain curious results:

This certainty is not a bare conjectural and probable persuasion grounded upon a fallible hope; but an infallible assurance of faith founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation, the inward evidence of those graces unto which these promises are made, the testimony of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God, which Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance, whereby we are sealed to the day of redemption. (CF 18.2)

The members of the invisible church have communicated to them in this life the first fruits of glory with Christ, as they are members of him their head, and so in him are interested in that glory which he is fully possessed of; and, as an earnest thereof, enjoy the sense of God’s love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, and hope of glory; as, on the contrary, sense of God’s revenging wrath, horror of conscience, and a fearful expectation of judgment, are to the wicked the beginning of their torments which they shall endure after death. (LC 83)

It is required of them that receive the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, that, during the time of the administration of it, with all holy reverence and attention they wait upon God in that ordinance, diligently observe the sacramental elements and actions, heedfully discern the Lord’s body, and affectionately meditate on his death and sufferings, and thereby stir up themselves to a vigorous exercise of their graces; in judging themselves, and sorrowing for sin; in earnest hungering and thirsting after Christ, feeding on him by faith, receiving of his fullness, trusting in his merits, rejoicing in his love, giving thanks for his grace; in renewing of their covenant with God, and love to all the saints. (LC 174)

Oddly enough, the experimental Calvinists at the Assembly used the word earnest more in its monetary meaning than in its associations with intensity or enthusiasm (or hedonism?), and they used it in connection with the Lord’s Supper, an ordinance sadly missing in many Presbyterian and Reformed Lord’s Day services. At the same time, those same divines emphasized how ordinary the means of grace are. In fact, they used “ordinary” roughly four times more than they did “extraordinary,” and always to the detriment of the latter:

This infallible assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties before he be partaker of it: yet, being enabled by the Spirit to know the things which are freely given him of God, he may, without extraordinary revelation, in the right use of ordinary means, attain thereunto. (CF 18.3)

If this is in any way an ordinary reading of the Standards, I do wonder why Christian piety has to be intense, earnest, palpable, or (my least favorite word) robust? Why can’t Christian devotion be ordinary? I eat oatmeal most days for breakfast (TMI). It is not something I order off the menu when I go out to eat. When I enjoy a special meal, I order something unusual. But that doesn’t mean that oatmeal is bad, or that my modest enjoyment of it everyday is somehow inferior. Granted, the word of God is special (as in special revelation). But our feeding upon it can be ordinary (as in ordinary means of grace).

If serious Christians could remember that special can be ordinary — the way that manna in the wilderness was — then maybe we could be content with worship and devotion that is not trumped up to move worshipers but instead services that are word-saturated in the way that everyday breakfasts are dominated by hot, soupy grains.

Why Do the Critics of 2K and Heterodox Political Theorists Sound So Similar?

Published on by D. G. Hart16 Comments

I wonder if Rabbi Brett, the BBs, and other transformers of culture (neo-Calvinist or not) would be troubled by Ronald Beiner’s observations in “Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau on Civil Religion” (Review of Politics, Autumn 1993).

According to Machiavelli, Christianity:

devalued honor and glorified passive martyrdom, has taught me to be humble, self-abnegating and contemptuous of worldly things, has made the world effeminate and rendered heaven impotent. In sum, Christianity has celebrated slavishness, and encouraged human being to despise liberty, or the harsh politics required for the defense of liberty. (622)

Meanwhile

Hobbes came to the same insight grapsed by Rousseau and Machiavelli, namely, that genuinely Christian aspirations are so radically otherworldly that they subvert the authority of temporal power, and so Hobbes too must search for a way in which to de-Christianize Christianity. However, Hobbes’s solution is not to go back to Roman paganism, but to go back further, to the Judaic tradition. (625)

Hmmm.