Category: Wilderness Wanderings

What the Cats Missed this Week

Published on by D. G. Hart55 Comments

I am a fan of Canadian cinema and a lover of cats. This combination made Good Neighbors a reasonably good pick. The movie is set in Montreal and is film noir lite, with cats playing important parts in the story line. I could have done without the slasher aspect of a couple scenes, aging metrosexual that I am. But still worthwhile.

I also took a look at the original movie version of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American. It is set in 1950s Saigon and explores dimensions of the civil war that will entice the United States to fight communism in Southeast Asia. Greene’s depiction of American idealism and naivete about foreign policy is particularly astute, though it may also stem from resentment that the Brits are no longer running the world. This is a better movie than the remake, though Craig Armstrong’s soundtrack for the 2002 version may tip the scales in the other direction.

For anyone who cares about Breaking Bad, I took another try at episode five of season one. I began to see a little more of the appeal. But I also identified two reservations that may prevent me from jumping on the BB bandwagon, and they are related. First, unlike The Wire, Breaking Bad has no urban credibility. I understand it is not supposed to be set in a city or in the Northeast. But without an urban dimension, the show so far lacks an edge. Meth in the suburbs just doesn’t grip the way that heroine in the city does. And this leads to the second reservation. The show has no obvious sense of place. If Breaking Bad doesn’t want to tap the rhythms and sense of Baltimore drug-running, or the New Orleans music scene (Treme), fine. But how about giving us a feel for the Southwest? Maybe I have not paid close enough attention, but I have not yet identified the actual city, suburb, or state in which the show takes place. For (all about) me, without this sense of place, Breaking Bad will always come up short compared to The Wire.

One last comment. Isabelle and Cordelia do not sleep through my listening to Phil Hendrie, the funniest man in North America. I subscribe to his website and so can stream his shows whenever I want, which is usually at the end of the day before dinner. It a talk-radio show where Phil is the voice both of the host and guest who talk about a crazy premise and elicit flabbergasted callers who think the interview is real. He has almost 60 different characters, from Margaret Grey, a syndicated columnist who writes “A Little Bird Told Me,” to Jay Santos, a Brigadier General in the Citizens Auxiliary Police. Phil does three hours of comedy gold every weeknight, which means he does more material in one week than Larry David does in an entire season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Anyone interested should know that Phil now has a free website where people can listen to clips from old shows. I also hear that you can make Phil Hendrie a radio station at Pandora.com.

What I'm (all about ME!) Sayin'

Published on by D. G. Hart147 Comments

While looking through the blogs today I came across a couple worthy of highlight.

In keeping with the theme of the realities of contemporary Roman Catholicism, Samuel Gregg’s piece on Vatican II and modernity might be of interest (especially to CTCer’s who whitewash dilemmas from church history). He seconds a point I often make that Rome’s decision to open itself to the modern world came at one of the worst points in modern history. Do you really want to open yourself to feminism, deconstruction, the Beatles, and suburbia? Here’s an excerpt:

Vatican II is often portrayed, with some accuracy, as the Church opening itself to “the world.” This expression embraces several meanings in Scripture. God loves “the world” (Jn 3:16). Yet “the world” can also mean that which opposes God (Jn 14:17). At Vatican II, however, the world took on yet another connotation: that of the “modern world.”

Curiously, you won’t find a definition of the modern world in any Vatican II text. But modernity is usually a way of describing the various Enlightenments that emerged in the West from the late seventeenth-century onwards. Among other things, these movements emphasized applying instrumental and scientific rationality to all spheres of life in the hope of emancipating humanity from ignorance, suffering, and oppression.

Given the often-vicious treatment inflicted upon the Church by many self-identified moderns—including Jacobins and Bolsheviks—Catholics were often wary of anything asserting to be modern. It’s untrue, however, that the pre-1962 Church was somehow closed to modernity’s genuine achievements. This quickly becomes evident from cursory reading of encyclicals written by popes ranging from Leo XIII to Pius XII.

Nonetheless, many Catholics during the 1950s and 60s were tremendously optimistic about possible rapprochements between the Church and modernity. And that includes the present pope. In a 1998 autobiographical essay, Joseph Ratzinger recalled his hopes at the time for overcoming the gaps between Catholicism and the modern mind. A similar confidence pervades Gaudium et Spes, the Vatican II document that specifically attempted to approach modernity in a non-antagonistic manner. Yet even in 1965, many bishops and theologians (including some associated with efforts for renewal) were warning that Gaudium et Spes’ view of modernity was excessively hopeful, even a little naive.

Of course the modern world has witnessed tremendous achievements since 1965. Its technological successes are the most obvious. Even diehard traditionalists find it awkward to be uncompromisingly anti-modern when needing dental-care. Likewise the spread of the economic modernity associated with Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations has lifted millions out of poverty at a historically unprecedented speed.

The warnings, however, about undue optimism concerning modernity turned out to be quite justified. The cultural and intellectual chaos that erupted in the late-1960s should have been proof enough. Since then, we’ve witnessed what might be considered an ongoing crack-up on modernity’s part.

Then on a different subject, prayer, Paul Helm registers reservations about the amount of detail that we put into our petitions. I have wondered about this for a long time, especially in those small group gatherings where you almost faint from the descriptions of medical conditions and procedures. Helm is addressing public worship but his point about prayer works just as well for the prayer closet (does any reader actually have such space?). Here he goes:

I don’t know how it is with you, but I cannot cope with times in services of worship when the minister or leader invites the congregation to ‘spend a few moments of quiet praying for someone in special need’. My mind starts to think about anything or nothing except a person I know of who’s in need. It’s rather like someone who says ‘Don’t think of a white horse’, an invitation that it’s impossible to accept.

We could spend a few moments reflecting on the view of public worship that it is implied by the ‘periods of silence’ invitation, of whether it is appropriate to think of public worship as involving the sum of the private devotions of the people who are present. Ought we not rather to think of public worship (as a general rule) as common worship, as in ‘The Book of Common Prayer’, as expressing in public the common, communal needs and aspirations of Christian people? But instead of thinking out loud along these lines I would rather spend these few minutes thinking out loud with you about what I shall call The Affliction of a Failure of Concentration.

Here’s my suggestion – not a novel one, but still, I think, worth airing and emphasizing – that praying, and particularly that branch of praying that is called petitioning or asking, including of course interceding for others, is not primarily, or even, a matter of acquiring and processing information, and then presenting it in bite-sized pieces to Almighty God. It is not a condition of responsible and genuine Christian prayer that it is ‘intelligent’ i.e. well-informed.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not against the provision of information. I have spent much of my adult life as a teacher and writer, engrossed in the world of ideas and arguments. I expect the students I teach to be able to absorb, understand, weigh and produce information. The more the merrier. But the point is that not all speech is primarily informative, and most certainly Christian petitionary and intercessory prayer is not primarily informative. Fellow-prayers in the prayer meeting may learn all sorts of things about Mr Smith when he prays publicly. But the living God is in a rather different position from our fellow worshippers in the pew. Does he need educating? Is he ignorant of any detail? Has he overlooked any of the needs of his people?

Selah.

The Goodness of God's Fallen Creatures

Published on by D. G. Hart8 Comments

I had only heard David Rakoff a couple times on This American Life, so I was not prepared to be as moved as I was by the news of his death yesterday, at the age of 47, after a quick bout with cancer (ironically the result of radiation for an earlier form of lymphoma). I (all about me) happened to be on the road today thanks to responsibilities to chauffeur the Mrs. to the Detroit Airport. This gave me a chance to hear the noon broadcast of Terry Gross’ Fresh Air show. She replayed excerpts from interviews she had done with Rakoff in 2001 and 2010. Rakoff was obviously funny, dark, and clever, which explains his winning the James Thurber Prize for American Humor last year. But he was also thoughtful as the excerpts he reads on these interviews attest. I highly recommend the show. (Beware, the show is not 2k.)

Listeners should also know that Rakoff was anything but a believer. He was at best (near as I can tell) an agnostic, though of Jewish descent, outspokenly homosexual, and almost always irreverent. Despite these attributes, he was a tribute to the maker he did not acknowledge. Rakoff demonstrated so many of those remarkable qualities that separate human beings from the rest of creation. As such he also showed how great God’s creatures can be even in a willfully fallen state. Creation suffers when we lose such talented creatures.

What The Cats Missed This Week

Published on by D. G. Hart40 Comments

At the instigation of our web administrator and designer (whose name will be kept secret to protect the allegedly innocent), a new series commences with this post — namely — what movies, dvds, or television episodes the Harts watched this week. The series name stems from the remarkable habit of our cats, Isabelle and Cordelia, to sleep through whatever we watch. Odd for cats to sleep so much, no?

One other word of introduction: since some readers mistake this blog as a form of ministry, do not take this or ensuing reports as an endorsement for all Christians. Since Paul wrote that some believers could handle meat offered to idols and others could not, readers of Old Life should consult any title for themselves before watching or ordering. IMDB is a good web resource for movies and television and should provide enough information to warn consciences appropriately. Rottentomatoes is another source for reviews of movies that I use occasionally. Readers will need to rely on their own powers of discernment.

The week started with Troubled Water, a Norwegian movie (subtitles, of course) about an ex-con who tries to make good life by playing organ for a church and befriending the female pastor’s boy. Since his crime led to the death of a boy, and since he returns to the town where the deceased boy’s family lives, his attempt to resume life is — let’s just say — complicated. The film is another reminder of how easy it is to make people who commit wicked acts into monsters (when we never see the monster in the mirror).

The week continued with the first three episodes of season three of In Treatment. Gabriel Bryne continues to play his role as a psychologist with lots of baggage in a mesmerizing way. The producers and directors also continue to make counseling sessions riveting. It was good to see Debra Winger on the screen again.

Also this week I persuaded the Mrs. to go to the theater to see Ted — and I lived to tell about it. I figured we needed to get out of the rut of staying in and streaming. So we went to the local theater, not exactly an art house establishment, and saw the best on display. Angelo Cataldi and company had recommended this movie, so I had misgivings. It was like so many Hollywood comedies, an interesting premise — a talking teddy bear who is a lifelong companion of the person who first received the stuffed animal as a gift. But once you get past the first prank of the teddy bear as grown up — smoking a bong and swearing — the movie descends into debauchery and juvenilia. Subtlety is not a three-syllable word that Hollywood does well, even though the writers did get off at least a half-dozen guffaw producing lines.

Last (it was a slow week in Hillsdale, alright?), we watched Welcome to Sarajevo, a 1997 movie about the Balkans War. Stephen Dillane, whom I like a lot, plays a journalist who turns activist and helps Muslim orphans to leave the city. The film seems to include a lot of footage from the war, which is hard to watch. The human story line is compelling but for me it could not offset what seemed to be a missed opportunity to explore a part of the world that the West has never come lost to understanding, perhaps because the Ottomans, Turks, and Muslims spook too readily.

When Blogs Imitate Facebook (I guess)

Published on by D. G. Hart20 Comments

I am back on the road, this time heading to the Academy of Philosophy and Letters annual meeting not in Linthicum but Linthicum HEIGHTS, Maryland (outside Baltimore). This should be an intellectually stimulating time and also personally depressing (if you care about the local and traditional).

I have made a pit stop in Hancock, Maryland, just over the Pennsylvania and West Virginia borders. The only resemblance to Turkey is that cell phone coverage is spotty. I took a pleasant stroll along the Chesapeake & Ohio Rail Trail and tried to call the Mrs. but wireless antennae would not cooperate. The drive has provided time for a few reflections (beware: all about me).

Birthday cake deprivation: my parents would have celebrated their birthdays this week. Ellen Marie Hart was born on this day in 1923. Jay Glenn Hart came into the world on June 11, 1922. I miss weeks crammed with birthday cake. I miss the people who supplied the ingredients and baked the cakes more.

Ohio giveth and Ohio taketh away: I have made the drive between Hillsdale and the East Coast several times now and I give the rest stops on the Ohio Turnpike high marks (not to mention that the 70 mph speed limit gives ample joy). Compared to the virtuous commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s or Michigan’s, Ohio’s stops are attractive, spacious, and easy to use. Whether construction materials — they are all brand new — will age well is another matter. But what’s up with the miles of highway narrowed for road construction and workers only doing repairs in a fraction of the hazard area. Traffic has not been terrible so having lanes reduced from three to two has not been onerous. What is a pain is the reduction of speed to 50. I find this unusual and objectionable if only because on two-lane roads in America, outside city environments, the speed limit is always 55. One explanation might be that drivers need to slow down for workers. But why slow down for all seven miles when the workers are located in one tenth of that space? It makes me wonder if Ohio had an excess of 50 mph signs and needed to use them.

What are Jimmy and Bunk up to these days? Music is almost as evocative as smell. Today when I played Thom Yorke’s solo cd, one song in particular reminded me of The Wire. It must be that I bought the cd when Mrs. Hart and I were deeply embedded in our first viewing of the series. I miss those characters and am still reeling from the end of the series when we had to say so long to them.

Stephen Daldry rules: another disk I played was the soundtrack from Billy Eliot. This was Stephen Daldry’s first stab at motion-picture directing. It is a wonderful movie and chokes up this vinegary Calvinist in ways reminiscent of dad, Jay Hart, who was a genuine weeper. From Billy Eliot, Daldry went on to direct The Hours, The Reader, and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. All of these are worthy of four stars and as many thumbs as you can find to put in the up position. The man knows how to pick good material and what to do with it.

Nothing could be finer: is there any prettier view than having the Appalachian Mountains on the horizon? (Having recently rewatched The Trip, I will grant that the Lake District gives the Blue Ridge region a real run for the money.) Granted, the East Coast’s mountain range would only count as hills in places like Turkey and Southern California. And they don’t have the grandeur of the Rockies, Alps, or Pontic Mountains. But the Appalachians possess a subtlety that should appeal to Reformed sensibilities shaped by the power of simplicity and order.

Of course, as our nemesis, PLM would remind us, all of this proves with utter certainty, epistemological and metaphysical, the truth of 2K.

A Word on Behalf of Christian Schools (yes, I'm on my meds)

Published on by D. G. Hart19 Comments

The current issue of Ordained Servant has an exchange between David Noe and Benjamin Miller about Christian education. Miller is critical of Noe’s original piece in the April issue in which he raised questions about what actually constitutes a Christian education. Noe’s response is here.

What is worth recalling is a small remark that Noe made in his original piece. In his concluding paragraph he wrote: “the most we can say about “Christian education” is that it is education delivered or provided by Christians. This, of course, is not an unimportant claim.” In fact, it is a very important feature of Christian schools that they are populated by believers.

The reason is that in a Christian school it is possible and even encouraged for students and faculty to reflect on what a believer might think about Andrew Jackson’s policies on native Americans or Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s feminism. That kind of consensus is hard to come by in many colleges and schools and it creates an environment where students are freer (conceivably) to ask questions than they would be an a private secular or state institution. Such a consensus also works in not overtly Christian settings like Hillsdale College where faculty may presume that most students consider themselves politically conservative or culturally traditional. It is much easier to teach when you can take some ideas for granted rather than having to start from scratch or assume that any kind of normative assertion is contested. At the same time, the answers come to Hillsdale students from a variety of directions — libertarianism, Straussianism, paleo-conservatism, neo-conservatism — such that a shared conviction will not necessarily yield intellectual agreement. That kind of diversity actually encourages students to think and faculty not to become complacent. Even so, a Christian school or college has real value if it creates a setting where students are free to ask questions about important convictions.

The problem — there is always a black cloud in the blue sky at Old Life — is that faculty and teachers at Christian institutions often have merely a Sunday school understanding of the faith which is supposed to integrate their academic expertise. In which case, students may often hear moral arguments that come across as the Christian position on banking policy or aesthetics when in fact the idea is mainly the opinion of the professor with a patina of religious conviction. Such a college has as many potential problems as Godless State University if students are not sharp enough to discern when their professors are merely teaching and when they are exhorting. Most undergrads, in fact, do not have that kind of intellectual discretion. But a pious older adolescent does have enough sense to be concerned that what he is hearing from his professor may not always conform to Christian convictions.

Be that as it may, Christians schools at their best play a useful role in the education of Christian children and all the controversy around Noe’s article should not let this point be missed.

Visually Stunning, Narratively Challenged

Published on by D. G. Hart21 Comments

The better half and I (all about us) finally got around to seeing “The Tree of Life.” I (all about me) sat down to watch with ambivalence. Some people I know (and even respect) loved it, and others thought it was tedious. I now place myself in the latter category, while admitting that the cinematography was breathtaking. I wish I could have done the movie justice by seeing it on the big screen. Even so, I don’t think even an Imax experience could salvage a smidgeon of coherence from this bloated film.

Take, for instance, the plot. What exactly is it? Not to give the story (such as it is) away, but a tragic outcome awaits one of the members of the featured family. And we needed 140 minutes to learn that this development deeply moved parents and siblings? Meanwhile, after all that time we have no more of a clue about the circumstances surrounding this tragedy than we do about the vastness of the universe. What we do learn — news flash — is that the family suffered as a result.

Oh, wait. Maybe this tragedy was the consequence of the Big Bang theory. If so, that might explain the inclusion of a half-hour sequence of shortish takes that seem to show the evolution of the physical universe. Again, visually bedazzling but what is the connection to the family?

As for character development or dialogue, “The Artist” goes well beyond “The Tree of Life” even though the former is about a silent-film era movie star. Even so, “The Artist” has virtually more dialogue than “The Tree of Life.” The DVD we watched instructed viewers to turn the volume way up. That helped us to figure out a few of the words that sounded more like grunts and accompany various visual sequences. But cranking the volume up to 80 wasn’t enough to come anywhere near figuring out the mother of the family. I sure hope feminists were upset by the film because this woman – who was not as visually stunning as the Milky Way – had no excuse for a presence in the movie other than to observe or weep.

But for all of its defects, “The Tree of Life” was successful in one very important way. It confirmed what most viewers suspect about Sean Penn. The experience of the boy who grows into the adult played by Penn must have been exactly what the actor was like when an eleven-year old – willful, devious, and rebellious against a disciplinarian father. Still, I didn’t need 140 minutes to have that hunch confirmed.

Not Shall But When Did the Fundamentalists Win?

Published on by D. G. Hart43 Comments

Culture warriors typically think that the contending parties in our current struggle pit morality and truth against relativism and skepticism. If only we had more skeptics. As I read the culture wars, both sides are equally committed to moral absolutes. Either gay marriage is wicked or the opposition to gay marriage is immoral. Uncertainty is as much in short supply on Fox as it is on CNN.

A recent story about Emory University’s commencement speaker confirmed this impression at least to (all about) me. Ben Carson, an accomplished neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins University, a Protestant of some evangelical variety, and an African-American humanitarian still cannot clear all of Emory students’ and faculty’s objections because he is not completely on board with evolution. According to this story:

About 500 Emory employees and students signed a letter, published in the campus paper, drawing attention to the fact that Carson doesn’t believe in evolution. The letter acknowledges the surgeon’s accomplishments and doesn’t ask that Carson be disinvited, but it suggests some of his views fail to align with Emory’s values. Other letter writers have defended the invitation, which was made after a group of seniors presented a shortlist of potential speakers to administrators. The surgeon is the cofounder of the Carson Fund, which has presented more than $4 million in scholarships to students with outstanding academic and humanitarian achievements.

Carson will still speak in Atlanta, though campus spokesman Ron Sauder said Emory wasn’t aware of Carson’s views on evolution until after extending the invitation. The invitation isn’t necessarily an endorsement of Carson’s opinions. “Our position is to follow the research and the scientific method where it leads,” Sauder said. “Our leading life scientists would define our views on evolution, and the number of signatories on that petition would probably speak to that.”

Even if Emory will not cancel the engagement, the response by part of a university community hardly identifiable with religious traditionalism is just the sort of reaction one might expect from a school like Liberty University if the administration were unwittingly to invite Francis Collins. Neither side today is willing to encounter an alien idea, both want to shelter its young from hostile beliefs, and each side does so under the banner of the pursuit of truth and intellectual freedom.

The last I checked, the American empire was full of citizens who are certain about their views, the ridiculousness if not perverseness of their opponents, and committed to keeping the other side out of power. If only the American public (as opposed to the mainline churches) had paid heed to Harry Emerson Fosdick.

The Day of Moral Perplexity Has Come for Angelo Cataldi

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

I had thought about entitling this post, “Predators All,” since the revelations of child molestation mount and mount. First it was the Roman Catholic Church, then Penn State, then Hollywood, and now comes word from several adults that Bill Conlin, a longtime baseball beat reporter for Philadelphia’s Daily News, molested them as children. This news cuts close to home for our dear moral blow hard, Angelo Cataldi, since Cataldi has hosted Conlin many times on the show to talk RBI’s and walks-hits-per-inning. Even closer to home, Angelo and Bill are neighbors during the summer when they occupy their beach houses in Sea Isle City, New Jersey.

Not that anyone living outside the Delaware Valley really cares about these Philadelphia media figures, but listening to the shows today (now that classes are over and grades are in) may be of interest to non-Philadelphians if only because of the tone that the various hosts have deployed to discuss this latest scandal. As clear as Angelo and others have been in condemning the alleged acts, the hosts have also exhibited a degree of anguish that was entirely lacking in the case of Joe Paterno. (One important difference is that Conlin yesterday resigned from his writing post, so no one can call for his job.)

On the one hand, all the talk show hosts looked up to Conlin as one of the best baseball minds in Philadelphia (a mind and voice that earned him the J. G. Taylor Spink Award this year for meritorious contributions to baseball writing). In other words, they knew him and could never have imagined that Conlin was capable of such behavior. Now, though, the moral wheels are grinding and different hosts are agonizing over the darkness of human nature, and wondering how much they need to be suspicious of anyone they know.

On the other hand, the hosts are not nearly so condemning of the adults who enabled Conlin (allegedly) to escape any charges for over forty years (and now the statute of limitations means that Conlin will not face criminal charges). No one is wondering who among Conlin’s editors knew about this. No one is blaming the parents of these children who did know (allegedly) of the molestation but did nothing because they did not want to hurt a friend and family member who was coming into his own as a reporter and columnist.

In other words, what is happening in the world of Philadelphia sports journalism is precisely what did not happen when news from Happy Valley arrived in Philadelphia. Instead of imagining how those close to Jerry Sandusky might have reacted to protect both a friend and an institution, Philadelphia journalists called for the figurative death penalty for everyone close to Sandusky.

It is a complicated world out there.

By the way, I keep wondering when the shoe is going to drop in all of these child molestation scandals. We live at a time when practically every form of sexual desire is tolerated; the institutions that promote some of those forms even wind up sponsoring sports talk radio. So why exactly, for instance, do these men who sometimes go to gentlemen’s clubs think that sex between an adult and a child is wicked and perverse? The obvious answer is consent. The children are subordinate to the predators and have no recourse. The flip side of this deduction is that consensual sex is fine, no matter how kinky.

What I don’t understand is how consent makes sex, no matter how perverse, okay. Is the desire of a man for a boy okay? Is it perverse and disgusting? Or does it only become twisted when carried out on a boy (who is incapable of giving consent)? Could it be that certain forms of sex are perverse, no matter whether the partners are consenting and no matter how “natural” either of the partner’s desire is? Could it even be that sex between a married woman and her single boss is also perverse no matter how consensual the sex or natural the adulterers’ desires are?

The reason for asking is to see if the moral sense that does regard child molestation as heinous might also be available to draw lines in other places. These other lines would and should apply as much to heterosexual as to homosexual forms of sexual desire. Ideally, the true form of consensual sex would be one where two people have consented to be each other’s sexual partner for life and to be responsible for rearing any offspring that proceed from their sexual relations.

Is Christianity Reasonable?

Published on by D. G. Hart81 Comments

You would think that religious historians would know better. Better in this case is understanding faith (of most varieties) to be fantastic since it involves truths and realities that cannot be seen and that divide rather than unite human beings. From this perspective, even the most orthodox of Christian affirmations look foolish and even irrational. Think of the Shorter Catechism’s answer number 22:

Christ, the Son of God, became man, by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the virgin Mary, and born of her, yet without sin.

Nothing in this answer is oddly Reformed, whether of the New or Old Life variety. It is an affirmation confessed by the church worldwide. And yet it is from an unbeliever’s perspective about as reputable a description of reality as the opening chapters of the Book of Mormon.

Why then would evangelical historian, Randall Stephens, and his co-author, Karl W. Giberson, single out Ken Ham (never heard of him), David Barton, and James Dobson for their “dangerous” anti-intellectualism? In a moldy New York Times op-ed column, then wrote (based on their new book, The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age):

THE Republican presidential field has become a showcase of evangelical anti-intellectualism. Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann deny that climate change is real and caused by humans. Mr. Perry and Mrs. Bachmann dismiss evolution as an unproven theory. The two candidates who espouse the greatest support for science, Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman Jr., happen to be Mormons, a faith regarded with mistrust by many Christians.

The second word of the column might be an indication of the authors’ agenda and the Times‘ editors’ willingness to further it. The Republican field is not a great one and I too wish that evangelicals had not bet the parachurch ministry parking lot on one party. But are Republicans the only ones with goofy ideas? Has it occurred to these authors that Democrats like Barney Frank keeping watch over the federal agencies responsible for mortgage lending did far more damage to the country than David Barton’s notions about George Washington’s faith? And can we really single out the pastors of Republicans without mentioning the likes of Jeremiah Wright?

But our president’s associations with a provocateur minister do not prevent the authors from complimenting the right kind of faith expressions in the United States:

Americans have always trusted in God, and even today atheism is little more than a quiet voice on the margins. Faith, working calmly in the lives of Americans from George Washington to Barack Obama, has motivated some of America’s finest moments. But when the faith of so many Americans becomes an occasion to embrace discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas, we must not be afraid to speak out, even if it means criticizing fellow Christians.

In which case, the other reason for bringing Barton, Ham, and Dobson to light in this way is to show a simple point: I am not an evangelical of the kind that these evangelicals are. Well, if that is the case, then why don’t we get rid of the word evangelical altogether? Sorry to be repetitious, but wouldn’t being Christian be a whole lot easier if you were not always lumped in with every other Protestant not in the National Council of Churches? Since Stephens and Giberson both have taught at Eastern Nazarene College, they might have made the useful point that they are Nazarenes, explained what these kind of Wesleyans believe, and faulted Barton, Ham, and Dobson for not being true to Nazarene teaching. But I don’t suspect the editors of the Times would have printed that. I’m betting Christianity Today wouldn’t either.

Some religious historians have wondered aloud about the propriety of these evangelical scholars turning on their own before the watching secular world. Baylor University historian, Thomas Kidd, objects that Stephens and Giberson have misrepresented academic evangelicals (who has supposedly integrated secular points of view into their w—- v—):

The editorial’s list of topics on which evangelicals have supposedly “rejected reason” is long and eclectic: evolution, homosexuality, religion and the Founding, and spanking children. On all these topics, evangelicals have not accepted the dominant academic position on the subject, and thus, the New York Times piece implies, have rejected reason. Surely many evangelicals would be open to a reasoned discussion on some or all of these topics, but they would need to feel that Stephens and Giberson appreciate that conservative Christians have logical justifications for believing what they do. Aren’t there serious reasons to believe in a literal reading of the “six days” of Genesis 1, or the historic teachings of most major religions on human sexuality, or even that the Bible’s mandates to spank your children (Proverbs 13:24 etc.) remain in effect?

John Fea from Messiah College agrees with Kidd:

Is The New York Times the best place for evangelicals to decry evangelical anti-intellectualism? Indeed, anti-intellectualism is a problem in the evangelical community. But I wonder, to quote Kidd, if the New York Times op-ed page is “the most promising way to start addressing that failuire?”

To be completely honest, I also wonder if a book published by Harvard University Press is going to have any impact on rank and file evangelicals. It seems to me that two kinds of people will read The Anointed: 1). Non-evangelicals who want ammunition to bash evangelical intellectual backwardness and 2). Evangelical intellectuals who already agree with Giberson and Stephens. I wonder if ordinary evangelicals–the folks who actually listen to Barton and Ham and Dobson–will read the book or even know that the book exists.

In the end, I agree with Kidd. The anti-intellectual problem in American evangelicalism needs to be addressed in our churches. It is going to require evangelical thinkers to engage congregations in a more purposeful way and give some serious thought to how their vocations as scholars might serve the church.

Meanwhile, University of Colorado historian, Paul Harvey surveys the evangelical backlash against the op-ed and takes it all lightheartedly:

My co-blogmeister and most excellent historian Randall Stephens and his co-author Karl Giberson have recently been called (among other things), wolves in sheep’s clothing, dangerous menaces to evangelicalism, and, best of all, unethical attack-dog researchers and writers — the later from famed ethicist Charles Colson, in a matchless self-parody of old-time fundamentalist fury. As John Turner noted here recently, after Randall and Karl’s book The Anointed, some have felt there is no hope left for America. (It bears mentioning that most of the above noted did not actually read the book but scanned, and that inaccurately, Randall and Karl’s New York Times editorial). As a writer for the always thoughtful and temperate National Review opined, “once left-wing values enter the evangelical bloodstream, there is almost no hope for America.”

You might have noticed that some of these initial reactions are an eensy-weensy bit overwrought.

And all along no one seems to notice that what Christians believe about the Trinity, Christ, salvation, human beings, sin, and the sacraments are from a secular perspective just as crazy as spanking children or an earth that began on November 1, 4004 BC. I wonder if the solution here is for religious historians to teach more about the faith than about faith’s implications for practical living (like politics and the environment), more about what Christians profess and less about how they vote. If that happened, then Christians and non-Christians might understand better how different Christianity is from a modern w— v— and in turn believers might try to preserve their uniqueness rather than trying to make everyone else — from politicians to newspaper editors — like them.

Bottom line: if Christianity truly were odd, and Christians were abnormal, we wouldn’t have to worry about evangelical Republicans running the country.