Category: Wilderness Wanderings

Imagine A World Without Moral Dilemmas (or not)

Published on by D. G. Hart2 Comments

One of the recurring points made by Joe Paterno’s detractors is the one repeated by Rhea Hughes, Angelo Cataldi’s female sidekick, who sits idly by when the busty bimbos traipse through the studio but draws the line when Michael Vick mistreats dogs or when Joe Pa fails to do more than pick up the phone. Rhea has noted often the past few days how someone’s perspective on Paterno and the scandal at Penn State might change if he imagined that the children allegedly abused were his own grandchildren. That kind of personal connection supposedly tips the balance, clarifies the situation, and reveals the guilt of the PSU officials — including Joe Pa.

But once you start the engine of your imagination, it actually creates more dilemmas than it resolves. For instance, Rhea, imagine the following:

That Joe Paterno is your grandfather.

That you are Joe Pa’s priest and he has confessed his sin and you want to tell the police.

That you are a reporter and have evidence that would convict Sandusky but without revealing your source it is only hearsay.

That you are Paterno’s attorney and know the truth but need to represent your client.

That you are Sandusky’s friend.

That you are a smoker.

That the fundamentalists really did win.

That John Lennon wrote a song called “Imagine.”

Oh, that’s right, Lennon did and it was as ethereal as the moral certainty is absolute that afflicts scandalmongering.

If I Liked Bunk, Can I Still Admire Joe Pa?

Published on by D. G. Hart68 Comments

Morality is alive and well on the airwaves of sports talk-radio. The ethical crisis of the moment is what did Joe Paterno know about the sexual abuse of boys by a former assistant coach and when did he know it. The issue has led to remarkable moral clarity for talk-show hosts who generally embrace views that the Baylys associate with secularism and relativism in the United States. Why, Angelo Cataldi, has even called for the firing of Joe Paterno for not controlling the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the security forces of Penn State University, and not knowing every single aspect of the football program at PSU. In other words, Joe Pa should be fired for not being God.

This is not a post about sexual abuse. It is about ethical abuse.

First, Angelo and company have no apparent capacity to consider what friendships may do in preventing someone from leaning hard on a friend and colleague. Would those who are calling for Paterno’s firing be so quick to decide so categorically to eliminate a friend or relative? Isn’t one of the most persistent problems of human existence that moral ideals run up against personal allegiances all the time? Does this make violations of an ethical code right? No. But the inability to imagine the angst that someone like Paterno may have gone and still be going through is the sort of one-dimensional outlook that prevents evangelicals and other pietists from ever reading novels that explore morally ambiguous circumstances.

For instance, Bunk Moreland is one of the great characters on The Wire. And in Season Five Bunk knows what Jimmy is doing to bring a drug lord to conviction — namely, breaking the law and police regulations. Bunk disapproves mightily of Jimmy’s misdeeds. But Bunk never tells on Jimmy. Was I outraged that Bunk didn’t rat? Duh! Bunk remains one of my favorite characters despite his moral weakness. This is the stuff of life. It is likely what Joe Pa has gone through many times. (Of course, it could be that Paterno doesn’t care a wit about his former colleague or the boys the ex-coach abused. But how someone could be that cynical and that morally self-righteous all in one gulp gives my brain indigestion.)

But the moral crisis thickens when listeners remember that the show Angelo and company broadcast is sponsored by many gentlemen’s clubs where the lines distinguishing the righteous from the unrighteous are not so clear. Granted, Angelo may argue that pedophiliac sex is not consensual, is if voluntarism justifies willful lying before a grand jury or driving eighty-one miles per hour on the Ohio Turnpike. But last time I heard, human trafficking was one of the great illicit activities in our time and many of the women who come to the United States through human trafficking wind up in gentlemen’s clubs (see Season Two of The Wire). And has Angelo ever considered that some of the people who engage in the activities that transpire in gentlemen’s clubs end up being hurt by such behavior — from sexually transmitted diseases to psychological and spiritual scars that will follow the dancers and their tippers around the rest of their lives?

So it is not at all clear that Angelo and others who self-righteously condemn Joe Paterno are all that free and clear from the moral law they so eagerly enforce.

Will I be disappointed if it turns out that Joe Pa looked the other way too many times and didn’t seek to protect kids from lecherous men? Yes. But I am also disappointed in a talk-show host who (while driving my wife nuts when he talks about babes and boobs) is generally entertaining but so morally obtuse not to see that most days he should be disappointed in himself before pointing out the moral failings of others.

The Gospel Coalition Goes Racial

Published on by D. G. Hart61 Comments

Several recent developments among the gospel allies have revealed that no matter how much we denounce racism, race is a category that is alive, well, obscure, and still divisive. Race, for instance, is almost as foggy as evangelicalism. Try to tell the difference and explain it briefly between race and ethnicity. Try to tell someone of African descent who came to the United States by way of Haiti that they are “black” in the same way that descendants of African-American slaves are. Try even to explain how President Obama is more black than white. Or for lighter shades of racial characteristics, try to explain how the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese, despite historic animosities, are all “Asian.” And don’t forget about the Irish, white people whom other whites – in this case Boston Brahmins – called black. Race is, as you may be able to tell, slippery. What is more, the persistent appeal to it ironically keeps alive the kind of quasi-scientific claims that fueled eugenics and other early twentieth-century schemes for preserving racial purity.

But the folks with good intentions, the allies of the gospel, keep stepping in the gooey subject of race with consequences unbecoming their wholesome (even if sappy) aims. First it was Christianity Today’s publication of an excerpt from John Piper’s new book, Bloodlines. The provocative title of the piece was, “I Was A Racist.” It chronicles Piper’s life, from his southern youth where he presumed the superiority of whites to blacks, to his days at Wheaton College where he was confronted at an InterVarsity Fellowship conference to consider the legitimacy of inter-racial marriage, to his studies in Germany which allowed him to visit concentration camps designed by the “master” Aryan race, to his decision as a middle-aged man to adopt an African-American child. Along the way, Piper employs tropes and taps sentiments designed to show the wickedness of racism, all the while he avoids a technical definition of the concept. And without a definite idea of what constitutes racism, readers don’t know if Piper really was a racist or whether his self-absolved declaration of innocence is justified.

Here’s one example of the sentimentality that lurks around Piper’s reflections:

I was, in those years, manifestly racist. As a child and a teenager my attitudes and actions assumed the superiority of my race in almost every way without knowing or wanting to know anybody who was black, except Lucy. Lucy came to our house on Saturdays to help my mother clean. I liked Lucy, but the whole structure of the relationship was demeaning. Those who defend the noble spirit of Southern slaveholders by pointing to how nice they were to their slaves, and how deep the affections were, and how they even attended each other’s personal celebrations, seem to be naïve about what makes a relationship degrading.

No, she was not a slave. But the point still stands. Of course, we were nice. Of course, we loved Lucy. Of course, she was invited to my sister’s wedding. As long as she and her family “knew their place.” Being nice to, and having strong affections for, and including in our lives is what we do for our dogs too. It doesn’t say much about honor and respect and equality before God. My affections for Lucy did not provide the slightest restraint on my racist mouth when I was with my friends. . . .

So Lucy was only as good as a dog? Is that really the way that whites viewed blacks when they taught them the Bible? Do dogs have souls? Were Boston Protestants “nice” to Irish Roman Catholics? And was this sort of treatment the same that the Nazis showed to Jews? Whatever the answers to these questions – and they will be decidedly mixed depending on the answerers’ bloodlines – Piper avoids a systematic treatment of race and opts instead for associations. Please do not misunderstand. Slavery was abhorrent, skin-color based slavery more so. But do we need to liken slavery to the Holocaust in order to condemn it? Meanwhile, notice the flip side of these associations – Piper’s kin were the equivalent of the Nazis. Is this any way to regard our families (as if Nazis were only evil all the time, as if people who believe in total depravity would locate wickedness in one ethnic group)?

Another observation to make about Piper’s piece is the way that adopting a child of African descent seems bestow racial innocence. I admire Piper for doing this, and for the kind of life he tries to lead by living in a specific neighborhood in Minneapolis. But is he not aware of African-Americans who might regard his adoption as simply another way of saying that “some of my best friends are black”? Of course, the folks who might say this about Piper, from Al Sharpton to Cornel West, could be harboring views of race and racism that a person of European descent could never avoid. But if that’s the case – which it is (think about Don Imus and the Rutgers women’s basketball team) – then why bring up race at all? Why not write a book about families, adoption, and urban living? Why the need to talk about private matters that are so patently alarming and have the potential for manipulation? If evangelicals read and adopt this book as a clear and incisive statement on race, they will surely be surprised the next time they enter a discussion or read a news item which reveals how deep and contested are the politics of identity.

One more thing — why does Piper not apply his assumptions about diversity to African-American churches? When I taught a course on religion in Philadelphia I showed students some videos from the African Methodist Episcopal Church and from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, not at the same time, but to cover the African-American experience one week and the experience of some ethnic-Europeans another. What was striking in these videos was how proud the African-American churches were of being black. They made no effort to reflect the diversity of their congregations because they didn’t have much racial or ethnic diversity. But not so for the Lutherans. We saw Asian-Americans, African-Americans, and even European-Americans in the Lutheran videos, even though the appeal of Lutheranism outside German and Scandinavian settings is tiny.

This does not mean that Lutherans or Piper are wrong to seek diversity in their churches. It does mean that if diversity is a biblical imperative – as opposed to an outgrowth of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism – then Piper should be communicating to black church leaders the importance of enfolding white’s and Asians into their congregations. But if he did that, would he be able to claim that he WAS a racist and isn’t one anymore?

Around the same time that Piper’s piece appeared in Christianity Today, the Gospel Coalition was engaged in some soul searching thanks to James McDonald’s decision to interview T. D. Jakes for Elephant Room. The problem apparently (since I don’t know the work of MacDonald except for the excruciatingly painful video he did with Mark Driscoll and Mark Dever about pastoral ministry, nor do I know about T. D. Jakes except for Don Imus’ regular invoking of and praise for the bishop — note the irony) was the terms under which MacDonald invited Jakes. Was Jakes a fellow believer in gospel? Or was and is he guilty of faulty view of the Trinity? MacDonald’s explanation of the situation was not good enough for a number of bloggers, white and black. The problem was particularly the mixed message that MacDonald (and by extension) the Gospel Coalition would send to the black church about the doctrine of the Trinity. According to Thabiti Anyabwile:

The news of T.D. Jakes’ invitation to The Elephant Room is widespread and rightly lamented by many. I’m just adding a perspective that hasn’t yet been stated: This kind of invitation undermines that long, hard battle many of us have been waging in a community often neglected by many of our peers. And because we’ve often been attempting to introduce African-American Christians to the wider Evangelical and Reformed world as an alternative to the heresy and blasphemy so commonplace in some African-American churches and on popular television outlets, the invitation of Jakes to perform in ‘our circles’ simply feels like a swift tug of the rug from beneath our feet and our efforts to bring health to a sick church.

Justin Taylor jumped on the bandwagon. “The most sobering and painful commentary on this controversy has been penned by Thabiti Anyabwile and Anthony Carter, who have both labored winsomely and heroically for a reformation in the black church and see this invitation as a tremendous setback for the cause of grace and truth. I’d encourage you to consider their perspective on something like this.”

What is remarkable in this reaction to MacDonald is, first, the assumption that the white church has a sound doctrine of the Trinity. Unless I missed something, the Gospel Coalition is a wart to the Matterhorn (thank you Henry Lewis) of the Trinity Broadcast Network and the larger Pentecostal and charismatic world which consists of Americans of European descent as much as blacks. In other words, the black church has no corner of heresy and the Gospel Coalition has a lot of work to do if it is going to labor winsomely and heroically for a reformation in the white church.

Second, the Gospel Coalition’s doctrine of the Trinity is not exactly Nicea. The first point of their doctrinal statement reads:

We believe in one God, eternally existing in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who know, love, and glorify one another. This one true and living God is infinitely perfect both in his love and in his holiness. He is the Creator of all things, visible and invisible, and is therefore worthy to receive all glory and adoration. Immortal and eternal, he perfectly and exhaustively knows the end from the beginning, sustains and sovereignly rules over all things, and providentially brings about his eternal good purposes to redeem a people for himself and restore his fallen creation, to the praise of his glorious grace.

Compare this to the Westminster Confession and you see a lack of precision:

1. There is but one only, living, and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek him; and withal, most just, and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.

2. God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself; and is alone in and unto himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them. He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things; and hath most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them whatsoever himself pleaseth. In his sight all things are open and manifest, his knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature, so as nothing is to him contingent, or uncertain. He is most holy in all his counsels, in all his works, and in all his commands. To him is due from angels and men, and every other creature, whatsoever worship, service, or obedience he is pleased to require of them.

3. In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost: the Father is of none, neither begotten, nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.

Of course, the Westminster Confession is not Nicea either. But it does have the important Nicene bits – the affirmations about substance and person, and the one about the Son being eternally begotten of the Father. In which case, if the Gospel Coalition wants to set itself as the standard for orthodoxy in the white church, especially on the Trinity, why not actually affirm (or teach about) the Nicene doctrine of God?

In the end, I’m not sure what race has to do with the current status of orthodox Trinitarianism in the United States, or with one pastor’s decision to adopt a child. But a lot of people seem to think that race still matters and that is not a recipe for overcoming racism but for keeping the vague concept of race alive.

Keep Sovereign Grace Out of the NBA!

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Not that anyone really cares about professional basketball in the United States anymore, but in a slow sports news cycle with the Phillies out of the playoffs, the Eagles in a bye-week, and the Flyers bringing up the rear of professional sports (i.e., the NHL) in North America, yesterday’s announcement that Josh Harris was part of the Seventy-Sixers’ new ownership sent shivers down my hyphenated Philadelphia-fan-Old-Life spine. Could Harris do to the NBA what C. J. Mahaney has done to the young, restless and re-reformed?

Not to worry. This is a different Josh Harris who has likely more work cut out for him in the NBA than his ministry counterpart does in SGM.

Why I Love My (all about me) Denomination

Published on by D. G. Hart86 Comments

The Young Restless and Reformed may be surprised to learn that some Reformed Protestants do not consider the young and restless to be very Reformed. They might even be surprised to know that Reformed Protestantism exists outside Desiring God Ministries, The Gospel Coalition, and Acts 29 (but that is another matter). But the Old Settled and Reformed keep tabs on the younger crowd and the reviews are not encouraging.

Brent Ferry is an OPC minister who is not particularly old and since he is a husband and father is fairly settles. But as an avocation he plays drums for a band and has a feel for youth and restlessness. Despite his demographical profile and musical talent, he is not much impressed with the recent Crossway book by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears, Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe (2010). The recent issue of the OPC’s magazine, New Horizons, has Ferry’s review of Driscoll and Breshears. Here is an excerpt:

Driscoll is sometimes identified as part of evangelicalism’s resurgent Calvinistic movement. Besides puffs and quotes from Reformed authors, however, the book does not reflect the contours of Reformed thought at all.

For example, the authors omit the covenant of works (p. 177). They argue against limited atonement in favor of hypothetical universalism (p. 267). They condition regeneration upon faith and repentance (pp. 317, 436). There is no clear affirmation of unconditional predestination. The book excludes the fourth commandment from the abiding moral law (pp. 198-99), yet has a high view of the Lord’s Day (pp. 381-84). It also contains pictures of Christ (pp. 208, 244). . . .

In short, Doctrine is a hodgepodge of various theological trajectories. When the authors compare Noah’s drunkenness to “a hillbilly redneck on vacation” (p. 184), they reveal the nature of their contextualization project, which is to promote a Christianity that embraces irreverent adolescence. Theologically, this book does does rise above that standard, but not by much.

In Christ on Paxil

Published on by D. G. Hart182 Comments

Christian (or biblical) counseling is a topic that deserves more attention at places like Old Life that are lean sap and well-stocked seeking discernment. It strikes me that biblical counseling is another example of worldview, pietistic thinking that requires a biblical answer for each and every human problem. It also appears to suffer from a pietistic piety that runs roughshod over the regular ministry of pastors and elders who are ordained for the purpose of providing counsel, instruction, and exhortation — and they don’t even charge a fee for it.

Another part of the challenge of Christian counseling is the attempt to turn a human woe into a spiritual opportunity. I don’t mean to drive too great a wedge between the human and the spiritual sides of human existence, but since we do go to non-Christian physicians for help with ulcers and tumors, why do we need to go to Christian counselors for help with psychological problems or even broken relationships? What would be so awful if a person trained in certain areas of human existence wound up having a fund of knowledge about problems that Christians share with non-Christians? Are these problems the result of sin and the fall? Of course. Isn’t cancer or appendicitis also the result of sin and the fall? Of course. So why only go to Christians for help with the non-material parts of human misery? Why, I remember a time not too long ago when Christians thought treating depression with drugs was sinful. It is as if regeneration has powers that extend well beyond forgiveness, or as if sanctification leads to well-adjusted believers who will out perform non-believers in most areas of life — including happiness and well-adjustedness.

The Christian Curmudgeon reminded me of the dilemmas surrounding Christian counseling with his own reflections on depression. He writes:

Cowper’s depressions began when he was young. At his best, he was probably holding it at bay. He had at least four major depressive episodes in his life. On occasion he intended, though he failed, to end his own life. He died in despair, believing himself reprobate. His last poem, The Castaway, expresses his hopelessness with regard not just to this world but the world to come.

John Newton, with whom Cowper lived for a season and with whom he collaborated in the production of a book of hymns, testified that he did not doubt Cowper’s salvation. More recently, John Piper has given a similar assessment.

Despite the tragic course and sad end of his life, his hymns are given an important place in evangelical Christian hymnody. Six are included Trinity Hymnal. Just yesterday I sang with God’s people Jesus, Where’er Thy People Meet. Moreover, he is an object of sympathy, even of admiration, because of his affliction. He is sometimes held before depressed Christians, if not as an encouragement (how could a man with his end encourage) at least as a fellow sufferer.

Contrast that with Nevin. Several years ago, I wrote a review of a fine modern biography of this German Reformed theologian. It was not published by the media outlet to which it was initially submitted. (Happily it was published in Modern Reformation.) One of the reasons I was given for the review not being used was that it was not desired to call attention to him. And one of the reasons for not doing so was that he had been suicidal.

What? We sing despairing, suicidal Cowper but we suppress Nevin? I wonder why? Well, Nevin was not a poet, and he did not have a friend like John Newton. But, I think there is more. Cowper was a friend of Calvinist experientialism and Nevin was not. Nevin wrote The Anxious Bench while Cowper wrote O, For a Closer Walk with God.

Of course, the Curmudgeon’s point has less to do with Christian counseling than with experimental Calvinism. But he does point to another facet of the echo chamber affect that afflicts evangelicalism and its Reformed friends. And this affliction extends to Christian counseling. Even when we know that pastors and elders are supposed to be delivering pastoral oversight, which includes counseling of a basic kind, and even though we gladly receive the care of non-Christian specialists when it comes to a variety of human ailments, we generally refuse to subject Christian counseling to tough questions. The reason is that their models of human flourishing appear to point to a form of Christian piety that fits the conversionist ideal of a spiritual reorientation that radically changes a person’s entire being — from psychological make-up and worldview to plumbing.

Mencken Week 2011

Published on by D. G. Hart2 Comments

Unfortunately, old Henry’s birthday anniversary got lost in the shuffle of thoughts generated by 9/11. Since he was born on 9/12 Mencken will forever have to compete in the memories of Americans for attention. Even so, he has been much on my mind since I am offering a seminar on him for Hillsdale students. And thankfully he has not disappointed.

The following is from “A Loss to Romance” and indicates ways that Americans might support public decency and oppose sex education in public schools without having to appeal to biblical morality.

Perhaps the worst thing that this sex hygiene nonsense has accomplished is the thing mourned by Agnes Repplier in “The Repeal of Reticence.” In America, at least, innocence has been killed, and romance has been sadly wounded by the same discharge of smutty artillery. The flapper is no longer naive and charming; she goes to the altar of God with a learned and even cynical glitter in her eye. The veriest school-girl of to-day . . . knows as much as the midwife of 1885, and spends a good deal more time discharging and disseminating her information. All this, of course, is highly embarrassing to the more romantic and ingenuous sort of men, of whom I have the honor to be one. We are constantly in the position of General Mitchener in Shaw’s one-acter, “Press Cuttings,” when he begs Mrs. Farrell, the talkative charwoman, to reserve her confidences for her medical adviser. One often wonders, indeed, what women now talk of to doctors. . . .

Please do not misunderstand me here. I do not object to this New Freedom on moral grounds, but on aesthetic grounds. In the relations between the sexes
all beauty is founded upon romance, all romance is founded upon mystery, and all mystery is founded upon ignorance, or, failing that, upon the deliberate denial of the known truth. To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anaesthesia—to mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god or an ordinary young woman for a goddess. But how can this condition of mind survive the deadly matter-offactness which sex hygiene and the new science of eugenics impose? How can a woman continue to believe in the honor, courage and loving tenderness of a man after she has learned, perhaps by affidavit, that his hæmoglobin count is 117%, that he is free from sugar and albumen, that his blood pressure is 112/79 and that his Wassermann reaction is negative? . . . Moreover, all this new-fangled “frankness” tends to dam up, at least for civilized adults, one of the principal well-springs of art, to wit, impropriety. What is neither hidden nor forbidden is seldom very charming. If women, continuing their present tendency to its logical goal, end by going stark naked, there will be no more poets and painters, but only dermatologists and photographers. . .

Has Anything Changed Since Everything Changed?

Published on by D. G. Hart27 Comments

All of the fanfare surrounding the tenth anniversary of 9/11 left the Calvinistic, dour side of me cold and a bit cynical. Part of the problem was the fixation westerners have, with our base-10 system of math, to give more weight to anniversaries that fall on the five’s and ten’s than, say, to the perfect number, seven. (Is ten years really more significant than eleven?) Another factor is the excess to which American cultural expressions are prone – think the Super Bowl here. When Americans observe anniversaries, birthdays, victories, or even death, they rarely do so with moderation and self-control. Do not discount either the effects of this scribe hearing Christian radio yesterday devoted to 9/11 and how the world changed – FOREVER. It was supposed to be the Lord’s day and devoted to hearing and learning from the word of God. But program managers couldn’t resist devoting the day to the U.S.A.

I certainly understand (or think I can) how the lives of those who lost loved ones changed ten years ago. It also makes sense for New Yorkers to consider how vulnerable their seemingly invincible city was (and still is) to one of the most stupendous attacks in human history.

But what I don’t understand is why we needed to be barraged with a litany of public figures who told us where they were on September 11, 2001, and what they thought in the light of those unbelievable attacks. Even NASCAR drivers got into the act. Over at Yahoo’s sports page some race car driver was featured in a video about his experience ten years ago.

What I find particularly troubling is that these kind of memories set into stone a particular moment without considering what has actually changed over the last decade. By conjuring up all of those feelings from a decade ago, Americans are in danger of continuing to think – which was quite plausible at the time – that they were innocent victims of an irrational and ruthless attack by religious fanatics. And that kind of consideration can lead to the kind of innocence that is so typical of American idealism at its worst. America, so the logic goes, is a friendly and benign presence in the world, and anyone who opposes the United States must be demonic. But if 9/11 showed the world that evil does exist, could it be that the lesson Americans take away from the day is that evil also exists within the souls of Americans? Or is 9/11 simply further proof of our innocence and righteousness?

A better response to the tenth anniversary – better still to conduct it fourteen years out (two times the perfect number) – would be to ask how our minds have changed. In my own case, I have changed my mind about the following:

– the desire for retribution that led to U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was unbecoming and even sinful;

– the United States’ foreign policy establishment may have been wiser to keep an eye on China than Al Qaeda;

– paying $2.29 for a gallon of gas is cheap.

Again, I don’t mean to minimize the loss that relatives and friends experienced from the attacks on 9/11, or the national sense of vulnerability. The good Mrs. Hart reminds me that I said on that morning of September 11, 2001 from our kitchen in Southern California, with tears in my eyes, “I would never say another bad word about New York City.” (I believe I broke that promise the year the Yankees beat the Phillies in the World Series.) The attacks shook me, indeed. But ten years should produce more reflection and prudence than trembling.

Confessional Intuition

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Worldviews are overrated. Intuition matters. At least, that’s the impression readers may take away from a thoughtful review of a new book on philanthropy by Jeff Cain, a former colleague and now the co-founder of American Philanthropic. The book in question is Do More Than Give: The Six Practices of Donors Who Change the World, and the title gives away the naivete that so often informs the transformationalist outlook, whether cultural or ecclesiastical. For the world of philanthropy the contrast runs as follows:

Maybe you are the kind of donor who supports nonprofits in your community. Like many Americans, you give or tithe through your church or temple. You support local human-service organizations that provide direct aid to the needy, infirm, and down-and-out. You contribute to your alma mater, local theatre company, community hospital, or library-building campaign.

Perhaps, too, your giving is influenced by your family members, colleagues, and close friends in your church, business, or neighborhood. You give out of a genuine sense of caring and gratitude for those people, places, and institutions to which you are geographically, psychologically, or spiritually connected.

If these sensible and natural forms of charitable giving describe your philanthropy, then Do More Than Give: The Six Practices of Donors Who Change the World is not for you. This fast-paced encomium to good intentions grounded in strategy and directed by experts is aimed at a special breed of philanthropist—a breed so special that it is honored with its own moniker: catalytic philanthropists, intent on changing the world.

The same kind of difference applies to the religious world and separates the churchly Protestant from the born-again believer who flocks to the parachurch organizations and their conferences in search of that fix that the local, mom-and-pop – okay, dominie only – church provides. If the idea of philanthropy is not to change the world, so the idea of confessionalism is about perseverance, pilgrimage, and waiting for the only transformer who is capable of changing the world.

The review is short and well worth a read. Aside from the point it makes about philanthropy, it also illustrates the difference between a worldview that holds to abstract truths as opposed to a profession of faith with concrete loyalties. Viewers of the world – perhaps because they don’t live in it – invariably want to change the world and think they have ideas capable of doing so. Confessionalists know that ideas don’t change the world (God does) and understand that those who attribute such power to ideas border on folly, never considering ironically the impotence of human reason. Chances are, though, that the people who are supposed to be the smartest in the room – the ones with all the philosophy and epistemology and theory – won’t ever intuit this dilemma because the people who object to worldview in favor of intuition can’t theorize their instincts. And without a theory, as all worldviewers know, knowledge is inconsequential.

It Doesn't Require a Worldview To Know What's Wrong with Higher Education

Published on by D. G. Hart36 Comments

From Joseph Epstein’s review in the Wall Street Journal of The Cambridge History of the American Novel:

Only 40 or 50 years ago, English departments attracted men and women who wrote books of general intellectual interest and had names known outside the academy—Perry Miller, Aileen Ward, Walter Jackson Bate, Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Joseph Wood Krutch, Lionel Trilling, one could name a dozen or so others—but no longer. Literature, as taught in the current-day university, is strictly an intramural game.

This may come as news to the contributors to “The Cambridge History of the American Novel,” who pride themselves on possessing much wider, much more relevant, interests and a deeper engagement with the world than their predecessors among literary academics. Biographical notes on contributors speak of their concern with “forms of moral personhood in the US novels,” “the poetics of foreign policy,” and “ecocriticism and theories of modernization, postmodernization, and globalization.”

Yet, through the magic of dull and faulty prose, the contributors to “The Cambridge History of the American Novel” have been able to make these presumably worldly subjects seem parochial in the extreme—of concern only to one another, which is certainly one derogatory definition of the academic. These scholars may teach English, but they do not always write it, at least not quite. A novelist, we are told, “tasks himself” with this or that; things tend to get “problematized”; the adjectives “global” and “post”-this-or-that receive a good workout; “alterity” and “intertexuality” pop up their homely heads; the “poetics of ineffability” come into play; and “agency” is used in ways one hadn’t hitherto noticed, so that “readers in groups demonstrate agency.” About the term “non-heteronormativity” let us not speak.

These dopey words and others like them are inserted into stiffly mechanical sentences of dubious meaning. “Attention to the performativity of straight sex characterizes . . . ‘The Great Gatsby’ (1925), where Nick Carraway’s homoerotic obsession with the theatrical Gatsby offers a more authentic passion precisely through flamboyant display.” Betcha didn’t know that Nick Carraway was hot for Jay Gatsby? We sleep tonight; contemporary literary scholarship stands guard.