Territorial Old Life Week

Published on by D. G. Hart459 Comments

While Francis is in Brazil and points South American for World Youth Day, the directors of the Old Life Theological Society will be conducting editorial meetings and pursuing other fun on the coast of Maine. I hope to finish Allen Guelzo’s history of the Civil War, and read Mary Gordon’s Final Payments, Francis Oakley’s The Conciliarist Tradition, and William Manchester’s biography of H. L. Mencken. Probably won’t, but you can always dream.

God willing, I should be back on the grid later next week. I am sure Stellman can’t wait.

In the meantime, some considerations for cultural warriors of the family friendly variety, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant.

What Happened to Gender?

Published on by D. G. Hart17 Comments

Carl Trueman has already raised questions about feminism but those thoughts returned while reading a variety of reactions to the George Zimmerman trial. You see a lot about race and class, but hear nothing about gender.

What does gender have to do with this? Well, both Martin and Zimmerman received their father’s surnames. That includes President Obama who gave a speech about the verdict on Friday (more below). What would the press and pundits have been saying about the case had Zimmerman been called George Mesa (his mother’s surname)? And what would those folks have said about race and ethnicity in the U.S. if Zimmerman were identified as a Hispanic-American with Afro-Peruvian blood (from his maternal grandfather)? And what about Zimmerman’s membership in the Democratic Party? The country has had a lot of debates for the last five years about illegal immigration or undocumented aliens (with Republicans trying to get out from under their white-only reputation), many of whom come to the U.S. from south of the border. Granted, Hispanic hardly does justice to Mexican-, Cuban-, or Peruvian-Americans, nor does Mexican do justice to the diversity of ethnic backgrounds in Mexico. But in the strange world of white/majority-non-white/minority relations in the U.S., George Zimmerman should qualify as a fellow as much on the minds of those who worry about race, class, and gender/transgender as they do about Sandra Fluke. In which case, the trial has an upside. A Hispanic-American, at a time when many Americans are skittish about immigrants from Central and South America, gained a welcome verdict in the nation’s white-dominated justice system. Obviously, that is no consolation to Trayvon Martin’s family. But since so much of the discussion of the trial and its aftermath has been about race, with the implication of how white Americans and their institutions mistreat non-whites, why doesn’t Zimmerman’s minority status provide some consolation to those sensitive to race and ethnicity?

Similar questions can be raised about President Obama. What if his name were Barack Dunham, and what if Americans perceived him as a white man instead of an African-American? (No one is really going to defend the idea that the slightest amount of African blood in a person makes them black, are they?) And what if the President himself thought more about being reared by a white mother and white grandparents before saying this:

You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.

Instead of the Trayvon Martin case showing how badly America treats blacks, the overwhelming reaction has been how much white America empathizes with blacks.

Does this mean that everything is fine in the U.S. and that we can all go back to work believing that this is a great land where the justice and economic systems work fairly? If you’ve seen The Wire (or read Wendell Berry), you never go to work thinking that. In fact, it is hard not to see a photo of Trayvon Martin and not think of Dukie Weems, or to have watched the series and not understand David Simon’s recent reaction:

In the state of Florida, the season on African-Americans now runs year round. Come one, come all. And bring a handgun. The legislators are fine with this blood on their hands. The governor, too. One man accosted another and when it became a fist fight, one man — and one man only — had a firearm. The rest is racial rationalization and dishonorable commentary.

At the same time, the inequities of the U.S. extend beyond white-black relations. Turning the George Zimmerman case into only a discussion of race and class will miss the larger canvass on which the tragic encounter between Martin and Zimmerman played out. I think I even learned about the complications of all social interactions from David Simon himself.

The Old Normal Is Still Normal

Published on by D. G. Hart20 Comments

Communions like the OPC (and probably the RPCNA) suffer from statistic-envy. We see other denominations that are bigger, congregations larger, and buildings newer (and owned). Turns out that small churches are par for the course among Protestants in the U.S. In a post about how much congregations would have to spend if Congress cut significantly the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also came statistics about the average size of congregations in the United States.

177,000 congregations (59%) have between 7 and 99 worshipers weekly.
105,000 congregations (35%) have between 100 and 499 worshipers weekly.
12,000 congregations (4%) have between 500 and 999 worshipers weekly.
6,000 congregations (2%) have between 1,000 and 1,999 worshipers weekly.
1,210 congregations (.4%) have more than 2,000 worshipers weekly (megachurch).

As for finances, the average congregation’s budget is $55,000.

If SNAP were reduced from $133.5 billion to $36 billion:

asking a 75-member church to absorb $50,000 in increased ministry costs works out to about $666 per person each year, a 44 percent surcharge on the average worshiper’s contribution.

To make matters worse, according to one estimate, the average church budget is $55,000. In other words, saddling the average congregation with the costs of not renewing SNAP would mean almost doubling its entire annual budget. And of course, as Sullivan points out, SNAP is just one program among many that conservatives would like to slash. You don’t need a calculator to figure out that it’s more than the churches could keep up with.

I suspect that giving in some normal congregations is better than others. So maybe it would not be that hard a hit (assuming for the moment that the church in general has a responsibility to provide physical resources for the public in general). But why should Christians have all the good charity?

Do Jason and the Callers Think Much about Wadi al-Kharrar?

Published on by D. G. Hart305 Comments

Recent discussion of John Paul II’s beatification resurrected parts of the pope’s career that I had completely forgotten, such as his 2000 trip to the place of Jesus’ baptism (Wadi-al-Kharrar). On that trip the pope said, “May Saint John Baptist protect Islam and all the people of Jordan, and all who partecipated in this celebration, a memorable celebration. I’m very grateful to all of you.” This was a year after John Paul II kissed the Qur’an during a visit to Rome by a delegation of Muslim leaders.

For some Roman Catholics like Robert Spencer, Islam and Christianity are fundamentally at odds and Islam is a threat to the United States. Others believe that John Paul II should never have been as friendly to other religions of the world:

I am an Orthodox Catholic (I do not consider myself ultra-conservative) and I cannot get beyond the incident at Assisi where the statue of Buddha was placed on top of the tabernacle (in the very presence of His Holiness), an act which Arch-Bishop Lefebvre called “diabolical.” Nor can I get the picture out of my mind of JPII kissing the Quran. And what about the joint prayer services with the pagans?

And then, of course, there is the condition of the Church under his watch. Need I say more?

Of all the popes- saints before JPII, would any of these things have happened under their watches? Does it preclude his sainthood? Should it? I don’t know the answers. But these are valid questions that cannot summarily be dismissed as “ultra-conservative” as Mr. Weigel attempts to do.

Then again, the reporters who cover the Vatican provide useful insights into what may drive Vatican policy (though it does not appear to be informed by Peter’s warnings about false teachers). This is from an old story about Benedict XVI’s 2009 visit to the Land many call “holy”:

When Benedict XVI lands in Jordan on May 8, it will be his first visit to an Arab nation and his first to a predominantly Muslim country since Turkey in late November/early December 2006. As it turned out, the Turkey trip became a kiss-and-make-up exercise in the wake of the pope’s famous September 2006 speech in Regensburg, Germany, which inflamed sentiment across the Muslim world because of its incendiary citation of a 14th century Byzantine emperor with some nasty things to say about Muhammad, the founder of Islam. The iconic image from Turkey was Benedict XVI standing inside the Blue Mosque, shoulder-to-shoulder with the Grand Mufti of Istanbul, for a moment of silent prayer in the direction of Mecca.

Because the Turkey trip was hijacked by damage control, Jordan offers Benedict his first real opportunity to lay out his vision of Catholic/Muslim relations while on Islamic turf. That vision goes under the heading of “inter-cultural dialogue,” and it boils down to this: Benedict XVI believes the real clash of civilizations in the world today runs not between Islam and the West, but between belief and unbelief. In that struggle, he believes Christians and Muslims should be natural allies. As a result, he has deemphasized the fine points of theological exchange – how Christians and Muslims each understand atonement, for example, or scripture. Instead, his priority is a grand partnership with Muslims in defense of a robust role for religion in public affairs, as well as shared values such as the family and the sanctity of life. (Among other things, that means joint efforts against abortion and gay marriage.)

The price of admission to that partnership, Benedict believes, is for Islam to denounce violence and to accept the legitimacy of religious freedom. In that sense, he sees himself as a friend of Islam, promoting reform from within a shared space of religious and moral commitment. To date, however, he has not found an argot for making that pitch successfully to the Muslim “street.”

All of this, and you can find a lot more about the Vatican’s relations with Muslims, adds up to a relationship between Roman Catholicism and Islam that is decidedly contested, with popes doing damage control and pursuing inter-religious dialogue in ways that would have made liberal Protestants proud, and some laity incredulous that the Vatican could be so indifferent to the claims of church dogma, with others willing to bless the popes in ways that John Paul II wanted John the Baptist to bless Islam.

But one additional item caught my eye while trying to take the pulse of Vatican-Muslim relations. It was a comment on the proper way to conduct inter-religious dialogue:

I am all for dialogue between Muslims and Christians when it is honest and not based on false pretenses. There doesn’t seem to be any use to dialogue that ignores difficulties and points of disagreement rather than confronting them. . . . One thing that must be recognized is that for many Muslim spokesmen and leaders, dialogue with adherents of other religions is simply a proselytizing mechanism designed to convert the “dialogue” partner to Islam, as the Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb explained: “The chasm between Islam and Jahiliyyah [the society of unbelievers] is great, and a bridge is not to be built across it so that the people on the two sides may mix with each other, but only so that the people of Jahiliyyah may come over to Islam.”

In line with this, 138 Muslim scholars wrote to Pope Benedict XVI, inviting him to dialogue. The title of the document they sent to him was A Common Word Between Us and You. Reading the entire Qur’anic verse from which the phrase “a common word between us and you” was taken makes the Common Word initiative’s agenda clear: “Say: ‘People of the Book! Come now to a word common between us and you, that we serve none but God, and that we associate not aught with Him, and do not some of us take others as Lords, apart from God.’ And if they turn their backs, say: ‘Bear witness that we are Muslims’” (3:64). Since Muslims consider the Christian confession of the divinity of Christ to be an unacceptable association of a partner with God, this verse is saying that the “common word” that Muslims and the People of the Book should agree on is that Christians should discard one of the central tenets of their faith and essentially become Muslims. Not a promising basis for an honest and mutually respectful dialogue of equals.

Which brings us back to Jason and the Callers. What kind of ecumenical dialogue do they encourage when some think it is really a form of proselytizing? And what kind of conversation do they facilitate when the Protestant paradigm is off limits? Rhetorical questions, perhaps. But given the way they call others to communion, one suspects they can’t be all that pleased with the recent popes’ outreach to Islam. (Or maybe they are.)

Jamie Smith Gives, and Jamie Smith Takes Away

Published on by D. G. Hart21 Comments

Erik has already commented that neo-Calvinists could learn from the Vatican, but the affinities between neo-Calvinism and Rome were even more striking in Jamie Smith’s recent post about Lumen Fidei. His remarks suggest that the real gateway drug for Protestant converts to Roman Catholicism is the sort of comprehensive Christianity that fuels every-square-inch transformationalism. Part of what makes neo-Calvinism appealing to evangelical Protestantism is that it offers so much MORE than salvation from sin and the need to evangelize daily. It talks about redeeming the whole world and promotes the value of every legal walk of life.

But just imagine how much more comprehensive Rome looks when it has 1500 more years of history, and an institution that (in addition to opposing the French Revolution, a neo-Calvinist requirement) put the Holy in Holy Roman Empire. If you want a culturally influential Christianity, Dutch or Dutch-American Calvinism looks like a piker compared to Rome.

This may explain why Jamie was so pleased by Francis’ first encyclical:

. . . the Pope rightly argues that the standpoint of Christian faith is not opting for un-reality—to believe the Gospel is not an irrational escape from “the real.” To the contrary, it is an invitation to participate in the One in whom all reality holds together. And this is an incarnational faith: tangible, sticky, concrete, embodied, in contrast to the vague Gnosticism that too often passes itself off as “Christian.”

So if Christians practice an otherworldly faith because Christ has gone somewhere else to prepare a home for his people, or because Paul tells us to set our minds on things above, or Calvin prays that we should not become too deeply attached to earthly and perishable things, these otherworldly saints are simply gnostics or fundamentalists.

And Smith goes on to quote approvingly Francis’ depiction of faith as a common (as opposed to a Spirit-wrought) good. Here’s Francis:

Faith makes us appreciate the architecture of human relationships because it grasps their ultimate foundation and definitive destiny in God, in his love, and thus sheds light on the art of building; as such it becomes a service to the common good. Faith is truly a good for everyone; it is a common good. Its light does not simply brighten the interior of the Church, nor does it serve solely to build an eternal city in the hereafter; it helps us build our societies in such a way that they can journey towards a future of hope.

To which Smith adds:

I can’t imagine a better articulation of the faith that animates our work here at Cardus. The Reformation isn’t over, but the protest that has separated us might not be as significant as the Gospel that unites us. This Protestant is deeply grateful for the witness of Pope Francis to the light of faith for the common good.

I know it is a sign of doctrinalist, logo-centric nit-picking to compare Smith’s words to the confessional standards he subscribes. But how exactly does faith become a common good when you define it the way Heidelberg does? (Can’t you at least show that you know what the Three Forms teach and then try a form of reconciliation?)

Question 21. What is true faith?
Answer: True faith is not only a certain knowledge, whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in his word, but also an assured confidence, which the Holy Ghost works by the gospel in my heart; that not only to others, but to me also, remission of sin, everlasting righteousness and salvation, are freely given by God, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ’s merits.

And what comes of the protest that separates Protestants and Roman Catholics when Heidelberg goes on to describe the centrality of faith to the imputation of Christ’s righteousness?

Question 60. How are thou righteous before God?
Answer: Only by a true faith in Jesus Christ; so that, though my conscience accuse me, that I have grossly transgressed all the commandments of God, and kept none of them, and am still inclined to all evil; notwithstanding, God, without any merit of mine, but only of mere grace, grants and imputes to me, the perfect satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of Christ; even so, as if I never had had, nor committed any sin: yea, as if I had fully accomplished all that obedience which Christ has accomplished for me; inasmuch as I embrace such benefit with a believing heart.

I understand and even admire the desire of Christians and NPR listeners to make the world a better place (even if I also think that desire can look fairly naive or self-righteous at times). But if you do grasp the otherworldliness of Christ, Paul, and the Reformers, you do understand that the good of a common life together on planet earth is remarkably inconsequential compared to a separate existence in heaven or hell. Gussying up the goods of western civilization, the humanities, Christendom, or social and political solidarity in talk of “the permanent things” still doesn’t cross the gulf that exists between the life that believers and unbelievers share in this world and the separate worlds they will inhabit in the world to come.

(all about) My Movie Idea

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

While Alan Jacobs is speculating on a script about rival realtors in Waco, Texas, the Baylys have me thinking about a movie about a letter to Congress. Having recently re-watched Broken Flowers (can’t get enough Billy Murray these days) and remembering the fairly vivid shots of a pink envelope winding its way through the USPS’ automated sorting system that open the movie, I wonder if someone could make a similar short about this letter from evangelical scientists to Congress. Here is the opening of the letter:

Dear Speaker Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Reid, and Members of the United States Congress:

As evangelical scientists and academics, we understand climate change is real and action is urgently needed. All of God’s Creation – humans and our environment – is groaning under the weight of our uncontrolled use of fossil fuels, bringing on a warming planet, melting ice, and rising seas. The negative consequences and burdens of a changing climate will fall disproportionately on those whom Jesus called “the least of these”: the poor, vulnerable, and oppressed. Our nation has entrusted you with political power; we plead with you to lead on this issue and enact policies this year that will protect our climate and help us all to be better stewards of Creation.

It goes on for a couple more paragraphs before seven (yes, 7!) pages of signatures.

This movie, after showing the letter’s advance through USPS hands (and machines) would then follow its advance to an assistant’s desk in the Capital Building, his or her disposition of the letter, and then what? Does it go to a staffer? Does it ever make it on Boehner’s desk? Who writes a response? Does anyone? And should the movie include tense scenes of evangelical scientists fervently awaiting a mere acknowledgement of the letter’s contents?

Then again, maybe no one ever sent the letter to Congress, in which case a letter is less a communication calling for action than a political gesture. Who knows? Screenplay writer’s call.

When Churches Build Cities, Where Do the Non-Christians Live?

Published on by D. G. Hart30 Comments

Thanks to the Allies, I went to discover what Austin Stone is. It turns out it has a lot less to do with Austin, Texas than with TKNY:

The Austin Stone is a Church for the City. We’re much more than a church to attend, but a community centered on the person and mission of Jesus Christ. We’re actively working to build a great Austin, renewed and redeemed by the gospel.

It could be that Austin Stone inspired Keller and Redeemer NYC, but if I were a betting man, I’d put money on the Yankees influencing the Don’t-Mess-with-Texas-Texans.

Of course, the website reveals nothing all that shocking after two decades of TKNY. But I do have to wonder why Christians who say they want to build cities to be great don’t seem to think about Jews and Muslims and Roman Catholics, not to mention skeptics and jazz musicians, who may also be living in a particular city and also want to promote the town but not on evangelical Protestant grounds.

This is a classic case of theonomy-lite. It sounds inspiring. It may even sound hip, though urbanism is hardly cutting edge these days. But this vision has no awareness of how believers and unbelievers might live together for a common good that is not explicitly Christian.

Voting with Their Feet?

Published on by D. G. Hart161 Comments

Roman Catholic young people do not appear to be as excited by Pope Francis as certain middle-aged Protestant converts. Here are the early returns on registrations for World Youth Day (and Francis will be playing on his home court):

O Globo reported that registrations for World Youth Day were expected to be in the neighborhood of 1 million to 2 million, with participant fees covering at least 70 percent of the total estimated cost of $140 million.

Participants are being asked to pay fees ranging from $51 to $283, depending in part on whether they attend the full week of events or just the concluding vigil and Mass with the pope.

As of early July, however, only about 320,000 registrations had come in. The newspaper account said organizers had asked federal, state and city officials in Rio de Janeiro to provide $13 million in additional assistance, which they declined.

The three levels of government already committed to spending roughly $50 million in security and logistics for the weeklong event and an additional $10 million in transportation subsidies.

Counts provided by bishops’ conferences in countries that typically send large delegations confirm that registrations are below previous totals.

In Canada, for instance, the bishops have reported that 1,153 Canadians will attend the event in Rio, which is 5,000 fewer Canadians than attended the 2011 World Youth Day in Madrid and 800 below the total that traveled to Sydney in 2008.

Basilian Fr. Thomas Rosica, a noted media figure who’s coordinating the Canadian delegation to Rio, said the high cost of the event coupled with concerns about security may have played a part in the lower totals.

Rosica also said the interval of two years since the last World Youth Day was too short, calling for “a longer waiting period.”

In the United States, a bishops’ conference official told NCR that registrations for Rio number 9,500, down from 29,000 Americans who went to Madrid in 2011 and 15,000 for Sydney in 2008.

Organizers caution, however, that not everyone registers in advance, and total turnout is generally considerably above the official registration numbers.

Is this an indication that world Roman Catholic youths fall more on the Whig than the Augustinian side of the Whig-Augustian-Thomist divide?

End Times Sale

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

Crawford Gribben’s Evangelical Millenialism in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1500-2000 is available from Palgrave for 50% off.

This book offers the first complete overview of the intellectual history of one of the most significant contemporary cultural trends. In the early seventeenth century, European evangelicals recovered those expectations of an earthly golden age that had been deemed heretical by medieval and reformation theologians. Throughout early modernity, and across the spectrum of evangelical belief, these millennial expectations were deployed to mount a series of radical critiques of church and wider culture. In modernity, these expectations were appropriated by religious and cultural conservatives, who found in millennial theology the framework of their hostility to an unbelieving world and a rationale for their critical engagement with it – a critical engagement that ranged from an attempt at the wholesale reconstruction of a Christian society to an expectation of its imminent and catastrophic demise. This account guides readers into the origins, evolution, and revolutionary potential of evangelical millennialism in the trans-Atlantic world.

Here is a form to use: Evangelical Millennialism in the Trans-Atlantic World 1500-2000.

Divided and Finally Dismissed

Published on by D. G. Hart44 Comments

It looks like Jason and the Callers may be taking back the call to communion. The former is perturbed that Protestants disagree with him. It resembles a wife, who when losing an argument to her husband about a fender bender, talks about all the laundry she does. Unable to persuade us by his logic, exegesis, and historical ignorance, Jason has detected a Protestant intellectual tic:

. . . what I have observed over the past year is that this tendency to distinguish and divide is perhaps most prominent, not so much in the Reformed self-identity as in their overall polemic, exhibited especially in the way they argue against Catholics. And it doesn’t really matter what the issue under discussion actually is. It has taken me several hundred hours of discussion and debate to really put my finger on this tactic, but now that I have identified it, it has become quite predictable and obvious to spot if you know what you’re looking for.

I call it, “Divide and Dismiss.”

So when it comes to exegesis (which Jason still does not understand is what the magisterium does infallibly and so is above his pay grade), theology, and (early) church history, Reformed Protestants exhibit a preference for separateness and ghettoization.

Possibly.

Or perhaps we have brains (I know rationalism). We notice that Roman Catholicism is more than what Jason and the Callers claim it is. We notice that matters in the Vatican and beyond still need reform. We also notice that Protestantism is afflicted with a host of its own problems. But our profession does not include the notion that the church cannot err, and so we are free to notice problems on both sides of the Tiber. This may not make us superior. But it does mean we aren’t covering our eyes, like cheerleaders still going siss-boom-bah when the team is down by three touchdowns in the 4th quarter and the starting quarterback is out with a broken leg.

I understand it’s a little early for Jason to express buyer’s remorse. But his insistence that his communion is superior, more unified, and more virtuous is not an argument but an observation. For example:

The impression one gets from dialoguing with the Reformed is that there are virtually no two portions of Scripture that share the same context, no two church fathers that taught the same things, and no two Catholics from varying backgrounds that confess the same faith.

Such a hermeneutic of suspicion is to be expected from our Reformed brethren, of course, as is their desire to pit one biblical passage, or one church father, or one orthodox Catholic, against another. Division and atomization are their bread and butter, and are part and parcel of their entire worldview w-w (otherwise, how would Protestants justify their existence?). But the message I’d give to my fellow Catholics is to remind them that the knee-jerk tendency to divide and dismiss is not part of the air that we breathe, and there is no good reason why we should countenance such rationalist approaches to the biblical, historical, or ecclesiastical data, or treat this data the way higher critics do the words of Scripture.

Oh brother.

Sorry, but division and atomization is the air that all Protestants and Roman Catholics breathe post 1789. Jason would know this if he spent a little time reading history after 400 AD and looking around at the contemporary Roman Catholic scene (though I seem to recall he liked atomization and division when protesters surfaced in Seattle during the G-8 summit). Without the magistrate to enforce belief, Rome is just one more church listing in the Yellow Pages, along with the PCA and the Latter Day Saints. Meanwhile, the papacy is no more capable of making George Weigel and Sean Michael Winters agree than the PCA General Assembly is able to turn Peter Leithart into a defender of the Confession of Faith.

It is a breakthrough, though, that Jason has acknowledged that Protestants and Roman Catholics are divided. Now that he has dismissed us, we are free to pay attention to the important and cacophonous voices within Roman Catholicism.