Giving A Whole New Meaning to Church Universal

Published on by D. G. Hart187 Comments

While Jason Stellman is trying to exegete his way back to Trent, I wonder in what part of the Bible or early church fathers you would read a statement like this from Pope Francis (yesterday):

“The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must! Because he has this commandment within him. Instead, this ‘closing off’ that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war and also to what some people throughout history have conceived of: killing in the name of God. That we can kill in the name of God. And that, simply, is blasphemy. To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.”

“Instead,” the Pope continued, “the Lord has created us in His image and likeness, and has given us this commandment in the depths of our heart: do good and do not do evil”:

“The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”

Now I guess conservative Protestants are not supposed to notice affirmations like this. So far Jason and the Callers have not been as fired up about Francis as they were in the initial after glow of the Conclave. Then again, their blogs do go to sleep sometimes.

Still, how exactly do you pull tradition, the church that Christ founded, and conservative Christianity out of this? Have the Protestant converts to Rome really accepted the notion that Roman Catholicism is above liberalism, as if modernism doesn’t happen there, as if Pascendi Dominici Gregis was foisted on the Vatican by William Jennings Bryan and William Bell Riley?

Between Francis’ apparent sympathies to liberation theology and his universalism, the task of selling Rome as the conservative answer to Protestant disarray is going to be almost as hard as making a movie about Edgardo Mortara.

Is the OPC the Church Hans Kung Has Been Waiting For?

Published on by D. G. Hart24 Comments

Kung is hoping that Francis will be like his namesake and repudiate the power, wealth, and intrigue that has afflicted what he calls the “Roman system.” If the current pope follows Francis of Assisi, then he will take a path different from Innocent III:

In fact, Francis of Assisi represented the alternative to the Roman system. What would have happened if Innocent and his like had taken the Gospel seriously? Even if they had understood it spiritually rather than literally, his evangelical demands meant and still mean an immense challenge to the centralized, legalized, politicized and clericalized system of power that had taken over the cause of Christ in Rome since the 11th century.

Innocent III was probably the only pope who, because of his unusual characteristics, could have directed the church along a completely different path, and this would have saved the papacies of the 14th and 15th centuries schism and exile, and the church in the 16th century the Protestant Reformation. Obviously, this would already have meant a paradigm shift for the Catholic church in the 13th century, a shift that instead of splitting the church would have renewed it, and at the same time reconciled the churches of East and West.

But Kung wonder if the papacy can retrace its steps and take a path not taken. If it does, it will need to measure up to three standards:

Poverty: The church in the spirit of Innocent III meant a church of wealth, pomp and circumstance, acquisitiveness and financial scandal. In contrast, a church in the spirit of Francis means a church of transparent financial policies and modest frugality. A church that concerns itself above all with the poor, the weak and the marginalized. A church that does not pile up wealth and capital but instead actively fights poverty and offers its staff exemplary conditions of employment.

Humility: The church in the spirit of Innocent means a church of power and domination, bureaucracy and discrimination, repression and Inquisition. In contrast, a church in the spirit of Francis means a church of humanity, dialogue, brotherhood and sisterhood, hospitality for nonconformists; it means the unpretentious service of its leaders and social solidarity, a community that does not exclude new religious forces and ideas from the church but rather allows them to flourish.

Simplicity: The church in the spirit of Innocent means a church of dogmatic immovability, moralistic censure and legal hedging, a church of canon law regulating everything, a church of all-knowing scholastics and of fear. In contrast, a church in the spirit of Francis of Assisi means a church of good news and of joy, a theology based purely on the Gospel, a church that listens to people instead of indoctrinating from above, a church that does not only teach but one that constantly learns.

It is hard to look at the Eternal City of Rome, follow the rites and ceremonies of the Cardinals, notice the monarchical associations of the papacy, and find the attributes that Kung desires. But if you take a gander at the OPC, by no means the runt of the Reformed Protestant litter, you would find a church with little wealth (by Roman Catholic standards). As for pomp and circumstance, the selection of a moderator for General Assembly has no smoke (or mirrors unless you consider Roberts Rules ceremonial.

For simplicity the OPC does pretty well, at least if you look at the worship services of most congregations. An attachment to proper exegesis and correct doctrine still dominate liturgical and aesthetic sympathies.

For humility, some might think the OPC (the Only Pure Church or the little church with the big mouth) falls woefully short. But two out of three isn’t bad. And we don’t need our General Secretaries to change names.

When This World Elbows Its Way Past the World to Come

Published on by D. G. Hart123 Comments

In addition to reading about Turkey, I also brought along materials that have to do explicitly and implicitly with Roman Catholicism. The explicit source is David I. Kertzer’s The Kidnaping of Edgardo Mortara – the case of the Jewish boy abducted in 1858 by the Vatican that led to the 1870 collapse of the Papal States. But I also brought along some back issues of magazines and that includes several issues of First Things.

Last Friday I ran across two remarkably different statements on the relationship between the Christian faith and the world’s affairs. The first, the classic pre-Vatican 2 perspective, ran like this:

. . . this life has not been given to us so that we can use it to enjoy the pleasures of this world, pleasures that alienate us from God, that pervert the heart, that cloud our judgment, that overwhelm our will, pleasures that unfortunately simply produce agitation, rancor, competition, jealousy, affliction, and unhappiness. (Archbishop of Bologna, Christmas letter, 1858)

The second came in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis:

All men of good will . . . believe that there are energies in the free human spirit whereby man may fulfill his destiny on earth, which is to be, not God, but the image of God. All men who believe in God are agreed that He is the Master of history. Man, therefore, manifests himself as the image of God chiefly by his intelligent, confident efforts to master the course of historical events and direct it toward the common good of the peoples of earth. (John Courtney Murray’s response to Pacem in Terris, quoted by George Weigel in First Things, February 2013)

Protestants used to call the difference between these outlooks like these a contrast that separates historic Christian orthodoxy. And those differences invariably attended the church’s embrace of a nation’s mission. I have no idea how conservative Roman Catholics account for such changes in outlook — Americanism used to be the explanation. But speaking about the political order — as if the church has that task — does seem to be the precondition for forgetting that the differences between the citizens of City of God and the City of Man cannot be correlated to life in the earthly city.

Life Among the Turks

Published on by D. G. Hart8 Comments

I brought along to Turkey a chapter from John B. Adger’s memoir, My Life and Times. For those unfamiliar with the name, Adger was an Old School Presbyterian who taught ecclesiastical history and church polity at Columbia Seminary, and was in some way the John Williamson Nevin (as in high church Calvinist) of the Southern Presbyterian communion. Before embarking on his teaching career, in the 1830s Adger was a missionary in Izmir (then Smyrna) not to the Muslims but the Armenians. He also ministered to African Americans in Savannah, Georgia, in connection with Independent Presbyterian Church.

Adger’s experience in Turkey was remarkably painful and would have driven your ordinary young and restless Calvinist to Joel Osteen. Three infants died during his tenure, and his wife also almost lost her life. Adger himself might have thought his days were numbered when he contracted small pox “of the confluent kind.”

But equally notable was how freely Adger moved about the Ottoman Empire, a regime ruled by the Caliph in Constantinople. Moderns might think that Christians were not tolerated in a Muslim society and that missionaries were even less welcome. Adger never mentions problems with the Turks nor does he suggest he was there to evangelize Muslims. Here is one description of his target group:

. . . the Armenian subjects of the Sultan are represented at his court by an officer called the Armenian Patriarch. This is always a bishop, who pays a large sum into the Sultan’s treasury for his official position and political and ecclesiastical power. He sells bishoprics to reimburse himself with a large profit. Bishops must sell priesthoods to reimburse themselves with a profit, and the priests must reimburse themselves by charges on the people for their priestly functions. Great is the power of the Armenian ecclesiastics. But perhaps the real lords paramount among these people are the rich Armenians of Constantinople, who are the bankers of the Sultan and all his pashas, and therefore able to make their power felt through all the empire. (95)

This kind of autonomy and power for Christians among the Turks, of course, had its limits. When Adger needed a Christian burial ground for his two infant boys, he could not find a church cemetery because he could not find a church:

There was no Protestant church building then at Boujah, but a suitable lot had been purchased, and a chapel was about to be erected. In that lot we buried our infants in one grave alongside of the one where we had shortly before assisted in depositing the remains of the wife of the Rev. Eli Smith, missionary to Beirut. No Christian church building can be built in Turkey without a special permit from the Sultan at Constantinople. Every effort to obtain this permission failed in this case. After a delay of some months, the Protestants purchased a dwelling house that had lately been erected, which with some inside alterations, would constitute a very commodious chapel. To this the Turks would make no objection. (105)

Compared to the experience of Jews in Rome and Bologna at roughly the same time (who were confined to ghettos), the Muslims were amazingly more tolerant than the Christians (more to come). And if the Ottoman Empire could be that commodious (for a price, of course), how much more the secular Turkish Republic?

Gallipoli

Published on by D. G. Hart15 Comments

Mel Gibson enthralled female movie-viewing audiences with his big blues and his down under twang when he starred in Gallipoli (1981), a film about a pivotal battle during the Great War (we didn’t count them then). Little did I know when I first saw the movie where in the world Gallipoli was – it’s in Turkey – or that I would some day visit it (twice so far).

The Allies decided in 1915 to try to break the stalemate on the Western Front by landing forces on Gallipoli, a peninsula along the Dardanelles of strategic significance, and sending them in from the East (along with Russia’s military). The reason the Australians made a movie about the battle is that Australians and New Zealanders made up the bulk of units to attempt to land at Gallipoli, and it was their first full-fledged service as part of the British Empire’s military (as I understand it).

But thanks to poor planning and Ottoman resourcefulness, the Allies experienced a bitter defeat in one of the most brutal series of battles – 100,000 soldiers died on both sides in eight months of fighting. (One irony is that the British won the rights to name bathrooms in Turkey – rule WC!) It was a pivotal event, not only in the larger war, but also in the history of Turkey and Australia. The war gave Australians, arguably for the first time, a sense of Australian nationalism – hence the movie. And for Turkey, Gallipoli produced a military leader – Mustafa Kemal Ataturk – who would become the father of the Turkish Republic. History runs on unintended consequences.

Each year Australian and New Zealand tourists flock back to Turkey to commemorate the dead and participate in ceremonies (April 25) that honor this war. The Turks welcome the Aussies and the Aussies in turn honor the Turks. The reason for the latter has something to do with the exceptional maintenance provided to the military cemeteries that hold the deceased Australian and New Zealand soldiers (some of whom could not be buried until after Armistice). Like many military cemeteries, the neat rows of white grave markers, surrounded by closely cut grass and war monuments of various kinds, are moving in themselves.

But the epitaphs we read yesterday were as touching as they were puzzling. They were curious, partly because the biblical references were small compared to what someone might expect from British colonial culture of the Victorian era. We did see one – had to be a Presbyterian – which spoke of justification by faith and peace with God. Another one invoked the second petition of the Lord’s prayer fittingly. But the one that was the most moving was also the one devoid of religion (an impossibility I know for the neo-Calvinist). It read “my only darling boy.”

Maybe a creative grad student has already done this, but a dissertation on gravestone epitaphs might be a useful way to measure biblical literacy and religious conviction. If the student compared wars, he or she might find ascending or descending rates of religiosity.

Another Coincidence?

Published on by D. G. Hart14 Comments

Islamic Calvinism.

Religion in Kayseri plays a central part in people’s lives. The city has a traditional reputation; the only place to get a drink is at the international hotel. But where in the past in Turkey business was dominated by the country’s secular elite, which firmly kept religion out of the boardroom, in Kayseri it has a central role.

And it seems to be a winning combination. Kayseri is booming. It holds the world record for the number of factories opening in a day – 190. The city boasts 50 out of 500 of the wealthiest people in Turkey.

But you would use never guess it walking on the streets of the city. There are few expensive cars, as ostentatious behaviour is frowned upon. Kayseri does have a rather puritanical feel to it. But that shouldn’t be a surprise, according Gerald Gnaus of the European Stability Initiative (ESI).

Gnaus recently published a report which draws a parallel with the 19th century Calvinists. Gnaus argues Kayseri buries the widely held belief that Islam and capitalism are incompatible.

“Many people in Western Europe — very serious thinkers too — have held that Islam is a fatalistic religion and that it suits a trading economy but not an industrial economy,” Gnaus says. “What we found in Kayseri is that on the contrary, the kind of characteristic traits that Max Weber attributed to the Calvinists – very hard working, very sober, not given to ostentatious displays of wealth – are the characteristic traits you find in businessmen in Kayseri.”

The term “Islamic Calvinism” caused a bit of a stir in Turkey, being angrily denounced by some in the Islamic media. But in Kayseri, most seemed quite happy with the label.

Mustafa Boydak is the head of the Kayseri chamber of commerce. He also runs one of the largest companies in the city Boydak. He also sees parallels with the 19th century puritans:

“In Calvinism there is this understanding that work is a form of worship, and Kayseri people share that understanding. Islam also teaches us to be tolerant, and open to new ideas, which is very important in business, and to people living here. But Christianity shares this ideal, and the influence of Christianity here is important. For centuries many Christian Greeks and Armenians lived here and were very involved in business, and this too has shaped people’s ideals.”

I’m not sure about the tolerance bit, though Mustafa Akyol makes as good a 2k case for Islam as any Western 2ker does for Calvinism. But when it comes to work ethic, the Turks would put many residents of Massachusetts to shame.

Turkey Bound

Published on by D. G. Hart12 Comments

Was it a sign? Harmonic convergence? Coincidence? Providence? While dressing for church yesterday, I was listening to the local Hillsdale radio station which has a segment of religious broadcasting before devoting several hours to big band hits. Why station managers deem Frank Sinatra and 1940s music as appropriate formats for the Lord’s Day is as mysterious as my needing background sounds on the Sabbath. (My explanation is that I am a product of Jay and Ellen Hart who always had the radio on. Their station of choice was Family Radio. I can only listen to it through streaming audio. The transistor radio in the bathroom only receives the Hillsdale station.)

Anyhow, the song that played yesterday, the day before we leave for Turkey, was “Istanbul (Not Constantinople).” It is a 1953 swing-style song, with lyrics by Jimmy Kennedy and music by Nat Simon. The lyrics comically refer to the official 1930 renaming of the city of Constantinople to Istanbul. The song was originally recorded by the Canadian group The Four Lads on August 12, 1953. This recording was released by Columbia Records and reached the Billboard magazine charts on October 24, 1953, and it peaked at #10. It was the group’s first gold record. Another tidbit from Wikipedia: The Duke’s Men of Yale, an all-male a cappella group at Yale University, perform the song at the end of most of their concerts. The song has been in the repertoire of the Duke’s Men since 1953.

Here are the lyrics.

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Now it’s Turkish delight on a moonlit night
(Oh) every gal in Constantinople
(Oh) lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople
(Oh) so if you’ve a date in Constantinople
(Oh) she’ll be waiting in Istanbul

Even old New York
Was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can’t say
People just liked it better that way

So take me back to Constantinople
No, you can’t go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks’

Doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo / ohhhhhhh ohh ohh ohh
Doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo / ohhhhhh ohh ohh ohh
Doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo / ohhhh ohh ohh ohh ohhh
Istanbul (Istanbul)
Doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo / ohhhhhhh ohh ohh ohh
Doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo / ohhhhhhh ohh ohh ohh
Doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo / ohhhh ohh ohh ohh ohhh
Istanbul (Istanbul)

Even old New York
Was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can’t say
People just liked it better that way

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks’

Doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo

So take me back to Constantinople
No, you can’t go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks’

Istanbul

You can listen here.

In further preparation for travel to Istanbul (not Constinople) we watched The Edge of Heaven last night after the evening service. It is a very good movie about mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and the relationships between the Turks and Germans. Lots of Istanbul (and Bremen and Hamburg).

Did Evangelical or Liberal Protestants Have a Better Week?

Published on by D. G. Hart52 Comments

First came the news of Mark Sanford’s victory in South Carolina’s First District to Congress. For anyone who remembers Sanford’s well publicized marital infidelity, it must have struck many observers as strange that evangelical Protestants — I hear South Carolina is thick with them — would return Sanford to public office. But they also had no problem with Newt Gingrich in the 2012 Republican presidential primaries:

This wasn’t the first time the Republican voters of South Carolina put fidelity to party over fidelity to fidelity. In the 2012 Republican primary, voters were reminded of Newt Gingrich’s admitted adultery and three marriages. His second wife spoke out just days before the vote. Gingrich won by 12.5 percentage points over the morally pure Mitt Romney. He won 45 percent of the evangelical vote, a group that has at times shown more than a passing interest in the morality of public officials. He won 46 percent of those who said that the religious beliefs of a candidate were very or somewhat important.

South Carolina conservatives may still say a candidate’s sins matter, but they aren’t voting that way. In fact, if you weren’t privy to the state’s strong social conservative history, you could almost mistake South Carolinians for city folk—people who vote for experience, policy, and political leanings and show a sophisticate’s relativism toward personal moral failings. These days, South Carolinians seem almost Parisian when they enter the voting booth.

Ross Douthat is having none of Sanford’s theological interpretation of his victory, nor is the columnist optimistic about what this election means for “family values,” once the brand of evangelical Protestant politics:

I’m not particularly surprised by that outcome: Sanford was the G.O.P. candidate in a conservative district, and voting on party rather than character is usually the path of least resistance for partisans on both sides. But the fact that South Carolina Republicans took that path, and made his swift and shameless comeback a success, is still a useful indicator of where the energy is on the right — and it emphatically isn’t with people who see the decline of marriage as a bigger issue for conservatism and America than the precise balance of power in the House of Representatives. Again, the preference among conservatives is obviously for stable marriages and family values and so forth — for the example set by the figures McArdle lists, rather than for Sanford-style shenanigans. But there apparently isn’t enough passion behind that preference at the moment to induce Republican voters to sacrifice even a single House seat on its behalf.

At the same time, this was not a complete win-win for evangelicals since it seems that Sanford himself is an Episcopalian (which suggests that evangelical Protestants are truly ecumenical and likely clueless when they vote according to their w-w, that is, if the lines between evangelicals and mainline Protestants still matter).

And then came yesterday’s news about Martha Mullen, the Virginia Methodist who found a place for Tamerlan Tsarnaev to be buried. When I heard her interview on NPR I could not believe — it moved me to tears (Edwardseans should be happy) — how Christian her motivation (but I’m not an Edwardsean and can’t see her heart) was. Here’s part of the transcript:

CORNISH: Now, you took it upon yourself to find a cemetery that would bury his body, and you don’t have a connection to his family, so why get involved?

MULLEN: Well, I was listening to NPR and I heard the story ongoing that he was unable to be buried and that people are protesting him. And it made me think of Jesus’ words: Love your enemies. I felt that, also, he was being maligned probably because he was Muslim.

And Jesus tells us to – in the parable of the Good Samaritan – to love your neighbor as yourself. And your neighbor is not just someone you belong with but someone who is alien to you. That was the biggest motivation, is that, you know, if I’m going to live my faith, then I’m going to do that which is uncomfortable and not necessarily that’s what comfortable. . . .

CORNISH: Martha, you heard about the story because of the protests. And did you have concerns about making this move that you would become the target of protests or people would have a real problem with what you were doing?

MULLEN: Well, I thought about that, but there’s a line in the Scripture that says whether we live or whether we die, we’re the Lord’s. And I feel like – I don’t think anything really horrible is going to happen to me. I think people are probably going to be upset and irritated and disagree with what this interfaith group has decided to go forward with, but I feel like it was the right thing and it’s important to be true to the principle of your faith.

Now words like these may be cheap, and Jesus’ words are certainly not obscure. But that it took a mainline Methodist to undertake what strikes me strikes me as something so obviously right was amazing, especially considering how many Americans (including Protestants of all kinds) were opposed to letting this terrorist be returned to dust. We do not refuse to bury persons our law enforcement system sentences to execution. So why we should try to prevent Tamerlan Tsarnaev from being buried, or even be suspicious of Martha Mullen or the owners of the cemetery that received the body, is dumbfounding. I know I may be naive about Islam thanks to a trip to Turkey, which is hardly the most representative of Muslim societies. But if conservative Presbyterians think that Paul Hill is not representative of strict Reformed Protestantism, is it not possible for Americans to imagine that Tamerlan Tsarnaev is not your average Muslim?

Then again, the United States has a tradition of moralism that insists, one strike and you’re in hell. The Boston bombings were truly heinous. But a civilized (even Christian) society refuses to abandon conventions like burial of dead bodies even for murderers. The lesson of Joe Paterno, who simply did not do enough to turn in a pederast and for that misdeed lost a chance to be considered one of the greatest coaches of all time, is a reminder of that moral standard. Who indeed can stand in that great day?

This Guy Needs His Own Blog – Part 2 (Gamble vs. Lee)

Published on by D. G. Hart791 Comments

Brian Lee has some very helpful and wise reflections on his decision to open Congress in prayer. I call it a capitulation to the nation’s civil religion. I believe this is fair even though it hurts to say it because Brian is a good friend and a Reformed pastor whom I respect. It is fair because (I won’t give reasons for befriending Brian) civil religion is precisely the theme by which Brian frames his post-prayer considerations:

Civil religion is thick in America. “God” is on our money, and in the Pledge of Allegiance, not to mention in the Declaration of Independence. We regularly ask him to bless America at ball games. And every session of the U.S. House and Senate opens with a prayer.

Recently the question of civil religion became very concrete for me. I was asked, as a pastor in Washington, D.C., to serve as guest chaplain for the U.S. House of Representatives, and open that body with prayer. The question of “Whether and what sort of civil religion shall we have in America?” quickly became “Should I pray in the House of Representatives? If so, how?”

But Brian went ahead and prayed even though he remains torn about whether he should have prayed. The whole piece is worth reading but I highlight the best reason he gives for not praying (even though he did — it’s confusing):

2) The difference between Congress and church.

Before you file this under “most obvious argument ever,” take a moment to consider exactly what the essential difference is. A church is a particular worshiping community, a creedal body, because it prays to a particular God. When I pray publicly in church, I therefore pray in the first person plural. That is, I pray in common and on behalf of every member of that community. While guests are welcome to observe and join in, there is no presumption they must do so. In doing so I presume for all to whom we are praying, and how we are praying, and why we expect our prayers to be answered.

To whatever degree “Christian” may describe America, we are quite obviously not a creedal nation. Membership in Congress is explicitly not subject to a religious test; it is in this sense an anti-creedal body. It is therefore impossible for me to pray before Congress as I pray in church, on behalf of the assembled body, for Congress does not have an agreed-upon God. However, while I may not be able to pray on behalf of people who don’t share my faith, I can certainly pray for them. In this way, I occasionally pray for sick unbelievers when I’m invited to visit them in the hospital.

Christians must not presume false unity within a pluralistic group by praying in the first person plural on their behalf. If we do pray in such settings, we must pray as individuals, to a particular God, for the group. And indeed, this seems to me most consistent with the pluralistic character of our polity, that we retain our religious distinctiveness even as we enter the public square, instead of pretending as though there is none.

That difference and the pervasiveness of civil religion would have been enough for me (feeling all full of my abstract self) to decline. Another reason is one that Richard Gamble highlights in his book, In Search of a City on a Hill. That is, American Christians (especially conservative ones) have been way too silent about the state taking over Christian language and ideas. Gamble writes:

Today, 50 years after the city on a hill first appeared in modern political rhetoric and nearly 400 years since John Winthrop shepherded his flock to New England’s shores, Americans are left with a secularized metaphor, politicized by the Left and the Right and nearing the point of exhaustion. The metaphor has been forced to carry an impossible load of nationalist, populist and collectivist aspirations. Americans have inherited two political cities looming so large in the media, the political culture and even the church, that together they have eclipsed the historical Winthrop and the biblical Jesus. The biblical metaphor, appropriated by the Puritans and reinvented by modern Democrats and Republicans, has been transformed so successfully into a national myth that few can see or hear these words without all of their modern political meaning attached. Even many Christians, how might be expected to guard their property more vigilantly, argue over which national values the politicized city should stand for and miss the fact that they have lost their metaphor. They argue over which party ought to build the city, over whether Kennedy’s or Reagan’s vision best defines the city, rarely stopping to consider whether Jesus ever had America in mind in the Sermon on the Mount. Such is the power of civil religion in twenty-first century America. Even if Americans manage to convince themselves, in spite of the evidence, that John Winthrop envisioned a glorious future for American ideals and institutions, can they really convince themselves that Jesus intended the United States to take up his disciples’ calling as a city on a hill? Distracted by a contest between two early political cities, Americans forget that the original city on a hill was neither Democrat or Republican. It was not even American. (178-79)

In other words, most of the critics of 2k who fault the notion of two kingdoms for secularizing politics, or culture, or child rearing, wind up secularizing Christianity by making it serve ends that are common (and even profane). At least 2kers are up front about the secular and try to preserve the uniqueness of Christianity. The integralists, the ones who want to see all of life whole with everything Christian, dumb Christianity down.

And it is for the reason that civil religion is so hard wired in American political discourse that I would have preferred that Brian Lee decline the invitation to pray before Congress. If he could have editorialized before praying, and explained that he was praying only as a minister, praying for (not with) Congress members, then perhaps it would have been useful. But as it is I fear that the huge appetite of American civil religion will swallow up his good prayer and thoughtful post-prayer reflections.

The Incomparable Mencken

Published on by D. G. Hart30 Comments

As part of my preparation to submit a proposal for a religious biography of H. L. Mencken, I ran across a back issue of Menckeniana which had Jonathan Yardley‘s talk at the 2010 Mencken Day. The book critic for the Washington Post, here is how Yardley described his first encounter with Mencken:

I was absolutely bowled over. The power, wit, and originality of Mencken’s prose seized me and shook me to within an inch of my life.

Yardley would eventually pitch a biography of Mencken but could not complete the project. In turn he encouraged Terry Teachout to pick up the task. Yardley concedes that Teachout wrote a better book than he could have. One indication may be this astute observation by Teachout about Mencken’s style and its journalistic genesis:

It is, in short, a triumph of style. The fact that this triumph was the work of a common newspaperman has long served to obscure its singularity, especially among academic critics. “The smell of the city room,” Charles Angoff wrote in 1938, “was in everything he put between book covers.” But what Angoff meant as deadly criticism is in fact central to Mencken’s appeal. It was the discipline of daily journalism that freed him from the clutches of the genteel tradition. The city room was for Mencken what Europe was for Henry James: the great good place where he became himself.

And what would a post on Mencken be without a jolt of that prose? Here is Mencken on the joys of newspaper work when he started to write:

I believed then, and still believe today, that it was the maddest, gladdest, damndest existence ever enjoyed by mortal youth. The illusion that swathes and bedizens journalism, bringing in its endless squads of recruits, was still full upon me, and I had yet to taste the sharp teeth of responsibility. Life was arduous, but it was gay and carefree. The days chased one another like kittens chasing their tails.