2K Reinforcement

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Richard Gamble, my colleague in history and fellow elder in the OPC church plant in Hillsdale, has a new book, In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an American Myth. It is a deconstruction of the Puritan and American abuse of the biblical metaphor when applied to either Massachusetts Bay or the United States. Here’s a tantalizing excerpt (thanks to our friends at The Imaginative Conservative):

Whether Jesus had in view only his chosen disciples, his followers in general, or the universal Church he promised to build, he clearly did not address the metaphors of salt, light, and city to the Roman Empire of his day. He could have done so. Others living during roughly the same era did just that. A century earlier, the Roman statesman Cicero combined two of these three images when he warned his fellow Senators at the time of Catiline’s conspiracy that he “seem[ed] to see this city, the light of the whole world and the fortress of all the nations, suddenly involved in one general conflagration.” Centuries earlier, the Athenian general and statesman Pericles had praised his city as a model to all the Greeks. Jesus, in contrast, gave these metaphors to his Church and not to an earthly kingdom. At some point in history—we will never know when—someone first applied the city metaphor to something or someone other than Jesus’ disciples, to something or someone outside the boundaries of the Christian church. That may not have happened for many centuries. It may not have happened first and only in America. But along the way it became commonplace to talk about America as the embodiment of Jesus’ hilltop city.

It is not natural or inevitable that America should have been given this sacred identity. The path from first-century Palestine to twenty-first century America is not an obvious one. Nor is the path from a sermon about life in the Kingdom of God to blogs about national destiny. Along that path, individual Americans did something to Jesus’ metaphor that changed it. Gradually or abruptly, intentionally or not, they helped remake the “city on a hill” from “a metaphor into a myth,” to borrow a phrase from historian Michael McGiffert. Even if we cannot pinpoint the exact moment of transformation, we will see in the following pages that at one time Americans chiefly used the “city on a hill” to describe something transcendent and theological, and then at a later time chiefly to describe something earthly and political. The transition required nothing less than the unmaking of a biblical metaphor and the making of a national myth.

Why Does Complementarian Rhyme with Egalitarian?

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A little while back Carl Trueman pushed back on the empasis by some gospel co-allies on complementarianism. Carl concluded this way:

This is not the only awkward question one might ask: for example, which is more unacceptable to a Baptist – a woman preaching credobaptism or a man preaching paedobaptism? But that is for another day. In the meantime, do not misunderstand me: I do write as a convinced complementarian and a member of a church where no elders or deacons are – or can be — women, though none of them are – or can be – Lutherans, Baptists or Dispensationalists either. It is thus not complementarianism in itself to which I object; I am simply not sure why it is such a big issue in organisations whose stated purpose is basic co-operation for the propagation of the gospel and where other matters of more historic, theological and ecclesiastical moment are routinely set aside. If you want simply to unite around the gospel, then why not simply unite around the gospel? Because as soon as you decide that issues such as baptism are not part of your centre-bounded set but complementarianism is, you will find yourself vulnerable to criticism — from both right and left — that you are allowing a little bit of the culture war or your own pet concerns and tastes to intrude into what you deem to be the most basic biblical priorities.

This seemed smart then and still seems so. My only quibble is with the word “complementarian” itself. Some say it is like the Trinity, a concept derived from Scripture but not actually used. Well, the same goes for “hierarchical” or “patriarchal.” Those are words that are much more likely to be derived from biblical teaching about society but are apparently offensive to gospel co-allies who don’t want to look odd to the watching world. The hierarchies assumed in Scripture, wives submit to husbands, slaves to masters, and believers to emperors, are hardly the social arrangements we take for granted in the United States after the democratic revolution inaugurated by Andrew Jackson. But they do resemble the ones that the Reformers, Puritans, and early Presbyterians took for granted. Just think of the language of “superiors, inferiors, and equals” from the Shorter Catechism’s discussion of the fifth commandment.

The logic of hierarchy and patriarchy is not something that I am going to defend, myself. The little missus and I have reached a level of concord that most observers would call an egalitarian arrangement. I have no stones to through from the windows of my glass house. I do have the shield of two-kingdom theology, though, which allows me to have my cake (egalitarianism of a kind at home) and eat it too (hierarchicalism and patriarchy of a kind in the church).

Still, I do think the Gospel Coalition’s rallying behind complementarianism is troubling. It resembles the version of Calvinism that traffics among the young and restless — lots of talk of divine sovereignty, not so much about limited atonement. After all, that biblical teaching and those Reformed creeds can sound reactionary to modern ears and we don’t ever want to sound extreme — as if believing in a God-man who died and rose again and will come again is moderate.

What is particularly troubling about the Complementarian w-w is what it seems to do to the church. For instance, in Mary Kassian’s “Complementarianism for Dummies,” she writes that complementarians don’t want to be traditional (which is surprisingly close to not wanting to be conservative):

In our name-the-concept meeting, someone mentioned the word “traditionalism,” since our position is what Christians have traditionally believed. But that was quickly nixed. The word “traditionalism” smacks of “tradition.” Complementarians believe that the Bible’s principles supersede tradition. They can be applied in every time and culture. June Cleaver is a traditional, American, TV stereotype. She is not the complementarian ideal. Period. (And exclamation mark!) Culture has changed. What complementarity looks like now is different than what it looked like 60 or 70 years ago. So throw out the cookie-cutter stereotype. It does not apply.

Well, if the culture has changed, shouldn’t the church? And if the culture now puts women into roles of authority, why shouldn’t the church also do so? In fact, the Gospel Coalition recently asked two women to exegete and interpret Scripture for its general (including male) audience. I am personally a great affirmer of the idea that non-ordained women can do whatever non-ordained men can do. But for an organization with ecclesial ambitions, allowing women to teach the Bible seems to put TGC on the road to women’s ordination (which is where some think their star allies are walking).

To come back to Carl’s point, if complementarianism lacks the deal breaker significance of the gospel, so too does women’s ordination. At the same time, the lesson of communions like the Christian Reformed Church is that distinguishing peripheral matters from central ones is not so easy. The ordination of women was not the line in the sand for all conservatives in the CRC. But it was indicative of a general unease in the denomination regarding teachings and practices that had been part and parcel of the church’s Reformed identity but now looked burdensome after a move out of immigrant quarters into suburbia. It is one thing to be prophetic about the environment. It’s another altogether to be so about relations between men and women.

So while complementarianism is not as big a deal as the gospel, the way you treat complementarianism may be indicative of how big the deals you are willing to make.

P.S. I wonder if Keller and Piper really do agree on complementarlianism, especially when it applies to the church and to marriage. This video has a certain poignancy to it that makes me wonder if the folks at Redeemer Church would invite Piper to lead a seminar on women’s role in the church.

If You Can Put A Woman in the Pulpit, You Can Self-Serve the Lord's Supper on the Moon

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Thanks to Joe Carter comes a link to the news story about Buzz Aldrin’s observance of the Lord’s Supper (by himself no less) on the moon. Because NASA was receiving flack from Madalyn Murray O’Hair for the astronauts on Apollo 8 reading from Genesis, the federal authorities decided to let Aldrin commune on his own without a radio broadcast of the event.

But the Presbyterian Church that supplied Aldrin with elements and utensils has not kept the event silent:

. . . at Webster Presbyterian church – the spiritual home of many astronauts – Aldrin’s communion service is still celebrated every July, known as Lunar Communion Sunday. Pastor Helen DeLeon told me how they replay the tape of Aldrin on the moon and recite Psalm eight, which he had quoted on his return trip to Earth (“… what is man that thou art mindful of him”). The church still holds the chalice that Aldrin brought back with him. Judy Allton, a geologist and historian of Webster Presbyterian church, produced a paper, presented at a Nasa conference, arguing that communion could be an essential part of future manned space travel. She claims that rituals such as Aldrin’s communion “reinforce the homelink”.

Perhaps if the PCUSA congregation (was it PCUS or UPCUSA then?) had had the sense to see the problem with private observances of the Supper, they might have also detected the anomalies of ordaining a woman. I do wonder if Christian readers of this story will be more inclined to see this as evidence of secular government run amuk than an instance of liberal Christianity.

(Will this get me any blog-cred with the Baylys? I’m not holding my 2k breath.)

What Makes the Religious Right Different from Political Islam?

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I (all about me) will be in Chattanooga this week to speak at the University of Tennessee in the LeRoy Martin Distinguished Lecturer Series. I will be drawing on recent reflections about Islam and Turkey to consider the assets and liabilities of Christian political engagement in the United States. Here is the description from the Philosophy and Religion Department, which is hosting the event:

D.G. Hart’s comparison of Political Islam to Christian activists in the United States is a provocative and even inflammatory juxtaposition. Aside from obvious and significant differences between political activism and the use of violence, conservative Muslims and evangelical Protestants do register significant objections to secular understandings of society and the state. They also seek to have secular governments recognize, if not implement, the morality taught in sacred texts. In sum, both groups are raising important questions about the secular politics and whether efforts to bracket religion actually end up imposing a secular version of morality on citizens. And yet, some political observers in the United States do not find the Religious Right to be as threatening as political Islam. On the other hand, other commentators see no difference because all politically motivated religious groups are at odds with the norms of liberal democracy. These considerations raise important questions about whether Christianity is more compatible than Islam with liberal democratic societies, and whether secular constructions of public life owe their existence the developments of Christianity in the West. D. G. Hart will explore these questions in the light of his recent book From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism (Eerdmans, 2011).

The event is scheduled for Thursday, September 27, 2012, Thursday, September 27, 2012 at 5:00 pm in the University Center’s Raccoon Mountain Room (269). The public is welcome. Rotten tomatoes are not.

The Dog House or Court Room Paradigm

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Many thanks to Bryan Cross for introducing me to the wonders of paradigms. They continue to explain differences between Rome and Protestants. Jason Stellman reminds me of paradigmatic analysis’ benefits in a recent post on the place of good works in the Christian’s life. He invokes Chesterton to this end:

It is quite popular among many Christians to insist that any works done by believers, even if they are Spirit-wrought, cannot contribute to our receiving our eternal inheritance, for if they did, we would be robbing God of the glory due him for our redemption from sin and death. Chesterton rightly rejected this inverse porportionality between God’s work and ours, as though God’s glory were a zero-sum game according to which anything we contribute necessarily diminishes his divine contribution. Rather, he insisted, the key to asceticism (which comes from the word denoting the practice of an athlete for his sport) is the paradox that the man who knows he can never repay what he owes will be forever trying, and “always throwing things away into a bottomless pit of unfathomable thanks.”

In a word, the key to asceticism is love.

Chesterton illustrates his point by considering the romantic love between a man and a woman. If an alien culture were to study us, they might conclude that women are the most harsh and implacable of creatures since they demand tribute in the form of flowers, or exceedingly greedy for demanding a sacrifice of pure gold in the form of a ring. What such an assessment obviously fails to see is that, for the man, the love of the woman cannot be earned or deserved, and this, ironically, is why he will be forever attempting to do so.

When it comes to our relationship with God, it is equally wrong (indeed infinitely more so) to think that we by our acts of love and sacrifice can somehow buy his favors or earn his eternal smile. But this does not preclude our good works. In fact, our own asceticism and love are conditions, but only in a nuanced sense. They are not conditions in a quid pro quo, I’ll-scratch-your-back-since-you-scratched-mine kind of way, but rather they are the wondrous and mysterious conditions attached to a wondrous and mysterious gospel.

But again, what is missing from Roman Catholic or would-be Roman Catholic tributes to charity and agape is that nagging sense of sin that sent Luther for another look at the Bible. What if the relationship between the a person and God is not that between a man wooing a woman, nor even a husband in his wife’s dog house for forgetting to bring home the milk that the kids need for breakfast, but a husband who has had an adulterous affair and now facing a divorce attorney?

That would seem to be the human predicament — one not of finding God’s favor but of facing his wrath and curse for violating his law. Even Rome acknowledges this when it teaches that some people can’t go to heaven without stopping first in purgatory. In fact, it is odd that Rome would seem to teach that it is possible to please God (with the right amount of grace), that all sorts of mechanisms are available to assist believers in this endeavor, not to mention the treasury of merits, and then all of this is not enough to overcome a blight which requires further purging somewhere between heaven and hell.

So if Chesterton were to think about the relationship between sinners and God as one between spouses estranged by unfaithfulness — a biblical image if Hosea is to be believed — I wonder if he might be more interested in a quid pro quo arrangement. How about one in which a savior takes away sin in such a way that the betrayed wife now regards her unfaithful husband as she did on wedding day?

The Man who Made John Facenda and Frozen Tundra Famous

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I don’t know how the news of Steve Sabol’s death is traveling outside Philadelphia where chatter on sports-talk radio this morning was all about Sabol’s work in taking the National Football League from a sport like professional hockey into the prime-time attraction that it is today. But word of his death did register with me since Sabol was one of my few brushes with greatness.

Back in my junior year at Woodrow Wilson High, one of my history teachers, obviously looking for a day off without having to call in sick, had Sabol come to campus and speak to various classes. At the time NFL Films was still a relatively new venture, but it was largely responsible for that collection of highlight footage that ESPN would take over. It is an indication of how small-time the effort was that Sabol would mix with ne’er do well youths in Lower Bucks County. But by mythologizing the sport — Sabol played football at Colorado State while majoring in art history — he helped turn the NFL into the corporate behemoth it now is. I wonder if he had regrets.

Fast forward five years. During my junior and senior years at Temple, while studying film — does “the cinema” sound less dilettantish? — I worked for Steve Sabol. At their center city facility in Philadelphia, I mixed chemicals for the film processors between midnight and 8:00 so that the writers and editors could prepare those highlight reels that Howard Cosell announced. Of course, the real voice of NFL Films was John Facenda, the television news anchor for Channel 10 in Philadelphia. Later Sabol would use other Philadelphia voices, like Harry Kalas.

Segments from old soundtracks prompted me to buy one of the cd’s with the remarkably good music that turned football into art. (If readers want proof that my better half doesn’t read Old Life, admission of on-line purchases has to be it.) Folks born after 1970 can likely not imagine a time when professional football was almost as beautiful as it was modest. The irony is that Steve Sabol may have been so accomplished at his craft that he helped turn the NFL into something almost unwatchable (not to mention those vexing violations of the Lord’s Day).

John T., Philip B., and D.G.

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I am (all about me) a pretty big fan of Julie and Julia. For one thing, it’s a movie about food and I like to eat. Second, it’s about cooking and I like to cook because I like to eat. For another, it features Meryl Streep as Julia Child, which is a remarkable performance. How many actors have played such various roles?

My affection for the movie has inspired thoughts about a daily blog about one of my different responsibilities. For those who haven’t seen the movie, Julie decides to cook through the all the recipes of (I believe) Mastering the Art of French Cooking. And she blogs virtually daily about the trials and successes of this marathon.

This premise has made me think about blogging my way through Robert Murray McCheyne’s schedule to read the Bible in one year, not just the edification that accompanies reading the word, but also the challenges to schedules, the odd juxtaposition of texts and life’s circumstances, and the failed days which require reading 30 chapters in one weekend before the guests arrive. Another thought is to blog about talk-show radio, to follow the topics and screeds that govern sports-talk shows, Rush Limbaugh, and Phil Hendrie over the course of one year and see what that reveals about the American people.

One other possibility is to blog about the writing of a book, from the stage of drafting a proposal for a contract, through the ups and downs of research and writing, to the soul-enslaving chore of revising and editing. The problem with this idea is that it would give an editor too much information about whether the author is goofing off. It would also give future readers a chance to see the real flaws in the book — such as that point when you cannot nail down the argument but decide on a strategy that let’s you fudge it. If you let on that you didn’t have time to go to the archives for a particular section of the book, the way that Julie admitted she overcooked the beouf bourgignon, then your editor is likely going to make you go to the archives, thus delaying the book and prolonging the blog for another year.

All of this is a long-winded way of mentioning that I turned in what I believe to be the final manuscript for Calvinism: A Global History, which if production schedules go well and if the Lord tarries, should be published next spring by Yale University Press. I have been working on this for almost five years — sometimes in fits and starts — but for the last eighteen months in a concerted way, and it is a great relief to have the manuscript “in the can.” This also means that I have been communing for the last five years in various ways with John T. McNeill, author of The History and Character of Calvinism (1954), and Philip Benedict, whose book Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (2002), broke the mold for studies of Reformed Protestantism. My book is somewhere in between McNeill’s and Benedict’s. Like the former, mine tries to cover the entire range of Reformed communions in various settings since the sixteenth century. Like Benedict, I look at the institutional, political and social history of Calvinism but extend his narrative (in a much less comprehensive way) beyond 1700, where his book stops.

So far, I don’t think I have revealed anything that I haven’t already written for my editor or readers. Nor do I think I have exposed potential weaknesses for reviewers ready to pounce. And to give readers an additional peek into the book, I include an excerpt from the introduction:

Although Calvinism was flagging, Froude, Kuyper, and Beattie were not simply overcompensating with their praise for Reformed Protestantism. Various students of modern societies in the West, with no particular stake in the survival of Calvinism, made similar claims about the faith’s political and economic contributions. Alexis de Tocqueville had observed during his visit to the United States that representative government was the fruit of English Calvinism’s seed. In New England among the Puritans, he wrote, “Democracy more perfect than any of which antiquity had dared to dream sprang full-grown and fully armed from the midst of the old feudal society.” George Bancroft in his History of the United States of America asserted that “the fanatic for Calvinism was a fanatic for liberty, for in the moral warfare for freedom, his creed was a part of his army, and his most faithful ally in the battle.” Positive appraisals of Calvinism as a generator of a better world were not simply the product of nineteenth-century amateur intellectuals. Max Weber’s argument about the influence of Calvinism on economic productivity became a staple in the analysis of capitalism. Several decades later, Robert K. Merton extended Weber’s analysis to show that Calvinism was decisive in the English scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. These assessments of Calvinism reveal that Froude, Kuyper and Beattie were not delusional. As much as they hoped to inspire, they also employed arguments that many non-Calvinists would have found plausible.

As natural as global assessments have come to students of Calvinism, this book despite its title, Calvinism: A Global History, takes a different outlook. Instead of exploring Calvinism’s contribution to the workings of the modern world, this study takes a modest approach. It examines how a variety of western Christianity that started in opposition to Rome in obscure small cities in central Europe eventually distinguished itself from other forms of Protestantism and established institutional outlets not only across Europe but also in North and South America, Africa, Australia, and Asia. Too much scholarship during the last century has exposed the overdrawn and sometimes faulty analysis of earlier assessments of Calvinism. What is needed now is less an account of Calvinism’s role in the forces of globalization and more a narrative of how Calvinism became a global faith. Reformed Protestantism did indeed circumnavigate the planet. But it did so not by underwriting or inspiring the West’s political and economic forces. Calvinism spread around the globe through unlikely historical developments that perhaps only the sovereign God whom Reformed Protestants worshiped could pretend to control. This book is about how Calvinism became a global faith. As it is, the how of Calvinism’s expansion is key to understanding why.

Not All About Me (sort of)

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I will be speaking tomorrow at the Front Porch Republic conference at Hope College. Here are a few specifics:

Registration is now open for our Second Annual Conference to be held on September 15. This time we will be in Holland, MI on the beautiful campus of Hope College. We’ve got a stellar line-up of speakers including Bill Kauffman, Mary Berry Smith, Patrick Deneen, Jason Peters, Richard Gamble, William Schambra, Kate Dalton, D.G. Hart, Jeff Polet, Matt Bonzo, Authur Verslius, and a keynote address by Eric Jacobsen, author of the New Urbanist book, Sidewalks in the Kingdom.

Cost is $30 for the day, $15 for students. Lunch is included. Porchers in the mid-west, this is your chance. There will be plenty of time for discussion during the day, and we are making arrangements for a post-conference gathering at a local establishment where the conversation can continue. We are looking forward to a great event, and we hope to see you there.

For location and other matters, go here:

And here is the conference schedule:

Panel 1: Politics and Economics 9:15-10:30

Jeff Polet, Hope College
Patrick Deneen, University of Notre Dame
Richard Gamble, Hillsdale College

Panel 2: Local Culture 10:45-12:00

Bill Kauffman, author of Ain’t My America
William Schambra, Hudson Institute
Mark T. Mitchell, Patrick Henry College

Lunch: 12:15-1:00

Keynote Address: Eric Jacobsen, author of The Space Between, 1:00-1:45

Panel 3: Environment and Place 2:00-3:15

Jason Peters, Augustana College
Arthur Verslius, author of Island Farm
D. G. Hart, Hillsdale College

Panel 4: Food and Farming 3:30-4:45

Mary Berry Smith, The Berry Center
Katherine Dalton, Contributing editor to Chronicles magazine
Matt Bonzo, Cornerstone University

Closing Remarks: 4:45-5:00

The title of my talk will be “Confessions of an East Coast Snob.”

Pia Desideria

Published on by D. G. Hart28 Comments

That title, the famous expression of Jacob Spener, the so-called father of pietism, came to mind when I read Richard Doster’s article at ByFaith, “Politics: Why Christians Must Be Involved.” (Thanks to Neoz for the link.) The reminder owes not so much to the contents of Spener’s book (though the connections between pietism and neo-Calvinism are striking — Christianity must make a visible difference on daily life). Instead, title itself, which has something to do with pious desires (or wishful thinking), is indicative of the tone of Doster’s article:

Christians, when rightly informed and motivated, change the character of political debate. They bring the moral standards of God’s kingdom into the civic realm and thereby become agents of His common grace — of His provision for those who believe as well as those who don’t.

“Forgiveness of sins is the central message of the gospel,” says theologian Wayne Grudem. “That’s the only way people’s hearts are truly transformed.” But that’s the opening of a fuller gospel story. The whole gospel, Grudem believes, includes a transformation. God’s grace changes people, and as a result they change everything around them. Families are renewed. Schools are rejuvenated. Businesses reorient their mission and purpose. What’s more, the gospel of Christ, because it changes hearts, changes the course of civil government.

When and where has this ever happened?

I don’t like to pull the expertise card, but I do know a little bit about the history of Protestantism and the record is never as stellar as the whoopers claim. Some good things happened here and there. But some good things happen in my home from time to time. Does that mean that Christianity has the wonder-working powers that Doster claims? And what about the times after the good times? What about America after Witherspoon, England after Wilberforce, Scotland after Chalmers, the Netherlands after Kuyper (not to mention Ephesus after Paul)?

At some point, dreamy accounts like this are going to need to show their homework. Until then, critics of the transformationalists will counter with articles like, “Knowledge: Why Christians Must be Informed.”

Mencken Day 2012

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Every man, whatever his actual qualities, is credited with and judged by certain general qualities that are supposed to appertain to his sex, particularly by women. Thus man the individual is related to Man the species, often to his damage and dismay. Consider my own case. I am by nature one of the most orderly of mortals. I have a placed for every article of my personal property, whether a Bible or a cocktail-shaker, an undershirt or an eye-dropper, and I always keep it where it belongs. I never drop cigar-ashes on the floor. I never upset a waste-basket. I am never late for trains. I never run short of collars. I never go out with a purple necktie on a blue shirt. I never fail to appear in time for dinner without telephoning or telegraphing. Yet the women who are cursed by God with the care of me maintain and cherish the fiction that I am an extremely careless and even hoggish fellow — that I have to be elaborately nursed, supervised and policed — that the slightest relaxation of vigilance over my everyday conduct would reduce me to a state of helplessness and chaos, with all my clothes mislaid, half my books in the ash-can, my mail unanswered, my face unshaven, and my office not unlike an I.W.W. headquarters after a raid by the Polizei. It is their firm theory that, unainded by superior suggestion, I’d wear one shirt six week, and a straw hat until Christmas. . . .

I note that many other men lie under the same benign espionage and misrepresentation — in fact, nearly all men. But it is my firm belief that very few men are really disorderly. The business of the world is managed by getting order into it, and the feeling for discipline thus engendered is carried over into domestic life. I know of very few men who ever drop ashes on the dining-room rug, or store their collars in their cigar-box, or put on brown socks with their dress-clothes, or forget to turn off the water after they have bathed, or neglect to keep dinner engagements — and most of these few, I am firmly convinced, do it because their women-folk expect it of them, because it would cause astonishment and dismay if they refrained. I myself, more than once, have deliberately hung my hat on an electrolier, or clomped over the parquetry with muddy shoes, or gone out in a snowstorm without an overcoat, or come down to dinner in a ragged collar, or filled my shirt-box with old copies of the Congressional Record, or upset a bottle of green ink, or used Old Dutch Cleanser for shaving, or put olives into Jack Rose cocktails, or gone without a haircut for three or four weeks, or dropped an expensive beer Seidel upon the hard concrete of my cellar floor in order to give a certain necessary color to the superstition of my oafishness. If I failed to do such things now and then I’d become unpopular, and very justly so, for nothing is more obnoxious than a human being who is always challenging and correcting the prevailing view of him. (“The Man and His Shadow,” Prejudices: Fourth Series)