Tag: Phil Hendrie

My Jaws Just Got Tighter

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

A few days ago, Terry Mattingly, of gotcha journalism fame, mocked the Washington Post for inserting a hyphen into Marco Rubio’s comments about Jesus. Here’s the quotation:

For the next few minutes, Rubio sounded more like a Sunday school teacher than a presidential candidate holding an early January town hall. He talked about John the Baptist, he referred to Jesus as “God-made man,” and he explained his yearning to share “eternity with my creator.”

Mattingly thinks that hyphen shows how little the Washington Post’s reporters know about Nicene Christianity (even though without the hyphen it the phrase “God made man” sounds strange when applied to the eternal son of God):

…for Trinitarian Christians, Jesus is not a “man,” “God-made” but, rather, “God made man” (or perhaps “God, made man”).

This may seem like rather picky stuff, and it is. However, it’s hard to name a more central doctrine in the Christian faith than the Holy Trinity. Wasn’t there someone on the Post copy desk who has taken Christianity 101, or was this simply a bad day when it came time to handle this particular piece of copy?

Now, it’s possible that the original copy for this story actually stated that Rubio “referred to Jesus as ‘God – made man’ ” and that turned into you know what?

So, will the heretical hyphen simply vanish in the online version of this story? Here is hoping that the Post editors actually do the right thing and, perhaps with the help of someone at the Catholic University of America, produce a correction. I cannot wait to read it.

Applying that logic to the church instead of newspapers, what does Mr. Mattingly think about Pope Francis’ decision to celebrate the Protestant Reformation (posted by Rod Dreher)?

Nearly 500 years ago, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of a German church, beginning the Protestant Reformation that led millions to break with the Roman Catholic Church and ushered in more than a century of conflict and war.

On Monday, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis will participate in a joint Lutheran-Catholic worship service in Sweden this October, kicking off a series of events planned for 2017 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

The effort to mend relations with Protestants has been on the agenda of many popes before Francis, but it is a delicate endeavor. The worship service in Sweden was billed by its sponsors, the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation, as a “commemoration,” not as a “celebration,” in order to avoid any inappropriate note of triumphalism. Some Catholics have criticized the notion of a pope celebrating the anniversary of a schism.

Some of those Roman Catholics who object to Lutheranism almost as much as the Obedience Boys do say this about the pope’s recent warming up to Lutherans:

According to Edward Pentin, a group of Lutheran pilgrims were given communion in St. Peter’s Basilica itself this week. What is significant here is that communion was offered to them unilaterally by the celebrants of the Mass — the Lutherans themselves were expecting to receive only a blessing, and the celebrants knew they were not Catholics.

It is scarcely possible that this happened without the knowledge of the Basilica authorities. Are we now seeing the practical effects of Francis’ ambivalent words on holy communion for Lutherans?

You would also think that if you knew your Canons of Trent the way Mattingly expects the Post’s reporters to know the Nicene Creed or the way we might expect the pope to know conciliar teaching, you wouldn’t be all that ready to celebrate Martin Luther. After all, Luther not only disobeyed the magisterium, but was inhuman:

Before the bar of every rational and decent person, does Luther not convict himself of utter inhumanity?

Before the bar of all that is reasonable in moral exhortation – from parental to educational to civil and criminal, does he not convict himself of a crime against all law? Is he, therefore, anarchical?

Before the bar of Catholic Dogma, supreme criterion on earth of what we know is and is not part of and/or in harmony with the Deposit of Faith, does he not convict himself of heresy?

Before the God whom we ought to honor, to whom we ought to ascribe only what is good and true and fitting, does he not convict himself of great blasphemies, greater even than the Gnostics who first attempted to ruin the Church? For the Gnostics distinguished two gods, one good and one evil. Does not Luther add to the evil by subtracting from the number of Gods, folding that Evil, which all right reason and right faith and common decency vomit out as execrable, into the one God?

So why would a Roman Catholic pontiff make amends with a church (a liberal one at that) started by such a person as Luther? And why wouldn’t Mattingly apply the same standards to Rome as he does to Washington?

Radio Worship

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

Yesterday’s call to worship came from Hebrews 12:

For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.” Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.” But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12:18-24 ESV)

You could, if you were not a Protestant or were flirting with trying to find the old Roman mojo, try to capture this gathering by doing what television does, that is, you could actually try to depict it in statues, paintings, priestly garments, high end liturgy. That is, you could try to show this visibly. And you would give a lot of work to artists. Let’s hope you paid them well.

But if you took the radio approach and let your imagination do the work without the aid of images, you might simply read the passages and not try to prescribe for the gathered who still live on planet earth how this assembly of the living and dead, of angels and God himself should picture such a meeting. It would be like listening to Phil Hendrie or Jean Shepherd (no relation to Norm) and letting your imagination supply the images.

Of course, radio isn’t as refined as high art. But if high liturgy winds up doing to the imagination what television’s images do, how great is that if you are merely a plumber?

What the Cats Missed this Week

Published on by D. G. Hart55 Comments

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

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

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

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

Man Crush

Published on by D. G. Hart17 Comments

No man should be belittled for having special affection for another man. Whether David and Jonathan’s friendship (in the Bible, not “Friends”) qualifies as a man crush is debatable, and so is whether their relationship might baptize the kind of attraction that a man has for another man, not sexual but bordering on smitten.

I myself have had any number of man crushes on both colleagues and celebrities. In the latter category I would now have to place Gabriel Byrne who stars in the HBO series, “In Treatment,” and is one of the few actors who can sustain interest on screen even when not doing anything, or in the case of his character as a psychotherapist, simply listening to patients. He first enthralled me as Tom Reagan in the Coen Brothers homage to “The Godfather,” “Miller’s Crossing,” a rare gangster hero who prevails not by overcoming his adversaries but by enduring the most beatings.

If I had written this two weeks ago, my nomination for man crush then would have been Garry Shandling, the comedian who created, wrote, and starred in one of the most underappreciated television series, “The Larry Sanders Show.” This was HBO’s first television series and it was both a tribute to Johnny Carson and the format of the late-night talk show and a humorous and poignant expose of the egos and antics that go into producing these shows. For anyone interested in the phenomenon of celebrity, “Larry Sanders” is a must.

My most abiding man crush is for Phil Hendrie, the best (and only) real talent on radio, who takes the political talk show and turns it on its head by functioning as both host and guest (with made up voices). The joke is not merely the callers who think the interview is real, but also the situations and characters that Phil creates — such as Ted Bell, owner of Ted’s of Beverly Hills steakhouse, who thinks he can flip off a van driver sporting a Jesus fish because Christians are supposed to turn the other cheek. It is radio theater at its best, and with three hours a day, available on-line, it is far more impressive how much comedic material one man can produce compared to an entire television series that employs hundreds to produce as much material for one season (13 hours) as Phil does in one week of broadcasts.

All of this is to say that I understand man crushes and see no reason for embarrassment in admitting to them. But sometimes man crushes are embarrassing. The latest case comes with the announcement from the editor of Kerux that the journal of biblical theology, where they put the Vos in Vossian, will no longer be printed but will be published on-line. In his introduction to the last print issue of Kerux, James Dennison goes on about Geerhardus Vos in ways that appear to take a man crush from a special fondness to an odd obsession. He writes:

. . . these pages have wonderfully developed the legacy of Vos in ways which would have both pleased and surprised him. Surprised him in the wealth of original contributions ranging through the history of doctrine – patristic, medieval, Reformation and modern: all these remarkable contributions endorsing, advancing, encouraging historic Christian orthodoxy – catholic, evangelical and Reformed. Pleased him in that new methods of penetrating the inspired Word of God have been applied in these pages. However haltingly or inadequately, nevertheless the advances God in his providence has granted to his church in our time have been plundered )aka robbing the Egyptians) in the interest of unpacking treasures of old and new which are locked in the mind, heart and Word of God.

I am not sure that a journal should be edited according a desire to please and surprise a deceased – even if highly regarded – theologian. I am even less sure that an editor should be so impressed by his own accomplishments in bringing such brilliance into print.

The kicker is the paragraph preceding Dennison’s adulation of Vos and Vos’ adulators. In a surprisingly candid admission of dangerous ideas and articles published in Kerux under his watch, Dennison unwittingly calls into question his own abilities as an editor:

Most of the contributions to this journal over twenty-five years have been insightful. . . . A few, however, deceived us, using the pages of this journal for their own ends and agenda. Their heterodoxy, even edgy ‘heresy’, has subsequently been revealed as, like Demas, they departed from us, even with contempt. It is increasingly clear that many who have sworn by the name of Geerhardus Vos haven’t the faintest notion of what he stood for. These charlatans, who have padded their bibliographies and footnotes with references to his works, have demonstrated over and over again that they are incapble of reading primary documents without skewing those documents to their own bogus schemes. They are users and users are losers. Their character is as insufferably self-centered as any classic egoist: ‘empty vines, they bring forth fruit unto themselves.’ Vos has no real place in their thinking because they constantly seek to re-image him in themselves. But when what they preach and what they write and how they act is placed against the portrait of this unassuming giant, they show themselves to be dishonest, arrogant and vicious. They are the acid which corrodes Reformed Biblical Theology, for the game is all about them and not at all ultimately about Christ.

Good to see that ultimately Kerux is about Christ and the gospel, but readers of this editorial have to be thinking, editor edit thyself. For if users are losers, what are editors who publish losers? Posers? Apparently, veneration of Vos is not a reliable guide to matters biblical theological. Not recognizing this may be the best indication when a man crush has crossed that fine line separating affection from obsession.

Why Evangelicals Aren't Conservative

Published on by D. G. Hart33 Comments

Nothing like ending a good political argument by inserting divine wrath into the debate. Arizona’s new laws on illegal immigration are attracting attention on a variety of fronts. One of my favorite radio hosts, Phil Hendrie, who is by no means a conservative (and the funniest man on air), thinks the law is sane even while he thinks that Arizona is not the brightest bulb on the U.S. Christmas tree of states. He has commented specifically on the irony of liberals showing great distrust of the blue-collar, union-abiding workers also known as police, who will supposedly engage in racial profiling to enforce the law. Would liberals assume coal miners or truck drivers or automobile assemblers were as prone to misbehavior as cops? Phil doesn’t think so. And could this distrust of cops be the hangover from the days when liberals were young and radical and referred to police impolitely as pigs (which is not to say that police have not been without their thuggish moments).

And then along comes Jim Wallis (thanks to John Fea), doing his best impersonation of Charles Finney, with a press release calling the Arizona legislation immoral and wicked. (Wallis’ reaction is patently unloving, so much for a charitable read of his fellow citizens’ actions or motives.)

The law signed today by Arizona Gov. Brewer is a social and racial sin, and should be denounced as such by people of faith and conscience across the nation. It is not just about Arizona, but about all of us, and about what kind of country we want to be. It is not only mean-spirited – it will be ineffective and will only serve to further divide communities in Arizona, making everyone more fearful and less safe. This radical new measure, which crosses many moral and legal lines, is a clear demonstration of the fundamental mistake of separating enforcement from comprehensive immigration reform. Enforcement without reform of the system is merely cruel. Enforcement without compassion is immoral. Enforcement that breaks up families is unacceptable. This law will make it illegal to love your neighbor in Arizona, and will force us to disobey Jesus and his gospel. We will not comply.

I had thought that one of the hallmarks of political conservatism is respect for and promotion of the rule of law. This doesn’t mean that every law is good or that laws in the American form of government cannot be repealed or amended. But to say openly and without qualification that a duly constituted polity and its lawmakers need to be disobeyed is not very conservative or, for that matter, very biblical. Wallis seems to suffer the affliction of most evangelicals who, because they believe they know the contents of a higher law (or sense they are inhabited by the Holy Ghost, feathers and all), all lower laws can be disregarded. One wonders whether Wallis has ever considered telling illegal immigrants that living and working somewhere against the laws of that place is disobedient and sinful.

Don’t get me wrong. Evangelicals don’t have to be conservative (they certainly aren’t religiously). Being conservative politically is not the same thing as being Christian and if evangelicals prefer to be biblical rather than conservative, then God bless ‘em. But if they are going to be biblical, they might want to submit fully to God’s word when it says submit to the powers that be. And if they want to be conservative, then they better try a form of political argument that does not rush to inflict divine judgment. An appeal grounded in American law, both state and federal, would be good, for starters.

Update: Jon A. Shields, in his study of the democratic virtues of the Christian Right writes the following:

. . . the vast majority of Christian Right leaders have labored to inculcate deliberative norms in their rank-and-file activitists — especially the practice of civility and respect; the cultivation of real dialogue by listening and asking questions; the rejection of appeals to theology; and the practice of careful moral reasoning. Movement leaders teach theese norms because they have strong pragmatic incentives to do so. Public appeals, after all, are most persuasive when they are civil and reasonable. Movement leaders further ground these norms in scripture. For instance, activists are regularly instructed to practice civility because the Gospels command Christians to love their neighbors, and they are encouraged to be honest because God forbids believers from bearing false witness. (Shields, The Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right [2009], p. 2)

Shields makes this point to contrast the fundamentalist leaders of the Christian Right, like Falwell, from the rank-and-file evangelicals. I can’t imagine a better example of the difference between fundamentalism and evangelicalism than that between Falwell and Wallis. And yet when it comes to style and mixing theology and politics — not to mention the lack of charity for political foes — it’s hard to tell the difference.