Frankly Speaking

When and How a Church Should Close

2012-01-20T06:55:00.000-08:00

According to one estimate, in the U.S. alone, more than 3,200 churches close their doors every year. On average, that’s 267 churches every month, 62 every week, and 9 every day. Recent editions of the directory Churches of Christ in the United States indicate that hundreds of our congregations have closed over the last decade.

In their book Legacy Churches, Stephen Gray and Franklin Dumond ask a hard-but-important question: What should church leaders do when the congregation that they love and have been a part of for many years is slowly but surely dying?

The authors begin with the story of Moses who was succeeded by Joshua as leader of the ancient Israelites. They point out that just as the death of Moses did not mean the end of God’s plan for his people, the closing of a congregation does not mean the end of Christ’s kingdom. On a related note, they emphasize that the obvious decline of a church is not necessarily the result of unfaithfulness. None of the churches of the New Testament exist today. But who would insist that all of those congregations were spiritual failures? Observation over a long period of time indicates that virtually all churches experience a life cycle that features a number of stages. These include birth, growth, maturity, plateau, decline, drop-out and, finally, death. Much like people, all congregations eventually go into decline and die.

Next, Gray and Dumond discuss three unique temptations encountered by churches in the last stages of the life cycle. First, churches are tempted to fire the current preacher and hire a new one. Their assumption is that if they can simply find the right minister, then their congregation will become healthy and will grow once again. This growth-by-preacher strategy is fatally flawed at a number of points. It overlooks, for example, that the new preacher didn't create, and can hardly undo, the non-growth systems that lead to the downturn in the first place.

Second, churches in steep decline sometimes believe that their better days will return if they will build a new facility in a growing part of town. But the growth-by-construction strategy confuses physical structure and location with the church. As the authors point out, a dying congregation in a new facility is just that. They conclude: "Growth by construction is never a good strategy for a church in decline" (46).

Third, churches in the last stages of the life cycle sometimes want to merge with another congregation. But as the authors point out, this strategy frequently ends in disaster. Why? Because in a merger, the two groups show up with alternate visions of what it means to be a church. Also, the leaders of the respective groups tend to compete for control of the newly formed congregation.

How can a church determine if they should consider making plans to close? In response to that question, Gray and Dumond name “Six Indicators of Potential Closure”:

1. Public worship attendance has drastically declined.
2. Staffing of essential ministries is no longer adequate or effective.
3. Annual income is no longer adequate to do effective local ministry.
4. The church has not consistently grown over the last five years.
5. The age or tenure of the membership is unusually high.
6. Survival has become the main mission.

The authors contend that when a church exhibits several of these indicators, leaders must not panic, but plan. Rather than survive at all costs, congregations nearing the end of their existence should become “legacy churches.” Specifically, they should use their financial assets to fund the start of one or more new congregations. In this way, the “spirit and the purpose of a faithful church” can be carried on “even if the worshipping congregation cannot be sustained” (65).

The final chapters of the book offer specific recommendations for the process of closing a church. The authors describe the legal and financial tasks that should be done. Above all, they urge congregations to host a closing service. They even provide three different outlines for conducting a unique and meaningful celebration of faith.

Appendixes include “Frequently Asked Questions,” which covers much of the content of the book in Q&A fashion, and “Life Cycle Survey,” a tool that can help a congregation determine its current position.

Legacy Churches is an excellent resource for leaders in congregations that have entered the last stages of life. These churches should not slip away in shame. Instead, they can and should close with dignity and a sense of hope for the future.

On the History of Africa since 1940

2011-12-05T19:15:00.000-08:00

Cooper, Frederick. Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present. New Approaches to African History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

To most westerners, even to many historians, the continent of Africa is a mystery. Most of us have heard recent stories about South Sudan and its years of guerrilla warfare, or about pirates working off the coast of Somalia. Seventeen years ago, we heard the news of genocide in Rwanda and of general elections in South Africa, the official end to apartheid. But many westerners would be hard pressed to name earlier significant events or personalities from the history of Africa.

In order to help fill that gap, Cambridge University Press is now publishing a series of short books called, New Approaches to African History. The first volume to be published was Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present, by Frederick Cooper. The author is a recognized authority on the history of Africa. After completing the doctorate at Yale, Cooper taught at the University of Michigan from 1989-2001. Since then, he has taught at NYU. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001.

Cooper begins by saying that in this book he is writing for “general readers, students and teachers.” He observes that many works dealing with “politics, development, or other aspects of contemporary Africa” treat the period since independence “more as background than as a subject for consideration.” By contrast, his intention is to meet the needs of readers “who would like to do more than that, who want to look at the past of the present in a more coherent way” (xi). He stipulates that his focus “is on the continent of Africa south of the Sahara Desert” (12), and claims that in certain ways the 1930s and 40s are just as significant to the recent history of this region as were the various moments of independence, most of which came twenty years or so later. He points to the two stories from 1994 mentioned earlier—genocide in Rwanda and popular elections in South Africa--and says that the colonialism and post-colonialism of twentieth-century African history were the essential precursors to both. Cooper makes this connection by explaining his main ideas.

First, the recent history of sub-Saharan Africa may be divided into the following three parts: a time of development (1940-1973), followed by a era of downturn (1973-1990), followed by an ambiguous, open-ended period which began in 1990. The first period predates the various moments of national independence because, as the author explains, such radical change was precipitated by African aspirations that go back at least as far as the late 1930s. It was during this time that Africans began to recognize and pursue their political and economic potentials. The second period began not long after the decolonization of much of Africa. Spikes in world oil prices beginning in 1973, rising interest rates, and many African countries taking on more and more debt combined to bring about a demoralizing downturn from which many of those nations have never really recovered. For example, in Chapter 5, which features several impressive graphs and tables, Cooper points out that in the decade before 1976, the GNP per capita of Sub-Saharan Africa grew by 20 percent. In the decade following 1976, it fell by the exact same figure, 20 percent. As late as 1996, that measurement had barely passed the level recorded in 1966.

Second, the legacy of colonialism combined with the legacy of African aspirations during the years before independence is the unique historical confluence that makes Africa what it is today. Cooper expresses this idea especially well in the following paragraph:

No word captures the hopes and ambitions of Africa's leaders, its educated populations, and many of its farmers and workers in the post-war decades better than ‘development.’ Yet it is a protean word, subject to conflicting interpretations. Its simplest meaning conveys a down-to-earth aspiration: to have clean water, decent schools and health facilities; to produce larger harvests and more manufactured goods; to have access to consumer goods which people elsewhere consider a normal part of life. To colonial elites after the war, bringing European capital and knowledge to Africa reconciled continued rule with calls for universal progress. To nationalists, a development that would serve African interests required African rule. After independence, new rulers could claim a place for themselves as intermediaries between external resources and national aspirations. But African rulers were in turn subject to criticism for sacrificing development for the people to personal greed (91).

Modern African leaders had learned their political lessons from their colonial predecessors. But, says Cooper, in the absence of a political history that had worked its way from the ground up, and without the economic resources of a European metropole, all such leaders were virtually destined to fail.

Third, the primary political dynamic at work in this history involves what Cooper calls the emergence of the “gatekeeper state.” He explains that leaders of newly-independent nations in Africa sat astride “the interface between the territory and the rest of the world, collecting and distributing resources that derived from the gate itself” (157). The arrangement was practically impossible to handle; and it was mishandled in any number of different ways as Cooper demonstrates in the national case studies he reports in Chapter 7. What was the common denominator among these? The establishment of the gatekeeper state, says Cooper, “made the stakes of control at a single point too high. Politics was an either/or phenomenon at the national level; local government was almost everywhere given little autonomy” (159). In the final chapter, Cooper uses this insight in order to interpret, at least partially, the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. In short, the critical problem was the Rwandan government's “inability to manage the politics of a gatekeeper state in the face of diminishing resources” (191). By contrast, South Africa was a uniquely-different story in the continent’s history. For one thing, the white Afrikaners there did not see themselves as colonists who really belonged somewhere else. Too, before the end of apartheid the South African government, though brutal, had managed to lead the nation to the highest level of prosperity in Africa. Thus, Cooper explains, the Afrikaners’ strong sense of belonging and their tight grip that held until 1994 ironically created for their successors a situation far superior to the ones inherited in other independent nations.

My overview here clearly reveals what Cooper believes are the most comprehensive horizons of recent African history: economics and politics. These are the topics that dominate his discussion. One might compare, for example, the number of references in this book to cultural or religious aspects of Africa since 1940. “Suggested Reading” sections appear at the end of each chapter. The titles listed there might provide good comparisons to Cooper’s approach.

Colonizer and Colonized in the Dutch East Indies

2011-11-29T09:15:00.000-08:00

Stoler, Ann Laura. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule, With a New Preface. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010.

In this highly-acclaimed book, first published in 2002, Ann Stoler identifies and explains what she calls “connections between the broad-scale dynamics of colonial rule and the intimate sites of implementation.” The author, who teaches anthropology and history at The New School for Social Research in Manhattan, points to Jean Taylor’s 1983 book, The Social World of Batavia, as one of her primary sources of inspiration. What seems clear, however, is that Stoler has moved past the mostly-descriptive approach found in Taylor’s work, and has gone on to build a sophisticated interpretive framework for understanding colonial rule.

In Chapter 1, Stoler offers a rationale for her approach: it is rooted in her observation that “domains of the intimate figured so prominently in the perceptions and policies of those who ruled.” These, she says, “are the locations that allow us to identify what [Michel] Foucault might have called the microphysics of colonial rule. In them I locate the affective grid of colonial politics.” Stoler emphasizes that historians of colonialism have typically ignored or completely missed "the intimacies of empire.” Her goal is to explore them primarily at a certain place and time in colonial history, “the Netherlands Indies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century" (7-8). Beginning on page 13, the author describes each successive chapter of her book, adding that the overall structure is both "modular and recursive." That is to say, while each chapter has a stand-alone quality, the book is not a simple conglomeration; later chapters sometimes refer to and connect with ideas presented in previous ones. The chapters appear in their chronological order of composition. But this is not to say that the chapters are “linear,” although Stoler regards the sequence as “logical” (20).

Chapter 2 begins with Stoler’s complaint that conventional histories entirely miss an interesting possibility: colonial experiments impacted colonizers as much as the colonized. By way of correction, she notes that colonial projects typically gave rise to “new constructions of what it meant to be European.” And, she adds, while racism “is an inherent product of the colonial encounter,” the character and intensity of racism varies widely among different times and locales (24). The emergence of “poor whites” and the arrival of white women in the colony provide plenty of examples. Both categories, says Stoler, “marked and threatened the limits of white prestige and colonial control” (26). By comparing the boisterous Dutch plantation belt in Sumatra with the older, more-settled colonial estates in Java, the author is able to show that the lines dividing the colonizer from the colonized were neither straight nor fixed. Instead, they constantly shifted so as to properly limit “who had access to property and privilege and who did not” (39).

In Chapter 3, Stoler explores her idea that "sexual control was more than a convenient metaphor for colonial domination.” More to the point, it was “a fundamental class and racial marker implicated in a wider set of relations of power" (45). She points, for example, to a typical arrangement in the colonies according to which a European man would take an Asian concubine. These relationships turned complicated and troublesome whenever European men became emotionally attached to their concubines, and especially when children were born. The ambiguous racial character and social standing of the child created an array of problems. In time, because of such dilemmas, prostitution and marriage replaced concubinage. By way of comparison, Stoler notes that this changeover mirrors the Spanish colonization of Mexico during the sixteenth century. At first, concubinage was condoned. But once offspring began to confuse the distinctions between ruler and ruled, colonial authorities imposed sanctions so that either marriage or prostitution would satisfy the sexual desires of colonial men. That factors other than traditional Christian morality were at work is clearly demonstrated by the fact that concubinage was tolerated and even encouraged at certain times, but discouraged and even condemned at others.

Chapter 4 focuses on “the construction of colonial categories and national identities” and on those people “who ambiguously straddled, crossed, and threatened these imperial divides” (79). As an example, the author tells the story of an 1898 court case in Haiphong, French Indochina (modern Vietnam) that involved a métis young man and his French father. The son was convicted of having committed a violent crime. Before sentencing, the father appealed to the court to be lenient to his son who was, after all, of French descent. In response, the attention of the proceedings turned to a different sort of affront; namely that in the eyes of the court the alleged father had apparently so neglected his son that the young man was illiterate and did not bear the qualities of a French subject. Quotations from the record reveal a court in which prejudice and hypocrisy were the rule. Interestingly, at this exact time, Dutch sentiment concluded that anyone who had been raised and educated in the Indies could not possibly be a bearer of Western culture and civilization. Commenting on the Mixed Marriage Law of 1898, Stoler says, “Nowhere in the Dutch colonial record was the relationship among gender prescription, class membership, and racial category so contentiously debated and so clearly defined" (101). In keeping with the new law, a European or Indo-European woman who dared to marry a native man was said to have “already sunk so deep socially and morally” that her decision did not result in ruin. It merely served to “clarify her situation" (103).

According to its subtitle, Chapter 5 takes up the topic of “Children on the Imperial Divide.” Stoler observes that European policy makers and those who commented on the colonial experience seem practically paranoid about the upbringing of children. Parental neglect and the dangers associated with delinquents among the colonized are common themes. In response to such fears, Dutch authorities established schools in the colonies, particularly kindergartens, in order to curb what they saw as the decadence of language and morality in European and Indo children. (Of course, colonizers first had to answer the question of the political identity of a child. Would a mixed-blood child be incorporated or excluded?) Turning from school to the home, Stoler notes that, while having servants represented the wealth and prestige of colonial families, the very presence of those servants were a threat to the "Dutchness" of the children growing up in those families.

Chapter 6, “A Colonial Reading of Foucault,” is the most theoretical section of the book. Throughout this complicated segment, Stoler writes about a previous book of hers, Race and the Education of Desire, and also about the publications and theories of the highly-influential French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault. Because I have not read any of these works, I found it difficult to follow Stoler’s questions and lines of reasoning, in spite of her summaries. What seems clear enough is that, in this chapter, she attempts to resolve her enthusiasm for Foucault’s ideas with what seemed to her a critical gap in his writings: “the issue of race” (140). This omission had created a dissonance for Stoler who was convinced from her research that “the making of race” was a significant factor in the placing of sexuality “at the center of imperial politics” (142). Listening to a series of recorded lectures delivered by Foucault in 1976 was a revelation to her: in fact, Foucault had at least taken up the subject of race in these lectures which were transcribed and published relatively late. Stoler seems relieved and reoriented when she says,

No one would argue that the 1976 lectures offer a comprehensive analysis either of racial discourses or of racisms of the state. On the other hand, few others have asked such discomforting questions about modern state formations or explored the reversibilities of racial discourses and the process of reversal. If Foucault pressed on some questions more than others, it is for us twenty years later to take on the ones he could and did not (160).

And with that, she states that it is up to the current generation of scholarship “to understand the conditions of possibility that give racial thinking its continuing and refurbished currency.” In fact, the attempt to discern “what joins racisms, biopolitics, and modern states” serves to extend the legacy of Foucault, who encouraged “the writing of histories that nourish reversals, recuperations, and insurrections within them.” She says that next chapter “is an effort in that direction” (161).

Chapter 7, written with Karen Strassler,“attempts an about-face.” It turns away from the viewpoint of Dutch colonizers and focuses on “the ways in which Javanese women and men who worked as servants in late colonial Indonesia saw their Dutch employers” (162).

Throughout this chapter, the authors struggle with theoretical and practical issues like the historical value of personal interviews and the dynamics of younger, western scholars posing questions to older, Asian former servants. Questions about how to conduct interviews in ways that generate candid, accurate, and relevant responses, how to account for facial gestures and body language, and how to interpret what was said, are just as important to the authors as the transcripts of the interviews. Eventually, they put aside their inhibitions and allow the reader to listen in as it were. When they do, conspicuously absent is the nostalgia commonly reported by the Dutch. Javanese former servants rarely speak of emotional attachment to their colonial overlords or their children. What they do remember is that their jobs working for the Dutch were simply that. This book includes several dozen remarkable photographs, many of which appear in this chapter. One of the more remarkable features of several of the photos is how the Asian servants often seem more like props than people, often unnamed and unacknowledged in the original captions. More than anything else, perhaps, this chapter points to an alternate direction for future research.

The book’s epilogue is titled, “Caveats on Comfort Zones and Comparative Frames.” Here, Stoler takes up a phrase coined by Friedrich Nietzsche and repeated by Foucault. By “comfort zones” Nietzsche meant those familiar areas of research that scholars mark off and within which they conduct their work. I take the expression “comparative frames” to mean the recognition or establishment of categories for the sake of comparison. Along these lines, Stoler reflects on the lack of precision and on the interpretive issues yet to be worked out in the field of colonial studies. Stoler’s “Preface to the 2010 Edition” extends that discussion by taking up what she calls “four broad problematics.” These have to do with “(1) the analytics of comparison and (2) the treatment of the intimate and what such a focus is expected to yield.” Stoler says that both of these “put insistent demands (3) on how we read colonial documents.” And each “bears on (4) the relationship between colonial pasts” and “the debris they leave behind” (ix-x).

Clearly, among other things, this book represents a tremendous amount scholarly work. In addition to the foregoing report, the book’s seventy pages of endnotes, with a bibliography running to some twenty-eight pages, testify to years of careful research. Just a glance at the endnotes reveals the author’s knowledge of a wide array of both primary and secondary sources, not to mention her own field work. Further, Stoler does not merely cite sources. She also describes and discusses them. Consequently, a good number of the endnotes read like short bibliographical essays that take up some aspect of the topic.

So what is the upshot? What are the outcomes that readers should take away from Stoler’s work? First, to use different words in order to repeat the author’s most basic point,“[p]rivate sentiments and public policy come together in the colonial . . . because domestic and familial intimacies were critical political sites in themselves where racial affiliations were worked out” (210).

Second, historians must recognize, as Albert Memmi insisted, that “colonialism creates both the colonizer and the colonized” (40).

Third, although conventional historiography emphasizes the differences between the various colonial experiments, what is striking is that “similar discourses were mapped onto such vastly different social and political landscapes” (80). Stoler indicates that this is the case because, although the particulars are always different, what is always at stake are interests like racial superiority and colonial control.

Fourth, probing the intimacies of colonial rule reveals that the historical truth is stranger than the innocent, or not so innocent, “fictions” of traditional historiography.

Fifth, colonial categories should not be understood as fixed, because they were “binding but unbound by those within them, were excessively rigid and exceeded their limits, had nuanced criteria for inclusion that were reworked by people who made them and by those who could not contain them” (8-9).

My main criticism and reservation about this book relates to its complexity. As critics on all sides point out, or concede, the cultural turn has lead to more-sophisticated readings of sources and, therefore, more-nuanced understandings of the past. This is commendable. But when reading Stoler's book, I could not help but think that here we have an example of sophistication gone to seed. Rather than quoting and discussing several passages, I city only one example. On pages 110 and 208 Stoler uses the adjective "Manichaean" to describe the dualistic colonial categories of "ruler and ruled." Why? The word is a rare, technical term. Used as an adjective, it refers to the dualistic cosmology and religious outlook developed by one Mani, an Iranian gnostic who lived during the third century C.E. Given that, there is nothing especially "Manichaean" about the categories the author describes. The use of the word in this context is imprecise as well as confusing. So there is no reason for her use such a term and every reason to avoid it. It confuses the reader and makes the author seem either “scholarly” or pretentious. In my opinion, Stoler could have brought the same very high level of sophistication, and could have provided the same nuanced understandings of the colonial and postcolonial experience, without using such complicated language.

From Dust Bowl Days to the Reagan Revolution

2011-11-06T12:55:00.000-08:00

Dochuk, Darren. From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism. New York: Norton, 2011.

This post is a version of something I wrote up for an online discussion group that focuses on the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement. The group is reading this book together, and I was assigned to report on the Introduction and Chapter 1. Here's the gist of what I sent in:

According to his faculty web page, Darren Dochuk completed the PhD at Notre Dame in 2005. Since then he has taught twentieth century U.S. history at Purdue University. He specializes in religion, politics, and culture. Over the last ten years, he has published a good number of journal articles and has contributed several book chapters. From Bible Belt to Sunbelt is his first book. A second book is forthcoming. So it seems like we'll be hearing a good bit from this young historian in the years to come.

Introduction: "At Home with the Angels"

Dochuk begins his book with an impressive description of the Billy Graham crusade held at the baseball stadium in Anaheim , California in September 1969. The author tells of the campaign's tremendous preparation and remarkable success. Among the statistics he reports: a ten-day campaign with a total attendance of 384,000 and over 20,000 decisions for Christ. He also mentions how Graham, from North Carolina, reflected on how comfortable he was, how at home he felt there in the Los Angeles area. Dochuk then comes to his point:

This book explains why Southern California proved so welcoming to Graham and nurturing of his worldview. More specifically, it describes and assesses the ways in which this evangelist's style of southern plain-folk religion--uprooted and relocated to the West Coast by monumental social changes begun in the 1930s--reoriented Southern California evangelicalism toward the South by the late 1960s. From Bible Belt to Sunbelt also tells the analogous story of how transplanted southern evangelicalism, itself revitalized and recreated in the Golden State, moved from the margins of the southern Bible Belt to the mainstream of America's first Sunbelt society (xv).

Although the author notes that the southerners who migrated to Southern California came from a variety of states, he describes their religious outlook as "Texas theology," which can be characterized as busy, vocal, promotional, and task-oriented (xvii). He says that, notwithstanding the images presented in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, southern migrants to Southern California were not so much "victims of circumstance," but rather "champions of a cause" (xvii). It wasn't that they were fleeing Egypt; they were responding to the Macedonian call. With their political views never far from their faith, these southern evangelicals not only reshaped Southern California's religion, they also impacted the politics of that region and far beyond. In fact, says the author, the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan to the Presidency represented their success.

But, says Dochuk, it didn't happen easily or suddenly. The long struggle was spread out over the years between 1910 and 1970. Within those six decades, he identifies four distinct periods to which the major sections of his book correspond. He overviews his book as follows:

Part I "charts plain-folk evangelicalism's relocation from the western South to the West Coast."

Part II "examines the clash of cultural views that resulted from southern evangelicalism's West Coast sojourn." Specifically, he reports how southern evangelicals lost the battle for their "early nineteenth-century populism" in California's Democratic Party and later "forged a powerful political front on behalf of the emerging conservative movement."

In Part III he describes how the conservative impulse began to define itself in the churches and church-run schools of California and how it moved from there into precinct and government. He says that this "phalanx of institutions threw its full weight behind Barry Goldwater's presidential run in 1964."
Part IV, says Dochuk, "shows how this evangelical front helped win the governorship for Ronald Reagan in 1966, the South for Richard Nixon in 1972, and ultimately the country for Reagan's Republican Party in 1980." (The overview is found on pp. xx-xxi).

Chapter 1, "Plain Folk"

Dochuk sets out to describe those people who made the migration to Southern California. A large percentage of them came from the Western South, by which he means southern states, most all of them west of the Mississippi (including, especially, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas, but also Missouri and Louisiana). According to the author, these folks embodied the Jeffersonian ideal of the plain person who knew how to raise a crop, who rejected special privilege and elitism, and who deeply valued the local community and, therefore, civic responsibility. Their political heroes were men like "Jeff Davis, the 'Wild Ass of the Ozarks,' W. Lee 'Pass the Biscuits, Pappy' O'Daniel of Texas, and Louisiana's Huey Long" (11).

Dochuk suggests that because these western southerners did not live at the center of the South, their memory of the Civil War was not so pointedly tragic. From a younger, less-settled part of the country than their cousins in the Upper and Deep South, they represented a culture that was forward-looking and optimistic. Upon moving west to California, they sought first to find good jobs and to establish strong churches in communities that would reflect their values and way of life. Dochuk points to the example of Bell Gardens, California in the 1930s, called by critics "Billy Goat Acres." Here was a place where recent arrivals from the South could find cheap housing close to local industry, a place where a person could keep chickens and raise a decent-sized garden.

"Yearning for familiarity" (a great phrase), these transplants naturally planted churches. They soon discovered that, living in such close proximity to one another and bound together by a common political, social, and religious outlook, what sprang up among them was a strong sense of belonging. But they also discovered that the same favorable economic and labor environment was just as available to other types of people as well. So it was up to the evangelicals to convert their neighbors in California, to save the lost of the world, which was now very close by.

So much for my overview of the Introduction and Chapter 1. The first thing I want to add is that my summary doesn't read nearly as well as the book itself. For the sake of brevity, I've left out almost all of the author's interesting details. But they are what make the journey of discovery in his description so enjoyable.

I have only one minor criticism of the book to this point: I think that Dochuk tends to overplay the idea that evangelicals from the South saw themselves as missionaries to Southern California. Observation and experience suggest that why a family moves and why they say they moved are sometimes two very different stories. Oftentimes, this is a matter of the family making the most of a less-than-desirable situation, and telling the version of the story that is most easy to live with, playing up the good that emerges in the new place. Dochuk suggests that the Grapes of Wrath view of southern migration to California doesn't represent the historical truth very well. Of course he's right about that. On the other hand, I don't think it was missionary zeal that led people like Okies to places like Bell Gardens. The evidence seems to suggest that it was hardship at home and the promise of a better life in California. Is there any evidence, for example, that southerners moved to California for the same kinds of reasons that members of the Churches of Christ moved to the Northeast in the Exodus Movement of the 1960s? I haven't seen any evidence for that so far. This is not to discount the real impact of these southerners. My only quibble is that I don't think there's a strong connection between why they moved to California and the religious and political influence they had once they got there.

The Bible as Comic Book/Graphic Novel?

2011-11-01T06:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I came across one of the more interesting projects I've seen in a long time: comic book style renderings of biblical passages and, in some cases, entire books of the Bible. The writer/artist is one Earnest Graham III, an Episcopal priest who clearly has the gift for doing this sort of thing.

Growing up, I wasn't one of those comic-book kids. I just never got into that, although some of my friends did. I haven't spent much time at his site, but from what I've seen so far, Graham's work has real merit. Check it out:
http://www.earnestillustrations.com/index.html

Isaiah 1: Overture? Preview? Promo?

2011-10-30T14:45:00.000-07:00

I'm teaching an Old Testament survey course this semester. We just began our exploration of the Israelite prophets of the 8th B.C. And that means, above all, spending some time with Isaiah.

It's been a few years since I've done much work in Isaiah. In the mean time, I had forgotten what an imposing maze this book can be. So to get started, I just decided to do something that Bible teachers don't always do: I read the Bible. Of course, from the very beginning of Isaiah, I noticed several things that begged to be unpacked. Here, I want to focus on chapter 1, which at this point I'm thinking of as an overture, or promo for, or preview of the entire book. Here's why:

Isaiah 1 as a Unit

Isaiah 2:1 sets off the first chapter as an independent unit: This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem (New International Version). Someone could easily mistake this verse for the beginning of the book. At the very least it's the beginning of a new section of the book, and that effectively makes the first chapter the first major unit.

The Content of Isaiah 1

This first discreet section, Isaiah 1, reveals that the person or group who compiled the entire book intended for the first chapter to be seen as comprehensive in some way. Why do people think that? Because chapter 1 exhibits a number of striking word parallels with later sections of the book. For example, Isaiah 1, verses 2 and 31 (the beginning and the end of the chapter) and the last verse of the entire book, 66:24, include these words:

. . . but they have rebelled against me (1:2) . . . with no one to quench the fire (1:31).

And they will go out and look upon the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; their worm will not die, nor will their fire be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind (66:24).

Here we have a signal (although it is well hidden!) that chapter 1 in some way stands for the entire collection from beginning to end. Other parallels between Isaiah 1 and the remainder of the book bear this out. For example:

my people do not understand (1:3) is a theme that the book later takes up and expands: my people will go into exile for lack of understanding (5:13).

In the Hebrew text, the words beaten . . . injured . . . welts (1:4-5) perfectly correspond to smitten . . . infirmities . . . wounds (53:4-5).

The language of Sodom (1:9-10) shows up again in an oracle against Jerusalem and Judah (3:9).

The Lord announces, When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; . . . (1:15), a theme that recurs in 8:17 and 59:2.

The image of refining by fire--I will thoroughly purge away your dross and remove all your impurities (1:25)--shows up again in 4:4 and 48:10.

Other examples can be cited. But these are enough to show a strong connection between chapter 1 and the remainder of the book.

What Should We Make of This?

Old Testament scholar David Carr has pointed out that the Book of Isaiah contains a number of significant themes that are not found in the first chapter. The upshot is that the word "summary" is not a precise description of Isaiah 1.

So, is something like "preview" or "promo" the best description of the purpose and function of Isaiah 1? What might this arrangement of the book signify, if anything, about how it is to be understood? If only a very close reading of this large collection reveals its intricacies, what might that say about the book and the assumptions of the writer and compilers?

Want more? Watch this video, which features Robert Wilson, one of my former teachers, and Stephen Cook talking about some of the basics of the Book of Isaiah.

A Trip to St. Mary's Cathedral

2011-10-27T07:30:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday of this week, my "Introduction to World Religions" class went on a field trip to St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cathedral here in Amarillo. Our host and tour guide was Monsignor Harold Waldow, the rector of the parish. After greeting the class, he explained some of the history of the building. The previous facility burned to the ground on February 26, 2007. The new one was consecrated and dedicated on September 11, 2010.

The cathedral really is something to see. Just outside the sanctuary hangs the huge, beautiful tapestry pictured below. One thing is apparent about this place: countless hours and a tremendous amount of work went into the new building and its decor. It's clear that the designers wanted to inspire awe and appreciation. They succeeded.

Once inside the sanctuary, Monsignor Waldow told the class about some of what had been salvaged from the old building and made a part of the new one. Almost everything had to be completely replaced, including the pipe organ, some of which you can see in the background.

Then, the class was welcomed up to the altar where they heard about the centrality of the Mass and various aspects of Roman Catholic history and theology.

Below are pictured the huge crucifix and the bishop's chair, unique to a cathedral church. Note that, unlike the typical Protestant cross, the Roman Catholic rendition is not "empty." It is a crucifix; Christ is on the cross.

It was an interesting trip for several reasons. For one, it's not often that you get to hear from someone who has childhood memories of the Church before the Second Vatican Council (early 1960s), who has also served as a priest since the early days just after Vatican II. Monsignor Waldow fits that description. So he's a walking, talking primary source for recent Roman Catholic history.

Something else, and I'm sure that the students noticed and may have been surprised by this: contemporary Roman Catholicism embraces the modern, scientific quest for truth. According to our host, this includes an openness to Big Bang cosmology and to at least some aspects of evolutionary teaching. In addition, the Church now acknowledges insights provided by modern higher-critical theories of the Christian Scriptures. For example, in commenting on the Book of Genesis, Monsignor Waldow highlighted the differences between the accounts found in chapters 1 and 2. He mentioned that he does not understand these passages literally. At the same time, he emphasized that whatever modern research might reveal about the origins and character of the written Word or about the universe, the Church ascribes the origin and sustenance of everything to God.

Finally, the Monsignor's remarks included a couple of references to a handful of embarrassing episodes in Roman Catholic history. He mentioned that there have been a few roguish popes, and that the Church clearly erred in its response to people like Copernicus and Galileo. That was significant, I thought, because it runs counter to a fairly popular notion: that Roman Catholicism claims to have a pristine past with popes who could do no wrong. Based on our visit, it seems clear that the Church recognizes its human frailties as well as its divine mission.

Broken China: The Decline of an Empire

2011-10-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

Huang, Ray. 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.

Non-fiction book lovers have gotten used to it: the odd-but-clever title designed to catch the attention of prospective buyers. In a world looking for something snappy, the title of a book is there to sell, not describe.

Thank goodness for the lowly subtitle. When you want to know what a book is actually about, the subtitle will tell you. And so it is that 1587, A Year of No Significance is really about The Ming Dynasty in Decline. More specifically, it focuses almost entirely on the era of Wan-li, who ruled from 1573 till 1620, and why his empire was in decline during those years.

The author, Ray Huang, was especially well-prepared to write this book. Born in Hunan Province, China in 1918, he served as an officer in the Chinese army from 1941 to 1950. Following his discharge, Huang moved to the United States where he studied at the University of Michigan, completing the doctorate there in 1964. From that time until his death in 2000, Huang built a fine academic career in which he taught, contributed chapters to the Cambridge History of China, and authored several books.

In 1587, Huang offers a series of compelling vignettes of major political, military and intellectual leaders of the period. His primary thesis is that, for all of their differences, each one was dealing with what was essentially the same intractable problem. At one point, Huang describes it as the "organizational inadequacy" (128) of the empire, a system in which "a literary bureaucracy" was managing "the affairs of the agrarian masses" (131). In another section, he speaks of "a sedentary empire" (186) with an army in which "the new elements had to slow down to keep pace with the old" (187).

The strength and the beauty of Huang's presentation is that his book resembles a carefully-researched film in which separate characters reveal a common world from the past. Thus we read about Wan-li, the boy who became emperor and who came of age only to discover that devotion to his public role made no apparent difference.

Next, Huang takes up the enigmatic Grand-Secretary Chang Chu-cheng, mentor and advisor to the young Wan-li. It was only after Cheng's death that Wan-li discovered the truth: when faced with the yin and the yang of "the professed moral tone of government" versus the "hidden desires and motivations of bureaucrats" (56), Cheng had become a hypocrite and a fraud.

Readers get some relief from the tragic as Huang delightfully tells the story of the special relationship Wan-li had with Lady Cheng, the emperor's favorite wife and the mother of his third son. Lady Cheng was refreshingly different from the hundreds of other women available to Wan-li. Instead of being awed by the presence of his majesty, she recognized his humanity and treated him more like a friend than a god. In this way she fulfilled many of his emotional needs, an unlikely gift for which he deeply appreciated and loved her.

Grand-Secretary Chang Chu-cheng was succeeded by the next character in the story, Shen Shih-hsing. Unfortunately, his completely different, subtle style was overshadowed by an early career in which Shen had worked under the then-notorious Chang. In this section, Huang makes clear that neither Chang's hard, top-down administration nor Shen's indirect approach could have ever made a long-term difference.

At this point, Huang takes up the story of the Ming emperor who chose to literally get away from it all, Wan-li's granduncle, Cheng-te. A playboy and a maverick, he avoided the Imperial City for months at a time, chasing women and fighting battles. But for all of the interesting tales he generated, Cheng-te's absence from duty only deepened and reinforced the crisis of the empire. The sick system he ignored only grew worse.

No one could have been more different from Cheng-te than Hai Jui, "the most impeccably moral and fearless civil servant of the empire" (141). As the author explains, though, even Hai's zealous campaign against the exploitation of the poor was destined to fail. In order to show why, Huang takes his reader back to the time of emperor Hung-wu and the early days of the Ming Dynasty. He describes how Hung-wu had established agrarian simplicity as the standard for the empire, ignoring the inevitability of commercial development. As a result, there were no established, regulated credit institutions. Without even a simple banking system, small struggling farmers had no one else to go to besides their neighbors who became their creditors. In those early years, a large share of imperial revenue came from those families who had succeeded at farming, lending, and acquisition. But over time, their wealth was transferred from the countryside to the Imperial City. By the late sixteenth century, not only had the imperial bureaucracy more than doubled in size, its 20,000 civil servants controlled a huge portion of the empire's economic power.

Huang's description of the imbalance and corruption of the empire provides the backdrop for his last two main characters. Ch'i Chi-kuang was one of the ablest generals in Chinese military history. Although he fought off the Japanese and Chinese pirates who were ravaging the east coast, Ch'i discovered that the contradictions and inconsistencies of his homeland were the toughest foes he would ever face. China's civilian leadership depended on the army for security. But they were also suspicious of strong military leaders. Consequently, in order to combat the enemies of the empire, Ch'i had to first develop and train an army that was always poorly supplied. Huang develops the story to show that, whether winning or losing battles, Ch'i was, from beginning to end, fighting a losing war.

Finally, the author turns to a very different sort of character, Li Chih. A proud and stubborn intellectual, he "appointed himself the group conscience of all the literati" (190). Huang portrays Li Chih as having been well-known and widely-read among his contemporaries. But not even a man with his clout and persuasion could succeed in a quest to "coordinate the personal needs and wants of a member of the scholar-gentry class with public morality" (198). The empire had long since become hopelessly conflicted. And so Huang concludes with his thesis: by the seemingly unremarkable year 1587,

the limit for the Ming dynasty had already been reached. It no longer mattered whether the ruler was conscientious or irresponsible, whether his chief counsellor was enterprising or conformist, whether the generals were resourceful or incompetent, whether the civil officials were honest or corrupt, or whether the leading thinkers were radical or conservative--in the end they all failed to reach fulfillment (221).

An interesting, if sad, story, what might it mean? Part of Huang's own answer may be revealed in an obvious quirk of the book: throughout, he punctuates his descriptions with phrases like "our history" and, especially, "our empire." Before getting used to it, the reader experiences the first few examples like a flash of lightning on an otherwise clear night. Of course, they remind the reader that although Huang had evidently become acclimated to the West by the time he wrote this book, he was first and finally Chinese. Beyond that, it may have been that Huang was using his story as a sort of political parable. He mentions how that those who lectured in the presence of the Wan-li emperor were expected to cite historical events as "a way of comparing past with present, and thus of reiterating the close relationship between ethics and public well-being" (44). Lessons from the past served as analogues to the contemporary scene. In this way, history was understood not only as background but also as prophecy. Did Huang intend for his own work, which was translated into Chinese, to serve in this way? I wonder.

World History Through Islamic Eyes

2011-08-21T13:15:00.000-07:00

Ansary, Tamim. Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes. New York: PublicAffairs, 2009.

As Americans moved past the initial shock of September 11, 2001, we began to ask a number of searching questions: Who were those people? What motivated them to give their lives for something so terrible? Who supported their senseless violence? And why do they hate us?

We soon learned that those nineteen men who hijacked four airliners and destroyed the lives of thousands were self-proclaimed Muslims. They did not represent any one nation. Their common bond was the culture of radical Islam. Upon learning that, Americans then wanted to know what it was about the terrorists' religion that led them to believe that their actions were justified. Did they represent only the lunatic fringe? Or were their convictions and deeds much closer to the heart of Islam?

President George W. Bush gave his answer when he told Americans, "These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith." But not everyone was so sure. In a 1996 book titled The Clash of Civilizations, Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington had claimed that the cultures of the Muslim world and of the West were inherently at odds with each other, and that the lines between them were what he called "the battle lines of the future." In the post-9/11 discussion, many observers suggested that the Huntingdon thesis anticipated those unspeakable events that had now come to pass. So who was right?

Enter the latest book by Tamim Ansary, Destiny Disrupted. As it is with so many non-fiction books these days, once the title catches your attention, it's the subtitle that tells you what the book is actually about: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes. Ansary might just be the very best person to write a book like this. He was born in 1948 in Kabul, Afghanistan, his father an Afghan and his mother an American. At age sixteen, he came to the United States where he graduated from Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, in 1970. Later, he traveled extensively in the Islamic world before settling on the American west coast where he has lived and worked as a writer ever since. Not only does he know both hemispheres, he describes himself as "resolutely secular" from a very early age.

Ansary's basic argument suggests that the relationship between the Islamic East and the Christian West is never going to be simple. Why? Because their back stories are long and complicated and now tangled. As the author explains,

Throughout much of history, the West and the core of what is now the Islamic world have been like two separate universes, each preoccupied with its own internal affairs, each assuming itself to be the center of human history, each living out a different narrative—until the late seventeenth century when the two narratives began to intersect. At that point, one or the other had to give way because the two narratives were crosscurrents to each other. The West being more powerful, its current prevailed and churned the other one under.

But the superseded history never really ended. It kept on flowing beneath the surface, like a riptide, and it is flowing down there still. When you chart the hot spots of the world—Kashmir, Iraq, Chechnya, the Balkans, Israel and Palestine, Iraq—you’re staking out the borders of some entity that has vanished from the maps but still thrashes and flails in its effort not to die (pp. xx-xxi).

As you might have guessed, Ansary gives no easy answers to the question I raised at first. What he does, however, is much more significant. Starting with the civilization that flourished in ancient Mesopotamia and bringing the reader right up to September 11, 2001, the author provides a masterful, engaging overview of Islamic history. He includes, of course, the story of the life of Mohammed, the careers of his successors, the Crusades of Christians from the west and invasions of Mongols from from the east, the complex Ottoman Empire which eventually crumbled, and the rise of modern, secular Islamic states, followed by a conservative reaction, the evidence of which we see today. But beyond that, he explains how the Muslim story impacts and fits into the larger picture called world history. Here and there, Ansary takes the time to explicitly state what his storytelling implies. Here are a few of his most significant points:

First, any credible account of world history will give appropriate space to the story of Islam. And as the author reveals, not only is that story significant, it is also fascinating. Most Westerners would never guess, for example, that in the 13th century Muslims were able make a stand against the invading Mongols by using a prototype gun they called a "hand cannon"; or that when William Shakespeare was writing his plays, the superpowers of the world were three Muslim empires; or that the steam engine was invented in the Islamic world three centuries before its development in the West.

Second, although the West has traditionally ignored Islam, quite often a knowledge of Muslim history sheds light on our well-known western version of world history. A good example of this is the anti-philosophy project taken up by the great Muslim scholar Ghazali. Ansary tells how this man, by all accounts a towering academic, wrote a book explaining the Greek philosophical tradition, giving special attention to Aristotle. In a second book, according to his plan Ghazali set out to dismantle the system he had described in the first book. But, as fate would have it, the first one traveled far and wide, sometimes unaccompanied by the all-important refutation contained in the second. Consequently, and ironically, Ghazali's excellent description of Aristotelian thought led to a boom in its popularity most everywhere the first book was read. Fast forward to more than a century later, when an Italian Dominican priest named Thomas Aquinas set out to square the Church's teaching with Aristotle's philosophy. How many westerners realize that that influential work of Aquinas, which runs to dozens of volumes, owed so much of its inspiration to a Muslim?

Third, the common American notion that Islamic terrorists hate the freedom of the United States is just plain wrong. Contrary to the rhetoric of George W. Bush, for example, those who plan to carry out a literal jihad against the U.S. do not resent the liberty of America. Instead, their rage is directed against what they regard as the boundless decadence and imperialism of the West, especially the United States. Along this line, Ansary relates what has to be one of the great geo-political tragedies of the twentieth century. In August 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency funded the violent ousting of Mohammed Mosaddeq, the recently-elected prime minister of Iran. Mosaddeq, who took a secular modernist approach to governing, looked to be the ideal Muslim leader. However, upon coming to power, he canceled Iran's lease with British Petroleum and announced that Iran would take control of its oil. As Ansary remarks, "Nice try." Eventually, the world learned that the United States actually sponsored the bloody coup that toppled Mosaddeq. Ansary observes that it would be hard to overstate "the shudder of anger it sent through the Muslim world" (p. 334). Since the end of World War II, the memory of a handful of events like the one just described has convinced a large percentage of the world's Muslims that the United States is, again, not only morally decadent, but hopelessly imperialistic.

Fourth, when the West and the Muslim world address each other, their messages almost always miss the target. The two sides often speak past, rather than with each other. Ansary explains: One side charges "You are decadent." The other side retorts, "We are free." These are not opposing contentions; they're nonsequiters. Each side identifies the other as a character in its own narrative. In the 1980s, Khomeini called America "the Great Satan," and other Islamist revolutionaries have echoed his rhetoric. In 2008, Jeffrey Herf, a history professor at the University of Maryland, suggested that radical Islamists are the Nazis reborn, motivated at core by anti-Semitism and hatred of women. It's a common analysis. (p. 350).

Fifth, although Islam certainly is a religion, comparable to other religions like Hinduism and Christianity, it is many more things than that. Ansary says that Islam is also "a social project," belonging to the same category as communism, parliamentary democracy, and fascism. One can also think of Islam as a civilization, in the same class as Chinese, Indian, or Western civilization. And, Islam can also be seen "as one world history among many that are unfolding simultaneously, each in some way incorporating all the others" (p. 356).

To summarize, in Destiny Disrupted, Tamim Ansary has presented the English-speaking world with an understanding of the sweep of history--and, therefore, an understanding of the way things are--from an Islamic point of view. By doing that, he has opened up a door that can lead at least "our side" towards a much-needed mutual tolerance. Anyone who wants to understand Islam and how it relates to world history and the present situation should read this book.

Theology "On the Beach" (1959)

2011-08-15T15:25:00.000-07:00

Stanley Kramer’s haunting film On the Beach takes place in the aftermath of a world-wide nuclear war. It is early 1964, and the superpowers have unloaded their atomic arsenals against each other. For reasons that the film partially explains, only Australia has been spared. But the experts who understand global wind currents predict that deadly fallout will arrive within a few short months. The movie tells a story about life lived out under conditions that are historically unique: humanity’s complete self-destruction.

The first sequence of the film introduces its American main character, Captain Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck). The U.S.S. Sawfish, a submarine, has survived the war. The ship was at sea during the attacks and has now made its way to the only known safe spot in the world. Captain Towers has brought the Sawfish into port and soon places the ship and its crew under the command of the Royal Australian Navy. There is no more U.S. Navy.

The captain’s Australian liaison is Lieutenant Peter Holmes (Anthony Perkins), a young married man with an infant daughter. Holmes and his pretty wife, Mary (Donna Anderson), decide to introduce Captain Towers to Moira Davidson (Ava Gardner), a beautiful rich girl who spends most of her time going from one party to the next, always drinking too much. Who better to entertain the captain and help him to not dwell on his lost wife and children? A romantic relationship begins to develop. Nonetheless, Towers continues to speak of his family as though they are still alive and that he has a future with them.

Soon an Australian admiral decides that the Sawfish should go on a mission to the North Pacific to visit the West Coast of the United States. At least some scientists are convinced that the Arctic region may be a safe environment. Only a trip there will tell. But the expedition finds that radiation levels in the Arctic Ocean are extremely high. San Francisco shows no sign of life. And a random beeping in San Diego turns out to be nothing more than a telegraph machine attached to a string on a window shade blowing in the deadly breeze. There's not one reason for hope.

Utterly dejected, the crew returns to Australia to live out their last few days. One of them, a scientist named Julian Osborne (Fred Astaire), competes in a deadly car race and takes the checkered flag. Dwight, who now accepts the loss of his family, takes Moira to a fishing resort where they spend a romantic night together. Within days, people begin to experience radiation sickness, and the public lines up outside of hospitals to receive government-issue suicide pills.

Back at home, the Australian lieutenant finds his wife beside herself. Once he is able to calm her down, the two of them share a tender moment. The crew of the Sawfish votes to return to the United States. Captain Towers would prefer to stay in Australia and die in Moira’s arms. But following the path of duty to the bitter end, he sails away with his homesick men, going down with the ship as it were.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To the extent that it takes up religious questions, On the Beach does so in an interesting way. There's a scene near the end—which, in this movie, means the conclusion of human history—that ironically portrays listless members of the Salvation Army conducting what amounts to an End-of-the-World service. (I'm guessing they didn't take up a collection). As if to suggest that humanity will never tire of its militaristic impulse, the band is heard to play “Onward Christian Soldiers.” Above the stage, strung between two poles is a huge banner that reads, “There is Still Time . . . Brother.” But the movie takes this appeal to prepare for the hereafter, and dramatically reinterprets it.

Before he boards the Sawfish for the last time, Captain Towers stands on the dock and holds Moira who tearfully says him, “There isn’t time. No time to love . . . nothing to remember . . . nothing worth remembering.” The message is clear: the Salvation Army’s banner appeals to a traditional religious understanding of reality that no longer commands assent. To temporal, sensual, truly-alive humanity, represented by all of the main characters, there’s no time for things like making love, sharing a meal, and delighting in children. Life, which means racing cars, going to the beach, drinking port, and growing old together, is no more. The emphatic ending of the movie shows the banner once more. This time the viewer knows its true meaning. Until a nuclear war breaks out, citizens of the world still have time to do whatever they can to try to prevent it. The unmistakable message of the film is that full-scale nuclear war will unspeakably and forever end the wonder of living. This, and not God, represents the good that human beings should treat as their ultimate concern. With the arrival of nuclear technology that has the potential to destroy human life, God has been upstaged. He no longer has the whole world in his hands. We do. And your brother? That's not your co-religionist, but every other person on the planet. Because of its unique dangers, the nuclear age requires the utmost in devotion and vigilance.

The Berlin Anti-Jewish Riots of 1935 (3rd of 3)

2011-07-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

In the previous two posts, I described the Berlin anti-Jewish riots of 1935. How to interpret such events from the past has been, and continues to be, a major question for those who study the Holocaust. Who was ultimately responsible?

In this particular case we know that, at the time, Hitler and the Nazi party had compelling reasons for creating at least the appearance of fairness for German Jews. For one thing, the leaders of the Third Reich did not want to risk a boycott of the next year’s Olympic Games, the threat of which was now renewed. [1] As early as mid-March 1933, Hitler had met with Dr. Theodor Lewald and Heinrich Sahm, president and vice-president of the German Olympic Committee. Following his conference with them, he “expressed great interest in the arrangements and said: ‘I will do everything possible to advance the Games, as well as all sports interests’.” [2] From that time until the successful production of the winter and summer Games of 1936, the regime did what was necessary in order to prevent a boycott. [3]

More-general economic concerns loomed as well. For example, on August 20, 1935 several ministers of the regime met in a conference called by Hjalmar Schacht, the Minister of Economics. Schacht emphasized to his peers “the damage caused by the anti-Jewish disorders and warned that the developing situation could threaten the economic basis of rearmament.” As one might expect, he was worried about present and future economic conditions. Of course, Schacht “agreed that the party program had to be implemented.” But he also insisted “that the implementation had to take place within a framework of legal instructions alone.” Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, and Gauleiter and Bavarian Minister of the Interior Adolf Wagner agreed with Schacht, and their conclusions were soon communicated to the Fuehrer.

Less than a month later, Hitler delivered a speech before the Reichstag, assembled at Nuremberg on September 15, 1935. He blamed international resistance to his regime for a supposed recent Jewish uprising in Germany. According to the Fuehrer, Jews living within the Reich sensed that they had strong support abroad. As a result, they had now concluded that the time had come for them “openly to oppose Jewish interests to those of the German nation.” Hitler continued with a general characterization and with a specific example from Berlin:

From numerous places vigorous complaints have been received of the provocative action of individuals belonging to this people, and the remarkable frequency of these reports and the similarity of their contents point to a certain system of operations. This attitude actually resulted in demonstrations which in a Berlin cinema were directed against a foreign film by which, though harmless in itself, certain Jewish circles felt themselves to be offended.

Having established the need for the German people to be protected from the supposed menace of an unresolved Jewish problem, Hitler then announced that a resolution was possible:

If this proceeding is not to lead to very determined action in its own defense by the outraged population—the consequences of which in any single case cannot be foreseen—the only way to deal with the problem which remains open is that of legislative action. The German Government is in this governed by the thought that through a single secular solution it may be possible still to create a level ground on which the German people may find a tolerable relation toward the Jewish people. Should this hope not be fulfilled and the Jewish agitation both within Germany and in the international sphere should continue, then the position must be examined afresh. [4]

And with that, Hitler initiated the so-called Nuremberg Laws which were then unanimously promulgated by the Reichstag.

Clearly, the Berlin riots of 1935 were connected to the enactment of the Laws. But more than that, they were a major part of the pretext for the Laws. To that extent, the riots represent a significant step in the long march from persecution to extermination. But exactly how significant were they? As I see it, Moshe Gottlieb oversimplified and overreached when he summarized the meaning of these events as follows: “The Berlin Riots mark the turning point in the final annihilation of German Jewry; for these attacks led directly to the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws, the Kristallnacht episodes of 1938, and the ‘final solution’ of the 1940’s.” [5]

Why should that statement be regarded as a stretch? For two main reasons. First, as the earlier parts of this paper show, the Berlin riots were especially notorious because they occurred in a section of the capital city that was full of visitors from other countries, press correspondents, and representatives of foreign governments. They were far from being the only major persecutions or the worst measures taken against German Jewry in 1935. Second, as Daniel Fraenkel explains, the Nuremberg Laws were indeed “an essential and logical step in the process of destruction unleashed against European Jews.” But he adds that “it would be a mistake to construe the enactment of the September laws as a direct prologue to the Final Solution.” Instead of “a frontal assault on the physical foundations of Jewish existence,” the Laws represented “an act of public and symbolic humiliation of German Jews.” [6]

Contrary to Gottlieb’s assertion, not even the Nuremberg Laws were decisive in any final sense. In my opinion, the complexity of the dynamic between expediency and the long-term goals of Hitler and other leaders of his party has been expressed quite well by Saul Friedlander:

The crimes committed by the Nazi regime were neither a mere outcome of some haphazard, involuntary, imperceptible, and chaotic onrush of unrelated events nor a predetermined enactment of a demonic script; they were the result of converging factors, of the interaction between intentions and contingencies, between discernable causes and chance. General ideological objectives and tactical policy decisions enhanced one another and always remained open to more radical moves as circumstances changed. [7]

The anti-Semitic riots in Berlin during the second half of July 1935 bear every indication of having been carried out, or at least permitted and controlled, by the leadership of the Nazi regime. It was in this way that Hitler and the party elite not only attacked the relatively-prosperous and significant Jewish population of the capital city, they also tested the resolve of the world community. Because they discovered an attitude that was unbelieving, lax, and even complicit, they then took the next steps along their ever-evolving but resolute path.
_________________________________________

[1] “Berlin riots mar Olympic planning,” New York Times, July 26, 1935. In the second half of 1935, the push for the U.S. Olympic team to abandon the games in Berlin intensified. See, for example, “Statement of non-Jewish advocates of boycott,” New York Times, October 25; “Jahncke asks ban on Olympic games,” November 27; and “N.A.A.C.P. asks A.A.U. to abandon Olympics,” December 14.

[2] “Hitler promises full support for the 1936 Olympic games,” New York Times, March 17, 1933. See also a piece that appeared in the Times two days earlier, “Hitler support expected for Olympics of 1936 in Berlin,” March 15, 1933. See also Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume I: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 138.

[3] In addition to the sources identified in the previous two notes, the pertinent literature on the story of the 1936 Olympic Games includes the following pieces from the New York Times: “Germany seeks 1936 Olympics for Berlin: government funds aiding 1928 campaign,” February 16, 1927; “Brundage’s views stir Berlin press,’ April 20, 1933; “Reich now says status of German Jews in next Olympics has not been settled, May 29, 1933; “Proposal to shift Olympics growing,” June 4, 1933. See also Moshe Gottlieb, “The American Controversy Over the Olympic Games,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 61, No. 3 (March 1972): 181-213; Bruce Kidd, “The Popular Front and the 1936 Olympics,” Canadian Journal of History of Sport and Physical Education 11, No. 1 (May 1980): 1-18; Allen Guttmann, The Games Must Go On: Avery Brundage and the Olympic Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984); “Olympic Games,” in Encyclopedia of the Third Reich, ed. Christian Zentner and Friedemann Bedurftig, trans. Amy Hackett (New York: Macmillan, 1991), 2:669-71; David Clay Large, Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936 (New York: Norton, 2007).

[4] Adolf Hitler, My New Order, ed. Raoul de Roussy de Sales (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941), 339. I owe this quote to Moshe Gottlieb, "The Berlin Riots of 1935 and Their Repercussions in America," American Jewish Historical Quarterly 59, No. 3 (March 1970), 308, note 9.

[5] Gottlieb, 328.

[6] “Nuremberg Laws,” in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, ed. Walter Laqueur (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 454.

[7] Friedlander, 5.

The Berlin Anti-Jewish Riots of 1935 (2nd of 3)

2011-07-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

The foregoing reports match up perfectly with dispatches issued during the spring and summer of 1935 by William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany. Dodd--pictured above with his wife in Berlin in 1935--wrote several lengthy reports for Secretary of State Cordell Hull. The gist of his communications was that the situation for Jews in Germany was then taking a turn for the worse. Ever since the early part of 1933, when Hitler and the Nazi party came to power and forced many Jewish professionals from their positions, the status of German Jews had actually stabilized. But now things were different. On April 1, Dodd wrote to Hull:

. . . there have been signs of an intensification of pressure upon the Jews in Germany. Fresh outbursts against the Jews in public speeches, additional discriminatory ordinances, and finally undercover work by the police all seem to furnish evidence that the State, profiting by the period of internal calm and by the strengthening of its hand through the declaration of military subscription, is engaged in a new anti-Jewish drive. [1]

Dodd noted, however, that compared to the obvious terror of 1933, the new campaign was being carried out, for the most part, “unobtrusively.” Furthermore, the recent measures seemed “to be directed at a further restriction of Jews’ legal rights.” Dodd said that he had no idea how far the regime might take the new measures, but he thought it was worth mentioning that an announcement had been made “of an early codification of the German citizenship laws and that in this connection many Jews here fear the worst.” By the end of April, things were much clearer. Dodd wrote to Hull:

Reichsminister of the Interior Frick, in an interview published in the Berlin Nachtausgabe of April 27, briefly outlined some of the details of the forthcoming citizenship law which, if they are ultimately incorporated in that law, will undoubtedly make it unique of its kind, inasmuch as it may be inferred from his remarks that citizenship shall be denied all non-Aryans and furthermore may only be acquired after the taking of a solemn oath to the Nazi State. [2]

By May 17, the situation had worsened. On that date, yet another dispatch from Dodd reported the following:

As the anti-Jewish campaign proceeds with official encouragement, it is only natural that, as is being continually reported by our consulates in various German cities, the instances of persecution should multiply in acts of personal humiliation of the Jews, press attacks against individuals, appeals to boycott Jewish stores, the changing of Jewish-named streets, and so forth. . . . The Consul General in Frankfurt has submitted a summary, enclosed as of possible interest, prepared by the National Society of Baptized Jews, showing the professions and callings barred to non-Aryan Germans. It will be seen that the disqualifications extend over practically the whole field of German life. . . . [3]

From these and other messages prepared for the U. S. Secretary of State and sent from Berlin, one can easily gather that the Nuremberg Laws, promulgated on September 15, 1935, had been in the planning for several months. What also seems clear enough is that the intensification of anti-Jewish measures that same year—even the ones blamed on rowdies or the public—were in fact well-coordinated. In yet another one of his communications to Hull, Dodd provides what appears to be independent evidence that the Berlin riots were not spontaneous. On July 17, two days after the outbreak of violence, Dodd wrote that the anti-Jewish campaign in the German press had “prepared the public mind” for the subsequent atrocities. Moreover, “[a]ccording to the best eye-witness accounts, outbreaks occurred at various times and places, but with a precision and common purpose evincing some sort of advance plan. . . .” [4] Significantly, Dodd’s communication was dispatched from Berlin on July 17, but was not received until July 26, nine days later. Moreover, it was apparently never answered. [5]
____________________________________________

[1] Moshe Gottlieb, “The Berlin Riots of 1935 and Their Repercussions in America,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 59, No. 3 (March 1970), 309. For the Dodd correspondence, Gottlieb quotes from Foreign Relations of the United States, 1935, Vol. II: Germany, 392-95.

[2] Gottlieb, 310.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 311.

[5] Ibid.

The Berlin Anti-Jewish Riots of 1935 (1st of 3)

2011-07-15T08:15:00.000-07:00

The next three posts will present some of my research on the 1935 anti-Jewish riots in Berlin. These events represent only one of the countless episodes in the unspeakable history of the Nazi regime. I say "unspeakable." And yet we must speak. Otherwise we fail to chronicle what fascist politics can do. If silent, we also run the risk of cooperating with those who, to this day and with increasing sophistication, deny the monumental atrocity of the Holocaust and downplay its horror.

I plan to eventually extend my study of this specific topic. And I want to improve the piece that follows here. So I welcome your comments, and am especially interested in hearing from those who are familiar with Holocaust studies. I thank you in advance for any feedback.

Abstract of the Entire Piece: My paper provides an overview of the atmosphere and activities of the anti-Jewish riots in Berlin in the summer of 1935. These incidents represent the pinnacle of the second major wave of disturbances following the Nazi takeover in early 1933. They were also significant because these events did not take place in a village in a remote part of Germany. Instead, they were perpetrated in the capital city, mostly along the Kurfuerstendamm, an elegant boulevard of Berlin. A major question—one that is difficult if not impossible to answer—is the degree to which Hitler and the Nazi high command were responsible for the Berlin riots. Had the regime simply set the tone? Or did they permit, or even commission, these atrocities? If the riots were permitted or even ordered, why did the leadership of the Third Reich disregard the possibility of losing the 1936 Olympic Games? Why would they come so close to an economic boycott? At any rate, what does seem certain is that in early-to-mid 1935, the regime decided to use the anti-Jewish disturbances throughout Germany, and especially the riots in Berlin, as a pretext for the promulgation of the notorious Nuremberg Laws. In fact, before he commended this legislation to the Reichstag, Hitler specifically mentioned the riots in Berlin as an example of why the races had to be separated. In that sense, then, we should understand the Berlin riots as a milestone in the road from persecution to extermination.

Conventions: I place short quotations within quotation marks. Block quotes appear as paragraphs in italics. In addition to the endnotes, where appropriate and when possible I provide links to pertinent Internet sources.

Sometime after 8 o’clock on the evening of Monday, July 15, 1935, anti-Semitic terror broke out along the Kurfuerstendamm, a well-known thoroughfare in Berlin. It was an unlikely scene for an outbreak of terrible violence. Known to many as Berlin’s "Great White Way,” the Kurfuerstendamm was brightly-lit and one of the most-fashionable places in the city’s West End. The area was also home to many of Berlin’s Jews who at that time still numbered as many as 150,000. [1]

According to that morning’s issue of the Voelkischer Beobachter, the official newspaper of the Nazi Party, a large number of Jews had booed at a recent showing of “Petterson and Bendel,” a Swedish anti-Semitic film. The newspaper account concluded with the words, “such insolence is not to be endured.” That afternoon’s edition of Der Angriff, founded by the notorious Joseph Goebbels, included a fiery editorial on the alleged Jewish response to the film. Not surprisingly, the riots that night began in front of the theater where the movie was showing. As they exited, those who appeared to be Jewish were seized, beaten, and chased. Victims were seen running down the street with blood streaming down their faces. Several area businesses owned by Jews were completely wrecked. Within hours, the Reich’s news bureau issued a statement: an attempt by Jews to disturb a presentation in a photoplay house on Kurfuerstendamm had resulted in spontaneous protests from “the public.”

The report went on to mention “minor accidents” and that “a window was broken” before police arrived and prevented further clashes. But according to a front-page story that appeared in the next day’s New York Times, the official statement had misreported the source, the extent, and the true nature of the events. In fact, an all-out riot, “which gave every evidence of careful planning,” was undertaken “by well-organized groups of young men who evidently had specific instructions.” Although these “rowdies,” around 200 in number, were dressed in civilian shirts, many of them were also wearing “Storm Troop boots and trousers.” At one point, “three men in Storm Troop uniform motored up and down the avenue giving orders to the rioters.” The growing crowds reduced the boulevard to a narrow lane, slowing traffic.

Every car that appeared to be driven by a Jew was greeted with shouts of ‘Out, Jew! Get out, Jew! Destruction to the Jews!’ Windshields were freely smashed.” The truckloads of police who eventually arrived seemed reluctant to intervene, unwilling to do much to restore order. To top it off, agents selling Julius Streicher’s notorious anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stuermer went from one café to the next wearing “placards that reached from their shoulders to their feet bearing the customary scurrilous caricatures." [2]

The Wednesday edition of the Times contained a story from the Associated Press that was almost entirely a first-person account provided by Varian Fry, the newly appointed editor of an American journal called The Living Age. Fry, a young, Harvard-educated journalist, had been in Germany on study tour for about a month. His account corroborated several details from the earlier story, including the time that the riots broke out on Monday night as well as how the crowd lined up on both sides of the street “forcing each car which came by to run the gauntlet.” He must have been jarred by the sheer ugliness of what he witnessed:

I saw one man brutally kicked and spat upon as he lay on the sidewalk, a woman bleeding, a man whose head was covered with blood, hysterical women crying, men losing their temper at the police or the Storm Troopers and being kicked or dragged off, women begging their men to keep out of the fight and crying and pleading.

Fry also remarked on the variety that he noticed among the perpetrators and enthusiastic onlookers:

Old men and young men, boys, Storm Troops, police, young girls of the domestic servant type, well-bred women, some even in the forties and over—all seemed to be having a good time. One youth told him, This is a holiday for us.

Yet another AP article that appeared in the Times told the story of a U.S. Navy midshipman, E. W. Wood Jr., who got into a fistfight with a man who had brutalized two women along the Kurfuerstendamm Monday night. [4]

The events of Tuesday, July 16, made it apparent that the Nazi regime was alarmed by what the Times called “the foreign and notably the British reaction” to what had happened the previous night. Reportedly, on Tuesday morning the commander of the Berlin Storm Troopers ordered members of the SA to avoid all questionable public demonstrations. For an indefinite period of time Troopers were to regularly wear their uniforms, except when at work in an office or factory. These precautions, it was said, would “deprive opponents of any opportunity to vilify or slander the party.” Also that morning, an official communiqué was released saying that “the beatings and destruction of property” the night before “were the work of ‘agents provocateurs’.” The story in the Times registered a strong doubt: “It should be noted that on previous occasions when similarly embarrassing events occurred, it has been, officially speaking on the morning after, the work of agents provocateurs.”

The local press in Germany did what it could to blame the victims. Tuesday’s edition of the Zwoelf Uhr Blatt remarked that the Jews considered themselves “again at home” and had assumed “the right to reject by whistling and whispering mocking remarks in a German photoplay house a film that had been declared ‘valuable for the interests of the State’.” It was the Jews “through their provoking behavior” who were responsible for “spontaneous demonstrations by German citizens.” Likewise, the Nachtausgabe said,

Certain Jewish groups began to regard themselves again as the masters of the situation. When ill feeling expressed itself yesterday on the Kurfuerstendamm, then that was simply evidence of how unendurable Jewish provocations had become. The responsibility lies with those who will not realize that the German people has no desire to return to Jewish rule.

Tuesday afternoon witnessed several aftershocks from the previous night’s earthquake. Customers at some of the ice cream parlors along the Kurfuerstendamm were harassed, and “a dozen young anti-Semites” chased one young man up the street yelling, “Traitor! Down with him!” That evening, supporters of Julius Streicher again came out in full force, wearing armbands that advertised Der Stuermer. Up and down the boulevard on windows and posts they placed stickers that bore the ominous slogan of the paper: “The Jew is the cause of all our troubles.” On certain shops they placed stickers that read, “I am a Jew. Aryans enter my establishment at their own risk.” [5] It was later reported that on Tuesday night, Adolf Hitler himself “patrolled the Kurfuerstendamm,” really or ostensibly, “to see that there was no new outbreak of anti-Semitic rioting.”

The Fuhrer twice rode up and down the fashionable thoroughfare in an automobile. He was dressed in a white raincoat and white traveling cap, and was accompanied by adjutants and Secret Service men. He made the personal survey, it was said, to assure himself that firm steps were being taken to prevent a repetition of the disturbances. [6]

The same piece also reported that the Nazi regime was pushing its sterilization program “despite Catholic protests,” and that the state-controlled press in Germany was devoting “entire columns to violent attacks on foreign reports of anti-Semitic disorders.” It went on to tell how the National Sozialistische Partie Korrespondenz, the Nazi party’s syndicate service, was now demanding that Jews, “on pain of death if necessary,” were thereby forbidden to rent an apartment to “Aryans.” Furthermore, no Jew was to engage Aryan domestic help, attend an Aryan physician, or accept an Aryan as a client.

Nonetheless, the article included the hopeful note that “a recurrence of Monday’s riots seemed unlikely.” [7] At the same time, it was noticed that in some towns and villages in Germany, the old signs reading “Jews are not wanted here,” had been replaced by new ones that said, “Jews enter at their own risk.” [8] Meanwhile, an official Nazi party bulletin insinuated that the press and the shapers of popular culture outside of Germany were guilty of communicating misinformation about life in the Third Reich. The bulletin asked why more attention had not been given to the plea issued by Reichsfuehrer Hitler in a recent foreign policy speech in which he had said:

The German Government is of the opinion that all attempts to achieve an effective lessening of the tension between individual States by means of international agreements or agreements between several States are doomed to failure unless suitable measures are taken to prevent the poisoning of public opinion in the nations on the part of irresponsible individuals in speech, in writing, in films and in theatre. [9]

By Thursday night of the same week, anti-Jewish rioting had broken out again in Berlin. Judging from the reports, though, these events were not nearly as severe as those of Monday night. [10] Nevertheless, the Times published many more stories over the next few days and weeks that indicated a relentless anti-Semitic drive in Germany. [11] They reveal something that Saul Friedlander has pointed out: though better-known than many of the other atrocities of 1935, the Berlin riots were only part of a much larger set of incidents. Most notably, as early as March of that year, Germany’s Ministry of the Interior announced that the new Wehrmacht would exclude Jews and that anti-Jewish legislation was in the offing. By the end of April, the city of Munich had witnessed several weeks of well-organized disturbances:

Jewish stores were sprayed nightly with acid or smeared with such inscriptions as JEW, STINKING JEW, OUT WITH THE JEWS, and so on. According to the report, the perpetrators knew the police patrol schedule exactly, and could therefore act with complete freedom. In May the smashing of window panes of Jewish shops began. The police report indicates involvement by Hitler Youth groups in one of these early incidents. By mid-May the perpetrators were not only attacking Jewish stores in broad daylight but also assaulting their owners, their customers, and sometimes even their Aryan employees. [12]

By Saturday, May 25 the attacks in Munich “had spread to every identifiable Jewish business in the city.” [13] Smaller cities and towns were also the scenes of attacks and locally-initiated measures against Jews. [14]

Yet another related article, published in the Times dated July 26, 1935, bolsters the idea that the wave of anti-Jewish incidents of that year were both planned and purposeful. By then, the aforementioned Virgil Fry had returned from Germany. Now he had a new twist to the story of the recent Berlin riots. While still in Berlin, he had spoken with Dr. Ernst Franz Sedgwick Hanfstaengl, press advisor to Reichsfuehrer Hitler. In their interview, Hanfstaengl admitted to Fry that it wasn’t Jewish patrons who had hissed during the showing of the Swedish film “Petterson and Bendel.” A different group was responsible for the instigation. As Fry reported:

Dr. Hanfstaengle told me many things and asked me not to mention some of them, but he did not give me this information in confidence, and I see no reason why I should not tell you. . . . The original hissing took place on Friday, three days before the Monday rioting, which I witnessed. Dr. Hanfstaengle said he had reliable information that those who did the hissing were Storm Troopers. [15]

Not only that, on Tuesday, July 16, the day after the outbreak of the anti-Jewish riots along the Kurfuerstendamm, Fry had taken a walk down the boulevard to see some of the aftermath. Allowing himself to be seen as a foreigner who was nonetheless sympathetic to the events of the previous night, he asked two Berlin policemen if they thought that the rioting had been sponsored by the Nazi party. “The policemen,” said Fry, “replied in the affirmative.” [16]

_________________________________________

[1] The population number comes from “Berlin,” an unsigned article in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s online encyclopedia. The piece reports that the census of June 16, 1933 indicated that 160,000 Jews lived in Berlin. Some German Jews moved into the city during the pre-War years of the Nazi regime. Yet, by 1939, the total Jewish population of Berlin had dropped to 80,000.

[2] “Jews are beaten by Berlin rioters; cafes are raided,” New York Times, July 16, 1935. Evidently, something of this had already broken out as early as the previous Saturday, July 13. In his dairy on that date, Jochen Klepper, a Protestant author who had married a Jewish widow, wrote: “Anti-Semitic excesses on the Kurfuerstendamm. . . . The cleansing of Berlin of Jews threateningly announced.” Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume I: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 138 who cites Klepper, Unter dem Schatten deiner Fluegel: Aus den Tagebuechern der Jahre 1932-1942, (Stuttgart, 1983), 269.

[3] “Editor describes rioting in Berlin,” New York Times, July 17, 1935. Varian Fry’s experiences in Berlin revealed to him the true Nazi spirit. In June 1940, he became one of the founders of the independent Emergency Rescue Committee. In August of that year, living in Marseilles, he created a clandestine network whose goal it was to smuggle refugees out of Nazi-occupied France. By August 1941, when Fry was expelled from the country, he and his associates had saved approximately 2,000 people from certain death. In 1976, nearly a decade after his demise, the United States awarded him the Eisenhower Liberation Medal. In 1993, he was honored by an exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. And in a 1996 ceremony attended by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem declared him “Righteous Among the Nations.” Justus Rosenberg, “Fry, Varian,” in American National Biography, Supplement 2, ed. Mark C. Carnes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 183-85.

[4] “Midshipman tells of fight in Berlin,” New York Times, July 17, 1935.

[5] “Reaction to riots alarm Germans; baiting continues” New York Times, July 17, 1935.

[6] “Nazis tighten law on sterilization; answer Catholics,” New York Times, July 18, 1935.

[7] Ibid.

[8] “Signs of the new drive in Munich,” New York Times, July 18, 1935. See also an earlier piece, “Ban on Jews increased,” July 12, 1935, which reports how a German health resort had recently replaced signs that read, “Jews are not wanted” with different signs reading, “Jews are forbidden to enter the gardens.”

[9] “Boycott is pushed,” New York Times, July 19, 1935.

[10] “Anti-Jewish riots renewed in Berlin,” New York Times, July 19, 1935.

[11] See, for example, “Anti-Semite police chief named to ‘purge’ Berlin of Jews and Communists,” New York Times, July 20, 1935; “Nazi reich in throes of new ‘purification,” July 21; “New Nazi drives on ‘reactionaries’ spread to nation,” July 23; “Anti-Semites firm in the saddle as persecution spreads in reich,” July 24.

[12] Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume I, 137.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid., 138-39.

[15] “Editor holds riots inspired by Nazis,” New York Times, July 26, 1935.

[16] Ibid.

MacCulloch, Chapter 14

2011-07-08T16:35:00.000-07:00

"Orthodoxy: More Than an Empire (900-1700)" is the title of this chapter.

Crises and Crusaders (900-1200)

At the millennium, Constantinople, with somewhere around 600,000 residents, was easily the biggest city in the known world. It was a time of relative strength and prosperity in the eastern empire. However, it was also a time of theological challenge, exemplified by Symeon "the New Theologian" who argued that true ordination came from God and not from men; that authority was rooted in character, not in office; that power was the result of godly simplicity, not worldly sophistication.

The eleventh century also saw Constantinople trying to fend off Muslim encroachment. "The most decisive battle in the Byzantine confrontation with the Seljuk Turks was at Manzikert in Asia Minor in 1071, at which the reigning Emperor Romanus was not only crushingly defeated, but suffered the humiliation of being taken prisoner" (470). His successor, Alexios "repeatedly appealed to Western leaders for help against various enemies, and in 1095 for the first time he was given a serious hearing. It as this request which led [Pope] Urban II to launch the publicity campaign which triggered the First Crusade" (470). The Crusades had the effect of increasing tension between East and West. The presence of armies from the West in and around Constantinople unnerved the East. At times, mayhem against Muslims spilled over into violence against Byzantines. The two sides had long since lost their ability to comprehend each other. And the papacy was increasing its claim to a universal monarchy.

The Fourth Crusade and its Aftermath (1204-1300)

MacCulloch singles out the Fourth Crusade because of its focus: "attacks on Constantinople in 1203 and 1204, horrible deaths in quick succession for a series of Byzantine emperors, including the little-regarded Alexios, the trashing of the Christian world's wealthiest and most cultured city--in short, countless incentives for centuries of Orthodox fury against Catholics" (474). The Byzantine Empire was forever damaged. In early response, a few "statelets" sprang up, the most impressive one at Nicaea in the mountains of Asia Minor. The rulers of Nicaea were the ones who recaptured Constantinople from the Latins in 1261. "Even though Constantinople was restored to Byzantine control . . . , the empire's unity, that fundamental fact of Byzantine society from Constantine the Great onwards, never again became a reality" (477).

Orthodox Renaissance, Ottomans and Hesychasm Triumphant (1300-1400)

The post-1261 Byzantine Empire was never the same, and it experienced disintegration and pressure as a result of "a new branch of Turkish tribes who had carved out for themselves a principality in north-west Asia Minor and who survived a determined effort by the Byzantines to dislodge them in a significant victory in 1301. Their warlord leader was called Osman, and they took their name of Ottomans from him" (483).

As MacCulloch points out, it's ironic that this age saw a good bit of interchange between East and West. He discusses the similarities and differences of the liturgies and physical features of the two great Churches. A good number of Latin texts by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas were translated into Greek during this period.

At this same time, the East "was convulsed by a dispute about the validity of a style of mystical prayer known as Hesychasm" (487). Hesychasm connotes the idea of silence and stillness, like an ancient form of Quakerism. Its main proponent was Gregory Palamas taught that this form of prayer enabled the worshipper to reach visions of divine light, to see the Holy Spirit as it were. On the other side was Barlaam who cited the Maximus tradition, according to which the essence of God is unknowable. Ironically, both of them cited newly-translated Latin theological texts. Ultimately, Barlaam's side lost the debate and Gregory triumphed. By 1341, Barlaam was condemned as a heretic. So he went west and joined the Roman Catholics!

Hopes Destroyed: Church Union, Ottoman Conquest (1400-1700)

By the end of the fourteenth century, the last emperors in Constantinople had resigned themselves to being vassals of the Ottoman sultan. Appeals to the West were and would have been futile. The hostility between the two had been growing for a long time. The Great Papal Schism of 1378, in which two and then three different people were claiming to be Pope, revealed that Catholicism had major problems of its own.

The fifteenth century witnessed an attempt on the part of the two sides to mend the rift. But from the standpoint of the East, issues like the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, their use of unleavened bread, and the powers and claims of the papacy, made the gap impossibly wide. In its homeland, Orthodoxy withered under Muslim domination.

MacCulloch, Chapter 13

2011-07-07T11:35:00.000-07:00

This is the first chapter in Part V, which is titled, "Orthodoxy: The Imperial Faith (451-1800)". Like myself, most Westerners know very little of Eastern Christianity. So I'm especially looking forward to reading this part of the book. The title of Chapter 13 is "Faith in a New Rome (451-900)".

A Church to Shape Orthodoxy: Hagia Sophia

MacCulloch explains Eastern Orthodoxy by way of describing the symbolism and worship associated with the great Hagia Sophia (Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom) in Constantinople.

In its present form, it is the achievement of the Christian monarchs Justinian I and his consort, Theodora (429) who succeeded in "sacralizing Byzantine society" (434). This was possible because of "an idea which over centuries became basic to Christian Orthodox spirituality: union with the divine, or theosis . . . a very different direction from Augustine's Western emphasis on the great gulf between God and humanity created by original sin" (433). Although the heirs of Justinian did much to root out anything that was Roman or non-Christian, the Byzantine empire had its enemies not the least of which were invading Muslims and a major plague which began in the 540s and continued well into the 700s, spreading west.

Byzantine Spirituality: Maximus and the Mystical Tradition

Since the Byzantine Empire disposed of the academies that anchored the intellectual world of the past, monasteries emerged in the East as "the safe-deposits and factories of learning" (436). By the eleventh century, it was the standard in Orthodoxy that bishops would first be monks (437). Two Orthodox monasteries survived the Muslim takeover of the East: St. Sabas near Jerusalem, founded in the 480s, and St Catherine's at the foot of traditional Mount Sinai, home to John of the Ladder (a.k.a. Climacus), author of a classic of Eastern monasticism, the Ladder of Divine Ascent.

But the "greatest theologian of the Byzantine tradition" (p. 438) was Maximus (or Maximos, c. 580-662), "the Confessor." Maximus consistently cited tradition that supposedly went back to Dionysius the Areopagite whom Paul the Apostle converted in Athens (Acts 17). In reality, this body of teaching likely went back no further than 80 years or so. With it, Maximus advanced the notion that theosis, deification, was the destiny of the saved, who would become "gods through grace," and even of the cosmos itself (439-40). In the Eastern tradition, the Church's liturgy is the chief means of such ascent to the divine.

Smashing Images: The Iconoclastic Controversy (726-843)

MacCulloch begins this section by addressing the question, "Where did the iconoclastic controversy come from?" One strong impulse came from Islam's rejection of images combined with Muslim military success. Maybe they were on to something. Maybe divine favor would return to a Byzantium free of its damning sculpture.

As a way of getting around the prohibition in the Ten Commandments--"You shall not make for yourselves any graven images"--Eastern Christians turned to the icon, an image that was painted, not graven or sculpted, on wood. But even these were officially prohibited, which sent them underground; they were kept and used in homes of believers, though they were not found in churches. This is not to say that images and icons had no defenders in the East. The Arab Christian John of Damascus criticized neighboring Islam for its hypocrisy: it made no room for images, but venerated the Black Stone housed in the Ka'aba. John was a great thinker and writer, "the last Eastern theologian to have a continuous impact on Western Christian thinking until modern times" (447). Thomas Aquinas claimed that he read from John every day!

In his defense of the use of icons, John advanced an earlier distinction made between two Greek words: latreia and proskynesis. The first is roughly equivalent to our English word "worship," and is appropriate only when directed toward God. On the other hand, proskynesis means something more like "honor" and can be appropriate when directed toward, say, an emperor or a holy person. Honor given to something or to someone ultimately goes to the One who made and shaped that something or someone. Through the veneration of images, the worshiper indirectly, but ultimately, worships God. Nonetheless, icono-clasm versus icono-phila was the norm in the East for centuries. Iconoclasm was finally crushed around 843.

Photios and the New Missions to the West (850-900)

Photios was an Orthodox Patriarch of the late ninth century who, as a result of reading very widely as a young man, was one of the most learned men of his day. He came to power at about the same time that Byzantine monarchs were restoring political stability and military power to the empire. His expansionist activities brought him into conflict with the popes in the West. Anticipating the rift that was to come in 1054, Photios and Pope Nicholas personally excommunicated each other in the year 867 (p. 460). One tactic of the Photios campaign was to create alphabetic systems which would become the scripts for a liturgy and theology that matched Orthodox norms, such as the Greek rite of St. John Chrysostom. This established that the Greek language did not have a monopoly over the Orthodox tradition, which experienced a real triumph during the ninth century.

MacCulloch, Chapter 12

2011-07-05T07:45:00.000-07:00

Theology, Heresy, Universities (1100-1300)

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw the advent of universities in Christianized Europe. Few people would guess, however, something that MacCulloch mentions about these schools: they were modeled after institutions of higher learning in the world of Islam (398). The scholastic approach to understanding God, the Bible, the way of Christ, etc. led to the development of a much more formal theology. Thus the scholastic theologians drew the precise lines by which some believers were deemed out of bounds, i.e., heretics. MacCulloch emphasizes that the universities, though they grew up in a thoroughly Christian society, had a good bit of independence from the Church, and dealt with ecclesiastical leadership in an advisory role.

A Pastoral Revolution, Friars and the Fourth Lateran Council (1200-1260)

Dominic began an order of friars (related to the term fraternity, brothers) that was dedicated to radical poverty and intellectual rigor. Dominicans were also called Blackfriars.

Francis of Assissi grew up in a wealthy family but rejected his upbringing, emphasizing that Christ was, to borrow the words of the song, "despised and afflicted, homeless, rejected, and poor." Francis was the first person we know of to have suffered stigmata, the physical marks of the crucified Christ (403). The Franciscan friars grew from his legacy. Franciscans were also called Greyfriars.

Pope Innocent III's push for greater definition of the beliefs and practices of the Church, for order and standardization, in effect generated the Inquisition. The activities of this episode, which are often misunderstood and exaggerated, were carried out by the Dominicans. The interests of Innocent were behind the calling of Lateran IV. "This fourth Lateran Council embodied the Gregorian aim of imposing regulated holiness on the laity and ensuring uniformity in both belief and devotional practice" (405). One idea was that every Christian should know what he's doing and why, what's going on in the Eucharist, etc. Such interest led to the closer definition of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Along this line, MacCulloch wisely notes: "It is easy to confuse the doctrine of the 'Real Presence," the general devotional belief that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are to be identified with the body and blood of Christ, with the doctrine of transubstantiation, which is just one explanation of the miracle" (406).

Carmelites=Whitefriars

Thomas Aquinas: Philosophy and Faith

Thomistic theology, highly influential, was a blend of Aristotelian philosophy and Church doctrine. Thomas's great work was his Summa Theologica (which MacCulloch translates "Sum total of Theology") and which runs to 61 volumes in its standard English translation.

Love in a Cold Climate: Personal Devotion After 1200

The climate of Europe began to turn much colder, beginning around 1200. MacCulloch suspects that this unfortunate change may have led to the "personalization" of God and Christ in the years that followed. The period exhibits a deep thirst for God. St. Francis's popular book Meditations on the Life of Christ (most likely written by John de Caulibus, a.k.a. pseudo-Bonaventure) expands on the life of Jesus as we know it from the gospel accounts. These embellishments strike MacCulloch as part of the evidence that people of the time wanted to know Jesus better, to have a closer view of him.

MacCulloch, Chapter 11

2011-07-01T07:45:00.000-07:00

"The West: Universal Emperor or Universal Pope? (900-1200)" is the title of this chapter.

Abbots, Warriors and Popes: Cluny's Legacy

MacCulloch begins by describing the massive abbey at Cluny in Burgundy and how it represented devotion to "the creation of ever more splendid Benedictine houses" (p. 363). During this same time in England, the powerful influence of Bishop Aethelwold led to the building of cathedral churches which also served as monasteries. Along this line, the author remarks: "One should never underestimate the significance of architecture in Christianity and particularly not in the era of reform which now emerged" (365). MacCulloch also relates the expansion of Christian pilgrimage, especially to Santiago de Compostela located in northwestern Spain. Together, these developments expressed and led to what the author calls a real "Reformation" (366) of the eleventh century.

Along with this "Reformation of the Middle Ages," there was an economic boom that accompanied increased farm production and with it a change in "the nature of the Western Church's ministry to society, making it pay more attention to the needs and obligations of the humble and relatively poor" (368). The need to organize an expanded ministry led to the invention of the parochiae, parishes.

Ministry among the emerging middle classes had a major unintended consequence: unlike the wealthy, these people could not afford full payment for their sins. And this, says MacCulloch, "was where the idea of a middle state between Heaven and Hell, first envisaged in the theology of the Alexandrian theologians Clement and Origen at the turn of the second and third centuries, proved so useful and comforting" (370). By the late twelfth century, people were talking about a place called Purgatory. Something else: new found wealth led to local battles for it, and so it was that the church emerged as arbitrator and peacemaker.

The Vicar of Christ: Marriage, Celibacy and Universal Monarchy

During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Western Church "did its best to gain more control over the most intimate part of human existence, sexual relations and marriage" (371). Part of the motivation for this new effort was based on a fear: "Married clergy might well found dynasties, and might therefore be inclined to make Church lands into their hereditary property, just as secular lords were doing at the same time. The result was a long battle to forbid marriage for all clergy" (372-73).

The period also saw the growth of the papacy. A new era came with Gregory VII (reigned 1073-85), the pope "who drew together all the strands of papal self-assertion" (374). The development of the papacy generated "a complex central bureaucracy," the cardinals, as well as canon law and "a staggering heritage of architectural beauty: the cathedrals of medieval Catholic Europe" (376-78). "Perhaps the most perfect of all is the cathedral of Chartes" (380).

The Age of the Crusades (1060-1200)

Overall, I thought this section was inadequate. But maybe that had more to do with my interest in the Crusades than any deficiency in the author. Either way, MacCulloch identifies some of the factors that led to the Crusades. For decades on end, the Church in Spain had been driving out the Muslims; a certain Caliph al-Hakin in Egypt had ordered the demolition of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem; and much like the growing phenomenon of pilgrimage, warfare had become a means of accruing spiritual merit.

Cistercians, Carthusians and Mary (1100-1200)

Here MacCulloch describes the reaction away from the lavish institutional Church. In short, the Carthusian monastic order emphasized "simplicity and self-denial" (389), while the Cistercians focused on separation from the world and built austere churches, unlike those of "Clunaic splendor" (390). Last but not least during this time was the further development of the cult of Mary. When the Greek theotokos (God-bearer) was translated into Latin, the expression signified something more like "Mother of God." Such language led to the full adoption of Mary's perpetual virginity; to the development of the doctrine of her immaculate conception (which refers to the conception of Mary and is different from the doctrine of the virginal conception of Christ); and to the origin of the story of Mary's assumption. In Catholicism, it's not just "something," it's a lot of things about Mary.

A Well-Deserved Vote for the Ritz

2011-06-28T08:05:00.000-07:00

The southeastern corner of the Texas panhandle is home to a great little town called Wellington. And Wellington is home to the historic Ritz Theatre. Recently, the good people of the town have entered the Ritz in a competition for a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Anytime you see a place like the Ritz you think, "This place ought to be preserved for future generations." Well now's your chance to do something simple and make a difference along that line. Please, take two minutes to go the site for the National Trust, and cast a ballot for the Ritz. You can register and vote at the blue box, top right, at this website. And hurry! Voting ends this Thursday, June 30th.

Internet History Sourcebooks Project

2011-06-21T18:05:00.000-07:00

"The Internet History Sourcebooks Project is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly (without advertising or excessive layout) for educational use."

I've recently looked around at this website and think it's excellent. If you're interested in finding texts that relate to world history, this is one of the best places to look.

MacCulloch, Chapter 10

2011-06-16T07:35:00.000-07:00

The title here is "Latin Christendom: New Frontiers (500-1000)." MacCulloch begins by insisting that the period from the break up of the old Western Roman Empire to the tenth century really shouldn't be called the Dark Ages. It's more neutral and fair, he says, to call those times the early Middle Ages. How Christianity got along during this period is the subject of Chapter 10.

Changing Allegiances: Rome, Byzantium and Others

Many descendants of the aristocracy from the former empire learned that their professional aspirations were best satisfied by leadership in the Roman Church. For its part, the church coexisted with Gothic Arian chieftains, like Theoderic. Increasingly, religious leaders from Rome emphasized a division of authority: the emperors in Constantinople were the secular leaders, but the Pope in Rome was the leader in spiritual matters. In that sense, the Pope was more important than was the Emperor. Pope Hormisdas (514-23) provides an example of contemporary claims to authority:

Christ built his Church on St Peter, and so in the apostolic see the Catholic faith has always been kept without stain. There is one communion defined by the Roman see, and in that I hope to be, following the apostolic see in everything and affirming everything decided thereby (p. 326).

At times such rhetoric seemed to be followed, but at other times not. A few especially-strong characters like Gregory I (aka, the Great, who was Pope from 590 to 604) did much to establish papal authority. Perhaps even more important to the rise of the Holy Roman Empire were the conversions of some of the barbarian kings formerly dedicated to Arianism. Clovis (predecessor of the Frankish kings name Louis) was the greatest of these.

Missions in Northern Europe (500-600)

This section describes the Christianity of the British Isles before and after the time of Augustine (not the Bishop of Hippo) sent by Gregory the Great as an evangelist. Ireland had already been Christianized by St. Patrick. And what Augustine found in England was a form of Christianity and a society that were quite different from what he knew on the Continent. We would know much less about these events if it were not for the great English historian Bede, author of "The Ecclesiastical History of the people of the Angli." MacCulloch emphasizes at the end that what was significant about Augustine's mission was not that he Christianized the British Isles. Again, much of that work was already done. The significance of Augustine was his emphasis on obedience to Rome.

Obedience Anglo-Saxons and Other Converts (600-800)

During this period, a much greater percentage of those who lived in the British Isles embraced Christianity and especially the authority of Rome. People in general wanted to be associated with the prestige of old Roman society, and the Roman Church's connections with Peter gave it a special credibility. From England, this particular interest and conviction spread to central Europe. In virtually all cases, the "conversions" of the peoples of the Continent did not amount to a change from paganism to Christianity. Instead, these were conversions of Christian people to the recognition of Rome and subjection to the Pope. During this period, when people did experience a conversion, this amounted to a Christian deciding to become a nun or a monk.

Charlemagne, Carolingians and a New Roman Empire (800-1000)

Charles Martel (676-741) had five sons, one of whom was Pippin III (the Short). And Pippin became the father of Charles the Great = Charles Magnus = Charlemagne (747-814). (This information from a basic encyclopedia). MacCulloch's section here deals with the transition from the Merovingian to these Carolingian kings and their careers. During this period, the papacy and Carolingian dynasty marginalized the position of the Byzantines and represented the early beginnings of the Holy Roman Empire. Charlemagne reigned for many years and brought about a renaissance in the production of manuscripts of ancient documents, some of which had almost been completely lost. This was the rise of the minuscule cursive which sped up the pace of making manuscripts. Also during this time, Benedictine monasticism grew in its stature as a sanctifying influence for society. For example, priests and monks could pray and participate in the Mass in order to offset the sins of war. The Carolingian kings were aware that public penance could be an effective political act. The monasteries seemed satisfied by their public presence and by the social control that they exerted.

At this point in my reading of MacCulloch, something that strikes me is the author's attention to the wide array of influences and factors in the history of Christianity. A different way of approaching the task would be to trace out mainly the history of Christian beliefs and doctrines, the decisions of councils, etc. In other words, one way of writing Christian history would be to focus on of the interpretation of Scripture and the development of tradition. By contrast, MacCulloch emphasizes how things like architecture and liturgy, monuments, politics, names, symbols, and even coins both shaped and reflected how people lived, what they thought and how they understood the world. This much less "gnostic" approach prevents the story from becoming nothing more than a series of biographies of important thinkers or a survey of the evolution of Christian doctrine.

A Few Translational Notes on Genesis 1:1-2:3

2011-06-14T07:55:00.000-07:00

What follows is an early draft of my notes on the Hebrew text of Genesis 1:1-2:3. I've put this together as a guide for anyone interested in mastering the vocabulary and grammar of this passage.

If you are unfamiliar with the vocabulary of this text, I recommend that you look up each word in the Gesenius-Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon (called BDB in the notes below). This will help to acquaint you not only with the Hebrew, but will also expose you to some of the delights of our standard one-volume Hebrew-English lexicon.

Genesis Chapter 1

Verse 1: One oddity here is that bereshit, the very first word of the Bible, is in construct and is followed by bara, an affix (a.k.a. perfect) verb form. This combination, though found in a few other texts (namely, Lev. 14:46; Isa. 29:1; and Hos. 1:1), is quite rare. Options for translation include, "In the beginning when . . . " and "When God began to create . . . " For more on bereshit, see BDB, 912. (Hereafter, all references to BDB appear in parentheses and give only the page number). In his commentary, Claus Westermann (p. 98) notes that there are two perennial observations made about bara: (1) The subject of this verb is always the Lord, never humans or another deity (2) The verb is never used with an adjective or an accusative of the material with which God creates. That is to say, bara seems to begin with nothing, and always results in a completed product.

Verse 2: Here we encounter a high percentage of rare vocabulary: tohu ("chaotic" 1062), bohu ("emptiness" 96), tehom ("abyss" or "deep" 1062) and rachaf ("to hover" 934). For the translation of tohu vavohu, Sarna suggests "unformed and void." Options for translating ruach include: "spirit" "wind" and "breath" (924-26). The choice here might depend on whether you think that ruach is in contrast, or is more parallel to, choshech . However one translates al pene hamayim, it should match the translation of al pene tehom, a nice parallel.

Verse 3: Note that yehi is a jussive form.

Verse 5: Here we find the first instance of what becomes a familiar refrain: "And there was evening and there was morning." Erev carries the idea of darkening, which makes "sunset" or, perhaps better, "evening" a good choice.

Verse 6: A rahqeeyah is defined as "an extended surface" (956) and apparently was used to speak, for example, of metal that had been hammered flat. The translation "firmament" is hardly helpful inasmuch as most people don’t know what a firmament is. (Nahum Sarna, in his JPS commentary, notes that rahqeeyah could possibly refer to a layer of congealed ice, which, he says, may be the idea in Ezek. 1:22, and which was certainly the understanding of Josephus in the first century A.D., the reference for which Sarna does not provide). However one translates yom echad , "a first day" or "day one," it should be noted that the definite article, ha is not coupled with yom until 1:31 (in connection with "the sixth day"), and then 2:2 ("on the seventh day").

Verse 7: Here we encounter for the first time the verb asah, which is used again in 1:16 and 25. Sarna says that we shouldn't make too much of the difference between bara and asah, as though the Lord suddenly needs material with which to work. Nonetheless, Sarna, like most translators, reflects the distinction between bara and asah with "create" and "make" respectively (pp. 5-8; so, too,Westermann, p. 76).

Verse 9: Yeeqahvu is a 3rd person verb. It is not patently a jussive, but a good argument can be made that it is; namely, jussives occur quite frequently (vss. 3, 6, and 14) in this highly repetitive text.

Verse 10: A meekvay is a "collection" (876). Concerning yamim, because there is dagesh in the mem, we know that this is "seas" and not "days." That is, the little fishy (the dagesh) is in the sea. See!

Verse 11: deshe is a generic term that can include all sorts of plants and fruit trees (Sarna, p. 9). For this reason, "vegetation" is likely the best translation. Asev is a noun meaning "herb" (793). Mazeriah is the hiphil participle of zara (281, esp. 282) which BDB translates "produce seed." Meen is defined as "kind" or "species," the latter of which sounds anachronistic here. However, Westermann says that meen denotes "precisely the same as that of the word used today in the natural sciences, namely species or genus" (p. 126).

Verse 14: A maor is a "light, light-bearer, luminary" (22). "Lights" is a good translation for the plural here, although "light-bearers" acknowledges that light has already been created (v. 3), and here, for the first time, light has a habitat.

Verse 16: Memshala is a feminine noun meaning ""rule, dominion, realm" (606). In this verse, the sun and the moon are given their respective times of rule or dominion. Sarna observes that the stars, the kokavim (456), are given no particular role. This, he says, "constitutes a tacit repudiation of astrology" and refers the reader to Jer. 10:2 (p. 10).

Verse 17: Here natan, which often means "give," connotes the placement of the luminaries. And God "placed" or "put" or "set" them (678-81, esp. 680-81, sec. 2).

Verse 18: This verse continues the thought of the previous one. Ve-leemshol is a qal infinitive construct of mashal = "rule, have dominion, reign" (605)

Verse 20: Sharatz, here in the qal prefix (a.k.a., imperfect), means "swarm, teem" (1056). The volume of terms leading up to the atnach makes for difficult translating. Sarna has it: "God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures’ " (p. 20). The King James Version manages to reflect all of the Hebrew terms, though awkwardly: "And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life’." Yeoafaf is a polel prefix (imperfect) of oaf which means "to fly" (733).

Verse 21: According to BDB (1072), the taneen is a "serpent, dragon, sea-monster" which, in mythological texts, denotes personified chaos. Ramas means "to move or glide about" (942-43). The same root occurs as a noun, remes, in verses 24, 25, and 26.

Verse 22: Parah means to "bear fruit, be fruitful" (826).

Verse 26: The plural of asah has generated endless discussion. Westermann, who refers to several grammarians, seems to favor the idea that this is a "plural of deliberation" (p. 145; compare Gen. 11:7). Tselem means "image" (873) and demut is "likeness" (198). Of course, the big interpretive question here is: Do these two words stand in apposition to one another, functioning as virtual synonyms? Or do they denote different senses in which humanity is comparable to God? (From the standpoint of syntax and the discreet sense of the text, I understand the two phrases as synonymous. On the other hand, the ways in which Christian theologians have exploited the fact that there are two phrases are interesting and instructive). Radah means to "rule" or "have dominion" (921-22). A dagah is a "fish" (185).

Verse 27: Zachor denotes "male" and, according to BDB (271), is related to the verb from the same root inasmuch as "remember" or "call to remembrance" or "call upon" = worship. The connection is apparently based on the idea that it is the male, as opposed to the female, who is "competent to worship." Nekavah, a relatively rare word, denotes "female" (666).

Verse 28: Cavash means "to subdue" (461).

Verse 30: Yereq is "green" (438). Achal means "to eat." Thus, achlah is is the denominative "food" (38).

Verse 31: As noted above, here we have the first instance of the definite article with yom. Sarna mentions that the exceptional use of the article "points to the special character" of the sixth and seventh days (p. 14); they are the days on which humanity and the Sabbath are made. Whatever the significance, the use or non-use of ha should be reflected in translation. As commentators frequently point out, this is the first time that tov is followed by meod. According to BDB, meod is actually a noun which means "muchness, force, abundance" (547), but often functions like the adverbs "very" and "exceedingly."

Chapter 2, verse 1: The first word is a pual prefix (imperfect) 3rd masculine plural of the root calah (478): "and they were completed." Tsvaham = tsevah + hem, and means something like "their array" (so Sarna, p. 14). KJV has "the host of them." Sarna adds this note: "Hebrew tsava’, in the sense used here, is strictly speaking applicable only to ‘heaven’; but, by the figure of speech known as zeugma, it is extended to apply to the ‘earth’ as well" (p, 15). Sarna’s endnote refers the reader to Nehemiah 9:6.

Some Sources:

Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. 4th rev. ed. Edited by Karl Elliger and Wilhelm Rudolph. Stuttgart: Deutsche Biblestiftung, 1990.

Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs. The New Hebrew and English Lexicon. Reprinted. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1979.

Sarna, Nahum. Genesis. JPS Torah Commentary Series. Jewish Publication Society, 1989.

Westermann, Claus. Genesis 1-11. Translated by John J. Scullion. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994.

Religious Responses to Modernism

2011-06-12T06:55:00.000-07:00

I want to start developing a series of short exercises for students of history and theology. This project will partially fulfill the requirements for a degree program where I'm expected to turn in complete syllabi for college history courses. The title of this post is the theme for the exercise: "Religious Responses to Modernism."

According to The New Oxford American Dictionary, modernism is "a movement toward modifying traditional beliefs in accordance with modern ideas." I understand that there are narrower definitions of the term. See, for example, the definition provided in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. But here I use the word "modernism" in that very broad sense of the definition I've quoted.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, in both Europe and America, developments like Darwinism, Modern Geology, and Higher Criticism of the Bible placed enormous pressure on Christianity and Judaism. In the modern world, tradition was no longer the judge of truth. Now, it seemed, tradition was the accused. Science and reason were the new the arbiters of truth.

Of course, nowhere did modernism cause more controversy than it did in its encounter with religion. In the following short readings, you will get a taste of some of the various religious responses to the rise and strength of modernism. As you read these, notice their similarities and differences. Take note especially of the different responses to the same basic issue.

In 1885, Kaufmann Kohler of New York called together Reform Jewish rabbis from around the United States. They met from November 16-19, with Isaac Mayer Wise presiding. The meeting was understood to be the continuation of the Philadelphia Conference of 1869, which built upon German conferences held in the 1840s. In 1885, the rabbis adopted what is known as the Pittsburg Platform.

Pope Pius X was born in 1835 in Upper Venetia. He was elected Pope in 1903 and died in 1914. In September 1910, Pius issued the Sacrorum antistitum, The Oath Against Modernism. All religious leaders of the Roman Catholic Church were required to swear to this statement until is was rescinded in July 1967.

Benjamin B. Warfield was born in 1851 near Lexington, Kentucky. He was a conservative Protestant Christian who taught at Princeton Seminary from 1887 until he died in 1921. A prolific writer, Warfield served as editor of the Presbyterian Review from 1890 to 1903. Around this time, he published the essay, Christianity and Our Times.

Karl Barth on "Double Predestination"

2011-06-11T07:05:00.000-07:00

At the moment, I can't document the following quote from Karl Barth. But it's just so juicy I had to pass it along:

If the teachers of predestination were right when they spoke always of a duality, of election and reprobation, of predestination to salvation or perdition, to life or death, then we may say already that in the election of Jesus Christ which is the eternal will of God, God has ascribed to man the former, election, salvation and life; and to Himself He has ascribed the latter, reprobation, perdition and death. If it is indeed the case that the divine good-pleasure which was the beginning of all things with God carries with it the risk and threat of negation, then it is so because the Son of God incarnate represents and Himself is this divine good-pleasure. The risk and threat is the portion which the Son of God, i.e., God Himself, has chosen for His own.

MacCulloch, Chapter 9

2011-06-04T11:25:00.000-07:00

Chapter 9 in Diarmaid MacCulloch's survey of Christian history is called "The Making of Latin Christianity." It's the first of several chapters in Part IV which is titled "The Unlikely Rise of Rome."

MacCulloch explains that during the fourth century, the growing Roman emphasis on the antiquity of the Church, the centrality of Rome, and the primacy of Peter were all the result of a desire to gain respectability, "to show that Christianity had a past as glorious as anything that the old gods could offer" (294). To borrow MacCulloch's expression, Christianity was becoming "a religion fit for a gentleman," and by that he means a Roman gentleman. Along this line, I learned something very interesting about the Roman Catholic dogma of the primacy of Peter and the history of the interpretation of Matthew 16. MacCulloch explains:

One aim of the programme was to place a new emphasis on the role of Peter rather than the joint role of Peter and Paul in the Roman past. Moreover, it was in [Pope] Damasus's time that Peter came to be regarded not merely as the founder of the Christian Church in Rome, but also as its first bishop. Ironically, it was actually a North African bishop, point-scoring against his local Donatist opponents by stressing the North African Catholics' links to Rome, who is the first person known to have asserted on the basis of Matthew 16:17-19 that 'Peter was superior to the other apostles and alone received the keys of the kingdom, which were distributed by him to the rest'; yet significantly it was in the time of Damasus that this thought occurred to the North African, some time around 370 (p. 294).

Meanwhile, Jerome was advocating the idea that scholarship, what he was did and loved, was just as legitimate a monastic life as manual labor or being an hermit. He put an exclamation point on his statement when he produced what would become the Christian Bible for the next 1000 years, the Latin Vulgate.

Next, MacCulloch provides a very fine survey of the life and legacy of Augustine, "shaper of the western church" (pp. 301-12), and ends the chapter by telling the stories of important people associated with the rise and development of monasticism in the West:

The most significant early figure in this story is Martin, without whom the Christianization of Germany and missions into the British Isles would not have happened. "Eastern and Western monasticism combined fruitfully in the monk John Cassian" (315). And then there was Benedict whose "Rule" became the basis for the flowering of monasticism in the West for many centuries to follow, even up to the present day.

Rice Haggard, by Colby D. Hall

2011-05-31T06:05:00.000-07:00

Hall, Colby D. Rice Haggard: The American Frontier Evangelist Who Revived the Name Christian. Fort Worth: University Christian Church, 1957.

It's been about fifteen years since I first read this book. But recently, I've looked at it again. For Stone-Campbell Restoration History buffs, here's a quick report:

This is the only book-length treatment of the life and times of Rice Haggard. Its author, Colby Hall, was for many years a teacher of church history at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. I never met Hall. But his passion for the subject of Restoration History and his personal flair shine through on every page.

The book begins with a chronological table and two photographs of prominent Haggard descendants. (Unfortunately, we have no likeness of Rice Haggard himself).

Chapter I provides a historical backdrop. Hall takes the reader back to Rice Haggard's ancestor, James, who arrived in America in 1689. Chapter II outlines the religious context of Colonial Virginia, the original Haggard family home in America.

Chapters III and IV trace the lines of Nathanael and Edmund Haggard, both sons of James. Rice, the subject of the book, was the son of Edmund. The chapter on the line of Edmund Haggard goes on to tell of Rice's involvement with James O'Kelley and the Republican Methodist Church.

Chapter V reports the contribution that Rice made to the movement associated with Barton W. Stone and the Kentucky Christians.

Chapter VI gives an overview of the family and personal life of Rice.

Chapter VII provides a summary of the sources and the content of Rice Haggard's pamphlet, An Address to the Different Religious Societies on the Sacred Import of the Christian Name.

Two final chapters supply information about the Haggard family in the early twentieth century and the use of the name "Christian" among believers in Jesus. A bibliography, a diagram of the James Haggard family tree, and a general index round out the book.

Bibliographical Note:

Though the book by Colby Hall is the monograph on Rice Haggard, it is now supplemented and corrected by mainly one source: Roberts, R. L. "Rice Haggard (1769-1819) 'A Name Rever'd'," Discipliana 54 (Fall 1994): 67-81.

For a popular-level treatment of the life and significance of Haggard, with photos, see my article: Bellizzi, Frank. "Rice Haggard: Unsung Hero of the Restoration Movement," Gospel Advocate 139 (March 1997): 26-31.

Better yet, to get the content of my GA article and more, check out the Rice Haggard posts here at Frankly Speaking.

Predestination and Early Christian Writers

2011-05-28T15:55:00.000-07:00

Augustinian predestination is not the doctrine of the Church but only the opinion of a distinguished Catholic theologian. --as quoted in D. MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, p. 308. MacCulloch cites G. Bonner, Saint Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies. 2d edition. (Norwich, 1963), pp. 394-95.

To see numerous examples of the early church's commitment to the doctrine of human free will as opposed to predestination, take a look at this page at the website of the Austin Graduate School of Theology.

MacCulloch, Chapters 7 and 8

2011-05-26T16:55:00.000-07:00

Part III (= Chapters 7 and 8) of MacCulloch's survey of Christian history takes up the story of the early church in the south and east after the Council at Chalcedon (451). These movements were partly the result of a debate about the nature of Christ.

The formula from Chalcedon said that Jesus Christ was "one person in two natures," human and divine. Most everyone agreed that the reported claim of Nestorius--that within Christ there were two persons--was absolute heresy. But for believers in places like Alexandria, it was also wrong to speak, as Chalcedon did, of Christ having two natures. The detractors explained that as wine and water become indistinguishable when mixed, so the human and divine in Christ were indistinguishable and essentially one. This was the position of the Monophysite movement. (MacCulloch calls this "Miaphysite." Both terms mean "one nature").

With their center of influence at Alexandria, the Miaphysites dominated northeast Africa. From there and also from the east bank of the Red Sea, the faith traveled further south into Africa all the way to Ethiopia. As a way of expressing their differences with Chalcedon, African Christians adopted the language called Coptic. On occasion, leaders at Constantinople attempted to strike a deal, holding to the Chalcedonian creed while maintaining ties with the Miaphysites. These efforts ultimately failed until, eventually, the southern churches became so institutionally and culturally different from Constantinople and Rome that the two sides were practically irreconcilable.

Another group breaking with Chalcedon went in the opposite theological direction and in a different physical direction. The Dyophysites emphasized the separateness of the human and divine in Jesus. Thus the early church's christological debate provided three distinct options: Miaphysite (one nature), Roman/Chalcedonian (two natures in one person), and Dyophysite (the human nature of Christ is separable from his divine person). The Dyophysite movement took root, often as a distinct minority, in various parts of Asia traveling as far east as India, China, and even Japan.

In chapter 8, MacCulloch shows that the rise and conquests of Islam and/or the presence of indigenous religious traditions had the effect of cutting off Africa and most of Asia from Roman and Byzantine expressions of Christianity. Those believers isolated in the South and East were often persecuted and oppressed. Nevertheless, they held to their faith (regarded by the West as heretical). The result is that there are to this day many vestiges of Christianity in Africa and Asia. And MacCulloch is convinced that a large number of these have yet to be appreciated or discovered by the West. He remarks that in the centuries following the break up of these two Christian worlds, what is truly remarkable is

just how little Western Chalcedonian Christians knew about centuries of Christian struggle, scholarship, sanctity and heroism in another world. Western Christianity, heir to Chalcedon, Reformation and Counter Reformation, still has a long way to go before the balance is fully righted.

Western Christians have forgotten that before the coming of Islam utterly transformed the situation in the eastern Mediterranean and Asia, there was a good chance that the centre of gravity of Christian faith might have moved east to Iraq rather than west to Rome. Instead, the ancient Christianity of the East was nearly everywhere faced with a destiny of contraction in numbers, suffering and martyrdom which still continues (284).

To this point in the book, I think this is the most impressive and important section.

MacCulloch, Chapters 5 and 6

2011-05-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

Oxford historian Diarmaid MacCulloch concludes Part II of his book, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, with chapters 5 and 6.

The title of Chapter 5 raises a question: "The Prince: Ally or Enemy?" MacCulloch begins by tracing the history of the church's relationship to the Roman Empire during the second century. Here, he offers a good description of how, to the Romans, the boldness of the Christians seemed like a provocation, how their aloofness created suspicion, and how their distinctive use of political language represented an affront to imperial authority. The Christians worshipped none of the traditional gods. Were they atheists? In their assemblies, it was said that they ate flesh and drank blood. Were they cannibals? Suspicion and resentment sometimes resulted in the martyrdom of Christians, terrible ordeals that resulted in the church having even more heroes. One can only wonder why MacCulloch ignores one of the earliest and most-interesting episodes in the history of Rome's various encounters with early Christianity: the conflict over the Cult of the Emperor in the province of Asia during the reign of Domitian, the unmistakable back story of the New Testament's Book of Revelation.

In a section on the "Third-Century Imperial Crisis," MacCulloch describes how in that period the borders of the Empire were receding. Among the biggest problems was weak leadership and governance. As a result, imperial government was reduced to "a police state" (167). "From Persecution to Persecution" describes the organized attempts of Decius (mid-3rd century) and Diocletian (early 4th) to obliterate Christianity. Finally, in a section on "Kings and Christians," MacCulloch provides a good overview of the Syriac-speaking church in the east. Once again, he makes a few remarks indicating that he has a bit of an axe to grind. Having referred to the "sheer diversity" of early Christianity, he remarks that it serves as "a vital lesson to learn for modern Christians who wish to impose a uniformity on Christian belief and practice which has never in fact existed" (176-77). This section of the chapter includes a good description of the Syriac-speaking church in the East.

Chapter 6, "The Imperial Church," begins with a section on "Constantine and the God of Battles." MacCulloch describes the development of Christianity under the patronage of the emperor who established the city of Constantinople and who led to the development of the church's organizational structure. Next, the author discusses the rise of monasticism as a reaction to Christianity's greater accommodation to and acceptance from the larger society. And he tells the stories of Pachomius, who originated monasteries, and Antony, who retreated to the desert and became the original hermit. MacCulloch also relates the story of Arius of Alexandria who reportedly said of Christ, "There was when he was not." Christ was created by the Father! Eventually, Constantine summoned the bishops of the Empire to Nicaea in 325. Homoousios was the term used in the proceedings of the council to affirm that Christ was "of one substance" with the Father (214). The Council of Constantinople, held in 381, finally outlawed Arianism. But, suppressed, it flourished among the Goths and Vandals, who lived outside the borders of the Empire and who apparently adopted heretical positions as a way of opposing Roman power.

The later Miaphysite (also called "Monophysite") controversy did not deal with the earlier theological question (how God the Father was different from, but similar to, Christ). Instead, this controversy took up the question of how to describe Christ's divine and human nature(s). By this time, the new power-politics character of Christianity clearly shows. Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Constantinople all vied power, not to mention Rome. In the debate over the Christological question, the Antiocheans were much more prepared to talk about Jesus's human nature than were the Alexandrians. Antioch had always given stronger emphasis to the literal sense of the Bible. By the year 400, the term Theotokos, "bearer of God" was already a common way of describing Mary. This was a result of the high Christology affirmed in the Nicean creed. Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople, trained in the way of Antioch, rejected the emphasis placed on Theotokos. It should be balanced, he said, by the term Anthropotokos, "bearer of a human." The Council of Ephesus (431) condemned Nestorius. Finally, the Council of Chalcedon (451) proclaimed that the Father and Son are co-equal, and that the humanity and divinity of Christ are co-equal. In this way, Chalcedon was conclusive and definitive regarding both the Trinitarian and Christological controversies.

Graduation at the University of Connecticut

2011-05-08T19:40:00.000-07:00

We decided to take some pics outside Chloe's apartment.

Chloe and Abigail

Just outside Gampel Pavillion

Congratulations and best wishes to the University of Connecticut Class of 2011!

Sunday Soccer

2011-05-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

Here and there, I've posted a few photos of my soccer daughter, Abigail. She's still playing and had a game this morning in Rocky Hill. However, things are a little different these days: she's a teenager now and does not want her dad taking pictures of her. And since this Papa isn't quite ready to join the paparazzi, well, I didn't get the greatest photos. Here's the best I could do.

Last minute instructions from her coach before getting on the field.

That's her in the center of the photo. Rocky Hill didn't beat Berlin this time around. But they gave it a good try. 2-1 was the final score.

A Few Notes on MacCulloch, Chapter 4

2011-05-02T17:35:00.000-07:00

Back to Diarmaid MacCulloch's book, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. I mentioned in an earlier post that when it comes to the New Testament and Christian origins, MacCulloch displays a penchant for finding disagreement or contradiction where there isn't any. More of this shows up in Chapter 4.

For example, MacCulloch claims that when Paul refused to accept financial support from churches he was working with at the time, he acted "contrary" to the teaching of Jesus who said that "those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel." But why is it contrary if Paul, for the sake of his mission, chose to relinquished his rights?

In an attempt to bolster his point, he actually makes matters worse with a complete misreading of 2 Thessalonians 3:6. There Paul instructs Christians at Thessalonica to distance themselves "from any brother who is living in idleness." According to MacCulloch, Paul's rigid work ethic here runs counter to the example of "Jesus and his wandering Twelve." The author appears to have forgotten that he had earlier quoted Jesus to the effect that those engaged in a teaching ministry had a right to be supported. The idle Christians at Thessalonica had not left fishing nets in order to follow and to learn from Jesus. As 2 Thessalonians makes clear, assuming that the return of Christ was just around the corner, they had quit working altogether only to become a public nuisance, which is a vast difference. In the words of Paul, they had gone from busy to being busybodies. Not to mention that MacCulloch shouldn't be quoting Paul from 2 Thessalonians anyway since he earlier claimed that the Apostle didn't write it, labeling it one of the "later pastiches of the authentic letters" (see 97, especially note 53 which can be found on 1025).

Shallow reading of the New Testament turns up again in a discussion of Romans 16. Contrary to MacCulloch, in verses 1 and 2 of that chapter, sister Phoebe, a diakonos of the church at Cenchreae, does not receive a greeting from Paul. Instead, the Apostle instructs the Christian community at Rome to receive her and to give her any help she may need from them. The passage makes clear that Paul had given to Pheobe the responsibility and honor of delivering his Letter to the Romans, a bit of evidence that MacCulloch might have used to strengthen his point about the relatively-high status of women in at least some segments of the first-century church (116-17).

Again, I think that MacCulloch is a pretty good researcher and writer. And I still expect that, in later portions of his book, he'll be able to teach me a few things about Christian history. Until then, I'll say that in these early chapters he should have been more careful, not so quick to question the New Testament.

Rattlesnake Derby, Mangum, Oklahoma

2011-04-30T17:45:00.000-07:00

My dad and I drove over to Mangum, Oklahoma this afternoon just to see what was going on at the annual Rattlesnake Derby there. . . .

It's just not every day that you see boxes labeled, CAUTION LIVE SNAKES

My dad. Back in the day, none of us had ever been to a rattlesnake derby. So he and my mom brought us to Mangum not long after we moved to Altus forty years ago.

Looks alive, doesn't it? Actually, it's stuffed. Didn't buy it though. I figured Michele wouldn't appreciate it on the coffee table. But what a conversation piece!

Here's a live one, . . . with lots of wire between me and him.

Again, not something you see everyday.

The First 100 Pages of the First 3000 Years

2011-04-23T08:25:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I started reading the newish book by Oxford church historian Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. It's a big book, over 1,000 pages long. What follows are a few of my reactions after reading the first three chapters, which take up about 100 pages.

Of course, nowadays authors are expected to come up with a title or a subtitle that intrigues and reels in the prospective buyer. The title Christianity doesn't create much of a stir. Here it's the subtitle, The First Three Thousand Years, that raises the obvious question. I thought Christianity was only two thousand years old. So what's the author up to? In the first few pages, you find out. MacCulloch believes that the Christian faith owes so much to its roots in (a) the ancient Greek tradition and (b) the history of Israel that it's no stretch to say that the Christianity sort of began about a thousand years before the time of Christ.

Those two strands of Christian pre-history take up the first two chapters of the book. Here, MacCulloch packs a lot of information into a few dozen pages. The reader can learn a good bit about how ancient Hellenism and Judaism shaped the world into which Jesus and his movement were born. At times, MacCulloch offers up some refreshing takes on well-known texts. A good example is found on page 50:

Around Abraham's rackety grandson Jacob are woven several engaging tales of outrageous cheating and deceit, and they culminate in an all-night wrestling match with a mysterious stranger who overcomes Jacob and is able to give him another new name, Israel, meaning 'He who strives with God'. Out of that fight in the darkness, with one who revealed the power of God and was God, began the generations of the Children of Israel. Few peoples united by a religion have proclaimed by their very name that they struggle against the one whom they worship. The relationship of God with Israel is intense, personal, conflicted. Those who follow Israel and the religions which spring from his wrestling match that night are being told that even through their harshest and most wretched experiences of fighting with those they love most deeply, they are being given some glimpse of how they relate to God.

Through the first two chapters of the book, MacCulloch's presentation is mostly good. But then comes Chapter 3, "A Crucified Messiah (4 BCE--100 CE)." Here the reader easily detects a zeal for debunking the Four Gospels that appears to have gone to seed.

For example, on page 79 MacCulloch says that “the Gospels agree on hardly any detail about Jesus’s infancy.” But the fact that Matthew and Luke report different traditions surrounding the birth of Jesus does not mean that they necessarily disagree. In fact, they don’t.

On page 83, we read: “The Gospels do not give a definite answer as to whether Jesus’s ministry lasted one year (John) or three years (Matthew, Mark, and Luke).” Here it’s hard to know where to begin. It is true that upon reading one of the first three Gospels one might guess that the public ministry of Jesus took up no more than one year. However, this is far from the notion that any of the evangelists state that one year was the time frame. On the other hand, the church derives its tradition that Christ’s ministry lasted three years from John’s Gospel, which mentions three Passover festivals (see 2:13, 6:4, and 11:55). Not only does MacCulloch insinuate a disagreement where there isn’t one, he also makes the confusing mistake of reversing the categories. Again, it is not the Synoptic Gospels, but rather John who establishes the three-year time frame.

Although it is not intended to contradict the Gospel accounts, one can only wonder about MacCulloch's discussion of the parable, Jesus’s favorite form of teaching. The author suggests that Jesus invented the device and adds that parables “emerge as a literary form in later Judaism only after Jesus’ death” (p. 87). He then asks, “Was this form of Jesus’s teaching so successful that it impressed and influenced even Jews who did not become his followers?” The entire section is unaware that instructing and convicting others by means of narrative metaphor finds its origin not in the teaching of Jesus, but in the Hebrew Bible, the Scriptural tradition in which Jesus stood. How did MacCulloch, the son of an Anglican priest, forget how the prophet Nathan revealed to King David the true character of his sin with Bathsheba?

There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup, and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him (2 Samuel 12:1-4).

Other examples from the Jewish Scriptures include Jotham's parable of the trees in Judges 9, the parable of the two sons told by the wise woman of Tekoa in 2 Samuel 14, and several others, like those found among the oracles of the writing prophets; for example, the story of the two eagles and a vine in Ezekiel 17.

These mistakes and misreadings in Chapter 3 do not inspire confidence in MacCulloch who otherwise seems to be a competent historian and a fine writer. So, anyone else out there who has read or who's reading MacCulloch? I'd be interested to hear your reactions. If not this book, then what are you reading these days?

Using "Fight Club" to Teach Buddhism: 2nd of 2

2011-04-04T05:15:00.000-07:00

This is the second of two posts about teaching Buddhism using the 1999 movie Fight Club. So if you haven't read the last entry here, you might want to take a look and then come back. I recently used this material in my Introduction to World Religions course at Amarillo College, and the class session went pretty well. To repeat, this approach is based on Fight Club: An Exploration of Buddhism, by Charley Reed. The article appeared in the online Journal of Religion and Film in October 2007.

The Tri Kaya Doctrine

A major branch of world Buddhism--and certainly the one that is best known in the United States--is called Mahayana. The word means something like "the great vehicle." It's the inclusive branch of the religion. Mahayana is "great" at least because it includes many people who otherwise would not be Buddhist. Mahayana also refers to a better-than-you attitude towards Theraveda.

By contrast, Theravada Buddhism insists that to be Buddhist means to strictly follow the example set by Siddhartha Gautama, the man who came to be known as the Buddha. When you see a Buddhist monk with his head shaved and wearing what looks like a toga, think "Theraveda." When you remember that Phil Jackson, the coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, is a Buddhist, think "Mahayana."

One way for Christians to conceive of the distinction between Theraveda and Mahayana is to ask the question, "In what ways must a Christian be like Christ?" Jesus was a first-century Palestinian Jew who apparently worked as a carpenter until he began a public teaching and healing ministry that lasted for three years. At the end, he was arrested and charged by the authorities who had him executed. Throughout his life, Jesus lived in and observed the customs of Judaism, including synagogue worship and participation in major festivals in Jerusalem. He spoke Aramaic and could read the Jewish Scriptures in Hebrew. Jesus was baptized, once fasted for forty days, and washed the feet of his disciples. The particulars of his life go on and on. Question: how much must a person be just like Jesus in these and other particulars in order to truly be Christian? This is the sort of question that Buddhism has asked: how much must a person be like Siddhartha in order to be Buddhist? Theravada gives the conservative answer. Mahayana gives the liberal answer. My sense is that the relationship between Theravada and Mahayana is a little bit like the one between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, sometimes debating and dismissing, but at other times complimenting and cooperating.

Within Mahayana there is a teaching called Tri Kaya, which means "three personalities." The term refers to the idea that the Buddha has three bodies: (1) the Nirmana Kaya, the "apparitional body" (2) the Sambhoga Kaya, the "state of perfect bliss" and (3) the Dharma Kaya, which is the body of "most excellent law" and, according to Reed, symbolizes "the enlightenment of Buddha nature." He also observes:

The connections between the doctrine and Fight Club are blunt: One can easily label Tyler as the Nirmana Kaya, Marla as the Sambhoga Kaya, and the narrator as the Dharma Kaya, but the actual meaning to the story of the film, once these connections are made, is what is more important.

Once a viewer looks through this lens, seeing Marla, Tyler, and the narrator as actually separate manifestations of one common thought, the movie really opens up to numerous possibilities. For one, if Tyler is the embodiment of Nirmana Kaya, then his leadership qualities in the film make a lot more sense, especially as a teacher for the narrator. In Buddhist teachings, the Nirmana Kaya is the idea of the historical Buddha, and is what is referenced when a particular person hopes to become more than just a bodhisattva, and has that internal characteristic about them. Also found in Buddhist teachings, is the idea that the Nirmana Kaya manifestation of the Buddha has compassion for all beings. In the film, Tyler too has compassion for all beings, wanting to free the "middle children of history," almost ignoring the narrator near the end of the film in order to flesh out the larger picture. The same holds true once seeing Marla as the Sambhoga Kaya. After this connection is established, one can then understand why, even though it appeared the narrator had nothing but distaste for Marla, both he and Tyler had romantic feelings for her. In Buddhist teachings, it is Sambhog Gakaya which is needed in order to achieve Nirmana Kaya, which ties directly to Marla being the catalyst for the narrator being forced to manifest Tyler.

The core "body" in Mahayana Buddhism is the Dharma Kaya, which is a constant, enlightened presence in the world which gives rise to the other manifestations of Buddha. In the movie, the narrator is the one tangible character who is sustained throughout, in almost every part of the movie from beginning to end. Dharma Kaya is also seen as the "pure" and "flawless" manifestation of the Buddha. While it may appear that the narrator is the opposite of that idea of Dharma Kaya, it is the conscience of the narrator that causes him to risk his life in order to save his city and nation from a terrorist attack, . . . and his new found self control allows Jack to provide meaning and prospective to his journey.

Tilakkhana

In addition to illustrating Tri Kaya, Fight Club can also be used to help students understand what Zen Buddhism (a branch of Mahayana) calls "The Three Characteristics of Existence." These are:

1. anicca, which means "change." Reed points out that the big change at the beginning of Fight Club involves the destruction of Jack's apartment, which explodes while he's away. Virtually nothing is left. Humans typically want for our worlds to arrive at and ideal state and then stay that way. Anicca is the word that reminds us that life never works like that.

2. dukkha, which means "suffering" or "pain." One doesn't have to watch Fight Club for very long to figure out that it's all about every kind of pain. The Buddha taught that to live is to suffer. This includes physical pain. But the concept of dukkha includes what many people regard as something worse: emotional or psychical pain. Consider that many counselees say that they'd rather be physically beaten than be verbally, emotionally abused. Jack encounters and endures big doses of all sorts of pain and suffering.

3. anatta, which refers to the concept of "no permanent self." As viewers of Fight Club eventually find out, a major theme of the film is identity. Anatta says that, in spite of my perceptions and desires, there is no permanent, immortal person, no enduring spirit. To think that a person, who once never existed and will someday be dead, has a unified, permanent existence is a little like thinking a car has such an existence. If the car is without its engine, or its tires and wheels, or without an interior, would it still be that car? What if you take the body off of the chassis? Is one or the other, or both, that car? And in that case, would the car have become two? What constitutes the car's permanent identity? At what point did it become a car? How much does it have to decay and come apart before it is no longer considered a car and ceases to exist as such? You could (and should) ask the same question about a human being who supposedly has a singular, permanent identity.

Using "Fight Club" to Teach Buddhism: 1st of 2

2011-03-01T19:35:00.000-08:00

Good teachers are always looking for new ways to effectively communicate their subjects. They want to use the best methods possible in order to engage their students in the material. The more memorable, the better. Over the past five years, I've taught ten or more sections of courses like Old Testament, New Testament, Life of Paul, and Introduction to World Religions. But I can tell you that I'm far from the teacher I want to be. I haven't gotten it all figured out.

Recently, I came across an article by Charley Reed published in the online Journal of Religion and Film. Reed's work led me to start thinking about using clips from the 1999 film Fight Club as way of exploring Buddhism in class. It's an interesting possibility to me. And, in fact, one of the movie's leading actors actually hinted at the connection back when the film was still in production. According to an interview article in Premiere Magazine, Edward Norton remarked, "In Buddhism there's Nirvana and then there's Samsara, the world of confusion and disharmony. That world is our testing ground, where we have the experiences that help us become enlightened. . . . Fight Club . . . is kind of that idea: You're challenging yourself to break out of the world."

Anyway, I think this way into the subject is something my students would like. At the same time, the project does have its pitfalls. I'm thinking especially about how Fight Club just happens to be one of the most violent and profane R-rated films out there. A classroom full of college students is a mixture of personal and religious sensibilities that a movie like this might trample on. People who are uncomfortable or upset about something are not really available at that point to learn something else. So I think that when using a movie, especially one like this, it's important for the instructor to (1) issue some sort of non-endorsement disclaimer and (2) carefully edit the clips that are used in class. That said, here's what I've put together so far:

Fight Club begins with the main character played by Edward Norton. Ironically, viewers never learn this character's name. In most discussions of the movie, he's usually referred to as "Jack" so I'm going with that. Jack has it all, or so it would seem. He's a young man, with a corporate job and a stylish apartment on one of the upper floors of a city high-rise. There's only one problem. Jack personifies the empty person who is controlled by fadish, mudane American consumerism. As Reed describes him, he's "a person who values the material wealth of his life more than his actual life and as a result of the blandness of his existence, finds himself constantly lying awake at night."

The First Noble Truth

So Jack goes to a doctor, asking for something, anything that will get him over his insomnia. The doctor refuses to prescribe a drug, assures him that he's not going to die, and mentions that Jack should get more exercise. And then, Jack announces the first of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths: "I'm in pain!" This is the truth about human life from beginning to end: dukkha. To live is to suffer, said the Buddha.

Samsara and Reincarnation

The doctor suggests that Jack should look in on testicular cancer support meetings. That's real pain, he says. So Jack goes. And there he begins to sympathize with the pathetic men at the meeting. He even cries. As a result, he's able to sleep soundly again. In time, Jack becomes addicted to his visits to support meetings for all sorts of victims. Seeing, hearing, and sympathizing with people in real pain is his chosen path of therapy. Of course, he hasn't solved his own problems. He's only seen the greater pain of others. In a sense, he has simply discovered samsara, an idea that Buddhism inherited from Hinduism. Samsara expresses the notion that life is a circle from which we cannot (or do not) escape. Because of the failure to escape samsara, individuals are reincarnated many times over. Leaving one of the support meetings, Jack narrates, "Every night I died, and every night I was reborn." Samsara. Reincarnation.

At that point, Jack's method is derailed by the appearance of Marla Singer (played by Helena Bonham Carter). Like him, she's a faker who comes to all the meetings because, as she says, they're "cheaper than a movie and there's free coffee." Disturbed by the presence of another impostor, Jack finds that, once again, he can no longer sleep. (The previous sections--on the First Noble Truth, Samsara, and Reincarnation--correspond to chapters 3-5 of the Fight Club DVD. These chapters contain a minimum of vulgar language, and no violence or nudity).

Jack's Koan

About that time, on one of his business trips Jack expresses something that sounds very much like a Zen Buddhist koan. A koan is a paradoxical question used in order to break up tired old patterns of thinking and open up the mind. One example of a koan goes like this: A man hangs over a precipice by this teeth, which are clenched in the branch of a tree. His hands are full and his feet cannot reach the edge. A friend leans over and asks him, "What is Zen?" What answer would you give? (Warren Matthews, World Religions 6th ed., 2010, p. 126). In the airport, Jack asks himself: "If you wake up in a different time in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?" It is no accident that, at this point in his life, Jack meets up with Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). Tyler is this completely self-assured nonconformist who, like the Buddha, rejects the importance of material possessions. (This section corresponds to chapter 8 of the DVD which is mild in content).

Fight Club as the Eightfold Path

Soon, Jack and his new friend, Tyler, begin Fight Club. It's a series of clandestine meetings where disenfranchised young men have brutal, bloody fist fights. In one scene, Tyler describes the members of Fight Club and the source of their rage: they are all "slaves with white collars . . . the middle children of history." They have "no purpose or place. . . no Great War, no Great Depression. Our great war's a spiritual war, our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off." Without an interpretive key to all of this, Fight Club might seem like mindless brutality to go along with a mindless existence. Why not? Alternately, the club can be seen as the last of the Four Noble Truths. First, said the Buddha, to live is to suffer. Second, our suffering is the result of our craving, our thirst for life itself and for permanence. Such desire is always, invariably frustrated (and frustrating!) because we're all marching towards death, and nothing ever stays the same.

But, said the Buddha, if one eliminates such craving, he would in effect eliminate suffering. This is the third noble truth. The fourth and last noble truth is that one can defuse desire by following the Eightfold Path. Among the English translations, one finds variations. But here's a typical version of the path:

1. Right Understanding
2. Right Thought
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration

Notice the connection to the number of Fight Club rules announced by the Brad Pitt character, Tyler Durden:

The first rule of Fight Club is, You do not talk about Fight Club
The second rule of Fight Club is, You do not talk about Fight Club.
The third of Fight Club, someone yells "Stop" the fight is over.
Fourth rule: only two guys to a fight.
Fifth rule: one fight at a time fellas.
Sixth rule: No shirts, no shoes.
Seventh Rule: Fights will go on as long as they have to.
And the Eighth and final Rule : If this is your first night at Fight Club, . . . you have to fight.

As Reed says, "there is not a literal translation of the eightfold path in Fight Club." On the other hand, it's obvious that the number of rules could just as easily have been five or seven or ten. Clearly, then, the values and the fighting of the club represent the commitments and activities demanded by the Buddha's Eightfold Path. This is why the viewer should try to look past the film's violence, which is common, often graphic, and sometimes comical. It's a depiction of what it means to be a disciplined Buddhist.

Jack makes little progress, though, Going down the list in order, Reed describes him like this: He is unable to understand Tyler's thinking, unable to think for himself, he minces his words in discussing Tyler, does not participate fully in Fight Club or its later form in Project Mayhem, does not fully accept the sacrificial aspect of his living situation, does not put the effort to rid himself of his worldly possessions, and of course, keeps the two divisions of his personality, the narrator part and the Tyler part separate." This is the root of Jack's prolonged suffering throughout the film. (This section relates to Fight Club, chapter 15, which includes lots of violence and some profanity).

Okay, more later. Till then, feel free to add your comments. Tell me what you think.

A Church That . . .

2011-02-26T09:45:00.000-08:00

A church that imagines it stands beyond history, beyond conformity to culture, beyond sin, and beyond tragic misunderstandings and miscalculations--such a church has little to offer the world. But a church that owns up to its blunders and its compromises--its humanness--is a church that can both receive and reflect the love and grace of God to the world around it. In so doing, such a church contributes mightily to the restoration of the gospel of Christ.

Leonard Allen and Richard Hughes, Discovering Our Roots, p. 9.

Returning a Favor to Dick Marcear

2011-02-25T08:15:00.000-08:00

Next Sunday morning, I'll be speaking at the Colonies Church of Christ here in Amarillo. Their preacher, Dick Marcear, had knee-replacement surgery last week. He called me a day or two before to ask if I'd handle the preaching responsibilities on the 27th.

It's funny how things turn out sometimes. More than a quarter century ago, when I was a Bible student at Freed-Hardeman College, I started getting a few invitations to preach at some of the small congregations of the Church of Christ there in West Tennessee. I was getting preaching appointments! That was the good news. The bad news was, I didn't have a very good idea of what I was going to say when I got there.

About that time, I discovered in the college library a publication called Truth for Today. It was a magazine written by and for preachers. Every issue was filled with manuscript sermons. So, being in my situation at the time, I began going through back issues of Truth for Today looking for the very best lessons. I discovered a preacher out in Amarillo, Texas named Dick Marcear. As I read his sermons, I thought to myself, "This guy is really good. He preaches the Bible. His sermons are clear and imaginative, with lots of good quotes and illustrations." And at that point, I began to make some of those sermons my own.

So I guess it's only fitting that I would be preaching next Sunday instead of Dick Marcear. He's already done something similar for me. I take it as just another reminder that whenever we do something good, we don't always know who we might be helping along the way.

Bill Humble on The Archaeology of the Bible

2011-02-20T08:05:00.000-08:00

Over the next few months, the San Jacinto Church of Christ will once again play host to Dr. Bill Humble. Now retired from Abilene Christian University, he has served for many decades as an influential teacher, writer, and speaker. And although he is now advanced in years, Humble hasn't slowed down a bit. His presentations are excellent. Last summer, he taught a series of lessons on "The World of Paul." After one of the sessions, I had my photo taken with him.

This time around he's speaking about "Archaeology and the Bible." Sessions are on Sunday evenings from 6:00 to 7:00 at San Jacinto, 823 Mississippi in Amarillo (corner of Line and Mississippi). Everyone is welcome to come. I'm encouraging my students to attend at least one session. I think that if they come to one, they'll want to return. Here's the schedule of dates and topics:

February 13   Abraham and Sarah
February 20   Mamre and Machpelah
February 27   The Hittites
March 6       Discovering David
March 13      Five Kings of Israel
March 20      Hezekiah and Sennacherib
March 27      Ancient Oil Lamps
April 3       A House in Capernaum
April 10      Jacob's Well
April 17      Excavating a King's Palace
April 24      Caiaphas, Pilate, and the Cross
May 1         Paul's Travels Around the Aegean Sea
May 8         Manuscripts of the Bible
May 15        Milestones in Biblical Archaeology

Earl Irvin West (1920-2011)

2011-02-14T07:15:00.000-08:00

A week ago last Friday, on February 4th, I received word that Earl Irvin West had died that morning. He was 90 years old.

For those who don't recognize his name, Earl West was the grandfather of contemporary historians among the Churches of Christ. His 4-volume survey entitled Search for the Ancient Order has long been a standard reference work. In addition, he published several other books and many dozens of articles. I just bought a copy of his brief autobiography called Searcher for the Ancient Order: The Golden Odyssey of Earl I. West. I look forward to reading it.

For many years, West served as a professor of religious history at Harding University's Graduate School of Religion in Memphis. From 1987 to 1997, I was a part-time, commuter student at Harding. During those years, I took three courses with Dr. West:

The Early Church
American Restoration Movement A
American Restoration Movement B

I won't say that the class on the early church was a bad one. It wasn't. But it was when he was teaching Restoration History that West was really "in his element." As he lectured about people like Alexander Campbell, Barton W. Stone, and Jacob Creath, Jr., you sometimes got the feeling that West actually knew those people. And I was always impressed that anytime a student asked him to elaborate, it was clear that he had at his fingertips much more information than he had planned to present. As a historian, he didn't just know the big rivers on the landscape. He also knew every creek and stream. A few other things I especially remember about my teacher:

When he came to class, he always wore a coat and tie, and always had a neat appearance. It was clear that he took his role as a teacher seriously.
He had sort of a lumbering way about him. In the race between the turtle and the rabbit, he would definitely be the turtle, slow and steady. Of course, this is how he was able to produce so much work.
West was a big man with a deep, resonant voice. I always thought that if he hadn't become a scholar and a teacher, he might have been a great radio announcer.
When lecturing, two of his favorite words were "Furthermore" and "Moreover." He used them as connectors in a list of items he was discussing. It was sometimes amusing for us students to notice how often he used those two terms.

Most of all, though, what impressed me about Earl West was that he believed it was much more important for a person to be a real follower of Jesus than it was for him to be a scholar. He loved his subject, not merely because he was a historian, but mainly because he was a Christian. And though I didn't know him well, I'll always love him for who he was and what he stood for.

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labor, and their works will follow them. --Revelation 14:13

American Heroes, by Edmund S. Morgan

2011-02-09T18:25:00.000-08:00

Last night on my way home from work, the car thermometer said it was 4 degrees Fahrenheit outside. But there was something else even more significant weather-wise: a gusty wind out of the north blowing around 30 miles an hour. And then, it started to snow.

When I woke up this morning, the temperature was 0 and it had snowed about 7 inches. Of course, in Amarillo 7 inches of snow means you've got drifts 4 and 5 feet high. Area schools were closed for the day. So we stayed home, built a fire, ate, watched TV, and read.

A good bit of today I spent reading the latest from historian Edmund S. Morgan, American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America (New York: Norton, 2009). It's a collection of articles and essays--some never published before--that Morgan, now 95 years old, has written through the years. And although some of them were written as far back as the 1930s, they're all as fresh and alive, instructive and inspiring as ever. Here we have in all their glory and infamy, Puritans, witches, Quakers, and Revolutionary leaders. Morgan combines his penetrating insight into the past with some wonderful quotations from primary sources. Each chapter can be read in anywhere from 10-30 minutes. And each one is a perfect little gem. Just right for an afternoon at home.

So that's what I'm reading these days. How 'bout you? Any good books you've recently discovered?

Add to Your Faith! A Message from 2nd Peter 1

2011-01-29T14:55:00.000-08:00

Tucked away in 2 Peter chapter 1 is a great passage that deals mainly with two things: what God has done for his people, and what he expects his people to do in response.

Peter begins the letter by reminding his Christian readers of what God has done for us. By exerting his "divine power," the Lord has given us "everything we need for life and godliness." By sending Christ, who was crucified for our sins and raised by the power of the Spirit for our justification, the Father has provided the way through which we can receive everything that we really need. Christians have joy and confidence because we know the one who has "called us by his own glory and goodness" (1:3).

Also, by calling us and allowing us to know him, God has extended to his people "very great and precious promises." Such gifts are not an end in themselves. They are meant to enable us to “participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world" (1:4). To put it another way, the promises of God draw us closer to him and encourage us to live lives in which we become holy, even as God is holy (Leviticus 20:7-8; 1 Peter 1:15-16). By living this way, we are set free from the destructive power of a sinful lifestyle so that we can fulfill our one great purpose of bringing glory and honor to God. This leads directly into a discussion of the human response to divine grace.

Beginning with verse 5, Peter turns from his description of God’s grace to the responsibilities of God’s people. We are to give “all diligence” (KJV) or “make every effort” (NIV) to “add” certain qualities to the foundation of our faith. There’s hardly a good way to translate the Greek word for “add,” which actually means “to provide at one's own expense.” The term highlights the idea of effort and sacrifice. The language suggests that although adding to your faith is worthwhile, it is not always easy. Consider each item that Christians are to have or to add:

Faith refers to our loyalty to God as well as our trust in him. It is mentioned first in the list because without faith we cannot even begin to please God (Hebrews 11:6). But on the basis of faith, we can obey and live for God. It is in this sense that we are justified by faith (Romans 5:1). Faith is the victory that overcomes the world (1 John 5:4).

Goodness carries the idea of "moral excellence" in the broadest sense of that expression. Because the Greek term here is so very general, the King James translators chose the word "virtue." Like their Lord, the followers of Jesus Christ should be known as people who do go about doing good things (Acts 10:37-38).

Knowledge supplies a Christian what he or she must have in order to make moral choices and doctrinal decisions. It is only upon the basis of knowledge that Christians can “test everything” (1 Thessalonians 5:20-21) or “test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1-3).

Self-control is the virtue that enables a Christian to resist temptation and closely follow the footsteps of Jesus. Developing this trait requires a person to rise above our environment. To be self-controlled runs against the grain of a society that practically worships unsuppressed action and the breaking down of inhibitions. But people who want to please God will work at strengthening the muscles of restraint so that they can act as they should.

Perseverance is translated from a word whose verb form means "to remain under." From this we gather that to persevere is to willingly remain under a heavy load you'd rather not carry. In this sense, the call for patience is similar to our expression, "Stick to it" or "Stay with it." Far too many families and churches are plagued by a lack of loyalty, an unwilling attitude in the face of those inevitable conflicts. The gospel has something to say to people who are prone to give up. It says, “Stick to it, and learn to patiently endure whatever you must for the sake of the kingdom of God!” (compare Hebrews 12:1-3).

Godliness refers to a right attitude towards God which leads to the right actions towards God's creation. Whenever we gratefully acknowledge the Almighty as the maker and sustainer of everything, we develop a sense of how we should treat other people, who bear the likeness and image of God (Genesis 1:26-27, James 3:7-10, and 1 John 4:20).

Brotherly kindness initially speaks of the warmth and affection that should be found in every family, but especially in the church, the family of God. According to Peter's first letter, sincere love for our brothers and sisters in the Lord is a by-product of our obedience to the truth (1 Peter 1:22).

Love is mentioned last. Why? Because love is the single quality that encompasses and supports all the others. Love is the capstone quality of the Christian life. It is what makes our abilities and sacrifices worth something in the eyes of God (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).

So what do you need to add?

Been Readin' Again

2011-01-18T13:15:00.000-08:00

Two new articles that are especially noteworthy:

1. It's time for me and other college instructors to really roll up our sleeves and make higher education reach higher. Here's the low-down on learning in American colleges and universities.

2. Gordon McDonald tells a heart-warming, challenging story: Seat Selection for Worship: Sometimes the Spirit doesn't give you the coveted aisle seat.

Learning How to Interpret a Biblical Psalm

2011-01-10T07:50:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, I developed the following lesson plan for a unit on the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament course that I teach at Amarillo College. I want to give credit where credit is due: I based my observations and the student exercises on a presentation by Professor David J. A. Clines of the University of Sheffield, in the U.K. Dr. Clines was speaking at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in November 2000. I attended the session and got the following ideas from what he said:

Exercise 1: Describe the relationship between the two halves (or several parts) of these verses in the Book of Psalms. How does the second (and third, fourth) part of the line relate to the first part?

1:1

1:6

24:2

29:1

91:14

119:11

As you have seen, the most basic feature of Hebrew poetry is couplet composition. This feature is more commonly called parallelism because the two or more parts of a psalm verse are in some way parallel to each other. Each verse consists of A and then B (and occasionally C, and even D). In order to understand it, each verse requires the reader to identify how B relates to A.

A second feature of Hebrew poetry is the strophe. What's that? Think of it this way: a strophe is to poetry what a paragraph is to prose. A strophe is a distinct block within poetic material. It's clear that the biblical poets thought and composed in strophes. However, the Hebrew text of the Psalms contains no markers for strophes. So it’s up to us to locate and identify them. What is the point of doing that? It reveals the major sections, the basic structure, and the progression of a psalm.

Exercise 2: Close your Bible. What follows is Psalm 2 in the New International Version translation. However, here the verses come one after the other, with no breaks to identify the strophes. (You may have never noticed it before, but the actual text of the NIV does mark off strophes with a blank line in between them). Now, identify the strophes by marking where you think the main divisions of this psalm occur. Be prepared to explain your “division decisions.”

Psalm 2 (NIV)

1 Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the LORD and against his Anointed One.
3 "Let us break their chains," they say, "and throw off their fetters."
4 The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.
5 Then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
6 "I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill."
7 I will proclaim the decree of the LORD : He said to me, "You are my Son; today I have become your Father.
8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. 9 You will rule them with an iron scepter; you will dash them to pieces like pottery."
10 Therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth.
11 Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling.
12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. ________________________________________________________________________

What kinds of signals or indicators led you to mark the divisions as you did? Once you have answered that question for each strophe, compare your results with your copy of the Bible. (Most modern translations of the Psalms indicate strophes by a blank line between them).

Now that you have identified the four strophes of Psalm 2, we can theorize about strophe identification:

1. Here are some clues that one strophe has ended and another is beginning:

change of speaker
change of location, setting
change of mood
change of topic

2. Here are some clues that a strophe is concluding:

a line repeats (word-for-word or in ideas) the line that opened the strophe
words like “forever,” “always,” or “death” may suggest an ending
a line summarizes the thought of the strophe as a whole
a refrain (a line that appears at the end of several strophes)

3. Here are some are clues that a new strophe is beginning:

change of addressee
words like “therefore” and “now.”

Exercise 3: Now it’s time to sharpen your ability to visualize what’s happening in a psalm. Imagine that you are a screenplay writer. You have been assigned the task of preparing a script for a short film depicting Psalm 2. For each strophe, you will need to identify things like:

· The location. Where does the action take place?
· Who is present?
· The speaker(s)
· The lighting, atmosphere, colors, mood, camera angles, etc.
· Since you are incredibly talented, go ahead and compose the soundtrack too. Does each scene include a musical score? What does it sound like? What specific recordings would you select for each scene?

Ecclesiates: How It Works, What It Says

2011-01-09T15:25:00.000-08:00

It's been a long while since I've written anything about Ecclesiastes. In previous posts, I discussed the book's setting in the leadership structure of ancient Israel, and also the title of the book. But now I want to get around to talking about how Ecclesiastes works, what it's actually saying and how. What follows is a short overview of my take. See what you think:

1. Unlike the practical wisdom book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes is an example of reflective, speculative wisdom. Instead of asking about how to live one’s life, this book asks about the meaning of life. The one other Old Testament book in the speculative-wisdom category is Job.

2. Ecclesiastes explores a specific question: What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? (1:3 NIV). I take this to mean something like: What is the point of a life well lived, a life characterized by productive work? Is there a lasting benefit? What aspect of ourselves will survive death and the ravages of time? As one would expect, since this question serves as the program for Ecclesiastes, the author repeats it several times. (See, for example, 2:22, 3:9, 5:16, and 6:8).

3. In response to his own question, the author of Ecclesiastes offers an initial, standard answer, which sounds hopeless and bleak: "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." (1:2). For the time being, I'll stay away from the question of what is the best English word for the Hebrew hebel, translated "Meaningless" here. Whatever the right word is, it's important to note that Ecclesiastes often repeats this first, most-basic conclusion announcing the enigma or futility of the search for significance in life. (See, for example, 1:14; 2:1 and 11, etc.). The book ends in 12:8 in much the same way as it began in 1:2. Connected to his general conclusion is the author’s frequent observation that the pursuits of human life amount to a chasing after the wind (1:14, 17, 2:11, 17, 26; 4:4, 6, 16 ).

4. The author’s experiences and observations have led him to his pessimistic conclusion. A few examples:

Famously (or infamously) the author appears to be agnostic about life beyond the grave: Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth? (3:21).
He denies that anyone can predict the future with any kind of accuracy: a man cannot discover anything about his future (7:14).
He insists that the search for true, never-fail wisdom is also futile: Whatever wisdom may be, it is far away and most profound – who can discover it? (7:24).
Sorting out what seems to be clear and well-known is apparently an impossible task. "Who knows the explanation of things? asks the wise man" (8:1). No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all his efforts to search it out, man cannot discover its meaning. Even if a wise man claims he knows, he cannot really comprehend it (8:17).

5. So at one level, the human quest for meaning and significance meets with failure and frustration. However, Ecclesiastes is not entirely pessimistic about the possibility of joy and contentment. The author includes a series of passages that use phrases like find satisfaction and be happy and enjoy in a positive way. Ecclesiastes introduces this series with the words "nothing better" (2:24-25, 3:12-13, 3:22, 5:18-20, 8:15, and 9:7-10). When reading these passages, one notices that the sequence moves from (a) observation to (b) commendation to (c) the final imperative of 9:7-10, which strikes me as a high point of the book.

Here, the legitimate enjoyment of good things is brought within the circle of God's will for humanity. This is the single most important contribution that Ecclesiastes makes to the biblical witness: that taking pleasure, today, in your work, in good food and drink, and in your family, is not only approved by the Almighty. In fact, happiness and joy are an important aspect of the revealed will of God for human life.

Does this look convincing? What are some of your own thoughts and reactions to Ecclesiastes?

Notes about study and sources:

At different times over the last 20 years, I've taken a series of runs at Ecclesiastes. One time I read it almost every night for about a month. When it comes to really getting a handle on a particular book of the Bible, or any text for that matter, there's just no substitute for careful, repeated, sometimes-slow reading. Anyone who's tried this knows exactly what I mean. There are some books that probably should be read in a hurry. But a book like Ecclesiastes is deserving of meditation. In addition to reading Ecclesiastes, I've spent some time with a few of its better interpreters. Two authors in particular have helped me to get a handle on this book: the late, great Robert Gordis, and an Old Testament specialist from the current generation, Graham S. Ogden.

My 10 Best Books of 2010

2011-01-03T07:35:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope 2010 was a good one for you. Either way, we now have one of those psychological new beginnings. So make the most of it.

I took a couple of graduate courses in history last year. So, many of the books I read came from an assigned list. The first course I took focused on the Holocaust. The other one dealt with the Cold War, especially the Cuban Missile Crisis. Every once in a while I had the chance to pick up something that wasn't required reading. Anyway, listed in the order I read them (and highly rated because I just like them) here are "My 10 Best Books of 2010."

1. Hiding in the Spotlight, Greg Dawson.

A true Holocaust survival story that reads like a Dickens novel. The author is the son and nephew of the two main characters. He's also a seasoned journalist. This book is beautifully and tenderly written.

2. Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories, Raymond Carver.

I'd love to write half as well as the great Raymond Carver did. I can't stop reading his stuff. He wasn't afraid to tell sad, gritty stories generated by his own hard experiences.

3. Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume I: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939, Saul Friedlander.

First published in 1997, this book has gone on to establish itself as a major contribution to Holocaust studies. For Volume II, which covers the years of the War, 1939-1945, Friedlander won a 2008 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

4. Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcomb Gladwell.

An easy reading book about how personal success is a matter of background and sustained effort. Gladwell says that both are highly significant.

5. Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Tribe in American History, S. C. Gwynne.

Wow. It's like David McCullough wrote a book about the Comanches. It's that good. Well-researched, superbly-written, this one is an armchair historian's dream come true.

6. The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, John Lewis Gaddis.

A series of eight lectures by a Yale history professor. Gaddis responds to questions like, What do historians do? Why? And what is the value of their work?

7. Restoration Roots: The Scottish Origins of the American Restoration Movement, Lynn McMillon.

The subtitle says it all. This is a popular edition of McMillon's doctoral dissertation completed at Baylor University in 1972. It overviews the impact of Scottish religious leaders like John Glas, Robert Sandeman, and James and Robert Haldane on the subsequent American Restoration Movement (also known as the Stone-Campbell Movement).

8. The Week the World Stood Still: Inside the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis, Sheldon M. Stern.

From 1977 to 1999, Stern was Historian at the JFK Presidential Library. He was almost certainly one of the first to ever hear the tapes made at the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis. From his transcripts of those tapes, he narrates the episode and provides a historical framework.

9. The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power, Garry Wills.

Wills, the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and historian, serves up an analysis of the Kennedy clan. Sometimes sympathetic, often scathing, this book was written not long after Ted Kennedy's unsuccessful bid to gain the Democrat's nomination for President in 1980.

10. Waiting for Snow in Havana, Carlos Eire.

Born in Havana in 1950, Eire was a grade-schooler during the Castro revolution. These days he teaches religious history at Yale. In this memoir from his early years, the author brings together his childhood fun and fears, theology, and a deep, dreamy wonder about what might have been.

So, what were some of the better things you read in 2010? Has anyone else read the titles (or authors) I've listed here? What's on your reading agenda for 2011?

See Abigail Ski!

2010-12-30T18:45:00.000-08:00

So Ab and I went to Ski Sundown today. It was her first time to go skiing. After her lessons, I took her up to the top of the mountain. She skied down like a champ. Watch out, Lindsey Vonn!

We had to take a break every once in a while. . . .

Six New Books. WooHoo!!

2010-12-26T14:35:00.000-08:00

So Michele's parents sent me a Barnes and Noble gift card for Christmas, and my folks gave me some cash. So I took myself book shopping this afternoon. Here's what I came home with:

1. The Kennedys Amidst the Gathering Storm: A Thousand Days in London, 1938-1940, by Will Swift.

2. American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America, by Edmund S. Morgan.

3. Flying High: Remembering Barry Goldwater, by William F. Buckley Jr.

4. American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation, by Jon Meacham

5. The Crowd Sounds Happy: A Story of Love, Madness, and Baseball, by Nicholas Dawidow.

6. The Best American Essays 2010, edited by Christopher Hitchens.

Now, which one to read first?

Coming soon to Frankly Speaking: My 10 Best Books of 2010

Suffering in Second Timothy

2010-12-20T11:05:00.000-08:00

Suffering and sacrifice just aren't a part of God's plan for you. True Christianity is all about having peace and prosperity and everything you want, or at least most of what you want most of the time.

No, I wasn't speaking for myself there. Yes, I was trying to give expression to what I hear a lot of these days. Sickening, isn't it?

For a few months now, I've been teaching a Wednesday-night adult class that's surveying the New Testament. A couple weeks ago, getting ready for our time with Second Timothy, I sat down and spent about fifteen minutes or more slowly (and I mean slowly) reading through this short letter. Here's some of what I noticed, or noticed again. . . .

It seems that by the time he writes this letter, Paul has managed to get himself into prison in Rome (1:16-17). At an earlier stage in his life, when he wrote to people like Philemon and the Philippians, Paul told them to get a room ready for him. Even though he was confined for awhile, he said he would soon be coming to see them (for example, Philippians 1:12-26 and Philemon 22-23) But this time around, usually referred to as his "second Roman imprisonment," he doesn't seem to be hopeful about getting out (2 Timothy 4:6-8).

Timothy, on the other hand, is apparently at Ephesus (1:18), which is where Paul had left him according to 1 Timothy 1:3. From the first letter, it seems like Timothy was having to deal with a lot controversy. The second letter continues this theme. In a situation like that, says Paul, Timothy must teach his people to avoid disputing over words (2:14). Timothy himself must have nothing to do with these stupid, senseless controversies. And, he must avoid falling into the trap of becoming quarrelsome. He should be kind to everyone (2:23-24).

Apparently, handling this sort of assignment will not be easy for Timothy. Why? Because he is not one for taking the bull by the horns, so to speak. Running all the way through 2 Timothy is the hint that this young evangelist is very uncomfortable with conflict. At the beginning of the letter, for example, Paul says that he remembers Timothy's tears (1:4). What Timothy had been crying about is not clear. But what does seem clear is that Timothy is prone to being timid. Paul needs to remind him that the Spirit that God gave to us is not one of fear, but one of power, love, and self-control (1:7). Paul goes on to tell Timothy not to be ashamed. Neither he, Paul, nor his helper, Onesiphorus, were ashamed (1:12-17). From there, Paul goes on to issue several related examples and words of encouragement:

be strong (2:1)
take your share of suffering (2:3)
I am suffering (2:9)
I endure everything (2:10)
You have witnessed my persecutions and sufferings. Now you endure (3:10-15)
endure suffering (4:5)

These add up to a powerful testimony about the necessity for Christians, and especially their leaders, to endure hardship for the Lord's sake. So here are some questions we started out with in class. Before I asked these questions, I told the group that it wasn't my intention to bring everyone down. I was my intention to cause them to think about some things that are inevitable:

1. What is the most difficult thing you've ever had to endure? I'm not asking about just anything that was hard or painful. I'm thinking about enduring hardship for the sake of someone else, or for the sake of something that was important to you.

2. What is the most difficult conflict you've ever had with another person or group of people?

3. In those circumstances, what helped you or inspired you to hang on?

A Southwestern Wedding

2010-12-17T14:05:00.000-08:00

So last weekend, Michele and Aubrey and I drove down to El Paso for a wedding. Eddie Cartagena and Marissa Hernandez (Michele's niece) got married.

It was a nice ceremony, something I would have said even if Michele's father didn't preside. He also conducted our wedding back in January 2004.

I don't think I'd like living in the desert southwest. But I did enjoy the warm weather in December.

The whole time we were there, I kept thinking about how, when we were there three years ago, it was safe for us to walk across the bridge over into Juarez. We found ourselves in a big crowd of out-of-towners who had come to El Paso for the Sun Bowl football game. What a difference a few years can make. Nowadays, you'd probably be safer in Baghdad or Tehran.

While I sometimes wondered about life on the other side of the Rio Grand, I also felt blessed to be on this side with my wife.

Day the World Ended (1955)

2010-12-16T10:45:00.000-08:00

I promise. This post has absolutely nothing to do with the previous one. I'm not poking fun. Not being deliberately ironic. It just happened like this.

On his way to becoming Hollywood’s king of low-budget movies, in 1955 a young Roger Corman produced and directed Day the World Ended. It was one of his earliest films. Dozens more would follow in the years to come. But in his 1998 memoir, Corman remarks that it was this movie that established him as a director in the science fiction genre (p. 31).

The film’s opening title card announces, What you are about to see may never happen. . . . but to this anxious age in which we live, it presents a fearsome warning. . . . Our Story begins with . . . . THE END!

Next we see an example of that now-familiar stock footage of an atomic explosion, and we hear the narrator, Chet Huntley. His voice has been modified to sound tinny with a bit of reverb, a convention that signals to the viewer that these words come from the Bible. (The same thing turns up in the Jule Miller evangelistic film strips). The narration interprets the nuclear holocaust with words taken from 2 Peter 3:10 according to the King James Version: . . . and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. (Note: This passage is often cited as biblical proof that Christian eschatology expects the fiery destruction of the created order. Few people are aware that this verse includes a notoriously difficult textual problem. In fact, the KJV rendering quoted above is not an accurate English translation of the autograph of Second Peter. In all likelihood, the original document said that the earth and everything in it would be “revealed” or “found,” not “burned up.” For a discussion of the questions raised by the various extant Greek manuscripts, see Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. 2d ed. [Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994], 636-37).

As survivors of World War III emerge through the smoke, the narrator tells us, “Man has done his best to destroy himself. But there is a force more powerful than man. And in his infinite wisdom, he has spared a few.” Those few soon begin showing up at the home of Jim Maddison (Paul Birch). Maddison and his daughter, Louise (Lori Anderson, pictured below) are safe, at least for the time being. Their house is in a valley protected by high winds, and by hills all around that contain lead-ore. Jim, a veteran of the U.S Navy, had long suspected that the worst would eventually happen. Ten years before it did, he carefully chose where he would live and stocked everything he would need in order for his family to survive. The lovely Louise has a fiancé, but we soon discover that he is among the victims.

The survivors who take refuge at the Maddison’s include a small-time crook Tony Lamont (Touch Conners, before he became Mike Conners of Mannix fame) and his girlfriend, an aging stripper named Ruby (Adele Jergens). A geologist named Rick (Richard Denning), who carries on his shoulders a man named Radek (Paul Dubov), follows them. Nearly dead, it seems, Radek has a bad case of radiation poisoning. Finally, a crusty old gold prospector, Pete (Raymond Hatton) shows up with his burro, Diablo, in tow. Thrown together by circumstance, the group spends the next several weeks waiting for the radiation to dissipate. Everyone stays inside for the most part, except for Radek who often wanders out at night and whose high roentgen count leads Jim and Rick to wonder why he’s still alive.

Eventually, they discover that Radek is some sort of partial mutant who kills and eats contaminated game during his nighttime ventures. As Rick describes things, Radek has survived because he’s the victim of “an entirely-new set of laws that we know nothing about.” But soon, Radek the hunter becomes prey. Stalking the valley is a full-blown mutant, actually Paul Blaisdell wearing one of the cheapest, most-pathetic monster suits in cinematic history. Soon after this monster with the huge head, bird beak, three eyes, and a 34-inch waist kills Radek, some of the other characters begin to kill off themselves or each other. Having grown impatient, Pete climbs out of the valley and onto the radioactive ridge. Tony, with his sights now set on Louise, stabs the jealous Ruby and throws her body off a cliff.

But Tony isn’t the only one interested in Louise. With the monster psychically calling to her, she wanders into the woods. When Rick discovers that she’s not in the house, he goes looking and finds her in a pond just out of the reach of the mutant, which seems to be afraid of the water. When Rick fires his rifle at the mutant, he discovers that it’s bullet proof, and he is also forced to take refuge in the pond. Just then, it begins to rain for the first time since the war. Immediately the monster begins to cringe, and it quickly dies. Louise tells Rick that, for some strange reason, she feels sorry for the mutant. And since it “spoke” only to her, viewers are left wondering if the monster was in fact Louise’s fiancé! (Usually, the man turning into a monster is something that happens after the wedding, right?). At any rate, as Rick and Louise return to the house, Tony plans to kill Rick so that he can have the girl for himself. At the last moment though, Jim, lying on the couch with a fatal case of radiation poisoning, pulls a hidden pistol and kills Tony. Afterwards, Rick, Louise, and Jim try to make sense of everything that’s recently happened. Jim says of the monster, That thing was created to live in a poisoned world. The rain came, and it was pure. Louise: Man created it, but God destroyed it. He brought the rain and the fresh air. Moments later, Jim dies, leaving only Rick and Louise. The final scene shows the couple healthy and smiling as they hike out of the valley arm-in-arm.

Of all the nuclear-war films that have been made, it would be hard to find one that is more explicitly religious than Day the World Ended. As my synopsis indicates, while the story acknowledges that humans are responsible for the event that brings them to near extinction, it also firmly places this event under the sovereign power of the God of the Christian Bible. Likewise, the end clearly asserts that humanity’s ability to survive and even flourish in a newly-cleansed world is also the result of the providential care of this God. To underscore all of this, midway through, the movie includes a Bible reading. In the previous scene, Jim and Rick wander through the woods. The men are perplexed by Radek’s strange behavior and by the question of what the fallout might have done to the environment. Jim asks his new friend, “What can we do, Rick?” An earlier scene revealed that Rick’s brother, who was instantly killed in the nuclear attack, was planning to become a minister. Rick replies to Jim’s question, My brother believed that the Bible gave strength and revealed a plan for everything. Jim responds, Then I hope I find it before I lose my mind. Back at his home, Jim holds a Bible and reads to the group:

. . . for I am with thee to save thee and to deliver thee, saith the Lord. And I will deliver thee out of the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem thee out of the hand of the terrible (Jeremiah 15:20b-21).

This raises a number of unanswered questions. Why has Jim made his way to the end of Jeremiah 15? Who does he assume that “the wicked” and “the terrible” might be? What sorts of applications is the viewer expected make? My last question leads back to Lou Rusoff, the author of the screenplay. But it’s really not that complicated. According to the story, Jim just happens to have found and read a passage that promises him—or at least his descendants through Louise—eventual rescue from radioactive monsters and nuclear fallout, not to mention Tony. Yes, it is a greeting-card understanding of the Bible. It’s also a very popular approach in Christian history and American culture.

In these ways, then, Day the World Ended assumes the existence and benevolent care of the God of the Christian Bible. Consequently, in this movie although humanity is responsible for World War III and the near extinction of life on Earth, the providence of God ensures that there are survivors. It also provides for a natural cleansing of the planet so that survivors then have the prospect of repopulating the world.

Some Sources:

Corman, Roger. How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998.

Kaufman, Gordon D. “Nuclear Eschatology and the Study of Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 51 (March 1983): 3-14.

Metzger, Bruce M. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. 2d ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994.

Date is Set for Christ's Return

2010-12-15T10:55:00.000-08:00

Just in case you hadn't heard, Jesus is coming back . . . . on May 21, 2011. Be sure to mark your calendars.

My favorite part of the story: The article begins with, There are 24 shopping days left till Christmas. And 171 days left until Jesus' second coming. I looked through the comments section for this story. Here are some of the more interesting lines:

What? Jesus is coming back right after graduation? I'm SO done working!

Where are we going? And why are we in this hand basket?

Dangit! That's my dog's birthday. I'm totally going to have to change the theme for her party!

Does this guy also predict winning lottery numbers?

Isn't this strange? What do you think? Is it all a publicity and marketing campaign? Or do you think the people making this prediction are sincere?

Seven Days in May (1964)

2010-12-08T07:55:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to work on a number of different historical projects lately. I know, I really should focus on just one. But I get distracted. Anyway, one of those projects has to do with feature films of the Cold War era. Here's a review of one of my favorites so far. Spoiler Alert! The first half of what follows is a full synopsis:

Seven Days in May
Directed by John Frankenheimer
Novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II
Screenplay by Rod Serling
Seven Arts Productions and Joel Productions
118 minutes

Seven Days in May begins with a riot in front of the White House. It's the late 1960s and U.S. President Jordan Lyman (Fredric March) has recently signed a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. Now, demonstrators for and against the treaty are coming to blows. The populace is afraid. The military-industrial complex feels betrayed. And the president’s approval rating has sunk to 29 percent.

In one of the opening scenes, the president talks with a sympathetic friend, Senator Raymond Clark (Edmond O’Brien). He explains his reason for making the pact. Sure, the U.S. could have maintained “a nice, cushy feeling that we’ve got a bomb for every one of theirs. But . . . there’d have come one day when they’d have blown us up, or we’d have blown them up.”

President Lyman’s most forceful opponent is Air Force General James Mattoon Scott (Burt Lancaster). The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Scott is a highly decorated war hero who never misses a chance to denounce the new treaty. In one scene, he tells a congressional panel, “There’s not a single piece of paper in history that’s ever served as a deterrent to a Pearl Harbor.” The next day, at a televised rally with thousands of veterans cheering him on, he rails against “the cynics, the one-worlders, the intellectual dilettantes,” those who believe that “patriotism is old-fashioned” and that “love of country is out-dated.”

Scott’s aide at the Pentagon is Marine Colonel “Jiggs” Casey (Kirk Douglas). Casey admires Scott and shares his mistrust of the Soviets. But unlike the outspoken general, Casey stays clear of any public criticism of the administration. A series of clues leads Casey to an uneasy suspicion about his boss, and he requests a meeting with the president. At the White House, Casey reports what he has recently seen and heard. Finally, when President Lyman presses him to speak candidly, the colonel tells him, “I’m suggesting, Mr. President, there’s a military plot to take over the government.”

The president regards the conspiracy theory as possible, and he calls together a small group of trusted aides and officials, including Casey, to investigate. Casey approaches Scott’s former mistress, Eleanor Holbrook (Ava Gardner). Though he is genuinely attracted to her, he visits Holbrook at her apartment in order to find out what she knows about the general. Casey leaves with a stack of love letters written by Scott, letters that can be used against him. The rest of the team discovers that General Scott is, in fact, planning a coup. The scheme is impressive. Scott has set up a clandestine military base near El Paso where unknowing troops are training for seizure. A scheduled alert exercise in a few days will serve as the pretext for mobilizing the military and isolating the president. The armed forces will commandeer nation-wide communications, including the television networks. Almost all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a key member of the Senate, Frederick Prentice (Whit Bissell), are in on the plan. A popular television newsman, Harold McPherson (Hugh Marlowe) will manage the media in the replacement government.

At first, President Lyman intends to derail the conspiracy by exposing it. But General Scott’s team, well organized and determined, prevents the president from assembling the evidence he needs in order to make his case to the public. Then he learns that Scott has rescheduled the alert for late Saturday night, instead of Sunday morning. With time running out, the president phones the Pentagon and demands to see the general immediately. At the White House, Lyman confronts Scott, accuses him of treason, and demands his resignation. The general first denies the plan and then defends his motives. As he leaves, the president vows to fight him.

The next day as the president holds a televised press conference, he receives word that a key piece of evidence exposing the junta has been discovered. Soon, he reports that members of the Joint Chiefs have tendered their resignations. On hearing the news, General Scott tells his driver to take him home.

The film ends with President Lyman speaking to the nation. He declares that in spite of the negative national mood, “the whisperers, the detractors, the violent men are wrong.” The United States is still a strong nation, “strong enough to be a peacemaker.” It is still a proud nation, “proud enough to be patient.” He concludes with the rousing prophecy that “we will see a day when on this earth all men will walk out of the long tunnels of tyranny into the bright sunshine of freedom.” As he leaves the podium, the press corps stands and applauds.

One of the truly great movies depicting the Cold War, Seven Days in May captures so well what seems to have been its cultural context, the attitudes and the atmosphere in America at the time. In 1960, Nixon and Lodge, who nearly won the election, had used a slogan that could have been part of the script: “They Understand What Peace Demands.” Two years later, in October 1962, the Cuban missile crisis heightened the nation’s awareness that both the U.S. and the Soviet Union possessed a large arsenal of incredibly powerful nuclear weapons, and that even an accidental first strike would likely result in retaliation leading to full escalation. In 1964, the year the film was released, such fears were the basis of a clever response to a slogan used by the Republican presidential nominee. The Barry Goldwater campaign declared, “In Your Heart You Know He’s Right.” Supporters of Lyndon Johnson responded with, “In Your Heart You Know He Might.”

More than that, the film also editorializes by presenting a vision of the sort of Americans who can guide the nation to survival and even prosperity. The film “takes a side” in a vital debate during the Cold War. But it also attempts to make room for the opposing side. For example, during his televised press conference, President Lyman assures his hearers of their right to dissent. Viewers overhear him say:

Americans traditionally and historically have given vent to their views. On the date that this government does anything arbitrarily to stifle those views, it will have to change form. It will cease to be a democracy. And I can state quite frankly that this day will not come.

Earlier, when he faces off with the general, the president never suggests that his opponent’s militaristic views have no merit. Although he disagrees with Scott, Lyman does not debate the general’s position. What he objects to is Scott’s attempt to circumvent American rules and procedures. When General Scott professes “an abiding concern about the survival of this country,” President Lyman responds:

Then, by God, run for office! . . . You want to defend the United States of America. Then defend it using the tools it supplies you with, the Constitution. You ask for a mandate, General, from a ballot box. You don’t steal it after midnight, when the country has its back turned.

Colonel Casey, a third alternative, personifies a hawkish position that at the same time defends duly elected civilian authority. When the president meets with the colonel at the White House, he asks him what he thinks about General Scott’s militaristic views. Casey answers:

I agree with General Scott, Sir. I think we’re being played for suckers. I think it’s really your business, yours and the Senate. You did it and they agreed. So, well, I don’t see how we in the military can question it. I mean, we can question it, but we can’t fight it. . . . We shouldn’t anyway.

From the vantage point of the film, Lyman and Casey are ideal Americans. They are strong enough to act responsibly and to show respect even while they believe that they are in the right and that others are wrong. Seven Days in May seems to assume that strength and purity of character combined with uniquely-American institutions will always generate a way for the United States to prevail. Thus, the film reflects and encourages the values of that religion or folk philosophy that has been called "Americanism."

Sources:
Farber, David, and Bailey, Beth. Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.

The Internet Movie Database. “Seven Days in May (1964).” http://www.imdb.com/ title/tt0058576/

The Kennedy Imprisonment

2010-12-01T10:55:00.001-08:00

Wills, Garry. The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1982).

Wills, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian, wrote this book in the wake of Senator Ted Kennedy’s unsuccessful run in 1980 for the Democratic presidential nomination. Like a political observer trained in family psychology, the author attempts to explain the unique privileges, burdens--and now failures-- of the youngest Kennedy son.

He describes it all as the result of the family’s development and abuse of power over many decades. For example, in “Part One: Sex,” Wills tells a number of stories about the philandering father, Joe Kennedy Sr. He suggests that John Kennedy, also a compulsive womanizer, was both acting like his father and trying to compensate for his own weak constitution. Only years later would the moral weight of this “masculine” family habit fall squarely on Ted’s shoulders. His lonely and damaged wife, Joan, and the candidate’s obvious reluctance to come close to any woman in public were just two of the pitiful consequences of a pattern of immorality spanning two generations.

In subsequent parts, Wills likewise depicts Ted as the prisoner of “Family” and “Image,” and “Charisma.” To devastating effect, he describes a Joe Kennedy Sr. obsessed with the goal of portraying his children, especially his sons, as a group of indomitable winners. For example, working behind the scenes Joe began with John’s senior paper at Harvard and managed to have it padded, reworked, and promoted as a noteworthy book, Why England Slept. He also saw to it that the story of PT 109 was carefully crafted and publicized so that John emerged as one of the best-known heroes of World War II. Again, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Years later it was not John Kennedy, but Ted Sorensen assisted by Jules Davids, who wrote almost all of Profiles in Courage, a book that, incredibly, garnered for JFK a Pulitzer Prize. Of course, the decades-long tradition of deception and empty credentials would inevitably come crashing down. But again, in this tragedy of Shakespearean proportions the older Kennedys experienced the pride. It was Ted, in so many ways alone, who would know the fall.

In the last major section of the book, “Power,” Wills sets out to demolish, among other things, the American myth of the Cuban missile crisis. One by one, he takes out each pillar holding up the structure: Notwithstanding the attempts to spread the blame, only President Kennedy could have launched or prevented the Bay of Pigs. With a mixture of hubris and ignorance, he opted to go with the plan, in part because it was clandestine, unconventional, and high brow, “a James Bond exploit blessed by Yale, a PT raid run by Ph.D.s” (231). And why not risk it? The president had been so lucky up till then.

The early, conventional portraits of the Kennedy administration suggest that not only did JFK learn several important lessons from his humiliating defeat, it was this new found wisdom that supposedly enabled him to act so effectively during the missile crisis. But Wills insists that the facts speak otherwise. He says that after the Bay of Pigs, the president never questioned the general purpose and plan of the scheme. To the contrary, he increased his dedication to an anti-bureaucratic approach that specialized in things like paramilitary assaults, counterinsurgency, and guerrilla warfare. In other words, after the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy did not change his course. Instead, he became more devoted to the prospect of unseating Fidel Castro, this time by means of the secretive Operation Mongoose. Plans designed to topple the Cuban dictator were well known by both Castro and Khrushchev. Thus, the reason why Castro reluctantly agreed to have Soviet missiles sent to Cuba was because he wanted a deterrent against an invasion by the US. When Cuba and the USSR made this claim during the crisis, they were telling the truth.

And what of the legendary restraint shown by Kennedy during the crisis? Wills answers that the president’s claim that he made “every effort” in order to provide room for his adversary is “demonstrably untrue” (265). Among other things, Kennedy ruled out open diplomacy from the very beginning of the crisis, insisted that the removal of the Jupiter missiles from Turkey must not be seen as a quid pro quo, and eventually gave the Russians a 24-hour deadline along with his proposal, a move that actually increased the likelihood of war.

Wills says that by acting in such unrestrained fashion, Kennedy helped to precipitate the fall of Khrushchev, a relatively-easy opponent who was replaced by a Soviet hard-liner. Having been treated this way once by the US, leaders in the USSR were in no mood to make compromises later. Not only that, Kennedy’s behavior in the crisis established a pattern of insisting that the US always deal with adversaries from a superior position, instead of as equals. For these reasons, Wills concludes that the Cuban missile crisis was not, in fact, a great victory for Kennedy and America.

The Kennedy Imprisonment was intended for a general, non-academic audience. It is extremely well written and reads easily. Nevertheless, any book making so many counter claims, several of them audacious, really should be accompanied by documentation. There was no good reason for this work to be published without some sort of notes. Their absence significantly weakens the credibility and usefulness of what might have been a convincing, as well as telling, critique.

Preachers Who Are Not Believers

2010-11-10T08:45:00.000-08:00

Some church ministers have a secret. A big one: they no longer believe what they preach. They no longer accept the tenets of the faith that their congregations are committed to.

1. Here's the article that Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, "Preachers Who Are Not Believers."

2. Dennett also published a shorter, popular-level article in Tufts University Magazine, "The Pastor's Secret."

3. Here's the page at ABC News.com that highlights a recent segment they did, apparently as a spin-off from these articles. Only there's a problem here: the text on the page is a match, but the videos that accompany the story are not a match. Not sure why. "Atheist Ministers Struggle With Leading the Faithful."

Anyway, although I haven't read it all just yet, I think this story is fascinating. All of my adult life, I've worked as a preacher and now as the director of a Christian Student Center. By experience I've always known that ministers have doubts and unanswered questions about the faith they teach and practice. In fact, I don't really trust the ministers who claim they don't have those questions. I suspect they're either lying or that they don't do much thinking, a major problem either way.

On the other hand, it's an entirely different thing for a minister to secretly reject the basics of his or her faith and stay in a ministry position, preaching week after week.

Somewhere in the middle, I'd say, is the minister who hasn't rejected basic Christian beliefs, but who doesn't share the congregation's commitment to group identity markers: like a Reformed pastor who doubts Calvinism, or a Pentecostal preacher who thinks tongue-speaking might be mumbo jumbo, or a preacher in the Churches of Christ who doesn't think instrumental music in Christian worship really matters to God. (Not that there are any preachers in that last category. It's just an example, okay?).

All of this raises a number of questions for me. Questions like:

1. What is the legitimacy and role of doubt in Christian life?

2. What sorts of unorthodox possibilities may a Christian leader seriously consider? What unorthodox convictions might be permissible for a Christian leader to develop? My question is, Where's the line that divides acceptable unorthodoxy from the unacceptable?

3. If a minister were to confess, or a church were to discover, that the minister harbors deep-seated doubt or an agnosticism about the Christian faith, what would be the right way for the church to handle that? (According to one story, a preacher publically confessed atheism and was asked by the congregation to stay on until his successor was named).

4. What is the minister's responsibility to the church with regard to these questions? That is, when is a minister who harbors doubt justified in maintaining his church-staff position? At what point does the unorthodox minister become a sort of religious prostitute?

5. Are churches places where people are afraid to ask their questions or express their doubts for fear of rejection? I know, to ask is to answer. But what's the right way for church leaders to handle what have to be many, many wide-ranging questions in the congregation?

6. Is the biggest problem here dependency on money? It has to be the case that the main reason why disbelieving ministers refuse to be honest is because, if they were, they'd lose their income. Is a Christianity that is strongly tied to institutional forms at the root of this question?

What do you think?

The Meaning of Shutter Island

2010-10-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the other night Michele and I watched the movie Shutter Island. Maybe you've seen it. If not, you probably saw the promos. The film was released back in February of this year. It was directed by the legendary Martin Scorsese and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, an actor who routinely turns in great performances, with no exception here.

Afterwards, I went to see some of the online discussion. What I found was a big disappointment. Not that I went looking for very long, but of the reviews I did come across none of them talked about the political dimension of this film. Why not? (spoiler alert!)

For those who haven't (yet) seen this movie, here's one reviewer's quick take on how it begins: Two U.S. marshals, Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule, are summoned to a remote and barren island off the coast of Massachusetts to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a murderess from the island’s fortress-like hospital for the criminally insane.

As the story unfolds, viewers encounter a common narrative device: the difference between perception and reality. Things aren't as they seem, which raises the challenge of distinguishing the two.

But here's what I found really strange about most of the interpretations and reviews that I read about this movie. To a one, they all considered Shutter Island a psychological study of the main character. I saw it much more as a political allegory.

Why? Well, for one thing, at least three characters on Shutter Island make references to things like atomic weapons and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Not to mention that at an earlier time in his life, the main character had been one of the American soldiers who liberated the concentration camp at Dachau. Several other related parts of Shutter Island convinced me that this story isn't so much a "psychological thriller" about Teddy Daniels, the main character. Instead, it's more like a parable about the craze-inducing responsibility of being the United States of America, the world's superpower.

For example, why is it significant that the main character was a U.S. soldier in WWII, one who liberated a death camp no less? Sounds like American guilt to me. . . . Sure we got involved in the War. But that was only after Pearl Harbor dragged us in kicking and screaming. By then it was way too late for millions of European Jews. And it wasn't like we hadn't heard news about their plight. We just didn't want to believe it.

The good news, of course, is that we--the good guys with right on our side--successfully ended the war, . . . by dropping atomic bombs on two cities. But we would make up for any sins of omission or commission, we told ourselves. Or at least we could prevent those sorts of ugly things from happening again. How? By becoming vigilant. So vigilant, in fact, that at one point in the 1950s we were more than ready to see a Communist behind every tree. Of course, almost all of these people protested that they weren't Communists. But what would you expect them to say?

At the end of the film, Teddy Daniels, the DiCaprio character with a history he barely knows, has a question: Which would be worse? To live as a monster, or die as a good man? That's the question that won't leave the U.S. alone. Even when America exercises its power with the best of intentions--and our intentions are never so pure as that--it's not uncommon for many thousands of people inside and outside this country to experience our actions as nothing short of monstrous. The movie insinuates that if your American patriotism reacts with thoughts like: "But what about our commitment to international freedom and liberty?" and "What about all of the good that we do?" then you're Teddy Daniels, the man who knows only one part of his story, only one side of his identity.

But what other alternative is there, except for the monster to cease to exist? The ending of the movie insinuates that that is exactly what will happen in the future. The moral order, the law of sowing and reaping will eventually neutralize the United States.

Did anyone else see the film this way? Or should I be committed to the island?

Been Readin'

2010-10-16T15:35:00.000-07:00

Cold War Fever

So maybe you've guessed by now. These days I'm focused on the Cold War; especially that episode called the Cuban Missile Crisis, which occurred in October 1962. My previous two posts are short reviews of some important sources about the crisis. One, Robert F. Kennedy's Thirteen Days, is an early, first-person report that was polished up and published not long after his assassination in 1968. The second, Sheldon Stern's The Week the World Stood Still, is based on the author's transcripts of the tape recordings of meetings held in the Cabinet Room and in the Oval Office during the crisis. In addition to those two books and a few others I'm currently reading, I've recently come across a few articles you might find interesting. . . .

The Calvinists are Coming!

Something I've noticed about Religion majors at Amarillo College: many of them are Calvinists of sorts. A recent issue of the Economist magazine contains an article about how this phenomenon is impacting the Southern Baptist Convention: Southern Baptists: the new Calvins.

The Sunday-Night Slide

I always enjoy taking a look at Christian Century magazine. For many decades now, it's been the voice of mainline Protestantism in America. It's like the Christianity Today magazine for people who are to the left of evangelicals. Anyway, a recent issue contains an article about something I've mentioned here before: Sunday night services a fading tradition.

A Scholar of the Classics Reads Paul

I can still remember the shock. I had just started reading Philo. He was a Jewish leader who lived in Alexandria, Egypt about the time Christianity first began. My Greek wasn't good enough to read Philo in the original. I had to settle for an English translation. But even then, on nearly every page I came across phrases and expressions that reminded me so much of Paul. It was overwhelming evidence of something I'd never really understood before: Paul's rhetoric was hardly unique. In fact, in many ways it was typical. Wanna see? Check out Philo for yourself. Anyway, more recently, a real scholar of the Classics, Sarah Ruden, has published a book on the Apostle called Paul Among the People. I haven't read the book yet, but enjoyed John Wilson's interview with Sarah Ruden, which showed up in a recent issue of Christianity Today. The article is titled The Apostle of the Golden Age.

So, what are you reading these days? Anything especially good? . . .

The Week the World Stood Still

2010-10-12T14:05:00.000-07:00

Stern, Sheldon M. The Week the World Stood Still: Inside the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005.

From 1977 to 1999, Sheldon M. Stern served as Historian of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. In 2003, Stern published Averting ‘The Final Failure’: John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). The author describes that book as a “full-length” account based primarily on tape recordings of meetings that were held in the Cabinet Room and Oval Office of the White House during the crisis. Two years later, in 2005, Stern published The Week the World Stood Still, the book under review. In his “Acknowledgments,” he explains that this later work is a “revised and condensed version of Averting ‘The Final Failure’,” designed especially for “students and general readers.”

In Chapter One, “The JFK Cuban Missile Crisis Tapes,” Stern describes both the delight and the frustration of listening to the recordings of the meetings. He relates the tedium of using the tapes, often incomplete and sometimes poor in quality, in order to identify who was speaking and what each person said. He also tells some of the story behind the production of the tapes: of JFK’s request for a recording system in the White House, the system itself and how it worked, etc. Finally, he disputes the notion that because only President Kennedy and his brother Robert knew that they were being recorded, the tapes fail to capture honest dialogue, but instead record the Kennedys posturing for posterity. In defense of his assertion, the author notes that a freewheeling conversation among fifteen bright people would be impossible to manipulate. Besides, like Richard M. Nixon a decade later, President Kennedy never imagined that anyone else would ever have access to his tapes. Above all, Stern reminds the reader that at the time of the crisis, as the meetings were being recorded, no one knew for sure how it would all turn out.

In Chapter Two, “The Making of the Cuban Missile Crisis,” the author sets the stage with a short, well-written, and helpful overview of the historical realities leading up to the crisis. Stern describes the Cold War and U.S. relations with the Soviet Union and with Cuba. He also tells us, with remarkable insight, about John F. Kennedy. Stern quotes letters written by JFK when he was a junior naval officer serving in the Pacific during World War II. Here, the reader gets to listen in as the unsuspecting future President candidly talks about the unspeakable ugliness of war and the comic ineptness of at least some military leaders. Stern closes the chapter with something that I found especially helpful: a brief, professional biography of each of the “Key Members of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council.”

Chapter Three, “The Secret Meetings of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council,” makes up more than three-quarters of the book. Here Stern recounts the significant events and meetings of each day of the Cuban Missile Crisis, beginning with Tuesday, October 16, 1962, and continuing through Monday, October 29. Throughout, the author weaves together description and direct quotation in order to produce a continuous narrative. Without hearing the tapes themselves, the reader gains a strong sense of how the meetings went, the personalities involved, the attitudes of the participants, who spoke most frequently, and the specific decisions that President Kennedy had to make while under incredible pressure.

Stern’s account provides plenty of high drama. A good example comes from JFK’s meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday morning, October19. A few days into the crisis by this point, the deliberations of the Executive Committee had convinced the president of the terrible hazards and possibly-tragic consequences of a full-scale attack and invasion of Cuba. Kennedy favored something less drastic, a naval blockade of Cuba. But the JCS stoutly opposed him:

General LeMay, giving no indication that he had understood the dangers raised by the president, turned JFK’s Berlin argument on its head: “I don’t share your view that if we knock off Cuba they’re gonna knock off Berlin.” The Soviets “are gonna push on Berlin and push real hard” if the U.S. fails to take military action against Cuba, since they would feel “they’ve got us on the run.” Kennedy interrupted to ask about Soviet reprisals after a U.S. attack on Cuba. There would be no reprisals, LeMay asserted confidently, as long as you tell Khrushchev again, “If they make a move [in Berlin], we’re gonna fight.” The self-assured general moved in for the verbal kill: “This blockade and political action I see leading into war. . . . This is almost as bad as the appeasement in Munich. . . . I just don’t see any other solution except direct military intervention, right now” (pp. 67-68).

Passages like that one typify Stern’s account. From beginning to end, the reader is able to perceive the emotional ebb and flow of the meetings, as well as the political, military, and diplomatic questions that the president had to answer. The chapter ends not long after Nikita Khrushchev made his surprise announcement, on Saturday, October 27, that the Soviets would dismantle and remove their offensive weapons from Cuba.

“Epilogue: The November Post-Crisis” describes the tentative character of the agreement that the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. had reached. There were still many loose ends to tie up.

In his “Conclusion,” Stern reflects on the ways in which his experience with the tapes radically changed his perspective on the president and the crisis. Like most everyone else during the late 1960s, Stern says that he took it for granted “that John Kennedy had been a tough and relentless Cold Warrior.” However, in spite of his hard public rhetoric and his desire to see Castro eliminated, during the crisis Kennedy "repeatedly acted to prevent, postpone, or at least question the wisdom of” more than a dozen “potentially provocative measures” (216). In doing so, he “often stood virtually alone against warlike counsel from the ExComm, the JCS, and the leaders of Congress during those historic 13 days” (217). It seems clear that the author continues to esteem John F. Kennedy as a hero. Only now, he has different reasons.

Bobby Kennedy on the Cuban Missile Crisis

2010-09-28T13:35:00.000-07:00

Kennedy, Robert F. Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Introductions by Robert S. McNamara and Harold Macmillan. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1969.

At the beginning of Thirteen Days, Robert Kennedy relates something of what it felt like when he and his brother, President John F. Kennedy, and several other high officials of the U.S. government first heard the facts. On Tuesday, October 16, 1962, experts from the U.S. Intelligence Community revealed to the group that the Soviet Union was building a missile base on the island of Cuba, and that atomic weapons and large missiles were already there. During the weeks leading up to that meeting, Soviet representatives, including Chairman Nikita Khrushchev himself, had consistently assured American leaders that they had no intention of sending surface-to-surface missiles or offensive weapons to Cuba. Remembering the moment when the truth became clear, Kennedy writes: "Now, as the representatives of the CIA explained the U-2 photographs that morning, . . . we realized that it had all been lies, one gigantic fabric of lies." There at page 27, I was hooked and kept reading to the end. What a riveting story, told so well.

From there, Kennedy describes some of the initial deliberations of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (the "Ex Comm"). He tells about the competing recommendations they offered, which invariably led to the excruciating decisions that finally only the President could make. The first major decision took up the question of an appropriate initial response. After President Kennedy rejected the plan of a military strike and adopted the idea of naval blockade of Cuba, there were other questions to answer. Many of these were related to the task of striking a balance. On the one hand, it was imperative that the U.S. forcefully confront Khrushshev over the treachery and provocation of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, it was also necessary to leave room so that the Chairman could retain honor and respectability while backing down. As Kennedy describes it, this balancing act was performed by the President as he stood between the implicit threats from the Soviets on one side, and calls from U.S. military leaders and hawkish members of Congress for at least a strike, or even a full invasion of Cuba, on the other side.

Kennedy relates a number of nail-biting episodes as the crisis unfolded. He tells, for example, about the President meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko two days after U.S. officials became aware of the build up, and how Gromyko denied any such activity. He also reports how, at his brother's request, he made a visit to Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin who, like Gromyko, held to the same official line: no long-range missiles had been delivered to Cuba, and the Soviet government had no intention of doing any such thing. Kennedy gives the reader a good sense of what it was like for the President to hear from the Ex-Comm about every possible contingency before making day-to-day and sometimes minute-to-minute decisions that brought with them huge consequences. Finally, Kennedy relates the official agreement according to which the Soviet Union would remove their weapons systems from Cuba and the United States would end the quarantine and pledge not to invade the island nation.

In addition to a sense of relief, I had several reactions as I finished this book. First, I was impressed at how well it is written. Throughout, Kennedy exhibits a crisp, easy-to-read style, the eloquence of precise and clear language.

Second, I was struck by the consistent humanity of this unique story. For example, if they go on long enough, even the most grave circumstances get interrupted by humor and the ridiculous. The Cuban Missile Crisis was no exception. Kennedy relates some of this. For example, upon realizing that something would have to be done in response to the aggression and deceit of the Soviets, Robert passed a note to his brother saying, "I now know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor" (31). And I had to smile when reading the story of how, instead of traveling in a long line of limousines which would have tipped off the press, ten men crammed into Kennedy's car for a ride to the White House (43).

Third, I felt suspicious whenever I sensed that Kennedy's own presidential aspirations and his natural desire to preserve his brothers' dignity overwhelmed the narrative. For example, he chalks up the Bay of Pigs debacle to a failure to solicit a variety of competing opinions. That action was precipitated by a unanimity of thought, says Kennedy, which closed off the possibility of a better decision (112). It also seemed more than a coincidence that Kennedy never mentions his official title, U.S. Attorney General. From beginning to end, he casts himself primarily as the President's brother, close advisor and assistant. An uniformed reader might be forgiven for concluding that Robert was the Vice President, instead of Lyndon Johnson to whom the author grants nothing more than a cameo appearance.

Most of all, I was glad I had read this book. In it, Robert Kennedy accomplished exactly what he set out to do: to tell the incredible story of the Cuban Missile Crisis from his own singular perspective.

Restoration Roots, by Lynn McMillon

2010-09-25T06:55:00.000-07:00

McMillon, Lynn A. Restoration Roots: The Scottish Origins of the American Restoration Movement. Henderson, TN: Hester Publications, 1983.

Armchair historians of the American Restoration Movement immediately recognize the names Barton W. Stone and Alexander Campbell. In fact, the religious saga in which they play the two leading roles has more recently been named the Stone-Campbell Movement. Students of this story also know the names of other heroes, especially Thomas Campbell, Alexander's father and mentor, and Walter Scott, one of the movement's great evangelists in the early 1800s.

However, if you were to ask, "Who came before them?" most of their spiritual descendants would look all the way back to the sixteenth century and mention Martin Luther and John Calvin. A gap would separate the reformers of the sixteenth century from the restorers of the nineteenth century. Restoration Roots: The Scottish Origins of the American Restoration Movement was written to fill in part of that gap. It traces some of the lines that tie the Reformation in Scotland to the eventual movement that, under the leadership of Stone and Campbell, sought to restore primitive Christianity on American soil.

Like several other fine works of history, this little book is the revision of a doctoral dissertation. McMillon completed it at Baylor University in 1972 under the guidance of Professors Glenn O. Hilburn, John Davidson, and Robert Reid. The original title was Quest for the Apostolic Church: A Study of the Scottish Origins of American Restorationism. In the early 1980s, the author, a long-time educator and leader among the Churches of Christ, made a few minor changes and republished the book as Restoration Roots.

The "Introduction" in the current edition was written by Earl West. Well known among the Churches of Christ for his multi-volume history of the American Restoration Movement called The Search for the Ancient Order, West offers some penetrating insights about McMillon's topic.

Chapter I sets the stage by reviewing the history of the Reformation in Scotland. Beginning with the influence of Oxford scholar John Wyclif, an Englishman who flourished in the late 1300s, McMillon identifies a strong Scottish attraction to the doctrine of sola scriptura (scripture only), a teaching that was later advanced by men like Patrick Hamilton, George Wishart, above all John Knox, and Andrew Melville.

Chapter II, one of the more interesting and significant parts of the book, shows how the Anabaptist branch of the Reformation, though sometimes overlooked or minimized, actually made a vital contribution to what would finally emerge as restorationism. For unlike those who sought merely to reform the Roman Catholic Church of the sixteenth century, Anabaptists used the language of the restitution of the true church, an idea that compares much more closely with the later concept called restoration. Too, the Anabaptist tradition was consistent with English and Scottish Congregationalism in its demand for the autonomy of individual churches, also a hallmark of future restorationism.

Chapter III tells the story of John Glas (1695-1773), who began as a minister of the Church of Scotland. In the 1720s, young Glas argued against the arrangement of the national church of which he was a part. Reminding his hearers that Jesus had said His kingdom was not of this earth, Glas advanced the idea of the separation of church from state. He rejected both presbyterian and episcopal forms of church government insisting on the autonomy of every congregation. After he was deposed by the Church of Scotland, Glas served as an independent church leader and encouraged the practice of congregationalism for the rest of his life. Glas espoused the singular authority of the Bible, the restitution of primitive Christianity, the leadership of a plurality of elders in each congregation, and weekly observance of the Lord's Supper not as a sacrament but as a memorial.

Chapter IV describes the early life and ministry of Robert Sandeman (1718-1771), who became John Glas's son-in-law and his most illustrious protege. In fact, it was the fiery Sandeman who extended the "Glasite" movement from its native Scotland into England and Wales. He did this largely through the publication of Letters on Theron and Aspasio. Sandeman's book was a direct response to an earlier one by minister James Hervey called Theron and Aspasio. Hervey's book breathed the warm, revivalisitic Calvinism which was popular in that day. Sandeman held up an alternate view of salvation, one that began with gospel facts in the mind rather than strange stirrings of the Spirit in the heart. His teaching made sense to many people, and established Sandeman as an important religious thinker of the time. As a result, many people in Great Britain became interested in Christianity as it was taught and practiced among the Glasite churches.

Chapter V continues the story of Robert Sandeman who came to America in 1764 preaching and planting churches in the Northeast. The most prominent of these congregations was at Danbury, Connecticut, where Sandeman died in 1771. His results in America were mixed. He was opposed by several prominent ministers. Also, many people who agreed with him on the basic question of salvation did not go along with the holy kiss, footwashing, and the strict discipline, etc., practiced in the Sandemanian churches. Above all, because of their non-participation in politics, the fledgling congregations appeared to be siding with the Tories and were consequently ostracized and persecuted at the dawn of the American Revolution.

Chapter VI advances to the next generation and the work of Robert and James Haldane. As the author explains, though they were also Scotch independents who learned much from their predecessors, compared to Glas and Sandeman, the Haldane brothers were a different sort of restorationist. They placed much more emphasis on openness, evangelism, Christian unity, and the training of preachers. McMillon writes: "The Haldanes were theological descendants of Glas and Sandeman, but the brothers were more broad-minded in their dealings with persons of differing beliefs. They also exhibited a more dynamic evangelistic zeal than did Glas and Sandeman. While the Haldanes might be characterized as aggressive evangelists, Glas and Sandeman were teachers who tended their flocks" (76). Something else at this point in time is different. By now, Alexander Campbell has been born in Northern Ireland (in 1788) and eventually has direct contact with the Haldanes and their associates like Greville Ewing.

Chapter VII, the last section, takes up "Alexander Campbell and the Restoration Roots." Although he sometimes pointed out the differences between himself and his predecessors, Campbell shared much the same outlook as did the Anabaptists, and Glas, Sandeman and the Haldanes. It seems that two ideas that all of them espoused were a commitment to Bible authority and some concept of the restitution or restoration of primitive Christianity. McMillon ends by telling the story of Campbell's visit to Great Britain in 1847, and his meetings with those who had influenced him, and who he had more recently taught through his journals and books.

So what did I think of this book? One of the first things I noticed is that McMillon writes very much like his former teacher, Earl West, mentioned earlier. He focuses on facts and provides simple description. The subject is religious history. Where he absolutely must, the author takes up political and philosophical contours of the story.

I enjoyed reading this book and learned a lot from it. Because I'm interested in the subject, I would have liked it even more if it had been longer. And what else might have been included? I realize that the decisions of an author never end, and that writers have to make choices about what to include and how far to go with a certain sub-topic. That said, I would have liked more by way of political, social, and religious backgrounds and sidebars, and fuller coverage at certain points. For example, the book barely mentions that a significant part of the growth of Sandemanianism in England was due to the conversion of whole congregations that were originally associated with Methodist preacher Benjamin Ingham. Also, the substance of the theological debate between Hervey and Sandeman is fascinating and deserves, I think, more description than McMillon provides.

That aside, Restoration Roots is nonetheless an important book, one of the few that's been written on its subject. It has been and will remain a significant contribution to the study of the antecedents of the Stone-Campbell Movement and will be enjoyed by those who are interested in this part of the history of Christianity.

It's Been at Least This Bad, Usually Worse

2010-09-19T04:35:00.000-07:00

Historians: I suppose they develop other maladies in order to compensate. But here's one problem they don't have: they don't live with the illusion that once upon a time, in the not-so-distant past, there was this wonderful, easy world, and that if we could just get back to that place and time, all would be right. The other side of this illusion relates to the present. It's baaaaad. Really, really bad. In fact, there's hardly ever been a time that was worse. If you ever doubt any of this, just ask a real expert like Glenn Beck.

Compare. Summarizing they way things were in England during the period from 1307-1471, the late Norman F. Cantor wrote:

For two hundred years there was chronic instability; change was vast, enveloping, and inescapable. Wherever we look are panic, brutality, violence in the streets. This is an upside-down world; a troubled, feverish world. . . . Even the most superficial account of the history of great aristocrats is a record of conflict, treachery, killing, beheading, and murder—even the surface pattern is one of general and extended violence. And underneath this surface lies a general dissatisfaction and unhappiness, and a tremendous yearning. . . . It is a time characterized by a prevailing apocalyptic feeling—the deep and haunting belief that the world is coming to an end. The English: A History of Politics and Society to 1760. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967), pp. 251-52.

Makes many of our problems seem downright easy, doesn't it? Oh, I know. But they're our problems.

John Lewis Gaddis on the Nature of History

2010-09-09T16:15:00.000-07:00

Gaddis, John Lewis. The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

What do historians do? How do they conceive of and go about their work? And what's the value of it? In this series of eight lectures, originally delivered at Oxford during the 2000-01 school year, John Lewis Gaddis responds to these and other basic questions. A native of Texas, Gaddis made his reputation by writing landmark books about the Cold War. He is currently the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University.

To make his discussion of theory easier to follow, he constantly uses illustrations, analogies, and quotations. He borrows these mainly from the worlds of art, literature, and popular culture. Even the book’s cover art, Caspar David Friedrich’s The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, sets up the first of many metaphors that Gaddis puts to work in order to communicate what he wants to say.

Throughout the book, Gaddis also interacts with two illustrious predecessors who raised similar questions: Marc Bloch, who wrote The Historians Craft, and E. H. Carr, author of What Is History? He also brings in the observations of other historians—most notably William H. McNeill, R. G. Collingwood, and Thomas Babington Macaulay—and, significantly, one evolutionary biologist, the late Stephen Jay Gould.

The references to Gould the scientist are significant because they underscore one of Gaddis’s most fundamental conclusions: historians should at least try to attain, like scientists, “a consensus of rational opinion over the widest possible field” (38). Conversely, biology’s acceptance of punctuated equilibrium (as opposed to the old expectation that the fossil record should be uniform), and a general scientific awareness of change and development (as opposed to old notions of timelessness in a static universe), mean that scientists have become increasingly historical. The comparison of the two disciplines comes out most clearly in Chapter Three where the author makes the case that the processes by which historians develop, study and test their theses is comparable to methods used in the “hard” sciences.

But, notes Gaddis, to say that history should in some respects be like science, and that science has become more historical, is not to say that history belongs in the classification of “social science.” For unlike social scientists, Gaddis rejects the assumption that historians should be able to isolate an independent variable, which can then be used both to identify a historical cause and to forecast the future. The complexity of reality, historical or otherwise, simply won’t allow for the identification of independent variables. In fact, reality is full of interdependent variables. In a world like that, also full of processes, “so much depends on so much else” (55).

So, then, what is the proper work of historians? Gaddis answers that they “interpret the past for the purposes of the present with a view to managing the future” (10). But no sooner does he give that straightforward answer than he adds a caveat. The real trick is to do this “without suspending the capacity to assess the particular circumstances in which one might have to act, or the relevance of past actions to them” (11). In other words, to employ the “lessons of history” requires us to do other things, like perceiving how the present is like the past and how it’s different.

Even before that, though, historians have to do the work of making a map, a favorite metaphor of Gaddis’s. That is to say, historians must represent the past in a way that both corresponds to the terrain of historical reality and that proves useful to people who might want to actually use the map. This business of map-making, he notes, leads the historian to feel both masterful (he’s the one, after all, who exercises power by simply describing) and insignificant (the terrain he describes is vast and ancient and will long outlive him, etc.).

In addition to the question of history as a social science, Gaddis also deals with the advent of postmodern thought and the questions that it puts to historical research and presentation. Here we see him both embracing and rejecting postmodernism. On the one hand, he notes that historians have always known that arriving at historical consciousness means you’ve learned “that there is no ‘correct’ interpretation of the past” and that “the act of interpreting is itself a vicarious enlargement of experience” (10). On the other hand, he rejects the extreme conclusion that because “we have no absolute basis for measuring time and space” we therefore “can’t know anything about what happened within them” (34).

So what were some of my impressions of the book? I might say that I could have done without so many specific references to Oxford and Great Britain. A lot of them didn't register with me. I also found myself rolling my eyes at some of the wisecracks, often a little sappy or overdone. I sometimes detected slight errors. For example, a light year is not a measurement of time, but of distance (27). A sentence on page 55 should end with “form an ecological view of reality,” not “from . . . .”

But to say things like that would be quibbling. The fact is, Gaddis has produced a short, brilliant introduction to some of the most important questions that historians can ask themselves regarding what they do and what it means. And he’s done it with a good bit of flair and success.

Job Interview Disasters from EmploymentCrossing

2010-09-08T14:35:00.000-07:00

The Stealthy Strength of History

2010-09-04T18:15:00.000-07:00

Went out for doves yesterday with my hunting mentor, David Jones. The water source that we were counting on to draw them in near sundown had completely sunk into the sandy soil. So we didn't shoot a lot of doves. But we got a few and got to spend a nice evening outdoors.
- - - - - -
In dealing with the past, our guard is down, because we start off thinking it is over and we have nothing to fear by taking it all in. We turn out to be wrong, because its immediacy strikes us, affects us before we know it; when we have recognized this, it is too late--we have been moved.

--Howard Zinn, The Politics of History, p. 39.

Bombs Away

2010-09-02T08:45:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, I mentioned some plans for a project in history, something I wanted to complete before the end of this year. I didn't mention it at the time, but my aspirations were related to a graduate course I'm taking this semester at West Texas A & M.

As it turns out, I don't have that much say when it comes to what my paper will be about. The course begins with us students reading some of the prominent secondary literature on the Cuban Missile Crisis. Then, during the second half, we do some research and then write up something that deals with a sub-topic related to that event.

So, here's my new idea: I'm thinking about a project at the intersection of the Cuban Missile Crisis and American Dispensational Premillennialism. I don't know much about this yet. But with the coming of the nuclear age, end-of-the-world scenarios began to assume that the Battle of Armaggedon would feature nuclear weapons. So, in what ways did the Cuban Missile Crisis ramify specifically among American premillennialists and their visions of the end time?

I'm interested in what you can tell me about things like must-see sources, for example. I know, the professor, the good folks at the WT library, and my course of study will do a lot of this. But here at the beginning of the race, I can use all the help I can get. So whaddaya think?

A Thousand-Mile Walk, 500 Years Later

2010-09-01T02:35:00.000-07:00

I was intrigued by a short article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal last month. The writer, Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, and her husband have decided to take a long walk together. To be specific, exactly 500 years after the father of the Reformation marched from Erfurt, Germany all the way to Rome, they're going to do it too. The piece is titled, "A Thousand Miles in the Footsteps of Martin Luther." As they go, the couple are writing up their experiences and posting some pictures too. Their blog is called hereiwalk.org.

On Lifting Our Hands

2010-08-31T05:55:00.000-07:00

I know, August is over and all month not a single post here at Frankly Speaking. I regret that. A long trip that made stops in Missouri, Ohio, West Virginia, and Connecticut kept me busy. Plus, school started at Amarillo College last week. Good classes so far. More about them another time.

Anyway, so here's something: Amarillo Bible Chair, where I'm the director, publishes a print bulletin that goes out once a month. We send it to our contributors and to other interested people and churches. Almost every month, I write up a little something that belongs in the church-bulletin editorial category. Most of these articles are pretty tame. Decent stuff, I like to think. But not even close to controversial. Every once in a while, though, I address something that I know is (or could be) a debated question.

I published the following piece in last month's bulletin. As I see it, the article is about something that neither I nor anyone else should have to write about. Yet among some people in the Churches of Christ I talk to, there seems to be some anxiety on the subject. So I put something together. Since then, I've gotten a little bit of "push back" in the mail. Here's what I wrote . . .

"I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing” (1 Timothy 2:8, NIV).

Paul penned those words to emphasize that the prayers of the church should be offered by people who are at peace with each other. But he also mentioned the practice of lifting hands. Why? According to the Old Testament, lifting one’s hands in prayer was common among the ancient Jews:

“I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands” (Psalm 63:4).

“When Solomon had finished all these prayers and supplications to the Lord, he rose from before the altar of the Lord, where he had been kneeling with his hands spread out toward heaven” (1 Kings 8:54).

1 Timothy 2:8 simply shows that at least some of the earliest Christians, many of them Jews, continued this way of praying. This might lead someone to ask, “Should Christians today lift their hands when they speak to God?”

The Bible clearly teaches that this is matter of personal choice. The Scriptures report occasions when people acceptably prayed while standing (1 Samuel 1:26), sitting (2 Samuel 7:18), kneeling (1 Kings 8:54) and lying face down (Matthew 26:39).

From these examples, we can gather that in 1 Timothy 2:8 Paul was not making the case for a certain prayer posture. He knew that his readers typically prayed that way. His point to them was that, when they prayed that way, the hands they lifted up were to be holy hands. If he were writing to contemporary American Christians, Paul might demand that we “bow holy heads.” In order to pray as we should, it’s vital that we bring pure hearts to the Lord. “If I regard wickedness in my heart, the Lord will not hear” (Psalm 66:18). It is the prayer of a righteous person that “avails much” (James 5:16).

Some people today like to pray and sing with their hands lifted up. That is not necessarily more spiritual; neither is it wrong. I've talked with some people in the Churches of Christ who regard lifting hands as a concession to Pentecostalism or the charismatic movement. Why? The fact that charismatics enter their buildings through the door doesn’t mean we have to start crawling in through the windows. The same Scripture that permits me to bow my head surely permits my neighbor to lift his hands. Rules made by man are just that. Let us be at peace and offer holy prayers.

The response that I got in the mail basically said that people who raise their hands in worship (and sometimes sway) probably do so out of motives that are ego-centered, or because some church leader unsatisfied with the status quo has encouraged them to do that.

Maybe so. I suspect that there must be someone who attends church, speaks up in Bible class, kneels, bows his head, closes his eyes, tosses a check into the collection plate, etc., all out of some truly unspiritual motives.

But my question is, How would I know that about him? The point is, my neighbor stands or falls (or lifts his hands) before the Lord, not me. If he's out to make a spectacle of himself, then shame on him. But that's not my call. Just like it's not for me to say to someone, "You shouldn't say 'Amen' during the sermon. You're just trying to call attention to yourself."

I for one don't raise my hands when I pray or when I sing. Even if I attended a congregation where that was the norm, I probably still wouldn't do it. It's just not a natural prayer and praise gesture for me. For someone else, that might be or become a gesture that is natural.

More From Alexander Campbell's Lectures

2010-07-28T05:05:00.000-07:00

I'm taking my time reading through Familiar Lectures on the Pentateuch. A few highlights from numbers V and VI:

In Lecture V, Alexander Campbell speaks to the men at Bethany College about the superiority of man, and the wonderful wisdom and goodness of the Creator, as manifested in the closing acts of his six days' labor (pp. 89-90).

"Trinity" Used in the Sense of Three-ness

In an earlier post, I mentioned AC's aversion to theorizing and, thus, the unlikeliness of his using the term "Trinity." However, he does speak of God's triune character (90), and he does believe that the plural pronouns of the creation account refer to the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. He even speaks of their plurality (or three-ness) as the trinity (90).

Man's Superiority as a Moral Creature

The superiority of man is strikingly developed by comparison. Wonderful and grand are the qualities that distinguish man from all things else; for there is no creature beside man, on the face of the earth, capable of being inducted into the conception of a moral idea. You may impart different kind of instruction to animals . . . . but you can never communicate to any animal the idea of moral obligation (91). So far, I've come across nothing that even begins to sound like the depravity of man. The anthropology is high. Adam was the universe in miniature. He is not only the pinnacle of Creation, he's way up there.

"Soul" and "Spirit"

It may be enough for us to know, that there is an animalism in the soul of man, but that there is none in his spirit. The spirit of man is the glory of man, and the special emanation from God (92-93).

Necessity of Knowledge

And we claim, that if a man would enjoy himself perfectly, that is, if he would derive all the pleasure possible from the healthy exercise of all his faculties, he must possess a complete knowledge of his mental and physical, moral and spiritual constitution and character, together with his surrounding circumstances. Such knowledge will not only comprehend the whole outward and inward man, but it will radiate, and lead off the inquiring and ever active mind, into all the branches of material and social science (95).

The Week Has No Type in Nature

In Lecture VI, Campbell begins by emphasizing the uniqueness of the week as a measure of time: This ordinance of time, depends entirely upon absolute will for its origin. The cessation of the creative labors of God on the seventh day, gave rise to this division of time; for which there is no type in nature. There is a type, or some symbolic mark, for every cardinal institution of the divine economy, except the week, and that has none. . . . . The week culminated in the seventh day--at the end of creation of the world--and that being a day of rest for man, is commemorative of God's ceasing to create, and the term rest is disposed of, on the ground that it is simply a figurative expression, so far as God is concerned, signifying, merely, that he ceased to act at the end of the week, but by no means indicates that the Almightly stopped to rest--to recover from the exhaustion of labor (96-97).

Uniqueness of the Fourth Commandment/Sabbath Remembrance Forever

Keeping this subject-matter under consideration, we invite attention to another remarkable fact, bearing upon this interesting question. It is this : Every one of the ten commandments begins with the phrase, " Thou shalt" or " shalt not" do this or that, except the fourth, and that begins with, " Remember." This is quite peculiar, and its significance is worthy of notice. Why this variation in the form of expression, as introduced at this particular command ? May we not presume or affirm, that it is because the Author had in his mind the fact that there is one day above all others in importance ? It was of extraordinary regard, because God had ceased to work on that day, and for this reason man is especially commanded to "remember" (always) " the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." On that day of days, God terminated the creation of the heavens and the earth, and retired into the solitude of his own infinity. Out of respect for this great truth, this important event, it was meet that man should cease to work on the same day, for the purpose of commemorating the great termination. (98). So, does Campbell believe that the Sabbath is to be remembered always, or not? Would he make a distinction between remembrance and observance? Interesting. And what a blessing to get to hear him "speaking" in this book.

A History Project

2010-07-27T04:05:00.000-07:00

Starting in about one month, I plan to dive head-first into one of the following historical studies: Some aspect of . . .

1. Quanah Parker and the Comanches, Texas, and Oklahoma

2. The King James Bible

3. John Glas, Robert Sandeman, and the Sandemanian movement in Great Britain and America

4. Alexander Campbell and his Familiar Lectures on the Pentateuch

5. Italian immigration to the United States in the late nineteenth century.

So what sounds interesting to you? Which one would you pick? Is there a certain bit of history you'd love to explore and just haven't yet? Or maybe you're in the middle of something like that right now. Tell us about it.

Alexander Campbell on Genesis 1-3

2010-07-17T07:55:00.000-07:00

In Lectures III and IV of Familiar Lectures on the Pentateuch, Alexander Campbell comments on different parts of the first three chapter of Genesis. Lecture IV is, more specifically, about the first Adam and the last Adam, Jesus Christ. Here are some of the highlights:

Study hard to read well

Convinced of the unique quality and character of the Bible, Campbell asserts that it requires more and better learning to read a chapter of Holy Writ, as it should be read, than to read one of Cicero's orations; or that in European colleges honors are awarded to the best readers. We find much in the sacred volume that appears very simple to undeveloped minds, but it grows in value and importance as men become riper in years and understanding. It often requires hours of study to enable us to read a verse or chapter in the Bible as it should be pronounced (p. 75). I'm not convinced that many readers at church put in "hours of study" beforehand. A few minutes of study and practice would have improved some of the readings I've heard.

The serpent showed up as a human

For reasons that I don't completely understand, Campbell seems intent on the interpretation that the serpent of Genesis 3 actually showed up in human form: In the third chapter, the serpent is presented for our consideration. We call him serpent, as Moses did, but we presume that was not his name originally. The word serpent means creeper. He fell into this condition because of the deception he practiced upon the inhabitants of the garden. I presume he was originally very like man. I do not mean man as he is at present, but as he was originally. Men have become greatly humanized, and in this, our day, some are to be found scarcely distinguishable from the lower animals (78-79). . . . I entertain no doubt that the serpent was incarnated in the human form (80).

God's gracious protection of sinners

In Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve became the first sinners, they were driven from the Garden of Eden and prevented from eating of the tree of life. What Campbell gathers from this is that God expelled Adam from the garden, lest he should eat the fruit of the tree of life, and become immortal in misery, with no hope of changing or dying. Therefore, like all the acts of the All-wise and Beneficent Creator in dealing with man, it was gracious (82-83). That's a common approach to the passage, which makes perfect sense. I quote it here simply because I love Campbell's expression.

"Let us" in Genesis 1:26-27

In this connection, keeping in mind the form "let us," it will be well to observe, the peculiar and characteristic style of the language employed, which clearly indicates plurality; the doctrine and existence of three persons in the Godhead (84-85). Campbell did not accept all aspects of Trinitiarianism; which is not to say that he didn't accept the biblical doctrine of the Trinity. He did. But I suspect that he didn't use the term "Trinity" in a positive way, and that he didn't because it is not a biblical word.

Alexander Campbell on Genesis 1:2

2010-07-16T06:45:00.000-07:00

For the longest time, I've been meaning to read Alexander Campbell's Familiar Lectures on the Pentateuch. He delivered them at Bethany College during the school year of 1859-60, when he was in his early seventies.

Campbell is an important member of my extended spiritual family, to say the least. And I've always wanted to find out more about how he handled the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. According to Campbell, how should the church put the Old Testament to use as holy scripture? Here, I suppose, he will answer that question not so much in theory, but in practice. So I'm looking forward to what will follow.

So far I've read the first two entries. Lecture I is introductory. Campbell highlights the necessity of the Bible for any education worthy of the name. He speaks against human theories, contrasting them with facts from the Bible. As I read this lecture, I thought about how members of the Churches of Christ, conservative heirs of Campbell, who have pursued higher education have almost always been "facts people." That is, they've typically studied history and languages, above all the Bible; but not so much philosophy or systematic theology. To get a feel for why that's the case, one would need to go no further than Lecture I, where Campbell says: The failure of popular systems of education . . . presents to us, very impressively, the truth that facts, and not theories, realities and not speculations, are essential to the true intent and meaning of education (p. 63). And where are the facts to be found? Where do we meet up with realities? Above all, says Campbell, in the pages of the Bible.

In Lecture II, Campbell covers the first two verses of Genesis 1. He presents running commentary on words and phrases. Up to this point in the Lectures, he hasn't made reference to specific Hebrew words. But he does mention the sense or the gist of the Hebrew text. In this lecture, I was especially intrigued by Campbell's reference to contemporary geology versus the biblical creation account. Here is part of his discussion of Genesis 1:2:

The second verse is especially important, inasmuch as it has to do with the many dates entertained by geologists, in regard to the antiquity of creation. But as already remarked, we take the Mosaic account, against all the world of authority of whatever nature--always accepting however, the geological history, so far as it accords with the inspired record. In this verse Moses presents us with a statement of the condition of things, in that undefined period, anteceding all the acts in the drama of creation, presented in the sequel of this chapter. How long a measure of time is assumed in this series of facts, is beyond the mental scrutiny of mortal man. (p. 71).

Here Campbell clearly states that when human theory goes against something the Bible affirms, then he will side with the Bible every time. Nevertheless, he notes, Genesis 1:2 does not give a time frame for that period during which the earth was without form and void. I don't know if the so-called "Gap Theory" had been formulated as early as Campbell's day. What is clear is that he leaves open the possibility of a huge gap in time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:3. In spite of his loyalty to the Bible, I wonder how much he was concerned that the Creation account match up with modern geology. Either way, he makes it a point to emphasize the indefinite period described in Genesis 1:2. Interesting, don't you think?

Mexico, Comanche Bands, and the Culture of Texas

2010-07-06T19:10:00.000-07:00

Among my summer reads, I'm especially enjoying S. C. Gwynne's new book, Empire of the Summer Moon. As readers have learned to expect, it's the subtitle that tells you what this one is about: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History.

It's like David McCullough wrote a book about the Comanches. It's that good.

But the book isn't just about Quanah Parker and his father's tribe. It also relates a good bit about other Indian tribes, the Spanish in the American Southwest, and the early days of Texas. The following passage is a good sample and relates something I that's very important about the history and culture of the Lone Star State:

Texas was never supposed to be its own sovereign country. After their victory at San Jacinto the vast majority of Texans believed that their territory would be immediately annexed by the United States. There were a few would-be empire builders like Mirabeau Lamar and James Parker (who volunteered to fulfill Lamar's grandiose vision by conquering New Mexico) who had other ideas. But mostly everyone else wanted statehood. They were soon disappointed. There were two main reasons it did not happen. First, Mexico had never recognized the Independence of its renegade northern province. If the United States added Texas it risked war with Mexico, something that, in 1836, it was not prepared to do. Nor could it easily admit a slave territory.

Texas was thus left alone, broke and militarily punchless, for ten years to confront two implacable enemies: Mexico on the south, and the Comanche nation on the west and north. The fledgling country would never know peace. Mexican incursions persisted; the city of San Antonio was captured twice by large Mexican armies in 1842. Raids were constant, as was the the predation of itinerant bandits from across the border. And Texas's western frontier was the scene of continuous attacks by Comanches. It is interesting to note Texas's peculiar position here: Neither of these enemies would have accepted peace on the terms the new republic would have offered them. Even more remarkably, neither would accept surrender. The Mexican army consistently gave no quarter, most famously at the Alamo. All Texan combatants were summarily shot. The Nermernuh, [i.e., Comanches] meanwhile, did not even have a word for surrender. In plains warfare there was never any such thing; it was always a fight to the death. In this sense, the Texans did not have the usual range of diplomatic options. They had to fight. (p. 131, emphasis is original).

One of many priceless passages.