Reformed Protestantism to 1700

Benedict, Philip. Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.

Philip Benedict introduces this big impressive book as a survey of “the history and significance of Reformed Protestantism in Europe from its origins until the end of the age of orthodoxy around 1700” (xvii). He points out that no single author has attempted anything similar since John T. McNeill wrote The History and Character of Calvinism, which was published in 1954. However, says Benedict, since then the broad field of history and also a specific part of that field, the corner known as Reformation studies, have each gone through what he describes as a dramatic sea change. What were those changes?

First, in general, historians no longer report only those events surrounding “elite actors.” Instead, they now incorporate “the actions and aspirations of ordinary men and women.” Second, the half-century following McNeill’s book witnessed what Benedict calls the “deconfessionalization” of Reformation history. He explains that, before, “most church history was written by members of the church in question eager to explore a critical moment in the formation of their religious tradition.” But since then a new scene has emerged where it is not uncommon, for example, for Roman Catholic scholars to offer “sympathetic and penetrating studies of Protestant theology” (xviii). Clearly, Benedict hopes that his book will be a good example of both trends. He not only subtitles his work A Social History of Calvinism, he also describes himself as “a total outsider, an agnostic, nonpracticing Jew raised in a secular household” (xxv). In this regard, the book under review is very different from a much more traditional title like Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers (Nashville: Broadman, 1988).

Benedict’s overview of the period follows a four-part outline. In Part I, “The Formation of a Tradition,” the author describes the hectic and disorganized character of the first few decades of Protestantism. He observes that the distinctive Reformed tradition in Protestantism had two beginnings. Huldrych Zwingli led the first. The second was associated with primarily three names: Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s protégé who tirelessly advanced the views of his mentor over a period of forty years, John a Lasco, who played a central role in the propagation of Reformed ideas in East Friesland and also among French and Dutch refugees in London, and, of course, John Calvin, “the most forceful voice within the increasingly multipolar and multivocal Reformed world” (77).

Part II, “The Expansion of a Tradition,” takes up the second half of the sixteenth century, a critical time of remarkable growth, one that turned out to be essential to the future prominence of the Reformed branch of Protestantism. Benedict explains that

the dynamism evidenced by the remarkable geographical expansion of Reformed churches in those years arose from an accumulation of specific theological features, organizational attributes, and historical circumstances that all helped the cause win supporters among princes and people alike, then defend itself tenaciously in those instances in which it expanded in defiance of the ruling authorities (124).

This part of the book also examines, in turn, six different regions in which the Reformed tradition was well known during a fifty-year period of historic growth: France, Scotland, the Netherlands, the Holy Roman Empire, England, and Eastern Europe. Benedict notes that between 1554 and 1600, the Reformed branch multiplied in number by a factor of twenty. More than that, for all of the various regional expressions of Reformed Christianity, this loosely organized international group managed to establish and maintain a certain solidarity. The unity of the movement expressed itself through mutual aid in times of distress, personal connections across long distances, consultation on theological questions, and an effort to draft documents that would express a basic consensus.

Part III, “The Transformation of a Tradition,” relates the story of Reformed Protestantism from about 1590 to 1700, “a period of theological ferment of the utmost importance” (298). Benedict says that during this time the tradition became more scholastic, more organized. These were the years, for example, when the doctrine of double predestination was refined, and when the idea of the verbal inerrancy of Scripture was developed as an answer to the counter-Reformation. But in addition to being a time of change from within, the seventeenth century also witnessed the Reformed tradition being challenged from the outside as a result of its sometimes falling into political disfavor. Finally, religious controversy and political upheaval in isolated Great Britain created unique struggles over theology and polity. These generated Anglicanism, Puritanism, and the Church of Scotland.

In Part IV, the most entertaining section of the book, Benedict concludes by describing the practical day-to-day differences that the Reformed tradition brought to the lives of adherents. He deals with three specific topics: ministerial leadership, church discipline, and common piety. Reformed believers appreciated sound biblical scholarship, preaching that brought with it strong conviction, and ministers who were models of Christian attitude and behavior. Along this line, Benedict reminds the reader that anti-clericalism stood at the center of what initially sparked the Reformation as a popular movement. Benedict says that the fragmentary nature of consistory records makes a full description of church discipline difficult. In spite of the sketchy evidence, two things are certain: the Reformed highly valued an actively disciplined church. Yet, it is a mistake to assume that Calvin’s Geneva was typical. In no other place and at no other time did any other presbytery measure up to that standard. Regarding common piety, Benedict observes that Reformed Protestants drastically reduced the number of Catholic holy days and abandoned the abstinence of meat during Lent. Their rhythms were not annual, but weekly: attendance at worship, which strongly focused on the preached Word.

In his “Introduction,” Benedict explains that his agenda for the book includes two specifics. First, he intends to examine Max Weber’s theory announced in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1900), a book that famously associated Calvinism with disciplined work. Second, he wants to test the supposed special connection between the Reformed tradition and modern democracy. As he concludes, Benedict announces his verdict: the evidence disproves both ideas, though still widely accepted.

Working through any book, especially one this size, readers are bound to notice what they regard as inconsistencies and gaps. This one is no exception. I have two criticisms of Benedict’s treatment. First, at some points, he seems unaware of the biblical and theological positions and the issues that were at stake in some of the Reformation debates. His descriptions of the controversies surrounding the Lord’s Supper are the most notable examples. He rightly points out that there was no theological issue more hotly contested among reformers than the question of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. But when detailing the variety of views held by first and second generation reformers, Benedict appears to assume that Martin Luther maintained the dogma he had inherited from the Roman Catholic Church, the doctrine of transubstantiation. As any survey of Christian historical theology reveals, Luther actually subscribed to a different position, an old viewpoint known as consubstantiation. Before Thomas Aquinas finally anathematized it, consubstantiation had actually been regarded by a number of highly regarded medieval theologians as an acceptable understanding of the Real Presence. This was true even after the Fourth Lateran Council. Luther himself illustrated the concept by noting that the distinction between metal and fire was impossible when looking at red-hot fiery iron still in the flames. But at no point does Benedict provide an explanation of such distinctions. Across hundreds of pages the reader searches in vain for even one mention of consubstantiation. And the name of Aquinas comes up only in a single reference to Thomas’s natural theology, not his interpretation of the Real Presence. This sort of omission does not fit with Benedict’s welcome acknowledgment that there is “no gainsaying the force of belief systems in the story of the European Reformation” (xxii). Although he says that his approach takes into account both religious traditions and the contexts in which they arose (xxii), it is the contexts that tend to take over Benedict’s discussion. How can a history of a movement dedicated to the premise of sola Scriptura contain so few biblical references?

A second disappointment is the scant attention that Benedict pays to the Reformation’s prehistory. Specifically, only rarely does he touch on the question of how the movements associated with John Wyclif and Jan Hus might have influenced and contributed to what unfolded in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Among the many fine features of this book are the dozens of figures, maps, graphs, and tables that accompany and illuminate the text. One of these, a Dutch print from the mid-seventeenth century found on page 52, depicts the men who were then regarded as the great heroes of Protestantism. Benedict includes the print in order to show that, at that time, people did not consider only Luther, Calvin and perhaps one or two others as the significant leaders. Instead, the print includes the faces of more than twenty men. Among these champions are Wyclif and Hus. Clearly, then, at least some Protestants of those early generations believed that in some ways their movement pre-dated Martin Luther. Yet, the caption for the print is one of only two times that Benedict simply mentions Wyclif in the entire book. Likewise, in a bare reference to Lollardy, Benedict suggests that its continuing presence and influence may have contributed to the sudden iconoclasm in England in the 1520s (233). The names “Lollard” and “Wyclif” do not appear in the Index. Thus, Benedict misses the opportunity to distinguish for the reader between influence and mere anticipation. How appropriate it is when, for example, modern-day Protestants speak of Wyclif as “the morning star of the Reformation”? Readers of this book will be left still wondering.

These criticisms notwithstanding, Christ's Churches Purely Reformed is a fine piece of historical scholarship and an incredible achievement. I learned so very much, and am glad I read it.

Edmund Morgan on the Puritans of New England

Morgan, Edmund S. Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea. New York: New York University Press, 1963.

In this book, Edmund Morgan traces the history of the Puritans from their beginnings in sixteenth-century England through developments in seventeenth-century New England. He gives special attention to their quest to purify the church so that its membership would more closely approximate the true and perfect church of Christ.

Morgan tells us that his title, Visible Saints, is a term that occurs frequently in the writings of the Puritans. More than that, quoting Geoffrey Nuttall, he asserts that this phrase “was undoubtedly their controlling idea and provides the key to what they were after” (vii-viii). Morgan explains that the fundamental question the Puritans raised actually goes back at least as far as the ancient church and the Donatist schism. The Donatists tried to relieve the tension between the ideal and the real by establishing and maintaining what they asserted were "holy" Christian communities. Famously, Augustine responded by insisting that there are at all times, in fact, two churches: one is pure, unmixed, but invisible, while the other is visible, but mixed and impure. In other words, although the Lord knows those who are his, the church doesn’t. With a few radical exceptions, says Morgan, the Puritans “never repudiated St. Augustine’s distinction between the visible and invisible church. They all insisted on the impossibility of a church without blemish in this world” (33). They nevertheless carried out a unique attempt to further the reformation of the visible church so that it would more closely resemble the invisible.

Eventually, there emerged among the Puritans two distinct groups: nonseparatists, who sought ecclesiastical reform while retaining membership in the Church of England, and separatists, who believed that their national church was hopelessly corrupt and that, above all, it lacked the essential quality of the true visible church: namely, the capacity of a congregation to discipline itself under the Word of God.

Among separatists, one question in particular naturally arose: who is worthy to belong to the church? What should be the terms of membership? At first, the conditions of membership appear to be a simple renunciation of the English Church and a promise not to attend the parish congregation. However, although all Puritans assumed that the invisible church was made up precisely of those people who had experienced the saving grace of God, early separatists made no attempt to determine the religious experiences of prospective members. The standards of membership were orthodox faith, voluntary submission to the discipline of the congregation, and the absence of obvious, gross sin.

In time, all Puritans eventually developed an ideal and practice of church membership which tested every candidate's experience of saving grace. The author notes that historians have typically believed that this practice was followed by the separatists who fled to Holland, and that it came in 1620 with the Pilgrims who, in turn, influenced later arrivals. Morgan's thesis disagrees with this traditional account:

My contention is that the practice came, not from Plymouth to Massachusetts as initially supposed, nor from England or Holland as presently assumed, but that it originated in Massachusetts among the nonseparating Puritans there and spread from Massachusetts to Plymouth, Connecticut, New Haven, and back to England (65-66).

Regarding Puritanism in America, Morgan says that in the 1620s and even the 1630s, membership in both separatist and nonseparatist churches did not require a description and test of a prospective member's experience of saving grace. Yet, around 1640 and afterwards, this procedure was the norm. If the new system was well established in the 1640s, but was not known in 1629, how did it come to be? Morgan suggests that the idea was likely developed by George Phillips, minister at Watertown who came to America with John Winthrop in 1630. At any rate, within a few years the practice was forcefully advocated by John Cotton so that, by 1635, it was the norm in New England. There, churches "held it a duty to exclude from the church everyone who failed to persuade them in speech or writing that he possessed saving grace" (93).

Morgan points out how his thesis helps to explain other developments in the history of early New England Puritanism. For example, the uniquely-American movements and episodes associated with Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were radical extensions of the emergent New England religion. Hutchinson and her followers believed that God had granted them the ability to judge perfectly the professions offered by candidates for membership so that, in their community, the visible and invisible churches were one and the same.

The development of the so-called "the halfway covenant" can also be traced back to the standards of membership first recognized in New England. Morgan explains:

The absence of ties between the unregenerate part of the community and the church gave the latter an unprecedented purity, but it also placed the very life of the church in jeopardy. The members of the New England churches had themselves come from imperfect churches, in which they had learned the doctrines of Christianity, had taken the sacraments and received the experience of grace that qualified them for membership in the proper churches of New England. But how would the mass of men who had come to New England unqualified for membership ever become qualified? (122).

What ultimately forced the question of the church's responsibility to outsiders was the next generation, the children of New England Puritans. They had grown up baptized members of the church. But according to the new standards developed in America, many of them lacked the experience that would qualify them for membership. And what of their children, the grandchildren of founding members? "The Puritans had in fact moved the church so far from the world that it would no longer fit the biological facts of life" (128).

A 1662 synod attempted to remedy the problem. The proceedings from the synod said that church members' adult children who had not experienced saving grace should continue to be regarded as members of the church, and that they could bring their own children to be baptized, provided that the family did not live an outwardly scandalous life. Such members could not, however, vote. Nor could they participate in the Lord's Supper. This odd arrangement, generated by Puritan commitment to both infant baptism and a church made up entirely of saints, epitomized and reinforced a tension in American Puritanism that, as late as the mid-eighteenth century, lacked any real resolution.

In the “Preface,” Morgan explains that his book “originated as the Anson G. Phelps Lectures, delivered at New York University, in February and March, 1962” (viii). From beginning to end, Visible Saints retains a good bit of the engaging style of a fine set of lectures. Occasional comments in the text as well as footnoted sources indicate that Morgan conducted extensive and, in many cases, exhaustive research in the relevant primary sources available to him. The result of his careful and logical analysis is a convincing and delightful little book that has apparently become a classic in Puritan studies.

When and How a Church Should Close

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 led 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.

My main caveat (based on the comments on this post, and which the authors of the book do not discuss) relates to those small churches in isolated, rural areas. What should they do? Although they often struggle, these congregations praise God, lift up Christ, and moor the faith of their members in areas that would otherwise not have a church. For that reason, they should continue on much longer than dying churches in more-populated areas.

Frederick Cooper on Africa since 1940

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

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

Darren Dochuk, 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 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?

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?

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

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

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

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)

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, to say the least, 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.

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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.