Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments

A Little Leaven

Although as I begin to write this it strikes me once again that it is a commonplace, a piece of Christian writing I happened upon this week indicates that it is easily forgotten: to impose laws or teachings upon God’s people, even for righteousness’ sake, that God himself does not impose or teach, is a great evil which contains many others within itself. 

The principal one, in my view, is that when it is discovered, as it frequently is when those imposed upon “come of age,” that God does not require what his representatives said he did, it casts heavy doubt upon the evangelical verities they have also taught. If the faithful have in fact been lied to about one thing, how can they be confident that the whole mass of Christian teaching received from their teachers wasn’t a fabrication of clericalism and prudential mendacity? If—to extract some blunt examples—it is discovered that God does not actually require (that is, the Bible does not in fact teach) teetotalism, or forbid dancing, or may not regard you with diminished satisfaction if you eat meat on Friday, then why should we think he is as firmly interested in modesty or temperance or the necessity of believing in Christ’s resurrection? Or that he exists? When we kick over the traces that deserve the kicking, we find that others attached to them also tremble.

The book I was reading tells of a pastor who, upon being forced by his conscience to confront and admit to himself a number of the errors of his sect, thought himself not only obliged to leave its pastorate—which would have been honest and perhaps inevitable—but had his faith shaken to the core by the discovery. Because so much of the complex of putative “Bible” teaching and cultural presumption that had formed it was brought into question by an intelligent friend working on doubts brought to the surface by unhappiness, he found himself angry and frustrated to the point of despair. The most ironic thing about this was that the pastor was a member of a religious group that almost certainly lionized C. S. Lewis, who would have taught him and his church, had they actually been listening instead of lionizing, all the things he was now discovering and admitting to himself, yet done it in the context of a strong and unapologetically orthodox Christianity. 

This, however, the pastor did not detect, at least to a sufficient degree to assure him that he could remain, if not in his pastorate, at least in a robustly traditional faith. The inner man was deeply shaken because what he believed as truth was too intimately tied to what he was coming to understand as error. This was the product of a tradition in which, for many prudential reasons, reasons intended mostly to guard and strengthen the faith, it was laden with teachings and rules discovered in the Bible by the founders and propagators of the sect, set in stone by the doctrine of inerrancy, and inscribed on the tablets of the heart by the love which binds a man to his people. 

December's Teasers

A short note to tell you that two articles from the December issue have been posted on the home page: Wilfred McClay's editorial God Rest Ye Merry, on celebrating the darker meaning of Christmas; and John Harmon McElroy's feature Workers of Another World, United, a personal commemoration of Poland's Solidarity on the 25th anniversary of its suppression by the Communist regime. Here is December's table of contents.

They are both very good, but I found Dr. McElroy's memory of Solidarity's Poland particularly convicting. These extraordinary people brought down a client state of one of the vilest regimes in human history by resisting non-violently, which means at great risk to themselves and without the satisfactions and the clarity of battle.

This kind of resistance takes a peculiar sort of courage, based, I assume, in a definite and living faith that the imitation of Christ works, even if we are not at all sure it will bring any worldly improvement. You don't know what you'll do till you're tested, but I think that I would have found joining a militant group much easier than joining Solidarity. Throwing molotov cocktails at tanks is easier than standing still and praying while armed troops march in.

King of Kings

     Back in the 1920's, when Hitler was rising to power, and Mussolini was busy pretending that his organ-grinder show was the resurrection of the Roman republic, and the Bolsheviks were laying waste to a Christian civilization almost a millenium old -- and the intellectuals of western Europe spent their last uneasy breath justifying it all -- Pope Pius XI proclaimed a new feast for Roman Catholics, then to be celebrated at the end of October, but now to be celebrated on the final Sunday of the Church year, the Sunday before Advent.  It is the feast of Christ the King.

     Pius hadn't proclaimed any new title for Christ.  The Church had always worshiped Him as Priest, Prophet, and King.  He is the King of Kings foretold by the prophet -- and that was Pius' point.  Christ is not simply the greatest of all kings; he is the King from whom all Kings, all republics, all soviets, and all senates derive their authority.  He is their King, whether they are wise enough to acknowledge it or not.

      To say that Christ is King -- not duke, not earl, not prince -- has profound political implications, as Pius certainly saw.  Most obviously, it limits what a state can legitimately do; and in that sense it frees a people from Nazis, Fascists, Bolsheviks, and intellectual elites.  Because a man belongs first and last to Christ, the state may not legitimately abrogate those rights which are inalienable from the very being of a soul made by God and for God.  The state may not murder; may not sterilize; may tax, but may not expropriate all the fruits of a man's labor; may not encroach upon the sanctuary of the family, unless to protect the life of the helpless; may not arrogate to itself the absolute right to determine how children shall be educated; may not, in essence, set itself up as a god, with its priesthood of elites, to be honored by the little ones without whose sweat there would be neither state nor elites.  You don't have to be Christian to see these implications; Tom Paine, the deist teetering upon atheism, saw them and wrote about them in Common Sense.  If Christ is King, then no man, not the dainty sot Louis XIV, nor the generally affable and articulate George III, can claim absolute authority.

     It really is pretty simple; but human beings will always fall back into the same old errors, and the state, left to the ambitions of the elites who run it, will always tend to reassume its old place as object of cultic worship and unappealable authority.  In the end, we lapse into worship of power: so in Egypt the Pharaoh -- Great House -- is a god, and the embodiment of the state.  So the lugash in Babylon becomes a manifestation of Marduk, the tutelary god of the city, and is the embodiment of the state.  So the Roman republic is a ceremonial shell after the reforms of Augustus, the First Citizen -- and he, not entirely against his will, is worshiped as a god, and becomes the embodiment of the state.  In America too the process is underway.  Not that we worship presidents as gods, though we do crave celebrity and honor it.  But it may be telling that images of Liberty no longer appear on our coins; rather images of a few great men, a few good but overrated men, an insuffragette, and a faithful Indian guide with her baby.

     That may be why we hear so much about "theocracy" coming from the left.  Christ is the King who sets His subjects free: not only from the bonds of sin, but also from the bonds of sinners.  To the extent that men acknowledge Christ as King, they will submit themselves to the liberating laws of virtue; they will more readily obey legitimate government, and in general not need a whole lot of governing, and will more readily rebel against laws that are no laws, as Aquinas puts it.  Sheep in the fold, and soldiers in the field -- that is what they will be.  But if you are a member of the governing class, and you do not acknowledge your King, you will resent the constraint upon your "freedom" to constrain the legitimate freedom of everybody else.  You want to clone human beings, although most of your little subjects find it appalling; and the King blocks your way.  You want to redefine marriage, against the judgment of your little subjects; and again the King blocks your way.  You want to engineer the future by dictating what shall be taught to all children, by whom, and how; and there stands the King, cordoned by the little ones whom He has called to Himself.  The King's sheep are soldiers too; but you don't want those sheep, you want your own. 

     So the elites of our day do not pity Christians for falling prey to a beautiful illusion.  They are angry with them, they hate and fear them -- see James Kushiner's post below, Den of Vipers.  That's an understandable reaction, from those who sit uneasily upon their makeshift thrones.  It was Herod's reaction, too.

From the Inbox 28 November 2006

A few things from my reading I thought some of you might find of interest.

First, from The Revealer, a website dedicated to religion and media, South Park takes on Richard Dawkins. I have never seen the show, but have read about it, and rather doubt that the shows satires on Scientology, Islam, and Christianity are as insightful as the writer thinks, but his conclusion was interesting:

South Park’s ecumenical contempt for religion doesn’t necessarily translate well into a critique of the substance of atheism or scientism. Rather, it is the slavish thinking and rigid dogmatism that go into any –ism or orthodoxy that South Park is best at lampooning. . . . unlike Scientology, Islam, or Catholicism, atheism’s ideas, as opposed to its style, proved off limits for even South Park’s religious critique.

The Italian journalist Sandro Magister writes on Chiesa.com that Ratzinger Corrects the Books About Jesus – And Writes a New One, describing the pope's upcoming book on Jesus. It also includes a critical review by Raniero Cantalamessa of a popular skeptical work on Jesus called The Jesus Inquest.

Those interested in a running description of the pope's visit to Constantinople may enjoy a new website, Pope & Patriarch. In The Dogs of Constinople, Joshua Trevino reflects on the history of the patriarchate and its continuing persecution by the Turkish government. For example, the Christian character of the city

came to an end when Constantinople became Istanbul in the Kemalist era. The 1923 "population transfer" on the heels of the Greek loss in its tragic war of the megali idea wiped out the Greek communities -- and hence the Christian communities -- of Ionia, the Pontus, and inland Anatolia.

Constantinople's Greeks were spared from annihilation, but their ranks thinned out of fear and harassment in the new order. Subsequent pogroms, notably the Turkish government-sponsored 1955 pogroms, had the effect of progressively reducing the numbers of native-born Constantinopolitan Christians.

Concurrent with this, the Turkish state pursued an active program of expropriation which itself abetted a vicious circle: if a church property fell into disuse, the state seized it; and with the state defining "disuse," the seizures often enough had the effect of denying the remaining Christians the very pillars of their communal life, which in turn provoked more Christians into leaving, which deprived more properties of their parishioners, etc.

The writer will be writing a report for us, probably to appear in the March issue (an editor doesn't count his articles before they arrive).

In Culture War, Don Feder describes Newsweek's new respect for Evangelicals, which depends upon their ceasing to be so politically and culturally troublesome. He captures the magazine's unctuous, insincerely sympathetic tone:

Newsweek rhetorically asks if conservative Christians can "move beyond the apparent confines of the religious right as popularly understood, or are they destined to seem harsh and intolerant — the opposite of what their own faith would have them be?" And, if the latter, will they still beat their wives with worn-out cliches?

From The Daily Telegraph, a worried article titled How Genesis crept back into the classroom.

Also from the DT, Child tsars unite to push to ban smacking. So greatly has political correctness affected all of us in this matter, that I find it hard to bring myself to write this, but: the "child experts" quoted are idiots.

 

Bush on Twain

Our new writer Harold Bush has just published a book on Mark Twain's religion, Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age, published by the University of Alabama Press. Here is the book's table of contents:

1. Mark Twain's Roots: Hannibal, the River, and the West
2. Mark Twain's Wife: The Moral Ethos of the Victorian Home
3. Mark Twain's Pastor: Joe Twichell and Social Christianity
4. Mark Twain's Liberal Faith: The Social Gospel on Asylum Hill
5. Mark Twain's Civil War: Civil Religion and the Lost Cause
6. Mark Twain's American Adam: Humor as Hope and Apocalypse
7. Mark Twain's Grief: The Final Years

Dr. Bush is a colleague of our senior editor James Hitchcock, and has an article on mentoring in the December issue in addition to his review of Joan Didion's latest book in the September issue. I found two of his articles available online: a review of Dangerous Water, a biography of Twain, and Ecclesiastes and Revelation, which is subtitled "The Embodiment of Authentic Hope in the Classroom."

Opportunity: Evangelism Wanted

A story at Religion Watch notes that Christianity, while attracting Russians on the level of ritual, nevertheless is making little permanent inroads in people's lives: "Orthodox Christians who regularly go to confession and communion remain around two percent," writes Novosti political commentator Vladimir Simonov (October 8). (Of course there are Roman Catholics and Protestants in Russia, but these are [also] small minorities.)

Two percent? I believe this from what Russians have told me, just making a rough guesstimate, based on the number of functioning churches in one large city. One cannot expect 70 years of Marxist-Leninism to not make a huge dent in the spiritual health of a nation. We see even in our own country the impact of a atheistic naturalism put into the heads of students day in and day out. People lose their faith.

What can get it back? In Russia? Evangelism, and nothing else.

In the U. S. A.: What percentage of the population "regularly go to confession and communion"? You know, it wouldn't surprise me if it was around or slighty higher than two percent.

So, "Behold the future"? Self-identified "Christians" in fairly large numbers who like to occasionally attend church services, but when it comes to dedicated, daily, involved and obedient believers, two out of a hundred citizens?  Did Someone tell us we could ever stop making disciples? There's evangelism to be done, here, there and everywhere.

Live from Istanbul

The Pope is going to Turkey, now. The Pope said things not too long ago that upset Muslims. Turkey is an Islamic Republic. So why is he doing this?

Few may know that in the last week of November for several decades the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch have been visiting each other, on the Feast of St. Andrew (November 30), and that this trip to Istanbul-Constantinople is part of an ongoing "dialogue" between Rome and the Eastern Orthodox churches. The Great Schism between East and West officially dates from mutual excommunications between the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch in 1054, the first move taking place in Constantinople in the church of Hagia Sophia, which became a mosque in 1453, and then in 1935 became the Ayasofya Museum.

During the next few days, there will be services with Pope Benedict XVI and Patriarch Bartholomew in attendance. Much of it will be viewable on-line and on cable-TV. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese has alerted us:

... we will be able to watch the services in their entirely via video streaming on Wednesday and Thursday (and after that on the GOARCH website archives). If you have satellite television, you’ll be able to view those events plus the Pope’s Visit to Hagia Sophia on Thursday and the Papal Mass on Friday via EWTN Catholic Network.

Our Archdiocese has also developed informational podcasts prior to the arrival of the Pope, and will also have podcasts of some of the services. See this URL for more details about podcasts:          

http://www.patriarchate.org/news/articles.php?id=28

Be sure to also check out the informative Patriarchal Visit web pages developed for the Patriarchate:

http://www.patriarchate.org

The TV coverage at EWTN:

Nov. 29, 12 noon  (ET), EWTN will broadcast LIVE from the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George, the Doxology of Thanksgiving, exchange of greetings and mutual reverence of the Holy  Relics  upon the occasion of the arrival of Pope Benedict XVI to the Ecumenical  Patriarchate. The program will repeat at 11:00 PM (ET). On Nov. 30, beginning at 2:00 AM (ET) EWTN will broadcast the Divine Liturgy LIVE, also from the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George. The program will be rebroadcast at 2:00 PM  (ET).  Both programs are being produced by the Ecumenical Patriarchate. *times subject to change.

Also broadcast LIVE on November 30, at 10:00 AM (ET) will be the visit of Pope Benedict to Hagia Sophia. On December 1, 2006, broadcasting LIVE at 1:30 AM will be the Holy Mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit with  Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in attendance (repeating at 11:00 AM  (ET))  and at 5:30 AM (ET) the Departure of Pope Benedict XVI from Ataturk Airport  in Istanbul.

Napoleon Blown Apart

Have you seen the film Napoleon Dynamite?  Did you read what Michael E. Bailey wrote about it in Touchstone?  Please read it here, and join the discussion on our Treaders page.

C.S. Lewis's Inelegant Obscenity

The December 2006 issue of Harper's magazine includes an excerpt from a January 28, 1951, letter by Hugh Trevor-Roper, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, to Wallace Notestein, Sterling Professor of English History at Yale, on the subject of C.S. Lewis.

Trevor-Roper wrote:

Do you know C.S. Lewis? In case you don't, let me offer a brief character-sketch. Envisage (if you can) a man who combines the face and figure of a hog-reever or earth-stopper with the mind and thought of a Desert Father of the fifth century, preoccupied with meditations of inelegant theological obscenity; a powerful mind warped by erudite philistinism, blackened by systematic bigotry, and directed by a positive detestation of such profane frivolities as art, literature, and, of course, poetry; a purple-faced bachelor and misogynist, living alone in rooms of inconceivable hideousness, secretly consuming vast quantities of his favorite dish, beefsteak-and-kidney pudding; periodically trembling at the mere apprehension of a feminine footfall; and all the while distilling his morbid and illiberal thoughts into volumes of best-selling prurient religiosity and such reactionary nihilism as is indicated by the gleeful title, The Abolition of Man.

Meow comments, to be sure. But I think, if Lewis ever knew of this, he must have at least relished the comparison to the Desert Fathers, perhaps over a secret dish of beefsteak-and-kidney pudding.

Canterbury's Daze

This is a surprisingly interesting article from the Telegraph on the Archbishop of Canterbury and the conflicted Anglican Communion. It seems schism is inevitable (experts say), and it has been predicted for some time. But few have known exactly what to do about it.

It reminds me of a scene my wife and I saw while being "punted on the Cam": someone attempted the punting himself, and his pole got stuck a wee bit. He tried to keep up with the pole in order to pluck it out and not lose it and see the boat adrift, but in so doing he held on too long to the recalcitrant pole and quickly went in a more horizontal direction than he would have liked, ending up like the pole, straight up and wet in the water, but out of the boat which had floated a few yards farther, a boat, I add, which was filled with the laughter of those he was punting.

Of course, the Anglican Communion is no laughing matter. The question will be which way will Canterbury "jump" as it tries to hold on to the English pole but keep its feet in the African-Asian boat as they drift apart. Ouch.