Avdat

Working ourselves out of a job

I just finished up a Jan. term course on the Reformation and early Calvinism. Learned that social historians are less inclined to view Calvinism as an intellectual or theological movement centered on double predestination, and more inclined to view Calvinism as a new regime of social control.

Philip Benedict's Christ's Churches Purely Reformed doesn't end with a treatment of how the Synod of Dort and the Westminister Confession codified (or some might say ossified) the ideas of Calvin, Zwingli, Bullinger etc.. It ends with a discussion of Calvinist piety (home devotions and catechisms), ministry (lay elders who oversaw their congregant's doctrine and morals), and discipline (sessions, consistories and presbyteries working hand-in-hand with the civil magistrates to suppress everything from folk religion and usury to drunken brawling, domestic violence and premarital sex).

It was a harsh regime, to be sure. Everybody knows the story of the burning of Michael Servetus, but there are many other stories: the stocks, stools of repentance, forced humiliations of all kinds.

But there were also successes. In Geneva they drove illegitimate births and prenuptial conceptions down to rates of 0.12%  and 1% respectively. They pressed husbands to stop beating their wives so much that laymen complained about the feminism of the Civinist regime (feminism being my term not theirs). They redirected funds for masses for the dead toward the living poor.

"We don't do this anymore. Why not?" I asked my professor.

He replied that the state gradually took on more and more of the disciplinary responsibility. After the 30 Years War there was a widespread revulsion at coercing religious conformity, and secular rulers began mandating a small measure of religious tolerance. Then governments began to construct poor houses and oversee economic policy, especially because the economy came to be seen as a national security issue (budding nation-states like France, Spain, the Netherlands and England were all vying to crush each other by enriching themselves).

In the 19th century all that was left for the session to police was drunkenness and sexual immorality, either of which could deny you a communion token, the price of admission to the Lord's Table. Then Prohibition took the alcohol problem out of the church's hands, leaving...

"So that's why we fight over sex so much!" I exclaimed. "We have nothing left to fight over." Exactly, my professor replied. 

I suppose one might find this disciplinary marginalization a depressing story of the church's increasing irrelevance. Or one might view this story as one of the idolatrous nation-state usurping ecclesiastical prerogatives and commanding the people's ultimate loyalty.

Another way of looking at it is to say that the Church has been amazingly successful at Christianizing the state, at least with respect to the second table of the law. Pre-modern states only existed to tax people to pay for their wars. They warred with each other because conquering land and enslaving peoples was the only economic development strategy anybody could come up with.

Things are better today. Not perfect. States still go to war, and with weaponry that's frighteningly powerful. But if we've taught the state how to feed the hungry, intervene in the family to protect vulnerable women and children, and prosecute fraud, maybe in a century or so we'll be able to teach it to reduce violence from open warfare to something more like police work.

In the meantime there are those niggling questions like, Where did I come from? Where am I going? What's the point of all this? An answer like, "Up from the primordial ooze and back into the void" is not wrong, but incomplete. Insufficient. Existence itself is enough warrant for the continuing relevance of the church, even if we've effectively outsourced the keeping of commandments 5 through 10.

Plus, there's always sex.

Special, as you know yourself maniac, step down

This is just rich. House Democrats won't pass the Senate Health Care Reform bill because they don't trust the Senate to take up their concerns in separate legislation. They feel like the White House has favored the upper chamber all along, and all their hard work in rounding up 218 votes to pass a bill to begin with isn't being reciprocated.

In other words, No health care for you because Obama hurt my feelings.

In a world of perfect justice, House Democrats would have to deliver that message in person to every uninsured American, starting with the ones who are sure to die sooner because they lack both coverage and good health.

I am so glad to know that the august legislators of the world's preeminent democracy are just as petty, self-destructive and megalomaniacal as some of the non-profits board of directors I've had the pleasure of serving with over the years. I swear, no one wishes Calvinism were untrue more than Calvinists themselves, but each new day brings fresh confirmation of total human depravity, does it not?

Out of touch

I don't know where to begin regarding the health care reform train wreck unfolding before my eyes, so I will confine myself to one anecdote, lest I start rambling and foaming at the mouth. Josh Marshall has persuasively and tirelessly argued since Tuesday that the only way forward is for the House to pass the Senate health care bill as is, and that's the message I've been giving my Congressman's staff every day on the phone.

Today's exchange was telling. The staffer worked hard to pass the buck:

It's not up to Congressman Scott to move the bill; it's up to the House leadership. There are many factions opposed to the bill in the Democratic caucus. The pro-lifers don't like the abortion language. Another group doesn't support the tax on high end plans. I know that from outside Washington it looks really easy to get everyone together and vote to pass the bill, but it's more complicated than that.

I replied that from outside Washington it looks like the Democrats are assembling a circular firing squad, and wished the staffer a good day.

And the more I think about it, the more that last sentence rankles. In a democracy, don't they bear the burden of understanding us, rather than we understanding the machinations of Washington?

It only took a year of power for them to get so out of touch.

Dear Democrats

I got this email from BarackObama.com yesterday:

Marvin --

Yesterday's disappointing election results show deep discontent with the pace of change. I know the OFA community and the President share that frustration.

We also saw what we knew to be true all along: Any change worth making is hard and will be fought at every turn. While it doesn't take away the sting of this loss, there is no road to real change without setbacks along the way.

We could have simply sought to do things that were easy, that wouldn't stir up controversy. But changes that aren't controversial rarely solve the problem.

Our country continues to face the same fundamental challenges it faced yesterday. Our health care system still needs reform. Wall Street still needs to be held accountable. We still need to create good jobs. And we still need to continue building a clean energy economy.

The President isn't walking away from these challenges. In fact, his determination and resolve are only stronger. We must match that commitment with our own.

But it won't be easy. Real change never is. For that reason, I am grateful you're part of this fight with us.

Thank you,

Mitch

Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America

I replied:

You do realize that the fight is with ourselves, don't you?

Look, we have a big majority in the House and a big majority in the Senate. We can pass health care reform, if we want to. I am far more disturbed by the fecklessness on display among Congressional Democrats after Tuesday's loss than the loss itself. President Bush seemed to get a lot more accomplished with much smaller majorities than this President is.

Tell the Democrats to pass the bill. That's what we sent you to Washington to do.

Yours truly,
Marvin

On converting Tiger Woods

Brit Hume issued an altar call to Tiger Woods, and Keith Olbermann took him to the woodshed for it:

Jonathan called my attention to this on Facebook, snarking, "Keith Olbermann just said Christians should keep their religion out of the public sphere. I'm so glad Martin Luther King didn't believe that!"

True, the Civil Rights Movement was a "faith-based initiative." True, the Left tends to conveniently forget this truth, just as the Right tends to forget King's strong opposition to the Vietnam War and equally strong commitment to eradicating poverty. I do have some sympathy with the snark, but there seems to be a world of difference between King and Brit Hume.

King deeply mined the biblical traditions of Exodus and the ethics of neighborly love and turning the other cheek, but he hitched those resources to the techniques of non-violent social action he learned from a Hindu. The genius of the conclusion of his I Have a Dream speech is the way he brought the language of African-American Christianity into the public square in a profoundly non-sectarian way:

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

King, unlike Hume, didn't ask Jews to become Christians before they joined hands with him in his liberation project. He appealed to all Americans to more deeply live into the best of their religious and civic traditions.

What's so obviously wrong with Hume's statement is that Buddhism, a religion devoted to detachment from worldly concerns, probably does have resources one can mine in order to leave behind a lifestyle of serial adultery. This is Don Imus' point in the above segment, and that it falls to someone like Imus to properly diagnose and prescribe cures for Woods' sins says something about the sad shape we're in. 

Hume could have talked about detachment (which is also Christian language, from our mystical tradition), about repentance (a concept which Christians don't have a monopoly on), or heck, about any number of things, and in so doing bring Christianity into the public square without pitting one religion against another. We don't live in Calvin's Geneva, or Puritan New England, and the keepers of the public square, with the consent of a good portion of the governed, simply don't view it as their task to adjudicate between competing claims for ultimate truth. Put differently, there is a difference between journalism and the 700 Club, but Fox News is blurring that distinction.

That said, I found myself exasperated to no end with Olbermann and his guest Dan Savage. It seems a willed misunderstanding of Hume to cast him as an antinomian in order to score points about the hypocrisy of the family values party. And when Savage asks, "Where are the moderate and liberal Christians who are willing to condemn Hume's on-air proselytizing?" well, isn't that a question for Olbermann? He could have booked one of them for his show instead of the lapsed Catholic and one-time seminarian Savage.  

Which gives me a great excuse to put this up, which basically explains why I don't watch Olbermann all that much:

Mindset of a terrorist

Al Qaida does seem to have a... thing for aviation, don't they? I mean, if they just wanted to kill a bunch of people and really scare the heck out of everybody, why didn't they just order the young Nigerian to fly to the United States, put together a suicide vest and wear it into a mall? Hamas did that all the time in the early 2000s. Anybody know why Al Qaida cannot or will not attack softer targets? And what does that say about their goals?

Let us pray

Both Michael Westmoreland-White and Ben Myers have called my attention to the fact that Evangelicals are covertly urging each other to pray for Obama's untimely demise. Let me tell you, there ain't no sin like the sin that prompts the earnestly spiteful intercession: "I'm going to pray for you!"

I got this once when a telemarketer called me pitching some curriculum. As politely as possible I interrupted the spiel, said I wasn't interested, asked him to put me on his Do Not Call List, and wished him a good day. I'm thinking, "I'm doing this guy a favor. I have absolutely no interest in buying this stuff. He can get onto the next call and maybe make a sale." No. Dude calls me back, and, his voice shaking, says, "You know what, sir? I'm gonna... I'm just gonna... pray for you.

That's Evangelicalism: Passive aggressiveness as spiritual discipline.

Only, like Michael says, there are people with weapons and mental illness out there who might be only too eager to answer this prayer.

No drama Obama

This very strange Charles Krauthammer column ran in today's Times-Dispatch. Krauthammer naturally has problems with the Obama administration's intent to close the Gitmo prison and try the underpants bomber in a civilian court, but his bigger beef with the administration seems to be that they aren't freaking out more. If you aren't speaking loudly, you must not be carrying a big stick.

I'm not a big fan of bureaucrateze, but re-naming terrorism a "man-made disaster" seems a lot less troublesome than the collective conspiracy of the media and the Bush administration to christen torture "enhanced interrogation techniques." Using language to minimize one's own perfidy is a far more egregious sin than using it to minimize your enemy's.

I'm not even that sure that Obama has minimized anything by not cutting short his vacation, John McCain style, and addressing a joint session of Congress on the dangers of exploding jihadist underwear. This Krauthammer mockery:

More jarring still were Obama's references to the terrorist as a "suspect" who "allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device." You can hear the echo of FDR: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- Japanese naval and air force suspects allegedly bombed Pearl Harbor."

is clever, but it completely misses the point. 100 or so guys living in caves simply don't pose the threat Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany posed to the United States. Just look at the body count. We suffered a 9/11 a day between 1941 and 1945.

Terrorism is a threat, but it is not an existential threat, and will be best dealt with some combination of military force, law enforcement and diplomacy. The last two factors are most important. We cannot invade and occupy every failed state in the world, much less our allies or ourselves where the terrorists also live. The existential threat is the terrorists getting a hold of a nuke, but as we've seen in Iraq, military force as a non-proliferation strategy is problematic.

Following the money, foiling plots before they hatch and enacting verifiable nuclear disarmament is a lot less sexy than throwing a hissy fit on cable news, or sending troops into battle, but that's what it will take to deal with this situation. And the daily grind of good governance calls for sober tones, not fire and brimstone. That will never satisfy people like Krauthammer and his allies, who seem to have a pathological need to hate an enemy, but I for one am glad that the administration isn't trying to re-ignite the smoldering embers of the World Trade Center with overheated rhetoric.