Fascinating article about the last four living Shakers – a.k.a. members of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing – who live in a historic “Shaker village” in Maine.
Author: Lee M.
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There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, left nor right…
This is an incredibly shallow analysis of what’s going on in the mainline churches. Here’s the (old, old) story, according to the author, Jim Tonkowich the president of the Institute on Religion & Democracy:
The left–also known as progressives, liberals, revisionists, and (in some circles) heretics–base their convictions on individualism, subjectivity, and majority vote with passing references to Scripture and creeds. The right–also known as traditionalists, conservatives, evangelicals, and orthodox (not necessarily said as a compliment)–insist on submission to the authority of the Bible and of historic confessions, regardless of contemporary preferences. It is this division that makes the conflict between the two sides so rancorous. Compromise on issues is possible. Compromise on the fundamental questions of truth and authority is not.
Revisionists are for gay marriage and clergy, divestment from Israel, and new names for the Trinity. Traditionalists, well, aren’t. And the reason left and right can’t get along, according to Tonkowich, is that they “live in parallel universes and can barely communicate with each other.”
While it’s probably true that there are some people who base their theology on “individualism, subjectivity, and majority vote” to say that this is true of “the left” as a whole is surely a slur. Otherwise, why would people who are just making it up as they go along, as Mr. Tonkowich claims, bother to do all that theology and biblical exegesis?
And many on the “right” may be sure that they are simply adhering to the authority of the Bible, but debate and differences of opinion about “what the Bible says” on a particular matter is hardly new. Otherwise, why are there so many churches each with their own version of what the Bible says on a host of disputed issues?
Far from being a simple tale of realists vs. relativists, there are people on both sides of most of the controversial issues in our churches who take the authority of the Bible and our traditions seriously. Take the case of homosexuality. Do the proscriptions in the Bible apply to all romantic same-sex relationships, or only exploitative or promiscuous ones? The question isn’t just “what the Bible says” but how we apply Biblical principles to reality as we know it. Many of us have experience of faithful, monogamous gay relationships and have a hard time seeing them as manifestations of idolatry or violations of the moral order. Therefore we’re led to question whether what the Bible seems to condemn is the same phenomenon, in the morally relevant respects, as the one we’re familiar with. Even someone like Richard Hays, who ultimately comes down on the traditionalist side, concedes that the Bible alone doesn’t provide unequivocal guidance here. Either way, though, we have people grappling seriously with the witness of Scripture and trying to fit their experience of the world into that. This is a far cry from the kind of heedless relativism that Tonkowich accuses “revisionists” of.
The same kinds of considerations could be brought to bear on the other issues Tonkowich mentions. But that would complicate the left/revisionist/heretic vs. right/traditionalist/orthodox storyline. (Actually, I’m not even sure why promoting divestment from Israel is supposed to be a sign of relativism or ignoring the authority of the Bible. This doesn’t seem like something historic Christianity has really had a position on.)
I’m not going to defend everything that left-of-center theologians and church bureaucracies come up with. There are undoubtedly some people in the church whose views differ little from your average Unitarian, and I’m sure by some standards my theological views are right-of-center, if we must use the language of “left” and “right” in the church. But I also believe that sincere Christians trying to be faithful to the Gospel can come to different conclusions about disputed issues. And I don’t think characterizing our differences in such tendentious terms is a helpful way for us to live together and maybe even learn something from one another about what it means to follow Jesus.
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Wine makes glad the heart of man
Maybe I haven’t been paying attention, but I didn’t realize there were still major Christian denominations that officially proscribed the drinking of alcoholic beverages by their members. And yet the Southern Baptist Convention has reaffirmed this stance at their recent annual meeting. The resolution could even be read to support reinstating prohibition.It’s easy to make fun of something like this, but the Southern Baptists are surely right that alcohol abuse is a serious problem. But their resolution insists that it’s the use, not the abuse which is forbidden. How do they square this with the fact that Jesus, by all accounts, drank wine? He was even called a drunkard by some of his critics!
Psalm 104 invites us to praise God for, among other things, providing wine that “maketh glad the heart of man” as the KJV puts it. Surely wine (and beer, and whiskey, and…) should be received as God’s good gifts to be enjoyed, though, of course, not abused. But not scorned either!
One possible argument is that Christians shouldn’t drink, even in moderation, because it might cause their “weaker” brethren who have problems with alcohol to stumble or might be occasion for scandal. This might be a good argument for not having strong drink at church functions, and certainly for abstaining while in the presence of a recovering alcoholic, but I don’t think it’s sufficient to show that we must abstain altogether. Many otherwise innocent activities can be occasions for sin under the right circumstances, but that doesn’t mean we have to refrain from them altogether. Surely there’s a limit to our responsibility for the ways in which other people might respond to our actions if those actions are innocent in themselves.
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Medieval Irish psalter found in a bog!
Uncovered by a construction worker, apparently dating from between 800-1000 A.D.
Story here.
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Book meme
This one comes via Chris of Even the Devils Believe:
1. One book that changed your life: Miracles, C.S. Lewis – made me question a lot of my assumptions and take Christianity seriously as something to be reckoned with intellectually.
2. One book that you’ve read more than once: Cash: The Autobiography, Johnny Cash
3. One book you’d want on a desert island: This is a trick question, right? I’m supposed to say the Bible. Ok – the Bible.
4. One book that made you laugh: Code of the Woosters, P.G. Wodehouse
5. One book that made you cry: Confession, Tolstoy
6. One book that you wish had been written: The Autobiography of St. Peter
7. One book that you wish had never been written: Mein Kampf. Or is that too obvious?
8. One book you’re currently reading: On War and Morality, Robert L. Holmes
9. One book you’ve been meaning to read: Crime and Punishment. I love Dostoevsky, and have started this one a couple of times, but I just haven’t been in the right frame of mind to get through it.
10. Now tag five people: Anyone who wants to play – go for it.
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Reading the Bible
Whew! Things have been getting pretty grim around here lately: war, abortion, stem cells, etc. Let’s change the subject.
Here’s a question for you: How do you read the Bible? Assuming that you do, that is. Lately I’ve been following the daily lectionary from Oremus. On the plus side, this, like the BCP lectionary, gives you an OT, NT and Psalm reading for each day, each in digestible bits.
One problem I’ve run into, though, is that, especially in the case of the OT books, I have a hard time getting much out of a given passage from, say, Jeremiah or 2 Samuel. I think this is because my familiarity with the OT isn’t nearly what it should be, so just dipping in more or less at random doesn’t work for me since I’m frequently unable to supply the context myself. I’m better at doing this with the NT, especially the Gospels.
So, how about you? What approaches to incorporating regular Bible reading into your daily life have you found helpful? Or not? Do you prefer to follow a lectionary or continuously read through one book at a time?
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Breaking up is hard to do
Iraqi officials say sectarian break-up is inevitable
In some sense this might not be such a bad idea. “Iraq” as a country is an artificial construct which was apparently being held together primarily by the brutal rule of Saddam Hussein. Self-determination for its various ethnic/religious groups might well be preferable.
Unfortunately, a break up of the country would likely bring problems of its own. Here’s an article discussing some of the relevant issues.
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The other war
Nope, not Iraq or Israel-Hezbollah/Lebanon. This one:
Peace talks aimed at avoiding civil war in Somalia were officially postponed Monday following a week of high-risk brinkmanship and heightened rhetoric from emboldened Islamic militias and the country’s weak transitional government.
One side and then the other refused to attend talks that were due to restart Saturday in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, each accusing their adversary of hostile intentions.
The latest sticking point is the arrival of Ethiopian troops to bolster the government’s shaky defenses at its headquarters in the provincial town of Baidoa.
Islamist leaders responded with a call to Somalia to wage jihad, or holy war, against foreign fighters and organized a rally of more than 3,000 people in the capital Mogadishu to protest their arrival.
John Prendergast, a senior adviser with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, says the flurry of moves leaves the country on a “precipice.”
“I think both sides – particularly the Islamists – are throwing a few jabs, to use a boxing analogy, testing each other to see how far the other will go in advance of any talks, if they should happen,” he says.
A complete breakdown in negotiations could spark a major regional conflict.
Lord, have mercy.
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When unilateralism is good
In light of the apparent collapse of the most recent round of trade talks, it’s worth reiterating a point I’ve made before: The talk about various countries making “concessions” by, say, lowering tariffs is misleading, at least if you take an orthodox free trade approach. According to free trade theory, a country benefits from lowering its trade barriers even if others don’t because it gets goods more cheaply than it would have otherwise.
Tariffs benefit one small concentrated group of people (producers) at the expense of another, larger, more diffuse group (consumers). This may make sense as policy in some cases, but it’s not accurate to say that, as a general rule, tariffs benefit the country as a whole. For one country to make eliminating trade barriers contingent on other countries doing the same just shows it doesn’t really believe in free trade. If free trade theory is right, then unilaterally lowering trade barriers is a good idea regardless of what other countries do.
P.S. Matthew Yglesias makes substantially the same point here.
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More on the Friedmans and Iraq
Chip Frontz rightly chastises me for not providing more context to the Milton Friedman quote below. Here’s the rest of the exchange from the WSJ interview with Prof. Friedman and his wife Rose, a distinguished economist in her own right:
Does it disappoint Mr. Friedman that the Bush administration hasn’t been able to roll back spending? “Yes,” he said. “But let’s go back a moment. During the 1990s, you had the combination that is best for holding down spending. A Democrat in the White House and Republicans controlling Congress. That’s what produced the surpluses at the end of the Clinton era, and during the whole of that era there was a trend for spending to come down. Then the Republicans come in, and they’ve been in the desert, and so you have a burst of spending in the first Bush term. And he refuses to veto anything, so he doesn’t exercise any real influence on cutting down spending. In 2008, you may very well get a Democratic president”–(Rose, interjecting: “God forbid!”)–“and if you can keep a Republican House and Senate, you’ll get back to a combination that will reduce spending.”
Mr. Friedman here shifted focus. “What’s really killed the Republican Party isn’t spending, it’s Iraq. As it happens, I was opposed to going into Iraq from the beginning. I think it was a mistake, for the simple reason that I do not believe the United States of America ought to be involved in aggression.” Mrs. Friedman–listening to her husband with an ear cocked–was now muttering darkly.
Milton: “Huh? What?” Rose: “This was not aggression!” Milton (exasperatedly): “It was aggression. Of course it was!” Rose: “You count it as aggression if it’s against the people, not against the monster who’s ruling them. We don’t agree. This is the first thing to come along in our lives, of the deep things, that we don’t agree on. We have disagreed on little things, obviously–such as, I don’t want to go out to dinner, he wants to go out–but big issues, this is the first one!” Milton: “But, having said that, once we went in to Iraq, it seems to me very important that we make a success of it.” Rose: “And we will!”
Of course, it’s somewhat strange to characterize a certain act as “aggression” but then say that we must stay and “make a success of it.” What does this mean? Consider an analogy: suppose I believe my neighbor, a pretty nasty fellow, is stockpiling weapons to use against me, and possibly our other neighbors. And suppose further that I have reason to believe he is terrorizing members of his family. So, I burst into his house, guns blazing, and apprehend the devil, killing a few family members in the process. But it turns out that my neighbor didn’t have the weapons I thought he had. So it seems that I committed an act of aggression, or, at best, a terrible mistake.
Given all this would we say that I must stay and occupy my neighbor’s house, running the household until a suitable replacement patriarch can be found? I think most of us we say I ought to leave, apologize to the family for those who were killed during my act of vigilantism, and perhaps pay them some sort of restitution. To “make a success” of an act of aggression would seem to entail, at a minimum, ceasing the aggression.
So, I actually think Mrs. Friedman has the more consistent position. She refuses to characterize the Iraq war as an act of aggression and believes we should stay there and make a success of it. Deciding whether making a success of it is actually a live option at this point I leave as an exercise for the reader.
A Thinking Reed 