She was, I think, a brave woman, for her campaign was not popular among her political party’s supposed constituency, the proletariat, and even excited some ridicule among them; but those were the days when there were still some politicians who fought for what they thought was right rather than for what was expedient in the careerist sense.
(Theodore Dalrymple, writing about Dr Edith Summerskill, a Labour Member of Parliament principally known for a campaign to outlaw professional boxing)
Twice Saturday I had to turn off unbearable radio (not counting the rare station change from WBAA 101.3; I just can’t really get into the Metropolitan Opera; it is, no doubt, a shortcoming).
First was NPR when they decided to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, with discussion of the “zipperless fuck” that quick turned from unseemly toward pornographic (or so it seemed; I didn’t linger long enough to confirm it). I was about 30 seconds into the story when I decided I was too young to listen to it.
Second was K-LOVE 106.7, to which I turned instead of opera, wondering if it really could be as bad as I remembered. The answer was “yes.”
And apparently it’s some kind of national syndicate. I’m not saying it’s got low production values. I’m saying it’s horrible music no matter what the production values. It is the reductio ad absurdum of the idea that the “message” can be communicated by any “medium.”
Okay, I can imagine a medium even less suited to evangelizing or edifying: interpretive strip-tease. Speaking of which, the online advertising was a nice touch, too, like this …
and this …
As I type, K-LOVE is streaming in another browser tab, begging for money.
So why would I go back to K-LOVE when I didn’t like it last time? Because someone close to me loves it and professes to find it uplifting (or some similar term). Truly, we’re divided by a common faith.
I listened to something much more edifying Friday night. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick talked about his evangelical upbringing, and how he deeply he now sees it’s infused with the idea that evangelism means transmitting actionable data. Conversion is something you do by yourself once you’ve received the data. The early Christian account of receiving converts, with lines like “on the first day, we make them Christians” (i.e. baptize them) is incomprehensible, if not “heretical,” to this mindset.
Fr. Andrew mentioned (among many other things) the number of Churches that have a message of changed lives or its cognates. Indeed, a not-too-distant relative is pastor of “Life Change Ministries,” and I note from today’s mailing that Trinity Mission (best known for ministry to alcoholics and drug abusers) has changed its name to Trinity Life Transformation Ministries.
I assume that this is all based on the apostolic message of Acts 2:38: “Wake up and get a grip and get some help if necessary and you, too, can look respectable and more or less upper-middle class!”
Folks, this is not the Gospel. It’s Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.
Moral is nice, and it’s certainly socially useful, but striving to be good is setting your sites way too low.
I have come to realize that both sides in the culture wars have their tales of outrageous behavior by the other side, and that both sides have built institutions that would be ill-served by a truce.
But I don’t know, and have some difficulty imagining, anything from The Right comparable to the relentlessness of “Doe” in Doe v. Jackson City School District. It wasn’t enough that a “portrait of Jesus” come down from an entrance wall at a Jackson, Ohio Middle School. It apparently was a profound insult to separation of Church and State for the picture to remain “in view of those entering an art-room storage area.”
Oh, the horror! When you take it to the city dump, make sure to bury it face down, lest someone see it yet again on public property!
I guess I was simply blessed to grow up in south Louisiana, which is Christian and conservative but so much more laid back than other parts of the South. It’s the Catholic influence, I think. I grew up in a mostly Protestant area, but living in Dallas, the only time I’ve ever been in a city where Evangelicalism set the tone for Christianity, taught me how cultural Catholicism moderated a lot of the public Christianity in south Louisiana.
Dreher here is reflecting on his surprising lack of familiarity with fundamentalism, even though he grew up in the south. What spurs his reflection is a thread he picked up from Andrew Sullivan, who was writing about a lapsed fundamentalist, now “progressive,” who blogs as Lana Hope at Wide Open Ground. (I hope that’s clear.)
All this makes me wish I didn’t have a very challenging seven days ahead of me so that I could follow the threads. What I see of Lana Hope’s writings is very thoughtful (though surprisingly badly spelled at times). Retirement will be nice in a few years. So much to read, so few years left.
Dreher concludes nicely:
I tell you, if I had been raised as a fundamentalist or an Evangelical who was taught to see the world through a narrow and severe idea of truth, I wonder if I would be a Christian today. It’s impossible to say. These things always are. Raise a kid with tap-watery religion, and don’t be surprised if he leaves it. Raise a kid with a religion as hard and cold as ice, and don’t be surprised if he leaves it. This is hard!
What is the difference between a religious fundamentalist and a religious conservative? Is it what they believe, or is it more about the fierceness and rigidity with which they hold those beliefs?
One thing I like about Pope Francis: whatever the flaws of his approach, he really does come across as someone who sees the concrete person before the abstract idea. Or rather, he sees the person as more than the sum total of their beliefs. Would that our political ideologues of the Left and the Right have such a humane approach.
Timothy George at First Things remembers Carl F.H. Henry.
When Henry headed Christianity Today it was a “fortnightly magazine of Evangelical conviction,” and I subscribed. Now it reads much more like Moody Monthly, a bit of fluff, now defunct, that lives on as a WordPress page by someone who scarfed up the domain “moodymagazine.com.”
This may be a parable.
CT still provides some interesting news coverage, and sources I do read link to it not infrequently, as Evangelicalism remains a cultural force (though of diminishing strength, I think).
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 