Category: History

Abe Lincoln’s Birthday

I’m not a huge Lincoln fan. Don’t ask why. It’s complicated, and the zeitgeist doesn’t want to hear it.

Note that I said “not a huge … fan.” I know how to write “I hate Lincoln” and could have written that if I meant that.

But here’s a good evocative poem for his birthday from The Writer’s Almanac.

And a few days ago, First Things had an article with a lede (“Though Abraham Lincoln was neither baptized nor joined a church of any kind, he was the most spiritually minded president in American history”) that made me think “Ah! At last! A neocon source sees fit to tell one of the less-than-flattering truths!”

I went to read it for confirmation of my pre-existing bias and came away a little less biased. This, for instance, made me afford a little respect for one of his less-than-flattering traits:

So why did he never join a church himself? Two reasons. First, he was offended by the religious rivalry and braggadocio of the frontier preachers of his day. None of them made a compelling case to his lawyerly mind that only one denomination was right and all the others wrong. Further, Lincoln was reticent, “the most shut-mouthed man I know,” as his law partner William Herndon said. He did not want to cross the thin line between sincerity and self-righteousness. There was nothing smug about Lincoln’s faith.

Lincoln’s great achievement was to see the terrible times through which he lived in the context of God’s providential purposes. He referred to America as the almost-chosen nation and came to see himself as a “chosen instrument in the hands of the Almighty.” His firm belief that God is concerned for history and reveals his will in it drew on the wisdom of the Hebrew prophets, the teachings of the New Testament refracted through the tradition of St. Augustine, and the Calvinistic Baptists among whom he grew up.

(Lincoln’s Faith and America’s Future)

If “A dog is better than I, because a dog loves and does not judge” (Abba Xanthios), then Honest Abe’s anticipation of Silent Cal is a virtue at least of sorts.

Happy birthday, Mr. President.

* * * * *

“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)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Mikhail Kalashnikov and culpability

Mikhail Kalashnikov, Creator of the AK-47, has died at age 94. He had little formal education, describing himself as a tinkerer. But he was an engineer at heart.

How many – millions? tens of millions? – have died, pierced by projectiles from the tens of millions of his creations? How much moral culpability should we assign to engineering sorts for the consequences of their creations?

I suggest that in all but extraordinary cases, we (whose job it isn’t to assign moral culpability anyway) shouldn’t assign much.

The world’s fraught with unintended consequences. Russia had legitimate enemies. His creation arrived a bit too late to to contribute to the defeat of Hitler, the starring role in which defeat arguably was Russia’s, but defending themselves and their citizens is what governments do. And a citizen who creates so fine a work as the AK-47 is reported to be deserves a true patriot’s fame.

Not so someone who compliantly, say, designed a gas chamber cunningly disguised as a mass shower. That’s the extraordinary case I had in mind.

Robert Oppenheimer? Maybe we should go back to Kalashnakov.

Still, I can’t bring myself to a full-throated “Memory Eternal!”

* * * * *

“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)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

10 Commandments, 4 Loves

A story was told by a modern, North American Orthodox Priest, about a young man of his Parish who came to confession. Among the sins confessed was “I cheated on my girlfriend.” Unsure what was meant, the Priest sought clarification: “I had sex with another girl, Father.” Continue reading “10 Commandments, 4 Loves” →

Nelson Mandela and St. Nicholas

Certain portions of the right wing are exercised today about anybody having anything nice to say about Nelson Mandela. For instance:

Please STOP making comments about how wonderful Nelson Mandela was. He wasn’t the kind gentle old man the media, yes the media, makes him out to be. You might as well praise Osama bin Laden, Castro or Hitler. Please, read below on what this man did The hero of the anti-apartheid struggle was not the saint we want him to be.

The image of Nelson Mandela as a selfless, humble, freedom fighter turned cheerful, kindly old man, is well established in the West. If there is any international leader on whom we can universally heap praise it is surely he. But get past the halo we’ve placed on him without his permission, and Nelson Mandela had more than a few flaws which deserve attention.

He signed off on the deaths of innocent people, lots of them

(Punctuation or lack thereof in original) After initially calling “bullshit” (because a half-truth is a form of bullshit), I repaired to my treadmill, and as I walked, I thought.

Specifically, I thought about the notion that Nelson Mandela could not be a saint because he ordered the deaths of people. And I thought about who deserves death and who might mistakenly be thought to deserve death.

The forces against which Nelson Mandela fought – and frankly there is no sugar coating that he was a “militant activist” with all that implies – were white Calvinist proponents of apartheid. They were of Dutch ancestry.

In 1990, when Mandela was released from prison, I was a member of the church consisting largely of Dutch Calvinists. And in that era, if not in that exact moment (my memory of the sequence isn’t all that clear), we came under suspicion of harboring similar racist thoughts.

But as I pointed out at the time (and I was actually quoted on All Things Considered one evening, defending my Church in letter or e-mail), the Christian Reformed Church in North America had already condemned apartheid as a “heresy.” The Orthodox Church, which later allowed this sinner into its fold,  has condemned apartheid’s cousin, phyletism, as a heresy.

Coincidentally, today is the feast of St. Nicholas. St. Nicholas is remembered among other things for having opposed the proto-heretic Arius at the first ecumenical Council of Nicaea, from which we got the first draft of the Nicene Creed. Arius denied the divinity of Christ, a doctrine which was not invented at the Council of Nicaea but which was affirmed in the face of the threat posed to Christ’s church by the heretic Arius. At one point in the proceedings (although the story is probably apocryphal), Nicholas became so indignant that he struck Arius in the face.

For this, he was stripped of his rank as Bishop and actually was confined in prison, perhaps with the intention of releasing him after the conclusion of the Council. But as the hagiography has it, key people experienced visions about him, and he was released from prison and returned to the Council, restored to the office of bishop.

Did I mention that this violent opponent of heresy is universally recognized as a saint?

On the wall in my icon corner is an icon of a man with very dark skin and very curly hair. It is the icon of St. Moses the Ethiopian. St. Moses was a violent thief and criminal, and I believe that he was guilty of murder, probably many times over. But he was radically converted, and went on to live an exemplary life. I believe that the story of his life concludes, ironically, with him being killed by a band of violent thiefs and criminals who were attacking the monastery of which he was the Abbot, and whose monks he was trying to protect by interposing his unresisting body.

So, dear right-wing, stop telling half-truths about Nelson Mandela. There was fear of extreme violence, whipped up by him, upon his release from prison in 1990. But he did something much more radical than that: he forgave.

I have no opinion on whether Nelson Mandela is a saint. As I write, I cannot even recall whether he  professed the Christian faith.

But I do know that history is messy, repentance happens, and that Nelson Mandela is a historical figure remembered not for his “militant activism,” but for his role in truth, reconciliation – indeed, “Truth and Reconciliation” – and in moving his country forward dramatically during the last 23 years of his life.

May his memory be eternal!

* * * * *

“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)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.