Category: Secularism

Nonsensical Secularist Caricature

Long ago if not far away, I sometimes speculated about what religion I’d be if I wasn’t Christian. I thought I’d probably be Bahai, because Diamond Girl was really cool and Bahais were pariahs in lands where pariahood was a badge of honor.

I now think the question was nonsensical, a gussied-up equivalent of “what would you believe if you didn’t believe what you do believe?” The appropriate response isn’t even “damned if I know.” It’s “what the hell kind of question is that?!” Continue reading “Nonsensical Secularist Caricature” →

Common Core Initiative

One of the Great Shibboleths of our culture is the obligation of “educated” people to have opinions about everything. Perhaps I’m dating myself by not saying “was” instead of “is.” Maybe the grand shrug “whatever” means the person has no opinion. Maybe it means it’s no longer cool (there I go dating myself again) to have an opinion. Maybe it means “My opinion is too nuanced and refined for a vulgar person like you to understand.”

Whatever.

Anyway, I’ve not been able to shed “you must have an opinion because you’re an intellectualoid” very well. (Sorry for the mixed metaphor of “shedding a shibboleth.” At least it alliterates. You did notice the antecedent “shibboleth” didn’t you?)

So I hereby announce my opinion about Common Core: I’m against it.

If you’ve been reading me for long, you’ll know this isn’t likely to be a partisan political position. I’m not even sure Common Core is a partisan issue, though it might appear such with a Democrat in the White House and Arne Duncan on the stump. But Republicans no less than Democrats, and perhaps even more, are likely to support “rigorous” standards for the most vulgar of educational workforce preparation goals.

I do not claim to have read widely and obsessively about Common Core. And I try to eschew conspiracy theories. But I’m not suggesting a conspiracy. I’m suggesting that our rulers are barbarians who can string platitudes together well enough to get elected, but who with precious few exceptions have no idea what it means to be an educated human being. Their honest, if stupid, reflex is that education is job training; that an “educated” person is a particularly well-oiled cog in the economic machine.

Here is what the Common Core folks reportedly consider an exemplary essay of a high school senior:

The modern world is full of problems and issues—disagreements between peoples that stem from today’s wide array of perceptions, ideas, and values. Issues that could never have been foreseen are often identified and made known today because of technology. Once, there were scatterings of people who had the same idea, yet never took any action because none knew of the others; now, given our complex forms of modern communication, there are millions who have been connected. Today, when a new and arguable idea surfaces, the debate spreads across the global community like wildfire.Topics that the general public might never have become aware of are instantly made into news that can be discussed at the evening dinner table. One such matter, which has sparked the curiosity of millions, is the recent interest in the classification of literature as fiction or nonfiction.

(Life Under Compulstion: The Dehumanities) The author who pulled that execrable passage for critique, Anthony Esolen, continues:

[T]he real problem can’t be cured by a visit to the English stylist.  It’s a problem that the authors of the Common Core Standards cannot recognize; just as a tone-deaf man cannot understand the beauty of the simple air that gives us Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.  The real problem is not technical, and is not primarily linguistic.  It is human.

A human being wrote that passage, but not as a human being.  He wrote it as a machine, as a Language Research Trainee, as a Prospective High-Prestige Academy Admission.  He wrote it as a boy-turned-ape, going through the English Language Proficiency Motions.  The passage is unrelieved by the slightest touch of beauty or elegance, of human feeling, of real address to a world of trees and dandelions and dogs.  There is one obvious observation – we have computers and the internet.  There is no wisdom, nor even the sprightly bravado of youth.  The writing is senile without ever having been young.

From political philosopher Patrick Deneen:

I think we can point to five “ascending” aims in the education of the young (while I’m sure there are more, I want to limit myself to five main aims), beginning from a more basic to the more ascendant, and that each have a corresponding end, or purpose. They are:

  1. Education in basic facts or “figures” (math) …
  2. A training in using these facts to more deeply understand things, especially provisional answers to questions that are not so easily achieved by simple memorization or “Scantron” answers …
  3. Civic education …
  4. The cultivation of character …
  5. The highest attainment of education is one that has no further end outside itself: not knowledge that we use toward some end, whether political or social or private, but simply the act of seeking knowledge for its own sake…

… the first two—the learning of various “facts and figures” and their manipulation through “critical thinking”—when divorced of the last three (civic education, education for character, and learning for the sake of learning) are highly prone to being employed toward only one end or purpose—instrumentalism, or utilitarianism aimed primarily toward baser ends of acquisition, material accumulation, the pursuit of pleasure or hedonism, the conquest of nature, and the accumulation of power. Divorced of any higher end, they become tools for the fulfillment of our physical nature without the cultivation of their use toward a higher end involving our role as citizens or the full-flourishing of the human being in virtue and as a creature that desires to know for its own sake.

It is unmistakably the case that the most dominant voices in education today insist that education is or ought be solely about the first two pursuits—the accumulation of facts and “critical thinking,” divorced from higher ends ….

(Common Core and the American Republic)

Set the standards. Reward those who achieve them. What behavior does that “incentivize”? (Can you say “Teach to the test”? I thought you could.) What becomes of students who are capable of higher pursuits?

Whatever.

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Primary sources:

  1. Life Under Compulsion: The Dehumanities, by claccisist and Dante translater Anthony Esolen, and also his other “Life Under Compulstion” essays: If Teachers Were Plumbers;  From Schoolhouse to School Bus;
  2. Common Core and the American Republic, by Patrick Deneen.
  3. This letter sent to all Roman Catholic Bishops by some of the living thinkers I respect most. If it’s bad enough to be rejected by Catholic Schools for the reasons adduced, Common Core is bad enough to be rejected by my state, too.

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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)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Nativity of the Theotokos, September 8, 2013

1

We commemorate today the Nativity of Our All-holy, immaculate, most blessed and glorified Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, daughter of the righteous Joachim and Anna.

The Nativity of the Theotokos is one of the Great Feasts of the Orthodox Church, celebrated onSeptember 8 ….

The Holy Virgin and Theotokos Mary was born to elderly and previously barren parents by the names of Joachim and Anna, in answer to their prayers. Orthodox Christians do not hold to the Roman Catholicdoctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, in which it is supposed that Mary was preserved from the ancestral sin that befalls us all as descendants of Adam and Eve, in anticipation of her giving birth to the sinless Christ. The Orthodox believe that Mary indeed received the ancestral sin, having been conceived in the normal way of humanity, and thus needed salvation like all mankind. Orthodox thought does vary on whether Mary actually ever sinned, though there is general agreement that she was cleansed from sin at the Annunciation.

(Orthodoxwiki) If you wonder why we commemorate such a thing and give Mary such an over-the-top title – and there are many in the world today, even among those calling themselves Christian, who do wonder, and even are scandalized – consider that she was prepared by God for her role, that she consented to becoming pregnant outside wedlock, and that without her consent – dixit autem Maria ecce ancilla Domini fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum, Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ would not have taken human flesh from her, and we would not be saved. (Yeah, I suppose there could be a “Plan B” but there didn’t need to be.)

And that doesn’t even touch on little things like her gestating God for 9 months, her womb containing the uncontainable one (“your womb he made more spacious than the heavens,” we sing), the creature giving birth to her creator.

Truth is, I wonder and am scandalized at those who refuse to venerate her, and who mutter “okay, dammit, she’s blessed,” thus performing what they think they biblically must, but with an attitude like an adolescent mad at being forced to apologize to another kid.

2

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.

And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives.

They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law. Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonor, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they, rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. They are attacked by the Jews as aliens, they are persecuted by the Greeks, yet no one can explain the reason for this hatred.

(Epistle to Diognetus) I suppose the Krustian response to this quote, from somewhere between AD 130 and the end of the century, would be a triumphalist “We’ve come a long way, baby!” But have we? Really?

They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country.

How are we doing on that “only passing through” thingy? It seems to me that a lot of Christians are very much at home in the America of, say, 25 years ago – any 25 years ago measured from now.

Our Christian Nation

(Epistle to the world from pickup truck window)

They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh.

When was the last time you fasted – skipped or deeply scrimped even one meal – to devote yourself to nourishment of the spirit?

But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.

(Luke 5:35) Are you addicted to any smutty TV shows?

And how’s your brotherly love doing?

Christians love all men, but all men persecute them … A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they, rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life.

When were you last persecuted? How loving was your response? When they come to take you away to the gallows (assuming you don’t deny Christ in order to live) will you welcome them and feed them a nice warm meal?

Mathetes wrote epistle to Diognetus when Christian numbers were probably increasing about 40% per decade, and Christendom was emerging from both their numbers and their influence.

We – cozy, warm, well fed, and feeling at home in America – are seeing the calamitous and undeniable collapse of Christendom, from absolutely pervasive dissembling and outright lies from our elected leaders, to a country intent on using terrorism as the pretext for building a police state, to a certainly Supreme Court Justice now thrice anathematizing traditional Christians as irrational haters.

And why shouldn’t it collapse? What credibility does it have left now that we’re lived it so indifferently?

There’s a point to my rant.

I’ve been to a number of Orthodox Evangelism conferences where people sought the magic formula for evangelizing our little American corner of the world. Maybe resuming the countercultural lifestyle Mathetes described to Diognetus would restore the good name of our Lord in the nostrils of out countrymen, where we’ve made Him a stench. And if not, at least it prepares us for the night that’s fast descending.

Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.

(Dean William R. Inge)

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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)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.