A Brief Review of Gregory Boyd's "The Myth of a Christian Nation"

I purchased this book after a friend recommended it to me, though I can't recall exactly when. It's been in one or another of my reading piles for quite some time. I purchased the book because of the recommendation, the reviews on Amazon, and the importance of this issue. What is the proper relationship between Christian faith and the State? 

Jacques Ellul addressed this issue in his False Presence of the Kingdom (1963), though he was not writing about American Christianity specifically. In The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church (2005), Gregory A. Boyd critiques Christian nationalism in America in the 21st century. Like Ellul, Boyd, a theologian, pastor, and former Oneness Pentecostal who became an Anabaptist-influenced evangelical, argues that the kingdom of God is fundamentally distinct from earthly political kingdoms. Drawing from Jesus' teachings—especially the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7)—he contends that Christians err when they seek to wield "power over" others through politics, as this mimics the world's coercive methods rather than Christ's "power under" model of sacrificial love and service.

The book was sparked by a 2004 sermon series at Boyd's church (Woodland Hills in St. Paul, Minnesota), where nearly 1,000 members left after he refused to endorse Republican politics or display patriotic symbols. What put him in hot water was his belief that a "significant segment of American evangelicalism is guilty of nationalistic and political idolatry." For some, the endgame is "taking America back for God."

When I think of the merger of Church and State, the Crusades testify that this is folly. And when I think of the Inquisition, it brings to mind a maxim that my mother was fond of saying: "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still."

Boyd suggests that Christians should engage society through personal ethics, not legislation; vote as informed citizens but avoid conflating faith with party loyalty. Boyd critiques both left and right for using God to justify agendas. 

The author's primary thesis is that political power corrupts the gospel's radical message, turning Christianity into a tool for control rather than transformation. 

Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world." It would help us much to spend time seriously thinking about what that means. Paul himself wrote, "My citizenship is in heaven," though on one occasion he appealed to Caesar (as a legal Roman citizen) to avoid an unjust trial in Jerusalem. 

Not everyone will agree with Boyd's arguments. Some might suggest he's overly simplistic. As the saying goes, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." This are some who most definitely believe that abstaining from politics will cede ground to evil.

A portion of the book addresses our founding, noteworthy as we prepare to celebrate our 250th birthday. The founders did not revolt from England to form a "Christian nation." Though the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Christians and Deists, they deliberately built a secular republic with no religious test for office. 

* * * 

Returning to False Presence of the Kingdom (1963) Ellul critiqued the modern tendency—especially among well-intentioned Christians—to confuse human social action with the work of God’s Kingdom. Ellul warned that when Christians look for the Kingdom in their own accomplishments, they mistake activism for revelation, effectiveness for faithfulness, and political wins for spiritual reality—thus obscuring the true Kingdom that only God can bring.

Related Links 

The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats

False Presence of the Kingdom
Imaginary Interviews: My Visit with Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy on Pacifism and Non-Resistance to Evil

Leo Tolstoy, 1897

A conscientious objector is an individual who refuses to perform military service or participate in armed conflict due to deeply held ethical, moral, or religious beliefs. The concept is rooted in the conviction that certain actions, particularly those involving violence and killing, are fundamentally incompatible with one's principles. 

For Leo Tolstoy, pacifism and non-resistance to evil were fundamental beliefs rooted in the teachings of Jesus Christ, specifically Matthew 5:39, "Resist not evil." 

 

Tolstoy's influence went beyond being one of the greatest and most influential authors of all time, nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature each year from 1902-1906. He was also nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize. (1901, 1902 and 1909.) His novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina have often been cited as two of the greatest books of all time.

Though Count Tolstoy grew up in upper crust society, in his mid-forties he underwent a moral crisis that resulted in his embrace a life of self-renunciation and anarchism, which at that time meant owing no allegiance to any state or political power. His ideas on non-violent resistance had a profound impact on future leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. It was a stance toward life that he took seriously.

It is also a conviction that stands at odds with many other Christian leaders throughout the centuries. The first who came to mind, and the reason I decided to write about this, was C.S. Lewis, who in his writings defended the idea that Christians could participate in war, especially in the defense of justice and in resisting evil. One of his radio talks during World War II addressed this and was later published in a small volume titled The Weight of Glory.

Saint Augustine supported the notion of war under certain conditions.He made a distinction between just and unjust wars. This notion of "Just War Theory" was expanded upon in greater detail by Thomas Aquinas eight centuries later. Martin Luther viewed military service as acceptable for Christians as a form of service to lawful authority. And Dietrich Bonhoffer participated in a plot to assassinate Hitler.

In short, these and many other Christians has found ways to reconcile their faith with military service. But who is right? 

Tolstoy stands in separate camp. His understanding of the teachings of Jesus, especially as delineated in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) forbids Christians from taking up arms to go to war.

 

In the year 1884 Tolstoy wrote a book titled "What I Believe," in which he made a sincere statement of his beliefs. The response to this book prompted to amplify his convictions with a follow-up titled "The Kingdom of God Is Within You." The preface begins as follows:

In affirming my belief in Christ's teaching, I could not help explaining why I do not believe, and consider as mistaken, the Church's doctrine, which is usually called Christianity.

Among the many points in which this doctrine falls short of the doctrine of Christ I pointed out as the principal one the absence of any commandment of non-resistance to evil by force. The perversion of Christ's teaching by the teaching of the Church is more clearly apparent in this than in any other point of difference.

* * *

Many Christians today would find Tolstoy's ideas so radical that they are not worth the slightest consideration. I myself feel challenged by them. Would any of the original Apostles become soldiers for the Roman Empire had they been recruited for military service?

The entire document is online courtesy of the Gutenberg Project. Here is a link followed by a couple excerpts.

TOLSTOY’S “The Kingdom of God Is Within You"

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43302/43302-h/43302-h.htm

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."—John viii. 32.

THE DOCTRINE OF NON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL BY FORCE HAS BEEN PROFESSED BY A MINORITY OF MEN FROM THE VERY FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIANITY.

Among the first responses called forth by my book were some letters from American Quakers. In these letters, expressing their sympathy with my views on the unlawfulness for a Christian of war and the use of force of any kind, the Quakers gave me details of their own so-called sect, which for more than two hundred years has actually professed the teaching of Christ on non-resistance to evil by force, and does not make use of weapons in self-defense. The Quakers sent me also their pamphlets, journals, and books, from which I learnt how they had, years ago, established beyond doubt the duty for a Christian of fulfilling the command of non-resistance to evil by force, and had exposed the error of the Church's teaching in allowing war and capital punishment.

In a whole series of arguments and texts showing that war—that is, the wounding and killing of men—is inconsistent with a religion founded on peace and good will toward men, the Quakers maintain and prove that nothing has contributed so much to the obscuring of Christian truth in the eyes of the heathen, and has hindered so much the diffusion of Christianity through the world, as the disregard of this command by men calling themselves Christians, and the permission of war and violence to Christians.

* * * 

And a little further on:

Conscientious objectors at Camp Pike, AK

But in the recent cases of refusal on the part of Mennonites to serve in the army on religious grounds, the government authorities have acted in the following manner:

To begin with, they have recourse to every means of coercion used in our times to "correct" the culprit and bring him to "a better mind," and these measures are carried out with the greatest secrecy. I know that in the case of one man who declined to serve in 1884 in Moscow, the official correspondence on the subject had two months after his refusal accumulated into a big folio, and was kept absolutely secret among the Ministry.

They usually begin by sending the culprit to the priests, and the latter, to their shame be it said, always exhort him to obedience. But since the exhortation in Christ's name to forswear Christ is for the most part unsuccessful, after he has received the admonitions of the spiritual authorities, they send him to the gendarmes, and the latter, finding, as a rule, no political cause for offense in him, dispatch him back again, and then he is sent to the learned men, to the doctors, and to the madhouse. During all these vicissitudes he is deprived of liberty and has to endure every kind of humiliation and suffering as a convicted criminal. (All this has been repeated in four cases.) The doctors let him out of the madhouse, and then every kind of secret shift is employed to prevent him from going free—whereby others would be encouraged to refuse to serve as he has done—and at the same time to avoid leaving him among the soldiers, for fear they too should learn from him that military service is not at all their duty by the law of God, as they are assured, but quite contrary to it.

The most convenient thing for the government would be to kill the non-resistant by flogging him to death or some other means, as was done in former days. But to put a man openly to death because he believes in the creed we all confess is impossible. To let a man alone who has refused obedience is also impossible. And so the government tries either to compel the man by ill-treatment to renounce Christ, or in some way or other to get rid of him unobserved, without openly putting him to death, and to hide somehow both the action and the man himself from other people. And so all kinds of shifts and wiles and cruelties are set on foot against him. They either send him to the frontier or provoke him to insubordination, and then try him for breach of discipline and shut him up in the prison of the disciplinary battalion, where they can ill treat him freely unseen by anyone, or they declare him mad, and lock him up in a lunatic asylum. They sent one man in this way to Tashkend—that is, they pretended to transfer him to the Tashkend army; another to Omsk; a third they convicted of insubordination and shut up in prison; a fourth they sent to a lunatic asylum.

* * *

The position of Christian humanity with its prisons, galleys, gibbets, its factories and accumulation of capital, its taxes, churches, gin-palaces, licensed brothels, its ever-increasing armament and its millions of brutalized men, ready, like chained dogs, to attack anyone against whom their master incites them, would be terrible indeed if it were the product of violence, but it is pre-eminently the product of public opinion. And what has been established by public opinion can be destroyed by public opinion—and, indeed, is being destroyed by public opinion.

The time will come and is inevitably coming when all institutions based on force will disappear through their uselessness, stupidity, and even inconvenience becoming obvious to all.

The time must come when the men of our modern world who fill offices based upon violence will find themselves in the position of the emperor in Andersen's tale of "The Emperor's New Clothes," when the child seeing the emperor undressed, cried in all simplicity, "Look, he is naked!" And then all the rest, who had seen him and said nothing, could not help recognizing it too.

The story is that there was once an emperor, very fond of new clothes. And to him came two tailors, who promised to make him some extraordinary clothes. The emperor engages them and they begin to sew at them, but they explain that the clothes have the extraordinary property of remaining invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position. The courtiers come to look at the tailors' work and see nothing, for the men are plying their needles in empty space. But remembering the extraordinary property of the clothes, they all declare they see them and are loud in their admiration. The emperor does the same himself. The day of the procession comes in which the emperor is to go out in his new clothes. The emperor undresses and puts on his new clothes, that is to say, remains naked, and naked he walks through the town. But remembering the magic property of the clothes, no one ventures to say that he has nothing on till a little child cries out: "Look, he is naked!"

This will be exactly the situation of all who continue through inertia to fill offices which have long become useless, directly as someone who has no interest in concealing their uselessness exclaims in all simplicity: "But these people have been of no use to anyone for a long time past!"

* * * 

What do you think? Is Christianity compatible with military service? Can a nation armed to the teeth with missiles and bombs, and supplying such to the rest of the world, be considered a Christian nation? 

Proof of Life: Hostage-Taking Is Not A Game

THROWBACK THURSDAY
In light of the current hostage situation in Gaza, still relevant.

Yesterday I was listening to a documentary about kidnapping and hostage-taking on National Public Radio. At one time Colombia led the world in number of hostages being held for ransom. If I heard correctly the program said there were 3,000 hostages being held by the FARC or the rebels at any one time at its peak ten or fifteen years ago. (Somalia, I believe, is now the leader in this enterprise.)

In fact, there were so many hostages held that a radio station in Bogota created a radio program that aired on Sunday afternoons for the purpose of transmitting messages from loved ones whose husbands (usually) were missing. Wives would tell their husbands that they were loved, that they looked forward to seeing them again, that sons and daughters were starting school next week or graduating, etc.

One of the reasons many hostages don’t make it is that they lose hope of ever getting out. As a result, they do not exercise or take care of themselves. This attitude leads to self-destruction when in reality the hostages-takers have it as their aim to keep them alive because they are only worth money alive. This is a ransom situation.

To get someone returned a price must be paid. But the person paying that ransom wants proof of life first. Why give a million dollars for a dead man? Proof of life may consist of videos, tapes, letters… evidences that the captive is still there. At least this is the way it works in the hostage business.

As an aside here, it’s interesting the Bible talks about the human race as being hostages, that God sent his son, Jesus, as the ransom to get us back. One difference between that story and this is that in the Paul’s letter to the Ephesians God did this ransom transaction knowing we were dead. That is, we were “dead to God” or spiritually separated from life, which in the Biblical story began with being banished from Paradise or Eden where the "tree of life" was situated. This is a very unusual notion but a central concept related to the “good news” that Christianity was originally all about. (Interestingly enough, the hero in C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy* is named Ransom.)

But as I listened to yesterday’s program and thought about it my mind latched on to this phrase “proof of life” but I wanted to apply it in a different way. What is the evidence we bring to this world that we are alive? After we’re gone, what have we left behind that proves we have lived? Certainly our children are a legacy. Do my writings count? My art? How about our acts of selflessness?

What are the proofs that you are alive? What proofs will you leave that you have lived?

* * *

Related Links: The Amazing Operation Jacques

*Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength

Originally published 2012

I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine: An Early Dylan Morality Play

One of the themes of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go is how information discovered later sheds new light on things we experienced earlier. In other words, the past is not fixed but fluid. This notion re-asserted itself as I was reading Agatha Christie's Elephants Can Remember this past week. 

Perhaps this is one reason why many Dylan fans not only appreciate his music but are avid readers of books about aspects of his life and career. The books, written much later, often shed new light on the songs that so moved us, inspired us and sometimes challenged us. 

Daryl Sanders' That Thin Wild Mercury Sound is one such book that brought new light to old memories. In light of how different this album was from the trio of what I would call astonishing studio albums that preceded it--Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde--I'm somewhat surprised it reached #2 on the U.S. charts and achieved #1 in England. 

Numerous writers have noted the quantity of Biblical allusions in the album, from 60 to more than 100 depending on who you listen to. I referenced this detail when writing about this song in 2016. Up until I read Sanders' book I'd always assumed that these spiritual themes and moral probing were a by-product of the motorcycle accident that ended his touring. That Thin Wild Mercury Sound dispels that idea altogether.

WHAT SANDERS NOTED in his book about the making of Blonde On Blonde was how much time Bob spent poring over the Scriptures, either looking for words and images or inspiration. Charlie McCoy, Kenny Buttrey and the rest of the studio crew had dealt with a situation like this before. By this I mean not the Bible reading, but the hours of having to chill while on the payroll. 

These recording sessions took place before the controversial motorcycle crash, so my assumption of the crash being a trigger that resulted in spiritual reflection was mistaken. This album, and some of the tracks on New Morning were my "evidence" of a turning point of sorts.

The reality is that from his earliest Dylan made no effort to conceal this moral aspect of his belief system. Those early songs about apocalypse ("Hard Rain") and injustice ("Only a Pawn in Their Game") are very much infused with a moral tone that had roots in a spiritual worldview. It was Dylan who in the Sixties told Noel Paul Stookey to "read the Bible." 

When one steps back and looks at the whole of Dylan's life, what one sees is an early seriousness about spiritual things followed by an earnest quest for God that led him to his embrace of Christianity in 1979. The next ten years we see him floundering somewhat as he attempts to synthesize these revelations with the greater whole of his life. The fruit of that period was the marvelous Oh Mercy in 1989 and the Never Ending Tour that was birthed shortly before. 

* * * 

I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine was first performed live at the Isle of Wight in 1969 with the Beatles in the audience and played numerous times during Rolling Thunder Revue. Here's some information from the Wikipedia page about the album it appeared on.

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John Wesley Harding is the eighth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on December 27, 1967, by Columbia Records. Produced by Bob Johnston, the album marked Dylan's return to semi-acoustic instrumentation and folk-influenced songwriting after three albums of lyrically abstract, blues-indebted rock music. John Wesley Harding shares many stylistic threads with, and was recorded around the same time as, the prolific series of home recording sessions with The Band, partly released in 1975 as The Basement Tapes, and released in complete form in 2014 as The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete.

John Wesley Harding was exceptionally well received by critics and sold well, reaching No. 2 on the U.S. charts and topping the UK charts. The commercial performance was considered remarkable considering that Dylan had kept Columbia from releasing the album with much promotion or publicity.

* * * 

I dreamed I saw St. Augustine
Alive as you or me
Tearing through these quarters
In the utmost misery
With a blanket underneath his arm
And a coat of solid gold
Searching for the very souls
Whom already have been sold
“Arise, arise,” he cried so loud
In a voice without restraint
“Come out, ye gifted kings and queens
And hear my sad complaint
No martyr is among ye now
Whom you can call your own
So go on your way accordingly
But know you’re not alone”
I dreamed I saw St. Augustine
Alive with fiery breath
And I dreamed I was amongst the ones
That put him out to death
Oh, I awoke in anger
So alone and terrified
I put my fingers against the glass And bowed my head and cried

Copyright © 1968 by Dwarf Music; renewed 1996 by Dwarf Music

* * * 

Related Links

I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine and Thoughts On Being Human

Seven Live Versions of I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine

Augustine's Confessions (Wikipedia)

The Confessions of St. Augustine (Gutenberg Project)

Tolstoy Asks Us To Address One Question: How Should We Then Live?

Painting by Ilya Repin. Public domain.

Russia's most significant literary figures of the 19th century would include Nikolai Gogol and Ivan Turgenev, for laying the groundwork of Russian literature, followed by Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekov. These latter three achieved international fame for their stories, novels and writing.

What I remember most about Count Lev Nikolayevich "Leo" Tolstoy--who is best known for his War and Peace and Anna Karenina, was that the second half of his life was devoted to writing about following Jesus and living out a life in harmony with Christ's teachings. As a result, he became keenly aware of injustice and had a falling out with orthodox and organized religion.

Tolstoy was not always motivated by the teachings of Jesus. In his book Confession he writes, "Quite often a man goes on for years imagining that the religious teaching that had been imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time there is not a trace of it left in him."

This paragraph pretty much sums up what he became, despite his nice Sunday school upbringing:

I cannot recall those years without horror, loathing, and heart-rending pain. I killed people in war, challenged men to duels with the purpose of killing them, and lost at cards; I squandered the fruits of the peasants' toil and then had them executed; I was a fornicator and a cheat. Lying, stealing, promiscuity of every kind, drunkenness, violence, murder — there was not a crime I did not commit... Thus I lived for ten years.

When his life bottomed out, he found new meaning in the teachings of Jesus, which infused much of his writing the second half of his life. What follows are quotes from his various writings.

Wikimedia commons. Photo May 1908

The Kingdom of God is Within You
"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him."

On Meaning
The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us.

The Key Question
This divergence and perversion of the essential question is most striking in what goes today by the name of philosophy. There would seem to be only one question for philosophy to resolve: What must I do? Despite being combined with an enormous amount of unnecessary confusion, answers to the question have at any rate been given within the philosophical tradition on the Christian nations...

But in more recent times, since Hegel´s assertion that all that exists is reasonable, the question of what one must do has been pushed to the background and philosophy has directed its whole attention to the investigation of things as they are, and to fitting them into a prearranged theory. This was the first step backwards.

On Pacifism
"The Quakers sent me books, from which I learnt how they had, years ago, established beyond doubt the duty for a Christian of fulfilling the command of non-resistance to evil by force, and had exposed the error of the Church's teaching in allowing war and capital punishment."

On the Good Life
To be good and lead a good life means to give to others more than one takes from them. --Tolstoy, The First Step

On Oppression
The oppression of a majority by a minority, and the demoralization inevitably resulting from it, is a phenomenon that has always occupied me and has done so most particularly of late.

Artist Ivan Kramskoi. Public domain. 

On True Religion
Genuine religion is not about speculating about God or the soul or about what happened in the past or will happen in the future; it cares only about one thing—finding out exactly what should or should not be done in this lifetime.--Path of Life

Choices
All our problems are caused by forgetting what lives within us, and we sell our souls for the “bowl of stew” of bodily satisfactions.

On Wealth and Poverty
"Honest work is much better than a mansion."

"Wealth is a great sin in the eyes of God. Poverty is a great sin in the eyes of man."

"If a poor person envies a rich person, he is no better than the rich person."

On Wisdom
The only thing that we know is that we know nothing — and that is the highest flight of human wisdom. --War and Peace

* * * *

Each of these could become a writing prompt for a future blog post. And since there is much more to say, I will likely return.

Related Links
The Forged Coupon and Other Stories

Were The Beatles Ever More Popular Than Jesus?

This spring I took a renewed interest in The Beatles, in part due to some of the writings of David Pichaske, author of From Beowolf to Beatles and Beyond, among other things. As a result I've been picking up a number of other Beatles' related books including Geoffrey & Brenda Giuliano's The Lost Lennon Interviews, which I was perusing Thursday evening as a bedtime read.

Early on there are a pair of brief newspaper articles dealing with John Lennon's infamous declaration that The Beatles were more famous than Jesus. The incident took place during the Beatles' last American tour in 1966. One result of this statement was this incident: bonfires were lit where young people could burn their Beatles records.

What's ironic here, if not bizarre, is that some of the bonfires were built by the Ku Klux Klan, as if they held the moral high ground. In South Carolina, for example, the Klan Grand Dragon Bob Scoggins nailed a Beatles record to a large cross and set it on fire. (Source: AllThatsInteresting)

As with many things, the media can be partially blamed for attributing the most heinous motives for John Lennon making this statement. Lennon afterwards stated in another interview, "I wasn't saying whatever they're saying I was saying... I was sort of deploring the current attitude toward Christianity."

His observation was that Christianity seemed to be shrinking at a time when pop culture was rising. "I'm not anti-God, anti-Christ or anti-religion. I was not saying we are greater or better."

But if fanning the flames would sell more newspapers, then let the Beatle memorabilia burn. (OK, that harsh indictment of newspapers crosses the fairness line, so we should be careful not to tar them all with this brush.)

* * * *
The second half of John Lennon's statement as regards being "bigger than Jesus" was that Rock 'n Roll would outlive Christianity. It's worth noting that Thomas Paine made a similar statement about the Bible, that as a result of Enlightenment thinking the Bible would be dead in 50 years. Paine died in 1809.

* * * *
Two years ago Slate published an interesting article on the 50th anniversary of John Lennon's "bigger than Jesus" quote. It's eye-opening because Lennon, by today's standards, violated a whole array of PC language regulations.

All this is on my mind in part because today is the beginning of our weeklong Duluth Dylan Fest and tonight David Pichaske will be giving a talk in the first John Bushey Memorial Lecture Series at Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum. Pichaske is more than familiar with the challenges of having a career in the academic world. Author of numerous books--Beatles to Beowulf, A Generation In Motion and Song of the North Country most relevant to our Dylan celebration--Pichaske's most recent book, Crying in the Wilderness, is a collection of essays, many of them dealing with the shifting sands of post-modern academia and free speech.

Pichaske's dedication should tell you a lot: "This book is a written memorial to the Southwest State University English Department, 1976-2016. blessings upon those who built it, a pox upon those who dismantled it."

His 2015 essay "Speech Cops on Patrol: How P.C. Language Regulations Undermine Communication" details some of the changes he has lived through and had concerns about. How far the pendulum has swung. In the Sixties the fight was for Free Speech, a right established in the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Over time, the lit professor was asked to no longer teach "Howl" by the beat poet Allen Ginsberg "because some students were uncomfortable with its homosexuality." In other words, let's only teach things that are "safe." Hence, the Duluth school district this year banned Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird from being taught in its curriculum. Despite the dignity of its message, it contains a bad word, which makes some people uncomfortable.

When Lenny Bruce fought the "status quo Goliaths" of his era, he was made to suffer for it. Today there are new Goliaths.

WWMTD

All this to say that I look forward to welcoming David Pichaske to our city tonight. He begins his book with a quote from David Masciota: "One of the most important challenges for any American in the twenty-first century is to remove the mask and shed the persona that regulates life, to actually work to achieve a fulfilling and freeing identity."

Inasmuch as Herman Hesse begins his book Demian with a similar sentiment, I half wonder whether this is a contemporary issue or a universal one. "I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings that came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?"

The answer here might come from Nietzsche, who observed that most of us are kept in line by our fear of being shunned. As a result, we are weaker people rather than stronger because we're afraid to raise the questions that are rattling around inside our heads.

This is likely what attracted me to Dylan in the first place. When I heard "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" I realized I wasn't alone. There was at least one other person who understood what I was feeling and thinking.

Related Links
The Letters of John Lennon
Lenny Bruce: Challenging the Status Quo
For the Benefit of Mr. Kite: How Creativity Works
Duluth Dylan Fest Schedule 

Will we see you tonight at Karpeles?
Meantime life goes on all around you. Engage it.

Religion in the Public Square

Yesterday I mentioned a few themes from the book Founding Brothers, but I avoided the issue of religion in the public square because there was insufficient space to make a point I wanted to explore.

The manner in which the slavery issue was debated throughout early American history exemplifies, probably more than any other, the challenge of bringing religion into public debate. The Quakers were quite vocal against it from the beginning, but their voices were dismissed because they were also pacifists who had been against the revolution itself. To some extent there was a condescending attitude toward the Quakers because although they were "nice" and "good" their views were not practical.

The tragedy (one of many, actually) with regard to Christians bringing the Bible to bear upon political issues like slavery is that the slaveholders were themselves church-going Bible-believing Christians who quoted the Scriptures to defend their way of life. Even after the end of slavery, these same believers went on to defend racist policies and fight against the very principles of freedom for all which the revolt against England was all about.

This unfortunate misuse of the Bible within the context of politics is not a uniquely American phenomenon. In Britain, during the Irish potato famine of the mid-nineteenth century Christians in Parliament argued that the people of Ireland should not be fed or helped in any way because it was a judgment of God.

Does this mean Scripture does not apply to political battles? Am I suggesting that Christians should have no voice in the political process? Absolutely not.

My personal belief is that the Ten Commandments, for example, are not true and good because God said them. Rather, they are true and good because God is a loving God and He understands how the soul works and the human social order works, that murder and adultery and lying are behaviors that damage communities and ourselves as well. It is in our best interest to live in harmony with the underlying rules of the universe we find ourselves in.

This may be an oversimplification for the sake of brevity, but I take it to the public square in the following manner. When arguing our case, whether it be for life affirmation or against the wrongfulness of treating humans as property, we must speak into the culture without the religious jargon and hardline arrogance that says, "My view is God's view." As mortals, can any of us have an absolutely perfect understanding of the ramifications of every situation, every piece of congressional legislation?

In point of fact, everything is easy in the ethereal realm of ideas and ideals, but it gets messy when you pull it down into the broken mess that is our world today. First, being a hardliner makes it very hard to find common ground to negotiate solutions with your enemies. Second, a thing may be "wrong" to one person but all the solutions are equally bad. Numerous examples can be cited.

Bottom line: our philosophical approach as Christians in the public square must be one of being Biblically informed, but we can't march into the arena spouting Bible verses and expect to have influence. Bible-wavers have been on both sides of nearly every ethical issue, from slavery to Viet Nam.

Our attitude must be one of humility and teachableness. The real need in the public square is for truth, compassion and justice to prevail. These are values for which banners must wave and for which all Christians must speak up. Our world is broken. How can we not make some attempt to be agents for healing and restoration?

Good Friday

"...but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews, and foolishness to Gentiles." ~ I Corinthians 1:23

Today is Good Friday, one of the high holy days of the Christian faith. The foundation of Christianity is not based solely on the long awaited revealing of the Messiah, fulfilling prophecies of a great prophet, the ultimate high priest, and eternal king of mankind, but on His sacrifice as literal fulfillment of the Passover Lamb of God, slain for the sins of the world.

He came into the world humbly, not as a nobleman, tycoon or royalty, and claimed that by understanding him we would understand what God was like.

There is little I can add to the historical record that has not already been, but on a human level put yourself in the place of his mother who had to watch her son’s ordeal, especially knowing the injustice of it all. And one of his best friends, John the disciple, also standing there, confused about everything he believed up until that moment on a lonely hill. And Peter, who only the day before had his feet washed by his master, who before the night had passed denied thrice any knowledge of his relationship with the Christ whom he loved. And the other followers who feared for their lives and fled, who went into hiding lest they too end up nailed to crossed on those isolated hills...

Hard to believe these were those who took the seeds of light that had been sown into their hearts and utterly transformed the future history of the world.

The following is a hymn written nine hundred years ago by Bernard of Clairveaux, to mark this day.

Augustine's Influence

"Our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Thee." ~ St. Augustine

Our philosophy club has been listening to a series of lectures called The Great Ideas of Philosophy by Professor Daniel N. Robinson. A little over a year ago we discussed a lecture titled "Augustine and the Light Within." Augustine's influence on the development of Western Christianity was significant.

One of the most influential writers of the first millennium A.D., his significance comes from taking an intellectual approach to the sacred texts which had become the canon of Christian faith, the Old & New Testaments. He was fluent in the ideas of Greek philosophy and brought together this foundation of Greek thought and spiritual insight to produce two significant written works, his Confessions and The City of God.

His first encounter with the Bible did not, however, impress him. It was a bad translation, and failed to convey the literary beauty and ideas contained in this profound book. The writings of Cicero, on the other hand, startled and captivated him with the fluid wonder contained in both the writing and ideas. It would be another ten years before he discovered the power of the Bible.

After leaving North Africa Augustine was offered a professorship in Milan where he came under the influence of Neoplatonism as well as the preaching of St. Ambrose. Inwardly he was in a great turmoil, which he relates in his vivid and introspective Confessions. Robinson refers to him as a bon vivant, a rascal and debauch. Until he met his Savior and embraced the faith he had earlier rejected.

After Rome was pillaged by the Visigoths in 410 he returned to North Africa where he spent fourteen years on the twenty-two books which comprise The City of God. This latter work contrasted two cities, God's city where the saints abide in joyful submission to God's will, and the earthly city where worldly selfishness reigns.

Augustine's primary positive influence was to show that being a Christian and an intellectual was not a contradiction. The predominant attitude up till Augustine's time was that you only need to know the Bible and that's all. Every other book is irrelevant. God's Word is all that matters.

St. Augustine recognized that truth is truth wherever it is found and there was much good in the works of Greek thinkers like Aristotle and those who followed up on those foundations. This was not an easy position to adopt and he wrestled with it until he saw what he believed was God's perspective on the matter. He used the example of Moses and the Israelites taking the gold from Egyptians when the left Egypt after Passover. "Gold is gold wherever it comes from," Augustine said, and in the realm of ideas the same holds true.

Likewise, how can Christians challenge ideas like Epicureanism, Stoicism and Hedonism if they have never read or tried to understand what the writers who proposed these views meant by them?

For what it's worth Augustine was, like ourselves, a man of imperfect understanding and some of what he wrote had negative consequences later. Like many writers, context can have an impact on the message. Augustine wrote during the period of Rome's decline and fall. In one section of his epic The City of God he thus argued in favor of using force to preserve the truth against the dark hordes. Unfortunately, a thousand years later these passages were used to justify the Spanish Inquisition.

Nevertheless, he is recognized as an important writer and thinker in the history of ideas, and in cultural history as reflected in Bob Dylan's tribute which can be heard on his John Wesley Harding album.

I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine

I dreamed I saw St. Augustine,

Alive as you or me,

Tearing through these quarters

In the utmost misery,

With a blanket underneath his arm

And a coat of solid gold,

Searching for the very souls

Whom already have been sold.

"Arise, arise," he cried so loud,

In a voice without restraint,

"Come out, ye gifted kings and queens

And hear my sad complaint.

No martyr is among ye now

Whom you can call your own,

So go on your way accordingly

But know you're not alone."

I dreamed I saw St. Augustine,

Alive with fiery breath,

And I dreamed I was amongst the ones

That put him out to death.

Oh, I awoke in anger,

So alone and terrified,

I put my fingers against the glass

And bowed my head and cried.